Summary:
Within her study, the state alchemist Mianna held a horrible secret: the monstrous, mangled body of her husband Albtraum, recently deceased in a mining accident, and just barely returned to the world of the living through her dark arts. With a little extra help, she was able to finish the deed, and return him whole—and quickly abandoned all she's ever known for the chance to continue life with her beloved.
Now a nearly-complete homunculus, Albtraum has forgotten all; even so, not all have forgotten him. In the small, isolated town of Wickerworth, Albtraum and Mianna encounter Suzette, an estranged childhood friend who is more than eager to let the couple stay with her until they are settled. But Suzette's husband, Hikaru, has his own sordid past as a state alchemist, and quickly grows hellbent on not letting his wife's new friends destroy the peace he's found.
Every day that passes, Hikaru's paranoia only grows more dangerous and unpredictable, forcing Suzette to struggle to keep the peace. All the meanwhile, Albtraum's tenuous tie on life begins to deteriorate, and Mianna must make a choice: how far will she go to ensure her husband lives?
A/N:
Hello and welcome to Aqua Regia! We are M. A. Vice (Impavidus), author of The Impavidus Cycle, and J. M. Rose (Hkrsztt), author of The Beloved Chronicles.
Aqua Regia began as a fun AU we developed while watching the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime together earlier this year, using characters from our respective novel series. However, it quickly became a much more serious project, and we ended up with... whatever this is!
Some things to note going in: This is an OC-focused fanfic - appearances and references to canon characters will be very limited. Additionally, Meg and James have very different writing styles - Meg writing in third person past limited POV, and James writing in first person present POV. We will label each section with its author so you know what to expect going in. Chapter lengths will also vary quite a bit. Lastly, Aqua Regia leans into the darker aspects of FMA '03 - this work will cover many dark topics including but not limited to death, mental illness, heavy suicidal ideation, paranoia, delusions, as well as canon-typical violence. Please take care when reading.
If none of this has scared you away yet, please enjoy Aqua Regia! This has been a labor of love we've had so much fun creating it - we hope you have fun reading too. If you like the characters and would like to see more of them, you can see Suzette and Hikaru in The Beloved Chronicles and Albtraum and Mianna in The Impavidus Cycle.
Chapter 1: Rebirth
IMPAVIDUS
POV: Mianna
"That should hold until the parts arrive for the rest of the new limb."
Mianna flexed her knee, staring down at the prosthetic that had taken the empty space where her leg once was. It was strange to see the limb whole once more, though not with flesh of her own - still, her body once again settled comfortably into a standing stance as she raised herself from the wheelchair for the first time in weeks.
"Thank you. What do I owe you?" Mianna asked, already withdrawing the book of checks from the pocket of her jacket.
The mechanic's brow furrowed as he held up a hand. "You can pay me once the automail's actually here. Wouldn't feel right taking your money for the temporary prosthesis."
"It's fine," Mianna said, shaking her head. "I have more money than I know what to do with, now. Between what the mining company paid out, and the compensation from the state…"
The man's frown deepened. "Keep it. It was rotten luck what happened - first your husband, and then that state convoy…"
A flicker of guilt twinged at the back of her neck as she recalled how easy it had been to crawl over to the truck as it came to a halt on the road - the transmutation to once again open her wound had been agony, but that - combined with the surprisingly convincing mangled pig's leg she tossed beneath the tire just as she moved herself into position - had been more than enough to explain the loss of her limb.
Mianna had not accounted for the truck belonging to the military, however - she was unsure if she or her fellow officers were more shocked when they rushed to respond to her agonized screams.
This guilt, though, was a trifle compared to the mountain of it she felt for what awaited her back home.
"Well… I appreciate your generosity." She pocketed the checks with a nod and made for the door.
The prosthetic leg felt strangely heavy as she carefully trod the path back to her home. Her stomach turned preemptively as she thought of the smell of blood that would assail her the moment she stepped inside - so much of it, constantly soaking the old wood floors so much she knew the stains would linger until the end of time. She had no idea how the thing could still bleed–
No. Not a thing. Albtraum. It was him. It was.
She hurried along as much as the false limb would allow once she reached the crumbling cobbled path that led to her door, at once dreading and desperate to return home. She was both sickened and unsettled by the constant rasping moans that emanated from the study in her home - and fearful that one day she would return home to hear nothing at all.
"Hello there!"
The voice that called out to her just as her hand rested against the doorknob drew a startled gasp, and she whirled on her good heel to find a young man she recognized as the mailman standing at the head of the path where it met the main road.
Mianna steadied herself with a trembling breath and called back. "H-hello." She wondered what had made the man suddenly so chatty… ordinarily he tried not to meet her eyes if she happened to be present as he made his deliveries.
"You're Miss Serafin, right?" he asked, taking a step forward. The question must have been rhetorical, because he continued before she could answer. "Awful sorry to hear about everything that's happened to you of late."
"I appreciate your condolences," Mianna breathed, fumbling with the lock. "Terribly sorry I can't muster pleasantries at the moment, I've had a very long day and I'd just like to go h–"
The thud of a hand planted against her door nearly made her jump back, and she turned her gaze to where the mailman now stood leaning against it, positioning himself between her and her home.
"Ah, but, Miss Serafin…" the tone of the man's voice shifted, almost unnaturally, the sound making her blood turn sharp in her veins. "Perhaps we could chat a bit more? I might be able to help you feel better…"
Disgusted with the man's forwardness, Mianna drew back. "Perhaps I'll inform the courier's office one of its workers thinks it's appropriate to proposition a crippled widow - and a State Alchemist, no less," she hissed. "Now I'll thank you to remove yourself from my property, before–"
"Hold on, now, Miss Serafin," the man said, the voice shifting again - no longer a man's voice, something she couldn't place, sneering and laced with venom. "We really should have a chat, I think. Particularly about that little problem in your study…"
Mianna felt her eyes burn as they widened, unblinking, all her breath catching in her chest. Was he…? No, it couldn't be… She'd kept the window there covered and boarded, she'd spread flour before every door and window nightly to make sure no one but her ever entered–
"What," she whispered, "are you referring to?"
"Don't play dumb," he said, his voice now fully that of someone else. "It's not cute. You've been requisitioning some very specific components from the state stores - and I have to hand it to you, you were smart about it. Anyone else wouldn't have suspected a thing. Now, I think you should invite me in for some tea, and we can all have a talk - me, you, and your husband. "
Mianna's mouth went dry, and her grip tightened on the handle of the doorknob. "Okay," she rasped. "Come in."
He smirked, stepping past her into the entryway.
She rushed in, all but slamming and locking the door behind her, her mind stumbling over possibilities. She could kill him easily, but she had seen people walking outside who'd surely seen him entering her home. His routes were documented. Her neighbors would notice the deliveries unmade, she would be the first to be questioned–
As Mianna turned around, she nearly cried out in surprise - the mailman was gone, in his place a lithely-built, scantily clad person with long tendrils of emerald-colored hair.
"Who are you?" she demanded, one hand still gripping the doorknob. It would be an easy thing to transmute it into a knife, and…
"Not important, dollface. All you need to know is I'm someone who solves little problems like yours. Not for free, of course - but we can discuss your end of things later. For now…"
They tossed something toward her, and she caught it out of instinct - a small cloth bag, rattling with what sounded to be stones.
Suspiciously, she undid the drawstring holding it closed, and peered inside - finding a small collection of smooth, glistening red stones. They caught the dim light of the nearby lamp strangely, the hue shifting such that they almost resembled tiny pools of blood.
Stunned, she looked back up, drawing in a sharp breath. "Are these…?"
"Yes ma'am, a bundle of Philosopher's Stones, just for you. That should help you get started on fixing the mess you made."
"But I…" She bit her lip, her gaze trailing downward to the dusting of flour at her feet.
"Hesitating, are you?" The voice was different now - achingly familiar. "What's wrong? You've been begging for an answer to this - and here it is, wrapped up for you all neat."
Mianna tore her gaze from the floor and looked up. Albtraum stood beside the staircase, as she remembered on days she arrived home late to find him waiting - alive, whole. Not a crushed and splintered corpse beneath a mountain of rubble… not the malformed monstrosity struggling and wheezing in the study where they'd once sat and read together each night.
But when he smiled at her, the illusion broke. He would never have looked at her with eyes so laced with malice, a predator about to pounce. "You won't use those for transmutation, mind. You'll have to feed them to him. And I would hurry, if I were you - he doesn't have much time."
Soon the mailman once again stood in her entryway, tipping his hat before he made for the door. "We'll talk payment soon," he chirped, back to the cheery voice that had first greeted her.
The door shut softly behind her as he left, leaving her in deafening silence.
She gripped the stones tightly in one hand and quickly ascended the stairs to her study, once again met with the metallic tang of blood in the air. There was so much, always so much, and it had soaked through the floors to drip into the kitchen below as though the house itself was bleeding.
The study door was as she had left it, half-ajar. Though she'd seen what awaited her within many times, she still felt her stomach churn and her chest tighten as she steeled herself to enter again.
She felt her heart seize with panic as she entered, finding the once-writhing mass lying amid a pile of blood-soaked linens entirely still. It was not until she stared, fixing her gaze on him, that she could see the slight twitching of movement in the sarcous bundle of flesh at the heap's center.
"Albtraum," she whispered, dropping to her knees. He did not respond to her voice, he never did - but he seemed to startle at the force of her knees thudding on the wood floor beside him. His eyes - if they could be called such - sluggishly twitched back and forth seeking light, translucent and gray, like the eggs of fish or frogs that she sometimes saw lining the pond in the yard in the summer.
"I left you too long," she muttered apologetically, opening the bag in her hands, removing one of the stones from the bag and rolling it through her hand. It was smooth, and a strange warmth radiated from it.
Delicately, she tilted what he had of a head to the side. There was something like an esophagus there, positioned below the tooth-lined ledge of his upper jaw, and she carefully placed the stone inside it. The muscles there reacted swiftly, swallowing the stone.
He seemed to move more after that, his half-formed eyes almost seeming to focus on her hand. She withdrew another stone and fed it to him, then another, and another - and soon all of them were gone.
When he'd finished with them, he stilled again - though this time, Mianna could see the steady pulsating of the single lung he had settling into a rhythm. It was difficult to tell what he felt, if he felt anything at all - but this was the first she had seen him in a state she could possibly describe as calm.
Feeling some of her tension subside, Mianna leaned back against the bookcase behind her, her eyes sliding shut - and before she could open them again, she was asleep.
A shred of sunlight flickered over Mianna's eyelids, and she suddenly became aware of the ache in her neck and on the stump of her leg where the prosthetic rested. She groaned slightly, sitting forward, and her gaze quickly snapped to Albtraum to assess his condition.
The constant wheeze that rattled through his exposed windpipe had softened, now almost to a point she could describe as normal breathing. She crept closer to him, looking him over - and saw something in his face move. One of his eyes now had a distinguishable iris, a pupil - and it was fixed on her.
"Albtraum," She whispered fervently, and this time his head tilted more toward her. He responded to his name with a low groan.
"I..." She scrambled to her feet as best as she could, still wobbling on her new leg. "I will be right back," she said quickly, rushing from the room.
She hurried down the stairs to the front door, rushing outside so quickly she almost - almost forgot to lock it behind herself. Her eyes widened as she saw the mailman, a few envelopes in hand.
"You're here already," she said incredulously as he handed her the letters. She could see from the seal on each one that they were orders from the state, yet she hardly cared in this moment. "Do you have more of the stones?"
He squinted at her, giving a nervous chuckle. "Afraid all I've got is letters, miss."
The actual mailman. Not the stranger she'd spoken to yesterday. Her mind raced over the conversation they'd shared.
"Ah, thank you," she said simply to the mailman with a nod, rushing back to the main road as he watched her in mild bewilderment.
Mianna could feel the shock of impact against her truncated bone as she ran - the prosthetic was not made for this kind of movement - but she hardly cared, forcing the pain down as she rushed to the state library office.
Once inside, a quick flash of her pocketwatch was met with a nod - and the guard went back to his reading as she made her way to the basement, where the alchemical supply stores were kept.
She was out of breath by the time she made it down the stairs - but waiting at the desk was the same sallow-faced man she had seen many times before, boredly perusing the daily newspaper.
She leaned over the desk. "The stones," she breathed. "I need more of them."
The man merely flicked his eyes to hers, staring for a moment before replying with a grin. "So the first helping worked, then, I take it?"
"Yes," she answered quickly. "Now, I need more of them–"
"Certainly," he chuckled, withdrawing another pouch from his pocket and holding it out to her. "Ration these out over the next few days. But–" he snatched the pouch back as she reached for it, "Do let me know once you've reached the end of these. There's one final step after that, and your end of the bargain to discuss."
Mianna merely grabbed the pouch as soon as he once more held it within her reach, then fled as fast as her body dared back home.
She stayed there in the study for days, watching as the stones slowly did their work.
The bleeding stopped after the second day, and so she did her best to clean the gore-covered floor around where Albtraum lay. She did not have the strength to move him, but as his human form became more and more discernible with time, it seemed ever more cruel to leave him in such conditions.
As she suspected, the deep stains remained on the floor, but the smell of blood soon faded from the room, and she was able to prop his head on a pillow. His skull felt soft in her hand, like a newborn's, and his nearly-human eyes watched her intently as she layered bedding over and around him.
"There," she said, cheerily as she could muster. "That's a bit more comfortable, isn't it, darling?"
He rasped back two syllables that could perhaps have been her name before slipping into sleep.
Much of his time was spent sleeping on the third and fourth days, such that it worried her. Yet every time she offered the stones, he consumed them voraciously, an animal spark in his eyes - by the time he once again had a full set of jaws, he nearly bit her fingers as she offered them.
The stones soon dwindled, then disappeared - Mianna felt panic seize her on the fifth day when she reached into the pouch and felt only the soft whisper of cloth against her fingertips.
Yet he was nearly as she remembered him now - his skin was translucent, and he looked withered, but the shape of who he'd been was visible.
It had grown dark outside, and she was exhausted. She settled herself beside him in her own makeshift bed she had laid out in the room, gripping his fragile wrist between her fingers to feel the faint pulsepoint that had formed there. She counted each beat fluttering against her fingertips, but soon trailed off and fell deeply into sleep.
It was as if the past three months had merely been a nightmare when Mianna began to awaken. She could hear the familiar rhythm of Albtraum breathing beside her, his warmth at her side - but as further awareness dawned in her waking mind, she abruptly sat upright.
She blinked, expecting the vision beside her to fade - yet this was no dream. Albtraum, whole and unmarred, sleeping peacefully beside her, his scarlet hair scattered across the pillow around his head and his brow twitching in his sleep as it always did, as though his mind were still racing as it did when he was awake.
She leaned over him, her breath so still she was nearly holding it - and slowly, his eyes opened. Warm amber, just as she remembered them, not glassy with death or gelatinous and half formed.
"Albtraum," she cried breathlessly, throwing herself into him and wrapping her arms tightly around him, drawing out a slight grunt of discomfort. She could feel him hesitate, then slowly wrap his arms around her.
"It's you," she sobbed into his shoulder, feeling her tears slickening his skin. "You're finally back."
She held him for a short while longer, finally pulling back - only to find him staring up at her with an expression of bewilderment.
"I…" he said slowly, his voice somewhat strained as he slowly sat up. "I'm sorry… But I'm afraid I don't know who you are."
Mianna felt her heart sink - so low it nearly shattered. He did not remember her - he stared owlishly at her, without a trace of recognition.
Yet her mind moved quickly, fortified against the wave of despair. He did not remember her. Yet he was here, intact, whole, alive - she recalled the laws of equivalent exchange. Something had to be lost, of course - his memories seemed a trifle in comparison to his life. She had him back - she would carry the memories he didn't. He would forge new ones at her side.
His bewilderment gave way to apparent distress - he was looking to her for an explanation. He remembered nothing… so she did not think it wise to remind him of the torturous month he had spent here, half-formed and bleeding.
"Ah… Well, Albtraum, my name is Mianna. I am your wife… you were in an accident and nearly died. It seems you've lost your memory."
The explanation seemed to soothe him, his shoulders relaxing. "I suppose it's… fortunate that I survived."
"Yes," she agreed, squeezing his hand. He hesitated… but squeezed back after a short moment.
"Thank you," he said slowly. "For… taking care of me. I'm sure my lack of memories must be troubling to you–"
Mianna shook her head. "No, darling… It's a small pain to me, I suppose, but I am just… so happy you are otherwise alright."
He nodded, giving her a soft smile. "Perhaps something will come back to me soon."
"Yes," Mianna agreed. "Perhaps it will."
After Mianna's automail had been fitted, she wrote out her payment to the mechanic, placing it in his hands without a word. She heard him about to call out to her as the door slowly shut behind her - it had been three times what she owed him.
It was dark by the time the car arrived - one from a neighboring city, where she and Albtraum were not known. She gathered the last of her belongings into her suitcase and carried it down the stairs - but Albtraum intercepted her, taking it from her hands.
"You shouldn't do that," he scolded softly. "Your leg…"
"It's alright," she assured him. "The automail… it's much stronger now."
He only answered with a half-smile, adding her suitcase to the small pile he had gathered outside.
"Just a moment," she called down the stairs as she rushed back up. "Have the driver start loading the car. I just need something from my study."
She left Albtraum at the door and raced to the study, where her she'd placed the supplies she had purchased earlier that day. Nearly half a pig's worth of meat.
Glancing over her shoulder to ensure Albtraum had not followed her, she quickly brought her hands together, and with a dim flash, the pile of flesh twisted, forming into a macabre imitation of a body.
Mianna grimaced. It was sloppy work, the muscle tissue looked all wrong - but the false bones underneath were flawless. That was all she needed.
"Mianna," she heard Albtraum call to her from the front door. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," she called back, quickly grabbing a book from the shelf to support her ruse, tucking it under her arm.
She looked at the pile of state orders on the floor beside the grim results of her alchemy - then withdrew the match from her pocket, struck it on the rough wood flame of the door, and dropped it on the small pile of letters.
The smoke was only just beginning to seep out from underneath the door she'd closed behind her by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs. "I'm ready," she said cheerily to Albtraum, taking his hand and making her way to the car.
They were far down the road by the time Mianna could see the faint flicker in the distance of her home going up in flames.
But she had no need of it now, she thought to herself as she took Albtraum's hand where he sat beside her, once more turning her attention forward.