This is my first FMA fanfic. I don't own any of the original characters, they belong to Hiromu Arakawa-sensei, but I do own Isolde!
I also do not own any of the songs that Isolde hums/sings in following chapters. If you don't know who the songs belong to, search for them using the lyrics, as there will be so many, I can't be arsed to credit them all, coz I'm lazy like that. lol.
This fanfic has been rated MA+ for coarse language, sex scenes, possible drug usage (legal and otherwise), and adult themes. If I've forgotten anything, please feel free to comment/message me about it. :)
It started raining. Isolde hated getting caught in the rain; especially when she had to walk a couple of miles down a dirt road. The small, brunette woman cast a scathing and miserable look at the night sky as she trudged down the mucky path. She held the strap of her satchel bag tightly to her, and pulled the faux-fur rim of her puffy-jacket hood down further over her grey-blue eyes. She hoped the rain would let up soon, or she'd be soaked through.
She slipped a little as she climbed the last hill, enjoying the view of the valley below. She was glad she'd decided to move to Ireland for a little while, even though it was so green and wet all the time, the total opposite of home; red and dry Australia. It was such a beautiful place. Magical, if you like. Now for the horrible slide down the hill, she thought, reality returning. She sighed resolutely and angled herself slightly to get the best grip out of her now-filthy leather work-boots.
She was making good progress. Until a sudden flash of lightening and deafening crack of thunder spooked her, making her jump. She tripped on a rock, and tumbled into the bracken on the roadside, thankfully managing to skip/hop/stumble over the washout and muck before landing in an ungraceful heap in the forest at the roadside, smacking her head on a hidden tree branch. The last thing she saw before blacking out was little starbursts of light, before what seemed to be eternal blackness inside a great gateway, and she fell right into it.
She awoke an unknown amount of time later, without a memory, and her coat and bag. She had no idea who she was, or where she was. She sat bolt upright in the damp undergrowth, looking around with a confused and scared expression on her face.
"Well, there's no use getting all freaked out," Isolde said aloud to herself, forcing herself to be calm. She laughed suddenly. "I like my voice. Hm, wonder where I am? I wonder why I'm taking this so well. Well, no use staying here." She pushed herself to her feet, and walked over to the road. "Left or right?" she mused. She saw a pebble at her foot that had a dip in the centre. She picked it up and saw it was flat on the other side. "Dip left, flat right," she decided as she flipped it. She caught it, dip up, and slipped it in her pocket and she started walking to the left.
She looked up at the clear night sky, wondering why she was out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, especially without a coat. She looked down at her clothes. A heavy pair of boots with a steel toe, a pair of close-fitting blue jeans and a black scoop-neck skivvy under a grey-and-black striped t-shirt with three buttons down the cleavage, and short little sleeves. While looking at her clothes, she noticed a necklace. It was silver with a name written in a pretty font. She took it off to get a better look at it. "Isolde," she read. "Well, at least I have a name now." She smiled, refastening it around her neck. She liked talking aloud to herself. She found it helped set things in her mind.
She started kicking her feet out amiably as she walked down the road, her mind wandering as she took in her surroundings. She was enjoying the freedom of the lackadaisical attitude she had towards her predicament. Soon, she started half-heartedly skipping, humming a tune that sprang to mind, although the words escaped her.
She'd stopped skipping as she walked steadily up a steep hill. When her head cleared the top, she saw a man standing on the side of the road, leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette. He was a lot taller than Isolde, but that wasn't hard. She was only five-feet-two, after all, and this man looked about six-three. He had short, dark spiky hair, wore strange little sunglasses (made odder by the fact it was the middle of the night), a white-fur-trimmed, sleeveless black vest over what appeared to be a dark navy, skin-tight singlet with odd red spots and stripes around his ribs and over his shoulders, black leather pants, and leather boots with a pointed toe. He looked like somebody who took a lot of pride in his appearance, and he had a toned, well muscled looking body that Isolde appreciated in a few quick glances.
In her mildly distracted state, she slipped on a loose rock. "Oops!" she exclaimed laughing as she scrabbled up the last few steps of the hill. "Hello," she said to the man who was now looking at her quizzically as she dusted her hands off on her jeans. "Um, do you know where we are? I'm a bit lost."
"About five minutes outside of Dublith," the man replied, flicking his cigarette away and walking over to Isolde. "I'm Greed," he introduced himself, extending a hand.
"Isolde," she replied, placing her fingers in his in a very ladylike handshake. He raised her hand to his lips, a kiss lightly brushing across her knuckles. She blushed.
"So how did you get out here?" Greed asked. He hadn't released her hand, and his thumb was currently whispering back and forth across the back of her hand.
"I don't know," Isolde replied, trying to gently extradite her hand, and failing. At least his hand was warm. It was so cold on this side of the hill! "I don't remember anything before I woke up on the roadside about fifteen minutes back that-a-way." She turned slightly, and tilted her head back down the road. "I only know my name because of my necklace."
Greed's eyes dropped from hers to look at the necklace, and lower. His eyes were taking in her tanned, ample chest, slender waist, and the high, round backside above her long, slender legs. Isolde coughed quietly. "The eyes are just a bit further north."
Greed grinned, exposing some rather sharp-looking, pointed teeth, and proceeded to examine her face. She had shoulder-length, wavy, chocolate brown hair, interspersed with pale gold streaks, parted on the right, with a black rose on a pin holding it back above her right ear. Her eyes were large and wide, framed with long, dark lashes, suggesting an innocence that was reflected in her navy-rimmed, stormy grey-blue eyes that held flecks of silver with smaller flecks of gold around the pupil.
She had a small, ski-slope nose, with a small silver stud in the left hand side, and a dusting of freckles that trailed along to her cheekbones. He turned his attention to her mouth; it was small, but the lips were full and soft looking above a stubborn chin.
"Are you finished?" Isolde asked mildly, cocking her head to one side. She shivered slightly as a cold wind blew down the road.
"Yeah," Greed said with a short laugh. "C'mon, you look frozen. You can crash at mine until somebody comes to claim you. Here." He released her hand and draped his vest around her shoulders, putting his hand on the small of her back, guiding her down the road to Dublith.