"I got a question: If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,
how much knowledge does a person need before they're safe?"
- The Invisible Man, episode 1.9: The Value of Secrets
He sits on the crate, exhausted. He can barely hold his head up. He clings to the mop in his hand and concentrated on the feel of the rough wooden handle against his callused palms. He knows he should be grateful. Things could be so much worse - had been worse - he'd worked in the fields and the quarries and his previous master had threatened to sell him to a brothel, told him he was pretty enough. When he was brought here, he was afraid that it was that threat made real, that his new master wanted him for a bed slave. But Master has no interest in him, and never touches him, and hasn't even acknowledged his existence. As far as 23 can tell, Master doesn't even know he exists.
Until...
He's been here for nearly a week, mostly ignored, assigned a number instead of a name. The tasks he's given are easy, but he's finding them harder and harder to fulfill. He hasn't slept more than an hour or two at a time: Master seems to forget that humans need to sleep, even slaves. Master himself stays up all night practicing alchemy, which 23 has no experience with and finds frightening. But he's fascinated by it all the same, drawing closer when he knows he shouldn't. The odd symbols etched into the stone floor are beautiful in their precision.
And then, 23 brushed his hand across them without thinking, and a blast of light and energy threw him across the room, smashing him into one of the lab tables, knocking it over, shattering glass and spilling unnamable liquids onto the floor. He was beaten, of course, his back still stings a bit, but the punishment was light compared to what he remembered from previous masters, and he wasn't sold away or even given a new assignment. Master wants him here in the lab.
And then, Master turned away from his work and met 23's eyes, and 23 flinched because he knows better than to make eye contact with a master, even though this time it isn't his fault. He tries to look down, but there's something that won't let him. Some magnetic attraction. "You're interested in alchemy, boy?" Master asks. And 23 nods. He should know better.
And then, Master took a sharpened knife and drew it across 23's arm until the blood spilled over into a clear glass flask. 23 didn't protest. Why would he? He doesn't own his body or his blood.
Master turned back to his work. 23 turned back to his. He slept for a full night and half a day and no one woke him, and there was no punishment.
And then he goes back to the lab, holding his breath. Something tickles at the back of his neck, some forewarning of disaster, like he'd felt the day his mother died, or the day he was sold away and his brother wasn't, and he lost all connection to his family, so long ago now that he wasn't sure they were ever real. But he remembers their names even if he's starting to forget his own.
He sits down on the crate, mop in his hand. "Hello?" a voice says. 23's head snaps up. The voice doesn't sound like Master's, or like the overseer's or any of the other slaves'. It's distorted, oddly echoing, and it makes 23's skin crawl. "Hey!" the voice snaps. "Look. Over here." It sounds almost sweet. 23 walks toward the sound, hand outstretched, grasping for something he should know better than to touch.
Something dark, like smoke, curls up inside the glass flask where his blood had pooled the day before. "Aren't you surprised?" the voice asks. "Don't you have a name?" (When 23 says he doesn't, the voice gives him one. Van Hohenheim. It's not his name, but it sounds strong and powerful and worth protecting, unlike the name he was born with, so 23 - Van Hohenheim - lets it stay.)
"Don't you even want freedom?" the voice asks. The hazy shape in the flask moves in response to 23's touch. 23 knows he should pull away, but the question is intoxicating. He should know better than to ask it. He isn't asking it. It's the thing in the flask that's asking. But I am you, says the voice, and it's in his head, this time, not even speaking aloud. I'm made from your blood.
23 shakes his head frantically and yanks his hand away from the flask as if it had burned him.
"Let me teach you, Van Hohenheim."
He should know better.
But just as when Master had asked if he was interested in alchemy, he nods. The smoky creature in the flask grins, wide and hungry.
Van Hohenheim learns, although the dwarf in the flask berates him repeatedly, calling him stupid because he is so afraid of being discovered attempting to read and write that he can't focus enough to learn it properly. "What have you to be afraid of?" the slave yells at the incorporeal form. "I've seen slaves who've had their eyes put out for trying to puzzle out written words, or had their hand chopped off for holding a bit of chalk."
"Do you think I won't protect you, Hohenheim? I would not exist without you."
Hohenheim bites his lip, turns back to the book on the table. He traces his finger over the words. He stumbles trying to read them, but he concentrates on pronouncing the sounds of each letter, putting them together until they make words that sound right, though many are unfamiliar. "Man cannot gain anything without first sacrificing something."
"That's right, isn't it?" the dwarf asks.
The overseer backhands him hard across the face when he is too slow to respond to his number. 23 is fading; he's Van Hohenheim now. The dwarf in the flask stares up at the bruise on his cheek and says "That feels wrong, doesn't it?"
"Of course it does," Hohenheim growls.
The dwarf laughs. "It didn't feel wrong to you before."
Hohenheim puts his book down at the table and stares at the dwarf in the flask. He curls his hand into a tight fist and closes his eyes. He's a slave. He doesn't own his body and he knows better.
"I know what you're thinking, Van Hohenheim," says the voice. "You can't go backwards. You can't unlearn what you know now."
"You're going to get me killed," Hohenheim mutters.
"This was your choice, kid. Now, move forward."
He learns how to make a transmutation circle, drawing in the careful runes and patterns that had so captivated his attention in his first days in this house. A flash of blue-white light washes over his hands, and when he looks down, he's created a small human figure, a doll, like the kind kids play with in the slave quarters.
"Why would you make something like that?" the dwarf asks.
Hohenheim shrugs, and tucks the clay poppet into his pocket. "Why not?"
Master walks into the lab while Hohenheim still has his hand on the chalk circle, and the dwarf in the flask is cackling madly and Hohenheim bows his head and waits for punishment (even though, inside, he swears that if anybody touches him he'll kill them. A slave doesn't have rights or freedoms, the voice whispers. But you're not a slave anymore.)
Master doesn't even seem surprised. He looks from the chalk circle to Hohenheim's face, and sighs. "I suppose you'll be more useful as an apprentice than a house slave."
He keeps learning. He doesn't gain freedom, exactly, but he gains status and power and those things are almost as good. He allows himself to dream dangerous dreams, he clings to the idea of falling in love, having a wife, and children. Keeping them, not watching them ripped away on the slave markets. His children will have names that won't be overwritten by numbers.
The dwarf in the flask is still his closest friend. They exchange questions that would have intimidated Hohenheim years ago, but now he finds he likes pondering the answers. "What makes you happy?" he asks the dwarf. "Do you believe that immortality is possible?" the dwarf asks him.
Hohenheim stands silent in the court of the king, eyes down, listening but not speaking. He knows he's still a slave, although a highly favored one. He holds the flask in his hands, and he can hear the dwarf laughing, although he doesn't imagine that anyone else can.
Shadowy hands reach out and choke the king and his advisors, and blood flows in the streets, and fire licks at the edges of the Xerxian Empire, and the dwarf in the flask asks him what he's willing to exchange for true freedom. Hohenheim nearly drops the flask, but he doesn't. He holds it tightly instead.
For the first time in a long time, he finds he can't properly form a question. "W-what?" he stutters. "What?"
The dwarf grins, spinning and flipping in the flask.
"Hohenheim, my blood kin, right now, you and I are at the center of everything."
There is bright light, and there is pain, and he thinks that he is dying.
When he opens his eyes, the flask is shattered on the ground. He rolls over and picks up one of the shards of glass. He holds it so tightly that it cuts his hand as a dark reflection of his own body looks down at him. "How do you feel?" asks the dwarf in the flask.
"You were my friend," Hohenheim chokes out.
"Don't you want me to be happy, Van Hohenheim?"
"Not… not like this. They're dead. They're all dead."
And he can hear their voices screaming inside of him.
Homunculus, still wearing his face, frowns down at him. He seems confused at Hohenheim's rejection. "You gave me your blood," it reminds him. "And I've given you a name, and I've given you knowledge, and I've given you a body that will live forever."
"I don't want to live forever. I never… I never asked for this."
"Still," says Homunculus. "You can't go backwards."
"You can't unlearn what you know," Hohenheim whispers. He pulls his knees to his chest and cries. He hasn't cried since he was a child.
He's a slave. He's always known his worth was countable, a set market value that anyone could pay if they thought the price was fair. He knows his life isn't worth 536,329 other lives.
"But you're not a slave anymore," says Homunculus.
It's wrong, though. He'll always be a slave to whatever's left of Xerxes. But he has 536,329 people to talk to now.
He keeps learning.
