#making an oc then making a self insert is insane levels of pathetic its actually so fucking embarassing

[fraternum-momentum]

fucking kill me

[bluebookbadger-blog]

The Price of a Life - Introduction

Title: The Price of a Life Fandom (s): Fullmetal Alchemist/Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Summary: I always thought waking up in another world would be a lot more...interesting. At least slightly exciting and terrifying, but it really wasn't. It was more of a sudden and underwhelming event, that landed me in the company of fiction and its ignorance to modern physics. I thought it was a dream. Boy was I wrong.  Characters: SI/OC, Maes Hughes, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, etc.  Rating: PG-13

To begin, I had never, ever wished to be 'inside' some fantasy world. Yes, the idea was cool and all; fighting evil, meeting your favorite characters, changing parts of the story you disagreed with, that portion of the trip would be cool. But, it just wasn't me. I was more of the 'stay at home and imagine someone else doing that kind of heroic stuff' kind of girl. I was not good at making high pressure decisions, like, plot changing world destroying/saving choices.

It was about a year or two ago, (you see time isn't as coherent as it used to be for me), when all of this insane mess turned my life upside down in the blink of an eye. It was the same as any other day, only deviating in my late arrival at school due to a power outage that caused my alarm not to go off. I came home, browsed the internet, ate, did homework, the usual. Nothing was out of place.

One minute I was in bed, relaxing and getting ready to fall asleep, and the next I was in a white void. No explanation, no magical poof or alchemic lightning raining down around me like holy fire, just a blank white world.

Which really made it disconcerting to wake up in some strange place with only my pajamas and Lucha on my back. Lucha was my ferret, nothing special, just a little whitish domestic ferret with two greenish eyes. Anyways, he was there too, just sleeping between my shoulder blades as he always did whenever he got the chance.

What was really offsetting was the sound. Just quiet nothingness. And Lucha snoring of course, but that stopped with a snort when I sat up, causing him to slump dejectedly and lazily to the ground. He was so pathetic and yet so cute. I sat there for a while, you know, just trying to see if this was a vivid dream I had become lucid in, as such a situation happened more often than I liked.

Besides, I was tired and it was kind of cold to be wearing only a nightgown. Lucha made his way to my lap and begged for attention, apparently not in the least bit fazed by the new setting. Stupid lucky bastard, blissfully unaware of how scary it was to be in that situation. Yes it was scary, I considered myself a young adult and this place was damn near the scariest thing I had ever experienced.

Just really unsettling, the whole place. Too cold, too quiet, too empty. And considering I wasn't able to push my thumb through my hand or change the setting, this was either an incredibly deep REM sleep where being aware of the dream and not being able to change it was part of the dream, or something real was happening.

"Oh, you haven't paid to come here? I'll just have to fix that won't I." The voices, well, it was spoken together so really more of a single voice, came from behind me. Lucha just nudged my hands impatiently, waiting for me to get him a treat as I always did when I woke him up in the morning. The source of the voices sat crouched at my level, not all that far away from me.

It was really damn creepy, all white, like the backdrop but shadows cast from its three dimensional form proved it was a physical entity. It smiled as it inched towards me, not walking but kind of sliding the ground below it. Freaky.

I hadn't seen the show in almost a year, as in rewatching a fourth time, but I never imagined Truth to have such a….benevolent feeling to it. It wasn't that overpowering terrifying feeling you'd expect from a being that's all knowing, more of like having a smart little kid approach you with the intent of entering a 'grown-up' conversation. The person outstretched their hand so that I could see its pale fingertips reaching for my face.

"H-hey!" I scrambled backwards, Truth watching as I shuffled awkwardly away and stood up. Lucha whined when I accidentally stepped on his tail, but then proceeded to shimmy up my legs and settle on my chest. Stupid ferret. I love him to bits though. "I d-didn't try to come here - I don't even know how to do alchemy, n-no one does."

I didn't know why I was stuttering until I realized my retainer was still in my mouth. Kind of disgusting, but I couldn't take it out in front of the Truth, it'd just be….weird. Speaking of the formless freak, it was now standing, probably about my height, which wasn't surprising considering it is 'all and one' and those other lines it throws around when describing itself. It cocked its head to the side, seeming to look me up and down. Which was strange since it had no visible eyes.

"Hm, that's true. Who sent you then?" The voices asked. Creepy as hell man, I could swear I heard my grandmother or some else who had died whenever Truth spoke. Which both made the Truth terrifying, and goofy. Like, imagine your grandmother having this conversation with you. It was just weird.

"Nobody brought me here, jus-st woke up here…" I hated the way my sentences trailed off, and I probably should have taken my retainer out to talk with the thing that is a self described god. It frowned, the being's smile looking as if it had been outlined in mascara and its teeth etched on with face paint. It was kind of silly looking.

And it could probably read my thoughts, but that was the least of my problems. The realization of where I actually was and the reality of it all was underwhelming. You'd expect to feel 'Oh, how terrifying! I've been jerking from my world and have to spend an indeterminate time in another!' but it was kind of disappointingly disenchanting. It obviously had to be a dream.

"Hm," Truth hummed, sitting down and scratching its bald head. "Then I don't know what to do with you," Lucha squeaked at me, growing impatient for his breakfast, "You two that is." I sat back down and played with Lucha for a while simply thinking over what I'd eat for breakfast once I woke up.

"I know!" Truth said, clapping its hands together excitedly. Seriously, it was like a little kid playing an all knowing creature. "I'll send you back if you pay me something smaller than what I usually charge. You know, something that won't kill you or make you bleed out." I glanced up at the being, not amused.

"Here," I said, holding out Lucha. He was so mellow once you scratched his belly or held him up by the nape of his neck. Literally a living slinky. "Will he do?" Of course, I still thought this was all a dream, so trading a dream ferret to wake up wasn't the hardest thing to do. Besides, Lucha was an asshole when he remembered that he was hungry.

Truth 'looked' from the fat puffball and then back to me before tentatively taking the limp ferret from my hands. Holding Lucha to its face, Truth was quiet for a moment.

"What's the matter?" Truth shuddered and shook its head at the question.

"Ugh, it doesn't feel right. The animal is too high of a price to send you back. Do you have anything else?" I was only wearing slippers with their inserts and my glasses, which was odd considering I thought I had taken those off when I went to bed, and my white polka dotted grey nightgown. The front pocket only had an old 'Mango Sunrise' chap stick. Truth shook its head and held Lucha farther away from its body. "No, no, no. This isn't working."

"You could always take my appendix or something useless like that." I suggested. This only made Truth shift uncomfortably.

"Internal bleeding. Unless you live near a hospital, you'll probably die." I sighed, reaching for Lucha. Truth was starting to look like an evil mastermind now that it was nervously stroking the ferret's thick white-grey fur. "Oh, this could work." It said suddenly.

For one moment, complete innocence enveloped me, and a wave of primordial fear gripped me the next minute as I turned to the see the infamous doors appear behind me. They were actually beautiful, the carvings very intricate.

"You're lucky girl, I can't posses a creature with a soul." These were the last words I heard the being speak to me as the doors creaked open, the mass of black hands twitching as they came towards me.

Though I was afraid, I could just imagine my pillow in my arms right now, me in my bed, safe and sound. However, the second one of those hands laid a finger on me, it was horror. I screamed more than I should have, and struggled more than I should have too as the hands pulled me into that black abyss.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, worried I might wake up with temporary sleep paralysis, which could be far more terrifying than the nightmare itself. I began to feel exhausted from struggling against the hands as they tried to pry my eyes open to see the Truth, I eventually peering over my glasses to see the blurry, spiraling helix of light before everything faded to black.

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Fullmetal Alchemist series; this includes the manga, the 2003 version and complementary movie, or Brotherhood reboot. Please look at the amazing fanfictions "VERITAS-VOS-LIBERABIT" by Anthem of the Lonely and "Through the Void" by TheAlleyCat18, as both inspired this fanfiction. All I own are the OCs and minor added plot details. This fanfiction has also been posted by my personal fanfiction.net account here.

Warnings: Violence, genderless palm trees, gore, puns, death, dad jokes, foul language, theoretical physics, spoilers to the Brotherhood series, theology lessons, occasional updates, individuals lacking melanin, and misunderstood references.

Masterlist