Chapter 11- A Forger's heart: Time's up

Raeluvs

Edward emerged from the dark cave, taking in a fresh breath of crisp air, sunlight streaming onto his face. The warmth of the sun felt good, sending a tremor of relief through his skin. His eyes slid closed for a moment, face upturned, lips curling slightly with a thin smile.

'Guess it takes chancing death to appreciate living.' Edward contemplated minimally. He cracked his knuckles, straightening his gloves. He had the list memorized; he knew what he needed, and he knew how to get them.

"This is gonna be a piece of cake." He told himself aloud, his tone far from reassuring. He clapped his hands together, feeling the power reverberating through his hands, the thrill of excitement coursing rapidly through his veins with the ferocity of a river over rapids. He could do this; he would do this.

"First… water; that'll be the easiest of all the materials to gather." Edward said softly, closing his eyes. He pressed his hands to the ground and felt the earth rattle beneath him. Stones cracked and split beneath his feet, but he did not fall. Droplets sprang from the ground, and moisture dropped from the air like a typhoon; Edward ducked his head and clenched his eyes closed, feeling the drops fly past, finally coming to rest in a large vat, rippling with tremors. Edward grinned, and the lake shimmered in reply; that hadn't been too hard.

"Carbon." Edward thought for a moment; where could he get that much carbon? Even if he supplied his own blood, containing the material, there was no way he could amplify it enough…

Trees.

A conceited grin dripped over Edward's face, his eyes narrowing presumptuously. With a light clap of his hands, he directed his focus toward the trees atop the valley wall and beamed as they burst into flame, burning down to the ground. The area surrounding the valley was wreathed with flames, the trees slowly dying down to dust.

Edward shoved all the charcoal that remained down into the valley near the water.

'Charcoal's basic composition is solid carbon.' He thought with a smirk. 'Alchemy 101 has finally come in handy.'

One by one, Edward pulled the materials he needed from the earth around him, salt from the soil, silicon from the thin layers of sand that encrusted the surface, and slowly but surely, worked all of the materials into one area.

The sun had sunken beneath the horizon; pale orange and dark violet stretched across the sky like watercolors on a blank pallet, waiting for the darker shades of night, and with the flick of a brush, the gleaming pinpricks of the stars. Edward stared, exhausted, at the mass amounts of materials he had collected. His breath was ragged and shallow, air coming in deep gulps. Despite the fatigue, a smile was plastered to his face. In one more moment, it would be done, and everything would finally be okay.

Gloved hands came together with a snap, separating gleaming eyes focused on one target.

"Here goes." He breathed, and slammed his hands to the ground.

Wind picked up around him, swirling the supplies he had so painstakingly collected and throwing them into the pit of water that he had created first; the surface trembled violently, ripples branching out, droplets expelling from over the sides. A deep sea green glow blazed and spun into a rising turret, twisting and curdling like a tornado. Edward stood, transfixed, watching his creation rise before him like the dawn of the apocalypse, watching water being set afire, smoke melding with ice. For a moment, everything was mute; shrill winds ceased to roar and clattering rocks fell silent. White, pure, chaste white, filled the golden eyes to the brim and spilled over, weaving a web of perfection.

The world reappeared, night fallen completely, the moon risen, full and round in the clear night sky. Edward rose to his feet, his hands trembling as he unlocked them from the ground. Walking to the edge of the crevasse where the light had been only moments before, he peered inside, not knowing what to expect. One thought pounded in his head:

'Did I fail!'

Before golden eyes faded to black as sleep overtook him, he felt his lips form a delicate smile on his way into dreams. As his eyes slid closed, he drank in the site of a glimmering, white stone.

Three days later

"Al?" Sciezka's voice had turned shrill with worry. "Al! Al, talk to me. Al!" She pounded furiously on the boy's chest, trying to get more air through to him. The resuscitation wasn't working; his face was pallid, lips dark.

"Colonel!" she shrieked down the hallway. How long could it take for him to find a doctor? "Colonel, First Lieutenant, someone with a medicine degree! Help!" She heard no footsteps thud down the hallway, not even the faintest jiggle of the door knob; she didn't trust leaving Alphonse alone with the risk of something happening.

"What am I doing here…? I can't help Al at all at this rate." she muttered to herself. "There's nothing I can do, I'm just a librarian…" Alphonse coughed softly, eyes hazily roaming the room and coming to rest upon Sciezka's taut face.

"Don't… degrade yourself…" Alphonse whispered, choking on his words. "Y… you've got a… special gift…" Sciezka looked over at him, an almost rampant expression on her face.

"Al, save your air, please." She said softly, thankful that he was still with her. The words he breathed were familiar, though. She remembered that he had told her that once before, the first time they had met. But if Alphonse supposedly had no memory, how could he repeat exactly what he had said nearly a year before?

'Could he have gotten it back!' she thought with a shock. 'Oh, Al, please remember!'

"Alphonse, I'm going to ask you a couple questions, okay?" She said, voice gentle, but urgent. "I need you to focus on them and give me an answer if you can, all right?" Alphonse managed a feeble nod, his breathing shallow, but becoming regular. Sciezka made note of this, and tried to think of a few satisfactory inquisitions.

"When Edward tried out to be a state alchemist, you and he stayed with a renowned state alchemist, called the Sewing Life alchemist." She began uncertainly. "He had a four--"

"Ni… na…" Alphonse interrupted, face clouded with memory. His glassy eyes brimmed with the thinnest of tears. One escaped down an ashen cheek, resting halfway down his face and drying upon paper skin. Sciezka's heart quickened. Nina Tucker was the Sewing Life alchemist's daughter; Alphonse had gotten it right.

"Just a few more, Al. Focus, okay?" She locked her gaze to his own, watching his eyes flail waveringly. He managed another nod.

"What guard did you encounter at Laboratory five?" she felt her throat tighten at the mention of the lab. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a moment. Alphonse coughed violently, strain wracking the frail child.

"Barry… the chopper…" he breathed, staring blankly. "Number 66."

"That's right!" Sciezka managed a watery smile. "You're doing wonderfully, Alphonse. Now there's only one more question and then everything's going to be okay, all right?" She didn't know why she added that onto the end; it was more for her own reassurance than Alphonse's.

"Ready?" Another nod. Sciezka adjusted her glasses and thought hard for a question only Alphonse could know. "What's the thing that your brother, Edward, is most afraid of?" Alphonse's face twitched slightly with a small smile. She could see thoughts skimming across his eyes as though reading words off of a typewriter, black and white, clear as crystal. Lips poised to answer, Alphonse's eyes suddenly widened, his pupils dilating rapidly. His breaths came shallow and sharp at an uneven, irregular pace. Coughs wracked his fragile body, blood sliding from the corners of his lips.

Sciezka leapt to her feet and ran to the door, thrusting her head out and screaming, "I NEED HELP IN HERE, NOW!" She heard the faraway clacking of heels on tiles and knew that assistance was on the way. She fled from the door and kneeled down beside Alphonse, taking his hand into her own and holding on tightly as ever.

"Al, stay with us!" she whispered, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Alphonse couldn't die; Edward was risking his own life to save his brother's. It couldn't all be in vain, not now. "Don't die, Al… please, don't die!" Alphonse's face was tranquil at last, as he fell back against the bed's wooden frame. His lips moved, sound barely escaping them, then fixing into a soft smile. His eyes grew distant, his hand falling limp in hers.

The door slammed open; Roy raced in. He stopped in his tracks at the sight that met him, ebony eyes constricting painfully with shock. Alphonse's eyes stared at nothing, blank and hollow; his chest didn't move and his face was placid. Sciezka's head was resting against the bed, the child's hand clenched in her own, shoulders heaving, her whole body quaking with sobs. He walked stiffly to her side and knelt down before the bed.

"He remembered…" she sobbed, tears falling softly off of her face, quiet, but with the power of rain. "He remembered everything…"

"What…?" Roy managed, staring at Alphonse's unmoving frame. Sciezka shook her head, bringing her other hand to her face, curled into a trembling fist.

"Ed's greatest fear… Al t-told me…" she whispered, turning a tearstained face to her superior. Roy was slightly confused, but did not implore as to what she meant. Her face was tight with pain, streaked with ever falling tears, quivering emerald eyes red rimmed and brokenhearted. Roy put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder; she tremblingly pressed on.

"Ed's g-greatest fear…" Swallowing hard, she tried to evade the crestfallen look that was growing in Roy's face. His eyes were enigmatic; Sciezka couldn't bring herself to look away, despite her want to. Those eyes… those black, slits of eyes, were like smoked glass; dark and clouded on the outside, as though shaded over with the finest of charcoal, locking away the emotions so they couldn't be seen from outside, concealing a whole other world that no one would ever see. Shielded by an invisible door, try as she might, she knew she would never penetrate that barrier.

"…was failure."

As though snapping out of a trance, the two heard the fierce pounding of the door thudding against the wall from behind them.

The scene moved as though in slow motion, pixel by pixel of the picture turning toward the door, eyes widening, faces registering surprise, pain, and fear. Edward Elric had burst into the room, his face bright and triumphant, a small, white stone, gleaming in his hand. Sciezka felt her heart leap into her throat; Roy rose to his feet slowly, as though carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Three days, no sleep, and I got here!" Edward said, boastingly. Sciezka's eyes overflowed against her will; she couldn't maintain his gaze.

"Excuse me." she managed, and stood, waveringly walking past him out the door, leaving superior and subordinate in a room shrouded by bereavement. Edward felt his glee slipping fast; his eyes darted to Roy, who had stood up, blocking the view of Alphonse.

"Colonel…?" he said softly, staring up at him. This scene wasn't right. Roy's eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He closed his eyes and stepped aside.

The stone fell to the ground.

A/N- curses at computer sorry, people, this took forever for three reasons.

1. I had to really look to find out where I could get all these freaking materials. RPing as Sciezka has really made me a technical bookworm; it's all gotta be mathematically correct, or I flip out.

2. My computer kept switching from English to Spanish type, and me being dense, I could never figure out why it kept saying 'said' was spelled wrong. Then when I did it took forever to re-vamp, etc. I'm an idiot, don't rub it in.

3. I'm frankly rather lazy. I'm back in school, way busy, have much on my mind. And now I'm out of ideas, which makes me feel really smart. But no worries, I promise I'll think of something.

That's about all from my end. Thank you to my dear reviewers, and supporters, I appreciate it more than I can say. Oh yes, anyone read chapter 50 of the FMA Manga? Just random thought, as I'm dying to read ch 51.

Signing off,

Raeluvs

p.s. Al fangirls... please don't kill me... I'm sorry... XDD