Chapter 2

Pain. Searing pain. Everywhere. My body ached. One moment it felt like I could reach out, even attempt to drag myself forward. Then, nothing. It felt like I was floating. Pulsing. Ebbing. Then the pain would return ten fold and I felt like I could reach, reach towards something. I didn't know what. I tried to open my eyes but then a bright light would seer my vision and I'd cry out in more pain. Then - pulse.

My mind felt muddled. Like one moment I could remember who I was and what I was doing before the pain, then I'd suddenly forget and I couldn't think at all. Just eb and flow. Then It'd come back again. Back and forth, back and forth.

I heard a noise.

"AHHHhhhhh!"

I cringed. It hurt my ears terribly to hear the scream that came from in front of me.

"It - it worked! At last!" A manic laugh pieced the space around me. The only other noises were the steam from the transmutation and the discharge from the alchemical reaction. The laugh ended in a gurgle cough and a loud thud.

"Fa-ther?" I called out, trying to form the words before I couldn't control my movements.

"Fa—" pulse. Pain. "Ther…"

I attempted to look again, to see beyond the brightness of the room. I cracked open my eye lids, despite the pain it caused me and tried to focus. I saw my hand, laying in front of me, outstretched. Eb. I couldn't see. I couldn't think. I couldn't stretch.

Pain racked my limbs like an electrical current flowing through my nervous system. I opened my eyes again. My hand, the edge of the circle. A figure lay sprawled on the floor covered in blood. It was unmoving. Flow.

Why couldn't I control my body? Why was I, for lack of a better word, disappearing? What had happened. The pain returned again and this time I tried to hold myself together. I mentally imagined my body as a solid object, unmoving. I remained like this for as long as I could. When my mind faltered, distracted by a crackle from the discharges around me, I would lose the battle and - pulse.

I tried again. My body shivered as sensation returned to my limbs and core. Solid perception. Statue. Stone! Anything. I flashed these images before my mind in a constant reel. Statue, stone, sculpture, statue, stone sculpture, statue… I stretched my arm again, maintaining an image of a moving statue in my mind. My hand moved forward about an inch. Good progress.

Again, picturing a moving stone figure, I moved my other arm to prop it beneath my body in an attempt to sit up. As I did this, I noticed the dark patches of stain beneath where I had lain. They weren't red,; it wasn't blood. They were a darker shade of the floor I lay on; almost as if water had been split. Mistake - flow. My vision suddenly dropped as it winked out of focus and I couldn't feel my limbs as I once had.

'WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ME!' my mind screamed once I could think again. This was beginning to wear on my nerves! I couldn't move, I couldn't think. The only thing helping me to maintain any form it seemed was thinking I was of a solid substance!

I wreathed in a blanket of pain for a length of time that felt like eons. In reality it was about 3 days. I wouldn't know this until I was well enough to leave the house. But then, I didn't even do that till I'd figured out what had happened to my body and felt with the blood stained body who had been my father.

The events of that day were forever burned into my memory. The way my father had betrayed my trust and deepest affections for him left a gaping chasm where once my ability to love and feel were held. The constant reminder came from the body he had changed, a body in constant flux of composition between human and hydrogen bonds. I basically had a body that could be manipulated into any water compound - to put it simply, I could turn into water.

Something else I learned over this lonely, excruciating time, came as another painful shock. When I tried to move my fathers body, no matter how much mind control I mustered, I could not hold my human shape. I could not feel the embrace of another human, could not come into constant with the warm hands that could offer me help. I was utterly alone now. Thanks to him. I was alone and broken like the bonds within my body. He'd taken that from me. So heartlessly ripped my life and dreams from me to fulfil his dying wish… to have a son. And although his last words were' it worked, at last', he had not gotten a son… He hadn't gotten anything. My body was altered from its original state and now fluctuated between the element most abundant in the human body - water, and its original form. I wasn't really anything in my opinion. If no one could touch me without me falling to bits then I didn't consider myself human.

I treated his remains the way I felt. I dragged them out of the house and buried them in an unmarked hole in the back. I dumped his research on top and rolled a rock into place atop the mark. It wasn't until I returned to my room for the first time in a week, when I lay in a heaping mess atop my bed, gazing across the room at my desk where a worn, dusty book lay, that I realized there was one thing I could still do, still call my own. Maybe it would help me find the answers I was looking for. Maybe.

Yay! Chapter 2 is up! Thanks so much for following me! You've inspired me to keep writing! I hope you enjoyed the read! Stay tuned!

Disclaimer, I don't own any characters or ideas from FullMetal Alchemist. Just pure inspired!