Hello everyone!
JumpinPopTarts here, announcing the start of my newest fic; Metal and Fire which will be a collab between myself and Louie (0.Forgetful.0; go see her stuff, it's awesome!)! It's taken a while coming, but we hope you'll enjoy it!
As for the plot, well….anyone with a DA account should know that there's a 100-theme list going around that site; loads of random words with no running pattern that are supposed to stretch people's creative talent. It sounded amazing…so we've decided to bring it to ff too! It's as simple as it sounds, 100 theme words mean 100 little oneshots of the best pairing in FMA…EVER! (of course, we're talking RoyxEd!) encompassing various genres (e.g I'm a fluff nut, but 0.Forgetful.0's promised some angst in hers) and all sorts of situations as the plot bunny really gets a workout.
Anyway, 0.Forgetful.0's doing the even numbers and I'm doing the odd…which means I get to start! Yay! +dances around like a loon+ So, with out any further ado…lets get going!
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Title: Introduction
Rating: PG13
A/N: Not the fluffiest start…but I thought I'd write a ficlet about Ed and Roy's first meeting! 99 of the dialogue it copied off the subbed anime to make it as realistic as possible (which meant more FMA watching for me! Yay!)
Anyway, enjoy!
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The pain just wouldn't stop.
Over and over, hour after hour, day after day, it scorched like flames through his every nerve, feeding on his tears and muffled screams, the cries that writhed beneath his tongue, bursting to get out.
But they never did.
Ever.
Because Edward Elric would never cry. Eleven years without a father had robbed him of the strength to do so.
You'd have thought God would have been content with just that punishment. But no.
Ed's lip trembled into another quavering moan.
Without a father…and now without a mother.
His limbs twisted, knots of memory tightening like ligature, cutting off the blood until the flesh was bloated and bruised. An endless open wound.
Fists tightened, clutching straws. The last of his strength hovered above him, around him, the house of Pinako Rockbell, (a stronghold throughout his childhood) now nothing more than wood and stone, no protection against the nightmares of the outside.
Of what happened on that fateful night…
Memories surged out of the dark behind his eyes.
He'd tried to bat them away, to fend them off just as he did to everything else in his life that had hurt him. His fights with Al, his loneliness, his secret longing to see his father again…all of these he could shut away at will.
But not this.
Never this.
Because, with all the others, his comfort blanket had been his alchemy; its complex theorems and patterns bringing order to his twisting soul. Once, he had been able to bury it all in work. It had made him strong, made him clever…
…but no longer.
Another sobbing gasp wrenched from between his lips. His chest heaved and the bandages over his stunted limbs tightened horribly; chilling reminders of where there had once been living flesh; flesh now taken as payment for this miserable existence.
Taken by alchemy. His last defence.
And without that, Ed was nothing but pain.
Winry would visit his little sickbay sometimes, her familiar face and chatter a welcome break in his endless hours alone. But that was all she was; a distraction, a fleeting thing. He barely felt her cooling, soothing fingers, or understood the words that she whispered into his ears; words to comfort, words to support, words that those who were 'just friends' should never say to one another.
But they were meaningless, like static, and everything drifted by, pointless, empty, grey.
Until the day He came.
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A morning like any other, an afternoon spent staring at nothing, too weak to even sit up for long…and then in the evening came Winry, with her wide blue eyes and demanding, high-pitched questions.
"What happened, Ed? You two came back from your training and now this? Oh, why won't you tell us anything! Even Al won't talk until you do!"
But Ed just turned away, blank-eyed, his hidden face crumpling as Pinako took up the questioning, her replies touching instantly on that agonised, unspoken truth.
"You tried to resurrect your mother." Her words should have been an accusation, angry at least, but instead they were quiet, empty, and to Ed that was the worst thing of all. That brief, intangible gentleness, sent the walls of grief crashing down around him and the boy winced away, feigning sleep to shut the Rockbells and their questions out for another night.
And then it happened.
Someone else spoke. Two simple words, but enough to set his entire body on fire.
"I see."
It was a warm voice, a rich voice, a voice unlike anything he had ever heard before; deep and dark and sonorous, calling him out of his tortured weakness and into the present day.
His hands bunched under the sheets. Ed kept his eyes closed, but his mind painted the speaker into his mind with sound alone.
Tall; he could tell that from the way his words echoed in the rafters. Handsome; no voice so exotic could be anything else. Arrogant too, yet somehow humble, as though he too knew something of what it was like to survive pain.
"I saw a light, coming from this village a few nights ago." The stranger was saying and Ed shivered, trying to ignore the ugly thing that stirred within him when he heard those words. The light. The light of-
"…the light of a human transmutation." The stranger spoke his thoughts exactly and the boy felt his body tense, like a coiled spring, wound tighter and tighter around the pain in his heart. The voice went on, oblivious.
"I've never seen such a strong transmutation response before…" For a moment the words sounded wistful, admiring in a way that made Ed's stomach flutter with ridiculous levels of pride.
What he had done that night was foul, was wrong, and yet in the eyes of this mysterious stranger it was impressive…something to be appreciated, for all its twisted wrongness.
But there was no need to feel quite this happy about it.
Squashing his giddy heartbeat, Ed emptied his lungs as quietly as possible and refocused on the conversation, where some angry retort by Auntie Pinako had just been fired at the stranger.
"Excuse me." The man replied, half-apologetic, half businesslike, as though he had remembered his actual purpose for being there. There was a sound of ruffling clothes, then a chink of some kind of metal chain.
"A State Alchemist watch?" Winry's incredulous words told the 'sleeping' boy what had happened. "You're a State Alchemist?"
The words stuck a chord in Ed too. He had heard his and Al's sensei talk about her hatred of the military and the State Alchemist 'toys' that they kept in their arsenal, and had learned to hate them without question. But hearing this one now, a real live one at last, had filled him with fresh doubt. Surely they couldn't be as bad as-
"Pah!" Pinako cut across them both, cross and defensive. "What would a solider want with us? We have two people critically wounded here; can't you see that?!"
"What do I want?" The State Alchemist repeated. There was another shuffling sound, as though he had produced something else to show to the startled Risemboolers before him.
"I was summoned here, by this letter."
"That's the one that brother wrote." Said Al. Al? When had Al been there? Ed's eyelids flickered but he forced himself to keep them closed. The night that had lost him his limbs had cost his brother even more dearly and, though he loved Al as much as he had always done, he could not oppress the twinge of fear and horror when he looked at that clumsy metal body, and hated himself for it. He wasn't ready to see Al again. Yet.
But if this State Alchemist had a letter… was he a friend of their Father's?
"Are you one of father's acquaintances?" He heard Al ask eagerly, then judged by his disappointed 'huff' that the State Alchemist had just shaken his head.
"I have not seen Hohenheim for many years. We're searching for him too, at Central City, where I'm stationed."
"So you came to find him here?" Pinako demanded "Well, these boys' father is still as missing to us as he is to you. Now, we have an injured person here and he needs his rest. Please leave."
It took a brave man to resist Pinako Rockbell, but the stranger appeared to do so without a thought. His voice sounded from exactly the same distance away, as though he had not moved at all. Ed shivered a little and felt the State Alchemist's eyes ghost over him, as though assessing him for something. Not knowing in the slightest what it was, Ed still found his heart hammering, hoping desperately that he had passed this silent test.
But the tone of the stranger's next words gave nothing away.
"If he still lives, even after attempting human transmutation…then I have more interest in him than his father."
Ed's stomach was doing somersaults now. Him? More important than his father? Of interest to this strange, captivating stranger?
But the State Alchemist was still speaking.
"Who knows?" A smile came into the voice at that "He might one day become an excellent State Alchemist."
"He has done nothing to deserve such a fate." Pinako snapped, her boots clattering across the floor as she ushered the unwelcome visitor towards the exit. "Go back to Central and stay there. We're busy."
"At least let me leave my name." The stranger said, sending another fizzle of apprehension through Ed.
"I really don't-" Pinako objected, but it was too late.
"I am the State Alchemist, Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang."
"Great. Thank you Mr Mustang. Now if you'd just get-"
"Visit Central city." The lieutenant colonel said, as though he hadn't heard. "I promise nothing, but you may find what you're looking for."
That last sentence was said just a little louder than the rest, as though not spoken to the whole room, but towards the bed. To Ed alone.
Ed couldn't help it. At the sound of his words his eyes crept open just a little, unable to resist sneaking a peek at the departing visitor.
His heart damn near stopped when his eyes immediately plunged into those of the stranger's. Colonel Mustang was looking directly at him, a half-smile across his handsome face (even more handsome than he had imagined), eyes blank, unreadable.
One look. That's all it was. And then it was gone, the Colonel vanishing behind the door, his footsteps fading into nothing. But his presence still swirled through the air, like a hint of spice, his name whispered wonderingly from every corner of the room.
Mustang…
Ed breathed the name and smiled. The word rolled around on his tongue, enticing, alien; an unspoken invitation that he just could not refuse.
A strange tingle run through him just then, a whisper of premonition that warmed his bones and filled him with new strength; this was the first sign, the start of a chain that would continue during the long days of his recovery, all through the journey to Central City until the moment when he finally met this stranger again.
A feeling telling him that, from this moment onwards, his fate and the fate of Colonel Mustang would be permanently intertwined…
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