Enigma
By TeriyakiPrinces
Rating: Mature.
Warnings for the chapter: Reference to genocide.
Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.
A/N: This is the first of a few oneshot AUs I have planned for Enigma, and yeah jeez summer caught me and somehow did away with any motivation to write at all. I'm trying to get back in the groove of writing, and I'm hoping to write a few chapters ahead of time so I can have a bit more of a steady schedule.
I hope this, even if it does not further the main plot, entertains you guys.
Enjoy!
She is spit out into the scorching embrace of the sands of a desert. All around her is blinding white and gold, the blue sky vibrant but all-encompassing in a way that gives no relief to the 16 year old.
In the heat of the day, she believes she shall die of not only dehydration and heat stroke but of the tightness in her chest as she tries to breathe.
Whatever the hell is wrong with her, she's not sure it'll matter in the long run if she doesn't survive the day.
In the cold of the night, she feels relief only for an hour or two before the bone-chilling cold seeps into every pore of her body and her breaths once again become labored, and her only hope that she won't die until daybreak is her leather trench coat, which (for the record) she had been really tempted to chuck somewhere along the way if it hadn't been the best cover from the sun she could ever hope for in such a bizarre situation.
When a new day breaks, she is overjoyed when she glimpses a dark spot on the horizon. As it moves slowly, slowly closer across the heated sand, she is less sure of her would-be saviors.
She sees the long line of chained figures being dragged behind what she is sure now is a caravan, but she knows it is too late to run, now.
When she is captured, they take her to the sand city where they call her a savage- she does not understand the words they use yet, but she will in time.
Why is she a savage if they're the ones who enslave human beings, even their own golden kin?
She witnesses alchemy for the first time when she is 17, when bringing her master sulfur and salt.
It is messy and bloody and crude, but she knows the moment the blue-white lightning crosses her sight that it can be beautiful and used by people that are good and not cruel like this man who has imprisoned her not only by chains but by a number.
That night she weeps because she is slated to die.
It is 2 months later when she meets Slave #23 for the first time, and she fears for her continued survival because Slave #23 is at least 30 years old.
She still has time, she tells herself.
She's always been good at lying to herself.
She is 19 years old when 23 takes her to meet the Dwarf in the Flask. She balks when he tells her the Dwarf is interested in her.
The Dwarf asks her her name and for the first time in over 3 years she utters the name given to her by her long-lost parents.
"Gaia."
She cries because she knows what she needs to do, now that she has the opportunity.
She stops crying herself to sleep at night when the Dwarf begins to teach her alchemy.
She knows she's sold her soul to the devil, oh yes, she does.
But she doesn't want to die.
And for a long time that is her only motivation to keep going.
So Gaia, Slave #36, 28 years of age, says nothing as she helps with the destruction of a civilization and the murder of thousands.
She can't die, now. And the old tightness in her stomach surfaces because what has she done, oh lord, what will she do now?
Van Hohenheim, Slave #23, answers that question for her. They will travel the world, he tells her, and try to help as many people as possible, to try and repay those that they unintentionally sacrificed.
But it wasn't unintentional on her part, was it? Was it?!
Hohenheim stays by her side wherever they travel, and takes care of her as any big brother would. She still remembers her blood-brother from before, but after nearly 50 years apart everyone's face blurs and fades, until only shadows remain.
The people she doesn't forget, doesn't let herself forget, are the third of the Xerxesian populace she holds within her immortal body.
There is Abraxes the silk merchant, Grexana the seamstress, Marx the orphan boy, and thousands upon thousands more. She knows them all in the most intimate ways, as does Hohenheim his own.
Within a hundred years they help Wing the Shaman develop a new, beautiful type of alchemy called alkahestry. It merges the medicinal properties of Xingese herbs and alchemy as they know it.
And so they are known as the Philosophers of the West.
From Xing they travel west, back through the desert and onto greener pastures. They stay but a night in the now-ruins of their former prison before moving on to the fledgling nations of Creta and Aerugo.
They stay away from Amestris and the familiar feeling of Father, as only she of the two of them knows he calls himself, up until they have tired of traveling the world and want to settle down once and for all.
400 and more years have passed since the tragedy that was Xerxes fell and now it flits through the minds of humans as a legend, a story, a warning against the unknown.
They settle in the East, where the temperate climate does not grate so on Gaia, still remembering the phantom pains of when she was normal, before she became a knowing participant in a genocide, from the far-away time she didn't hear the thousands of voices that reside in her mind, and the two Philosophers stones can study in peace.
Then one day, so heartrendingly expected and yet too soon, Van Hohenheim falls in love.
Trisha Elric is beautiful and kind and perfect for her brother, she thinks. Yet, Gaia cannot help but resent her in a deep dark part of her heart for the pain her sickness and subsequent death will wreck upon this family-that-will-be.
But that is what tells the green-eyed woman to embrace this family she has somehow found. It doesn't take long before she falls to the charms of her mild-mannered sister-in-law and the two beautiful golden nephews she is given to dote upon.
And as Gaia Hohenheim looks down into her nephews' brilliant eyes, she knows she can do right by them as she could not do with her own blood family.
She shall not abandon them.
.Fin.
Reviews are appreciated! Tell me what you wanna see in future chapters, and my PM box is always open for suggestions and such! I'll take anything at this point. You want more Roy? More drunk Gaia?
idk people give me something I'm squandering in anti-motivation juice.