Hope for Happiness
Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction
Genre: backstory, het, drabble
Rating: PG-13 (T) for 74 words of somewhat nonconsensual touchy-feely
Character: Cornello
Pairing: Cornello/Rose
Word Count: 500 exactly
Notes: Prize!fic for kikiko_haru, who was Runner Up in the Second fma_exchange Anniversary Contest on LJ. The prompt was Cornello/Rose.
He had known sincerity, once. Felicity. Temperance. He had known it, preached it, breathed it—five, ten, fifteen years ago when time stretched long over small moments and his hands had felt only the heads of infants between them.
(Fresh from the baptism.)
Then he'd felt the sweat grit clam skin of the dead; militia from the two towns his parish straddled. He brought their eyelids down over glassy eyes, wiped blood from their foreheads (remember this boy, when you wiped the holy water from his brow? fifteen years ago).
The eastern wars changed Amestris; it changed the desert, and it changed the Church still more. By the time Cornello made his way to Liore, he had sold his priests' robes for directions (information once given freely), and burned two books of the Scripture to prove that he had rescinded his faith. He still believed in felicity, temperance. But sincerity was gone and the only way he could reclaim that was release his faith. He could not do that.
Looking back, he knew he had. He hadn't seen it, hadn't felt it, but he had. Still, every day, he preached it, and still, sincerity melted back further into black.
There was still hope for happiness.
In Liore, the Sun God lit the streets day and night, and the people were nothing if not earnest. There was goodness there; too much goodness. Cornello could see the statues brought crashing down as they had in the war, people scattered to wind and dust and sandstorm. He cannot watch that happen. He cannot prevent that from happening. But perhaps he can throw these visions to the far future—in some five, ten, fifteen years. Perhaps he can give Liore this much at least.
So he'd thought. He hired bodyguards and propagandists, city watch and riflemen. He kept accounts and begged donations. The cathedral was redone, new statues were commissioned. He built the Sun God's Church, made it something less breakable than words and feelings. He made it real, material. He made it powerful.
He made it something it could not and should never have been. But if something has become they very thing that worked to destroy it, then it can never be destroyed (serpent on her breast, devouring its own tail). There is still hope for happiness.
And yet, happiness was something Father Cornello could not touch. Happiness had strong bronzed shoulders, thick brown hair, soft grey eyes. Happiness had faith and hope and honesty.
Happiness stole away his chastity.
He devoured her grief and preyed on her sorrows, a strange devil in the night (this serum will help you sleep, even in the deepest of suffering; take it, my child)—and the day he held her breasts between his hands, and she, deep asleep (an angel), suspected nothing, he kissed her lips and was reborn again. He traced her two strong legs, and prayed she never use them. He became what would destroy him.
He keeps candles lit; hope for happiness.
end.