WARNINGS FOR: Language, violence, death (that's become such a norm at this point omg)
Hey guys! I just came back from Ball State University for a very expensive Journalism Workshop (which by the way I won a scholarship for so I didn't have to pay a dime) and it's wonderful! I also would like to apologize for the long hiatus, I'm currently trying to get my YouTube Channel, "The Baehood," on the up and up again and school started up for me again and I'm also a member of the newspaper and theatre, so it gave me much less time to do it (yeah Elena whatever you gotta tell yourself to help you sleep at night and get through writer's block); but anyway! I can't believe we made it to ten chapters! Thank you guys so much for all your love and support for this story! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and once again, thank you so much for reading!
-Elena
Chapter Ten
The Phantom Alchemist
Edward sat on the front porch, smoking from his pipe just as he normally did before. It was early in the morning, the rest of his family still asleep in their beds, giving him just enough time to watch the sunrise and think. He and Roy were quite similar with this – nobody knew what they would think about in the mornings, and nobody dared to bother them. Sometimes, they didn't think at all, sometimes, it was another way for them to shut off their minds while staying awake and not having to suffer from any nightmares. The rest of the time, they would think, about anything in particular, whether it be in the past or the future, their mind would be speaking to them in their own voice.
Who knew what goes through their heads.
In this particular case, Edward thought about sleep. He wanted it, but it was too late to have it, since it was early morning. Granted, he was an adult by now and could do what he wanted, but he has two children. It was like that saying all mothers tell their little ones from a very young age: "when you have kids, your life no longer becomes your own."
It had never been so true in his case. After Marcus was born, that became Ed's only focus until Isabelle was born, where he now had to become an expert at multitasking. Thank the Truth for Winry, for being the perfect partner and the perfect mother.
Mother.
He thought of his mother. He thought of the chestnut hair that was gently pulled off to the side and tied just to keep it from being a mess. He thought of how that simple shade of lavender with the white apron always seemed to suit her, and she always had a modest elegance to her. He remembered how she'd sing to him and Alphonse at night, and her voice was always very pretty.
He tried to sing his lullaby to his children when he had them, but the first note made him choke on his own words, and he had to practically force himself to finish the lyrics. Wintry was the one who convinced him to change the lullaby for the kids, and he thought of the night he tried to bring his mother back from the dead. He remembered how Alphonse desperately scooped him up into his arms so he could run to Pinako's house at the dead of night, his older brother bleeding to death on the suit of armour. Edward remembered while they ran to the Rockbell house, he looked to the sky, seeing a bright red cardinal soar across the sky, the crimson from its wings matching the blood from his limbs.
"Sing little bird, sing little bird, let your wings guide me."
He thought of the night he failed to commit human transmutation. His mind flashed and flickered with the awful memories that came with it. The pipe dropped from his hands as they flew up to clutch his head; goddamn it, it hurt to remember. It was if his brain screeched at him – over and over again until he finally–
"Papa!"
Edward's eyes snapped open and turned towards the sound – towards reality – when he saw his thirteen-year-old daughter staring at him with concern. He sighed in relief, knowing his place in the real life, and he just gave her a tender smile and spoke in a soft voice, "I'm sorry, babygirl, did I wake you up?"
The girl did not nod, nor did she shake her head, she just glossed over the subject while her eyes gave away the answer. "Were you dreaming again, Papa?"
He looked at her dead in the face, expecting himself to lie to her and tell her that he was fine, but he couldn't. Isabelle wasn't stupid, he knew this, and he certainly wasn't going to take advantage of her and treat her like a child. She was about to be legal, after all. Edward just sighed as he looked at her, his smile faltering, "Yeah, I was."
She didn't say anything in response, but she had a sadness in her iris, the blue flame dimming to a cooler water – deeper, sadder, but still lukewarm. She took a few steps closer to him, standing slightly taller than he was since he was sitting on the porch swing, and she bent forward, wrapping her arms around him. There was a moment of silence, before he pulled her down to him, letting her sit on his lap and sprawl her legs across the rest of the swing, and he held her back with a tighter force. It was as if he was clinging to her for the last time, her body light against his and a melancholy atmosphere clouding their souls.
"Isabelle, please, no matter what happens to your mother and I, don't commit human transmutation." Edward pulled her back, holding her by her shoulders and looked at his daughter eye-to-eye, a gold flame meets blue. She nodded, but he shook his head, "No, babygirl, promise me. Please, promise me. Promise me you won't commit human transmutation. Tell me, right now, I want to hear you say it."
"I promise, Papa."
"Promise what?"
"I promise I won't commit human transmutation."
The wind grazed by, gently lacing its fingers across their cheeks, blowing carefully on their necks and tracing their collar bones. "No matter what happens," Edward added in a demanding voice.
"No matter what happens," Isabelle concluded.
That was all the security he needed. Knowing how well his daughter sticks to her word, he rested her head on his chest again, holding her tightly in his arms just as he had before. Out of the corner of her eye, Isabelle saw the last little flicker of flame within the ashes of his pipe die; one ear was covered by the palm of her father's hand, the other covered by his chest, listening to his heart – a hammer against cloth.
And it was still beating.
"Wakey-wakey!"
Edward was awake before he opened his eyes, but he didn't appreciate his head being yanked up by his hair. His ponytail was loose by this point, most of it was hanging out of the knot and very few strands were bunched together at the nape of his neck.
He glanced in-between the cell bars to see his brother, and found that Alphonse had been bleeding from his nose, a faint purple tinging his face from the bottommost corner of his eyelid to the uppermost tip of his lip. His head snapped towards his captor to scream at him for hurting his baby brother, but he saw a bite mark on his hand – specifically, in that strip of flesh between his thumb and index finger; in his other hand, the knuckles were red, the knuckle on his ring finger cracked just slightly and leaking just a little bit of blood.
The older felt a twang of pride when he pieced two and two together to figure out what Alphonse had done. Edward knew that his brother could fight, sure, but he never knew that he had it him to fight dirty – to the point of biting people, even. If anything, he would have worn that bruise on his face with pride knowing that he finally inflicted an injury on this man.
Speaking of their captor, after he woke up the older brother he left the cell, standing in-between the two of them just as he had every day before. "I thought you two were rather lonely down here, so I got you someone to talk to."
Immediately, Edward thought of his children and his wife. He was afraid that his captor finally caught them, and that they were going to be forced into this horrible situation. The thing is, however, Isabelle hadn't been exposed to the things the brothers have experienced, and that it would be a lot easier to sway her in the direction he wanted. Little did her father know that he underestimated her hard-headedness.
Instead, he brought down someone just as important to them. The door opened, and a young woman was pushed down and ran down the few steps, where their captor caught her once she reached the bottom of the stairs. Her body was small against his, and the only thing they could make out was faint traces of dark hair. It was clear the woman had been crying. "Come on, sweetheart, why so scared? Stop crying, see, your dear fiancé is here." He spun the woman around, one arm wrapped around her body to hold her arms in place, and the other holding her head against his body, tightly gripping onto her forehead to keep her hair from her face.
Alphonse screamed.
When Edward's eyes focused on her face, he saw that it was May. Her face was wet from sweat and hot, angry tears, her body trembling and her visage clearly expressing a form of spite. May had always been a brave girl, and this was no exception. When she locked eyes with her fiancé, her expression softened. "Alphonse," she called out, her eyes flooded and overflowed with relief.
Their captor forced her to walk forward, opening the younger brother's cell and pushing her in. She didn't think to get him out of the shackles that bound his hands to the wall, instead her first instinct was to run towards him and scoop his face in her hands. Just to feel his touch, really, and then there was a kiss – and in that kiss the couple almost completely forgot about what was currently happening in their lives. Physical contact was an essential part of their relationship, especially to Alphonse; it made him feel more human. When they pulled away, that's when she realised what she should do. She reached her hands up to the shackles to scratch a transmutation circle onto the iron with her nails, only to be yanked away.
"Oh, how very," he paused, trying to keep the princess still as she thrashed against him to let her lover escape. Once he found the proper word, he tossed the small girl backwards, having her crash into the bars on Edward's cell with a cry. "Touching," he finished. He turned to look at her, ignoring the brothers' screaming and shouting, and a wicked grin spread across his face.
"Now," he said, walking backwards and gently patting Alphonse on top of the head. "Remember my soldiers that you saw when we brought you here? I need you to make more of those for me. Stronger, now, so that Ed's daughter can quit killing them. These two keep refusing, no matter what I do to them."
That's when they all knew what he was talking about. Edward was screaming his thoughts at her, knowing full well that she could at least sense what he wanted her to say. "No," May said in a stern yet slightly concerned voice. The last thing she wanted to make was one of those things, especially if they were going out to hunt her only niece and nephew.
"No?" he mused.
"No," she repeated. By this point, she was shaky again, knowing that something was going to happen. Their captor had a way of striking fear into people, and yet so it seemed May was a tough egg to crack.
He just hummed a little, nodding slightly as he did. Then in one swift motion, he swooped down and tore open Alphonse's shirt at his shoulder, baring his teeth just above the skin. He unshackled one of his hands and held it down, letting his shoulder hang down so that he may have something to bite into with ease. Except this time, they were sharpened and fanged, like a wolf's. He took note of their immediate reaction to lunge forward to protect the helpless brother, and he opened his jaws, strings of saliva dripping onto the bare shoulder.
He paused, watching May freeze in her position, resorting to asking him over and over not to hurt him. "All it takes is one bite, and he'll bleed out," their captor said like how a mother would scold her child on their first offense. "Now, I'll ask again. I would like you to make more soldiers for me."
She was definitely shaking. She quickly glanced at her fiancé, for an answer. By this point, she wanted to agree so that he wouldn't get hurt, but she didn't want to do it at all. "Don't do it May!" Alphonse cried out. Suddenly, his captor's hand wrapped around his mouth, his nails now claws, digging into his skin just enough to break it and draw some blood, but not enough to cause any serious damage. One hand covering his mouth and the other hand gripped the unshackled arm to keep it from moving; to keep a wide area for him to bit into.
"You're not answering to him, you're answering to me," he said simply. "So what will it be, sweetheart?" Her fiancé couldn't say anything, but his eyes screamed everything.
It felt like thirty years between his request and her response. The wait weighed on them in a deadly silence – their bodies losing heat from their bloodstream when she finally spoke.
Edward could only remember the cold.
When Isabelle woke up, she found herself in a puddle of blood. Along from the sweat and fear that came with her nightmare, she had a scream lodged in her throat, only to escape when she found the crimson staining her bedsheets. Her shrieks were what woke up everybody else in the Estate, and they were never so quick to run to her bedroom.
Marcus was there first, understandably, since he was in the room right next to hers, and he saw the blood-soaked sheets and immediately cried out for the General. He and the Lieutenant arrived at the same time, guns drawn and gloves on, quickly skimming the room before the General found the puddle of blood the Elric children had been screaming about. "I'm dying!" Isabelle kept crying out, practically choking on her words from the utter panic she was experiencing, "I'm dying! I'm dying!"
The Lieutenant seemed to be immediately relieved, and she calmly walked towards Isabelle, who had gone into a panicked frenzy. "Isabelle," she said carefully and soothingly, but unable to get her words across to the girl. The woman took a deep breath, then slapped her across the face, cutting out her hysteria and snapping her back into reality. There was a stunned pause from everybody else in the room before she spoke again, "Isabelle, where are you bleeding?"
"My legs, I think!" she gasped, removing her hand from her cheek and slowly patting the small puddle of blood that came from in-between her legs and branched outwards. When she drew back her hand, it had stained her palm with crimson. She screamed, as if to panic again, but the Lieutenant silenced her, asking what she was physically feeling, if there was any pain to begin with. The girl's response was almost instant: "It hurts!" She pointed to her lower body in general, afraid to even lift the sheets to find the source of the blood.
"Isabelle, do you know what a period is?"
The General quickly straitened up and stepped away from Marcus at the doorframe, walking a distance away from the scene since he now knew what actually happened. Isabelle looked at her brother, as if he had the answers to what she was talking about, and he just shook his head with a confused and terrified look. How were they supposed to know? The girl wasn't given the Talk as a child and the boy never dated a female, so they weren't aware of what the hell was happening.
The Lieutenant pursed her lips together – they had a lot of work to do.
After everything had settled down and worked out, they sent Isabelle to sleep in the guest room, since her sheets and blankets were taken off her bed to be washed thoroughly with cold water. For the cramps, she was fortunate enough to receive painkillers since the General was wealthy enough to buy them.
Not only was her first period scarring for Isabelle, but it was scarring for Marcus as well. Having no prior knowledge about menstruation and suddenly waking up to his sister shrieking as if she was being murdered and finding her in a puddle of blood triggered some awful flashbacks in his head. They weren't, however, about the Smiley Face Killer as most would think; no, it was about Isabelle's fourteenth. He was always comfortable working with blood, after all he was an automail mechanic and had to deal with emergency situations with his mother often, but he could never handle seeing blood when it involved his family and close friends that he cared about.
It always took him back to the night Winry was murdered.
It seemed as though by this point both of the Elric children came to terms with their mother's murder and accepted it so that they may try and move on, but the event that unfolded always had a way of creeping back into their heads. When they'd listen to the music on the radio, they'd hear the gunshot that took their mother's life. When they'd carry on and get lost in their daydreams, they'd see Winry amongst the haze. When they'd sleep at night, they found themselves back in the dining room. Just as they'd start to move on, something would yank them back to where they were before.
The murder always found a way back, even if they attempted to push this memory and repress it as far back into their minds as possible – it'd always make a return.
And tonight, it was in the form of silky red ribbons that carefully dripped onto the hardwood floor; the blood cutting a vivid memory into the linen bedsheets.
After stopping the Smiley Face Killer, one would think that the Investigations Department would be celebrating their victory, and they'd be wrong. It seemed that Isabelle had detonated a bomb of tension within the group, being the youngest of all of them and the only one to kill a man at the drop of a hat. Nobody else in Investigations had been in the military for longer than a decade, and even then there weren't any wars or situations where they had to take a life. They were trained to do so, if necessary, but the only one that managed to successfully follow through was the child. It didn't help that about two weeks after things died down with the Smiley Face Killer case, several other murders started to unfold. Instead of homosexual men, however, this one was targeting State Alchemists.
Specifically, newer, female State Alchemists that were blonde, young, and lower in ranking. This one, the General knew, was targeting Isabelle. If it weren't for the fact a couple of these murders took place while the Dead Aim Alchemist was still in the office with the Lieutenant Colonel, most of Investigations would actually assume that it was her.
At first, the target found this absurd, until she put herself in their position and realised that she would be one of the best candidates to be a murderer. She was the only person in the department that killed someone, the one that figured out the Smiley Face Killer's identity in practically no time at all, and the fact that she's probably the most intelligent member of the Investigations Department meant that all odds were stacked against her. Many would think that the members of Investigations would be in the clear if a murder were to take place, but if anything, and ironically, those in the Investigations Department are interviewed first, because it would be so easy for them to get away with murder.
The General made careful sure to keep Isabelle guarded at all times. When she wasn't in the Investigations office with the Lieutenant Colonel, she was to stay at his own personal office with him until his shift was over. Marcus stayed with them, too; he wanted to make sure that his sister didn't run off and find herself to be a victim of murder just as he almost did.
In a way, Isabelle liked being stuck in the General's office with him and the Lieutenant. Before she got her job as a detective, she was only able to see them whenever they were done for the day – which was in the evening. However, after she earned her position in the Investigations Department, the only time she could see them was when she was dismissed – which ended up being later. Being a detective often meant pulling all-nighters in the office to try and solve cases until they passed out from mental and physical exhaustion. Isabelle was guilty of this, until it started to worry the General and he had to force her home by a certain time. That's when Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher would take her home since he was able to drive her to the Estate safely.
Prior to the murders, Isabelle often returned to the Estate later than the General himself. It's not that there were so many cases, it was one case alone – the hardest case that anybody in Investigations ever had to deal with in the past century – the Elric Case. She had come back home many times in tears, originating from an emotion that she couldn't place her finger on. There were too many to choose from when it came to that case.
After the murders began to take place, Isabelle would be ordered to the General's office an hour or two prior to his dismissal, so that he could take her back to the Estate himself. In those couple hours, Isabelle was often helping the General and his team with whatever they needed, or she'd have time to work on pettier cases that she was assigned. She learned to enjoy spending her time there, especially since Team Mustang was quite different from the Investigations Department.
From what she knew, it was also not the same group of individuals that were there following the General while her father knew them at her age. Apart from himself and the Lieutenant, only two men had stayed under the General's command after the Promised Day – Second Lieutenants Havoc and Breda. She knew of Feury and Falman, but only in writing and in mention, since it was the original Team Mustang that wrote to her for her fourteenth; only because they knew her through her father. The two different members didn't know her nor her father, but they grew to love her just as much as the rest of the team had.
These two were Second Lieutenants Erich Hermann and Hugo Nabokov.
Due to Isabelle's inadequate social skills in regards to meeting people didn't necessarily know, while she was at their office she was practically glued to the General's hip. And when he'd shoo her away so he could stall on his paperwork, she was right next to the Lieutenant.
While it did take a few days, she did find herself to warm up to the group. Isabelle took a particular liking to Breda, since he was one a member of the Investigations Department until he was promoted into Team Mustang. Already, the girl was ready to fly above her station and make her own legacy – her own mark on the Elric name.
They didn't mind Dead Aim being around all of a sudden for a few hours, knowing her situation and just how important she was to the General and the Lieutenant. If anything, they took such a strong liking to her that they eventually volunteered to be her bodyguard if she wanted to leave to go someplace like the library. She wasn't one to handle cabin fever easily, and finally being allowed to go off and do something was refreshing every once in a while.
This experience made her understand her brother's absolute hatred of being ordered not to go anywhere. At least then, the chances of the Smiley Face Killer choosing Marcus was a lot smaller than her circumstances now. This killer was targeting her. The murders all but confirm it.
Because of this, Marcus didn't even want Isabelle to leave the building without him by her side, even if she was protected by someone that worked for the state. It was the General that had to convince him to stay with him in the office after his apprenticeship so that he wasn't following his sister around.
She had learned quite a lot about the General while she was there – before thinking that he was a hard worker and ambitious, and someone who remained loyal to only his wife. And yet, while she spent time with him in his workplace, she found out that not only was he really lazy, he also puts on the façade of being flirtatious; but she did notice that he didn't typically do that while in front of the Lieutenant.
Smart move.
While Isabelle had plenty of free time with the General, she was actually given one of the spare desks in his office so that she could work on whatever she wanted. She had recently remembered at how alchemists transcribe their notes so that nobody could understand them and have their work fall into the wrong hands. It inspired her to start transcribing her own notes in flower arrangements.
Then it made her think about her father – she knew he transcribed his notes in travelogue, and not even her uncle could decipher what was within it. So, upon asking the General and getting his seal of approval, Isabelle managed to get all of Edward's documents that were in the library so she could take on the challenge of decoding them herself.
While she may be known in the future as the smartest alchemist in history, she knew that her father was not stupid by any means. In fact, he may be as smart as she is now, considering he scored so high on his essay when he was twelve. If his intelligence increased with his age, then he should most certainly be at least close to her level in regards to intellect.
Maybe this was why she was having such a hard time trying to translate his notes.
Granted, she was making some progress a little at a time, but it didn't make the task any less difficult to tackle head on. She seriously underestimated him, to say the least. The challenge was too damn hard.
But it wasn't as hard on her as the Elric Case was.
If there was anything impossible on this side of the gate, it would have been solving the Elric Case. Nobody knew what to do with it – and the only lead they had was shot to bits by a fourteen-year-old girl. At least Isabelle was making progress with her father's notes by a paragraph or two a day, with the Elric Case there was no progress at all.
If it weren't for the fact they were kidnapped, the military would have ordered the case to be shelved until they found a lead and have the missing Elrics presumed dead instead of relying on a desperate child in a frantic search to find her family. Thankfully, there were two eyewitnesses to confirm that they were indeed kidnapped – and with the incident with the General and how the Shapeshifting Chimera wanted the girl alive furthered the point.
Isabelle forced herself to transcribe her father's notes for some sign, for something, anything to grab onto as a lead, even if it's a stretch. She managed to unlock names and locations she had briefly heard about; after this killer targeting her would be found, she would be able to go out on location and interview who she can to get whatever information possible.
She could practically taste them.
It was another night she spent frantically trying to decipher what she could, her eyelids heavy and yet she still continued on, planning to stay awake until she finished the paragraph. There were times where she felt her head nodding forward and her eyes starting to close, and she had to practically smack herself back awake. About an hour of this took place, and she wasn't even a fourth of the way done.
The General tapped on her shoulder, prompting her to turn her head and face him. "I think it's time for us to go home," he said to her simply. Isabelle looked around the room, noticing nobody else there. It wasn't uncommon for the General to dismiss his team from their duties and he stayed later, especially if he noticed Dead Aim on the verge of a breakthrough in her notes.
"I'm almost done," she lied, "may I finish, sir?"
"What's your definition of 'almost,' Dead Aim? Is it an eighth forward or an eighth left?" This prompted her to just purse her lips together and not say anything, defeated. He just sighed and gestured her to stand up and leave with him.
Obediently, she did.
Something was troubling him, and it was obvious; anybody could see it in his eyes. Yet, he didn't say anything, so Isabelle deemed it best that she remained silent about the matter and leave him to talk to the Lieutenant about things that bothered him. As he opened her door to let her in the car and they hopped in, what she didn't expect was for him to volunteer the information. The doors had just shut, and a heavy silence weighed on the two of them. Finally, he spoke to her, "Isabelle, I have bad news."
She remained quiet, already her heart sinking about the possible things that could have happened. Whatever happened, did Marcus know? Was it something just between the two of them? Was it her family? The last thing she wanted to hear was bad news about her family. However, she already had learned by this point that the Truth is cruel, and that it won't give her something that she wants.
"There was a raid – in Xing. May's gone."
To put it bluntly, Isabelle was not having a good time at all. If she wasn't pushing herself to find every little detail within her father's notes before, she was definitely doing so now. She wouldn't even show up to either the Investigations office or to the General's office anymore; after a long series of panicking, she was found in the library, her research completely scattered around a table while she was keeping herself awake to read what she can about her family.
Desperation rang in her entire existence, and it sparked multiple rumours within the military. Since the murders had stopped since the last victim a few weeks prior, it certainly wasn't looking good on Isabelle's reputation.
The General tried to diffuse these rumours, but yet it only seemed to make them worse. Dead Aim didn't care about her reputation by this point, she didn't care if everybody in the State thought she was the damned Smiley Face Killer herself – she had one goal in mind.
A lead.
It didn't matter what it was or where it was or who it was or why. She just wanted answers, and she wasn't going to rest until she found them. The General had to practically pry the Elric away from her notes and drag her out of the library, forcing her to go home so that she may get at least some rest.
What the General didn't know was that she wasn't going to stop that easily. She was so close to cracking the code within Edward's alchemy notes, and she wasn't giving up just yet. She'd rest her eyes for an hour or so, squirming around in bed to keep herself moving and active so she won't accidentally pass out. Just when the rest of the family had gone to bed, she'd sneak out of her window at night, pocket-watch in hand, back to the library. There, she would stay and work until two hours before sunrise, where she'd give herself just enough time to make it back to the Estate in time before the General was awake and get about an hour of rest.
And that remained as her schedule for the next few days, working non-stop until one day, when something – finally–
"Dead Aim," the General said as he looked up from his paperwork, surprise in his tone. Isabelle stood at the door, papers in hand, smiling and shaking all at once, her cheeks wet and her facial expression unreadable. "What happened?"
"I did it," she responded in a quiet, cracked voice. "I cracked the notes."
Then her emotions could finally be interpreted. She was relieved, sure, but she was devastated. There was nothing in the notes that gave her any sort of lead other than places to investigate and people to interview – blindly, even. The Elric Case was hopeless.
But, there was something else.
"So? What'd you find?" It was Havoc's voice, his hands paused before lighting a cigarette, all eyes fixed on her.
There was a pause. Isabelle looked down at the papers, rereading her translations that she had written on them; her mind was racing with the choice. Tell them, or leave them be? What she uncovered in her genius of a father's notes would have made a breakthrough in alchemy – but was humanity ready for something like this? Would they be able to handle such a power?
She thought for a long time, the suspense holding dangling everybody on their toes by a thread. That is, until finally, she took a deep breath, and tossed the papers in the fireplace, letting them burn within the flames until nothing remained except ash and soot.
"There's a reason Papa encoded this in his research," she said finally. "Only those worthy enough to pursue it would be worthy enough to learn it. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you what was in those notes."
There remained a silence, a period where nobody knew what to say – what to even think – until she heard a voice; a woman's voice, coming from behind her and taking her by the shoulder while she watched the fire flicker in the dark.
"We understand," the Lieutenant said.
That was the last time they talked about those notes that day.
It was the Lieutenant that was taking her home early that evening when everything was finished. Marcus stayed behind with the General, nobody knew the reason why. Isabelle was exhausted – all those all-nighters she spent working her brain to its limits tired her in the most excruciating way possible.
Her eyes burned, her limbs ached, and her brain was practically melting out of her ears. And yet, like all bad encounters, it happens at the worst place at the worst time. In this case, it was also whenever she was too tired to even tell the difference of right and wrong.
"Isabelle, keep close behind me," the Lieutenant ordered, her hand reaching to her holster on her hip. The girl nodded and obeyed. She felt it too.
That's when they heard a scream (more like a war cry, really) coming from above. The two women had just enough time to look up and dodge in opposite directions to avoid being severed with an axe.
Isabelle rolled over and lifted her head up, noticing the woman holding the axe turn and face her. What truly shocked the young girl was the fact that this woman that tried to kill her wore a State Alchemist uniform. "You must be the Dead Aim Alchemist," she took note as the wanted child pushed herself up to her hands and knees, scrambling to find her feet. Before the woman could continue her speaking, she heard a gun click behind her.
She smirked, then spun around to punch the Lieutenant in the stomach, only for her to leap backwards, a hand over her abdomen as her firearm was still raised. "Even if she is the Dead Aim Alchemist, you have no business with her. You take one more step in her direction and you'll regret it."
"Alright," the woman shrugged, her uniform making an all too familiar rustling sound, that only belonged to those blue garments. She didn't take a step toward Isabelle like she said, but she instead dashed toward the Lieutenant, axe in hand.
"Lieutenant!" Isabelle shouted, fumbling in her pockets for a weapon of any kind – only to find herself with nothing. The one time she neglected to arm herself of course had to have been the one time they were attacked.
Just her luck.
Immediately, she knelt back down to the ground, trying to scratch her nails into the cobblestone to make a circle, but nothing would etch in. That's when she began to bite her fingers.
The woman aimed for the Lieutenant's stomach again, every time she'd leap backwards, and their attacker noticed this with a smirk. "You keep protecting your abdomen, Lieutenant. What's cooking in there?" Isabelle wouldn't know what she was meaning until a little later. For now, she was only thinking of trying to protect Riza at all costs.
Nobody else was going to die or get hurt because of her.
"You know what," the woman stopped, pulling out a piece of chalk. She paused, almost in remembrance, staring at the chalk in a strange way before continuing to speak, "I think I know what's happening. I don't want to fight you anymore – I remember how hard it was."
That's when she promptly drew a circle onto the floor and pressed her hands against the circle, sparking a reaction, the cobblestone reaching up around the Lieutenant and then trapping her within a stone wall that extended towards the sky. There was no ceiling, only to allow air to enter, but it was so high up that she couldn't climb out.
"Get me out of here!" she cried, only for her voice to be drowned out by the walls. The woman then turned to face Isabelle, how had started to draw a transmutation circle into the ground with the blood that dripped from bite marks on her fingers.
"Persistent, aren't you?" she grinned as she strode towards the girl, still holding a tight grasp onto the axe in her hand. Dead Aim quickly started to try and transmute a weapon, only to be forced away to dodge decapitation.
"The hell is your deal, anyway? What have I done to piss you off and make you want to kill me?" Isabelle asked with a raised voice. Then again, she thought, I never really avoided it, did I?
"Nothing to me personally, but I am on a mission," the woman said simply as she lifted her axe and chucked it toward the child. The girl ducked, avoiding being hit with the projectile, and then taking it for herself and doodling a transmutation circle on it. The woman charged after her to make sure her circle wouldn't be complete, "Nah, ah, that's not yours, love."
Isabelle went to run again, only for the traitor to trip her, sending her off balance on her feet and stumbling to the ground. She turned back, seeing her predator make her way towards her, and she quickly turned back and scurried to the transmutation circle she wasn't done drawing before. She placed her hands on the circle and created a spear, fumbling to keep it in her hands.
The Dead Aim Alchemist sprung to her feet, whipping around with the spear in her hand and immediately impaled the first thing it came in contact with – the woman's left lung. She stopped in place, dropping her weapon and coughing up blood instantly.
There was a pause – a stunned, equally horrified moment of silence where the two women just looked at each other, both in shock that a little girl was able to take a life so easily. Then the girl used the spear as leverage to push the rogue alchemist onto her back, not removing the weapon to keep her alive just some time longer.
Squeals of pain escaped the woman's throat as she reached toward her pocket and held a small bottle in her hand; it was the kind that doctors used to fill a syringe with liquid. "Take it," she croaked, her lip quivering, "inject it into my daughter at home. They'll come after her and take her away."
"Who's 'they?'" Isabelle asked the dying.
"They'll experiment on her, they'll torture her until it takes her life," she continued, her sentences growing faster in tempo to make sure everything was said before her own life will end, tears now stinging the brim of her eyes. "Please, inject this into her, it'll prevent that from happening. It'll clean her blood and make it unusable. This will save her; please, she's only two."
Isabelle nodded and took the liquid vial, then looked back at the woman, "who are these people?" she asked again. "Why would you work for them if they would do this to your child?"
"I didn't have a choice," she cried, "they made me."
"Who's 'they?'" Isabelle asked once more, her voice raised slightly due to being aggravated that this question was constantly skipped.
The woman swallowed hard, and simply said, "They call themselves Transmuters."
"What can you tell me about them? Anything! Anything, please – they might be the people that have–"
"–your family," she finished, her words becoming harder to create. "Yes, they have them, I believe, but at their main base."
Isabelle's heart skipped a beat and her breath stopped. All those countless hours where the girl struggled day in and day out trying to discover anything in her father's work, all those moments where she would almost have a mental breakdown from no progress. All those weeks were she searched so desperately for a lead, only for one to fall right on her lap.
They have my family!
"Where is it?" she shouted, growing desperate as she noticed the woman's life began to slowly fade away, "Please, you have to tell me!" They looked each other in the eyes for just a moment, the State Alchemist giving her a look that told her everything: she was never told.
"At least tell me who you are, then," Isabelle asked, her voice growing softer, not as desperate. She had some confidence that what she had just learned meant that it won't be long before she finds them.
"My name is Ida. Ida Leene," she breathed out, removing the spear from her chest to quicken the end. "Tell my little Danielle something, please."
Isabelle felt indebted – even though she was already going to be doing so much for a soon to be dead woman, she felt that she wasn't doing enough. She told her who had her family, for fuck's sake, and she thought that she couldn't pay her back enough. In her eyes, she saw her mother, in her last moments before her murder, desperate and her children being the last and only things on her mind.
This time, Isabelle was the murderer.
Not wanting to think about it, the Dead Aim Alchemist nodded, simply saying, "of course."
"Tell her that Mommy will see her very soon," she managed to say, her last words hanging above her lips like fish bait. "I will see her when she wakes…"
She couldn't finish her sentence – the taste of blood the last thing that enticed her senses before she succumbed to the ultimate form of heartache.
Isabelle couldn't trace her emotions down to a single thought – it was more along the lines of everything was jumbled around in a giant clusterfuck of logic and feelings, all tangling around each other and intertwining without reason.
The first thing the Dead Aim Alchemist had done after Ida's death was break down the walls that had entrapped the Lieutenant. Before she had the opportunity to order the child still, she watched as the girl slipped from her to go carry out the State Alchemist's dying wish.
She kept her gun on her hip, ready to use it in case she was walking into a trap. There wasn't a single doubt in her mind that what she was doing was equal parts wrong as it was right – but she didn't quite realise how it would end up until it was too late for everybody. After Ida died, the girl had taken Ida's ID card and her keys, knowing that she'd need them in order to find her daughter.
When Isabelle reached the house, she used the house key, carefully turning the knob and peeking inside. She checked the corners first, gun now drawn and aimed, just in case if she were to suddenly be attacked. She shut the door behind her, then she heard quick footsteps run downstairs in excitement, "Mommy! You're home!"
She leaves her daughter alone?
When she turned towards the stairs, Isabelle saw a little girl with bouncy hair make it to the bottommost step with a large grin on her face. When Danielle noticed that the woman standing before was indeed not her mother, her grin faltered, then faded altogether. "You're not Mommy."
Isabelle glanced over at the clock, noticing the late time, and drawing a conclusion that the child was supposed to be in bed. "No, babydoll, I'm not," she replied in a gentle voice and knelt down to the baby's height. She spoke in a voice similar to how her own mother would before bed, or how Marcus would when he would lull her to sleep after some awful nightmares; it was smooth, gentle, and nurturing. Altogether it was calm and soothing to the ears. "But your mother did tell me to come give you something. She said it's like medicine, it's supposed to make you be really healthy."
It was a lukewarm lie again.
The toddler glanced over, noticing the needle and liquid within the syringe, then slightly panicked, "I don't want a shot!"
"It won't hurt, I promise. Your Mommy said this should put you to sleep and make you healthy, and she said that she'll see you when you wake up," Isabelle said slowly and comfortingly, carefully taking the child by the arm and turning it so she can see the underside of her elbow. "She loves you very, very much."
"Will it hurt?"
"Not too much, babydoll, I promise."
There was a pause, and then the little girl nodded and shut her eyes very tight to help her make it through the prick of the needle. Isabelle was cautious while injecting the liquid into the child's bloodstream, making sure that there was no air in it so it wouldn't kill her. Once the vial was emptied, she was done.
For a moment, everything was quiet, neither of the two girls knowing what to do after that. That's when the older decided that she would take this younger child to the orphanage, and went to pick her up – that's when the coughing began.
Once it started, it wouldn't stop. Danielle collapsed towards the floor, only to be caught by Isabelle, who had just realised what was in that bottle. The liquid itself was clear, and she remembered how Ida said it would clean her daughter's bloodstream to make sure it wouldn't happen. It had a strange scent to it, almost like bleach.
That's when she knew.
"No, no, no, no," Isabelle frantically stammered as she scooped the girl into her arms and gently shook her, not gaining a single response from her. Her eyes were lifeless, her skin pale, and the colour that contrasted was the blood that had spewed from her mouth with every cough, staining her beautiful, infant skin.
I just killed a child.
Those words replayed themselves over and over again in Isabelle's mind. She seemed to forget that even though she was legal to do many things, she herself was still a child.
I'm a baby killer.
She stepped out of the house, carrying the little Danielle in her arms like a princess, only to be greeted with the General and his team outside the building, staring directly at her. She knew that she couldn't tell them all – it would have been equal parts stupid and suicidal. Swallowing hard, the Dead Aim Alchemist returned their stares, and spoke in a shaky voice, "They already got to her." While her emotion may have been true, her words were not. She looked at the Lieutenant, who had already known about this situation from being able to hear their conversations within the walls. "I didn't make it fast enough."
She stayed in her place, just the way she was; and by the end of her sentence, she was already shaking, the dead child trembling along with her in her arms. It felt that all heat had drained from her body, and she didn't know what to think. How to react.
I didn't mean to–!
"Dead Aim," the General said carefully as he slowly began to walk up the steps, unsure how to react to what he was witnessing. He could only see her father – staring blankly at the stone steps shortly after Nina died. He could only hear his screaming. "Isabelle, give her to me," he said in a gentle commanding voice.
The girl glanced up at him, finally her hearing focusing on sounds and tones, but his still remained jumbled together. Three lives before this child in her arms were taken without a second thought or a care in the world – and yet, so it seemed, that this one (albeit, accidental) caused a chain reaction within her thought processes. This was just a little girl. This was just a child.
It was a moment like this where Isabelle remembered that she was just a child, too.
From: The Diary of the Dead Aim Alchemist, a Young Girl, by Isabelle Elric (East City University Press, 1951) pg. 252:
It felt like my world was ending all over again. Everything I had strived towards, everything that I swore to myself that I wouldn't become, just unravelled right in front of me in the form of liquid cyanide.
I don't remember much about what happened after she died. I remember lying to the General and his team. I remember my brother being in the car when the Lieutenant walking me down the porch steps. I vaguely remember a few questions, but the rest of my mind was clear in the thought I had just killed a baby. During the whole interrogation process, I remember someone telling me that I was handling this girl's murder very calmly and professionally, that it impressed them.
Do I really give off that vibe? I try to mirror the Lieutenant in that we make our emotions unreadable with our facial expressions. She taught me to do that – and that it would be handy in times where I shouldn't show any fear or regard whatsoever.
It seems that I learned.
My memory in-between the time of Danielle's death and arriving at the General's Estate was blurry. In which one would normally start to have a clearer memory of a hazy incident as time went on, but with me it wasn't the case. I only remember a few gargled statements, a long list of sounds strung together in forgotten words and discombobulated actions. I can't remember a damn thing.
I just remember the cold.
"You know, you were very brave out there today, Izzy," Marcus said as he sat down next to her in the living room back at the General's Estate. The Mustangs were discussing something privately in the dining room, their voices quiet enough so that they were still able to hear the Elric children talking to one another since there wasn't a wall to divide the sound.
"I killed her."
It was at those words, everything stopped. All voices and all actions, stopping and staring at the girl after her confession. Her words rendered them speechless, their thoughts stopping in mid-think to try and sort out what she had just said.
"What did you say?" The General asked slowly, a firm caution in his tone as he walked from where he and the Lieutenant are talking towards the girl on the couch that was too afraid and too out of it to even look back up at him. He had heard what she said, but he had to double check. Just to make sure that he wasn't losing his mind.
Isabelle swallowed hard. She wasn't sure how to respond to him, if she should at all. She was faced with a couple options on what to say, but she decided otherwise. She decided to just repeat her statement just as she said it before, and she just stared blankly at the carpet, focusing on not looking anywhere else.
They were stunned. How else were they supposed to react? They had already written Isabelle's lie into the case file, and they weren't sure where to begin with her punishment. "Isabelle–" the Lieutenant began, only to have her words trampled down.
"–I didn't mean to!" Isabelle shouted in a sudden outburst. It was if the pent up emotions over the past few murders finally seemed to sink in on her consciousness. She wasn't one to cry in front of people, if anything, she hated it; it made her feel weak. She remembered the last time she cried was after she almost lost her brother to the psychotic Smiley Face Killer. Before then, she couldn't recall when she cried any time before. The only thing worse than crying, in her opinion, was the pity others would feel toward her if she did. Because of this, she never cried in front of people often, if at all. And yet, it felt that this time she had no other choice. "I didn't mean to. Her mom gave me something to try and save her from those people, but I didn't know that it would kill her!"
Her tears were running without any assistance, her voice wavering as she spoke. Her hands were shaking and she wasn't able to form a solid sound without a lump in her throat. "I didn't want to kill her. I didn't mean to kill her. I didn't mean to."
Marcus reached over to take his sister's hands, but Isabelle had done the unexpected – she pushed him away. He couldn't make out the intentions behind her actions, but he could definitely make out the emotions that caused said actions: disgust. He didn't know if it was directed at him or if at herself, and due to the situation he assumed it would be the latter.
"I'm sorry," she choked. They pitied her, alright, and she hated every minute of it. In that moment, the Dead Aim Alchemist vowed to look for all other options before taking another man's life – and in that moment, it would be the last time Isabelle Elric would be seen crying. The next time Marcus would find her crying, she wasn't his sister.
I actually had intentions of adding more to this chapter, where Isabelle will have to be facing repercussions from the military, but seeing how long it was anyway, I decided to split it into the next chapter! Thank you guys so much for being patient with me, it really means a lot. Thank you so much for reading once again and I can't wait to get started on the next chapter!
-Elena
