An experiment in writing. My first FMA fic. Also, wow, I am not enjoying your new formatting, fanfictiondotnet. :(
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the writing itself.
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Human Nature
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You weren't born like this, as a hulk of armour. Once, you had skin and flesh and blood, eyes with colour and a mouth with lips. You had hands that could feel and lungs that could breathe, and you know this because it is the truth, a fact. The mirror had reflected your image back at you, a little boy with full cheeks and a wide grin, and then, suddenly, it was gone.
Alchemy. Supposedly such deep magic that the fullness of it can't be contained in books alone, and the extent of it isn't even known. What was it that drove you both into doing the unthinkable? An unconscious desire to know the extent of how far you could go? Or was it really, truly the love? Love, supposedly a magic sensation, and yet also a thing that drives men into sin, the way it drove you. You can hardly even remember what it was that made you do it, anymore. Mother's face, mother's warm hands. Warmth. You can hardly even remember the way your own reflection looked anymore.
You try to keep this to yourself, this forgetting, because you know he would be worried. He always is, a little, even though he tries to be rude and crass and loud to cover up how he feels for most of the time. Sometimes, when he is sleeping and you still can't, you stare at his mismatched arms and legs and then his tired, relaxed face, wondering if that feeling in your chest is agony or just the empty void that's been there for as long as the metal has.
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(In the first few days that you were like this and he still hadn't gotten used to it, he had sat and watched you when he didn't know you couldn't sleep. His hand, then, on your chest, where your heart would have been if it had been, his eyes as hollow as you are. The lingering pain of installing automail still left him shaking, sometimes, and back then, when you still believed you were human, you wanted to tell him that even though you were a piece of metal, you were still just a boy in clothes too big for him. Now you don't know anything.)