Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Fullmetal Alchemist. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
This contains spoilers through volume sixteen of the manga. I wrote this in, oh gosh, October of last year for lj user mjules for (hopefully the first round of) fma_ladyfest.
Known Then and Now
Phantom pains woke her. Her arm ached, deep, where the monster Bradley's blade had cleaved first through flesh, then muscle, then into bone. Lanfan reached for her arm. Her fingers settled on cloth: the sheet, drawn flat. Her breath hitched. She fisted her hand in the sheet.
In the dark, a rustle. A woman spoke, near and known. "Why are you crying, little thorn?" This, too, was known: Elder Sister's name for the girl who clung like a thorn to her.
So. The ghosts came to her in this hour, to ask her of her duty and of her failure. Fitting that it should be Elder Sister, who had died nobly protecting the Lady Yao. Lanfan had pulled the arrowheads out of her sister's back one by one and placed them in a jar. They had tinked on the glass like small bells, red with her sister's blood.
"I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was small. Her throat hurt with it. "Please forgive me for having disturbed your rest."
"Ah ah," said Elder Sister, amused. "When did you start asking forgiveness, little thorn? I don't remember any of that."
"I failed," said Lanfan. Her eyes burned; she closed them. "In my duty. To protect the young master."
"Is he safe?" said Elder Sister.
Lanfan nodded.
"Then you did not fail."
Coolness on her shoulder. Elder Sister stroked the white bandages there. The bones in her shoulder ached where the implant now rested, grafted into bone and skin.
"Oh, little thorn," she said softly. "What have you given of yourself?"
"A necessary sacrifice," said Lanfan. She said this harsh. She covered her eyes with her hand, that she might not look into the dead face of her sister. A coward's gesture. "If I had not underestimated the enemy we faced-"
The thought had haunted her, consumed her in the depths of the fever which followed this most recent surgery, to fit the implant to her bone. If she had not been so remiss as to disregard the threat posed by a single man, perhaps she would have not lost her arm, lost it to her own foolishness like a child. Perhaps she might have saved the young master from the monster which had devoured him.
"This is the price I paid," she said, "for failing in my charge. I am to protect the young master, but he protected me."
Elder Sister waited. That was her way. Patient where Lanfan was short, understanding where Lanfan was not. This was why Lanfan was little thorn.
Lanfan turned her face away.
"I did not think you were one to run," said Elder Sister, "or to accept defeat."
"I'm not running," said Lanfan. Petulant, even to herself. Her ears burned.
"Is that why you're here?" said Elder Sister. She touched Lanfan's shoulder again, her fingers light as air. "Is that why this is here?"
The silence stretched between them, a long quiet which fell like loneliness on Lanfan's chest.
"I can't protect him now," said Lanfan. She took her hand from her eyes. Elder Sister was a trace of light, a strange suggestion at the corner of her eye. Lanfan cupped the joint of her shoulder, where no arm rested. "But I will have a new arm made. A strong one, so I can carry the young master on my shoulder."
Elder Sister laughed. "So, you see?" she said. "Don't muddle in your mistake. You failed once. But you won't fail again."
"No," said Lanfan. She breathed in, then out, the pain in her chest now receding. "I won't fail again." She would not. She knew this.
"Oh, little thorn," said Elder Sister again. She touched her cold fingers to Lanfan's cheek. "Look how you've grown. What honor you've brought to our family."
Lanfan closed her eyes and turned into her sister's touch. "I've brought no honor," she whispered.
"You have," said Elder Sister. Her voice was thin, like the soft wind caught in the leaves which rustled outside the window. "Listen to your sister."
Lanfan stretched out her hand, but her fingers slipped through nothing more than air. She drew back.
"Please be at peace, Elder Sister," said Lanfan.
"With such a troublesome little sister, how can I?"
Then she was gone.
A memory.
"What have you done now?"
Elder Sister, come to find her and bring her home. Lanfan turned her shoulder away. The branch shivered beneath her. Autumn had taken the leaves, stripping her shelter to its crooked bones.
"Lanfan," warned Elder Sister.
She fiddled with her fingers, walking them about each other like ants. "I fought."
Elder Sister looked up at her. She rested her hand on the branch, her fingers at the small of Lanfan's back. "With whom did you fight?" she said.
Lanfan's cheek ached where Grandfather had struck her. "The young master."
Elder Sister sighed, as Grandfather had sighed and Mother before him.
The prince had not sighed. He'd stared up at her, his eyes wide, his hand at his jaw, and said, "Wait, please don't," when his tutor raised his switch high, to lash her for daring to touch the emperor's son.
"You shouldn't fight with the prince," said Elder Sister.
"I know!" She knew. She did. But. "He took my brush," said Lanfan. "It was mine. He gave it to me. It's not my fault his brush broke."
He'd given her another brush after, then he'd gasped when she shoved it back at him, her hand flat on his chest. He'd stood there watching as she turned and ran.
"That doesn't matter," said Elder Sister firmly. "You mustn't fight with him. He's your master, and it's your duty to obey him. Now come down." She pulled on Lanfan's shirt.
Lanfan slithered down the tree. The bark scraped on her palms. A chill wind cut through Grandfather's small garden; it bit at her through her clothes. She hunched her shoulders.
"It isn't fair," she said.
Elder Sister stroked Lanfan's head. Lanfan shrugged her off, irritable. Elder Sister sighed again.
"Duty means you must sacrifice some things. His highness sacrifices, too."
Lanfan didn't see how this was so.
"We all do," said Elder Sister. "We do what our duty asks us."
"I know," said Lanfan. She looked away to the elegant rise of the Yao's well-patched palatial residence. She thought the prince might still be bent over his desk, painstakingly copying the ornate letters of the old language, alone but for the tutor with the long nose.
"Well," said Elder Sister, "I can see you've learned your lesson, little thorn." She trickled her fingers along Lanfan's shoulder, pulling her along. "Come on. I'm sure Mother has something for you to do."
"Chores," said Lanfan.
"Duties," said Elder Sister.
She remembered this when she woke again. Morning, then. She'd dreamt of her sister. She couldn't remember why. The feel of her sister's hand on her nape lingered, warm as a dream. Her shoulder ached with the cold. Her skin itched, sewn and grafted and tightly bandaged into place with the hard metal of the implant.
Lanfan breathed in and out and in again. Lightly she touched the cloth drawn taut about her shoulder. Dulled though it was by the layers of bandages, she could trace the rings and the small knobs of the implant, buried in the bone.
Morning, she thought. She had much to do.
Lanfan rose.