Random Kimblee/Roy one-shot. I love these two together. This fic was another plot bunny of mine, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm also avoiding my other story on Roy/Ed. *whines* I don't want to write it...
Fullmetal Alchemist is owned by Hiromu Arakawa.
"It was beautiful. The buildings blasted into pieces with the perfect trajectory. The people were screaming. It was simply music to my ears." The man in wooden shackles closed his eyes and let his head fall back, face to the ceiling. "It was the loudest and most magnificent explosion I have ever seen. It wouldn't have been so large if it weren't for the stone. I nearly cried because it was utter perfection. Any alchemist should be able to appreciate it." The corners of his mouth curved upward. As the smile lasted, lips cracked into a toothy, demented smile. "The sound of the destruction is my favorite part. I'd like to do it again someday." His crooked smile gave way to hysterical, twisted laughter which in turn brought tears to the defendant's eyes.
The judge silenced him with a few loud smacks of the hammer on the desk. "That's enough. Now, is there anyone else here to speak either for or against Mr. Kimblee?" The silence in the room was answer enough. The Flame Alchemist shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Kimblee pulled his head forward and scanned the room with sharp yellow eyes which came to rest on his former bunkmate. They held each other's gaze while the sentence was declared.
"Solf. J Kimblee, you are hereby sentenced to life in prison for your abominable actions during the Ishval war. In addition, you will serve time in the new soundless chamber created by the Sonic Alchemist. I think you will find it quite exquisite."
Roy Mustang's eyes tore away from the Crimson Alchemist's as the judge slapped the hammer down one last time, blinking quickly several times to bring him out of his daydream. Looking at the floor, the Flame Alchemist couldn't bear to see the smug look on his old friend's face as he was led from the room surrounded by six state Alchemists. Things had changed between them since they first enlisted. Things will continue to change.
When they first closed the doors on him, he was laughing maniacally. They couldn't break him. Once he was out of this room, he would figure out how to blow his way out of prison. He wiped tears from his eyes and carried on chuckling as he tried to get a grip on himself. On the way into this new "soundless room", one of his escort guards bet another that he wouldn't last more than a half hour in there. He had bet 2000 cenz, the idiot.
Only a half an hour? They must think I am very weak. They are wrong. Did they know that I am the Crimson Alchemist? He took a deep breath to compose himself and looked around to evaluate the room he was in.
Beneath him was wire grating, through which he could see the floor of the room, which looked identical to the walls and ceiling. Even the door was now covered. He thought that he could remember where the door was but now it looked just like the walls. Large wedges of some material he had never seen before undulated throughout. The valleys of the wedges reached further back to the wall than he could see. Well, that explains the little tunnel we walked through to get here. It had to be at least 7 feet long. What is this place? It's just a room.
Bored, Kimblee moved to sit on the grated floor and began to inspect the shackles in which he was placed. His ankle was chained to a small ring on the floor and his hands confined in wooden stocks. Even with all the wiggling and pulling he could manage, his fingers were still inches apart. He had to resort to just sitting there. He sat staring down through the grates at the wedges below him.
He wasn't sure how long it was before the sensation of oppressive weight overtook him. The air around him felt heavy and it seemed to be pressing in making him feel frozen in place. He had known by shear deduction that spending time in this room would be quiet. It wasn't called a soundless room for no reason. Before now he simply couldn't fathom a soundless space. Except it wasn't without sound. It was. Or wasn't it?
A whisper behind him to his right caused his head to snap around, only to find himself looking at same wall that was in front of him. He knew he was the only one in this room; it wasn't really difficult to see that, the space was only about 15 feet in length on all sides. He was alone.
It was quiet. It made him anxious. With no background noise to process, his mind began to work in ways he never knew it could. His eyes squinted and his face distorted as he strained to hear anything, anything. Even the sound of his rustling clothes and shackles disappeared. Where normally the sound would reverberate off a wall and bounce back, it seemed to just… go away.
Kimblee coughed nervously to test the sound of his own voice, afraid to find how it would be. The sound was just that. A cough. Nothing else. It felt muted as if he had layers of pillows pressed to the sides of his head.
This isn't right. He frantically snapped his fingers together while holding them close to his ear. Again, while some of the sound made it to his ears, most of it seemed to be sucked out of the room. His heart began to race as his anxiety deepened.
He sat frozen, legs crossed and arms hanging limp in front of him. Wide, golden eyes bore through the wall as his brain attempted to process the lack of sound. The sounds within the lack of sound.
The wheezing of breath passing through a stress-tightened larynx. The whoosh of blood being pumped to his brain and body, faster and harder than normal, pounding in his ears. The emptying of stomach acid into his small intestine. Sounds that are normally drowned out by everyday background noise; the birds, the wind, the cars.
"Hello?" He called out loud and cringed as he felt the quiet, heavy weight of the air pressed in on him again. His voice was swallowed up by the room and he barely heard himself.
Kimblee pressed shackled palms to his dry, tired eyes and sighed. Or at least he felt himself sigh. He didn't really hear it. He hoped that he could just sleep it off so he lowered himself to his side with a flop. The sound that resulted from this movement made him scream in frustration and he sat back up pulling at his hair. He heard the movement of water. Fluid in his inner ear shifted as his head moved and in the absence of outside noise, it sounded like a rushing waterfall.
Trying desperately not to move at all, Kimblee sat staring at the wall. His sight was sharpened in the absence of sound but it was wasted as the scenery was not exactly engaging. He could smell himself, his sweat, blood, piss and shit. He could smell the wood of the shackles on his wrist. The oil used to coat the chains around his ankles. His nose twitched at a foreign smell which he figured was the material the wall was made from. He had never smelled that before. Everything that he could smell, he could taste too. He gagged on it. His senses were overwhelming him. Kimblee felt dizzy.
He felt cold and his skin was overly sensitive. The brush of his shirt on his collarbone felt oddly painful and gave him goose bumps. He squeezed his eyes shut and stilled his body, hugging his shoulders with what grip he could manage with his hands bound.
How long do I have to endure this? I don't want them to break me. I'm the Crimson Alchemist. They can't break me. Kimblee tried to reassure himself, but the whispers returned despite knowing he was alone in this room.
To his left he thought he heard the voice a little girl and behind him the voice of a man, both speaking in a foreign tongue. Ishvalan, He thought. Ignoring the roar coming from his own ears when he moved his head, he stood up and spun around to face the beings. No one.
Another whisper sounded, except this one seemed to be right in front of him. He was staring straight ahead and saw nothing. Kimblee backed up until the chain tugged on his ankle, pulling him back down to the grated floor with a slam. Then the whispers stopped and he was blanketed in silence once again. His heartbeat was now the loudest sound in the room and it was racing.
That is when they appeared. The Ishvalans surrounded him. There were more people in the room than he ever thought would fit, they were even below him, underneath the slats in the floor reaching upward to grasp him. Women, children and men; they were slowly creeping toward him and he scrambled to stand but the chain held him to the middle of the floor and he fell hard onto his face. The clanking of the shackles disappeared into the walls of the space along with his screams.
The Crimson Alchemist couldn't remember a time when he was so afraid. He was never afraid. Ever. Until now that is. The whispers he heard and the things he saw now terrified him and he knew deep down that he was broken. They would get him.
Roy Mustang paced back and forth at the entrance to the soundless room. The judge from the hearing and two other State Alchemists also remained outside the room to be sure the sentence was carried out. The judge looked quite pleased with himself and smiled as he watched the Flame Alchemist pass him.
Roy checked his silver pocket watch and sighed. He had heard things about this chamber. Other officers in the military claimed that the soundless room actually had negative sound. The sound measured from within was quieter than the sound audible by humans. Roy wasn't sure how that was possible but he heard that the walls absorbed all of the sound. Some of the men said that no person had spent longer than forty-five minutes in there without trying to kill themselves. Hallucinations plague them and they'll do anything to make it stop. A mind that is used to processing sound will go mad in this room.
Kimblee, his ex-bunkmate and someone he had considered a close and very dear friend until his actions during the Ishval war, has been in the soundless room for twenty-nine minutes now. Roy began to fear that Kimblee would do something to hurt himself. The man was sadistic and unstable, but the Flame Alchemist knew that there was more to him than that.
After more pacing and inner turmoil, he checked his pocket watch again and decided that thirty-four minutes was far long enough.
"Please let me go in for him." He pleaded with the Judge, who appraised him with narrowed eyes.
"Fine. The bastard has probably gone mad already, though some do last longer than others. Bring him out and we'll take him to his permanent cell." The judge nodded to one of the Alchemists, who opened the door to the little tunnel, another door at the far end.
The door at the end pushed out and to the side. As soon as the sound proof seal was broken, he heard the screams of his friend. No words could be made out, it was all incoherent babbling.
Kimblee sat on the floor yelling and thrashing, the cuff around his ankle had dug into his flesh as the man frantically tried to pull out of the binding metal, leaving behind a bloody mess. Roy cringed seeing him in this state. It was unsettling to hear that even with the door to the soundless room open, Kimblee's cries were small and meek, his calls swallowed by the eerie space. It was hard to explain, but they simply were just gone. There was no echo from the walls and Roy felt nauseous. The man in front of him certainly was going mad.
"Kimblee," Roy breathed. He shuddered at the sensation of not hearing himself that well. Kimblee spun to face him but Roy realized the man wasn't really seeing him. The Crimson Alchemist began frantically shaking his head muttering "no, no, no, no…." Roy took a slow experimental step toward the middle of the room and called out again. "Kimblee?"
At the advancement of his new hallucination, the Flame Alchemist, Kimblee thought he heard the whisper of his name and it pushed him over the edge. Using the wooden shackles on his hands, the man began to repeatedly hit himself on the head, occasionally catching an ear. Blood poured from new cuts and scrapes and his right ear was soon split wide open, the top of his cartilage dangling.
Roy rushed toward his friend, and when he was almost standing right above him, Kimblee froze and looked up at dark, black eyes. His own golden eyes were wide, pupils completely dilated, taking everything in.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I am so… I shouldn't… They came for me…" Kimblee ever so quietly mumbled to Roy, who knelt beside him placing a gentle hand on the man's leg and the other held on the wooden shackles. He didn't want him to hurt himself anymore. It was almost impossible to hear Kimblee as he chattered on softly. "Roy? I killed them… I enjoyed it…I…" Tears flowed easily from Kimblee's eyes and he whispered to what he thought was just another delusional vision. "I regret it… I'm sorry."
Roy held the sobbing Crimson Alchemist's face gently in his hands.
"Solf," Roy whispered softly, although it still startled the man in his arms. His eyes seemed to finally focus on Roy and he started to cry even harder. Tears threatened to fall from Roy's eyes as well and he bent his head down to place a light kiss on Kimblee's lips. He rested his forehead on the other's not caring that he was now covered in blood.
"I'm so sorry that you had to be in this room. I loved you once and along the way, I'm not sure what happened to make you so… so, diabolical." The Crimson Alchemist's eyes began to dart around the room as if they were searching for something. Roy could practically feel the anxiety coming off Kimblee as he held him.
"Solf," Roy called his name again, this time more forcefully. Again, this brought Kimblee's attention to him and Roy felt desperate fingers grasp at his uniform. "I still love you, but you need to serve your time in prison. I'm sorry it had to be this way; I don't like seeing you hurt. But you hurt a lot of people. If you are well behaved, you may be able to get a lesser punishment." Roy kissed Kimblee again, who sat still in shock. Roy transmuted the chain around his ankle to dust and carefully hoisting the man to his feet. "Promise me you will be good?"
Kimblee couldn't speak; he was still trembling from his recent hallucinations. It was hard to make his mind realize that Roy wasn't an illusion as he first thought. He simply nodded and clutched at Roy's sleeve, not trusting that he wouldn't be left alone in the room again. Roy also nodded and led them out of the soundless room.
Roy hoped that he would never see another person suffer in there, but he knew the military would use the room again. This is another thing I hope to change as Fuhrer, he thought as he led his friend to the Alchemists that would escort him back to his permanent cell.
These rooms actually exist, google 'anechoic room'. I'm not sure about the going crazy bit but I figured it wasn't normal to hear absolutely no sound. My friend told me about them and I had to write the story. :) Tell me what you think and leave a comment please! :D Thanks for reading!