Hello everyone. Here's chapter two.
I was going to have anything in Amestrian be italicized, but then I realized that thoughts are italicized and that would get too confusing. So anything in Amestrian will be in bold like this "Blah blah blah."
Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter.
Chapter Two
Edward Elric had never really been a religious person. Being an alchemist, he believed in equivalent exchange, even when many things in life didn't seem fair or equivalent. He also believed in The Gate, having seen it on more than one occasion, the same way another person may believe in a god or another higher power out there that holds some sort of control over life. He didn't necessarily believe in Heaven or Hell, he'd never seen any real proof of either of them (unless you counted Hell on Earth), but he did believe that there was something waiting for you beyond death.
Alchemy proved the existence of the soul; that even when the body failed, the soul continued to thrive. What else could it have been but Al's soul that he attached to the suit of armor? So if the soul existed, there had to be some place for it to go, a place that it was drawn to when it left the body. Right? Maybe not Heaven or Hell, but there had to be something.
On the day that Edward's own life was brutally taken from him, this was one of the things that flashed across his mind; that there had to be something more beyond death, that it couldn't just all end. This thought along with many others repeated in his mind as his last breath of life floated away from him, and then...
It didn't end.
But it didn't continue either. He neither ceased to exist nor continued on to some next great adventure. He was trapped in nothingness; a cold, cold, shapeless void. He felt disjointed with no sense of time. A second could feel like a millennium and a millennium could have passed with it only feeling like a second. He had a vague recollection of random spurts of coherency, but whatever happened during his lucid moments, the memories were lost to him when he re-entered the void.
'Maybe this is the afterlife,' he would think on more than one occasion. 'What else could it be? But then... where is everyone else?'
Then the thought would be gone before he could ponder more on it.
Edward's existence continued on like this for what felt like an eternity until finally something changed. It came in the form of a burning light that in no way felt heavenly or welcoming like the light many people claimed to see during moments of near death. It grabbed at him and tore him from the nothingness.
Suddenly his mind was clearer and he could feel again, but all he felt was pain and a familiar sense of wrongness. For a moment, he was blind, deaf, and unable to scream out in agony. His nerves felt like they were on fire. His surroundings blurred into existence and noise exploded around him. He had eyes, ears, and a mouth which was open in a silent scream. He only briefly caught sight of the transmutation circle surrounding him before his eyelids shut tight against the pain. He could hear shouting, but couldn't make out what was being said.
A spray of a warm liquid rained down on him as silence enveloped the room. He shuddered involuntarily on the ground as what felt like hot ribbons wrapped around him, burning his skin like a brand. Curling up tightly on the ground, he wrapped his arms around his shivering form.
A stillness fell over the room, like the calm before a storm. A part of him knew that he should be happy that something had finally changed. He had a body again, and with a body comes the ability to actually have the choice to do something. He was in shock though. While he had a pretty good idea as to what had happened, he could hardly believe or process what had happened. He wanted to go back to the nothingness. It was what he had become used to and at least there he knew what to expect.
'I... I shouldn't be... and... and this shouldn't be...'
Edward's scattered thoughts were interrupted by the sound of several popping noises. His senses, feeling raw and exposed after being smothered so long in the void, picked up on a new presence in the room, several of them in fact. They spread out around him and began speaking in a language he couldn't understand.
He curled up tighter on the ground, hoping that they would leave. He didn't know who they were, whether they were a threat or not, but he did know that he was in no condition to fight. His body felt weak and useless. There was no way he could take on them all. He was completely at their mercy and would just have to wait and see what they did.
One suddenly approached him, and he tensed up, readying himself for the worst, but instead of an attack, he felt soft fabric drape over him and a hand patted him on the shoulder as a voice spoke quietly to him. He couldn't understand the words, but he could tell they were meant to be soothing. Opening his eyes, he briefly stared at the woman crouched over him before the sight of blood caught his attention. It was everywhere and he realized that he even had some splattered on him.
His breath caught in his throat, but before he could fully panic, the woman spoke to him again in the strange language. Frowning at her, he said, "Sorry, I can't understand what you're saying. Do you speak Amestrian, or... do you know someone who does?"
She frowned at him and a man standing across the room shouted something before pulling a stick out of his sleeve. The woman and the man argued briefly before the woman also pulled out a stick. Edward stared at it, curious and confused as she pointed it at his head and said something else. Then, to his shock, light shot out of the stick.
'Alchemy!' his mind screamed and before he knew it, he had clapped his hands and impaled the woman in the arm. Her alchemized stick clattered to the ground. 'And here I was starting to think she was nice.'
The next attack came immediately in the form of ropes that wrapped tightly around him, pinning his arms to his sides. Edward sucked in his breath as terror sunk its icy claws into his flesh, for he was no longer in a bloody room with strange people speaking a strange language, suddenly he was in a small rural town, bound up like an animal on the ground with his right arm missing. He was surrounded by people; all of them screaming and shouting, half mindless from fear, rage and disgust. They were grabbing at him, hands clawing and scratching, squeezing his flesh arm too tight. Then he was being dragged across the rough ground; sharp rocks tearing into his back.
In a flash, he was back in the bloody room. It was almost a relief, but he was too tired now to fight or put up any sort of struggle. Panting heavily on the ground, he closed his eyes. His body was too exhausted to do anything else but sleep. Drifting off, he let them take him.
He slipped in and out of consciousness, unaware of how much time had passed between his waking moments. Each time he awoke, he felt weak and shaky, hardly able to leave the cot they laid him on. He was cleaned up and clothed, and they kept offering him small meals, but his stomach would either rebel on him or the food just didn't help him feel any better.
Periodically they would come into his holding cell and try to use their stick alchemy on him, but it never had any effect on him and they seemed to get more and more frustrated with each try. They eventually removed the ropes binding him and instead shackled his wrists up into some archaic looking device that kept his hand separated and prevented him from clapping. He had long since given up on trying to communicate with them and asking repeatedly if they could find someone who spoke Amestrian to translate. There was nothing left that he could do, the next move would be up to them.
Edward could sense that something was different on the day that they came to take him away. His surroundings in general were a lot quieter and nobody spoke a word to him. He had no idea what was going on, but he had a foreboding sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. He didn't know what time of day it was, he had just barely woken up, when two people entered his cell. They were dressed in the same odd robes that everyone else was wearing. On more than one occasion, Edward had wondered if he had stumbled upon some sort of cult.
Dragging him to his feet, they slipped a black sack over his head and lead him out the cell door. There were more people waiting out in the hall. Edward could hear their footsteps as they traveled alongside him down many halls and through several doors. Finally, they reached whatever destination they had planned because they stopped and something was shoved into one of his shackled hands.
Suddenly, Edward felt a pull behind his naval accompanied by a spinning sensation that made him feel nauseous. He would briefly recall the sound of the ocean's waves hitting his ears before he fell unconscious and anything beyond that was a never-ending mental torture in which he relieved his worst memories over and over again.
His mother's death. The Gate. Losing Al. Losing his leg and arm. Automail surgery. Little Nina Tucker's tragic transformation as well as her death. The chimera. The homunculi. The list just went on. Over and over the memories kept replaying.
And then...
His death...
Trying to fight back without actually killing anyone. They were civilians after all, but... it wasn't enough. His alchemy wasn't enough. The Colonel's fire wasn't enough. There were too many people to fight. Too many women and children, too many normal looking people. Maybe fighting wouldn't have been an issue if it had been a bunch of strong, older looking men and women who looked like they could take a hit, but it wasn't. It was just a bunch of townspeople, the hatred in their eyes burning as brightly as the torches they carried.
Smashed automail torn from its socket. Shredded gloves. They couldn't win. They were overcome.
As Edward was dragged through the streets, he kept wondering if Al was safe where he was. Would they find him? Would they recognize him as an alchemist? Would he ever get to see his little brother again?
Edward's screams mixed with the screams echoing from the rooms around him. He felt as if the life was being sucked out of him, as if he would never be happy again. Hell existed and he was trapped in it. His sleep was plagued by nightmares, his waking moments were plagued by bad memories just as horrible as the nightmares, and when he wasn't trapped in nightmares, he was trapped in a reality filled with screaming and crying where rats would come out of the walls and nibble on his flesh and skeletons cloaked in shadows would wander the halls like grim reapers.
They would come into his room sometimes, the shadows billowing around them, and they would lean down over him, their rotting faces close enough that he could feel their chilling breath on his skin. It was then that he felt the worst, it was then that he wished for death. The bad memories would wash over him and mutate into something more horrific than what actually happened. Suddenly The Gate didn't just take his arm and leg, It took his entire body, and It did it slowly; peeling back layer upon layer of flesh until there was nothing left and he never even had the chance to bring Al back.
Edward screamed until his voice went hoarse and he couldn't scream anymore. Then, during the hours it took for his throat to heal, he would simply shiver on the cold, damp floor and listen to the screams of those around him. He would hear their crying pleas in that same strange language, and he would hear the same words repeated over and over again that he actually began to understand some of it. Soon, he too began crying out the same words as those around him.
"Please! Help me! Somebody help me! I'm sorry! I'm sorry... please..."
There were days when he felt that he really was close to death, like he was standing at the edge of a cliff and all that he needed was a light wind to push him over and back into the void. That light wind never came though. Somehow he would always get a slight burst of strength that would keep him in the land of the living.
Trapped, always trapped in a never-ending hell, and Edward didn't understand why. Why had he been sent to this place? What could he possibly have done to deserve this? He was having trouble thinking clearly enough to remember what came before Hell and after his death, but he could vaguely recall people sending him here. People who dressed in robes, shot alchemy out of sticks and spoke a different language. Possibly a cult of some sort, a dark cult that had grim reapers at their disposal and knew of a passageway to Hell.
"Please, please, please," he would murmur over and over again. "Please help me. Or come kill me. Get out... I gotta get out. Al! Help me! I can't fight this on my own."
No one ever came though, to help him or kill him. Sometimes he swore he saw Al standing in a corner, but by the time Edward willed up enough strength to drag himself over there, his brother would be gone. Soon, he stopped trying to even get up and would simply stare at Al and try not to be happy for the change because any happiness he felt was quickly smothered with the bad memories.
One day though, a change came that was too big to ignore. The continuous misery abating to a manageable level was the only warning Edward received before Hell shuddered under the force of an explosion. It was powerful enough to knock the door to his cell loose and, judging from the sound of running footsteps, it knocked loose the doors to several other cells as well.
It took him a moment to process what the slightly ajar door meant, and after staring at it for a while, Edward finally willed up enough strength to drag himself to his feet. Shuffling over to the door, he leaned against the wall next to it and stared through the small opening leading out into the hallway. Now that he had the chance, he wasn't quite sure that he wanted to leave. Maybe it was some sort of trap where the hallway was even worse than the cell, or maybe it was a test and anyone who leaves will be punished worse than their usual punishment.
'I could just... close it, and forget that it ever opened,' Edward mused quietly to himself.
"Go on, brother," Al said gently.
Edward's head snapped in the direction of Al's voice to see him standing in a corner of his cell. His little brother had never before spoken to him when he appeared like this, so it must be important.
"It's worth a try to escape, right?" Al said with a small smile.
"Yeah," Edward said, his voice hoarse.
Determined but wary, Edward slipped through the open door and out into the hall. There were other prisoners wandering about like him, but none of them seemed like too much of a threat, too focused on their own escape, so he mostly ignored them. As he turned a corner, a robed man wearing some sort of skull mask ran toward him. Edward's breath caught in his throat. Expecting some sort of attack and being completely defenseless with his hands shackled, Edward pressed himself against the wall and slid down so that he was crouching; ready to curl up and protect himself if he needed to. The robed man simply ran past him though, completely ignoring him.
Confused, Edward stared after the man. He wore the same robes that the people who locked him up wore, but he didn't seem to care at all that Edward was out of his cell. It didn't make sense. Unless... The mask. Maybe the mask he wore was supposed to be some sort of symbol of him being different from the other robed people; like he had different views and was on a different side; a side that didn't want to condemn Edward to Hell.
The man was too far away to catch now, but maybe there were more like him. With a plan now in mind, Edward headed in the direction the masked man had come from. Passing through a few more hallways, Edward could tell that he was getting closer because the sound of activity was getting louder. He could hear many footsteps running every which-way along with voices speaking in that same language he could hardly understand. A couple more masked people passed him, but they were moving too fast for Edward to grab their attention, so he simply continued on to the heart of all the action.
Turning yet another corner, Edward finally reached his destination. It looked as if an explosion had gone off, blowing out the walls of several cells and exposing them to the choppy ocean outside. There were a few masked and robed men scattered about the room, but it was the man that they were taking orders from that gained Ed's attention the most.
"A chimera," Edward breathed, his eyes wide with shock. Yet, oddly enough, he felt no fear at the sight of this chimera, for although the man had taken on many frightening features of whatever reptile he had been merged with, Edward knew from experience that not all chimeras were bad. Some were just people that had fallen victim to the wrong end of alchemy. The chimera was something familiar in this world of unfamiliar things and Edward couldn't help but feel comforted by this.
Before Edward even knew what he was doing, he had stumbled over to the chimera and fell to his knees at the reptilian man's feet. He still felt so weak and all of the walking he had done had eaten up any energy he had left.
Grasping at the chimera's robes, Edward remembered the words he had learned while trapped in Hell and said, "Please... please help me... and then maybe... I could help you..."
Lord Voldemort hadn't been planning on breaking into Azkaban until later, preferably after the public knew of his return, but too many of his loyal followers had been locked up while he was out of commission and if he planned on getting anything done, he'd need them at his side. It was fairly easy to get the dementors on his side, and once that was taken care of, the rest of the prison break would be easy.
They entered Azkaban with a bang, taking out a good portion of the wall on a side where none of his followers were locked up. Once they were in, Voldemort sent the Death Eaters he had brought with him to go collect the rest of his wayward brood. As he waited for them to return, one of the prisoners had the audacity to grab hold of his robes, although he wasn't too surprised considering that more than half the people in Azkaban were out of their minds. The Death Eaters still in the room tensed, but Voldemort waved them off, he was perfectly capable of defending himself.
The prisoner was a young boy and although Voldemort was mildly curious as to what a young boy was doing in Azkaban, he wasn't curious enough to spare the child. He drew his wand, ready to kill the blond and be done with it.
As the boy pleaded for help and then babbled something in some other language, Voldemort paused, but it wasn't because of the different language the boy spoke, it was because of the red markings. At first he had dismissed them as tattoos, but looking at them longer, he noticed that there was something very familiar about them, he just couldn't quite remember what. That's when he saw it. There on the boy's left shoulder, exposed to the cold through a rip in his tattered shirt, was a mark that connected all of the pieces in his mind.
"The ouroboros," Voldemort whispered. "Then those markings..."
The boy's eyes slid shut as he slumped to the ground; falling unconscious at Voldemort's feet. The Dark Lord holstered his wand before leaning over the boy to get a closer look at the red markings.
"Not a tattoo," he murmured to himself. "But a transmutation circle."
Or at least parts of it. Although it wasn't completely intact, Voldemort could recognize some key symbols that were used in many alchemy arrays.
'A homunculus,' Voldemort realized. 'But what is a homunculus doing in Azkaban and how did the Ministry get their hands on it?'
Voldemort had learned about alchemy and homunculi long ago when he was still a student at Hogwarts. His interest in the subject had all started when Nicholas Flamel came to one of Slughorn's parties and had revealed quite a bit of interesting information after having one too many drinks. After getting as much information out of Flamel as he could, Voldemort did his own research with the intention of learning how to use alchemy himself. He was never able to perform it though and quickly lost interest.
That was a long time ago and he'd have to refresh his memory on the subject, but he did remember the specifics about homunculi; that they were dangerous creatures created from an unsuccessful attempt at bringing someone back to life through human transmutation. They were powerful, nearly indestructible, and they all had some sort of special ability. Something like that would be the perfect weapon for his side in this war he was fighting.
However, looking down at the pathetic child before him, Voldemort had to wonder how much of that information he read about homunculi was true.
'If any of it is true, it'd be worth it to have him on my side,' he thought, a devious smile spreading across his face.
"My Lord?" one of his followers, Lucius Malfoy, questioned, his eyes traveling from the boy on the floor up to Voldemort.
"Malfoy," Voldemort said, "your wife is an efficient healer, is she not?"
"Yes, my Lord," Lucius said.
"Good. I have new orders for you," Voldemort said. "Take this boy home to your wife. Set him up in one of your guest rooms and see to it that she patches him up. I'll be by to check on him later. Also, get me any file the Ministry has on him."
Lucius looked confused, but wisely chose not to question the orders.
"Yes, my Lord," he said before walking over to the boy and slinging him over his shoulder. Turning quickly in place, Lucius aparrated the boy away with him to Malfoy Manor.
That's all for chapter two! Tell me what you think and review please!
