Authoress Notes: I finally got off my lazy authoress butt and decided to post something new! Praise and love me! :D
Claim: I claim rights to any and all characters of my own design.
Disclaim: I do not claim rights to Fullmetal Alchemist.
Chapter One
Eight Years Prior
Rain. It fell in heavy vertical sheets, turning dusty roadways into soupy waterways. Clouds swollen with precipitation blocked out any chance of sunlight, giving the town below a dismal, gloomy appearance. Headlights of an approaching vehicle threw a shadow engulfed alleyway into sharp relief momentarily before passing on. Black wheels rotated sluggishly through a small, shallow stream of dirty rain water as the sleek black automobile came to a halt. After a moment's pause, two doors opened, allowing a young woman with blonde hair and brown eyes and a young man with raven black hair and deep blue eyes out. An annoyed look crossed the man's fair features as he commented in a deep baritone, "I hate the rain. Nothing good ever happens when it rains."
His companion said nothing to his complaint on the depressing weather, and both turned when a door with a brass lion-head knocker opened, a man with green eyes that sparkled behind his glasses exiting and head down the stairs. "Come on, Roy!" he said, teasing the disgruntled military man before his face sobered, and he wiped his glasses as he continued. "It's a real mess in there, Roy. There's blood everywhere. God only knows what this guy was trying to do. An ambulence is on it's way as we speak."
"Alchemy isn't a game and - wait." Roy paused, giving the other man a sharp, penetrating look. "An ambulence? There's a survivor?"
"Yeah," the man nodded, adjusting his glasses as he waved the pair to follow him back up the rain drenched steps. "A little girl, only six years old. We think she's the guy's daughter, Alia."
They entered the house, which, despite it's less than grand outward appearance, had the air of someone with quite a bit of money living there. China was displayed behind glass cases, a rectangular table set with clean, empty plates and a few candles that cast dim shadows upon the wall as they walked past. Officers crowded the main room which was made with hard-wood floors and made the scene before them that much more gruesome to behold.
What was definately a transmutation circle had been carved into the wood several inches deep, and thick, viscous blood seeped into the grooves, obscuring the symbols that had been written there. The copper stench made Roy's nose wrinkle in disgust as he observed the scene. An arm sat awash in the large pool of blood, detached where it would have joined with an elbow. The fingers were stretched upward, as if reaching for some unseen object or person.
Remembering that Hughes had said something about a daughter, he searched for the girl and found her in the arms of one of the officers, being cradled as if she were made out of glass. She was wrapped in a cloak similar to the black one that he himself wore at the moment, obscuring her clothing from view. A white silk ribbon tied thin ringlets of light brown hair away from her face that resembled a china doll with glassy pale blue eyes and plump, ivory skin. Her hands, tiny as they were, were completely covered in blood, a few drops marring her childish face.
Hughes was right, the girl couldn't have been any older than six and already her eyes spoke volumes about the horrific scenes she had witnessed tonight. As much as he disliked children - he didn't dislike them, persay, he just felt uncomfortable around them -, Roy didn't think it was right to show the gruesome sides of living to small children such as the girl. Hughes strode forward, taking the small girl from the officer. Though Hughes had no children as of yet, he seemed to be naturally good at taking care of them, and Roy had no doubts that Hughes would make sure the girl was taken care of.
Hughes carried the cloaked girl towards the door, but not before Roy caught a glimpse of the clothing the child wore. It was obvious the elegant dress had once been white, but was now stained a dark scarlet with blood that painted the girl's skin below her chin and no doubt beneath her dress. Supressing a shudder, Roy brought his attention to the crime scene instead, convinced that the child would no longer have anything to do with him.
It was more out of a moral sense of duty to make sure the little girl was alright than actual concern that brought Roy to the hospital a few hours later and he paced the waiting room restlessly, waiting for Hughes to come back. When the bespectacled man did return, it was with a sober face and a serious glint that Roy knew meant that whatever he had to say wasn't good. Hughes ran his fingers through his short black hair and sighed before pulling a manila folder from underneath his arm.
"The doctors gave me these," he explained, flipping open so that Roy could see what was in it. Photographs of the girl were atop the packet of paper that had writing on it, but it was the photographs that caught Roy's attention first. The first was of the girl's back, cleaned of blood and devoid of clothing, the hospital gown pushed down around her elbows. Dark markings swirled around her skin in seemingly nonsensical patterns, but as an alchemist of the state, he knew all too well what those markings were, burnt permanently into the little girl's back. "There's more."
Hughes flipped to another picture, one that made Roy swallow. "They said her bones were hollow, like a birds. And these," Hughes traced the shape with his index finger, the bones that overlapped the natural ones and made the girl's skeletal structure look like something out of a horror movie.
"Those are wings," concluded Roy quietly, internally caught between horror and anger. How could anyone do that to a child? No doubt she had been experimented upon, and that was most likely the end result of the mess back at the crime scene. His stomach churned, and he felt like vomiting. "That sick son of a bitch..."
"If we don't do something, she'll be hauled off like some laboratory experiment." It was apparent that Hughes wasn't going to let that happen as his eyes darkened, and he closed the file. "What do you want to do about this, Roy?"
"...I don't know." Roy answered, and it was the honest truth that he had no idea what to do with a six year-old girl who had obviously been a victim of human transmutation.
And outside the hospital, the rain continued to fall.