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“I must’ve fallen down the mine shaft.”
Fullmetal’s voice reached Darius’s ears, and he let out a low groan. Couldn’t he die in peace? It wasn’t enough for him and Heinkel to have to go out being slowly crushed by debris, they had to have some upstart alchemist to rub it in their faces?
“Can’t- breathe-” Heinkel gasped next to him, the debris groaning as he struggled to free himself.
“Dammit.” Fullmetal cursed. “I can’t let- Kimblee get away,” he sounded winded, and Darius smelled hot iron, the sharp scent of fresh blood. Several strained breaths, and then- “You’re kidding. No!”
Metal clanked against the concrete floor, and Darius heard Fullmetal grunting in pain, or effort, for a few seconds before there was the soft thump of a body falling, and the sound of more metal on concrete. Fullmetal’s laboured breathing went soft with a weak groan, and Darius shut his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, they could die in peace...
“I won’t make her cry,” he spat, and there was the sound of a fist meeting concrete with force. “Especially not over something stupid like this!” the sound of alchemy reached his ears, blue lightning visible even through his eyelids, and he opened his eyes at the sound of metal clanging to the floor. He couldn’t see very well over the chunks of concrete littering the floor, but he could make out soaked red fabric and a glistening wet metal beam that ended just barely above it, the unnaturally smooth end still free of blood. At his best guess, he’d say Fullmetal had been impaled. He heard it this time when the alchemist brought his hands together, and Darius’s eyes widened as the ground surged up around him, lifting the heavy debris off his back and Heinkel’s chest.
“Damn,” Heinkel grunted, pulling himself out from under the debris to crouch low as Darius twisted quickly to his feet. “Kimblee’s gonna pay.”
He nodded in agreement, gripping his shoulder as Heinkel caught his breath and rose to his feet. It didn’t feel dislocated, or like anything was broken, but he’d be willing to bet everything from his elbow to his clavicle would be a nasty shade of purple in the morning. On his feet, without the rubble blocking most of his view, the first thing Darius noticed was that Fullmetal looked... small. And not just in the way the people mocked him for, either. Pale-faced and lying in a pool of his own blood, curled around the pole through his gut, he looked young. Darius looked over at Heinkel, and found his partner’s expression matched his own.
“Hey, Fullmetal kid. Are you still alive?” he asked, more to give the brat an easy question than out of any kind of uncertainty.
“What made you decide to rescue us?” Heinkel asked, moving stiffly as he stalked forwards. “You’re more injured than we are.”
“Don’t get- the wrong idea,” Fullmetal said through an audible grimace, his side moving with shallow but deliberate breaths. “I can’t pull this out of my stomach on my own. I could use- a little help.”
Darius crouched in front of the soldier alchemist teenager, fingers curling tighter around his aching shoulder. “We were enemies just five minutes ago, but now you’re asking us to save your life?” he asked incredulously.
“Yeah, basically.” Fullmetal’s mouth twitched at the edge, like he wanted to smile but was in too much pain to go through with it. Darius looked over at Heinkel again. His partner shrugged.
“Well, it’s not like we were given orders to kill you,” he shuffled sideways around Fullmetal, until he could slide his hands under the teen’s shoulders and carefully lever him upright. Fullmetal let out a pained hiss as the pole through his left side sagged under influence of gravity. “Come on,” he coaxed Fullmetal a little straighter, sliding in closer so the teen could lean against him.
“Y’know, kid, you’re gonna bleed to death pretty quickly once I pull this out,” said Heinkel as Darius settled his hands on Fullmetal’s shoulders, holding him firmly in place.
“Not if I heal it,” the young alchemist said stubbornly, his voice weak and rasping with effort. “As soon as it’s out of my I’ll close up the wound. With alchemy.”
“What?” Heinkel's fur flared slightly. “Have you ever performed any kind of medical alchemy before?”
“Sort of,” Fullmetal admitted, leaning back against Darius further. “I did some research on it, when I tried human transmutation.”
“Just some research?” he asked incredulously. He wasn’t a scientist by any stretch, but Kimblee liked to ramble about alchemy, about the complexity of still-living materials compared to inert ones, and that was just when they were being used to make an explosion. “Your guts have gotta be all messed up. You’re gonna need a philosopher’s stone to make this work!”
“I’m gonna have to use my own life force, the same way I would use a stone,” Fullmetal said, his tone resolute and voice unwavering. Darius’s eyes widened, his mouth falling open. This kid was planning to do what? “It may take a few years off my lifespan, though,” Fullmetal admitted, as if that was a completely normal thing to say.
“You’re positive?” Heinkel asked, and Fullmetal’s head lifted stubbornly.
“I don’t really have time to think about it,” Fullmetal snapped, shoulders tensing under Darius’s hands. “If this is really what showing mercy is gonna cost me, then I’m gonna have to learn to pay the price, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds like you’re sure,” Heinkel said, leaning forward and wrapping his hands around the bent, half-crumpled end of the bar sticking up out of Fullmetal’s gut. “Ready?” he asked, and Fullmetal nodded. Darius tightened his grip as the kid leaned back fully into his support, taking a deep and visibly painful breath. His arms came up, the automail still with the signature blade still extended from the forearm, and he held them in a clear ready position in front of his chest.
Heinkel tightened his grip on the metal, and began to pull. The sound was awful, a wet ripping nose like Darius had never heard before, and he gritted his teeth against the instinctive urge to recoil. Fullmetal’s screams of pain were only intermittent as Heinkel slowly, carefully extracted the piece of metal, and somehow that made it worse. The kid should be screaming his lungs out, writhing in agony, his face a teary mask of pain, but none of those things were true. Fullmetal was holding nearly statue-still and mostly silent, his face one of grim determination.
His hands slammed together as Heinkel pulled the last few centimeters free, and then lightning erupted from where Fullmetal’s hands pressed on either side of his wound. It was blue, and blinding, and Darius couldn’t look away. Through the flashes of alchemic energy he saw things shifting, Fullmetal’s body knitting itself back together, and when the teen sighed so did he, slumping and loosing his grip on his shoulders.
“Did he make it?” he asked Heinkel.
“You can’t kill me that easily,” Fullmetal sounded like he was grinning, which Darius couldn’t deny was probably an appropriate reaction to cheating death.
“You mean it worked?” he asked, leaning to the side a little so he could actually see Fullmetal’s face.
“I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m healed,” the teen admitted, his gloved hand pressed to what was no longer a gaping hole in his side but probably still hurt like hell. “I patched my undamaged organs together, and I’ve managed to stop the bleeding, but it won’t last for long.”
“Oh,” Heinkel nodded slightly in understanding. “Then you need a real doctor.”
“No,” Fullmetal shook his head, shrugging off Darius’s hands to stand up. “I don’t- have time for that,” he swayed unsteadily on his feet, pressing his automail hand to his side.
“Wha- Hey!” Darius rose to his feet, reaching out, but Fullmetal was already staggering away.
“I’ve got to stop Kimblee. Before he gets- to-” Fullmetal’s speech faltered and he collapsed between one step and the next, tipping forward to land face first on the concrete.
“Oh, man,” Darius could only wince. Even for someone as short as Fullmetal, that couldn’t be fun.
“Idiot,” Heinkel said what both of them were thinking as they started towards the probably unconscious teen. “There’s no way you can fight Kimblee in your condition,” he paused mid-stride, head turning, and Darius came to a stop as his partner veered off to look at something in the rubble.
“What is it?” he asked as Heinkel reached out and plucked something small and red from one of the larger chunks of broken concrete.
“Whoa,” he held it up to the light, and Darius saw it was a cloudy crystal.
“A stone, huh? I guess Mr. Kimblee must’ve lost it.”
“Quit calling that freak Mister,” Heinkel snorted, condensation curling up from his nostrils. “He’s not our boss, not since he almost killed us.”
“That’s a good point,” Darius admitted. “How about we make our resignation official?”
“Let’s just hold onto our freedom and let the bastard think we died in the rubble,” Heinkel said after a second’s thought. Which, yeah, would probably work out better for them than trying to resign from the military while being living proof of their crimes.
“Well, what do we do with him?” he asked, looking down at Fullmetal. He knew what he wanted to do, the teen had saved their lives after all, but Heinkel might have a more concrete plan of how to go about it.
“We can’t just leave him here to die,” Heinkel stooped and grabbed one of Fullmetal’s arms, pulling him up off the ground and onto his back, arms hanging limp over his shoulders. “He did save our lives, after all,” he gave Darius a grin and slid his arms under Fullmetal’s knees, hunching slightly to keep the teen balanced on his back.
“First things first, we’ve gotta find him a doctor,” he said, following after his partner towards the door.
“Yeah,” Heinkel agreed. Darius hurried ahead as they neared the door, and though it was locked a quick boot heel just above the handle fixed that problem quickly and efficiently. The door opened up on a tunnel leading left and right, the gloom so deep even Heinkel was having difficulty after a couple turns.
“Don’t suppose you have a torch,” he muttered, and Heinkel let out a snort. “Didn’t think so.”
“We’re still on the right track,” Heinkel assured him after another minute or so of trudging in darkness.
“How can you tell?” he asked, because for all the training they’d undergone both before and after being made into chimeras he couldn’t recall a single instance of how to navigate in the dark.
“When in doubt, always follow your nose.”
“Last week you thought someone was dying in the mess,” he said flatly, and Heinkel made an offended sound.
“There was a lot of blood!”
“The look on her face was-”
“Shut up,” Heinkel growled, and Darius chuckled. “We’re in a mine right now, yeah?”
“Yeah. What, did your hometown have superstitions or something?”
“No. Well, yes, but those were local and beside the point anyway. This mine is old, all the air shafts were either closed off or got plugged up with ice and snow. So the only place fresh air can get in from is an entrance.”
“Ohhh,” he nodded. “So you’re following the fresh air, and when we get there I’ll just be slamming it open like I did the last door.”
“Probably. We may be finding an open exit, though.”
“Great. How far do you think we are?”
“Depending on the state of the tunnels, maybe half an hour?” Heinkel hedged. “And from there we have to find a doctor.”
“There’s another mining town not far from here. Maybe an hour, if we cut across the side of the mountain instead of following the roads,” he said, recalling the maps up in Briggs.
“Maybe?”
“I don’t exactly have the map on hand to check,” he pointed out.
“Are you sure there’s nowhere closer?” Heinkel asked, and Darius shook his head.
“If we took the road, it’d be at least two hours to the nearest village.”
“Not to mention potentially being seen by the military.”
“Yeah, not to mention,” Darius sighed. They fell silent as they trudged onwards, following Heinkel's nose to an open end of the tunnel. Darius shivered at the first brush of bitterly cold wind, pulling the compass out of his coat pocket and getting his bearings. “We need to head this way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the nearest town.
“Wait,” Heinkel said after he’d taken a few steps out into the crisp, clean snow.
“What?”
“Fullmetal,” his partner shifted, making the teen’s head loll to the side. “He’s not got a second coat like we do.”
Damn, that was right. Plus he wouldn’t be moving around to keep himself warm, and he’d lost a lot of blood, which had soaked his coat and probably made it a lot worse at keeping the heat in. Hell, now that Darius looked he was already shivering a little. “I’m sure I can find an emergency blanket somewhere,” he said, backtracking into the mine and looking around for any doors that might lead to an office with a first aid kit.
“Darius,” Heinkel’s voice stopped him, and he turned to see his partner with an even stonier expression than usual. “I’ll give him my coat, I just need you to hold him a moment.”
“What? But without your coat you’ll-”
“Still be carrying about seventy kilos of dead weight through rough terrain with a fur coat,” Heinkel said flatly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Darius sighed, and walked back over to take Fullmetal from his partner. “But if the doctor we find for him has to treat you for frostbite, it’s your own damn fault.”
“Perhaps,” Heinkel shrugged off his outermost layer, and gestured for Darius to put Fullmetal back in place. A minute or two of shuffling and muttered curses later, the boot on Fullmetal’s metal foot was down a shoelace and the teen himself was secured in place, coat tucked and tied tight around him. The oversized garment only made him look even younger, and Darius set his jaw as he checked the compass again to confirm their heading. He owed his life to this kid, the very least he could do was make sure Fullmetal survived the next few hours.