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prose_alchemistTitle: Blood Ties (4/14: Hunters)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for fantasy violence and blood.
Characters: A whopping big ensemble across two worlds, although the strongest focus is on Ed.
Setting: First anime. Same timeframe as CoS, two years after the end of the series.
Summary: Alternative to Conqueror of Shamballa. An old enemy plunges Ed into the dark secrets of his new world, linked to the alchemy he thought lost to him—while in Amestris, Al faces a life-or-death choice. Will the nightmare Ed is drawn into provide the key to both their fates?
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
Noa’s physical response to the blood was swift. By the time Ed could bring himself to look at her, the wound on her neck had entirely healed, and her eyes were bright with fresh energy. He couldn’t deny that he felt the same effect; still, he loathed the thought that the life now in his veins had been the life of something else, even if he hadn’t killed it himself. Fundamentally speaking, all creatures were nourished by the death of other living things—it was part of the flow of the world, the basis for change and renewal, as he and Al had learned on Yock Island so long ago—but drawing that life directly from the blood itself felt different, unnatural, wrong.
There was nothing to do but bear this new weight of sin, as he had borne his automail for seven years. Edward had work to do now, and a great deal to learn. It was time to meet the Hunters… and the dhampir Maes Hughes.
Perhaps out of respect for the memory of his world’s Hughes, Ed felt an impulse to make himself more presentable. Guided by his reflection in a piece of broken glass, he combed the traces of dry blood from his hair with his fingers, and rebraided the long blond locks. In lieu of his ruined coat and shirt, he kept Noa’s inverness, but he gave back her sword—realizing the Hunters’ weapons were far more personal to them than the intimate memories they exchanged so freely. If Noa was seen to have entrusted her blade to him, there would be questions, and he feared they would both face enough of those as it was.
When he was ready, they left their improvised shelter, and began to travel south. Ed allowed Noa to lead him, although as before, the streets he had never seen became increasingly familiar to him as they walked.
“What are you going to tell Hughes?” he finally asked, breaking a long silence between them.
The sideways glance Noa gave him was difficult to read. “That’s not important. All that matters is that there’s a vampire in London.”
It was a nice try, but Ed wasn’t buying it. He knew the questions of who he was and how he became a dhampir would be no small matter to the Hunters. Hughes would require an explanation—and if Ed’s idea of his controlling nature was accurate, he might take the truth from Noa’s own blood if he was not otherwise satisfied.
“Will you get in trouble for saving me?”
Noa’s slight flinch was not lost upon him, but she quickly squared her shoulders. “Of course not. When the others know there’s even a chance you could kill vampires, they’ll understand why I had to do it. Maes will take care of everything then.” She hesitated. “I just… have to find the right moment to explain it to him.”
“Who is he to judge? He did the same thing himself… And for that matter, if it’s such a taboo, why wasn’t he punished for turning you?”
“He was. This assignment was a demotion.” Noa smiled ruefully. “London is an unimportant post for us, because vampires don’t often do their killing in large cities. The last time the Hunters tracked one here was in 1888.”
Something stirred in Ed’s mind; not from Noa’s memories, but from fragments of this world’s history he had offhandedly acquired over the past two years. “Wait a minute. 1888? That wasn’t…?”
“Jack the Ripper. Yes.”
She strode ahead of him, and Ed stared at her back, marveling at how casually she acknowledged such a gruesome piece of information.
Another half-hour of walking brought them at last to their destination. The large, ornately gabled four-story building must have been a hotel sometime in the last century—but since then, it had clearly been redesigned as a fortress for creatures of the night. Nearly all of its windows were filled in with bricks, and the strategic few that remained were equipped with steel shutters to block out the sun. The lawn was bare of trees and shrubs to maximize visibility, and a high wall surrounded the entire property.
“Do you know this place?” Noa tested him gently, as they neared the single wrought-iron gate that provided access.
Ed frowned, attempting to sift something pertinent from Noa’s memories. What he found was hardly what he would have expected for such an ominous-looking structure.
“All I can remember right now is that to you, it’s… home,” he answered in quiet wonder. The very feeling was unfamiliar; not since his mother’s death had he known a specific place he cherished that way. On this side of the Gate, the entire world that was lost to him had become achingly identified as home in his heart, but that was something rather different.
Noa looked surprised, and Ed suddenly realized that as a detached examiner of her experiences, he could discern truths she herself was not fully aware of. This was her home. She found here a stability she could never have imagined during her nomadic human life as a gypsy, and a sense of security after the brutality of the night she was turned.
“I suppose it is,” she said, smiling wanly. Then her gaze sharpened upon Ed again. “You don’t know anything else about it?”
“Not yet. Your memories are… kind of hard to pin down,” he admitted uncomfortably.
“That’s not surprising. It’s never easy at first… and when you took my blood, your mind and body were still in shock from your turning.” She lowered her gaze demurely. “As your system adjusts, you’ll start to absorb my memories more fully.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Ed murmured sincerely.
“It’s alright, Edward. I’m used to sharing my life. It’s part of the way Hunters work. And I want you to know what I know, if it will help you to understand my world, and learn how to use your power… your alchemy here.”
Her confidence in him made Ed just a little uneasy.
He watched her press a button beside the gate that was presumably connected to a buzzer somewhere, and then he studied the building again, folding his arms thoughtfully. “It must take a lot of money to run an endless underground war against things you can never kill.”
“We’re funded by the Council.” Noa’s questioning look returned. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Sort of…”
“They’re based in Paris. The Hunters all over the world answer to them,” she prompted.
A dawn of comprehension overcame Ed’s puzzled face. “I’ve got it now… It’s an elected group of leaders, always made up of five dhampirs and five humans. They organize information about vampires’ movements, send Hunters where they’re needed—and they’re in control of the money from investments the first Hunters made hundreds of years ago, to finance this work.”
“That’s right. And they also judge any Hunters who break our laws. Like Maes… and me.” Noa shook her head at Ed’s look of concern. “Don’t worry. They always consider every side of these cases. I know they’ll believe I did the right thing…” She hesitated. “That is, if you do.”
It suddenly struck Ed that his own willingness to bear his fate would be taken into account in Noa’s judgment. The thought was sobering; he wasn’t even sure how he could answer that question. He had never asked to become a monster, and even now, a part of his soul yearned darkly for release from the sheer wrongness of this existence. His one reason for accepting it was his will to fight the even more terrible monsters that roamed this world.
Before he could say anything, movement in the darkness across the lawn caught his eye. Someone had emerged from a service door at the side of the building. It was a man, and as he approached them, he seemed to be talking to a dog that trotted beside him.
A bemused smile was forced from Ed as he noted the animal, and found it hauntingly familiar. Small for a guard dog, but a sprightly pup, with a dense white-and-black coat and a brisk attentiveness of demeanor…
Then the man raised his face to the moonlight, and the shock staggered Ed like a physical blow.
It was the incarnation of Roy Mustang who was coming toward them.
There was no question of it. The refined features, the slender frame, and the glossy black hair were all the mirror of Ed’s erstwhile commander. A few differences were distinct: he wore his hair in locks that flowed loose to his shoulders, and his left eye was covered by an eyepatch, from beneath which emerged a long scar that extended down his cheek to the jaw. Yet none of these things could disguise the face Ed had known so well, and argued with so often… and occasionally had nightmares about.
Noa’s quick, uncertain glance told Ed she had noticed his reaction, but he breathed deeply and closed a tight grip on his emotions. Once again, he forcefully reminded himself that he was facing a stranger.
And yet, to find the counterparts of both Sig and Mustang among the Hunters, as well as Hughes…
Still more strikingly, this Mustang was a dhampir. Ed knew it even before he registered the man’s scent, tinged with a quality his instincts told him was not human. He knew it from the bleak paleness of Mustang’s face, the subtle difference in his movements that betrayed the stillness of his lungs.
Man and dog stopped at the gate. A single obsidian eye skimmed over the speechless Ed; Mustang breathed in once to scent him, doubtless identifying him as a dhampir as well, and the eye narrowed dubiously before shifting to Noa.
“You’ve been busy,” Mustang said, with a careful tonelessness that still managed somehow to raise Ed’s hackles—and not only because that voice had endlessly, gleefully grated on him for five long years.
“I’ve got to see Maes, right now.” Noa’s voice sounded slightly impatient in turn.
With a noncommittal shrug, Mustang produced a key and unlocked the gate. “You’ve got him pretty worked up over your neglecting to check in. He was about to send the rest of us out to look for you. What happened?”
“A vampire happened.”
That answer silenced Mustang, as a different sort of chill came over his expression… and it was the first time Ed could remember having ever seen fear in that face.
Mustang dragged the heavy gate open, and Noa strode through it, with the graceful self-assurance of the fighter Ed had first seen in her the night before. At least she was at ease. He followed her with some reluctance, beginning to wonder just how much more his nerves and even his sanity could take.
At the sound of a soft whine next to his knee, he absently reached down with his flesh hand to let the un-Hayate sniff him. A tail wag welcomed him as no threat—but Mustang’s approval was clearly less generous. His tall form abruptly loomed over Ed, eyeing him keenly but speaking to Noa, as if the disheveled teenager she had brought home was some sort of stray animal.
“So what’s this?”
Ed bristled, and in his indignation, he briefly forgot both his restraint and the situation itself. “The name’s Edward Elric, Colonel Ba—”
“Leave him alone, Roy,” Noa interrupted, addressing Mustang in a short, commanding tone that startled Ed—and also privately delighted him. “He was the vampire’s mark, and I wasn’t in time to stop the attack. If you want the whole story, you can come upstairs to hear my report… but I don’t think there’s much reason for you to bother.”
A trace of anger flickered in Mustang’s eye. For a moment it seemed as if he might argue; then he turned wordlessly and started back across the lawn, with the dog trailing after him. Ed moved automatically and somewhat dazedly to follow, only to find himself halted by Noa’s hand on his automail wrist.
“You knew him too, didn’t you—in the world you came from?” she asked in a low voice.
Gathering his wits, Ed slowly nodded. “Roy Mustang was my commanding officer in the military. Er… loosely speaking.”
The truth was that Ed had never remotely come close to possessing military discipline, and he certainly never behaved as if Mustang was his superior in anything. In hindsight, a part of him marveled now that the Colonel had put up with his rebelliousness… but another part of him still faintly resented the amused tolerance that was an adult’s condescension toward a child.
“I hope the man you knew was different.” Noa began walking slowly toward the building. “This Roy was a soldier once, too.”
“What happened to him?” Ed asked as he followed her.
“Terrible things. Much worse than what I went through.” The gypsy grimaced. “You have to understand, the War was a feast to the vampires. They came from all over the world to follow the armies, feeding on the destruction. When Roy was wounded at Flanders, he was left for dead on the battlefield… and that’s where one of them found him.”
“But he fought back,” Ed surmised immediately—and he was startled by the insistent note in his own voice, his irrational need to believe that Roy Mustang would fight to his last breath against the monsters of any world.
“He tried. At least, he made the vampire bleed enough to infect him through his wounds. But all his struggling really accomplished was to make it angry, and it… it did things to him.” Noa shuddered. “What happened to his eye was just a small part of his torture. Somehow he survived it for another two days, but when the human life that was left in him finally died, and he turned… a dhampir’s strength only meant his body could endure even more suffering.”
Ed’s gut twisted, and he cursed. He knew very well what a homunculus with a grudge was capable of. Their vindictiveness was something he would never have wished upon Mustang or anyone else.
“Maes was tracking the vampires in the war zones then,” Noa went on, more gently. “He saved Roy, and tried to train him as a Hunter. But Roy was…”
“Was what?” Ed prompted, although he knew very definitely that he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Noa sighed. “Some of us have it within us to cope, Edward—and some don’t. Living with what we are is more than just a matter of courage, and Roy is the kind who never adjusted well. Maes had hopes for him, but the first time he faced a vampire… he lost his nerve, and another Hunter died. And that only broke him even more.”
This tragic narrative loosened a thread in the tangled tapestry of Noa’s memories, and Ed found he was beginning to follow it himself.
“He shut down so badly that the Hunters gave up trying to make anything of him,” he murmured. “And after Hughes found you a while later… he took you as his apprentice instead, didn’t he?”
“I was all he had then. When he was sent here as punishment, Roy and I were the only ones who came with him.” Noa’s eyes hardened. “Maes chose to be responsible for me when he turned me. He sacrificed the powerful position he’d earned. He cared for me, and I wanted to stay with him—but Roy only tagged along because no one else would have him. Besides, hiding here under Maes’ wing gave him the security of being a Hunter in name only, without actually having to face any vampires… at least until now.”
“Shirking duty and playing politics,” Ed muttered with a halfhearted wryness. “At least that sounds familiar.”
Of course, the story was deeper than that. The subject had evoked more details from Ed’s secondhand memories: the dhampir Mustang was a troubled man, a loner even among the Hunters, spending much of his time with the guard dogs he looked after. Most of the Hunters shunned his embittered personality, but Hughes had a sort of pitying fondness for him, and treated him with tolerant kindness—another skewed echo of a different place and time.
And there was something else—someone else…
By this time, Ed and Noa had reached the main entrance of the building. Here they were met with double doors of heavy steel, and yet another buzzer. As she pressed the button, he slouched against the wall and sighed.
“It’s all crazy, upside down. Homunculi running around as vampires, duplicates of people from my world fighting against them as dhampirs…” He raised his eyes to hers, with a sad and weary smile. “A part of me can’t help wondering if this is all a dream—or a nightmare.”
“Sometimes I wish it was only a dream,” Noa said softly. “Sometimes I’d give anything to wake up to the smell of a campfire, and the sound of my people’s voices… and the light of the sun.”
“Only sometimes?” Ed asked her pointedly.
Noa’s eyes darkened. She drew a breath to answer, but before she could speak, the door opened—and Ed nearly fell over himself at the sight of the petite, pixie-faced brunette who stared out at them.
“Sheska?”
The familiar figure started and caught her breath, her large green eyes widening at Ed.
“What… Nobody ever called me that except—!”
She moved like lightning then, and Ed learned in a decidedly painful way that she was also a dhampir—as a small but inhumanly powerful fist drove into his stomach, followed by a chop to his throat that decked him.
Consequently, he found himself on his back, staring up at the astonishingly not-Sheska who nonetheless wore the face of that shy bookworm. She was crouching like a cat on the threshold, her fists balled for a fight. Her face was indefinably different than he remembered; no eyeglasses, he realized. Of course, if her vision was as enhanced as his own had become, she wouldn’t need them.
“Francesca! Wait, it’s alright!” Noa exclaimed in horrified protest, interjecting herself between Ed and his antagonist.
“Who is he…” the not-Sheska ground out, her voice an almost literal growl, “and how did he know—?”
“Trust me, he doesn’t,” Noa interrupted. “And he doesn’t have anything to do with him. I promise, I’ll explain everything later. Please—just go tell Maes I’ve come back, and I have important news. Alright?”
Francesca, as she apparently called herself here, maintained a burningly suspicious glare on Ed for a moment longer. Finally she turned and disappeared beyond the doorway, and Noa heaved a sigh of relief.
“I don’t have to ask if you knew her before,” she observed in a longsuffering tone, offering a hand to help Ed up.
Rather sheepishly, Ed allowed her to haul him to his feet. His unbreathing body was not winded by Francesca’s blows, but they left his flesh stinging a little—and his pride considerably more.
“And I thought you were jumpy…” he mumbled, gingerly rubbing his neck. “What was that—and who is ‘him’?”
“That was Francesca. And him was her boyfriend who went to fight in the war… only to come back as a dhampir. Unlike Roy, he wasn’t lucky enough to be found by a Hunter, so there was no one to teach him how to survive without hurting anyone. At first he managed alright on his own, but when he finally got up the courage to see Francesca again…”
“He couldn’t control himself, and he ended up turning her,” Ed summed up flatly. “So now she’s here. What happened to the guy?”
“He lost his mind, and murdered three other people before the Hunters caught him… and then he was put down, like all dhampirs who become killers.” Noa fixed a hard gaze on Ed. “We don’t say his name around Francesca—and we never call her Sheska, because he was the only one who did that, and it brings back unpleasant memories. But I don’t think you’re going to forget that now, are you?”
“No kidding…”
Her expression warming, Noa clutched his arm and led him toward the open doors. “Now I’m just curious to know what Francesca was in your world.”
Had he the blood for it, Ed knew he would have blushed. “She was a librarian, okay?”
Noa stifled a chortle into her fist, and Ed glared at her.
Upon stepping through the doorway, they entered the antechamber of what had indeed been a hotel at one time. There were still faded traces of opulence all around them: rich Victorian wallpaper, marble tiles that echoed underfoot, a crystal chandelier suspended from the gilded dome of the ceiling. Beyond this space sprawled an equally luxurious lobby, its grand staircase leading to a deserted mezzanine. The place should have sparkled in its extravagance, but instead, it felt hollow and ghostlike…
At least to Ed. Beneath his own perceptions, he felt the sense of safety and familiar affection that was Noa’s response to her home, and it made him just a little sad.
Yet the vast emptiness of the building’s ground floor was deceptive. Originally designed to awe hotel guests, it was only a decorative waste of space now, for the Hunters were hardly apt to entertain such company as might appreciate it. Ed realized they occupied the floors above, where the rooms were smaller, more private, and more practical.
Bypassing that showpiece of a staircase in front, Noa guided Ed to the back stairway, and they climbed to the second floor. The former guest rooms there had been partially gutted and rebuilt into more functional spaces. Here the Hunters could meet for discussion, study newspapers for signs of vampiric activity, and even spar to maintain their fighting skills. The lighting was soft, measured to suit human needs while giving no discomfort to the sensitive eyes of dhampirs.
“You may not have seen a vampire around here in decades, but you sure seem to keep busy,” Ed noted, peering curiously through the open doors they passed.
The Hunter at his side tensed slightly. “We still have our share of work… dealing with rogues.”
With an unpleasant feeling, Ed stopped. “You mean—dhampirs who kill humans?”
“Mostly it isn’t their fault. Not all dhampirs are as strong as you and I, and the unluckiest ones… they go mad when they turn.” Noa closed her eyes in silent pain. “We can’t let them hurt anyone. It just isn’t easy to do what has to be done sometimes.”
Involuntarily, shadowed half-images rose in Edward’s mind—and he knew these memories were not simply difficult to recall. A part of him had willfully suppressed them, because they bore the ugliness and guilt of Noa’s work. Her experience wasn’t limited to the impermanent beheading of homunculi. With her own hands, she had killed other dhampirs whose bloodlust turned to violence.
He also realized how easily he could have been one of them. Noa had gambled on his strength, because she wanted more than anything to find her world’s salvation in his abilities; but if the shock of his turning had destroyed his sanity, she would not have hesitated to terminate the undead life her own blood endowed him with.
A shudder crept down Ed’s spine, and he swore quietly. “I’m sorry…”
“Because of what we do, there are a lot of people out there who can still see the sun.” Noa’s eyes opened, hard and bright with determination. “Hunters bear this burden so others will never have to. That’s worth the price we pay.”
But where is the Equivalence in that? Ed questioned silently, as a pang of guilty grief squeezed his chest.
It was all so wrong. If his father was correct, the energy released by death on this side of the Gate was the fuel for their own world’s alchemy—yet all this society received in return was a plague of monsters that caused still more death. There was no balance between the two worlds, no Equivalent Exchange at all that Ed could see. There was only the injustice of one world suffering for the other’s gift.
It had to stop. He had to make it stop.
Before he could say anything further, Noa had shaken off the moment herself. She touched his arm, and nodded to the far end of the hallway that was lined on both sides with doors. “This way. Maes will expect my report in the meeting room, down there.”
At least connecting with Hughes and the other Hunters might be the first step toward fixing things. Ed let himself be led, continuing to glance into the rooms on either side; but when they drew level with one open door, he stopped abruptly.
The small room appeared to be a sort of communications center. An entire wall was taken up by radio equipment as powerful and advanced as the open market could offer, and perhaps a few things no one outside of a military was supposed to have. The gadgets were interesting—but it was their operator who caught Ed’s eye. He was a very young man, black-haired and slight of figure, and he smelled human.
Feeling Ed’s stare, he looked up from his dials and knobs, his eyes half-obscured by a glare of light on glass lenses. “Uhm…?”
“It’s alright, Kain,” Noa said hurriedly, and gave Ed a discreet push to propel him past the doorway.
He continued to walk, but the flesh hand he pressed over his eyes was beginning to shake just a little. His shoulders twitched with a faint bark of a laugh he suspected was not entirely healthy.
“Fuery, too…” His hand slipped down from his face, and he shook his head incredulously. “Are they all here?”
It seemed Noa had accepted this baffling pattern of recognition by now, because she didn’t even comment. She merely guided him to the room where the Hunters met to confer and deliver reports. Its dominant feature was a long meeting table, while the walls were covered with large and detailed maps of London, the British Isles, and the whole of Europe.
Edward dragged a chair away from the table, and sank down gratefully onto it. “I need to think for a minute.”
“You probably need to think for days,” Noa retorted wryly, but her expression quickly sobered. “It’s all confusing for any new dhampir, but for you… I don’t know how you bear it.”
“I have a job to do. Somebody’s gotta fix what the alchemists of my world have done here.” Ed’s automail fist clenched, and he closed his eyes, distracting his mind with another attempt to delve into Noa’s memories. “Fuery… He’s here because a vampire killed his parents, isn’t he?”
“Yes, when he was very young. Hunters practically raised him. He’s skilled and passionate about our work, but a childhood illness left him a little frail—and that’s why he was sent to us.” Noa smiled bitterly. “All of us here are the unwanted.”
The sad self-assessment caused Ed to raise his head and frown at Noa. He was about to reprove her, but when he inhaled a breath to speak, he caught a peculiar whiff of dog hair… and it amused him tremendously that this smell presaged the entry of Mustang, who stepped in from the hallway two seconds later.
Mustang glanced back and forth between Noa and Ed, and his disapproving gaze settled on the latter. “You’re in my chair.”
“Really.” Ed leaned back with an exaggeratedly comfortable stretch. “So that’s why it smells like wet dog.”
A faint growl rumbled in Mustang’s throat; but without another word, he slunk away to a different seat at the table, and Ed marveled ruefully at that submissiveness. The man he had known would never have let it go at that. He once would have thought a Roy Mustang he could torment without reprisal would be terrific fun… but in fact, it was just sort of depressing.
Of course, this Mustang might simply be plotting a more subtle offensive…
Before Ed could pursue that paranoid thought, he heard approaching voices—and from the corner of his eye, he noticed the way Noa glanced at him, as if to see whether he was bracing for a further potential shock. Without acknowledging the look, he sat straight and intent, watching the open door for the new arrivals.
Francesca entered first, but Ed ignored her doubtful scowl at him. He was focused on the faces of the three men who came into the room behind her… and this time, his only reaction was to become very, very still.
Jean Havoc, Vato Falman, Heymans Breda…
By now, Ed could immediately read the clues of scent and breath-movement, and he realized Breda was the only human of the three. Jogged by the sight of them, his borrowed recollections at last came more easily, supplying details about these mirror-lives before him: Havoc was undone by his familiar old womanizing ways, inadvertently turned by a female vampire who seduced her prey. Falman was another battlefield casualty, just as Mustang was. Breda had been a soldier too, an infamous human killing machine, who escaped infection but was left half-mad the night he watched a vampire tear out a comrade’s throat. Each of them was broken, judged unreliable, rejected by the Hunters who worked more active assignments.
This accounted, then, for everyone Ed had known as Mustang’s people—except for one piece on the chessboard. The most important of them all.
The queen, he thought, wryly following the analogy to its logical conclusion.
But in this world, these were not Mustang’s men. They were Hughes’ men instead, and Mustang himself was just an afterthought to them, kept around to feed the dogs and answer the door. How the mighty were fallen… and somehow, Ed took no pleasure in that fact.
All of their eyes were on Ed, looking at him as if he was a zoo specimen. It was uncomfortable, but he had an odd feeling he shouldn’t speak up until Hughes arrived, or at least until Noa gave him an introduction. Instead, he studied these too-familiar figures with equal intensity. He was used to seeing them in the blue of Amestrian military uniforms, but here they wore black, dressed for stealth in their largely nocturnal work—and perhaps out of suspicion toward the stranger brought into their stronghold, they came to this meeting armed. Swords and knives adorned their belts, and Ed also noticed the bulge of a shoulder holster beneath Breda’s coat.
“So who’s the fresh meat?” Breda rumbled, muscles straining his shirt fabric as he folded his beefy arms over a barrel chest. Ed didn’t like the sound of his wording one bit, and might have spoken if he hadn’t felt Noa’s staying hand touch his arm under the table.
Mustang shrugged. “Apparently he’s Noa’s foundling,” he said caustically, and the word made a connection in Ed’s mind. In Hunter parlance, a foundling was a lone and often newly-turned dhampir who a Hunter took responsibility for, to teach and protect them until they could survive on their own without doing harm to others.
Ed bristled slightly. However he felt about having been turned without his consent, he was grateful for Noa’s care of him since—but he didn’t appreciate being thought of like some adopted pet who needed housebreaking. He had his own reasons for being there. Furthermore, he feared certain conclusions were brewing that might be dangerous for Noa.
“Eh?” Havoc murmured, eyeing Ed with unpleasant interest. It was strange to see him without a cigarette in his mouth; smoking, it seemed, was unsatisfying for those who did not naturally breathe. “Foundling’s gotta mean there’s a rogue around, or else… Noa, what gives?”
When Havoc turned to look at Noa, his expression and voice were entirely different, and Ed registered another bizarre fact. While dhampirism had cured the man perforce of his flirtations, he had feelings for Noa that were deeply and helplessly genuine—but unrequited. Remarkably, Ed sensed that this Havoc was gentleman enough to respect Noa’s disinterest, and suppress his unwelcome attraction.
“Wait, Jean,” Noa answered wearily. “It’s all too complicated to go through more than once.”
Fuery scuttled into the room then, hurrying to take a seat. “Maes is coming.”
“Now maybe you’ll finally start talking,” Francesca sniped at Noa. Her tone was irritated at the moment, but Ed found that Noa’s feeling toward the other dhampir girl was the warmth of a friendship.
A brief, anticipatory silence filled the room, and Ed was glad to find the Hunters’ stares had shifted from him to the door. Although there was no rank among them, and they addressed each other by first names, there was a certain hierarchy—and their respect for their leader would have been clear even if Ed hadn’t learned it from Noa’s mind.
At least this time, he had the advantage of knowing what familiar face he was about to see… but it was still a shock when the tall, strong figure of Maes Hughes appeared in the doorway.
With the Hughes he had known dead and buried for some time before the end, Ed hadn’t seen his face in an even longer time than the others. Even so, now he felt as if it was only yesterday. This Hughes was a little more gaunt, and like Francesca he wore no eyeglasses, but otherwise there was no outward difference. There was only a shadow in his eyes that the other never had, even in his most dangerous moments.
He wasn’t alone. A woman entered with him, blonde, statuesque, unmistakable—and human. She looked immediately to the place where Ed sat, with a puzzlement that meant something very different from the way the others had looked at him… and then her eyes sought the man she had expected to see in that chair.
Riza Hawkeye met the gaze of Roy Mustang, and Ed felt the last missing pieces fall into place.
In this world, she was his girlfriend before the War. After he became a dhampir, he was too afraid and ashamed to see her, but she tracked him down herself… and even what he’s become wasn’t enough to keep her from his side.
Edward had no time to fully realize the wonder that crept into his heart at that discovery. Hughes was moving toward the end of the table where he and Noa sat.
Noa bowed her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t check in last night, Maes. I was…” She glanced at Ed, and concluded awkwardly, “delayed.”
“I can see that,” Hughes murmured, studying Ed with an unnerving intensity—and making him quite self-conscious of the fact that he still wore Noa’s coat. He had an idea that Hughes might be frighteningly possessive of Noa, his own foundling, for whom he had sacrificed his blood and his status among the Hunters. Already Ed felt uneasily like the young man brought home to meet an overprotective father, and when Hughes learned what Noa had really done…
“It’s been a long time since we had a survivor on our hands,” Hughes said, not unkindly. Then his focus shifted back to Noa, and he asked a simple, terse question that belied the horror of the meaning behind it. “Did you put down the rogue?”
“It wasn’t just a dhampir, Maes,” Noa replied softly. “It was a vampire.”
A ripple of gasps and muttered curses circled the table. Hughes himself gave a start, and for a long moment, he weighed the cold certainty in Noa’s eyes.
Then he relaxed, abruptly and deliberately, and put on a mild smile as he turned to Ed. Evidently the vampire would not be discussed until they had attended to him. Perhaps Hughes meant to avoid upsetting him, if he was as frightened and confused as any normal victim would be—but they didn’t yet know that he was no ordinary foundling.
“It’s alright, kid. We’re on top of this—but first of all, we want to help you. I’m Maes, and I’m in charge around here. What’s your name?”
Hughes’ tone stirred a pang, because for a moment it was that of the father figure Ed had appreciated only too late; the man who cared without condescending, and treated the Elric brothers like the young innocents they had never been, just because he honestly believed they were. The very sound of that voice made Ed want to give in a little, to take the comfort it offered.
“I’m Edward Elric,” he answered, and an irrational part of him longed to see just one of these familiar faces react to his name with recognition… but there was no such response. Hughes only looked at him with what seemed to be a faint admiration for his composure.
“Well, don’t worry, Edward,” the Hunters’ leader said encouragingly. “We know what you’re going through. I won’t ask any stupid questions like whether you’re okay—but I promise, we’ll see you through this. Do you need anything?”
“No… not now.” Ed glanced at Noa, deciding to let her disclose his visit to Sig’s shop if it was warranted, but she was silent.
“I guess Noa’s had some time to explain things to you over the last day.” Hughes eyed Noa with just a hint of doubt, but the look faded before his gaze turned back to Ed. “You understand what’s happened?”
“I do.” This much Ed asserted with an unhesitating firmness, but beyond that, he was reluctant to say more—only because he wasn’t sure how much he could say without creating trouble for Noa. If she felt it was best for her to explain things to Hughes in her own time and her own way, she was undoubtedly right.
Noa chose that moment to make her attempt at just such an explanation. She leaned forward, placing her hand on Hughes’ arm.
“Listen, Maes. Edward is… something different. We need his help much more than he needs ours.” She exchanged a glance with the alchemist, found unspoken consent in his eyes, and continued. “He has a special power. I saw him use it on the vampire who attacked him—and I saw him make that vampire hurt.”
More murmurings passed around the table, and it was Hawkeye who voiced the general consensus. “That’s impossible. Nothing hurts them.”
This time Ed spoke up for himself. “But I did hurt him—and I think I can do more than that. I think… maybe I can even kill them.”
“It’s true!” Noa confirmed fiercely, looking at the startled and skeptical faces around the table. “Edward knows more about vampires than we ever have. He knows what they really are, and where they come from—”
“Where they come from is straight outta hell,” Breda interrupted with a snarl.
That remark coaxed a bleak chuckle out of Ed. The sound drew all eyes to him, and he slowly rose from his seat.
“Hell?” he repeated quietly. “In a way… maybe you’re right.”
Until this point, his hands had rested in his lap, out of sight; but now his left hand reached up to unfasten his borrowed coat. He let it fall from his shoulders, exposing his automail arm and the scarred upper body that bore it, and raised a clenching steel fist beneath the astonished stares of the Hunters.
“Wh-what is that?” Fuery whimpered, jerking to his feet.
“It’s what happens when one of your vampires is created—in the place I come from.”
A tense silence gripped the room for a moment. Then Hughes reached out, slowly but with no evidence of fear, and closed his fingers around Ed’s automail wrist. Ed allowed him to turn it over, examining the prosthetic limb that was unlike anything known to this world.
“What are you?” Hughes asked him simply.
“I was human, before last night. I just come from a world that’s different from this one.”
Francesca let out a piercing squeal. “You see, I told you aliens were real!” she exclaimed, prompting a collective wince and sigh from the rest of the room—Edward included.
“It’s not really like that.” Ed eased his arm out of Hughes’ unconsciously white-knuckled grip. “But there’s a power in my world that you don’t have, and when it’s misused… sometimes a vampire is born. The problem is that nobody there even knows this world exists—much less that the things they’ve created are coming here to kill.”
Mustang rolled his eyes to one side. “The kid’s crazy.”
“No he isn’t!” Noa snapped, and turned to face Hughes with beseeching eyes. “You’ve always known you can trust me, Maes, so believe me now. The power Edward has—it’s hope for us. It’s what the Hunters have spent centuries searching for. If I wasn’t absolutely sure of that…”
She faltered into silence, her gaze falling to the palm of her left hand, and Hughes’ eyes suddenly darkened.
“Noa, what is it you’ve done?” His hands came to rest gently on her shoulders, but she flinched when their grip tightened. “Tell me you didn’t do this! Haven’t you learned anything from me?”
“Leave her alone!” Ed protested, and tried to bluff, even though he knew the effort was wasted. “She didn’t do anything… It was the vampire.”
Hughes gave Ed a hard, skeptical glance. Then he released Noa’s shoulders and took a deep breath, looking hard into the eyes of his favored disciple.
“Give me the truth.”
Noa’s face fell. She bowed her head with a desolate resignation, and reached up to unbutton the collar of her blouse.
Realizing instantly what the gesture meant, Ed reached for her arm. “Noa—”
Only a moment too late, her memories warned him of how badly Hughes would react to the hand of a stranger touching his foundling.
Ed never saw the fist that swung up at his jaw. He only felt a blow so powerful it almost blinded him, pitching him against the edge of the table. He instinctively braced his arms underneath him, making a feeble attempt to push himself upright; but in the moment when he was face-down, a broad hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pinning him there with his chin pressed to the tabletop.
Hughes leaned down over him, and Edward felt the sudden sharp pain of fangs sinking into the back of his left shoulder.
He had time enough for one instant of relatively coherent panic, his flesh and steel fingers clawing futilely at the polished wood surface of the table. Time enough to hear Noa shouting at Hughes to Stop, don’t do this, he isn’t like us…
Then his muscles fell slack with the first bright shock as he began to bleed, and he felt his memories pouring out of him.
It was the same as before, when Envy bit him. His entire life was flowing like water, all the pain and wonder and joy of it, and there was nothing he could do to make it stop. Some foolish part of him thought he could, and he struggled within his own mind against the onslaught—but that only made his head throb with pain. Still the pieces of his past fell without ceasing, childhood happiness fading into agonies of battle, dates and places merging in a dizzying jumble.
The day he became a State Alchemist. The day Mother died. Lior, Resembool, Central—
His psyche gave a violent burst of resistance, but it meant absolutely nothing, as the memory of his twelfth birthday welled up irresistibly from his veins. Nina. Alexander. Snow.
Major Maes Hughes of Amestris, smiling on the sidewalk.
Gracia, and the miracle of birth. Tiny Elicia, soft and warm as a breath.
The confetti of photographs her father left in his wake for the few remaining years of his life.
Abruptly the visions ceased, as Maes Hughes of the Hunters ripped himself away from the contact with something like a sob—and even in his stunned condition, Ed knew that cry of soul-shattering anguish would forever haunt him. It was the sound of something dying on the inside… or the sound of something terrible being born.
For a moment Ed could only sprawl limp and shivering against the table, feeling savagely violated and completely exhausted. Hughes probably hadn’t taken much blood, but its loss did nothing to help the raging ache in his skull, and his soul felt as raw as an open wound.
At last he dared to open his eyes, wincing at the gentle light in the room, and turned his head. Hughes had sunk into a chair hardly an arm’s length from him; he was shaking too, his face buried in his hands, and he might have been weeping. Francesca and Falman were bending over him in anxious concern. Most of the others remained standing or sitting where they had been, looking uncomfortable or interested, or merely bored by a process they must have witnessed or even experienced innumerable times before.
As for Noa, her arms were twisted behind her back in the restraining grip of Mustang and Havoc, and Ed could almost feel the tension pouring off of her. She was breathtakingly furious, and when the men finally let her jerk free of their grasp, it was not Hughes’ side she rushed to—but Ed’s.
“Easy…” She slipped a hand under his flesh arm to help him sag into a chair, and when she knelt down beside him, he could see the dampness brimming in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
She was sorry. It was in her eyes and expression and the entire attitude of her being. She had never intended this, and she was angry at herself as much as her mentor who committed the deed, even though she had clearly tried to intervene.
An almost imperceptible shrug hitched Ed’s shoulders, dismissing her guilt. He took a needless breath to see if that would help clear his head, but it only brought him the smells of Mustang’s dogs and Breda’s sweat—and the faint tang of his own blood. His stomach lurched, and with a grimace, he gave up the effort of breathing.
Her fury boiling over, Noa rounded on Hughes. “Maes—”
“We’re going to talk later.”
Even in her outrage, Noa was paralyzed by those words, and by the voice that delivered them. It was the most deathly tone Ed had ever heard, warning that the promised conversation would be very, very unpleasant… because now Hughes knew for a fact that Noa had broken the taboo of the Hunters, by turning Ed with her own blood.
Hughes slowly raised his head to stare at Ed. At that moment, his eyes were the color of the blood he had consumed, hollow and fever-bright. It chilled Ed to see those predator eyes in such a familiar face.
“That world you came from… My family is really alive there?”
“No. Not your family.” Ed set his jaw, trying to control the quiver of disgust and latent fear in his voice. “The family I knew belonged to the other Hughes—not you.”
“But that man…” Scarlet eyes widened as Hughes searched his stolen memories, apparently with a far greater speed and clarity than Ed himself was yet capable of. “He’s dead. He was killed by—Envy. The same creature that turned into the vampire you were attacked by.”
Ed let his head fall against the back of his chair. He was fatigued and hurting and deeply shaken, and he desperately didn’t want to be having this surreal conversation.
“Forget about it,” he muttered faintly. “Because… I plan on making Envy pay for that myself.”
The other Hunters were looking increasingly confused and uneasy—which was understandable, considering their leader was now talking in the same otherworldly terms as Ed. It was Falman who finally took it upon himself to try to shed some light on the discussion.
“Wait a minute. Maes, are you seriously saying all those things the kid was talking about are true?”
Hughes glanced at him, and nodded unsteadily. The red hue was fading from his eyes, but they still looked unhealthy.
“It’s all he said—and more. Vato, my… my family is there, in that world—”
“I told you that’s wrong!” Ed ground out.
“No. It isn’t. How could it be? I lost them, and they lost me… We need each other.” Hughes rose and lurchingly began to pace, like a caged cat. “And it—it can be done, can’t it? …You think it can.”
At those quick, halting words, Ed remembered his speculations about transmuting a homunculus-vampire to open the Gate, and his unbeating heart plummeted.
“No, Hughes! You can’t possibly think of… Don’t you realize you’d only hurt them?” He gathered his strained and aching nerves and leaned forward, fists clenching. “They’ve buried their dead and moved forward… and you’re not that man, no matter how much you want to be. You may look like him, but you’re not. How do you think they’d feel if they saw you this way—and if you do love them, how could you risk letting them become like you?”
But Hughes wasn’t listening. He was still pacing, rubbing his hands together, eyes glazed with feverish thought—and Ed knew he was thinking about alchemy, letting arrays and equations flood the scarred mind that was fracturing before their eyes.
“What we need… is Envy,” he murmured slowly.
Havoc frowned. “Chief?”
“The vampire! It’s the key to everything…” Hughes turned on his heel, seizing Havoc by the shoulders with a sudden manic excitement. “We have to capture it!”
“Are you kidding?” Mustang gasped. “Nobody’s ever taken a vampire captive, and the ones that’ve tried have—”
Hughes turned to his lowest subordinate with a look that made Mustang physically shrink back.
“They didn’t have alchemy,” he said, with an unholy eagerness.
“And you think you do?” Ed was clutching at straws now, but it didn’t matter. This was insanity, pure and literal madness, and he couldn’t let it unfold into tragedy for either of their worlds. “For all I know, and for all you know, I might have been the only person in this world who could use alchemy—and maybe I can’t even do it anymore, now that I have homunculus blood in me. And even if I could, I’ll never help you open the Gate.”
“Then let’s hope I don’t have to ask you.” Hughes spoke in something very close to that terrible, chilling tone again, studying Ed as a spider might inspect a fly trapped in its web. “But in case I do… Oh, don’t worry, Ed. We’re going to take good care of you.”
They were so like the words he had said only a short time before, when he was still a shadow of the kind man Ed had known.
Don’t worry, Edward… We’ll see you through this.
It was Ed himself who had corrupted Hughes, allowing his sanity to crumble under the influence of memories he should never have possessed. Ed had broken the mind of Noa’s cherished patron, endangering her and the other Hunters and perhaps even his own world, and the guilt of it made him want to be sick.
“Maes…” Noa said faintly, her voice trembling.
Hughes ignored her, turning to glance at his other followers around the table. “Roy, Vato—let’s make Ed comfortable.”
The Hunters looked back and forth between each other uncertainly. There was a long hesitation… and then Mustang and Falman obediently came forward. They took Ed by the arms, and when he felt the inhuman strength of Mustang’s grip at his left, he knew he was in no condition to even try fighting both of them.
As he was led from the room, his last glimpse of Noa was her bowed head as she wept.
© 2011 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 :: 8 :: 9 :: 10 :: 11 :: 12 :: 13 :: 14 :: Epilogue ::
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for fantasy violence and blood.
Characters: A whopping big ensemble across two worlds, although the strongest focus is on Ed.
Setting: First anime. Same timeframe as CoS, two years after the end of the series.
Summary: Alternative to Conqueror of Shamballa. An old enemy plunges Ed into the dark secrets of his new world, linked to the alchemy he thought lost to him—while in Amestris, Al faces a life-or-death choice. Will the nightmare Ed is drawn into provide the key to both their fates?
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
Noa’s physical response to the blood was swift. By the time Ed could bring himself to look at her, the wound on her neck had entirely healed, and her eyes were bright with fresh energy. He couldn’t deny that he felt the same effect; still, he loathed the thought that the life now in his veins had been the life of something else, even if he hadn’t killed it himself. Fundamentally speaking, all creatures were nourished by the death of other living things—it was part of the flow of the world, the basis for change and renewal, as he and Al had learned on Yock Island so long ago—but drawing that life directly from the blood itself felt different, unnatural, wrong.
There was nothing to do but bear this new weight of sin, as he had borne his automail for seven years. Edward had work to do now, and a great deal to learn. It was time to meet the Hunters… and the dhampir Maes Hughes.
Perhaps out of respect for the memory of his world’s Hughes, Ed felt an impulse to make himself more presentable. Guided by his reflection in a piece of broken glass, he combed the traces of dry blood from his hair with his fingers, and rebraided the long blond locks. In lieu of his ruined coat and shirt, he kept Noa’s inverness, but he gave back her sword—realizing the Hunters’ weapons were far more personal to them than the intimate memories they exchanged so freely. If Noa was seen to have entrusted her blade to him, there would be questions, and he feared they would both face enough of those as it was.
When he was ready, they left their improvised shelter, and began to travel south. Ed allowed Noa to lead him, although as before, the streets he had never seen became increasingly familiar to him as they walked.
“What are you going to tell Hughes?” he finally asked, breaking a long silence between them.
The sideways glance Noa gave him was difficult to read. “That’s not important. All that matters is that there’s a vampire in London.”
It was a nice try, but Ed wasn’t buying it. He knew the questions of who he was and how he became a dhampir would be no small matter to the Hunters. Hughes would require an explanation—and if Ed’s idea of his controlling nature was accurate, he might take the truth from Noa’s own blood if he was not otherwise satisfied.
“Will you get in trouble for saving me?”
Noa’s slight flinch was not lost upon him, but she quickly squared her shoulders. “Of course not. When the others know there’s even a chance you could kill vampires, they’ll understand why I had to do it. Maes will take care of everything then.” She hesitated. “I just… have to find the right moment to explain it to him.”
“Who is he to judge? He did the same thing himself… And for that matter, if it’s such a taboo, why wasn’t he punished for turning you?”
“He was. This assignment was a demotion.” Noa smiled ruefully. “London is an unimportant post for us, because vampires don’t often do their killing in large cities. The last time the Hunters tracked one here was in 1888.”
Something stirred in Ed’s mind; not from Noa’s memories, but from fragments of this world’s history he had offhandedly acquired over the past two years. “Wait a minute. 1888? That wasn’t…?”
“Jack the Ripper. Yes.”
She strode ahead of him, and Ed stared at her back, marveling at how casually she acknowledged such a gruesome piece of information.
Another half-hour of walking brought them at last to their destination. The large, ornately gabled four-story building must have been a hotel sometime in the last century—but since then, it had clearly been redesigned as a fortress for creatures of the night. Nearly all of its windows were filled in with bricks, and the strategic few that remained were equipped with steel shutters to block out the sun. The lawn was bare of trees and shrubs to maximize visibility, and a high wall surrounded the entire property.
“Do you know this place?” Noa tested him gently, as they neared the single wrought-iron gate that provided access.
Ed frowned, attempting to sift something pertinent from Noa’s memories. What he found was hardly what he would have expected for such an ominous-looking structure.
“All I can remember right now is that to you, it’s… home,” he answered in quiet wonder. The very feeling was unfamiliar; not since his mother’s death had he known a specific place he cherished that way. On this side of the Gate, the entire world that was lost to him had become achingly identified as home in his heart, but that was something rather different.
Noa looked surprised, and Ed suddenly realized that as a detached examiner of her experiences, he could discern truths she herself was not fully aware of. This was her home. She found here a stability she could never have imagined during her nomadic human life as a gypsy, and a sense of security after the brutality of the night she was turned.
“I suppose it is,” she said, smiling wanly. Then her gaze sharpened upon Ed again. “You don’t know anything else about it?”
“Not yet. Your memories are… kind of hard to pin down,” he admitted uncomfortably.
“That’s not surprising. It’s never easy at first… and when you took my blood, your mind and body were still in shock from your turning.” She lowered her gaze demurely. “As your system adjusts, you’ll start to absorb my memories more fully.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Ed murmured sincerely.
“It’s alright, Edward. I’m used to sharing my life. It’s part of the way Hunters work. And I want you to know what I know, if it will help you to understand my world, and learn how to use your power… your alchemy here.”
Her confidence in him made Ed just a little uneasy.
He watched her press a button beside the gate that was presumably connected to a buzzer somewhere, and then he studied the building again, folding his arms thoughtfully. “It must take a lot of money to run an endless underground war against things you can never kill.”
“We’re funded by the Council.” Noa’s questioning look returned. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Sort of…”
“They’re based in Paris. The Hunters all over the world answer to them,” she prompted.
A dawn of comprehension overcame Ed’s puzzled face. “I’ve got it now… It’s an elected group of leaders, always made up of five dhampirs and five humans. They organize information about vampires’ movements, send Hunters where they’re needed—and they’re in control of the money from investments the first Hunters made hundreds of years ago, to finance this work.”
“That’s right. And they also judge any Hunters who break our laws. Like Maes… and me.” Noa shook her head at Ed’s look of concern. “Don’t worry. They always consider every side of these cases. I know they’ll believe I did the right thing…” She hesitated. “That is, if you do.”
It suddenly struck Ed that his own willingness to bear his fate would be taken into account in Noa’s judgment. The thought was sobering; he wasn’t even sure how he could answer that question. He had never asked to become a monster, and even now, a part of his soul yearned darkly for release from the sheer wrongness of this existence. His one reason for accepting it was his will to fight the even more terrible monsters that roamed this world.
Before he could say anything, movement in the darkness across the lawn caught his eye. Someone had emerged from a service door at the side of the building. It was a man, and as he approached them, he seemed to be talking to a dog that trotted beside him.
A bemused smile was forced from Ed as he noted the animal, and found it hauntingly familiar. Small for a guard dog, but a sprightly pup, with a dense white-and-black coat and a brisk attentiveness of demeanor…
Then the man raised his face to the moonlight, and the shock staggered Ed like a physical blow.
It was the incarnation of Roy Mustang who was coming toward them.
There was no question of it. The refined features, the slender frame, and the glossy black hair were all the mirror of Ed’s erstwhile commander. A few differences were distinct: he wore his hair in locks that flowed loose to his shoulders, and his left eye was covered by an eyepatch, from beneath which emerged a long scar that extended down his cheek to the jaw. Yet none of these things could disguise the face Ed had known so well, and argued with so often… and occasionally had nightmares about.
Noa’s quick, uncertain glance told Ed she had noticed his reaction, but he breathed deeply and closed a tight grip on his emotions. Once again, he forcefully reminded himself that he was facing a stranger.
And yet, to find the counterparts of both Sig and Mustang among the Hunters, as well as Hughes…
Still more strikingly, this Mustang was a dhampir. Ed knew it even before he registered the man’s scent, tinged with a quality his instincts told him was not human. He knew it from the bleak paleness of Mustang’s face, the subtle difference in his movements that betrayed the stillness of his lungs.
Man and dog stopped at the gate. A single obsidian eye skimmed over the speechless Ed; Mustang breathed in once to scent him, doubtless identifying him as a dhampir as well, and the eye narrowed dubiously before shifting to Noa.
“You’ve been busy,” Mustang said, with a careful tonelessness that still managed somehow to raise Ed’s hackles—and not only because that voice had endlessly, gleefully grated on him for five long years.
“I’ve got to see Maes, right now.” Noa’s voice sounded slightly impatient in turn.
With a noncommittal shrug, Mustang produced a key and unlocked the gate. “You’ve got him pretty worked up over your neglecting to check in. He was about to send the rest of us out to look for you. What happened?”
“A vampire happened.”
That answer silenced Mustang, as a different sort of chill came over his expression… and it was the first time Ed could remember having ever seen fear in that face.
Mustang dragged the heavy gate open, and Noa strode through it, with the graceful self-assurance of the fighter Ed had first seen in her the night before. At least she was at ease. He followed her with some reluctance, beginning to wonder just how much more his nerves and even his sanity could take.
At the sound of a soft whine next to his knee, he absently reached down with his flesh hand to let the un-Hayate sniff him. A tail wag welcomed him as no threat—but Mustang’s approval was clearly less generous. His tall form abruptly loomed over Ed, eyeing him keenly but speaking to Noa, as if the disheveled teenager she had brought home was some sort of stray animal.
“So what’s this?”
Ed bristled, and in his indignation, he briefly forgot both his restraint and the situation itself. “The name’s Edward Elric, Colonel Ba—”
“Leave him alone, Roy,” Noa interrupted, addressing Mustang in a short, commanding tone that startled Ed—and also privately delighted him. “He was the vampire’s mark, and I wasn’t in time to stop the attack. If you want the whole story, you can come upstairs to hear my report… but I don’t think there’s much reason for you to bother.”
A trace of anger flickered in Mustang’s eye. For a moment it seemed as if he might argue; then he turned wordlessly and started back across the lawn, with the dog trailing after him. Ed moved automatically and somewhat dazedly to follow, only to find himself halted by Noa’s hand on his automail wrist.
“You knew him too, didn’t you—in the world you came from?” she asked in a low voice.
Gathering his wits, Ed slowly nodded. “Roy Mustang was my commanding officer in the military. Er… loosely speaking.”
The truth was that Ed had never remotely come close to possessing military discipline, and he certainly never behaved as if Mustang was his superior in anything. In hindsight, a part of him marveled now that the Colonel had put up with his rebelliousness… but another part of him still faintly resented the amused tolerance that was an adult’s condescension toward a child.
“I hope the man you knew was different.” Noa began walking slowly toward the building. “This Roy was a soldier once, too.”
“What happened to him?” Ed asked as he followed her.
“Terrible things. Much worse than what I went through.” The gypsy grimaced. “You have to understand, the War was a feast to the vampires. They came from all over the world to follow the armies, feeding on the destruction. When Roy was wounded at Flanders, he was left for dead on the battlefield… and that’s where one of them found him.”
“But he fought back,” Ed surmised immediately—and he was startled by the insistent note in his own voice, his irrational need to believe that Roy Mustang would fight to his last breath against the monsters of any world.
“He tried. At least, he made the vampire bleed enough to infect him through his wounds. But all his struggling really accomplished was to make it angry, and it… it did things to him.” Noa shuddered. “What happened to his eye was just a small part of his torture. Somehow he survived it for another two days, but when the human life that was left in him finally died, and he turned… a dhampir’s strength only meant his body could endure even more suffering.”
Ed’s gut twisted, and he cursed. He knew very well what a homunculus with a grudge was capable of. Their vindictiveness was something he would never have wished upon Mustang or anyone else.
“Maes was tracking the vampires in the war zones then,” Noa went on, more gently. “He saved Roy, and tried to train him as a Hunter. But Roy was…”
“Was what?” Ed prompted, although he knew very definitely that he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Noa sighed. “Some of us have it within us to cope, Edward—and some don’t. Living with what we are is more than just a matter of courage, and Roy is the kind who never adjusted well. Maes had hopes for him, but the first time he faced a vampire… he lost his nerve, and another Hunter died. And that only broke him even more.”
This tragic narrative loosened a thread in the tangled tapestry of Noa’s memories, and Ed found he was beginning to follow it himself.
“He shut down so badly that the Hunters gave up trying to make anything of him,” he murmured. “And after Hughes found you a while later… he took you as his apprentice instead, didn’t he?”
“I was all he had then. When he was sent here as punishment, Roy and I were the only ones who came with him.” Noa’s eyes hardened. “Maes chose to be responsible for me when he turned me. He sacrificed the powerful position he’d earned. He cared for me, and I wanted to stay with him—but Roy only tagged along because no one else would have him. Besides, hiding here under Maes’ wing gave him the security of being a Hunter in name only, without actually having to face any vampires… at least until now.”
“Shirking duty and playing politics,” Ed muttered with a halfhearted wryness. “At least that sounds familiar.”
Of course, the story was deeper than that. The subject had evoked more details from Ed’s secondhand memories: the dhampir Mustang was a troubled man, a loner even among the Hunters, spending much of his time with the guard dogs he looked after. Most of the Hunters shunned his embittered personality, but Hughes had a sort of pitying fondness for him, and treated him with tolerant kindness—another skewed echo of a different place and time.
And there was something else—someone else…
By this time, Ed and Noa had reached the main entrance of the building. Here they were met with double doors of heavy steel, and yet another buzzer. As she pressed the button, he slouched against the wall and sighed.
“It’s all crazy, upside down. Homunculi running around as vampires, duplicates of people from my world fighting against them as dhampirs…” He raised his eyes to hers, with a sad and weary smile. “A part of me can’t help wondering if this is all a dream—or a nightmare.”
“Sometimes I wish it was only a dream,” Noa said softly. “Sometimes I’d give anything to wake up to the smell of a campfire, and the sound of my people’s voices… and the light of the sun.”
“Only sometimes?” Ed asked her pointedly.
Noa’s eyes darkened. She drew a breath to answer, but before she could speak, the door opened—and Ed nearly fell over himself at the sight of the petite, pixie-faced brunette who stared out at them.
“Sheska?”
The familiar figure started and caught her breath, her large green eyes widening at Ed.
“What… Nobody ever called me that except—!”
She moved like lightning then, and Ed learned in a decidedly painful way that she was also a dhampir—as a small but inhumanly powerful fist drove into his stomach, followed by a chop to his throat that decked him.
Consequently, he found himself on his back, staring up at the astonishingly not-Sheska who nonetheless wore the face of that shy bookworm. She was crouching like a cat on the threshold, her fists balled for a fight. Her face was indefinably different than he remembered; no eyeglasses, he realized. Of course, if her vision was as enhanced as his own had become, she wouldn’t need them.
“Francesca! Wait, it’s alright!” Noa exclaimed in horrified protest, interjecting herself between Ed and his antagonist.
“Who is he…” the not-Sheska ground out, her voice an almost literal growl, “and how did he know—?”
“Trust me, he doesn’t,” Noa interrupted. “And he doesn’t have anything to do with him. I promise, I’ll explain everything later. Please—just go tell Maes I’ve come back, and I have important news. Alright?”
Francesca, as she apparently called herself here, maintained a burningly suspicious glare on Ed for a moment longer. Finally she turned and disappeared beyond the doorway, and Noa heaved a sigh of relief.
“I don’t have to ask if you knew her before,” she observed in a longsuffering tone, offering a hand to help Ed up.
Rather sheepishly, Ed allowed her to haul him to his feet. His unbreathing body was not winded by Francesca’s blows, but they left his flesh stinging a little—and his pride considerably more.
“And I thought you were jumpy…” he mumbled, gingerly rubbing his neck. “What was that—and who is ‘him’?”
“That was Francesca. And him was her boyfriend who went to fight in the war… only to come back as a dhampir. Unlike Roy, he wasn’t lucky enough to be found by a Hunter, so there was no one to teach him how to survive without hurting anyone. At first he managed alright on his own, but when he finally got up the courage to see Francesca again…”
“He couldn’t control himself, and he ended up turning her,” Ed summed up flatly. “So now she’s here. What happened to the guy?”
“He lost his mind, and murdered three other people before the Hunters caught him… and then he was put down, like all dhampirs who become killers.” Noa fixed a hard gaze on Ed. “We don’t say his name around Francesca—and we never call her Sheska, because he was the only one who did that, and it brings back unpleasant memories. But I don’t think you’re going to forget that now, are you?”
“No kidding…”
Her expression warming, Noa clutched his arm and led him toward the open doors. “Now I’m just curious to know what Francesca was in your world.”
Had he the blood for it, Ed knew he would have blushed. “She was a librarian, okay?”
Noa stifled a chortle into her fist, and Ed glared at her.
Upon stepping through the doorway, they entered the antechamber of what had indeed been a hotel at one time. There were still faded traces of opulence all around them: rich Victorian wallpaper, marble tiles that echoed underfoot, a crystal chandelier suspended from the gilded dome of the ceiling. Beyond this space sprawled an equally luxurious lobby, its grand staircase leading to a deserted mezzanine. The place should have sparkled in its extravagance, but instead, it felt hollow and ghostlike…
At least to Ed. Beneath his own perceptions, he felt the sense of safety and familiar affection that was Noa’s response to her home, and it made him just a little sad.
Yet the vast emptiness of the building’s ground floor was deceptive. Originally designed to awe hotel guests, it was only a decorative waste of space now, for the Hunters were hardly apt to entertain such company as might appreciate it. Ed realized they occupied the floors above, where the rooms were smaller, more private, and more practical.
Bypassing that showpiece of a staircase in front, Noa guided Ed to the back stairway, and they climbed to the second floor. The former guest rooms there had been partially gutted and rebuilt into more functional spaces. Here the Hunters could meet for discussion, study newspapers for signs of vampiric activity, and even spar to maintain their fighting skills. The lighting was soft, measured to suit human needs while giving no discomfort to the sensitive eyes of dhampirs.
“You may not have seen a vampire around here in decades, but you sure seem to keep busy,” Ed noted, peering curiously through the open doors they passed.
The Hunter at his side tensed slightly. “We still have our share of work… dealing with rogues.”
With an unpleasant feeling, Ed stopped. “You mean—dhampirs who kill humans?”
“Mostly it isn’t their fault. Not all dhampirs are as strong as you and I, and the unluckiest ones… they go mad when they turn.” Noa closed her eyes in silent pain. “We can’t let them hurt anyone. It just isn’t easy to do what has to be done sometimes.”
Involuntarily, shadowed half-images rose in Edward’s mind—and he knew these memories were not simply difficult to recall. A part of him had willfully suppressed them, because they bore the ugliness and guilt of Noa’s work. Her experience wasn’t limited to the impermanent beheading of homunculi. With her own hands, she had killed other dhampirs whose bloodlust turned to violence.
He also realized how easily he could have been one of them. Noa had gambled on his strength, because she wanted more than anything to find her world’s salvation in his abilities; but if the shock of his turning had destroyed his sanity, she would not have hesitated to terminate the undead life her own blood endowed him with.
A shudder crept down Ed’s spine, and he swore quietly. “I’m sorry…”
“Because of what we do, there are a lot of people out there who can still see the sun.” Noa’s eyes opened, hard and bright with determination. “Hunters bear this burden so others will never have to. That’s worth the price we pay.”
But where is the Equivalence in that? Ed questioned silently, as a pang of guilty grief squeezed his chest.
It was all so wrong. If his father was correct, the energy released by death on this side of the Gate was the fuel for their own world’s alchemy—yet all this society received in return was a plague of monsters that caused still more death. There was no balance between the two worlds, no Equivalent Exchange at all that Ed could see. There was only the injustice of one world suffering for the other’s gift.
It had to stop. He had to make it stop.
Before he could say anything further, Noa had shaken off the moment herself. She touched his arm, and nodded to the far end of the hallway that was lined on both sides with doors. “This way. Maes will expect my report in the meeting room, down there.”
At least connecting with Hughes and the other Hunters might be the first step toward fixing things. Ed let himself be led, continuing to glance into the rooms on either side; but when they drew level with one open door, he stopped abruptly.
The small room appeared to be a sort of communications center. An entire wall was taken up by radio equipment as powerful and advanced as the open market could offer, and perhaps a few things no one outside of a military was supposed to have. The gadgets were interesting—but it was their operator who caught Ed’s eye. He was a very young man, black-haired and slight of figure, and he smelled human.
Feeling Ed’s stare, he looked up from his dials and knobs, his eyes half-obscured by a glare of light on glass lenses. “Uhm…?”
“It’s alright, Kain,” Noa said hurriedly, and gave Ed a discreet push to propel him past the doorway.
He continued to walk, but the flesh hand he pressed over his eyes was beginning to shake just a little. His shoulders twitched with a faint bark of a laugh he suspected was not entirely healthy.
“Fuery, too…” His hand slipped down from his face, and he shook his head incredulously. “Are they all here?”
It seemed Noa had accepted this baffling pattern of recognition by now, because she didn’t even comment. She merely guided him to the room where the Hunters met to confer and deliver reports. Its dominant feature was a long meeting table, while the walls were covered with large and detailed maps of London, the British Isles, and the whole of Europe.
Edward dragged a chair away from the table, and sank down gratefully onto it. “I need to think for a minute.”
“You probably need to think for days,” Noa retorted wryly, but her expression quickly sobered. “It’s all confusing for any new dhampir, but for you… I don’t know how you bear it.”
“I have a job to do. Somebody’s gotta fix what the alchemists of my world have done here.” Ed’s automail fist clenched, and he closed his eyes, distracting his mind with another attempt to delve into Noa’s memories. “Fuery… He’s here because a vampire killed his parents, isn’t he?”
“Yes, when he was very young. Hunters practically raised him. He’s skilled and passionate about our work, but a childhood illness left him a little frail—and that’s why he was sent to us.” Noa smiled bitterly. “All of us here are the unwanted.”
The sad self-assessment caused Ed to raise his head and frown at Noa. He was about to reprove her, but when he inhaled a breath to speak, he caught a peculiar whiff of dog hair… and it amused him tremendously that this smell presaged the entry of Mustang, who stepped in from the hallway two seconds later.
Mustang glanced back and forth between Noa and Ed, and his disapproving gaze settled on the latter. “You’re in my chair.”
“Really.” Ed leaned back with an exaggeratedly comfortable stretch. “So that’s why it smells like wet dog.”
A faint growl rumbled in Mustang’s throat; but without another word, he slunk away to a different seat at the table, and Ed marveled ruefully at that submissiveness. The man he had known would never have let it go at that. He once would have thought a Roy Mustang he could torment without reprisal would be terrific fun… but in fact, it was just sort of depressing.
Of course, this Mustang might simply be plotting a more subtle offensive…
Before Ed could pursue that paranoid thought, he heard approaching voices—and from the corner of his eye, he noticed the way Noa glanced at him, as if to see whether he was bracing for a further potential shock. Without acknowledging the look, he sat straight and intent, watching the open door for the new arrivals.
Francesca entered first, but Ed ignored her doubtful scowl at him. He was focused on the faces of the three men who came into the room behind her… and this time, his only reaction was to become very, very still.
Jean Havoc, Vato Falman, Heymans Breda…
By now, Ed could immediately read the clues of scent and breath-movement, and he realized Breda was the only human of the three. Jogged by the sight of them, his borrowed recollections at last came more easily, supplying details about these mirror-lives before him: Havoc was undone by his familiar old womanizing ways, inadvertently turned by a female vampire who seduced her prey. Falman was another battlefield casualty, just as Mustang was. Breda had been a soldier too, an infamous human killing machine, who escaped infection but was left half-mad the night he watched a vampire tear out a comrade’s throat. Each of them was broken, judged unreliable, rejected by the Hunters who worked more active assignments.
This accounted, then, for everyone Ed had known as Mustang’s people—except for one piece on the chessboard. The most important of them all.
The queen, he thought, wryly following the analogy to its logical conclusion.
But in this world, these were not Mustang’s men. They were Hughes’ men instead, and Mustang himself was just an afterthought to them, kept around to feed the dogs and answer the door. How the mighty were fallen… and somehow, Ed took no pleasure in that fact.
All of their eyes were on Ed, looking at him as if he was a zoo specimen. It was uncomfortable, but he had an odd feeling he shouldn’t speak up until Hughes arrived, or at least until Noa gave him an introduction. Instead, he studied these too-familiar figures with equal intensity. He was used to seeing them in the blue of Amestrian military uniforms, but here they wore black, dressed for stealth in their largely nocturnal work—and perhaps out of suspicion toward the stranger brought into their stronghold, they came to this meeting armed. Swords and knives adorned their belts, and Ed also noticed the bulge of a shoulder holster beneath Breda’s coat.
“So who’s the fresh meat?” Breda rumbled, muscles straining his shirt fabric as he folded his beefy arms over a barrel chest. Ed didn’t like the sound of his wording one bit, and might have spoken if he hadn’t felt Noa’s staying hand touch his arm under the table.
Mustang shrugged. “Apparently he’s Noa’s foundling,” he said caustically, and the word made a connection in Ed’s mind. In Hunter parlance, a foundling was a lone and often newly-turned dhampir who a Hunter took responsibility for, to teach and protect them until they could survive on their own without doing harm to others.
Ed bristled slightly. However he felt about having been turned without his consent, he was grateful for Noa’s care of him since—but he didn’t appreciate being thought of like some adopted pet who needed housebreaking. He had his own reasons for being there. Furthermore, he feared certain conclusions were brewing that might be dangerous for Noa.
“Eh?” Havoc murmured, eyeing Ed with unpleasant interest. It was strange to see him without a cigarette in his mouth; smoking, it seemed, was unsatisfying for those who did not naturally breathe. “Foundling’s gotta mean there’s a rogue around, or else… Noa, what gives?”
When Havoc turned to look at Noa, his expression and voice were entirely different, and Ed registered another bizarre fact. While dhampirism had cured the man perforce of his flirtations, he had feelings for Noa that were deeply and helplessly genuine—but unrequited. Remarkably, Ed sensed that this Havoc was gentleman enough to respect Noa’s disinterest, and suppress his unwelcome attraction.
“Wait, Jean,” Noa answered wearily. “It’s all too complicated to go through more than once.”
Fuery scuttled into the room then, hurrying to take a seat. “Maes is coming.”
“Now maybe you’ll finally start talking,” Francesca sniped at Noa. Her tone was irritated at the moment, but Ed found that Noa’s feeling toward the other dhampir girl was the warmth of a friendship.
A brief, anticipatory silence filled the room, and Ed was glad to find the Hunters’ stares had shifted from him to the door. Although there was no rank among them, and they addressed each other by first names, there was a certain hierarchy—and their respect for their leader would have been clear even if Ed hadn’t learned it from Noa’s mind.
At least this time, he had the advantage of knowing what familiar face he was about to see… but it was still a shock when the tall, strong figure of Maes Hughes appeared in the doorway.
With the Hughes he had known dead and buried for some time before the end, Ed hadn’t seen his face in an even longer time than the others. Even so, now he felt as if it was only yesterday. This Hughes was a little more gaunt, and like Francesca he wore no eyeglasses, but otherwise there was no outward difference. There was only a shadow in his eyes that the other never had, even in his most dangerous moments.
He wasn’t alone. A woman entered with him, blonde, statuesque, unmistakable—and human. She looked immediately to the place where Ed sat, with a puzzlement that meant something very different from the way the others had looked at him… and then her eyes sought the man she had expected to see in that chair.
Riza Hawkeye met the gaze of Roy Mustang, and Ed felt the last missing pieces fall into place.
In this world, she was his girlfriend before the War. After he became a dhampir, he was too afraid and ashamed to see her, but she tracked him down herself… and even what he’s become wasn’t enough to keep her from his side.
Edward had no time to fully realize the wonder that crept into his heart at that discovery. Hughes was moving toward the end of the table where he and Noa sat.
Noa bowed her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t check in last night, Maes. I was…” She glanced at Ed, and concluded awkwardly, “delayed.”
“I can see that,” Hughes murmured, studying Ed with an unnerving intensity—and making him quite self-conscious of the fact that he still wore Noa’s coat. He had an idea that Hughes might be frighteningly possessive of Noa, his own foundling, for whom he had sacrificed his blood and his status among the Hunters. Already Ed felt uneasily like the young man brought home to meet an overprotective father, and when Hughes learned what Noa had really done…
“It’s been a long time since we had a survivor on our hands,” Hughes said, not unkindly. Then his focus shifted back to Noa, and he asked a simple, terse question that belied the horror of the meaning behind it. “Did you put down the rogue?”
“It wasn’t just a dhampir, Maes,” Noa replied softly. “It was a vampire.”
A ripple of gasps and muttered curses circled the table. Hughes himself gave a start, and for a long moment, he weighed the cold certainty in Noa’s eyes.
Then he relaxed, abruptly and deliberately, and put on a mild smile as he turned to Ed. Evidently the vampire would not be discussed until they had attended to him. Perhaps Hughes meant to avoid upsetting him, if he was as frightened and confused as any normal victim would be—but they didn’t yet know that he was no ordinary foundling.
“It’s alright, kid. We’re on top of this—but first of all, we want to help you. I’m Maes, and I’m in charge around here. What’s your name?”
Hughes’ tone stirred a pang, because for a moment it was that of the father figure Ed had appreciated only too late; the man who cared without condescending, and treated the Elric brothers like the young innocents they had never been, just because he honestly believed they were. The very sound of that voice made Ed want to give in a little, to take the comfort it offered.
“I’m Edward Elric,” he answered, and an irrational part of him longed to see just one of these familiar faces react to his name with recognition… but there was no such response. Hughes only looked at him with what seemed to be a faint admiration for his composure.
“Well, don’t worry, Edward,” the Hunters’ leader said encouragingly. “We know what you’re going through. I won’t ask any stupid questions like whether you’re okay—but I promise, we’ll see you through this. Do you need anything?”
“No… not now.” Ed glanced at Noa, deciding to let her disclose his visit to Sig’s shop if it was warranted, but she was silent.
“I guess Noa’s had some time to explain things to you over the last day.” Hughes eyed Noa with just a hint of doubt, but the look faded before his gaze turned back to Ed. “You understand what’s happened?”
“I do.” This much Ed asserted with an unhesitating firmness, but beyond that, he was reluctant to say more—only because he wasn’t sure how much he could say without creating trouble for Noa. If she felt it was best for her to explain things to Hughes in her own time and her own way, she was undoubtedly right.
Noa chose that moment to make her attempt at just such an explanation. She leaned forward, placing her hand on Hughes’ arm.
“Listen, Maes. Edward is… something different. We need his help much more than he needs ours.” She exchanged a glance with the alchemist, found unspoken consent in his eyes, and continued. “He has a special power. I saw him use it on the vampire who attacked him—and I saw him make that vampire hurt.”
More murmurings passed around the table, and it was Hawkeye who voiced the general consensus. “That’s impossible. Nothing hurts them.”
This time Ed spoke up for himself. “But I did hurt him—and I think I can do more than that. I think… maybe I can even kill them.”
“It’s true!” Noa confirmed fiercely, looking at the startled and skeptical faces around the table. “Edward knows more about vampires than we ever have. He knows what they really are, and where they come from—”
“Where they come from is straight outta hell,” Breda interrupted with a snarl.
That remark coaxed a bleak chuckle out of Ed. The sound drew all eyes to him, and he slowly rose from his seat.
“Hell?” he repeated quietly. “In a way… maybe you’re right.”
Until this point, his hands had rested in his lap, out of sight; but now his left hand reached up to unfasten his borrowed coat. He let it fall from his shoulders, exposing his automail arm and the scarred upper body that bore it, and raised a clenching steel fist beneath the astonished stares of the Hunters.
“Wh-what is that?” Fuery whimpered, jerking to his feet.
“It’s what happens when one of your vampires is created—in the place I come from.”
A tense silence gripped the room for a moment. Then Hughes reached out, slowly but with no evidence of fear, and closed his fingers around Ed’s automail wrist. Ed allowed him to turn it over, examining the prosthetic limb that was unlike anything known to this world.
“What are you?” Hughes asked him simply.
“I was human, before last night. I just come from a world that’s different from this one.”
Francesca let out a piercing squeal. “You see, I told you aliens were real!” she exclaimed, prompting a collective wince and sigh from the rest of the room—Edward included.
“It’s not really like that.” Ed eased his arm out of Hughes’ unconsciously white-knuckled grip. “But there’s a power in my world that you don’t have, and when it’s misused… sometimes a vampire is born. The problem is that nobody there even knows this world exists—much less that the things they’ve created are coming here to kill.”
Mustang rolled his eyes to one side. “The kid’s crazy.”
“No he isn’t!” Noa snapped, and turned to face Hughes with beseeching eyes. “You’ve always known you can trust me, Maes, so believe me now. The power Edward has—it’s hope for us. It’s what the Hunters have spent centuries searching for. If I wasn’t absolutely sure of that…”
She faltered into silence, her gaze falling to the palm of her left hand, and Hughes’ eyes suddenly darkened.
“Noa, what is it you’ve done?” His hands came to rest gently on her shoulders, but she flinched when their grip tightened. “Tell me you didn’t do this! Haven’t you learned anything from me?”
“Leave her alone!” Ed protested, and tried to bluff, even though he knew the effort was wasted. “She didn’t do anything… It was the vampire.”
Hughes gave Ed a hard, skeptical glance. Then he released Noa’s shoulders and took a deep breath, looking hard into the eyes of his favored disciple.
“Give me the truth.”
Noa’s face fell. She bowed her head with a desolate resignation, and reached up to unbutton the collar of her blouse.
Realizing instantly what the gesture meant, Ed reached for her arm. “Noa—”
Only a moment too late, her memories warned him of how badly Hughes would react to the hand of a stranger touching his foundling.
Ed never saw the fist that swung up at his jaw. He only felt a blow so powerful it almost blinded him, pitching him against the edge of the table. He instinctively braced his arms underneath him, making a feeble attempt to push himself upright; but in the moment when he was face-down, a broad hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pinning him there with his chin pressed to the tabletop.
Hughes leaned down over him, and Edward felt the sudden sharp pain of fangs sinking into the back of his left shoulder.
He had time enough for one instant of relatively coherent panic, his flesh and steel fingers clawing futilely at the polished wood surface of the table. Time enough to hear Noa shouting at Hughes to Stop, don’t do this, he isn’t like us…
Then his muscles fell slack with the first bright shock as he began to bleed, and he felt his memories pouring out of him.
It was the same as before, when Envy bit him. His entire life was flowing like water, all the pain and wonder and joy of it, and there was nothing he could do to make it stop. Some foolish part of him thought he could, and he struggled within his own mind against the onslaught—but that only made his head throb with pain. Still the pieces of his past fell without ceasing, childhood happiness fading into agonies of battle, dates and places merging in a dizzying jumble.
The day he became a State Alchemist. The day Mother died. Lior, Resembool, Central—
His psyche gave a violent burst of resistance, but it meant absolutely nothing, as the memory of his twelfth birthday welled up irresistibly from his veins. Nina. Alexander. Snow.
Major Maes Hughes of Amestris, smiling on the sidewalk.
Gracia, and the miracle of birth. Tiny Elicia, soft and warm as a breath.
The confetti of photographs her father left in his wake for the few remaining years of his life.
Abruptly the visions ceased, as Maes Hughes of the Hunters ripped himself away from the contact with something like a sob—and even in his stunned condition, Ed knew that cry of soul-shattering anguish would forever haunt him. It was the sound of something dying on the inside… or the sound of something terrible being born.
For a moment Ed could only sprawl limp and shivering against the table, feeling savagely violated and completely exhausted. Hughes probably hadn’t taken much blood, but its loss did nothing to help the raging ache in his skull, and his soul felt as raw as an open wound.
At last he dared to open his eyes, wincing at the gentle light in the room, and turned his head. Hughes had sunk into a chair hardly an arm’s length from him; he was shaking too, his face buried in his hands, and he might have been weeping. Francesca and Falman were bending over him in anxious concern. Most of the others remained standing or sitting where they had been, looking uncomfortable or interested, or merely bored by a process they must have witnessed or even experienced innumerable times before.
As for Noa, her arms were twisted behind her back in the restraining grip of Mustang and Havoc, and Ed could almost feel the tension pouring off of her. She was breathtakingly furious, and when the men finally let her jerk free of their grasp, it was not Hughes’ side she rushed to—but Ed’s.
“Easy…” She slipped a hand under his flesh arm to help him sag into a chair, and when she knelt down beside him, he could see the dampness brimming in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
She was sorry. It was in her eyes and expression and the entire attitude of her being. She had never intended this, and she was angry at herself as much as her mentor who committed the deed, even though she had clearly tried to intervene.
An almost imperceptible shrug hitched Ed’s shoulders, dismissing her guilt. He took a needless breath to see if that would help clear his head, but it only brought him the smells of Mustang’s dogs and Breda’s sweat—and the faint tang of his own blood. His stomach lurched, and with a grimace, he gave up the effort of breathing.
Her fury boiling over, Noa rounded on Hughes. “Maes—”
“We’re going to talk later.”
Even in her outrage, Noa was paralyzed by those words, and by the voice that delivered them. It was the most deathly tone Ed had ever heard, warning that the promised conversation would be very, very unpleasant… because now Hughes knew for a fact that Noa had broken the taboo of the Hunters, by turning Ed with her own blood.
Hughes slowly raised his head to stare at Ed. At that moment, his eyes were the color of the blood he had consumed, hollow and fever-bright. It chilled Ed to see those predator eyes in such a familiar face.
“That world you came from… My family is really alive there?”
“No. Not your family.” Ed set his jaw, trying to control the quiver of disgust and latent fear in his voice. “The family I knew belonged to the other Hughes—not you.”
“But that man…” Scarlet eyes widened as Hughes searched his stolen memories, apparently with a far greater speed and clarity than Ed himself was yet capable of. “He’s dead. He was killed by—Envy. The same creature that turned into the vampire you were attacked by.”
Ed let his head fall against the back of his chair. He was fatigued and hurting and deeply shaken, and he desperately didn’t want to be having this surreal conversation.
“Forget about it,” he muttered faintly. “Because… I plan on making Envy pay for that myself.”
The other Hunters were looking increasingly confused and uneasy—which was understandable, considering their leader was now talking in the same otherworldly terms as Ed. It was Falman who finally took it upon himself to try to shed some light on the discussion.
“Wait a minute. Maes, are you seriously saying all those things the kid was talking about are true?”
Hughes glanced at him, and nodded unsteadily. The red hue was fading from his eyes, but they still looked unhealthy.
“It’s all he said—and more. Vato, my… my family is there, in that world—”
“I told you that’s wrong!” Ed ground out.
“No. It isn’t. How could it be? I lost them, and they lost me… We need each other.” Hughes rose and lurchingly began to pace, like a caged cat. “And it—it can be done, can’t it? …You think it can.”
At those quick, halting words, Ed remembered his speculations about transmuting a homunculus-vampire to open the Gate, and his unbeating heart plummeted.
“No, Hughes! You can’t possibly think of… Don’t you realize you’d only hurt them?” He gathered his strained and aching nerves and leaned forward, fists clenching. “They’ve buried their dead and moved forward… and you’re not that man, no matter how much you want to be. You may look like him, but you’re not. How do you think they’d feel if they saw you this way—and if you do love them, how could you risk letting them become like you?”
But Hughes wasn’t listening. He was still pacing, rubbing his hands together, eyes glazed with feverish thought—and Ed knew he was thinking about alchemy, letting arrays and equations flood the scarred mind that was fracturing before their eyes.
“What we need… is Envy,” he murmured slowly.
Havoc frowned. “Chief?”
“The vampire! It’s the key to everything…” Hughes turned on his heel, seizing Havoc by the shoulders with a sudden manic excitement. “We have to capture it!”
“Are you kidding?” Mustang gasped. “Nobody’s ever taken a vampire captive, and the ones that’ve tried have—”
Hughes turned to his lowest subordinate with a look that made Mustang physically shrink back.
“They didn’t have alchemy,” he said, with an unholy eagerness.
“And you think you do?” Ed was clutching at straws now, but it didn’t matter. This was insanity, pure and literal madness, and he couldn’t let it unfold into tragedy for either of their worlds. “For all I know, and for all you know, I might have been the only person in this world who could use alchemy—and maybe I can’t even do it anymore, now that I have homunculus blood in me. And even if I could, I’ll never help you open the Gate.”
“Then let’s hope I don’t have to ask you.” Hughes spoke in something very close to that terrible, chilling tone again, studying Ed as a spider might inspect a fly trapped in its web. “But in case I do… Oh, don’t worry, Ed. We’re going to take good care of you.”
They were so like the words he had said only a short time before, when he was still a shadow of the kind man Ed had known.
Don’t worry, Edward… We’ll see you through this.
It was Ed himself who had corrupted Hughes, allowing his sanity to crumble under the influence of memories he should never have possessed. Ed had broken the mind of Noa’s cherished patron, endangering her and the other Hunters and perhaps even his own world, and the guilt of it made him want to be sick.
“Maes…” Noa said faintly, her voice trembling.
Hughes ignored her, turning to glance at his other followers around the table. “Roy, Vato—let’s make Ed comfortable.”
The Hunters looked back and forth between each other uncertainly. There was a long hesitation… and then Mustang and Falman obediently came forward. They took Ed by the arms, and when he felt the inhuman strength of Mustang’s grip at his left, he knew he was in no condition to even try fighting both of them.
As he was led from the room, his last glimpse of Noa was her bowed head as she wept.
© 2011 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 :: 8 :: 9 :: 10 :: 11 :: 12 :: 13 :: 14 :: Epilogue ::
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Date: 2011-04-10 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 12:35 am (UTC)Next chapter in a day or two, probably. :)
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Date: 2011-04-12 02:57 am (UTC)All mock anger aside, I love how you managed to include just about everybody from the main cast! Kudos!
Of course, being a Roy 'fangirl', my heart broke for him.... that is, until you introduced Riza a few scenes later. This tells me that there might be hope for him yet.
As for Maes... At this point all I can do is cringe in anticipation as to what's going to happen next. His heart's in the right place, but it's pretty clear whatever was left of his mind is now gone. I'm pretty scared for (and of) him at the moment.
By the way, I'm making "Night Castle" my personal Blood Ties soundtrack, with Epiphany (http://www.trans-siberian.com/lyrics_story/night_castle_lyrics-11.php) as the main theme. I can't listen to it now without getting reminders of the first three (now four) chapters.
Alright. On to chapter five! Whee!
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Date: 2011-04-12 03:18 am (UTC)I'm looking forward to hearing "Night Castle" when I get it from the library! I have a list of several songs I've associated with "Blood Ties" in the course of writing it, but they're in a very different vein.