Doc dump tiiiimmmmeeee...
If you want chap by chap in atimely fashion, follow story on AO3.
It was remarkably difficult to make Negan Smith stop talking; his profane, running commentary on the world around him and any of its unfortunate denizens who happened to be in his close vicinity was as much a part of his being as his sneering, overconfident grin
Edward Elric had managed to shut him up.
The Saviors leader had stared patiently at first as Ed had done his best to explain himself, with the alchemist looking back forth between Negan, the German to English dictionary he'd been given, and the notebook full of scrawled notes ed had apparently jotted down to help him with his long and, the Fullmetal Alchemist worried, utterly unbelievable story; he had his doubt that these bandits and their cruel leader would believe anything he had to say, but at the same time, he doubted his ability to lie connivingly to them even more.
Despite the language barrier, he could tell this Negan was far cleverer than he let on, judging just by the army of devoted followers he had at his beck and call; even Ash, the girl he had seen Negan burning with the hot blade of her own knife, was now placidly standing behind him, face bandaged, helping Negan and Ed translate where she could with no sign of resentment.
Ed knew he needed to get her alone and find out what was going on, seeing her as potential ally in this bandit stronghold, but first he needed to win a little trust from her leader, and he had only an inkling of how hard that might be until he started explaining just the little bit he had decided of who he was and where he had come from.
On the other Earth he had been to- and Ed had managed to figure out that this was Earth or at least some version of it -Hohenheim had told him there was no alchemy and to keep his mouth shut about Amestris, but on a world where the dead walked, rotting on their feet across the remains of a once powerful civilization, Ed was taking a gamble that his being from a different world might not be as unbelievable as it would normally seem.
And so he calmly spoke to Negan about Amestris, about alchemy, about the gate and how the gate had brought him here. He left out details, of course; no mention of how his attempted transmutation had caused him and Al to lose so much, details of his quest to get his and brothers bodies back simply became orders from the military to track down special information in the story he was telling Negan. The battle for the gate under Central became a trap set by Dante which sent him to this world by accident, rather then explaining that he had bene drawn there by child shaped shadow monsters with the voices of his dead friends.
He did his best to explain to Negan just who and what Dante was but as he struggled with the unfamiliar language, he realized part of the reason he was holding back was just how absurd his story really sounded; he wouldn't have believed much of it if he hadn't been living it.
Midway through trying to get the point across that Dante was a massively powerful, nigh immortal body snatching alchemist with an army of artificially created human styled monsters under her command, Ed had simply drifted to stop.
Negan hadn't been giving dubious looks through any of this, not even a smile; Ash had grown steadily more disbelieving with each word, but she had taken ques from Negan and remained silent, but Negan had just listened, dark eyes boring into Ed, not the least bit put out by the almost shimmering gaze of Ed's golden eyes, which in itself was disconcerting; the socially awkward alchemists one and only tool in the game of conversational dominance had bene his oddly colored eyes, which tended to throw many people off. But not, unfortunately, the savage before him.
"Dante?" Negan suddenly asked,
"Yes…her name was, is, Dante. She called herself this at the least."
"Last name Alighieri, right?"
Ed shrugged,
"I never caught her last name, she was too busy trying to kill me and my brother." Ed almost winced; he hadn't really mentioned Alfonse before then.
Negan's grin was back, long enough for ed to see and know it was there in an absolutely I've got that sort of way, but Negan didn't press. He waved at Ed to go on,
"At the end of the fight Envy…Dantes minion…"
"Minion, huh?" Negan interrupted.
"Yes…minion, thug, goon…"
"You look those words up specifically?" Negan asked, moving for the first time since Ed started talking, pulling that barfed wire wrapped club off the table and resting it in his lap as he leaned back in the chair, draping one arms across the back of it. Ed knew he had just done something to make ethe shrewd bandit relax, like he had suddenly gained an upper hand, but he had no idea what it was.
"Yes…may I finish the story?" Ed asked, a bit annoyed. Ash bristled at Ed's tone, but Negan waved her off, not taking his eyes off Ed as he waved ta the young alchemist to continue.
"Envy…held me…while Dante completed her ritual, but I was able to reverse part of the spell after Envy became distracted,"
"By what?"
"He…Envy thought he could reach our father by going through the gate that linked Amestris and Earth."
"Wait, 'our father'?" Negan asked.
Ed sighed. He had been trying to keep this simple and not m go into too many dramatic details.
"Envy is, was, my half-brother."
Ash laughed out loud behind Negan, and the bandit leader didn't reprimand her outburst this time, simply bringing the tip of his club to his head and muttering something under his breath that sounded like, "Baby, help me keep my shit together, here…", before waving at Ed to continue.
"Know I how crazy sounding is this, but…" Ed started,
"Finish the story, and then we'll talk, kid." Negan commanded.
Ed harumphed, but kept talking.
"I used Envy's distraction to…turn things around. And Al was able to use his alchemy and then, the gate reopened. I stepped in to sacrifice myself and allow him to get back into the fight with Dante. After this…I don't know what has happened there. The gate brings me here and now…" Ed gestured around him to encompass the room, Ash and Negan.
Negan waited a moment to see id Ed would continue, and when he didn't, the marauder took in deep breath, held it, and let out, slowly.
"Let's see if you can look at this whole shit show from my perspective, ok, kid?" Negan said, not bothering to wait for Ed's reply before continuing, "You sit here and run through a crazy motherfuckin' ass story like that with magic alchemies and fucking monsters and fucking creepy ageless step mom's that wanna fuck you(1*) and whatever shit you left out because you thought it was too unbelievable, and normally, I'd assume you saw some shit like dead-heads eating your parents in front of you that drove you inro fucking la-la land to escape the pain, but," the bandit leader held up a hand to forestall Ed's protests, "Crazy fucks are a dime-a-fucking-dozen I this lovely world of ours. But they don; have a bag of fucking magic tricks to back up their bull shit." Negan tapped the metal desk Ed had clearly trans-mutated the night before; as before Negan had left the alchemist in the room, the desk had been a collections of rusted folding chairs and the seat he was currently sitting in had been a half rotted out cable spool until this Edward guy had done whatever it was he did to them.
"So," Negan continued, "You have just laid an unholy fuckload of what-the-fuck on my plate and it is going to take me a long fucking time to digest this shit."
Ed remained uncharacteristically silent as Negan leaned forward and propped Lucille up between his legs, rhythmically bounding the top f the bat on the floor as he thought.
This kids story was un-fucking-believable. Obviously. But…well, everything that followed the word but was always fucking pointless.
He claimed to be form another world, obvious bullshit, but, Negan had seen the kid freak out at seeing a dead chomper, something that was pretty much impossible two years into the undead apocalypse. He barely spoke the language, he had no idea what half the shit he saw even did, and on and on…
The kid claimed he was a fucking wizard, well, alchemist, obvious bullshit, but Negan had seen him do his magic-circle changing matter act on multiple occasions and things were far to goddamn gone for all of that o be some sort of sleight of hand special effect bullshit.
And there was a laundry list of other shit with Ed's name on it racing through Negans head; he tried to downplay his story, but if it were true the kid was a straight up fantasy hero type, righting wrongs and fighting the big bad.
Bullshit.
But…
The kid had wared into a herd of stenches to save Ash, lost his shit and bene ready to take on a dozen armed adults after he walked in on Ash's punishment. Definitely the hero type.
And that was when Negan realized he believed the kids story. And also when he realized that the story didn't matter a damn to him and his people here and now, in this undead world. Every Savior, every survivor, in this world had a story, but at any moment it wouldn't matter and they would be dead.
What mattered in this world was staving off the moment where your story ended by another month, another day, another second.
And Ed, with his alchemical powers and even his obvious intelligence; for fucks sake, the kid was picking up another language in front of Negans eyes, Ed was a way to push that moment back for every person under Negans banner.
But how? How to convince him to help? Just ask? Take him hostage? Brainwashing? Throw him booze, pussy and power in a river till he was too drunk on them to realize that was how he was being controlled?
Negan realized that Ed was looking back at him, probably wondering the same thing;
What do I do now?
1*Authors note: yes, it's canon, I didn't write the plot of the anime.
What Negan did was the same thing he did the day before; he left Ed to his own devices, although this time he peeled off Ash to stick with him, telling the girl to just follow the alchemist, and find him if Ed did something stupid. Which he no doubt fucking would.
"A true-to-shit hero type." Negan thought as he stalked down the hallways by the room he'd stuck Edward in. What worse, if he was to be believed, a true-to-shit hero type who'd only just stepped out of a more or less civilized world into…well, whatever the fuck this was that Negan inhabited.
The Saviors leader sighed as he walked out unto the former factory floor, now a dissolute tent city with ragged flee market that as the focal point for what passed as an economy for his followers at the center of it, near the still working forge that the saviors used for heat in the winter as well as…other things.
At some point in time, he had thrown a party with a case of scavenged tequila, his wives and his lieutenants. A question had been brought up, after most of the booze had been drained,
"What would the person you were two years ago say to you?",
Talk about a fucking mood killer.
No one had said anything. Not even him. For five minutes, until Simon, bloodthirsty, brutal Simon, had stood up and left without a word. Followed by everyone else until Negan had been the one stuck sitting alone at his own party, cradling Lucille and staring at an empty bottle.
None of his people besides those biker assholes in the mechanic shop had been, as far as he knew (some questions are not asked, and at the Sanctuary, "who were you before?" was a big one) remotely like the people they now were. The Saviors were raiders, robbers and extortionists, who used their numbers, weaponry and organization to exploit other communities of survivors for their resources and supplies, brutalizing and killing anyone who resisted or was short on their protection pay offs.
Negan climbed the stairs to a concrete ledge that bordered the factory floor and looked down at his people. He could stand there and say, rightly, that even the youngest child he saw before him was reaping the rewards of his way of survival, almost none of the food that kept them fed, the materials that girded the walls, or the weapons that kept back the stenches or other bands of raiders had been grown, made or found by the Saviors. The goods had either been taken as tribute or were stripped from people that had defied him and the Saviors and suffered for it.
Two years ago, Negan had been an goddamn gym teacher and a shitty husband. Now, he was a post-apocalyptic warlord, more akin to the villains in the Mad Max movies he used to watch then the…okay-ish man he was before the dead walked.
But walked they most certainly fucking had, and who he was was far less important to Negan than who he would be tomorrow, and who he wanted to be tomorrow was living, loving and with a goddamn wizard- sorry, alchemist -on his side, doing all sort of cool shit for him.
Which led him back to the problem, as Ed was most certainly a b0y with more in common with the person anyone in this room had been before Wildfire broke out and brought the dead staggering back to life to pull down the world.
Negan was still unsure about Ed's story, about how he had rushed into to fray to save thousands of people from this Dante lady, and rushed headlong into the unknown to save his brother's life; the by had bene remarkably humble about it, but that's what it boiled down to.
But even if he wasn't, if he was just a normal kid from a normal world, how the fuck could Negan justify anything about the way he and the Saviors survived to someone who had never been starving, scared and alone with a tireless horde of Stenches growling down their neck?
Negan thought about the cells. He could lock the kid down and try Dwighty-boys half assed Patty Hearst treatment on him, but the sadistic half-faced fucks tricks seemed pretty stupid and mildly distasteful to Negan, and he'd be fucked if he tried them on a kid. Not to mention, as far as he knew Ed could just draw one if his circles, clap his hands, and set off a fucking nuclear blast for all he knew.
That left him with…nothing.
Negan leaned o the railing as the crowd below caught sight of him and began going to one knee in obeisance. The leather jacket cad tyrant grinned and waved at his followers to go on about their business.
He was going to do absolutely nothing, and in two days after Ed was full of righteous indignation about the way things worked around here, he'd talk to the kid and on that day, Edward Elric would join the Saviors.
Or…well, he'd let the kid go, pointed in a direction that wasn't remotely near any of the settlements the Saviors had under their thumb, but away he would fucking go.
As fucked up as he was, Negan wasn't going to kill a kid for not wanting to participate in the fall of civilization in a way that didn't suit him.
Ed had sat at the table for a few minutes after Negan had left, writing a few notes down in his notepad. The Fullmetal Alchmeist had taken a moment to consider this simple writing pad; it consisted of uniform sheets of blue lined paper sandwiched between glossy blue card-paper covers and was bound with a simple metal spiral.
But to an alchemist like Ed, used to analyzing the feel, weight and quality of the items in the world around them with scientific interest it told a story.
It was clearly mass manufactured, probably not very expensive to make an this cheap to sell, but the paper was of a higher quality than the most expensive stationary on Amestris.
It was also old. The paper was slightly yellowed, the covers creased.
Negan had given him this notebook.
Negan, the leader of a colony of bandits, a warlord in a fallen world. And if that type of man couldn't get his hands on a something as simple as brand-new blank note book, it told Ed that things outside the walls of the bandit's stronghold had deteriorated badly.
Which, of course, didn't tell him anything new.
He sighed as he set stood up, notebook in hand. He was sick of looking at the puke green tiled walls of this damn room, and if Negan wasn't going to guard him and try and force him to stay in it, he wasn't sticking around.
When he stepped out into the hallway and found Ash sitting by the door in a chair made out of lime-green canvass and metal rods, reading a small book with a colorful cover, at some pint she'd gotten her rifle back and it was leaning on the wall next to her.
She didn't look up.
"Hey," Ed spoke; Ash jumped a bit, but tried to cover it up as she looked up nonchalantly at Ed, regarding him casually form under the that backwards facing cap she was wearing once again, "Are you here to guard me?" he asked.
"Nope. Boss said I was just supposed to watch you and go get him if you did something stupid." Ash candidly replied.
"But…"
"Those are his exact orders. You can come and go as you please."
Ed blinked. As far imprisonments went, this was pretty casual. He took a step into the hallway and looked around. He picked a direction and started walking, hearing Ash sigh in annoyance behind him and struggle a bit to get out of that odd chair; when he turned around she was standing, rifle slung across her chest as she tucked her book into one of pockets of the odd, sack like hooded garment she wore under her ammunition vest.
"Good book? Sorry to interrupt."
"S'ok. I'll live." Ash caught up with Ed, "It's a Lone Wolf book, it's like a Dungeons and Dragons nerd thing where you build your character up and choose your own adventure by flipping to different pages. It's real geek shit, but…" Ash looked over at Ed's vacant expression "You have no idea what the fuck I'm saying, huh?"
Ed grinned sheepishly,
"It's sort of a common theme between us, huh?"
Ash shrugged,
"Guess so. Where are you trying to go?"
"I don't know. It would be nice to be around people for a while."
Ash pointed down the hallway,
"You say that now, but wait until you meet some of the people around here." The girl warned, cryptically, "Anyway, main floors that way, come on." She said as she took the lead.
Ed followed, asking,
"How's your face?" before wincing at his blunt language; "Very smooth, Ed", he chided himself.
"It's fine. Arat and the Doc worked hard to make sure it won't get infected."
Ed was silent, but he had to ask he burning question;
"Why?"
Ash shrugged again, but explained clearly enough;
"Negan ordered me to watch you and not fiddle with that corpse soldier boy in the library, there had to have been a reason for him to be chained like that, yeah?"
Ed thought back to dead body and the way it had seemed like whoever it was had been making sure that door wasn't opening before they had changed into a reanimated by…whatever process it was that the reanimated were crated. He added that to massive lost of questions he had burning in the back of his mind.
"But I wanted what he had on him. I was greedy, and because of that, a swarm of stenches got let loose and could have killed us all. When you defy orders like that in the Saviors, you get burned. I knew that, but I defied Negan anyway."
Ed was definitely a bit discomforted by the almost reverent way the girl spoke the big bandit's name. He thought back to the bandits (Saviors, it seemed they called themselves) in the school and how they had bowed when Negan had passed by. That cult like reverence out him in mind of the late, great and unlamented Father Cornello of Lior and his Cult of the Sun God…or whatever it had been called. But Ed guessed this was less like the pudgy con-man's bogus religious movement and more like the cult of personality that sprang up around the old kings of Amestris, or, more accurately, like those of the raider war-lords of the Azure Sea of Drachma he had read about once.
Ed smiled wryly to himself as he and Ash stepped out unto the main floor of the Sanctuary, and straight into squalling child, who was sobbing inconsolably just on the other side of the door they had come through.
It took Ed a moment to see what had happened; they little boy seemed to have broken a toy, if the shattered remains of the colorful little truck at the bottom of a nearby staircase were anything to go by.
The alchemist frowned, annoyed that no one else in the crowd of people was paying the distressed child any heed.
"Hey, little guy, it'll be ok…" Ed began, which interrupted the distressed wail just long enough for the child to notice ethe two, and immediately rush over and wrap his little arms around Ash's leg.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry, miss, he doesn't know any better," a woman's voice called out, as she rushed over; ed guessed the woman in the worn dress was the boy's mother, "Please don't…" she started to say, but Ed didn't really here the rest, as he was carefully drawing a quick reconstruction circle on the floor with the felt-tip pen Negan had given him. Satisfied, he gathered the pieces of the toy into the center of it, clapped his hands together, and slammed them down unto the circles as it flared into brilliant blue life, before fading away, leaving the toy truck in the middle of the circle, good as new.
Ed smiled as he picked up the toy, getting ready to hand it back to the child…and that was when he noticed the crowd that had gathered to watch the scene after the boy's mother had come running after her son had grabbed ahold of Ash.
The crowd that had now just witnessed alchemy for the first time.
That was when all hell broke loose.
As the little boy gaped at his now shiny new toy, his mother almost fell over herself in her confusion to both escape this sudden flare of unknown power and to save her son from the wielder of this strange and doubtless terrible new power.
Behind them both the crowd of onlookers starting yelling confusion and panic, with those who had witnessed Ed's alchemical feat arguing with those who were still unsure of what they had seen or had simply been to focused on the growing confrontation between Ash and the boy's mother to pay attention to the strange new comer scratching odd designs on the floor.
The little boy took the truck from Edward's hands, smiling brightly as he wiped away the tears and shouted a thank-you that was lost in the hubbub of the swelling crowd. Ed stood up and stepped back, standing next to Ash as the mother grabbed her son's hand and tried to shove her way through the crowd and away, but the wide-open factory floor seemed to have constricted into circle as the denizens of Sanctuary closed in, and by unhappy coincidence the only one of Negan's armed enforcers on the floor seemed to be Ash.
Before the dead had come, the people of the Sanctuary would have been, for the most part, normal citizens of the now fallen United States, leading ordinary lives, with more or less the same education afforded to most American citizens and with more or less the same grasp on scientific reasoning, principles of physics and the same understanding of the world that came with being a reasonable and logical citizen of the modern world.
But everyone here had also spent the last two years evading hordes of rotting, walking corpses, seen their friends and family being eaten alive or turned, the living regressing every day into something more and more savage, brutal and animalistic until they were little better then savages and now, every man, woman and child there was living day to day, hand to mouth, under the heel of a capricious tyrant and his gang of marauders and raiders.
The mother tried to shove past the crowd again, her hand going white around her son's as she gripped him hard enough to bring back his tears, and a bald and pot-bellied man in a ripped sweater grabbed at the woman, wrapping his hands around the smaller woman and threw her to the ground, yelling something about her staying right here.
Ed wasn't listening, having been around mor angry mobs then he really ever wanted to have been at sixteen years old, and as he saw the worst moment of a riot gathering in front of him, as the crowd moved headlong into ugly, unreasoned violence.
The alchemist was just taking a step forward to intercede when he was suddenly shoved back by Ash as she lunged forward and drove the collapsible stock of her rifle into vicious blow into the mans face, tearing open a wide, blood gash as the weapon wetly collided with the man's flesh and bone, and the fat man collapsed limply to the ground, stunned by the hit.
Ash quickly brought the rifle to her shoulder and cracked off three quick rounds, the shots tearing through the air and silencing the crowd as they neatly shattered three window panels above the factory floor.
"You fucks back up or you're all fucking dead!" Ash roared, voice cracking as she swept the crowd with the muzzle of her rifle. The fat man tried to roll over and get to his feet, but Ashe kicked him in the mouth, bloodying his battered face even further with her heavy boots, "Fucking now!" she emphasized, as the crowd scattered.
Ed was still staring in shock at the girl, trying to process her actions and sudden fury, when a swarm of armed bandits erupted from the door behind them.
"Who the fuck's firing in here?" one of them roared, a tall skinny man with iron-gray hair and a thick mustache, he quickly locked his coal black eyes on Ash as he strode forward to her, snatching the rifle form her grasp in the blink of an eye and staggering the girl, "The hell are you thinking, girly? Huh?"
"I was handling a goddamn situation, Simon." Ash snarled back, not backing down but she flinched as Simon loomed over her,
"What situation is that, huh, little one?" the older man demanded,
"Fucking Negan's new wizard set off the citizens. Pulled some…" ash trailed off as she realized what she was saying as Simon gave an exaggerated nod and smiled condescendingly,
"Wizard, huh? What in the name of fuck are you talking about, girl?"
"I…I…"
"Sorry to interrupt, I am," Edward cut in, shaking himself out of his shock at Ash's sudden outburst if violence and the other bandit's furious arrival, "My alchemy, scared them it did."
Simon looked at Ed like the alchemist like he was something he'd found on his boots, the other bandits taking their leaders cue and massing around him. Edward was suddenly very aware that to these men and women he just looked like a skinny teenage boy of completely average height wearing…dirty, gore-stained clothing.
He tried to muster a commanding presence, having faced down people far worse than this Simon and his bandit followers, but he was painfully aware that everyone around him was bigger and armed to the teeth. He looked around and spotted a table full of dirty glassware that seemed to be for sale, or trade, and was struck with a sudden flash of inspiration.
He smiled widely back at the lowering Simon, explaining slowly,
"I didn't mean to cause trouble, you see, but I forgot for a moment that not alchemy is had on this world, and did a quick repair job on a child's toy he broke."
Simon laughed, nastily,
"What the hell are you trying to say kid? First, it's the half-assed Yoda talk, now what? I get the feeling English isn't your first language, but you are making zero goddamn sense…"
Ed continued as if Simon hadn't interrupted him, slowly making his way to the table of glass ware,
"I performed my alchemy, and the people got…angry, agitated? Both? Like you said, this is a second language for me," in actuality it was a third, but no reason to go into details with that right now, "And Ash had to…calm them down." Ed sighed, realizing he was making excuses for the girl's brutality.
But while he might not approve of her behavior the girl was still the closest thing he had to a friend in this world, and he'd bene fiends with far worse than her back on Amestris.
He hoped. He still didn't know just what had happened to this world and these people; he knew they weren't the friendliest but no one here had done him any harm, yet, thanks in part to Ash and her violent crowd control; so, if nothing else he owed her.
"I understand little sense it makes…I mean, it doesn't make sense, but let me show you."
Out came the pen again; actually, it was more of a paint stick, maybe…the name on the side of it's light gray casing said "Sharpie", whatever that meant.
"Give me a moment." Ed said, not bothering to look at Simons's reaction as he carefully scotched out a pair of alchemical circles on the dirty table top and dragged a small water glass unto one of them,
"Kid, what the hell are-," Simon began, losing his paper-thin patience.
Ed clapped his hands and pressed them down unto the circle wit the glass at it's centers, and in a flash of blue light, it was reduced to a pile of sand.
"Good, looks like materials on this world are mad ethe same way they are on Amestris. I got lucky with that truck, I swear," Ed mused, as he carefully pushed the pile of sand over unto the other circle he'd drawn.
The band of Saviors behind him fell silent, with not even the vicious, brutal Simon saying a word as Ed continued,
"Alchemy has many principles, but two of them are deconstruction, which is what I just did," Ed clapped his hands and pressed them down unto the circle again, and in a flash of blue light, the glass appeared more less back in one piece in the center of the circle, "And reconstruction, or construction, as well, but in this case…"
Simon was the first to recover, turning to Ash,
"Is this a trick?" he asked, voice dangerously quiet,
"No, Simon, he's done it…four or five times? It's why Negan wanted him here, I mean, obviously, but Negan told me to just follow him and come get him if he did something…stupid."
Simon nodded, not speaking as Ash continued,
"And some kid had broken his toy just as we came out the door, so Edward just…did his thing, fixed it. The workers and the citizens got spooked, the fat one," Ash pointed to the man she'd beaten down, still moaning on the floor nearby, "Shoved the boy with the trucks," Ash pointed to the woman and her son, who were still cowering behind the band of Saviors, "Mother to the ground and it looked like he was going to do something even dumber, rile things up more, so I busted him in the mouth and popped off a few caps to get them disbursed, I was fucking alone out here, Simon." Ash finished, lowering up at the sadistic Savior leader.
Simon looked down at the man n the floor, who was just starting to recover, at least until Simon kicked his arms out form under hi as he tried to push himself up. The man had just become the outlet for fear Simon was desperately trying to had after Ed's demonstration.
Edward, for his part, made to call out and stop the bandit, but Ash grabbed his arm and held him back while shaking her head; the iron-willed alchemist hesitated; he was unsure of what to do but being reminded that it wasn't just his own hide on the line brought him up short.
In any case, Simon rained no more blows down on the man, but shoved his battered head over to face Ash and Ed before prying his swollen eyelids open so he could see as he snarled,
"See her? She's earned the right to be violent around here, whereas your fat-ass?" Simon made the man look at him, "You haven't." with one shoer, savage shive he bounced the man's head off the concreate floor before ordering his men, "Put him on the fence. A sturdy part of it too, don't want his weight dragging anything down."
The fat man's gargled protests faded as he was dragged off, and Simon turned back to Ash.
"You've earned the right be violent," he quoted himself, "God that sounds dumb. But in any case, you are actually pretty damn good at this. Good instincts…Ash, right?" Simon asked,
"Yeah, Simon."
"You're on Arat's crew?"
Ash nodded, unsure where this was going.
"You're on mine now. We're heading to Hilltop soon; they're getting a bit…sullen. I'm gonna have you deliver them a wake-up call." Simon smiled, broadly, "And you're gonna be delivering it for me."
Ash looked crestfallen, and Simon clapped her on the back as he passed her,
"Why so glum? It'll be fun." He promised before looking around at his gang and snarling "You assholes get back on the floor! I'm going to go find out who was supposed to be out here keeping an eye on things!"
Ash watched him leave and turned to Ed,
"Well, I guess I better go tell Negan you managed to do something stupid."
"Oh, Negan is already well-fucking-aware he did something fucking stupid."
Negan emerged from the dark corridor and unto the torch and fire lit factory floor, glaring at Edward,
"Looks like you and I are going to be having that chat a day or two early." He growled.
Edward smiled back,
"I'm sure we both have a whole lot of what-the-fucks to ask each other about at this point." The alchemist answered, before frowning, "Did I say that right? Learning to swear is always a hard part of new languages, yes?"
Negan's stoically grim expression faded and ghost of smile twitched back on his face as Ash pointed out;
"Well, you did come to right place to learn, at least."
The plan had been to just let Edward figure things out about just how far removed from the society he had left behind on his home word…reality, whatever-the-fuck he really was amongst the Saviors, but, as with most plans in this undead apocalypse overtaken world, it had gone to shit remarkably quickly.
Between seeing how Negan had punished Ash for disobeying his orders, his close encounter with the downtrodden mob of Sanctuary dwellers, Ash's unhesitatingly brutal crowd control, and being in the general vicinity of Simon for…any period of time, really, Negan guessed that Edward was starting to get a pretty clear picture of the way things worked around here, and he doubtlessly was going to disapprove.
And he hadn't even seen the truly nasty parts yet.
Which left Negan scrambling, he'd been counting on more time to figure out a way to get Ed to stay, or at least better justifications for the way he did things, but time had most definitely run out.
As Negan walked down the short hallway that led to his office and bedrooms, he quickly glanced behind him; Ed was still trailing behind him, grim faced.
Spotting the kids stoic expression, Negan's face cracked into a grin, naturally happy to see someone else sharing his misery and not doing half as good a job at putting a brave face on things. The kid had tried to play off a close encounter with a violent mob and Simons crew on the floor with that lame-assed joke about learning to swear, but Negan figured the kid was shaken up, not just by that, but by the whole situation he'd been dropped into.
The hardest part to crack about Ed, for Negan at least, was his still intact moral compass. Edward had just come from a relatively civilized world, where rolling up to someone's front door with an armed band and saying give me half your shit or I'll kill you was, most likely, seen in a dim light, rather than here, where it was already a mercy by just not opening fire and looting the recently departed of their valuables before the stenches closed in.
But Ed had to be going through the absolute shock that everyone else had when they realized the world had just ended and they were now on the endangered species list. That slight shake up may be enough for the charismatic marauder to bend Edward the Fucking Hero to the dark side, so to speak.
Spirits bolstered, Negan stopped at the door to his rooms and grinned at Ed,
"Fore-warned is fore-armed, Eddie, so just to let you know, my lifestyle is a bit…liberated."
"Liberated?" Edward asked. unsure he was translating the word right in his head,
"Yep. You could say it is downright fuckin' groovy, baby." Negan said, laughing at a joke Ed didn't get as he pushed open the door and went inside, with Ed suddenly growing nervous to follow him.
"Ladies! Agave for me and my new fuckin' friend here." Ed heard Negan call, and he hesitantly stepped inside.
Negan's…apartment, office…Ed looked at the quartet of women inside, each wearing a black and slightly to short cocktail dress and heels, and added harem to the list of words to describe Negan's personal quarters,
One of the women, a shorter brunette looked at Ed before turning to glare at Negan,
"That's just a fucking kid, Negan!"
"As much as it turns me on to hear you swear, darlin', I fail to see how that is fucking pertinent to what the fuck I just told you to do…"
"You are not giving tequila to a goddamn kid! First off, he's tiny…"
Ed felt his temper flare and before he could stop himself the words tumbled out of his mouth,
"Who are you calling short?!" he roared, but in Amestrian.
The room fell silent as everyone inside stared at Ed.
"Fucks sake, does he speak English? Is he crazy or something, did you bring hi up here to make fun of him, for Christs sake?"
"Well, to answer your…rapid fire barrage if questions, in goddamn order, yes he fucking speaks English, no he is not fucking crazy, and the fucking insinu-goddamn-ation that I, a grown ass man, would drag a kid up here in front of you fine ladies to make fun him is fucking insulting as fuck." Negan answered, hotly, but he didn't loom over the shorter woman or any of this other terror tactics.
Negan smiled, sweetly, but he continued,
"Now, fine, no tequila, but get then get the sippin' whiskey out form behind the bar and fetch two glasses. Now." Negan ordered, coldly, but continued, "Him and I both are gonna need a drink for the conversation we're about to have."
Negan sat down on a leather couch and waved Ed to take a seat on the couch across form him, with marble coffee table in between them on which a pair of glassed and glass bottle of brown liquid were placed by one of the women in the room.
Negan looked over at Ed,
"Don't suppose you could use that alchemy shit to make us some ice, could you?"
Ed was taken off guard by the innocuous question, and he was still trying to unravel just what sort of living situation was going on between Negan and all these women, but he nodded after a moment,
"Probably. Can you get me some water, in a metal bowl?"
Negan nodded and waved at one of his women, who went behind the bar I the rooms corner and set a bowl in the counter and filled it wit water from a bottle; the room had electric lights, unlike the factory floor below, but not, it seemed, running water.
Ed took the Sharpie pen form his pocket and looked over at Negan,
"I'm going to have to draw on your pretty table if you want me to ice make…make ice." Ed corrected himself.
Negan waved his ok and Ed quickly drew the correct alchemical circle on the white marble; he might not have been The Freezing Alchemist, but he could pull this off.
After the bowl was placed in the center of the circle, Ed clapped his hands together and placed them on the table after a brief moment to gather his thoughts, and in a flash the water was converted into a solid mass of ice.
Negan laughed appreciatively, but the women doubled back I fear; one even ran into another room and slammed the door behind her, with Ed looking guiltily after her.
"Don't worry, they're just a bit sheltered is all." Negan excused, as he drew an enormous knife from a sheath strapped to his thigh. Ed sat back in his seat, unsure what the bandit was paying at, but Negan quickly used the pommel on the end of the handle to smash the solid mass of ice apart before dumbing a few chunks in the two glasses on the table.
"Why don't you girls go check on Amber, before you come back and fill your glasses with some of this ice?" Negan asked, and the women dated after Amber, clearly eager to get away from the Edward and his strange powers.
Negan poured his glass and Ed's full from the bottle on the table, before bringing his glass to his lips and taking a short, but deep, pull on the liquor inside.
"So, those are my wives." Negan explained,
"Wives? As plural?" Ed questioned,
"Yes. As plural."
Ed took in a deep breath. He could tell this was going to be a long talk, and he swept his glass of the table and took a drink from its contents, coughing sharply as the bring liquor went down his throat. He let out one last cough, and took another sip, with no cough this time.
"Attaboy." Negan said, smiling approvingly, "You drink much?"
Ed shook his head no, "Seems like a good time to start.",
Negan let out a single chuckle before leaning back into the couch and looking at Edward,
"Negan Smith." He stated, flatly.
Edward took a second to catch the older mans intent, but after a moment, he said;
"Edward Elric." Ed was a bit confused; he and the bandit leader had already introduced themselves, was this some sort of cultural thing, or…
"So, the reason no one around here ever uses a last name to introduce themselves, to talk to each other, for basically any goddamn reason at all, is that we've all of us spent the last two years figuring out that most people die to fast for you to bother to learn their last name. Last names imply you're from somewhere, that you have people there…but now? There's only one place we're all going." Negan took another drink, "And all that fucking matters is keeping out of it for another goddamn day."
Ed watched the marauder leader, but kept quiet,
"That'd the one thing you need to understand before I tell you about how things work here."
Ed nodded and then Negan told him the unvarnished truth about the world they now shared
Actually, first things first, Negan thought, taking a second look at the teenaged alchemist seated on the couch across from him, staring intently at him with those disconcerting golden eyes. The Saviors leader drained off his glass and poured another one.
Elric made him nervous, and he was not a fucking pussy to try and lie to himself about it. Ed- Negan's hidden dread of the young man could be seen in that the bullying bandit hadn't taken to calling him Eddie to get a rise out of him -was not only whatever the hell magical (he still couldn't believe he was casually using that word unironically), sorry, alchemical person he was, he was also actually a pretty resourceful survivor and, if his story was to be believed a veteran fighter, not in the type of savage, winner-take-all-cuz-second-place-is-death brawling that had become the norm after the world fell to the dead, but still…Edward was the type of person Negan loved to have on side, and well, if people are a resource, Ed was gold even without his alchemy, but with it…invaluable.
Negan poured himself another whiskey.
The problem, however…
The Saviors way of surviving was absolutely effective, Negan knew, as he had several hundred people under him, spread across multiple outposts and strongholds, he had vehicles and heavy weapons, armed followers, explosives, stockpiles of food, fuck he had eggs in a world where most livestock either went feral or were eaten by walking corpses. But…well, extortion, robbery and the occasional beating or murder were not ways he would think of earning a living before a couple years ago.
Which is pretty much where this kid he so desperately wanted to recruit would be coming from; ok, he'd been through the shit with this Dante woman and her crew of homunculi, whatever the fuck those were, and if that slightly haunted look Edward got on occasion was anything to judge by, probably a lot more he hadn't spoken of on top of it.
But that still didn't compare this living nightmare that had consumed the earth in a hungry tide of undead monsters and societal collapse.
What scared Negan is that he wanted this kid with the Saviors, but there was no way he was going to stick around. Not after what he had seen and what Negan still had to tell him. Negan could explain away every single thing about his band of survivors, but only to someone else who had been here from the start of end of the world.
The problem with being a post-apocalyptic warlord, was there was no possible way to explain yourself to a normal person.
Wait…
Negan grinned again as he leaned back on the couch. He was nothing if not smugly self-confident, and he maybe had a way for this work. Fuck yeah.
"So you may be wondering, being from another fucking planet and all, why there's dead people trying to eat on occasion,"
"Wait, eat me? Is that what those things do?" Ed asked, eyes going wide,
Babe in the fuckin' woods, Negan thought.
"Yeah. It's a lovely fucking sight, I assure you."
Ed looked confused as he shook his head,
"That doesn't make any sense, why do they do that? They're clearly dead, they can't even digest…"
"Kid, if I accepted the fact that you're a goddamn wizard, you can bear with me on the dead fucks eating people fact, ok?"
Ed clearly wanted to argue more,
"I could take you down to dead we have chained to the fence and feed them some asshole out of the cells while you watch, but then you'd owe me for the newly dead fucks labor." Negan offered, before flinching, well, this off to a great start.
Edward was taken aback by the sudden, savage offer of the bandit leader. That hadn't been a joke. Ed leaned back on the couch, unconsciously putting more space between himself and Negan.
Simons command to take this fucker to the fence made more sense now, too.
He could make a break for it, get the hell away from these bandits; from the way Negan acted, he was trying to get Ed to join his band and Ed guessed the bandit leader wouldn't be too happy with his exit, but he'd gotten out of worse situations.
He ignored the voice in the back of his mind that asked when?
But instead of planning his escape, Ed had a different thought.
Why are these people like this?
Maybe it was the lingering guilt over killing Greed, someone who would have still been alive if Ed had asked more questions and been just a little more empathetic, but he had to know before he tried to leave.
So, he asked.
"Negan," he began, leaning forward, "Why do you act like this?"
The bandit leader shrugged,
"Keeping things together around here is a bitch. The Sanctuary is remote and fortified, but by the time I got in charge of things there were too many mouths and no way to grow food. We had numbers and weapons, though, so we swept out and found other groups…" Negan began, "And offered them a deal. Protection from the stenches and any marauders for food and supplies. First few times, that's what we did, too." The tyrant shrugged, "But eventually, well, we got the stenches corralled or killed off, and the local asshole population either died, hid or joined up after a few examples had been made out of the fucks leading them." Negan idly stroked the barbed wire wrapped club on the table, and Ed had no doubt what those examples entailed, "So, eventually, well, we had more mouths and no one felt like they needed protection. After a few examples of our own, they realized they still did."
Ed frowned and shook his head, bringing the bandit leader to a halt.
Ed had been subject to more self-indulgent speeches from the absolute worst people he could think of, including from some who were not exactly even people, then he cared to remember, but that wasn't what Negan was doing. The bandit had even stopped swearing as theatrically as he normally did, leaving Ed to wonder just how much of the man before him was affectation and how much was true. But it still wasn't really what Ed had asked, and the sudden end to the non-stop barrage of profanity and braggadocio made his real question even more pertinent.
"No, why are you like this." Ed asked again.
Negan froze, eyes wide.
No-one, absolutely no-one, in the Sanctuary would ask that question. No one would have the guts. But this kid wanted to know.
Negan added having big, brass balls to the list of reasons he wanted Ed to join up.
But that was one question he really, really, didn't want to answer. Negan set his whiskey back on the table and picked up Lucille. Ed looked worried as Negan sat the bat across his lap and looked over at him.
"I didn't mean anything…"
"You want that story, I'll tell you, but then you're gonna fucking owe me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if I tell you mine, you are gonna tell me yours, tit-for-fucking-tat, I tell you my fucked-up story, you tell me yours."
Ed hesitated,
"C'mon kid. No bullshit from me or you, ok? Let's lay our tragedies bare, here. We've both been through it to get where we are, lets see why."
"You won't believe all of it…"
"Neither will you."
Ed picked up his forgotten drink and gulped it's contents, with Negan refilling it without a word.
"Ok."
And so, the alchemist and the warlord laid their lives bare to each other. There were similarities, even across the gulf between the two; both of their nightmares began with the sickness of woman close to them; Negans wife, dying of cancer even as the dead walked and the world fell, Eds mother, terminally ill with the medicine and alchemy of Amestris unable to help, both wasting away in front of the eyes of those who love the most, who would have done anything to protect them, both unable, in the end, to do anything.
The boy Edward Elric had been and the man Negan Smith had been both died the day they realized that.
Ed had focused on his quest to fix everything, to use alchemy to bring his mother back, ignoring the warnings about human transmutation and the pain in his brothers' eyes, while Negan had felt every single emotion in his body die, until he found he could do anything, to anyone, until he had warped himself into a grinning, murderous fiend who could neat someone to death while cracking bad jokes and laughing.
But if there were similarities, there were also vast differences. Ed's journey had hardened him into someone willing to lay his life on the line for strangers, to save them from the pain he had gone through, to protect them, while Negans had turned him into a tyrant ruling through fear and indulging his worst impulses, high on the power he had built, but still, he was doing his best by his followers in his own way.
Ed told Negan about what his mistake had cost him, about the gat taking his arm and leg, Al's body, about how he fought through the pain and shock to use his own blood to scrawl that sigil into the armor that contained Alfonse's soul for all those years, about finding out the truth about his father, Hohenheim, and what he really was, about so much more…
Negan told Ed about being scared, tortured, giving away the people who had helped him to a gang of outlaw bikers just to get back to his wife, only to find her dead by her own hand, leaving nothing but desperate note pleading to be put out of her afterlife as one of the risen dead before Negan left.
He told the kid about the bikers, about the way they died…
"Your first?" Edward asked, bringing Negan up short.
"Yeah. You?"
"A man named Greed. One of Dante's homunculi."
"He deserve it?"
Ed shook his head, no.
They shared a short, haunted look. Neither one of them as hardened as they would want to believe.
They both picked up their drinks and drained them off at almost the same time.
"We seem have both been through it, huh?" Ed joked. Neither laughed.
"Yeah."
Silence, and then,
"This place is fucked, kid, but so's this whole world. I know that. You deserve…well. Better than this." Negan waved at the room, but he clearly meant the world as a whole, "But Jesus fuck, we could use you."
Ed leaned back and looked at the man across from him, seeing him, and this world for what felt like the first time. He knew each and every person here would have a story just as tragic as Negan's, and Ed knew, his own.
And misery loved nothing so much as company.