A/N: Cue John Clease and a piano. And now for something completely different. Well, sort of. This is a prequel to the anime and my 'Death of Truth' sequels. It's through the eyes of an original character for various reasons, mainly because I couldn't think of anyone suitable in canon to use to explore the central character of these fics, namely Hohenheim of Light.

The reasons for wanting to explore anime!Hohenheim's backstory are fairly straightforward. The guy is guilty of some of the most terrible crimes imaginable. So how did he get to the point of falling in love for real and sacrificing his life for his sons?

Anyway, enough blather - on with the fic (which will no doubt have the same erratic update schedule as my others. You have been warned.)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

Birth and Death

Physically, he was nearly perfect, a man in the prime of his life. Slender and finely featured, he was nevertheless strong and virile. True, his skin was unnaturally pale, as if starved of light, but there was nothing else sickly about him.

His master had been pleased about that. She liked beautiful things, even if they were made for ugly work.

Mentally though, there was little there. The transmutation had been passionate, certainly, driven by fury and desire, pulling down a counterfeit of the soul of a man whose cruelty and vice had been legendary in his own life time. He had come into the world malformed and broken, a tangled mess of organs. She had plied him with red stones and he had guzzled them until he became the image of some classical god. But for all that, she had cared little about his mind. All she wanted was the hate he had been born with, the hate that made him perfect for the task she had for him.

There was nothing of his outer beauty in the space where his soul should have been. Just her rage and her hatred. Because that was what he was. Her retribution. Her vengeance.

Her wrath.

When the time came, she kissed him, once, on the forehead. The oldest child sneered and spat, the fires of his spite burning behind his eyes. The master laughed and told him that he would have his turn. If he behaved. Then she released her creation into the world and told him to hunt.

He obeyed without thought. His senses, infinitely keener than a blood hound's, locked onto his prey almost at once. From then on, there was only the chase.

Hills and fields and forests and rivers sped away beneath his feet. He did not need to stop, did not need to eat. Night and day fled behind him, things from another life that no longer mattered. The red fire that burned in his belly was stronger than hunger, stronger than fatigue, stronger than pain, driving him on and ever onwards. A bright shape blazed on the horizon, coming closer as he sped over the countryside. That shape was the whole of his world, the only thing in the universe that meant anything to him. He would reach that shape and he would grasp it and he would destroy it.

That was what his master had decided would happen. So that was what must happen.

The shape grew bigger, resolving from a wavering dot into a far-off stick figure, then into a humanoid blob, then into the form of a man, tall and broad and as crimson as the dying sun. He tracked the man for a while, seeking a way past the landscape that kept getting in his path. When he could find no such way, he created one, tearing stone and earth and brick and wood aside without care. Second-hand hatred made the task unavoidable; his strength made it a mere inconvenience.

He burst into a room that no one could have found, much less broken into, if they had not been able to see through to its one occupant. His form distorted as he struck, his fingers becoming daggers, his limbs extruding into whips. With his dark hair streaming behind him, he flew at the man who his master wished dead. Before the stones he had swept aside had hit the floor, he was at the man's neck, the tips of his claws digging mercilessly into soft, yielding flesh. In an instant, the end was certain.

Scarlet light filled his vision. The man was torn from his grasp as he was lifted and propelled backwards by spears as cold as death that seemed to spring from the very air itself. They pierced him straight through and carried him across the room, to collide bone-shatteringly with a fireplace. The man lifted a hand briefly to the skin that had been cut then, satisfied that no great damage had been done, brought both together.

He had barely time to exult in the crackling joy of rebirth before another red flash lit up the chamber and a great, glassy claw caught him in its grasp and crashed him to the ground, splintering the flags and forcing every breath from his body. He cried out, in instinct rather than because of the pain, for the pain was a background distraction, swamped by the anger of being deflected from his purpose. He flexed and shattered the claw, muscles standing out sharply and grotesquely under his skin.

The man took a step and put down a foot with precise intent. For a third time, the scarlet light swept out, birthing hideous black vines that whipped and caught at him as he hurled himself at his master's enemy. He was nearly there, snarling and groping for the man's neck again, when they brought him to a stop, binding him tighter and tighter until he could not take another step, forward or back, could not move, could not breathe.

The man surveyed him once, with eyes that were golden and empty of warmth, and then dismissed him completely with a single wave. The vines dragged him clear of the floor and back to the rock wall, then into the rock, the earth parting briefly to welcome him into its embrace.

He could not scream as the mountain swallowed him up.