Chapter III: Connected

"So I let go, watching you turn your back like you always do.
Face away and pretend that I'm not,
But I'll be here 'cause you're all that I got."

("Faint" – Linkin Park)

I never got to say good-bye to my younger brother, though we both had decided that death was far better than the lives—excuse me, life—we were living. Blown into two separate pieces by Edward Elric, we had come to realize that truth. When he took his own life, I felt a little bit of myself die with him. My brother was the most important thing I had in my life… though I'd never be able to admit it to his face. I hope he has his own body in the after-life, though. I liked it much better when we were two separate beings.

I guess since we were serial killers doomed to a fate of execution, the plausibility of being granted another chance at life sounded just too good to be true. Yet… we both jumped at the chance anyway. Two separate beings then were fused into one: Number 48, assigned with the sole duty of guarding the Fifth Laboratory.

It's a shame that my brother and I never valued life until it was too late. In fact, we got our kicks with picking out random saps on the street, stalking them, and murdering them in cold blood. After the deed was done, we'd go down to the nearest pub and drink until the bar-keep threw us out on our backsides. Yes, those were the days. We didn't have a care in the world until one day my brother, in a drunken rage, starting screaming at anyone who would listen that he would kill them all—oh yes, he had killed before, alright—and cut them all into unidentifiable pieces. Of course, neither of us noticed the military officers sitting in the corner either until it was too late. I remember them both clearly—one was a young-looking man with square-rimmed glasses and facial hair, and the other was a wickedly tall, muscular man of unintelligible age. The younger one eventually got up from the table, flanked by the muscular guy, and told me that he was going to send out a unit to investigate my brother's little "claims." Then he flashed me a coy little smile… and left.

So, naturally, we were caught red-handed. A group of about four soldiers raided our house later that night and we were immediately locked up in prison.

A couple of days before our executions were scheduled, a group of scientists—or were they alchemists?—came to my brother and I and asked us if we, in an attempt to evade our executions, would like to be the center of an experiment that would probably allow us both to live. Foolishly and unthinkingly, we agreed. Later that night, we became one being. Fused into a suit of armor, my younger brother took charge of the body and I took charge of the head. It was only natural—I had always been the smarter one anyway. And so we were commanded to patrol the Fifth Laboratory; the very place where we had been experimented on, until the day they didn't need us anymore.

That's where Edward Elric steps into the picture. When he took it upon himself to crawl through the vents of the Fifth Laboratory, we were there to meet him when he came out. The battle we had was fairly pathetic—it ended with him slicing our head off, which basically means my brother and I came apart for the first time in months. So, not seeing a point in living anymore, we tried to convince him to kill us.

Best deep and hypothetic conversation I've had in years, let me tell you.

To keep a long story short, Edward refused to kill us and my brother decided that enough was enough. Before I even had a chance to get a word in otherwise, my brother cried out that he was going to go ahead into the unknown and meet me later in the after-life.

And with that he took his own life, smashing the blood seal that connected his soul to the body of the armor. Furious, I went into a rage, although there's not much you can do when you're just a head.

Lacking a purpose in life, I agreed to take Edward to what he had been searching for all along… the Philosopher's Stone. It's the least I could've done in punishment for all the poor souls my brother and I had killed throughout our lives.

Oddly enough, I'm strangely calm now. I have an inexplicable feeling that I'll be able to see my brother again soon.