Author's Note: Ok, so months ago I got into this fandom on the whim of helping out a friend, and here I am months later with a story for it, that wasn't originally going to happen...this story is the product of a large amount of writing, rewriting, planning, reworking, and should be a very interesting final product! This story could not have happened without the help of my wonderful, amazing, talented, patient…well you get the point...best friend, Hallow Bird. She has listened to hours upon hours of ranting, heard plan after plan, and given so much input. I cannot thank her enough, and I will blatantly advertise her here! She has stories for Doctor Who, Batman, and an upcoming story for the FMA fandom! Please go read her stuff, not just because I say so, but because she's a kick ass author.
So without further adieu...
Story Details
Title: Leave a Light
Rating: T for swearing, violence, and implied sexual content
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the FullMetal Alchemist franchise. I do however own any OCs and original content.
Warnings: Spoilers for FMA: Brotherhood, OCs, OC pairings, Slight AU content
Pairings: main Roy/OC, and many others (it's a long list)
And now on to the story!
Leave a Light
by Breathe1926
Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don't know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and I look them in the eyes.
"This also you are," they say, and I almost fall into the void.
…and then?...
And then I turn around and go do what needs to be done. What else is there?
–Andrew Ashling
Prologue
Fallen From Grace
Life.
Death.
These two things separated them and her.
They were pure.
They were saved.
They were innocent.
They were sentenced to die
She was stained.
She was damned.
She was guilty.
She was the executioner.
These thoughts plagued the young alchemist as she watched the peace in the town around her.
Red-eyed boys and girls ran and played in the streets around her. Silver braids and buzz cuts giggled in the hot sun as she hid beneath her hood. The young alchemist wandered the streets of the town square waiting for her partner, silently cursing herself for ever going off to war, refusing to admit she never had a choice. The sun continued to beat down on her tan cloak, making her sweat and blood rush to her cheeks.
As she continued to walk through the dusty desert street, a child ran into her and fell down at her feet. The little girl looked up at her with red eyes blazing in curiosity. The little girl looked into the covered eyes of the alchemist, and smiled, giggling slightly, as the young woman returned the smile with a hesitant and sad smile, masking the pain she felt beneath it. A moment of understanding passed between the two, and the child ran away, her silver hair flying behind her as she ran to what the alchemist knew would be her doom.
The young woman stood still savoring her final moments of what little peace she could find from herself, pretending that she wasn't who she was, that wasn't were she was then. She imagined herself as a little girl again, laughing as she rode around on her father's back, or relaxing in her mother's embrace. The sun wouldn't be as harsh, the hot desert ground would be warm shades of grass, and the screams of war would never have been. She would be an innocent, guilty of only the sin of believing the world was good. She kept her eyes closed as she stood in the square, living in her own fantasy of what once was, and never could be again.
A hand on her shoulder jerked her out of her false reality. It brought her back to the horrible truth of war. The screams of men woman and children filled her ears as the soldiers marched on the town, and began the massacre. Her partner looked at her with his cool blue eyes that held the gleam of sick joy she was so familiar with by now. He nodded, his eyes gleaming even more, anticipating the sick high to come, and she grimaced, it was time.
The alchemist shed her cloak, revealing her blue military uniform, and pulled on her gloves, readying herself for the transmutation; she stood back to back with her partner. He grinned sadistically, and readied to murder the entire town. The screams got louder, and she tensed, and felt her partner do the same. Then in sync, like a perfectly matched dance of sin, the alchemists raised their hands and clapped, then touched the ground.
Explosions rolled throughout the town as the citizens ran in all directions trapped by the sudden wall of stone that circled the city. Soldiers shot at civilians, and people began to die by the masses, men women and children alike. Screams pierced the silence, and the smell of decay and burning flesh covered the air.
The alchemist looked up from the ground, forcing herself to watch the horror she helped create. She watched as everyone around her, save her fellow alchemist fell to the ground. She saw the life drain out of the blood red eyes of the townspeople, and gazed out in shame as the bodies of all the innocents fell to ground. Then suddenly she heard the scream of a familiar voice, and her head turned.
The little girl who had fallen at her feet earlier was crying only meters away from her. The girl had her back turned to the alchemist, and was fighting to stay alive. She began running in no particular direction, but purposed all the same. The alchemist nearly failed in choking back a gasp, and hung her head in shame as the girl turned around, eyes landing on the alchemist. The girl screamed one final time, as she fell to the ground, life drained out of her once beautiful eyes.
The child fell at the alchemist's feet once more. The alchemist looked at the child's eyes, once so filled life and love and innocence, but now forever held a look of recognition and horror. The face had twisted into a permanent scream. In life the alchemist had seen life and joy on the child's face, and in death now she saw a look of fear and terror, and betrayal masked over with a contorted face of pain and confusion.
The scene flashed before the alchemist's eyes, the memory burning her very soul. She heard the screams of war, the cries of the millions of souls with in her, burning her being. She had carried the weight of the war and the lives she had taken, and she saw the face of the young girl with the blood red eyes filled with fear even in death. She saw each life like it was a thread of light inside her, and it burned.
Despite every rule and theory that told her not to, the alchemist stood there. She looked at the ground and the circle drawn on it, and readied to begin. She would start with the days before became a monster, and bring home the person who was the center of it. If anyone could do it, it was her. She closed her eyes, feeling the burning once again, the fiery anger of the hundreds of thousands of lives she had a hand in ending, and she wished for the millionth time it would stop.
Determination set in, and she pulled herself together. Today she would end the burning, and bring herself back to the days of yesterday. The anguish of war would not harden her; instead it would allow her a way to escape the burden of the monster it had made her. She would bring them all back, no matter what the cost.
The white light blinded the young alchemist, and fear set in. She had seen what she made, but it wasn't what she wanted. She should have been greeted with the smiling face of her childhood. She should have been held in the embrace of a mother today gone. Instead she was isolated into the gaze of a being that wasn't even human. Instead she looked into a mirror of herself, and stared eye to eye into a monster.
The figure in front of her grinned. It appeared to be human, but it had only a mouth, its face matching the white blankness of the area around her. It looked to be a single body, outlined in black nothingness. The grin of the creature in front of her parted, and began to speak.
"Welcome," it said, interrupting her panic.
"Wh-Who are you," asked the alchemist, her usually strong voice shaking with fear. "I am known by many names. I am called the World, or the Universe. Perhaps you would refer to me as God, or the Truth. I am all, and I am one. I am you," said the creature called Truth.
Silence passed between the two.
"What am I doing here," she asked, regaining her voice.
Truth grinned again."You are here because I wish you to be. You are here to see the Truth."
The alchemist started to ask a question, but instead she screamed. She felt her body being drug backwards, away from Truth. She turned her head to see multiple black arms dragging her towards a black abyss that was almost blinding in the whiteness. They drug her back closer to the abyss no matter how much she struggled.
As she was brought inside the darkness, doors shut in front of her and then the pain began. Her body was being deconstructed inside tis blackness, and the information of the universe shoved into her mind. It hurt like nothing she had ever felt, and she could do nothing but scream. Then in the midst of all the pain, she saw the face she had tried to bring back to life, and she knew there was hope. Then as soon as it began, it stopped, and she found herself again facing Truth.
"What do you think," it asked, grinning sadistically.
"That there's a chance I can save them," said the alchemist, new fervor in her voice.
"So that is the conclusion you come to, and yet, you don't ask to see more," Truth inquired.
"I want to, believe me, but you can't have shown me that without a price, right. That's a Gate, so there must be a toll," she retorted, no longer visibly frightened.
"You are correct, " said the featureless being.
The alchemist looked at the creature daring him to take from her, and after a moment, it smiled. The creature held up its hand and she watched in horror as the white creature grew a human appendage from the wrist. The woman looked down at her own arms and saw she lost her own.
The alchemist was pulled away from Truth with a million questions still unanswered, and blood spilling from the very place she used for that purpose. The white nothingness was replaced with the barren and cold ground of the building. Silence was replaced with the rain beating down on the roof. Truth was replaced with the skeletal figure that stared into her very soul. The alchemist was left once again alone, and once again the burning of the lives she had taken consumed her, and the screams of wartime memories filled her ears, as if they were happening in front of her. She finally gave up, and began screaming with them.
"Sir," came a voice from behind her, breaking the spell of memories she had been bound in.
She opened her eyes from the bleak and relentless rain of her past, and woke into the world of reality and present problems. The daylight streamed in chasing away this particular nightmare. The officer turned her chair to face the person behind her.
"Yes lieutenant," she replied, hiding any evidence of falter in her voice.
"The details on the most recent cases of the Loire riots are in. The general wants these forms read and witnessed by tomorrow afternoon," said the young man in front of her, placing a stack of papers as thick as her wrists on her desk.
"Damn it. Is that all," asked the woman.
"Yes, sir," came the uniform reply from her assistant.
"Very well, you are dismissed. Do me a favor and send Sargent Warring in here," she said with a commanding tone.
"Understood, Colonel Mustang."
And with a final salute, the lieutenant left her back to her nightmares.