#skjfhdkjsf real talk

[egoiistas]

at the center of the world

|tag || ao3 ||  ffn 

Amestris becomes a harrowingly silent place on the afternoon of the Promised Day and only the survivors at the center are left to tread over it. Within a few hours, they won’t be the only ones wandering. 

10.6 edit: @thenerdyalchemist‘s wonderful art!

Rated: M. it’s a horror/zombie au fic. - or it tries to be warnings: this chapter has major character deaths, blood, violence, ptsd.

Chapter 1/11

May

If she concentrated she could sense the distortion. The natural ebb and flow of the world warped or razed, carried off by a torrential flood. It was worse than the aberrant crawling underfoot. It was unholy to the religious man. She wasn’t sure she wanted to feel the absence of fifty million souls. It was silence made tangible, void and emptiness.

She shuddered from the chill, pulling herself closer together.

The world felt as cold as the transmuted stone she sat on. Unfocused, she stared at the transmutation marks, tracing shivering lines with her finger. The fast climb from Central’s depths added to the chill with a cool, whipping breeze that parted the short bangs on her forehead, braids snapping behind her. Tried as she might, the feeling of defeat wouldn’t settle. It didn’t seem real.

Over and over, the events replayed like a looping film reel in her mind, trying to pinpoint where they went wrong. They had plans, countermeasures. They were the heroes. The type of heroes in her tales where the good always prevailed. They triumphed through the hurdles, the obstacles. It always worked out in the end. Together. The books never explained the consequences when the battle swayed in the villain’s favor. There were no lessons to be learned worth the cost; only that evil had decidedly won that day.

She clung to these beliefs, naive and optimistic as they were, because they brought color and imagination and heart to a life that had been cold and disappointing. An undeniable frustration her clan, to be sure. May didn’t want to be the princess waiting to be saved. From a very young age she knew she was never going to be. She wanted to prove her worth as the Dragon’s daughter hailing a low ranking clan and to release them from poverty. To be lauded as the savior of her family was one of her many childlike daydreams. So she turned her sights to Amestris.

In some part of her mind, May acted out her alternative should she come up empty-handed. Upon her return, she would be simultaneously praised crossing the desert and admonished for her recklessness. But that would be all. She’d carry on and find another way out of her socio-economical rut.

However… May didn’t expect this.

The Yao Clan lost their heir.  The Elrics lost their father. Amestris lost its populace.

The rock slowed to a stop. She blinked out the blood and sweat trickling into her eyes. A source of light brightened the decimated chamber, spilling in from the crumbling opening above. She remembered it ominously dark and blood splattered from a battle between humans and… humans that weren’t.

She stood and Xiao May climbed onto her shoulder. The sunlight was soft, welcoming, and warm, creating glimmering sparkles out of the concrete slabs. Squinting, her vision narrowed on a pair of dark silhouettes lying in the light’s circumference. With the pace of her pulse quickening she dashed in between limbs.

The Ishvalan was warm to the touch. The corner of his eyes were wrinkled, brows knitted together. The blood sharply contrasted between the white of his hair, the dark ink of his sleeve, and the tan of his scarred skin. Sensing the faint flow of chi she gasped. He was unconscious and short, shallow breaths hardly counted as breathing, but he was alive. Frantically, May inked the five points of Alkahestry onto the concrete and shut his wounds.

Seconds ticked felt like hours until he stirred. She pressed her palms down lightly on his shoulders, “Don’t move, Mr. Scar.” Her voice sounded foreign to her as if her ears had been cotton-stuffed this entire time. “I’ve only managed to stop the bleeding, but we’ll need to get you to a- ” she froze “-a doctor,” she finished quietly, considering the suddenly short supply of medical professionals in the vicinity. She slumped, sitting on her feet and watching the man struggle with labored breath.

Scar grunted from the pressure she’d place on his forearm and Xiao May nudged her.

“S-sorry!” May’s palms fell back and she shook her head, trying to uproot herself from this daze. Slapping her cheeks, she refocused and spotted the bend in his chi where his arm was broken and she cursed her melancholy thoughts for not noticing earlier. She glanced around her for scraps of cloth to brace his fracture, selfishly unwilling to rip her own Xingese garb.

May searched for a cloth and realized the forgotten man behind her. She approached him with light footsteps, scrutinizing him. He had aged from the last time she saw him, as if he had been wrung of the life that sustained him. His arms were severed at the joint of his elbows. His white shirt textured by miniscule wrinkles from drying in the sun. A smile slightly curved his mouth. He died in peace, May figured, without any remorse or unspoken words. He died in battle and not for his love or his country or even in the uniform of the military he led. Just an ordinary man cut down at last by a survivor of the people he saw to extermination even with the power of a Philosopher’s stone.

The indignation crept back again, huffing at the cloth was about to rip and pilfer. She had it, she had immortality in her hands. She angrily ripped the cloth. The instructions were clear: Go.  Home. It wasn’t in her place to meddle with foreign affairs. She let the homunculus manipulate her. She could have been quarterway across the desert if she just had…

May sighed and Xiao May quirked. Truth be told, at the time, she didn’t know how taking back a dilapidated, mutant lizard would have helped her cause. She was already second guessing herself and Youswell was the right kind of excuse to help her find reason. Foreign affairs or not, she was already involved.

Roy Mustang stumbled over the girth of a pipe he couldn’t see. The woman May saved caught him by the arms. She watched them, him and his blonde companion; her face troubled with concerns and his, trying to reassure her. A satisfying warmth settled in her tummy knowing she did at least that succeeded in salvaging her life.

Distantly, a pool of blood darkened with the lapsed time. May managed to save her. She turned away from the red elixir when it was within her grasp once more and, for a second time, she let her prize slip from her fingers for the lives of others, for people who shared no blood relation - something so devastatingly important in Xing.

Perhaps it was the way he held her as if clinging on tighter to her body would keep her with him. Or how called out to her with a subtle break in his voice full worry and desperation. His white gloves stained vibrant red from her blood. It saturated her hair to her clothing to the hard surface underneath her. An unmistakable fear pierced through his features and she could still see his overwhelming relief when her breath was no longer ragged and her consciousness resurfaced.  He hugged the Lieutenant so tight May thought he would squeeze the remaining life out of her. The same thing happened in Youswell. She couldn’t help herself from saving others.

  They had a moment when May glanced over. It felt like peeking into a private room. The Lieutenant looked exhausted. Her hand trembled, cupping his face. Her eyes looked like the small, white dishes back at home for deonjang, but her relief was as vibrant as refractions off a water’s surface. She pecked him on the lips, like older adults do to greet each other.   “Lieutenant,” Colonel Mustang murmured.

Guilt befell the woman’s features, as if she was suddenly aware of the room. May refocused back to her task.

A deep breath filled her lungs for recentering, but she subsequently took a step back when the hum of life flowing inside the Fuhrer triggered her senses. Her eyes narrowed, realizing the difference. She concentrated harder and cautiously dipped a hand into the dead man’s pocket.  

It was colder than she imagined. The vial reflected the brilliant color of red, brighter than oxidized blood and it flowed back and forth inside the glass with the tilt of her hand. The energy inside was standalone, detached from the flow. It was tiny and encapsulated by something so fragile, but she already knew it was far from it. A power so sinister and evil. She curved her fingers around it.

“May.”

The voice behind her sent a shock throughout the surface of her skin. May turned around and looked up. Alphonse stood, or rather was propped up, with his brother’s assist. The Amestrian military jacket he wore swallowed him, yet he still smiled at her - despite everything. It made her want to cry.

“So that’s Bradley, huh?” Ed commented on the man behind her. “Pretty smug way to go, don’t you think?”

“Brother…” Alphonse looked like he lacked the energy to even furrow his eyebrows together.

Ed didn’t answer to Alphonse’s reproach. “The plan is to head to the hospital as soon as possible. It’ll have the materials we need for now and then…” The pause spoke volumes to her, but the weight of it never crossed his face.  “Then, we can talk about our next plan of action.”

May nodded, curling her fingers tighter.

“Are you okay? Can you walk?”

She smiled at his absurd question, “Of course. You don’t need to worry about me - worry about yourself. You’re skin and bones.”

He beamed at her and it took her that much time to realize that the real Alphonse stood in front of her now, not an empty suit of armor. The heavy jacket bustled from a shrug, “I guess I am.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get you to the hospital before you pass out from the blood rushing to your cheeks.” Ed turned them both, ending that conversation.

“Brother!”

May stood, brushing off the dust off her and preparing for her yelling fit of the hour. She stopped at the sight of Scar. “Wait a moment! I do need help with Scar.”

“He’s alive?” Their golden heads turned towards the Ishvalan.

“Yes, and I’ve managed to aid him with surface wounds and-”

“Hey, Mr. Gorilla!”

“Brother, please, I’m still not used to the loud sounds.”

“Sorry, Al. Can we get you to help us with something?”

She tucked away her secret inside the folds her of clothes. She heard the banter Ed initiated with the gorilla-fused chimera over the rustling behind her. Later on, she would wonder if she ignored it out of the grasp of normalcy she knew would not exist outside of the this crumbling room.

Before the chimera spoke, before his expression altered from adrenaline and twisted from animalistic instinct, the hairs at her neck stood  and her skin prickled from

“Little girl, look out!”

In hindsight, it was distance that made the difference. A little bit further and his blood wouldn’t have stained her face. A little bit closer and it would have been her life. Instead, the dead eyes of King Bradley haunted her as he lost what life she stole away. The kunai glinted sharply against the light, nestled cleanly at the center of his forehead.

She reacted. That’s all it was. May tried consoled herself, but the blood that smeared on her cheek denied her any comfort.

Bradley slumped sideways and the air suddenly felt suffocating and tense.

May jumped as a hand touched her shoulder. She lifted her head warily, trying to remember the moment her knees gave out.

The lieutenant lady looked at her, concerned. Colonel Mustang stared into the distance behind her and the alchemy teacher beside him. She stared at May worryingly too. She didn’t need to hear the words. The eyes of the others were on her too and it made her feel ill at ease.

“I’m okay! Everything is ok.” She freed the blade and the gurgling noise unsettled her imperceptibly. “It was just- it just happened so quick.”

The blonde didn’t say much. Her pale face stared and many noticed her injury would need tending to. Her hand let go after a gentle squeeze of affirmation and stood up.

May found her feet. She overhead the lieutenant relate information back with militaristic style, sparing no details. The alchemy teacher disappeared next to the Elrics and she spoke to no one in particular. “I’ll go on ahead to make sure no more surprises happen!” She heard the protests behind her, urging her to come back, but the walls of the room felt closer around her and the light suddenly seemed to darken.

Through the opening overhead, her feet landed softly onto what looked like courtyard Central’s military headquarters. Xiao May quivered from death decorating the a parade grounds, but it didn’t bother May It bothered her that it didn’t. She spent a few moments with Dr. Marcoh, silently wishing for his passing in peace.

She looked around the military compound. Headquarters at her back, strong walls surrounded her except for one. It was decimated by some catastrophic force, cleaning carving a hole into the streets of Central.

People frozen in time. Stopped in their daily lives as their spirits were severed and their souls escaped them.   Her fingers wrapped around a tossed vial, feeling the impact of true emptiness. 

note: fmabb fic is here!! and I’m lucky to be doing this alongside @thenerdyalchemist who got me into the Last of Us while writing this and I am now a lifelong fan. 

oh god. AFTER LONG MONTHS ANGUISH. this is my first longfic, as some of you know i prefer short ones or oneshots ;__; any feedback is appreciated. i only ask to be objective for the constructive ones.it is 95% done and this is one third of what the original was. so i may or may not continue the rest. excuse me while i go breathe in a bag.