this is just something i wrote for a class assignment. i had a lot of fun writing this and because its lowkey a fanfic i put it on here! if youre reading this, thanks so much and please let me know what you think ! i actually havent watched fmab in a long time so... we'll see how this goes.

Desperation is an ache that permeates every fiber of your being.

It's what drives children to eat their mothers; it's the frenzied motivation behind looking a god in the face. So when the man who bleeds eternity offers a demon in exchange for life, he looks the bastard right in the eye and smiles with all his teeth.

For the longest time, he had lived with the typhoon of a hundred thousand souls writhing in his chest and almost pressing him down, like the lifeblood that never got the chance to rest with their ancestors sang for the relief of returning to dust. And above it all, of course, sat his closest friend, the one who saw all the parts of him – the shining ambition and iron resolve. Every pride, dream, and shame that shaped him into what he was.

He'd once thought that being free of that burning weight would be a relief, but really, he just feels empty. Almost like he's hungry for something he knows is gone but can't bring himself to stop looking for.

Except he knows how to find it again.

It was the same aching, gnawing hunger that had sent him to this foreign land with its dry air and ever-present black smoke. Looking down at that kid with the golden hair, his mouth curls into a grin he knows is blinding in its cheerful intensity. But he's not such a good liar that he can completely mask what he knows his aides can see in his eyes.

He is close. So, so close.

When all his cousins, cowards that they were, stayed home in their silk robes with their concubines and long pipes, he had packed up and headed straight west. He had made it out of the country a little later than the Chang girl, but while she was wasting her time in the desert, he was here. Looking down at his salvation, the key to the miracle that could do anything, even stand defiant in the eyes of the gods.

He lays there, one hand on his stomach and another tucked behind his head, for a long time. He keeps careful control of his breathing and doesn't let his thoughts wander until the first rays of dawn start piercing the sky.

It's blasphemy. It's foolish.

But it is possible.

The long days before their agreement was pain like he'd never imagined pain could be. He'd been injured many times before, both physically and emotionally, but there in that moment, surrounded by a void that shrieked red. It was incomparable to anything else.

After the agreement, sometimes, when the countryside got very quiet, it would start up again. It was almost like a migraine. And each time, every time, it would be that mask, grinning in the red abyss, that spoke through every fiber of his being, far gentler than it had any right to be.

It's the same soothing hum that it uses as it disintegrates, not saying any words but resonating throughout his entire body. An apology and something more, something that he dares not name when, later, he is sitting under the huge desert moon with nothing but deafening silence in his ears.

The void had left a scar, the same as any other scars. It ached worst in the palace, where even the cicadas seemed quiet. But that last goodbye is an open sore, constantly dripping red into every aspect of his life.

He is home now, in his own estate. The air is a little less heavy with moisture here in the mountains, and the cicadas and swaying leaves keeps him grounded in the physical. But now and then, the wind will pick up, whistling shrilly through the hills and the winding walls of his home. Those are the nights he doesn't trust himself to sleep without his friend there to protect him. He gets a lot of work done, but his aide worries, and really, he can't blame her. She already lost so much – her grandfather, her arm. It's a shame that this is the one thing she can't protect him from, as fierce as she is.

And truly, she has reason to be worried, because while he is pumping out as much legislature and political pieces and treaty proposals as he can to prepare for when he'll claim the throne, he's working on a little side project too.

He doesn't want to use innocent lives to recreate one of those abominations, nor does he particularly want to use prisoners sentenced to death either, so it's a good thing that the maniac from the desert left so many of them behind. It's slow work, paying people to sneak into the laboratories he himself broke into only two years ago – it feels like longer, yet also only yesterday.

And the project might take longer, as the journey across the desert is long and arduous. But right now, he has two in his possession, and is waiting on a third. Not that he particularly thinks he will need one, from his growing knowledge of alchemy. But, coming from his more intimate knowledge of the one god he knows is real, it's always good to be on the safe side.

He's not particularly anxious about it, but when the drop off never happens after a three-week delay, he does start to wonder. The first jolt of panic only comes when his aide barges into his room as he's washing his face. Her face is contorted into something like anger, something like sorrow, and a whole lot like pain. The wicked blade on her metal arm shines in the moonlight and the joints make a faint clattering noise as she trembles, but it's not from fear or tears.

He doesn't say anything.

She holds out her arm – the flesh one – and in her palm is a small, red stone about the size of a pearl. It looks harmless, but he can sense the evil aura radiating from that thing like the stink of garbage in the sun. He doesn't say anything. There's no point, really, because they both know what that is and what it's capable of.

"They caught this at the train," she says.

He knows what train she's talking about and it takes years of court training to stop him from reacting. The woman he paid was supposed to be a professional, but rather than crossing the desert on foot like she was being paid a hefty sum to do, she tried to take the newly established line instead.

The thought pulls a half-hearted smile from him. "I guess this means that line was a good investment?"

"Not funny."

"Sorry."

She closes her palm and puts the Stone in her mouth, swallowing with a faint grimace. He can't help but feel bad – just the thought of that being in his body makes the hairs on his neck stand up. It's like keeping a slug in your esophagus, only worse. "I don't know how you managed to do this," she says after a moment to regain her composure.

"I didn't," he replies, and it's more snappish than he intends it to be.

But it's the truth. It really wasn't anything like that. Hiding a Stone in that way and becoming a Homunculus are two vastly different things, and she seems to realize this too, because that muscle in her jaw moves in the way it usually does when she regrets saying something.

"Don't worry about it," he says.

She nods.

They cross the room and make way for the painted doors that lead into the garden, sharing silence. When they reach the big stones in the center of rustling bamboo plants and vibrant pink flowers, they sit across from each other. The moon is only half-full, but the light is more than enough to read each other's expressions.

"Why," she asks, and while her voice is even, her eyes glaze over with what he knows her well enough to recognize as angry tears.

He considers his words. "I'm looking for a friend."

She nods, and for a split-second, he's taken off guard. She'd hated the living Stone inside of him more than anything. Hated the way it tainted his aura, the way his body was not totally his. But then he remembers the way her voice cracked screaming her grandfather's name during that fight, two years ago.

That doesn't stop him from being surprised once again when she coughs up the Stone, wiping it off on her pants before putting it in his palm and curling his fingers over it.

He looks at it in his hand. It's redder in the paleness of his palm and the baleful moonlight. An abomination that he will use to bring back another abomination, he thinks, and the thought eats at him until it feels like his entire chest is empty for the wind to whistle through.

"Why?" he says, after a long time.

She shrugs and seems to struggle for words. But there are none.

There's an old proverb among his people. "There is no word for loss." But it's wrong. There are so many words for "loss." Fear. Loneliness. And Desperation that screams and screams red-hot like a typhoon.

He thought he knew all about it, back when that monster in human skin bled a little slice of eternity into a shallow cut on his face. Every muscle in his body tore, every bone in his body crushed itself under the weight of that void. Breaking, remaking, and then repeating the process over and over again until he too, was a monster in skin that had once belonged to a human being.

It must have been truly ugly, judging from the horror in those large golden eyes that seemed so much bigger then in that child's face. He was tempted to apologize to the little alchemist for doing that in front of him, but his mouth didn't move, and no sound came out.

Instead, he felt himself climb to his feet.

The circle is almost complete. He drew it himself in an abandoned home on the outskirts of his clan's territory, instead of using a hall in his estate for this purpose and hiring alkahestrists to draw one for him. In his hands are three shards of blood red eternity, almost like the one that once lived in him, except these are mindless. Dead and writhing with life.

"Must be why it's called a Philosopher's Stone," he decides as he draws in the last line. "Makes every fool into a philosopher."

He straightens and stretches his back before tossing away the almost spent chalk. Not for the first time, doubt creeps into his mind. Looking at the array before him, the gravity of what he's about to do hits him like a punch in the gut.

But the ache for his friend is stronger, and he carefully kneels and places his hands on the outermost circle.

"You're a foolish pack-rat, clinging to garbage. Can't even let go of the past."

That much was true, he had to admit, even if he hated the man who said that to him like it was some sort of thing to be ashamed of. But the past wasn't garbage.

And coming this close only to let go seemed so unfair. They'd both deserved better, and that, he knew, was true. Sometimes you give and give and get nothing in return, but that shouldn't be how things work. Alchemists talked about it all the time – Equivalent Exchange.

Actually, it was really one alchemist who went on about it at such length.

That kid - well, not so much a kid as much as very short – had some skeletons in the closet. No-one's eyes, even if they were the color that they were, burned like that unless they had something to hide, avenge, or atone for.

Maybe, he thinks with noncommittal curiosity, all three.

Alkahestry had never been his strength, and he could already tell that alchemy had nothing to offer him asides from the Stone. But you can tell a lot about a person by the way they talk about their interests, and even though he knew the little alchemist's personality well-enough to anticipate him during a fight, his values were something else entirely.

Equivalent Exchange. Mankind. Truth.

He thinks about this in the split second before the liquified Stone hits his skin.

They had all deserved better than what they had got, and for the most part, they had received it. The alchemist brought back his brother and they were living together again. The colonel was promoted and even worked together with Scar to rebuild that graveyard in the desert – and even the Chang girl was involved. He himself had proven himself worthy out of all his cousins for the throne and was due to be crowned emperor very soon.

But the one person who wanted nothing more than a family.

"Everyone wants something they don't have."

once again, thank you so much for reading and leave a review xx