Of Blood and Smiles

by Nythtak

Random Kimbley one-shots, irregular updates. Chapter 1 - "Is this what insanity feels like? He wonders, as the ground buckles and twists beneath his palms, as the screams of the injured and dying fill his ears in a morbid symphony." Title suggestions and prompts welcome.

2. Laugh

He doesn't think the way other people do. He never really has, or at least that's what he assumes. Always on the outskirts, never quite fitting in, never forming the bonds with other people that seem to be so important. Family and friends; the concepts are foreign to him. He has no family, unless you count the orphanage that raised him until he was old enough to be kicked out onto the streets. Friends? He hears people talking about how they'd give their lives for their friends, how they'd always be there for them, and he knows he'd never be able to do the same. He can't imagine ever caring about another person enough to sacrifice himself for them, and the idea of supporting someone without any benefit to himself makes him frown.

What is the point? Where is the logic in such loyalty, in risking yourself? He'd asked someone this, a long time ago, when he was still a young and (relatively) innocent child.

Love, they'd said.

The answer still confuses him. That was it? They'd do anything for a person, stand up for them and care for them, just because an emotion dictates they do so?

Whilst he understands such emotions as boredom and curiosity fuelling someone (both had been behind his interest in alchemy, acting as his drive to push past the many failures), love has always been somewhat illusive to him. He doesn't see its use, its purpose, so he decides he doesn't need it.

He wonders of other people can do that. Can just push aside emotions when they need to, can ignore them or eradicate them altogether. After all, what use was he if fear crippled him at every turn, or if he felt any sympathy for the hundreds of lives he extinguishes each day?

Oppositely, can they induce them so completely they're almost tangible? Amusement if so simple to feel, so easy, and it is much more fun to feel amused than it is any other emotion. It pushes away the cloud of boredom that so often plagued him, makes him feel alive. And even if it earns him frightened and disgusted looks when he laughs at the horror and destruction that is war, he decides that he finds it funny (and so he does).