Fullmetal Alchemist: Irony

[jordannamorgan]

Title: Irony
Author: jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for canon character death.
Characters: Tim Marcoh, and peripherally Lust and Gluttony.
Setting: First anime.
Summary: Doctor Marcoh considers the irony of his demise.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
Notes: Written for a horror-genre prompt at fma_fic_contest. (What can I say? Horror—specifically classic horror—is my native genre, so I simply couldn’t let the challenge go unanswered.)



Doctor Marcoh told the homunculi what they wanted to know.

Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps the life of the chambermaid those creatures held hostage was a small price to pay, compared to the lives they could obliterate in the forging of a Philosopher’s Stone. But Marcoh could not bear to die with one more innocent life on his conscience—and he knew he was going to die. He was bleeding out swiftly and profusely from his impaling wound, and even if the homunculi chose not to finish him directly, his medical knowledge told him any help would come too late.

For himself, it was a comeuppance long overdue. He could only hope his faith in Edward Elric’s cleverness and strong will was not misplaced.

So he gave the homunculus named Lust all the answers she wanted, and begged her to release the maid. An indulgent smile was her reply; and without looking over her shoulder, she gave the beast called Gluttony a dismissive wave of one hand.

The maid’s scream was mercifully short, lost in a sickening crunch as Gluttony’s jaws closed upon her skull.

Marcoh bellowed with horrified rage and struggled up from the floor, only to feel the white-hot pain of Lust’s living spears shooting through his chest and right thigh. Inescapably pinned, he was conscious of the very life within him fading as the outpouring of his blood quickened. All that was left to him was to weep with futile guilt and despair at the continued sounds of snapping bones and tearing flesh… and await his own turn.

Some part of his mind disconnected eventually, a numb lightheadedness setting in with the loss of blood. It was as if pain and fear and regret, now useless to him in his last moments, were the first parts of him to die—leaving only a dull throbbing warmth and an oddly detached clarity.

It was ironic, really.

Across the room, the hideous smacking and crunching ceased, as Gluttony wistfully abandoned the remaining bloodstains of his first course. Then the fat homunculus looked beseechingly at Lust; and at her nod of permission, he began crawling toward Marcoh. His toothy, salivating jaws opened impossibly wide, the small eyes above that enormous maw glittering with anticipation.

A faint, bitter laugh rattled in Marcoh’s blood-choked lungs. Yes. Terribly ironic.

Tim Marcoh himself possessed a great love of food—a fact increasingly evidenced by his waistline as he grew older. For all his understanding of proper diet, he had a weakness for overindulgence. His long experience as a gourmand had even inspired him to design his alchemic code in the language of the kitchen.

He had disguised the ultimate secret of alchemy as a cookbook… and now, his life would end in the belly of a monster alchemy had created.

---

© 2011 Jordanna Morgan