Scar
In the evenings, the man known as Scar would lose himself in the overwhelming disarray of a stationary life. Having lived years as a nomad, often wanted by the law, it took several weeks simply to become comfortable with the idea of returning to the same rooms night after night.
It had been two months now since he'd joined with Major Miles and Colonel Roy Mustang in the Ishvalan Restoration. The exhausting parade of speeches and decrees had long come and gone, and Scar simply watched on with a sort of fatigued detachment. After all that had occurred- the homunculi, the realization that his brother's research had saved millions, the aftermath of the bloody civil war that peppered the streets of Central with bodies… that smell of crushed concrete, blood, and carbon had brought him back to terrible times. He couldn't even step out of the quarters they'd assigned him for much of the first two weeks while Mustang's men and the remainder of the Amestrian military force mobilized to clean up the streets and restore as much basic infrastructure as they could. There had been so much dead…
It hadn't really been his choice to join forces with the Amestrian state. It had merely been the only thing to do. Only the power of the military could restore the damage they'd dealt, though Scar had no illusions that Ishvalan people would ever fully recover. Yet Miles had said he'd needed him. The man even asked him his name. Major Miles was something of an enigma; he was only one-fourth Ishvalan by blood, and he never felt the pain their people felt during that terrible extermination. He bore the same red eyes and dark skin that Scar and his ancestors were born with, but something in his eyes was different; foreign. The way he moved was with military precision, his elbows always straight and his steps sure and urgent. He spoke choppily and with power, like every word was an order- such was required of an officer. He didn't move with the poetry of the Ishvalan people. When he smiled, he lacked a certain easiness in the mouth.
He missed his people. The Ishvalans in the slums eked out a meagre existence that could not be compared to how they'd lived in the glory days of old Ishval. Scar missed the soft melody of an oud, the lifting flitter of a shepherd boy's flute, and the smoky voices of the wild desert nomads that came into Kanda to trade their camelhair blankets, precious metals, and pilfered jewels. He missed the look of his brother, Evram, pacing about the house and ruining everything he touched with his ink stained fingertips. In the evenings, Scar stirred perfect proportions of gum Arabic, soot, honey, and water into the fine black ink that their family used for writing.
And the women! Though Scar embarked on the path of a priest, avum-Ishvala, at twelve years old, he never stopped appreciating beauty when he saw it. He loved watching the Gunjan women dance, slamming their feet on Ishvala's earth and ringing out a song with their heavy metal ankle bracelets. The wealthy women of Kanda lined their eyes with powdered lapis and amethyst, while other women like Scar's mother simply rubbed mutton fat into their cheeks in the dry season.
None of these things existed in the slums. There were no huge feasts, festivities, and raucous dancing. The people survived on what food they could find, and there were no more date cakes, honeyed pistachios, or endless bowls of curried beans that Scar remembered as the flavors of his childhood. He cringed to think that children were born in the slums and lived their life as an Ishvalan without ever having seen Gunjan girls dance or eaten fried flatbread sprinkled with cumin and rock salt.
Scar often thought of these things when he saw the other man during the day, marching about doing this and that, chased by his subordinates and chasing his superiors. He'd derive a certain sort of pleasure, thinking that no, he isn't truly like us, and then he'd immediately recoil in disgust. We are no more. There was no more poetry in Scar, either. His life had become a ceaseless march, one towards destruction. And now that all was destroyed, now that all was dust and new birth was possible, he found himself utterly lost.
The Ishvalan Revival was to take place immediately after the re-consolidation of the chain of command in Central, which Scar was told could take several months of administration and propaganda to establish. Fuhrer Grumman's takeover of Bradley's former position was smooth and unopposed, having hid his tracks carefully during Mustang's coup. His position was fairly stable, but some members of the former upper echelon that remained still worked to rally their loyalties. As it was, the Amestrian public was not fully convinced that the Grumman administration would be any better than that under Bradley, and there was the added problem of having to fabricate a complex lie to hide the reality of what had occurred. The general public was not ready for stories of homunculi, immortal men, and wholesale corruption over centuries of state-sanctioned bloodshed. Eventually it was explained away an alchemical weapon that Bradley tried to unleash before it was ready in order to quell the coup. It was a complicated tug-of-war that left Mustang exhausted every day and increasingly reluctant to attend to anything else.
"The Colonel keeps his promises," Hawkeye had reassured Scar over dinner in the mess hall. Mustang ordered his meals to be delivered now to his personal office. "But he must work on the foundations first."
"The Ishvalan Revival is a tall order of both administration and manpower," Major Miles had added between bites of dry bread dipped in a watery tomato soup. The demolished roads and railways made it difficult for food to be transported, and the military subsisted on rations mixed with whatever fresh food was available. "Think of it as a tall tree- for the tree to become tall, the roots must grow strong. There cannot be a tall tree with small roots. It would fall immediately."
"You speak like an Ishvalan," Scar could not help but comment. He watched Miles' eyes narrow with an emotion he couldn't place. He felt his own isolation keenly; the Ishvalan survivor stood out like a sore thumb in the mess hall, not clad in the same blue uniform as everyone else. He preferred a simple white shirt with long cargo pants, and he threw on a beige trenchcoat on the cold or rainy days. They relocated Major Miles to Central and appointed him his own office, and made Scar one of his subordinates. Scar was to be given a salary, benefits, a residence… it was all very pointless to the man, but Mustang had insisted. Neither Mustang nor Miles had ever approached him to don the state uniform, though Scar technically did work for them now. Perhaps they sensed he needed more time.
Scar knew he was to be used as a figurehead, along with Miles, to give the Act some legitimacy. He was to represent the face of Ishvala, and there were so many things wrong with that.
Edward and Alphonse Elric were gone, far off to the countryside.
May and her strange little animal had disappeared to the east.
Only Doctor Marcoh remained, and the man was in a hurry to return to that wretched little town to which he'd pledged his life.
Scar found himself very, very lonely. It had never been a problem before. Being on the run, having an identity for himself as God's Hand, these things gave Scar a clear purpose. They gave him a drive. Now that he was more or less an employee of one of the state alchemists who'd participated in the extermination, now that he spent his time surrounded by soldiers, now that no one was in a hurry to kill him and there was no one he was tracking down to kill, Scar found himself… wandering. It was a terrible feeling.
As a priest in the former Ishval, he used to hear the words of God in the wind. He felt God in the warmth of the sand, and tasted their Creator in the sweetness of the water. Even in those terrible dry months of the dry season when the hardiest thornbushes shrivelled like parchment and fruits fell black and pruned from their trees, he never once doubted that Ishvala was with them. Their people knotted lengths of rope and hung them from giant date palm trees, and the women would pray under the scrim of rope while heat rose up around them like a shimmering curtain.
If one year was dry, the rainy season was always quick to follow. Scar never had a reason to doubt the will or fairness of Ishvala, until the extermination.
He used to pray often, not just for himself, but for others in his community. He used to be a light for his people. But his light had meant nothing during the dark night of extermination, when the state alchemists came to raze their land to ashes and dust. He witnessed his family being stolen by demons from the World-to-Come, and he saw his people fall around him and felt the ground beneath him breaking open to swallow him whole. He was forced to watch, helpless, as Ishvala abandoned them during the driest summer in decades, and the rainy season never returned.
Is a light still a light if no one is here to notice it?
Going home to his quarters was like returning to a prison. Every fiber of his being itched to be released. He could almost already feel the heat of the desert sun bearing down on his back. Scar dropped to his knees. "God, O Great Creator Ishvala," he spread his palms out in front of him and bowed his head. "You who are above, below, within and without, you who are higher, deeper, inside, and outside. You who oversee and rule us, your glory is above the heavens. O Creator, come to my assistance. Keep watch over me, Lord, and guard me in the night if such is your will. May you find me worthy to be protected under the shadow of your light, Ishvala, so that I may be guided onto the right path. As you will, so it shall be."
The words, though familiar, tasted bitter in his mouth. Ishvala had willed that Ishval be destroyed. Scar struggled with the thought for years. Could it have been a test of faith?
During the war, the Ishvalans turned to rigorous spiritual practice in order to redeem themselves in the eyes of Ishvala, whom they thought they had offended. Priests took vows of silence for weeks on end in effort to hear Ishvala's commands, but they heard only gunshots. Gunjan resistance warriors banded their arms with barbed wire until their limbs bled blue from infection, believing that their pain and suffering would appease Ishvala to spare their people. The Amestrians continued to advance. During the time of desperation, women turned to sorcery to force miscarriages in fear of birthing a baby into the hands of the Amestrian murderers.
Regardless of what they did, the precautions they took… they still perished in flames.
If this was a test, or a cleanse that Ishvala wanted for His people, Scar wondered why he of all people had survived. What was his role in Ishvala's plan?
It was late now, and the soldiers had surely gone off to the mess for beer. It never seemed that alcohol was in short supply here. Scar himself did not drink much. Though alcohol was not forbidden by Ishvala's teachings, too much of the stuff was said to open a person to darkness and evil. Besides, Scar had no real friends here, no one to drink with.
Miles was not his friend, though he praised the man for his efforts.
Mustang was too exhausted with his daily routines.
Hawkeye was just as busy as the man she worked for, and Scar rarely saw the woman except at mealtimes. And even then, she'd recently started taking dinner with Mustang in his office.
Public opinion of him was slow to change- soldiers here still regarded him with a mix of apprehension and fear. Scar, the criminal, the murderer.
There were no Ishvalan slums in Central, and Miles did not want Scar to leave his supervision before the Ishvalan Revival Act was formally announced and put into place. It would not do for their figurehead to have his image poisoned by his past history. It was better for Scar to lay low for a bit and then re-emerge with a new public image. He was allowed to wander outside once in a while, only under supervision, but the sight of Central being slowly rebuilt made him sick. No one had been there to lend a helping hand when Ishval was leveled to the ground. None of his most loved ones had survived. His mother, his father… his brother…
The weight of his guilt was crushing. His brother had given his life so that he would live… The corners of his mouth quirked. Perhaps it was all for this moment, so that he would survive to aid in this revival. After all, that blonde Major General had said the same. But… why him?
Obviously, this sedentary life had given him too much time to think, and thinking was a dangerous thing.
Miles
Miles did not remember much of his grandfather. The man was a woodcutter, and passed away before his time when he was crushed under a rather large oak that refused to notch properly. The man prayed often, and had many stories to tell. It was a pity that Miles could not remember the vast majority of them.
Miles' father, Conrad was his name, was also born with the dark skin and red eyes so distinctive of the Ishvalan people. As a child, he sometimes heard his parents lamenting over the discrimination his father faced each day. He'd get shorthanded in pay, be harassed into working overtime with no pay at all, or be inexplicably booted from every job he tried his hand at. The man was strongly built with a strong, sharp nose and angular features. If it weren't for his obvious Ishvalan genes, Conrad might have even been said to be attractive in many circles. The man threw his all into roofing, smithing, scrubbing floors, farming, shoe-shining, mining, woodcutting… anything at all he could find, but as tensions in Ishval rose and the daily papers became peppered with anti-Ishvalan propaganda, Conrad found himself consistently unemployed and unable to provide for his wife and child.
That winter their family had to sold what semi-precious things they had for lamp fuel and dried fish. They parted with the gray camelhair blanket trimmed with braided cord that Miles' grandfather had brought with him over the desert, some of their cooking pots, and a pair of heavy copper anklets. The next winter was even worse, and the young boy came down with a case of pneumonia. Miles' mother sold her hair to buy them a bit of bread and some medicine. Suzanne wasn't what anyone would call a strikingly beautiful woman. She was merely average, with a small nose and thin lips, but her hair was like she'd stolen the sun. He remembered the way his fathers' eyes welled up with tears that would not spill as he looked upon his wife, his beautiful wife with white skin and blue eyes, blonde hair no more. Then he'd look at his son, who was dark skinned like him, and the guilt would stab at him like daggers.
Miles' mother was always a calm woman, never complaining, always ready to greet her son with a smile. But the young boy used to hear her crying on the other side of their ramshackle door. Grief, he'd heard and seen often. However, Miles was perhaps blessed that anger and resentment never found its way between his parents. At the very least, it was not expressed.
They were eventually evicted from their tiny one bedroom dwelling and forced into an Ishvalan ghetto.
"I'm not Ishvalan," Conrad had yelled in desperation, clutching to his citizenship papers when they came to take his family. "I was born Amestrian, see!"
But they took his papers and cast it to the ground, stepped on it and spat in his face. They took his mother away. They wouldn't believe Suzanne and Conrad were married. Their marriage documents ripped under the leather soles of their boots. It seemed like the louder Miles screamed, the harder they gripped his mother, until dark bruises appeared on her arms where they held her. She was trying to say something to him- her mouth was moving, but Conrad's yelling was too loud.
And then they were separated.
Miles was seven years old then, and that was the last time he ever saw his mother.
Today he turned thirty-three. Miles himself didn't mention a thing, and went about the day as usual. But Mustang, who always thought it necessary to know and remember the small things, had a habit of deriving key bits of information from his subordinates' files as soon as they come under his command.
He should have known something was up by the way people smiled at him on his way to his office. Predictably, he arrived to find a generic 'Happy Birthday' card taped to his door, signed by dozens and dozens of people.
This was pretty common practice for Central administration, but Fort Briggs had never adopted anything of the like. Strength and endurance was the way of life at Briggs, and when someone's birthday came around they celebrated with beer at the end of their shifts and surprise barfights- but never a card.
He plucked the card from the door. It was filled with signatures- some from people he knew, like Mustang and Hawkeye, and some from complete strangers that were probably his new subordinates. Miles even started feeling a bit bad for not knowing who they were- obviously they knew him, because many left comments and remarks. Most comments consisted simply of 'Happy Birthday', but many were more specific. 'Thank you for helping me sort out the movement orders,' one Logistics Officer had written. 'I hope you enjoy these desserts I've left you in your office,' a one of the mess hall cooks wrote in surprisingly elegant handwriting, 'I noticed how much you like the stuff.'
Despite himself, Miles found himself smiling. These people were Amestrians- soldiers from Central, no less. The Briggs Major would be lying if he said he expected this sort of kindness.
Yet there was one person whose voice was distinctly missing from the card. As much as Miles hated to admit it, he was disappointed that Scar hadn't signed this frivolous and trivial birthday card.
"Your appointments were cancelled today," Warrant Officer Ross told him from behind two giant stacks of papers. "Major Armstrong was immediately needed at Eastern headquarters, so the Ops meeting will have to be postponed until they return the following week."
"Very well," the Major replied, though he was not happy at having to postpone the meeting with Major Armstrong. But there was nothing more to be done- they'd already left. "Are there any papers I could help sort out?" He had much to do himself- drawing up plans and mission statements for the Ishvalan Restoration Act, organizing troops and logistics and securing funding, for example. But there wasn't much he could really push out without having Scar examining his work and offering his thoughts. Miles had made various attempts to get close to the man, and what had originally seemed to be a good partnership suddenly disintegrated into a consistent cold-shoulder treatment from Scar that Miles couldn't explain. It was absolutely imperative that he and Scar could manage to work together. Scar was the centerpiece of their operation. Without Scar, they were fools bumbling in the dark.
"No sir," Ross heaved a great sigh. A rotund man who'd had far too many cakes and pies in his time, the Warrant Officer seemed to roll in his seat. "This paperwork is for me." He gestured to the giant stacks that seemed to be growing each day. "But rest assured, sir, after I've signed them and they've made the rounds, every sheet of paper will come to your desk also. If I were you, sir, I'd take advantage of the break."
Reluctantly, Miles nodded and headed off to his desk, which seemed to emanate an aura of sweetness and butter. A pastry box rested on his desk, and already Miles knew it had to be hiding cream filled profiteroles, his favorite treat. They were not as common now like they used to be, Mustang had lamented a few days ago, since fresh ingredients were hard to come by. But Mustang had insisted that the cooks prepare the treats when the ingredients became available- nothing raised morale quite like being able to enjoy an airy profiterole after a long day's work. Miles had grown quite fond of the bite-sized treat.
Peering into the box, he counted two precious profiteroles, filled to bursting with fresh made cream and drizzled with chocolate, an even rarer commodity. The cook had even dusted the treats with icing sugar. It was the closest thing Miles had ever had to a slice of birthday cake.
His Queen would like this.
The thought came unbidden to Miles' mind.
It'd been almost two months since his last call to Briggs headquarters, to her. Miles wasn't a fool. He knew he was going to be tied up in Ishval for a decade at the least, maybe more. It wasn't fair to his Queen. As much as Miles wanted, he couldn't continue what they'd begun.
She could do better, he told himself, gritting his teeth at the thought of another man seeing her the way he had. But the truth was, he was a man of mixed blood with no wealth to inherit. She was a pureblooded Amestrian from a long line of illustrious aristocrats.
They had no future.
Miles couldn't do that to her.
Kimblee
In the silence between sleep and waking and sleep again, a drunken and lazy thing spread throughout Kimblee's body. It was a slug, an insect, a snake that burrowed through his body and into his mind, until his head felt full to bursting… A bit of light, understanding, and then Kimblee opened his eyes.
Ah. Yes.
He'd touched it.
For a split second, he'd joined with that profound mystery like a dewdrop evaporating in the morning sun. He'd touched the truth, and it had been both terrible and exhilarating.
Glorious.
He'd always wanted to die joyously, with arms spread and welcoming.
So why…
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He was in a hospital.
Slowly, the sounds and smells of the environment filtered down into Kimblee's fragmented consciousness. The stench of rubbing alcohol, the continuous droning sound of whispered words and prayers, sometimes interspersed with a fit of coughing or a groan. The light was a horrifying off-white that stung at his eyes, and the Crimson alchemist struggled to remember how to breathe.
"I wasn't sure of his identity before," a deep male voice carried over from the right side… familiar… Kimblee instinctively tried to turn his head, but found he couldn't. Something was holding his head in place. The voice continued, somewhat shakily, "but there is no doubt now. That is Zolf J. Kimblee, the Crimson Lotus Alchemist."
A female voice followed, slightly hoarse but commanding. "I see. I will alert the authorities at Central at once. Is he waking? Load him up with morphine. I don't want any trouble on our hands."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Kimblee felt like floating. He wondered where he was. He had no memory of what brought him here. He vaguely remembered fighting some sort of animal… and then somehow… he also remembered peering at many eyes at once in a veil of darkness. He remembered screaming, but laughing at the same time from how good it felt.
He was staring straight at the Angel of Death, who existed solely because he believed in Her ever since he was a child. She opened her mouth and in that black gaping abyss a thousand eyes were blinking. And when She swallowed him whole, it was with the deafening roar of a lion.
End Ch. 1
Notes:
I always thought that it couldn't have been that easy for Scar to get along with Miles at first, knowing the drastically different routes they took to redeem Ishval in the eyes of Amestrians, or take vengeance. By my logic, Scar should have hated Miles or at least had to work through some severe animosity. In addition, it couldn't have been easy for Scar to take this role as part of Mustang's restoration, so I felt it was necessary to explore his reservations and fears.
Kimblee has always intrigued me as a character, and challenged me. In the chapters to come, I hope to delve into his true character under the exterior. I just can't let him be dead, goddamnit.
My inspiration for Ishval draws on cultural customs and practices of Pre-Islamic Arabia, and other early religious communities such as the early Jews. My Ishval isn't based on any real geographical location, so the flora and wildlife I'm introducing will be a little varied. I've basically divided it into the three provinces mentioned in the manga; Kanda, Gunja, and Daliha. Kanda has a moderate to hot climate, better for trading than farming. Gunja is a devastating dry stretch of desert with a dead salt sea, and its people survived by war. Daliha is a province of green grasses and oasis ponds, where farming and animal herding was most prevalent.
There will be a few OCs as we go on, but not more than five and they will be fully developed with motivations of their own that drive the plot.
Please consider leaving a review with any thoughts on the work so far. I do appreciate it.
