Author's Note: Greetings, all! Marie here with a new story! Lindsey got me to start the Fullmetal Alchemist series a few months ago, and I absolutely fell in love with it! So, I couldn't resist writing something about it once she and I were discussing various concepts. If you haven't checked out her story One is All, I highly recommend it! Anyway, this is the prologue for my new story! Just a heads-up: I will be abiding mostly by Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and the manga (which I am currently reading and am also in love with), with the occasional moment from the 2003 anime. With all my rambling aside, let's get to it!
Part One: Before Fullmetal
Prologue: Meeting Maes Hughes
Tap tap tap.
Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes straightened making sure his wife was asleep before looking at his front door. It's the middle of the night, he thought. Who could be knocking at this hour?
Tap tap tap.
Drawing a push knife, Hughes walked toward his front door, going through the list of people who would have any reason to visit him at his home at—he glanced at the clock above the mantle, his mind automatically converting it to military time—almost 0100 hours.
"Maes?"
The Lieutenant Colonel jumped, spinning around to see his wife, clutching a frying pan. "Oh, Gracia!" he whispered, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. "You startled me."
"Who's at the door?" the brunette asked, her eyes wide.
Hughes sighed. "I…"
Tap tap tap.
"P-Please…"
The voice was so soft, so gentle. Hughes took another deep breath, gently nudged his wife behind him, and opened the door.
There, sitting on their doorstep, was a girl with black curls and rich, tan skin. She raised her head, revealing brilliant, emerald green eyes set in a face that somehow struck Hughes as familiar. "Are you all right?" the Lieutenant Colonel immediately asked, kneeling in front of the girl.
"Just…c-cold," she admitted, shivering. "I'd hate…to be a b-burden—if it's too much, I-I'll lea—"
"You'll do no such thing," Gracia piped up from behind her husband. "Maes, get her inside. I'll make some tea."
Nodding over his shoulder, Hughes turned back to the girl in front of him, offering her his hand. "Can you stand?" he asked softly.
"I can try," she replied, taking his hand firmly and allowing him to help her. Once she was on her own two feet, Hughes guided her inside, sitting her on the couch in their living room and grabbing one of his sweaters from his closet, handing it to her before reviving the fire that had sputtered out hours earlier.
As he worked, Hughes managed to observe the girl they had just taken in as she pulled his green sweater over her head, fluffing her curly black hair back out, small sea shells that had been braided in rustling. She couldn't have been more than eighteen years old, and was wearing a skirt and small shirt, not adequate protection from the autumn weather they were experiencing now. No wonder she was freezing, the man thought. He watched her scan the room with her emerald eyes, her face bearing a resemblance to someone…he just couldn't place who it was. "Where are you from?" he asked, sitting in his armchair directly across from her.
"Amestris," she replied, smiling gratefully at the mug of tea she was given by Gracia as the woman sat beside her. "Thank you."
"No offense, but you really don't look like it."
The girl looked down, looking smaller than before in Hughes' sweater, and a small smile slipped on her face. "Well, I guess that's what I get for being away for almost decade."
Hughes' brow furrowed. "Who are you?"
Her eyes shifted around nervously. "I don't know if I can tell you that."
"This is a safe place, Sweetie," Gracia soothed, patting her knee. "Anything you say here won't leave these walls unless you want it to."
This seemed to relax the girl somewhat. She took a deep breath. "My name is Lana. Lana Mustang."
Hughes' eyes widened as he realized why her face looked so familiar. "You're related to Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang, aren't you?"
Lana gasped, a small smile on her face. "My brother is a Lieutenant Colonel?"
"And a good friend of mine." The man stuck his hand out again. "Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes." As she sat down her mug to shake is hand, he noticed a patch of ink on her palm. "You're an Alchemist too, huh?"
Once she released his hand, Lana nodded, turning both of her palms upward to reveal the blue tattoos in the firelight. "Yes, sir. That's why I've been away for so long; I've been training."
"What sort of alchemy do you practice?" Gracia asked, looking at the circular patterns on the girl's palms.
"It's not Flame Alchemy," Hughes noted. "That's not the kind of transmutation circle Roy has on his gloves."
Lana nodded. "Water Alchemy. It's about as rare as Roy's." She put her hands together, making the tea in her mug swirl around the room before pouring it back into her glass, earning a small smile from Hughes and a gasp from Gracia. "Of course, the best way to learn is to be around your element constantly, since—"
"Alchemy in its basic form is the understanding, deconstruction, and reconstruction of matter," Hughes finished.
The dark-haired girl smiled. "You've known Roy for a while, haven't you?"
"Since we entered the State Military Academy. Graduated from the same class."
"How old were you?"
Hughes thought for a moment. "We were born in the same year, so…fifteen when we entered, eighteen when we graduated."
"That sounds about right," Lana agreed. "He left home when he was fifteen, and I didn't get a letter from him until over a year later."
The Lieutenant Colonel snapped his fingers. "I remember him writing a letter in our barracks when we got some paper. It was addressed to a Lana and a Madame Christmas. I thought then that it must've been a sweetheart back home."
Lana shook her head, chuckling. "No, sir, just his nine-year-old sister and our foster mother." She took a sip of her tea before continuing. "He didn't say much; he just let us know that he was okay…and warned us about the conflict that had risen in Ishval."
Garcia took a deep breath, recalling the memory. "That war was at its worst when they graduated. They put Maes in there first thing. Before that year was over, he was a Captain—the higher-ranking officers were dying that quick." Hughes reached across to grab his wife's hand, squeezing it gently.
"You were a Captain at nineteen," Lana exhaled, her respect for the man in front of her growing. "That's right. Aunt Chris told me he came home around that time."
"Where were you?" Hughes asked, curious.
"Since there was a war, and he knew that we shared a knack for alchemy, Roy asked our foster mother to find me a teacher," Lana explained. "Madame Christmas pulled a few strings, and before I knew it, I had a teacher who was perfecting the art of Water Alchemy. However, he theorized that the best way for someone to understand water is to be around it, so I left home and lived on the coast of Aerugo.
She smiled, closing her eyes for a moment. "The ocean can make one feel so…so small, especially when seeing it for the first time at the age of nine. It can make you forget a lot of things—it took me until I was almost fifteen to write Roy and Madame Christmas a letter each. I felt so bad I decided to try to make up for it by painting a picture on the back of each letter."
"The girl on the beach," Hughes realized. "I remember: he had a painting of a dark-haired girl with him when he came to Ishval. He was twenty-three then; an official State Alchemist."
"That's the year that the Führer issued Order 3066," Gracia added softly.
"It required all State Alchemists with combat abilities to be sent to the front lines as human weapons," Hughes explained bitterly.
Lana gasped. "That must have been awful. How did Roy…"
Hughes sighed. "They call him 'The Hero of Ishval' because of his…work…in Daliha. It was mostly because of him that the war ended soon after Order 3066 was issued. But…you could see it in his eyes…he felt like nothing but a killer. Almost all his idealism was gone—gone from all of us. We all felt like nothing but murderers."
She looked down at her tan skin and wind-blown hair before grasping a necklace around her neck: two small vials filled with seawater dangling from the chain. "He always told me his reasoning behind learning alchemy was to help make this country better." A tear splashed into her tea. "I can't even imagine how you all must have felt."
"He's still determined to protect those he loves," Hughes assured. "And in order for everyone to have someone to protect and to be protected by, he's set his mind to becoming the Führer."
Lana smiled. "He's always been a big dreamer."
Hughes nodded in agreement before draining his mug of tea. "And what brings you back to Amestris?"
"Well," Lana sighed, "I've finished my studies, so I thought I could try to track my brother down and see if I can help him in any way."
The Lieutenant Colonel chuckled. "You'll have to start back East; he's stationed at Eastern Command right now." As the curly-haired girl groaned and planted her face into her hands, Hughes continued. "I could just see if he wants to pay me a social visit; it's been a while since he's seen my darling wife."
"In exchange for me troubling your home at such a late hour, I'd love to help you around your house, Mrs. Hughes," Lana offered. "Just until I get readjusted to this weather and can stand on my own two feet without freezing to death."
"You don't have to do anything!" Gracia declared. "You're Roy Mustang's sister, an honored guest!"
"Its the Alchemist in her, dear," Hughes teased, making Lana blush. "They abide by the Law of Equivalent Exchange."
"You're more than welcome to stay as long as you'd like, Dear," Gracia smoothed over. "Don't worry about a thing."
Lana Mustang smiled warmly at the couple, grateful that she had managed to find one of her brother's friends.
Now just to find you again, Roy, she thought, carefully sipping her warm tea.