Fireworks
For Xenocythe, because she wanted a drabble piece but didn't tell me the pairing.
Contains spoilers to FMA Episode 34.
He heard about this place before, from the other prisoners in the 5th laboratory. It seemed like a lifetime away, when he sat with the other condemned lives, surrounded by the red water they would soon be part of. Personally, he could not understand the lure of the Philosopher's Stone. Give him a human anyway, and he would make lovely fireworks out of it.
But now, as he dragged his feet across the flooded pavement, feeling the pain from the slices of cold rain against his skin, the sign to the tavern swung precariously in the heavy rain. Kimbley smiled, and then raised his hands to knock. Well, 'Devil's Nest', wasn't that an apt name?
He had no idea why he was here. Only that he did not want to die. Not yet anyway.
When he woke up again, he was in a warm bed with the faint smell of cigarette smoke in the air. The light that hung above him flickered and came back on again. Kimbley held out his hand, and slowly clenched it into a fist, exhaling a breath he had not realized he was holding. The rusty metal cuffs around his wrists were gone. Somebody had removed them for him. For the first time in his life, he felt free. He was not a State Alchemist, nor was he a convict-soon-to-be-experiment-target. He was no one.
"Is this hell? Or is it heaven?" Kimbley whispered to no one in particular.
"Anything you want it to be," a male voice chuckled. The ex convict narrowed his eyes and turned his head to one side. Sitting beside him with a book in hand was a tall man, his eyes covered by a pair of round Chinese shades. But what caught his attention most was the dark red Ouroboros symbol on his hand.
The stranger smiled, and put the book aside.
"My name is Greed. You are..."
"Kimbley. Zolf Kimbley." The alchemist answered briskly. "And you've got bad dress sense."
Greed looked down at himself, and chuckled, running his fingers absently over his furred collar.
For the first time, he was lost. As he ran through the sewers like an underdog, he knew he was lost. They told him, never to trust someone from the military. Never to trust someone who had never pledged his loyalty to him. Greed did not listen. He was greedy, after all. Greedy to believe that for once, some things need not be said. For once, he could trust someone as much as others had trusted him.
"Kimbley and Tucker are going to pay for what they did."
He lied. No, they were not. He was going to pay for what they did. And what he did.
He was going to pay for making the first mistake centuries of existence had taught him not to make.
To fall in love.
The night air was warm, the slight tinge of blood and sulphur in this air. It was his favorite smell. Yet strangely, Kimbley could not bring himself to smile. This was ridiculous, he thought, as he slowly distill the unfamiliar emotion within him into its various components. Sorrow, regret, and a little bit of self-hatred. Was this...guilt?
He shook his head, gave a quick glance at the pale man sitting next to him, and looked out of the car again.
A soft rustle of sound from the grey bag shook him out of his musings. He turned, and saw Archer open the bag, frowning in confusion when he let the small bits of bone and dust slip through his fingers.
That's right. The Greed he knew, the Greed who hauled his ass out of the rain and into the Devil's Nest would never let anyone have a hold over him, even if it meant dying first. Life or death, it was his choice. Always.
With that thought in mind, Kimbley smiled.