Fullmetal Alchemist: Chasm (4/4)
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prose_alchemistTitle: Chasm (4/4)
Author:jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG for fantasy violence and desperate situations.
Characters: Hughes, Alphonse, Edward, Mustang, Scar.
Setting: First anime. These events take place sometime after my story “Roughing It”, in which Hughes learned the truth about the Elrics’ past. In terms of where it fits within canon events, I leave that up to the reader.
Summary: During a manhunt for Scar, Hughes and Alphonse become trapped and endangered, leading Al to make a grave request.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
“It’s all my fault…”
With a sigh, Roy Mustang looked at Edward across the back of the military truck they were riding in. The boy was hunched deep in the depths of his scarlet coat, his arms folded tightly over his chest, his face pale beneath his wind-whipped fringe of bangs. His whispered words were a refrain he had been repeating every few moments since the truck caught up to him. Nearly mindless with panic at the thought that his brother was hurt, he would have run all the way to Hughes’ section of the search grid if Mustang hadn’t hauled him into the vehicle.
“Ed, try to calm down—”
“It’s my fault!” the teenager exploded, glaring at Mustang through amber eyes that glistened just a little too much to be intimidating. “I was the one who suggested Al should go with Hughes. I never should have let him out of my sight!”
“You had no way of knowing if their group would be the one to find Scar—and we still don’t know if that was the case,” Mustang said firmly.
“Why else wouldn’t they have met back up with us?”
Ed’s voice wavered, just a little, as he asked that question. It was not a retort, but a plea. He sincerely and desperately wanted an answer to that question… and Mustang had none to give him.
“I don’t know. But imagining the worst isn’t going to help anyone. We’ll be in the area in just a few more minutes—so hold yourself together until we have a chance to find out what’s really happened.” The Colonel forced his tone to harden. “That’s an order, Fullmetal.”
Silence. A brief, bitter stare, and then Ed slumped back, looking away from Mustang’s face.
“It’s my fault.”
Sometimes Mustang wondered why he tried.
It was moments like these that made him feel he would happily bear Ed’s most scathing insults all day long. That was the Ed he knew how to deal with: the Ed who was sure of himself, of his own ability to resolve any problem, and was simply annoyed with the rest of the world for not behaving according to his plans. Childish, in his own way, but not… childlike.
No, the attitudes and the tantrums caused Mustang no pain. It was seeing Ed like this that caused an unfamiliar hurt somewhere inside him.
That boy who was driven by love and guilt, who shouldered such heavy burdens without complaint, could be the strongest person Mustang had ever known. He was utterly fearless of any danger to his own life; but when his love was twisted into fear for his brother, for the one thing that anchored him, cracks would appear in the grim maturity that had been forced on him at far too early an age. It was a jarring reminder of just how young—how innocent—he really was.
“…It isn’t your fault, Ed. It’s mine.”
Ed looked up warily.
“I never should have allowed you and Al to come with me,” Mustang continued brusquely. “It was already pretty obvious that it’d take half an army to bring Scar down—so there was no excuse for my letting two boys get into the middle of it. I should sooner have put both of you under lock and key than let you tag along.”
For several seconds, Fullmetal said nothing. Once again he turned his face away slightly, but this time his shadowed gold eyes still studied the Colonel from underneath his hair.
“I’d like to have seen you try,” he murmured, after a long moment.
In spite of himself, Mustang smiled.
The water was lapping at the exposed portion of Al’s chestplate.
Time was running out. If the water rose another two inches, it would begin to trickle over the rim of his neck opening, and collect rapidly within the hollowness of his prone torso. After that, it would only be a matter of a few minutes before it broached his blood seal.
Maes’ cautious efforts to free Al’s arm were making some progress, but the pace was torturously slow. After digging eight inches deep into the mound of debris-filled earth, he had fully uncovered Al’s shoulder, and proceeded to work his way down from there: scraping away soil a little at a time, holding his breath every time he pried out a stone. The smallest handful of dirt, if removed in the wrong place, might cause the rock slab above Al to shift and slide downward—pushing him into the water under its weight.
By this point, with Al’s rerebrace half-uncovered, Maes suspected the boy could have pulled his arm free by his own strength; yet because of the danger of that slab, he couldn’t move. He could only wait as Maes wore away the soil gradually, feeling for pressure points, ensuring that enough support remained to hold the slab up.
A few inches above Al’s elbow, Maes found a large chunk of stone. It was wedged firmly against Al’s rerebrace. He let out a thoughtful hiss, gingerly digging deeper into the soil around it with his fingertips, seeking out its buried edges to determine its size.
“What is it?” Al asked faintly.
“There’s a piece of rock jammed against your arm.” Maes probed the upper corner of the stone, and grimaced. “I think it’s taking some of the weight of that slab up there. I can’t pull it out without bringing the whole pile down on you… but maybe, if I can shift it just a little, it’ll help support the slab while I free the rest of your arm.” He bent down a little farther, meeting Al’s gaze. “Do you want to take the risk?”
Al’s helmet tilted downward, staring at the water that was now so close to reaching his metal chin. “We don’t have any choice.”
“Okay, then. Just keep still.” The Major forced a confident smile. “In a few minutes, we’ll have your arm loose, and you can use alchemy to get yourself out of there.”
There was no time for Maes to gather his nerves. He took a deep breath, braced his feet as best he could against the silt on the submerged floor of the pit, and carefully slipped both forearms into the hole alongside Al’s shoulder. His fingers wrapped around the exposed front of the stone, and he pressed on it very gently, trying to push it away from Al’s arm without upsetting the balance of the rock slab above.
The stone shifted a fraction of an inch. Dirt sprinkled down onto Maes’ hands, but the slab held fast. Emboldened, he adjusted his grip on the stone, and began easing it a little more to the side. Only a few inches would be enough to move it out of the way of Al’s arm…
A muffled crunch shuddered through the earthen heap, just above Maes’ head, and the entire debris mound suddenly lurched.
What happened after that took only the blink of an eye.
Instinctively Maes jerked backward as soil and rock bulged toward him, and the hole he had dug around Al’s shoulder collapsed in upon itself. The slab tilted, sagged, and settled deeper, its front edge dropping closer to the water. Its weight bore down more heavily upon everything that was beneath it, further compressing the mound.
Alphonse let out a small, startled cry as his armor was jolted downward by the shifting weight above him—a movement that was more than two inches. His helmet tumbled off, sinking into the water, and there was a sickening slosh as water poured over the rim of his chestplate.
“Al!” Maes shouted, slipping to his knees in the water as he grasped the rim of Al’s neck opening. He bent his head down almost to the water’s surface, to look with horror into the dark recesses within the armor.
He could see the dim glint of a ripple, still a hand’s breadth below the inner surface of Al’s backplate, and the precious blood seal it bore.
“I-I’m okay.” Al’s trembling voice was almost inaudible. “It didn’t touch my blood seal yet…”
What followed the yet went unspoken. The boy didn’t need Maes to tell him how close the water was, how little time he had. It would take only a few minutes for the water to rise and fill his armor completely, washing against the seal; and with the slab settled even more firmly on top of him, there was no longer any chance that Maes could free his hand for alchemy.
“I’m sorry, Al,” Maes breathed, as hot dampness stung his eyes. He leaned his head against the edge of Al’s backplate, helplessly caressing the steel.
“It’s not your fault, sir,” Al whispered.
Blinking through the tears, Maes looked at the earth that was packed around Al’s armor, already hardening slowly into mud as water seeped up into it. There was nothing in the world he could do about it now. In a few more minutes—unless a miracle literally came from above—he was going to watch Al die.
“…I want to ask you one more thing, Mr. Hughes.”
Maes swallowed hard, drawing back slightly. Without the helmet, Al didn’t even have a semblance of a face to look into, but Maes stared into the shadowed hollowness between his shoulders and hoped he was meeting Al’s gaze.
“Anything, Al.”
The boy hesitated. The water lapped a quarter-inch higher before he spoke.
“When the water reaches my blood seal. If it… if it hurts…”
Al’s voice trembled for only a moment. Then he purposefully hardened it, and spoke with a perfect, chilling steadiness.
“I want you to break the seal—so it will be quick.”
A violent spasm of nausea clutched at Maes’ stomach, and for a brief moment, he felt as if he would vomit.
This last request was beyond anything he could have anticipated. Al was asking for nothing less than a mercy killing, to hasten the inevitable. For a man who cherished children as deeply as Maes did, nothing could possibly be more unthinkable than to deliberately end a child’s life with his own hands…
Except perhaps, for the thought of watching that child suffer pain that could be spared.
“Al…”
“Please.” The frightened quiver came back into Al’s voice. “It’ll be okay if I die. I’ll be with Mom, and I know you’ll take care of Ed. But I… I’m scared of how it will feel, if the water takes time to wash the seal away. I know how awful it is to ask you, but just… please don’t let it hurt.”
There was nothing Maes could say to that. Committing such a deed was against everything in a loving father’s being… but he realized it was the one thing left that he could do for Al, if in dying the boy should feel pain one last time.
“I promise,” he replied softly, resting his forehead against the exposed portion of Al’s cold armor. It was the closest thing he could offer to an embrace; and in response to that feeble gesture of comfort, he felt the barely-perceptible tremors in the steel grow still.
“Thank you, sir.”
There was silence between them for a long moment. The rising water was cold, but Maes remained kneeling in it, submerged to his chest as he hugged close against Al. He was shivering badly, both from anguished emotions and from the hypothermia he knew was setting in. Very soon, if no help came, he would be in no small danger himself—but that was the last thing he was thinking of now.
“Tell Ed… I’m sorry,” Al whispered at length.
Maes didn’t respond to that, didn’t bother to repeat that Al had nothing to apologize for. He had no words left. He could only accept whatever Al wished to spill from his intangible heart, in what now seemed sure to be his final moments of life.
Opening his closed eyes, Maes turned his head and gauged the water’s rise against the edge of Al’s neck opening. Then he leaned down a bit more, dipping his left shoulder beneath the water, to look inside the armor again. The gap between the rippling surface and the inner curve of Al’s backplate had shrunk to scarcely an inch.
Would there truly be pain, when the water lapped at the seal and began to dissolve it? Drawn with blood and imbued with Al’s soul, it was the one part of his physical shell that was once organically alive. He had always seemed to be aware of the slightest accidental touch against it. Did it possess a sensitivity that the rest of his inert steel did not?
More than that—it was Ed’s blood. Would he feel it when that fragile link was broken?
If he did… Maes could only pray that when it happened, Roy would be there, and be able to handle Ed.
Time was running out. Moving slowly and with great care so as not to cause ripples, Maes reached his uninjured left arm into the armor, all the way to his shoulder. However it was that Al’s sense of sight worked, he imagined he was probably obstructing the boy’s view of the pit around them, but it couldn’t be helped now. If the water did cause Al pain, Maes wanted to be ready to act, to reach up to the seal and end it as quickly as he could.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, stroking the edge of Al’s neck opening with his right hand. The words were a lie, but he needed to say them anyway—as much for himself as for Alphonse. “It’s gonna be okay…”
His left hand reached up inside Al’s armor until he touched the inner surface of the backplate, just below the fast-rising waterline. He knew the blood seal was a mere few inches to the right of his fingers. Locating it blindly might be a clumsy effort, but there was no way he could reach far enough inside without blocking out the faint light that still filtered down into the pit.
Ruthless yet perversely gentle, the water lapped higher, until only the smallest sliver of open air remained beneath the seal. The armor trembled, just once, against Maes’ touch… but Alphonse made no sound.
Maes’ hand moved numbly. His wet fingertips slid across dry metal, creeping an inch closer to the anchoring point of Al’s soul.
“AL!”
The piercing cry caused Maes to jerk his hand back from the steel as if it had been electrified. He looked up to see a frantic blur of crimson and black above him, hurtling down from the edge of the pit.
A sharp clap resounded in the air; and then the blur was Edward, crouching on top of the debris pile, his fingers clenched into the loose earth. Arcs of blue-white light rained down from the young alchemist’s hands, sending transmutation energy surging through the mound and into the floor of the pit below… and this time, Maes felt the ground beneath him heave upward.
In the swift confusion that followed, Maes grasped only fragments of what was happening. Himself, Alphonse, Edward, and the entire debris mound rocketing skyward, perched atop a huge shaft of morphing earth. Mud and rock shifting and falling away around Al, permitting water to pour out through the newly-uncovered gaps in the joints of his armor. An abrupt halt to the sick-making motion, as the animated earthen arm thudded down onto level ground beyond the pit—still cradling its passengers in the palm of a rudimentary hand.
Somehow, Maes fell backward; but he wasn’t sure if that was due to a loss of balance in the violent stop, or to the sudden, stunned collapse of all his strength, both emotionally and physically.
Another second… another inch…
For a long moment, he wasn’t sure if his heart was going to start beating again.
In any case, he hadn’t far to go anymore. He found himself sprawled on his back between the fingers of the now inert hand-shape, staring at what was left of the debris mound. The rock slab had disappeared at some point, jolted loose to crash back down into the pit during the course of that wild ride. Only a thin crust of earth still lay over Al’s back.
Edward leaped down from the top of the crumbling heap in which his brother was mired. He fell to his knees, gloved hands clutching anxiously at Al’s steel that was now much more exposed. His too-young voice was choked with fear as he uttered an urgent query Maes couldn’t quite decipher.
Maes wanted desperately to hear the answer… if there was an answer… but his shocked and exhausted body would wait no longer.
He thought he heard Roy Mustang’s voice as he sank into blackness.
© 2013 Jordanna Morgan
CHAPTERS: I. - II. - III. - IV. - Epilogue
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG for fantasy violence and desperate situations.
Characters: Hughes, Alphonse, Edward, Mustang, Scar.
Setting: First anime. These events take place sometime after my story “Roughing It”, in which Hughes learned the truth about the Elrics’ past. In terms of where it fits within canon events, I leave that up to the reader.
Summary: During a manhunt for Scar, Hughes and Alphonse become trapped and endangered, leading Al to make a grave request.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
“It’s all my fault…”
With a sigh, Roy Mustang looked at Edward across the back of the military truck they were riding in. The boy was hunched deep in the depths of his scarlet coat, his arms folded tightly over his chest, his face pale beneath his wind-whipped fringe of bangs. His whispered words were a refrain he had been repeating every few moments since the truck caught up to him. Nearly mindless with panic at the thought that his brother was hurt, he would have run all the way to Hughes’ section of the search grid if Mustang hadn’t hauled him into the vehicle.
“Ed, try to calm down—”
“It’s my fault!” the teenager exploded, glaring at Mustang through amber eyes that glistened just a little too much to be intimidating. “I was the one who suggested Al should go with Hughes. I never should have let him out of my sight!”
“You had no way of knowing if their group would be the one to find Scar—and we still don’t know if that was the case,” Mustang said firmly.
“Why else wouldn’t they have met back up with us?”
Ed’s voice wavered, just a little, as he asked that question. It was not a retort, but a plea. He sincerely and desperately wanted an answer to that question… and Mustang had none to give him.
“I don’t know. But imagining the worst isn’t going to help anyone. We’ll be in the area in just a few more minutes—so hold yourself together until we have a chance to find out what’s really happened.” The Colonel forced his tone to harden. “That’s an order, Fullmetal.”
Silence. A brief, bitter stare, and then Ed slumped back, looking away from Mustang’s face.
“It’s my fault.”
Sometimes Mustang wondered why he tried.
It was moments like these that made him feel he would happily bear Ed’s most scathing insults all day long. That was the Ed he knew how to deal with: the Ed who was sure of himself, of his own ability to resolve any problem, and was simply annoyed with the rest of the world for not behaving according to his plans. Childish, in his own way, but not… childlike.
No, the attitudes and the tantrums caused Mustang no pain. It was seeing Ed like this that caused an unfamiliar hurt somewhere inside him.
That boy who was driven by love and guilt, who shouldered such heavy burdens without complaint, could be the strongest person Mustang had ever known. He was utterly fearless of any danger to his own life; but when his love was twisted into fear for his brother, for the one thing that anchored him, cracks would appear in the grim maturity that had been forced on him at far too early an age. It was a jarring reminder of just how young—how innocent—he really was.
“…It isn’t your fault, Ed. It’s mine.”
Ed looked up warily.
“I never should have allowed you and Al to come with me,” Mustang continued brusquely. “It was already pretty obvious that it’d take half an army to bring Scar down—so there was no excuse for my letting two boys get into the middle of it. I should sooner have put both of you under lock and key than let you tag along.”
For several seconds, Fullmetal said nothing. Once again he turned his face away slightly, but this time his shadowed gold eyes still studied the Colonel from underneath his hair.
“I’d like to have seen you try,” he murmured, after a long moment.
In spite of himself, Mustang smiled.
The water was lapping at the exposed portion of Al’s chestplate.
Time was running out. If the water rose another two inches, it would begin to trickle over the rim of his neck opening, and collect rapidly within the hollowness of his prone torso. After that, it would only be a matter of a few minutes before it broached his blood seal.
Maes’ cautious efforts to free Al’s arm were making some progress, but the pace was torturously slow. After digging eight inches deep into the mound of debris-filled earth, he had fully uncovered Al’s shoulder, and proceeded to work his way down from there: scraping away soil a little at a time, holding his breath every time he pried out a stone. The smallest handful of dirt, if removed in the wrong place, might cause the rock slab above Al to shift and slide downward—pushing him into the water under its weight.
By this point, with Al’s rerebrace half-uncovered, Maes suspected the boy could have pulled his arm free by his own strength; yet because of the danger of that slab, he couldn’t move. He could only wait as Maes wore away the soil gradually, feeling for pressure points, ensuring that enough support remained to hold the slab up.
A few inches above Al’s elbow, Maes found a large chunk of stone. It was wedged firmly against Al’s rerebrace. He let out a thoughtful hiss, gingerly digging deeper into the soil around it with his fingertips, seeking out its buried edges to determine its size.
“What is it?” Al asked faintly.
“There’s a piece of rock jammed against your arm.” Maes probed the upper corner of the stone, and grimaced. “I think it’s taking some of the weight of that slab up there. I can’t pull it out without bringing the whole pile down on you… but maybe, if I can shift it just a little, it’ll help support the slab while I free the rest of your arm.” He bent down a little farther, meeting Al’s gaze. “Do you want to take the risk?”
Al’s helmet tilted downward, staring at the water that was now so close to reaching his metal chin. “We don’t have any choice.”
“Okay, then. Just keep still.” The Major forced a confident smile. “In a few minutes, we’ll have your arm loose, and you can use alchemy to get yourself out of there.”
There was no time for Maes to gather his nerves. He took a deep breath, braced his feet as best he could against the silt on the submerged floor of the pit, and carefully slipped both forearms into the hole alongside Al’s shoulder. His fingers wrapped around the exposed front of the stone, and he pressed on it very gently, trying to push it away from Al’s arm without upsetting the balance of the rock slab above.
The stone shifted a fraction of an inch. Dirt sprinkled down onto Maes’ hands, but the slab held fast. Emboldened, he adjusted his grip on the stone, and began easing it a little more to the side. Only a few inches would be enough to move it out of the way of Al’s arm…
A muffled crunch shuddered through the earthen heap, just above Maes’ head, and the entire debris mound suddenly lurched.
What happened after that took only the blink of an eye.
Instinctively Maes jerked backward as soil and rock bulged toward him, and the hole he had dug around Al’s shoulder collapsed in upon itself. The slab tilted, sagged, and settled deeper, its front edge dropping closer to the water. Its weight bore down more heavily upon everything that was beneath it, further compressing the mound.
Alphonse let out a small, startled cry as his armor was jolted downward by the shifting weight above him—a movement that was more than two inches. His helmet tumbled off, sinking into the water, and there was a sickening slosh as water poured over the rim of his chestplate.
“Al!” Maes shouted, slipping to his knees in the water as he grasped the rim of Al’s neck opening. He bent his head down almost to the water’s surface, to look with horror into the dark recesses within the armor.
He could see the dim glint of a ripple, still a hand’s breadth below the inner surface of Al’s backplate, and the precious blood seal it bore.
“I-I’m okay.” Al’s trembling voice was almost inaudible. “It didn’t touch my blood seal yet…”
What followed the yet went unspoken. The boy didn’t need Maes to tell him how close the water was, how little time he had. It would take only a few minutes for the water to rise and fill his armor completely, washing against the seal; and with the slab settled even more firmly on top of him, there was no longer any chance that Maes could free his hand for alchemy.
“I’m sorry, Al,” Maes breathed, as hot dampness stung his eyes. He leaned his head against the edge of Al’s backplate, helplessly caressing the steel.
“It’s not your fault, sir,” Al whispered.
Blinking through the tears, Maes looked at the earth that was packed around Al’s armor, already hardening slowly into mud as water seeped up into it. There was nothing in the world he could do about it now. In a few more minutes—unless a miracle literally came from above—he was going to watch Al die.
“…I want to ask you one more thing, Mr. Hughes.”
Maes swallowed hard, drawing back slightly. Without the helmet, Al didn’t even have a semblance of a face to look into, but Maes stared into the shadowed hollowness between his shoulders and hoped he was meeting Al’s gaze.
“Anything, Al.”
The boy hesitated. The water lapped a quarter-inch higher before he spoke.
“When the water reaches my blood seal. If it… if it hurts…”
Al’s voice trembled for only a moment. Then he purposefully hardened it, and spoke with a perfect, chilling steadiness.
“I want you to break the seal—so it will be quick.”
A violent spasm of nausea clutched at Maes’ stomach, and for a brief moment, he felt as if he would vomit.
This last request was beyond anything he could have anticipated. Al was asking for nothing less than a mercy killing, to hasten the inevitable. For a man who cherished children as deeply as Maes did, nothing could possibly be more unthinkable than to deliberately end a child’s life with his own hands…
Except perhaps, for the thought of watching that child suffer pain that could be spared.
“Al…”
“Please.” The frightened quiver came back into Al’s voice. “It’ll be okay if I die. I’ll be with Mom, and I know you’ll take care of Ed. But I… I’m scared of how it will feel, if the water takes time to wash the seal away. I know how awful it is to ask you, but just… please don’t let it hurt.”
There was nothing Maes could say to that. Committing such a deed was against everything in a loving father’s being… but he realized it was the one thing left that he could do for Al, if in dying the boy should feel pain one last time.
“I promise,” he replied softly, resting his forehead against the exposed portion of Al’s cold armor. It was the closest thing he could offer to an embrace; and in response to that feeble gesture of comfort, he felt the barely-perceptible tremors in the steel grow still.
“Thank you, sir.”
There was silence between them for a long moment. The rising water was cold, but Maes remained kneeling in it, submerged to his chest as he hugged close against Al. He was shivering badly, both from anguished emotions and from the hypothermia he knew was setting in. Very soon, if no help came, he would be in no small danger himself—but that was the last thing he was thinking of now.
“Tell Ed… I’m sorry,” Al whispered at length.
Maes didn’t respond to that, didn’t bother to repeat that Al had nothing to apologize for. He had no words left. He could only accept whatever Al wished to spill from his intangible heart, in what now seemed sure to be his final moments of life.
Opening his closed eyes, Maes turned his head and gauged the water’s rise against the edge of Al’s neck opening. Then he leaned down a bit more, dipping his left shoulder beneath the water, to look inside the armor again. The gap between the rippling surface and the inner curve of Al’s backplate had shrunk to scarcely an inch.
Would there truly be pain, when the water lapped at the seal and began to dissolve it? Drawn with blood and imbued with Al’s soul, it was the one part of his physical shell that was once organically alive. He had always seemed to be aware of the slightest accidental touch against it. Did it possess a sensitivity that the rest of his inert steel did not?
More than that—it was Ed’s blood. Would he feel it when that fragile link was broken?
If he did… Maes could only pray that when it happened, Roy would be there, and be able to handle Ed.
Time was running out. Moving slowly and with great care so as not to cause ripples, Maes reached his uninjured left arm into the armor, all the way to his shoulder. However it was that Al’s sense of sight worked, he imagined he was probably obstructing the boy’s view of the pit around them, but it couldn’t be helped now. If the water did cause Al pain, Maes wanted to be ready to act, to reach up to the seal and end it as quickly as he could.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, stroking the edge of Al’s neck opening with his right hand. The words were a lie, but he needed to say them anyway—as much for himself as for Alphonse. “It’s gonna be okay…”
His left hand reached up inside Al’s armor until he touched the inner surface of the backplate, just below the fast-rising waterline. He knew the blood seal was a mere few inches to the right of his fingers. Locating it blindly might be a clumsy effort, but there was no way he could reach far enough inside without blocking out the faint light that still filtered down into the pit.
Ruthless yet perversely gentle, the water lapped higher, until only the smallest sliver of open air remained beneath the seal. The armor trembled, just once, against Maes’ touch… but Alphonse made no sound.
Maes’ hand moved numbly. His wet fingertips slid across dry metal, creeping an inch closer to the anchoring point of Al’s soul.
“AL!”
The piercing cry caused Maes to jerk his hand back from the steel as if it had been electrified. He looked up to see a frantic blur of crimson and black above him, hurtling down from the edge of the pit.
A sharp clap resounded in the air; and then the blur was Edward, crouching on top of the debris pile, his fingers clenched into the loose earth. Arcs of blue-white light rained down from the young alchemist’s hands, sending transmutation energy surging through the mound and into the floor of the pit below… and this time, Maes felt the ground beneath him heave upward.
In the swift confusion that followed, Maes grasped only fragments of what was happening. Himself, Alphonse, Edward, and the entire debris mound rocketing skyward, perched atop a huge shaft of morphing earth. Mud and rock shifting and falling away around Al, permitting water to pour out through the newly-uncovered gaps in the joints of his armor. An abrupt halt to the sick-making motion, as the animated earthen arm thudded down onto level ground beyond the pit—still cradling its passengers in the palm of a rudimentary hand.
Somehow, Maes fell backward; but he wasn’t sure if that was due to a loss of balance in the violent stop, or to the sudden, stunned collapse of all his strength, both emotionally and physically.
Another second… another inch…
For a long moment, he wasn’t sure if his heart was going to start beating again.
In any case, he hadn’t far to go anymore. He found himself sprawled on his back between the fingers of the now inert hand-shape, staring at what was left of the debris mound. The rock slab had disappeared at some point, jolted loose to crash back down into the pit during the course of that wild ride. Only a thin crust of earth still lay over Al’s back.
Edward leaped down from the top of the crumbling heap in which his brother was mired. He fell to his knees, gloved hands clutching anxiously at Al’s steel that was now much more exposed. His too-young voice was choked with fear as he uttered an urgent query Maes couldn’t quite decipher.
Maes wanted desperately to hear the answer… if there was an answer… but his shocked and exhausted body would wait no longer.
He thought he heard Roy Mustang’s voice as he sank into blackness.
© 2013 Jordanna Morgan