Chapter Text
Central Amestris, late 1899
Lust sometimes came to visit their not-really eldest brother. There was just something about him, whether it was the oppressive atmosphere as of a sleeping dragon, or something to do with how much he looked like Father. Lust had never truly met her eldest brother; neither had any of the others. Not even Pride had seen the Eldest awake.
Sometimes, Lust wondered what he would be like. From the little Father had said, their eldest brother had been made to slay gods. Lust was an effective infiltrator; she would not have been a useful tool if she was less observant. She noticed things beyond even Envy, who could take whatever form he chose.
Secretly, Lust suspected that when Father created Wrath, he was still trying to recreate his first and most favored weapon.
Wrath never visited their eldest brother. Greed had, a few times, with Envy. Pride did, maybe once a century. Sloth was kept busy with heavy labor, and Gluttony could not appreciate the silent mausoleum and sleeping Eldest. Envy visited, too, even now that Greed was gone; Lust could only wonder what lay in his mind as he stared down at their eldest sibling.
Lust shook her head to clear the lingering thoughts and entered the mausoleum. She felt a tickling sense of something not quite right at the base of her skull; the dust, perhaps, was more disturbed than it should have been. She opened the hidden door.
The hum and faint glow of the transmutation circle was gone; the circle was silent and dark, a sharp scuff dragged through the outer ward, the philosopher’s stone which had maintained the circle crumbled to dust.
The Eldest was gone.
Leore, Amestris, 1914
Edward awoke in the early morning—the predawn light gray in the windows, the outside air chilly from the cold desert night—with an itch at the back of his skull. He had to see the stone creature again.
Edward shrugged into his coat and tried to slip out of the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Al asked.
Damn. He still couldn’t get anything past Al; why was he even trying? Pride, maybe. He wasn’t upset, though. “I need to see that thing again,” Edward said. “Want to come?”
Al closed his book and stood. “Sure.”
No one else seemed to be up yet in the church or its attached hostel. Edward was glad of it. No one to try to stop them, or to ask where they were going. Uninterrupted, they made their way out to the square. No one was stirring outside the church just yet, either.
The statue was untouched, the stones lying as they had fallen from its halo, its fallen arm—now stone—several feet away. Edward could not explain the sense of relief and gratitude that the creature’s body had not been touched or vandalized that washed over him, or the strange sorrow in his heart as he looked at it.
“What is it?” Alphonse asked in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know,” Edward admitted. “It wasn’t human.”
Alphonse turned toward him. If the armor had had eyebrows, Edward had no doubt they would have been raised at him. He stooped and picked up one of the small stones from the ground—a tiny model of a planet with rings, it looked like, in banded stone. Edward shivered in the morning chill, heart heavy with emotions he didn’t understand and could not explain. He closed his hand around the stone. “Let’s go back, Al.”
There were people up now, watching reverently from the sides of the road. This time, Edward noted gratefully, they made no attempt to approach him. He kept his face forward and his expression stony as the dead giant in the street until they made it back into the church.
The church was no longer empty. At the far end, Rose knelt in the sanctuary before the altar.
Edward looked up at the carven face of Leto’s statue and felt nothing, no stir of religious sentiment. Leto was merely a big man with a beard and robes. No, not even that. He was just a statue, not one that had ever been a living thing. There was such a vague, generic quality to the features that it seemed very unlikely any human had even modeled for it.
Edward stood back in the nave, his hands in his pockets, studying the statue. Alphonse stood behind him, just as silent as his brother.
At last, Rose paused and looked over her shoulder. She scrambled to her feet. “Messenger! Please excuse my rudeness.” She bowed deeply.
Edward hurried forward to raise her again. “Don’t bow to me. Don’t grovel. I hate that.”
Rose lifted her head, though not the rest of her body. “I mean no disrespect, Messenger.”
“It’s not disrespect. Don’t revere me. I’m no messenger of Leto, or of any other god.”
“Then…” Rose stammered. She didn’t stand up.
Edward gave up and tried to slip past Rose without touching her.
Rose grabbed his sleeve, straightening up, though she was still on her knees. It irked Edward that he was almost eye-to-eye with her like this. “Please,” Rose pleaded. “Don’t go.”
Edward froze in place. “Just… stop bowing to me.”
Rose stood and nodded, then released Edward’s sleeve. Ed eased into the pew, trying to straighten his rumpled feathers.
“Please, Messenger…” Rose wrung her hands together.
Edward shook his head. “Like I said, I’m no messenger of god. I’m an alchemist.”
“What do you mean?” Rose asked, her expression bewildered.
“I’m a scientist. I work with the material world, with what I can observe and infer.”
Rose bit her lip. “But you wielded the light of the sun. You saved us.”
Edward clapped, reading the local atmospheric composition. Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, trace noble gasses… It wasn’t hard to feed energy into the atoms and excite them to release photons. Purple-white light bloomed around his hands. There were older ways to do it, less refined and scientifically cultivated, but this was… simple, elegant, beautiful. “Light is easy to generate,” Edward said. “You just excite the atoms enough and they start kicking out photons. That’s what light is. And there are older ways to do it—arrays that were created before the wave-particle theory of light, before photons were understood. They worked, but those alchemists couldn’t say why. Even activating an array for any other transmutation strips electrons and ionizes the air, which creates light too. Light is not hard.”
Rose stared at him in bewilderment. “That doesn’t look like what you did yesterday.”
“There are more ways to generate light,” Edward insisted.
“You… you won’t bring my fiance back.” Rose looked shaken. Devastated, even.
“I can’t,” Edward stressed. “No human can, and I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to speak for God.” That much, he had learned the hard way.
“But you’re—” Rose protested.
“I’m just a scientist,” Edward said. “I’m no miracle worker. Neither is Cornello. He’s been using alchemy to trick all of you, and trust me when I say: Alchemy can’t bring back the dead.”
“I don’t understand,” Rose repeated. “You saved us yesterday.”
“Saving your lives isn’t the same as raising the dead.” Edward exhaled and removed the notebook from his pocket. “35 liters water, 25 kilograms carbon, 4 liters ammonia, 1.5 kilograms lime, 800 grams phosphorus, 250 grams salt, 100 grams saltpeter, 7.5 grams fluorine, 5 grams iron, 3 grams silicon, and trace amounts of fifteen other elements. That’s the average chemical makeup of a human adult. Science has been able to discover that much, yet there still haven’t been any cases of successful human transmutation. Even talking about it is… questionably legal, but, Rose. You can’t pin all your hopes on resurrection. I call that a false hope.”
“Why can’t God do it, even if humans can’t?”
“Maybe,” Edward said. “Again. I can’t speak for God. And Cornello shouldn’t be trying.”
Rose stared at him, her eyes wide with desperation and despair. Edward felt a flash of hot rage toward Cornello and all his empty promises, his exploitative cruelty. “I’m sorry,” he said, not ungently. “Rose. Are you really ready to see the truth?”
The more Edward saw of the Church of Leto, the more it looked like a cult.
While the government didn’t much care what religious sects people spent their weekends in, once things crossed a certain threshold—of teachings, rarely, but usually of willful deception, of promises, of cenz, it became a question of fraud and extortion. And while a fraud case was not the most ideal setting for a piece of jewelry to disappear, Cornello had deliberately not drawn attention to the ring—at least, not if he had the intelligence Edward had assumed of him.
If Cornello really wasn’t even that smart? Edward would just be disappointed.
He’d probably still upset Cornello if it meant losing the ring. A delusion—of a returned loved one, or of an almighty god faked with cheap alchemy—was a cruel thing to live under.
Given that the philosopher’s stone did not, officially, exist, the opulence of the church had to be factored into the estimate of donation volume.
Cornello really had done himself no favors.
The Elrics’ feet hit the ground in a measured pace—Ed’s quieter, uneven footfalls contrasted with the clanking magnified in Al’s armor. Rose’s steps were a quick patter almost lost among the two alchemists’ footsteps.
“Is this it?” Alphonse asked, looking the door over.
“Yes,” Rose replied.
“Right,” Edward said. “Let’s get this over with.” He tried the door. It opened slowly, groaning on its hinges.
There was a group of acolytes waiting inside. They gathered around the Elrics.
“I hope you don’t intend to take up too much of the founder’s time,” the man at their head said. “He’s a busy man.”
“We’ll make it quick,” Edward said, smirking.
“I should hope so.” The man drew a pistol out of his robe and set it to the eye aperture of Al’s helm. The other acolytes blocked Edward from coming to Al’s aid with a pair of staves.
Edward willed himself to stay calm. The gun wasn’t angled down enough to damage the blood seal, even if it discharged. Al was all right.
“Brother Clay!” Rose cried, aghast. “What are you doing?”
“Rose, these two are false prophets and heathens that threatened the future of our order,” Clay said.
“But Edward worked miracles!” Rose protested.
“I am an alchemist, not a miracle worker!” Edward argued.
“The adversary has many ways to confound the faithful,” Clay said.
“Father Cornello would never allow this!”
“He has allowed it,” Clay said. “Father Cornello speaks with the voice of God. This is the will of God!” He pulled the trigger.
Al’s helmet flew off and he fell. Edward frantically calculated the angles of the possible ricochet. It should miss the blood seal. It must have missed the blood seal. It had to.
“You—you killed him!” Rose gasped.
Clay pointed the gun at Edward. “Now for the other one.”
Alphonse stood and gripped the gun. “Doesn’t sound like a very nice god to me.”
Edward grabbed a fistful of the acolyte’s robes and heaved out in time with his sigh of relief. The man flew overhead with a startled yell and crashed into Clay. “You really don’t know the first thing about guns, do you? You’re as much of a danger to your own people as you are to us.” He kicked the stave between the legs of the other man who had held him, tripping the man up.
Rose was staring at Alphonse fixedly, even as Edward returned Al’s helm. “Th-there’s nothing inside!” Rose gasped.
“That’s just how it is,” Alphonse said, settling his helm back in place. Rose stared in horror, her eyes fixed on Al.
“What’s all this?” Cornello called. He stood at a platform halfway up the far wall. “Have you come to learn more about our faith, Fullmetal Alchemist?”
“Stop playing around,” Edward snapped. “You don’t get to order our deaths and then act all fatherly.”
“A misunderstanding,” Cornello said. “I apologize for my followers’ hastiness.”
“Doesn’t feel like much of an apology with you looking down on us like that.” Edward began to advance. “You’re going to be singing like a canary by the time I’m done with you.”
“You shouldn’t talk to the founder like that!” Rose exclaimed, torn between reverence and outrage.
“Rose, come here,” Cornello ordered.
“What?”
“Have you forgotten why you came to me? When your fiance died, who helped you find yourself again?”
“You did, Father,” Rose whispered.
“And what did I promise you?”
“You promised me you’d bring him back!” Rose started to move.
“Good girl,” Cornello said. “Now for the unbelievers who threaten the future of my religion.” He pulled a lever to the grinding of a heavy door.
“Wow, you really are banking everything on us disappearing,” Edward remarked. “I didn’t even estimate your intelligence that highly, and I’m still disappointed.”
From the shadows came a growl. Alphonse moved to shield Rose. A creature that looked like a lion in front with the hindquarters of some kind of lizard and the talons of a bird of prey stepped into the light.
“Have you ever seen a chimera before?” Cornello gloated.
Edward assessed the chimera. “This might be a challenge to handle with my bare hands.” He clapped and touched the floor. Blue light sparked and crackled as he drew a glaive from the ground.
“No transmutation circle! So that title of yours isn’t just for show.” Cornello exclaimed.
Edward dodged around the chimera and swept the spear forward. The chimera’s claws sliced the haft of the spear, clipping Edward’s leg. Cornello laughed. “How do you like that?”
Edward grinned at him. The automail leg was undamaged. “What was that?” He kicked out, flinging the chimera back.
“If the claws don’t work, bite him to death!” Cornello yelled.
Oh, that might be a problem even with automail if the chimera had a strong jaw. Edward moved to dodge but the chimera pounced on him. Instinctively Edward shielded himself with his right arm and let out a silent sigh of relief as the jaws failed to crush the metal. He lifted the chimera and flung it from him, following the throw up with a hard kick that knocked the chimera on its back.
“Don’t look away, Rose.” Edward gritted his teeth. “Look at me.” He ripped the tatters of his coat away, fully exposing the automail. “This is the consequences of meddling in God’s domain. Are you ready to pay the price?”
“So that’s why they gave you such a stern name,” Cornello gasped. Rose’s eyes were fixed on Edward’s arm and leg, both hands covering her mouth.
“Why don’t you come down?” Edward taunted Cornello. “Are you afraid you can’t measure up?”
Cornello turned to Rose. “Rose, there are things alchemists absolutely forbid themselves. The state demands that no alchemist create gold, but these boys have attempted what is most taboo. The ultimate sin of human transmutation!”
“There aren’t many commonly-told stories that predate Amestris. Isn’t that interesting?” Gold eyes rendered uncanny by their color fixed Rose with their attention. “However, there are a few. One speaks of a hero who flew on wings of wood and wire, feathers pinioned in with wax. Fascinated with the sun, he flew higher and higher. The sun’s heat melted the wax, and flung him back to earth.
“Those who attempt to reach the sun only burn.”
Rose shook.
“We only wanted to see our mother smile again,” Alphonse murmured, his small voice echoing in the emptiness of the armor.
“Why ask forgiveness from him, Al?” Edward replied. His voice was steady.
“You foolish children!” the founder mocked.
Alphonse turned toward Rose. “My brother’s leg was taken away. I lost my entire body. Ed sacrificed his arm to bind my soul to the armor.”
“Do you really want to maim yourself like this in pursuit of what can’t be done?” Edward ground out in a low voice. “Do you want to send yourself through hell?”
“So that’s why you want the stone,” Father Cornello laughed. “You think you will succeed this time with it!”
“Don’t take me for what I’m not!” Edward snapped. “We only want to regain ourselves.”
“Father,” Alphonse said firmly. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Give us the stone before you hurt yourself.”
The founder laughed. “Fools. Blasphemers who tried to approach God and fell to earth. I may just have to send you to God myself!” He whipped his cane forward, except it wasn’t a cane, but a machine gun.
There was a clap amid the dust and a flash of blue light. Cordite smoke cleared to reveal a bullet-pocked stone wall that had flowed up from the floor.
“God doesn’t seem to like me much,” Edward’s voice rang out. “If we went, it’d probably send us right back down.”
“Quick, Rose!” Alphonse urged. He scooped her up. The founder turned his attention to them. Rose screamed at the sound of bullets ricocheting off the back of the armor.
“This way, Al!” Edward shouted, running toward the exit.
“Fools! That door won’t open unless I command it!” the founder announced.
“Really? I’ll just have to make my own!” Edward clapped to a bell-like sound and slammed his hands to the wall. Lightning sparked from his hands and metal-coated doors appeared. They were through the doors in an instant and flying through the basement of the church.
Alphonse lowered the stolen bell to the ground, setting up his materials neatly and checking the circle. “The basis of alchemy is equivalence, but what people don’t want to acknowledge is that just means ‘sacrifice.’ You must give up something to obtain. My brother is considered among the best alchemists in the country, but all that means is that he’s worked harder at it than anyone else.”
“You gave up so much…” Rose said. “How can it not have worked?”
“It can’t,” Alphonse said softly. “What we made didn’t even look human.”
Rose sucked in a breath.
“We won’t touch human transmutation again,” Alphonse said. “But Edward wants to restore me to my former self, and I want to return his limbs. We don’t know if it will work, if it’s even possible. But that’s the path we’ve chosen.” He activated his circle. “Let’s get started.”
Cornello almost ran past Edward. It was comical to watch him stumble over himself to try and recover, but Edward had bigger fish to fry. “You’re not getting past me again!”
“You’ve had a long day,” Edward said. “And I’ve gotten away from you several times.” He leaned back on the desk. “Let’s talk. Or should I call the military in?”
Cornello stiffened. Finally, he seemed to be recognizing the reality of his situation: Edward wasn’t just going to disappear. The man closed the door behind him. “Fine. We’ll talk.”
“Alchemy wasn’t the best tool to accomplish your mock ‘miracles.’ You could’ve been served just as well by sleight of hand.”
“It served its purpose. No one here knows the difference between alchemy and miracles. If they believe it, they are overwhelmed with fervor. The miracles may be faked, but the sentiment is real!”
“Why do you even need this church?” Edward eyed Cornello dubiously. “If you wanted money, you could make all you wanted with the stone. We’re so far from Central here, I doubt anyone would notice you passing transmuted gold.”
“If I wanted money, I’d receive donations anyway. What I wanted was followers: believers who didn’t fear death. A zealous, fanatical army that would let me overwhelm the military. In a few years I’ll be ready, then I’ll sweep this country away by force. Who knows—I might even leave something over for you!” The false priest began to laugh.
Edward laughed along. Cornello cut off his maniacal fit with a cough. “Why are you—”
Edward grinned. “This is why you’re only third-string.” He held up the switch, in the ‘on’ position.
Cornello’s jaw dropped. “What—how long has that been on?”
“Since the moment you stepped through that door. Cat’s out of the bag.”
“You’re not getting out of this room alive!” Cornello touched his cane to transmute it into a chain gun again.
Edward leaped forward, the familiar blade transmuted onto the armplate. “You’re too slow!”
The barrel of the gun clanged on the floor. Edward pulled himself back into a ready stance. “I told you. There’s no comparison between us.”
“I still have this stone. I can make as many miracles as I wa—”
Red lightning crackled around the butt end of the gun, but it was all wrong. Its shape, its color, its smell—everything was wrong enough to make Edward’s skin crawl. Cornello screamed. His arm was mangled, the color of gunmetal, distorted.
What could cause a rebound like that? Even the greenest alchemy student knew better than to leave a circle unbounded, and with a philosopher’s stone it should not even have been possible—
Cornello’s sobs echoed through the room. Edward grabbed him. “Shut up. You still have an arm!” Even if it was one that he was better off getting amputated. Ed had been through enough surgeries and medical procedures to know not to take his own body for granted. “Show me that stone!”
There was a plink! as of overheated metal cooling. The philosopher’s stone cracked and fell from its setting, dissolving into dust.
None of this added up. “The philosopher’s stone is supposed to be the perfect substance,” Edward said. “How could it just break?”
“No one told me anything about this!” Cornello begged. “I can’t do anything without the stone! Spare me, please!”
Edward stood up. “We came all this way… you put us to all this trouble… you wanted me to pretend to be a messenger of God… and it’s a fake?”
A creak behind him warned him.
“Hey…” Edward said slowly. “You tricked people into your little cult. You gave them false hope. Was Leto just the first name that came into your head? Don’t answer that, I don’t care. You use alchemy to fool them, and you wanted me to do the same… You should really have read up on me before you tried to kill me.” Alchemy crackled between his fingers. The floor rumbled and creaked. “You want the fist of God? Well, here’s Leto’s fist!”
The floor bucked as the statue of Leto from the church below surged through it, wood and plaster subsumed into the stone, swelling the flood. Its fist threw Cornello backward.
Edward got up and left the room, climbing over the statue’s arm to the doorway. Hmm. The building wasn’t all that structurally sound any more. Oops.
“So it was…”
Edward sighed. “A fake. Yes.”
Alphonse sounded patient—and oh, how Edward hated that, the way his little brother sounded patient rather than upset. Alphonse had every right to scream and yell and cry. Instead he was patient. “It’s a pity,” Alphonse said, sounding altogether too calm. “I had hoped…”
“Yeah.” Edward punched the ground. His fist left cracks in the stone steps. “I was really hoping this would be the one.”
“Well.” Alphonse stood up and dusted off his battle skirt. “Where to next?”
“No… This can’t be true…”
“Rose,” Alphonse said, not ungently.
“He promised. He said he’d bring Kane back to life! He promised!”
Edward exhaled. “People lie, Rose. They lie, and it’s cruel and it hurts.”
“What am I supposed to believe now? What am I supposed to cling to?” Rose sobbed into her hands. “What hope do I have, without that?”
Edward stood. “Hope is something you have to make for yourself, Rose. Stand up. Walk forward. Find what to live for. You’ve got strong legs to stand on.”
Xerxes, 1414
A distraught father and mother sat by the side of their son’s bed. Lines of gold traced the boy’s veins. Despite the fact that he was deeply asleep or unconscious, his face still faintly expressed pain. Bandages wound around his arm and throat and faint marks as of burns traced his skin.
“Please wake up,” the father whispered. “Please.”
The boy stirred.