5/14/2016: I finally caved! I'm editing a bunch of these earlier chapters, and while content-wise not a lot is changing, I'm making some things clearer from the get-go, and updating the writing so that this work isn't quite so obviously written over the course of four years. (Blimey.) If you're a new reader – don't worry! You don't have to pay any attention to this bit.

I'm also going to add chapter notes to the bottom of these, just to clear things up on things where I'm being subtle or clever but not necessarily trying to preserve mystery.

TW: blood/injury, death, medical, food, trauma reaction.

Lyrics by Lacuna Coil.

~2~

Answer me, it can't be so hard

Cry to relieve what's in your heart

-Daylight Dancer

Selim had always found William a little intimidating, boisterous, sometimes even cruel. He loved him, of course – questioning that was like questioning why the sun rose, or why the rain fell. Still, he'd always been more comfortable around Alex, even with all the strange and peculiar things he did.

He'd never seen Will sleeping before, though. Asleep, Will's face wasn't quite so sharp, and there were no mocking words waiting on his tongue this time. Not that Selim would have minded a barb or two. Even a half-hearted curse. Anything.

Timidly, still kind of expecting to be bitten, he reached out and brushed a few stray blond strands away from Will's pale face. Dad said he'd lost a lot of blood – Selim didn't even want to think about how much he'd bled before they got down there.

What if he dies?

He didn't want to think about, he wasn't going to think about anything except what was going to happen when Will woke up, what was Selim going to tell him, they didn't even have a body -

Three days of this. Three days of sitting by Will's side, waiting for something to happen, refilling his IV bag, cleaning and changing the bandages around the horrific stumps where his arm and leg had been torn away -

torn? What could do that? What did they do? -

He'd been reading to him, too. Fairy tales, mostly, and just whatever he could think of.

And Alex…Selim felt the lump in his throat rise again, and he forced it back down. It had been two years without Mum and he hadn't cried once. He wouldn't cry. Crying was a sign of weakness.

But ten-year-olds weren't supposed to -

Selim shivered involuntarily, trying even harder to push away the memories of the bloodsoaked floorboards and the thing. Of course, that just made them even more vivid.

He slammed his hands over his eyes, whimpering in fright as he tried to ignore the thoughts racing through his head. It was a monster and it tore Will apart and it devoured Alex and they're gone they're gone they're gone and it's still out there -

Something tugged on his pants leg, and he shrieked, falling out of his chair and shielding his face with his hands. "Don't eat me!"

"...That wasn't the reaction I was hoping for," came the familiar voice, although smaller and a little more... hollow than before.

Selim parted his fingers. "A-" He couldn't even voice the name. He'd sound so stupid -

"Don't I even get a 'thank god you're alive'?"

"Alex!" He pulled his hands from his face, blinking in confusion. Alex wasn't there. Instead, the doll that Will had been holding like a talisman for three days was leaning against his bare foot. "...What?"

The doll hung its head. "Hello," it said, enunciating clearly.

Selim's mind went completely blank. "H-hi," he stuttered out. He couldn't even figure out whether or not to be relieved. "Alex?" he said again. He had to be sure.

"In the... er, well. Wood, I guess." Well, doll or not, Alex was sounding strangely chipper for somebody who'd been missing for three days.

"You're not dead!"

"Nope, or at least I hope not. If I am, that means heaven is staring at your ugly mug."

Selim found himself gritting his teeth. "I thought you were dead for three days!" And suddenly, despite all his promises and his resolve, tears started pouring down his face, and he sniffled, still trying to be brave. "I-I didn't even know you were home yet and then you – you -"

He picked up the doll, holding Alex delicately in one hand and wiping desperately at his face with the other. "I'm glad you're okay," he whispered.

"I – think I am?" Alex quickly changed the subject. "What about Will? The last thing I remember is activating the circle."

"So it was alchemy!" Selim started to get angry, not for the first time. "This was all some stupid experiment or something, wasn't it -"

"We were trying to bring her back," Alex murmured, almost too quietly to hear. "Just please tell me – please tell me Will's okay."

Selim didn't know how to respond. Instead, he lifted his hand and let Alex crawl onto the bed, let him take it in.

Alex sat on Will's chest, rising and falling with every shallow breath his brother took. He was quiet for so long that Selim began to wonder if he had been hallucinating everything, but the mouthless voice came again after a long while, breaking the silence with a somber whisper. "We didn't get anything back. Did we?"

The monster with the broken neck and the long brown hair. "It...wasn't human." It wasn't Trisha. Even though he'd recognized the face, it hadn't been her.

"So... nothing. And this is what we paid." Selim could hear Alex's voice shake with – was it sorrow, or anger? Usually he could read his friend's body to know the difference. But then Alex kept talking. "And nothing? Nothing in return?" This time, Selim could hear the fury in his voice. "What happened to equivalent exchange?"

The words he spoke meant nothing to Selim. They were alchemy terms, as strange to him as equal force, pulleys, gears and metal strengths were to them.

Alex looked up at him, carved face still managing to be painfully, hopelessly lost. "What…what do we do now, Selim?"

Selim wished he had an answer. He wished he could say something to comfort Alex, for all that his mind was still reeling from the sheer impossibility of the friend he'd begun to mourn returning in such a form. He still didn't even know how it was possible. "I don't know," he whispered.


Will woke up three times in the next week. The first, only King was there for – it lasted about thirty seconds before he lost consciousness. He hadn't noticed what was wrong – he'd only looked up with his watery eyes, asked if Alex was okay, and then disappeared again.

The second time was with both Selim and Alex. He blinked his eyes open, and found Alex perched on his chest. Slowly, voice cracking from days of disuse and still hoarse from screaming, he explained that this had been the only way to save him, that he'd tried -

And halfway through his sentence, when he tried to move his arm, when he noticed the empty, flat part of the sheets, he went silent. They tried to speak to him for an hour before they left, Selim carrying Alex away after it became clear that it wasn't going to work. For all that his eyes were open, staring off into the distance from the dirty window, he wasn't there.

The third time, King refused to let him go back to sleep and poured lukewarm soup down his throat. "You've got to eat. Get some strength back. You lost a lot of blood, son, and you need to get your iron levels back up."

Will swallowed the soup hungrily, but only two of the words made it through to his still-feverish brain. Iron. Blood.

"We tried to be gods," he croaked, still only half-conscious. "We weren't supposed to fail."

"Everybody fails sometimes." King tried to give him some more, but Will turned his head away.


Selim caught Alex staring through the glass, for the second time that day, and sat down in the chair by the windowsill. "You want to go outside?"

"You sure it's a good idea?" Alex murmured. He still didn't know if this was permanent, or if Will had any way to turn it back. He certainly hoped so. He had his own plans for what he was going to look like, what he was going to change about himself, and getting trapped inside the dolly that some ancient neighbour had given him when he was a newborn hadn't been part of that plan. She thought I was a girl, he remembered, although at the point everybody had thought he was a girl, him included, so he couldn't really hold it against her.*

Still, he found himself staring at the reflection in the glass, distracted from the view. "It looks beautiful out," he added.

"Come on, I'll take you.I'll make sure a cat doesn't eat you or something."

Alex turned around and smacked Selim on the arm with his nub of a hand. "Oh sure, laugh. I won't pull any punches next time you're the size of a lamp." Leaping down from the windowsill, Alex started making his way towards the door, still figuring out how to walk with his new legs. They didn't quite joint properly – although, he reflected, he was lucky they had joints at all. It could have been worse. He could have been a corn-husk doll, fated to rot away with the next heat.

It was actually kind of funny – he hadn't been particularly happy with the body he's gotten before, but this hadn't exactly been what he wanted. Still, you made the best of what you got, right? It sounded a little stiff even to him but he figured if he said it enough, it'd sound true.

Selim opened the door before he could struggle to reach the doorknob, and Alex stepped outside for the first time in his new body.

And it was all wrong.

He couldn't smell the wind – he knew it would smell of bluebells and willow and cow manure, just like it always had, but it didn't.

The grass was turning into golden hay, but he couldn't feel it scratch his feet.

He tried to take another step forward, and fell – his body was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

He tried to scream again, and he heard it, but it didn't rip from his throat or even out of his closed, painted-on mouth. It just hung in the air, an invisible echo -

Now he was being picked up – was that Selim's hand? It was too big, so wrong –

"I'm so sorry," Selim murmured. Alex bit back his response, be careful what you wish for. It might come true.

He'd wanted his mother – he'd wanted a new body -

-well, he'd gotten both.

Notes:

*There's unfortunately no smoother way to introduce it, but I wanted it to pop up earlier than it eventually did – Alex is a transgender man, and has identified as such for a few years by this time. Trans rights in this time period were in their absolute infancy; for example, the term 'transgender' didn't yet exist, so the word itself will never appear in story.