Hi! Oh my gosh, I've gotten quite a few new favorites (yay!), and I love you for that!
Well, sorry for not getting this up yesterday. Four hours of bus makes no one want to update at eleven pm. Sorry!
Well, see ya later?
"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?" – Chuck Palahniuk
Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist, its plot or any of its characters. I only own a space on this website where I can let my fantasy flow freely.
Chapter thirty-six: Her Heart is Breaking in Front of Me
"Who the fuck are you?" Edward said when he saw that Alexander Osbourne was drinking coffee in his kitchen.
"Brother! Don't curse at the nice man!" Alphonse said and looked at the Alexander and said nervously and almost too fast. "Hi, I am Alphonse who are you?"
"Well, the proper sentence would be 'Hi, my name is…' well, whatever your name is. 'What's your name?'" Alexander said cockily and stood up facing Edward, which actually was a quite funny scene, because Alexander was at least a decimeter taller than him.
"Edward, Alphonse, this is Alexander Osbourne," Patricia tried to save the situation. "He's a friend, be polite to him. Alex, this is Edward and Alphonse Elric. Edward's a state alchemist, and Alphonse is the nicer of them."
"Oh, nice to meet you!" Alexander said and stretched out a hand as a greeting, which clearly wasn't working well. Edward simply stared at the hand, while Alphonse politely enough shook it slightly.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm visiting a friend, what are you doing here yourself?" Alexander replied.
"I live here! I can be here as much as I want to!"
"You live with him, Trisha?" Alexander said and looked over at her.
"That's true Alex, he lives here and pays a part of the rent," Patricia confirmed.
"Alex? Trisha? You have nicknames?" Edward said affronted. "You don't even call me Ed."
"I know that. That's only because you don't call me Trisha," Patricia said.
"You know why I don't wanna call you that!" Edward said, angry.
"Yes, I do! But it's equivalent exchange after all, you should know!"
"Am I… interrupting something?" Alexander asked somewhat confused.
"No!" Edward and Patricia said in unison.
"Who wants coffee!?" Alphonse threw in, but he was useless and ignored.
"No worries then!" Alexander exclaimed. "Let's get outta here, Trisha. I can't handle this… this twit any longer."
"Who're you calling a grain of rice that barely fits underneath your shoes?!?!"
"I never said that!"
"Please, the both of you! Stop fighting!" Patricia said.
"No!" Alexander and Edward said.
"Well, why don't you just put 'em on the table and measure them! And you can do that anywhere that's not here!" she screamed and pointed at the door.
"My house," Edward said, but he didn't look as cocky anymore. Alexander just stared, and Patricia put her head in her hands.
"Please, just go. Edward, back for dinner and Alex…I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"
"Right. See you later, Trisha."
"No! You're kicking me outta my own house and then expect me to come home to dinner?! I don't think so."
The both boys stormed off in their own tempo, one furiously and one slowly, as if nothing bothered him. Edward almost ran and Alexander just went on as if nothing happened.
Patricia sighed. Why couldn't her life ever be uncomplicated, easy, plain and simple? One of them, she might like as more than a friend, the other she only found as nice company.
But which boy was which? Sometimes it was hard to tell.
"Patricia?" Alphonse's concerned voice asked. "What are you going to do about Ed?"
"For now, I'll just let him be. I'm so tired, Alphonse," Patricia said.
"Then go to sleep. You need it, seeing as you just got out of the hospital. You need any help?"
"Nah, I'll be fine, thanks. I'll… see you later?"
"Yes. I'll go and do some research at the library now, see if Ed's there," Alphonse said and waved as goodbye.
"'Bye."
She hadn't lied to Alphonse. She was tired, more tired than she would willingly admit. The fight between her friends, the heavy leg, the whole new experience of having a leg in flesh and bone, the feeling of having just gotten out of the hospital and a few hundred other things. It was difficult to handle all the new things, the new apartment she shared with Scieszka, Edward and Alphonse, her leg, the hospital visit, Alexander Osbourne, the fight, all the brooding after the week back in Paris, everything.
But she would get through it somehow. She knew she would. She always did. She'd learned how to put the bad things aside and set the positive thoughts, memories and experiences first.
Learned how to make the ones around her happy before she worried about herself. Let them reach their goals when she sat at the bottom of the ladder of success, applauding at them.
"Good job, you made it. Me? No, I don't need any help. I'm fine. I'll do this myself."
The way the world of Patricia Taylor worked.
The sad truth, but please recall that the sad, horrible, heart-ripping, soul-tearing truths often is the truest of them all.
The way the real world works.
No, no more room for such sad, horrible, heart-ripping, soul-tearing thoughts anymore. Patricia shook her head violently to clear her head. What had made her mind wander like that? Was it the maze of love, the labyrinth of friendship, and the fact that the both of them are way too often entwined in each other, impossible to figure out?
Nah, that couldn't be it.
Please note the sarcasm.
The soft fabric of the couch embraced Patricia and her mind was left to the dark, lonely thoughts from before, now only magically transformed into incontrollable dreams.
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The long dark days had only begun in her mind; the darkest of all her living years were yet to come. She didn't know what was coming, and had no chance whatsoever of knowing it until it already was upon her, tearing and ripping and slashing through her insides, her mind and the immortal soul the Catholic church had taught her to believe in.
An illusion of safety was all she had. Don't bother to ask why she knew all this, for she did not know herself how these thoughts had come to her, eating away all that was ever hers in another dimension, in another era, in another world.
Was it all a terrible nightmare? And if so was the case, would she ever wake up?
No!
That couldn't be it! She couldn't have dreamed all this despair, grief, longing and later, joy, friendship, and possibly something commonly known as affection, attraction, and maybe, maybe…
A dark room, light on a chair on which Patricia sat with only her thoughts as company. And no happy thoughts, not one.
In her imagination, one after another of the people she treasured the most disappeared. They were killed, lost and hanged as warnings for the people: "Do as we tell you, or else…"
The dream changed character. Now it was exactly like the dream she had before she went back through the Gate; a girl, who looked exactly like Patricia, twirled and spun around while Patricia stood about ten feet away from her and watched her.
The girl stopped short and looked at Patricia with horror in her gaze. Her grey eyes were wide open and staring at Patricia as if she saw a terrible, horrifying, life-threatening monster.
Then the girl smiled, a malicious smile that didn't seem to want anyone anything else than evil. Blood red tears trickled down the girl's cheeks and colored her face crimson. Her grin grew wider and cut her face in half, all while glaring at Patricia with all the malignity in the world centered at her.
The girl opened her perfectly shaped mouth and said no louder than a whisper: "You're dead. You don't belong here. You don't belong on the other side either. You come from in between the worlds, from the Gate itself!"
Patricia gasped. She, a creature from inside the Gate? Or worse, one of the ghosts in flesh and bone, kind of like the sea goddess, whatsername, in Pirates of the Caribbean?
Pirates of the Caribbean? Didn't she go way too far with the pop-culture thing now?
Of course she did.
At that instant, the world she was in now – her own dream world – dissolved in cascades of colors, spinning in a spiral, dragging Patricia and the doppelganger with the colors into the deep abyss called 'eternity'.
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Song of the day: This Love – Maroon 5