Chapter Text
There is something beautiful about the unknown that has Kai etched onto it like metal to magnet. Like two pieces of paper clipped together, hardly worth anything when they have been ripped apart, and that thought is what allows Kai to keep himself occupied by it. His nose is stuffed into a book, only because of the intensely growing curiosity that simmers in his gut, and he frowns when the faint sounds of his sister and friend laughing and screeching can be heard from inside.
Nothing is exactly stopping him from joining them. He would love to get up and throw the book away, because as curious of a guy as he was, he deems nothing to be worth more than sharing laughs and memories with some of his favourite people.
And yet. He would rather glue himself to the dimly lit bunker of his uncle’s research chambers at the moment. Light pierces through a narrow corner, providing the only form of contact with the outside world, even if indirectly. Snow had only just begun melting off the roof of his house; It is not hot in the enclosed library. Kai has no real issue with staying there.
He tells himself that it’s all in his control — but he can’t even bring himself to leave no matter how strong the urge was.
…He blames it all on Wu.
His sort-of uncle. The man who’d helped his parents raise him and Nya, having been the one to introduce the siblings to his nephew; their would-be younger brother. He owes a lot to the man. He’d been the one to teach him about alchemy. About everything. Wherever his parents lacked, Wu would always make up for.
But he’d left.
And that seemed to have left both his parents in disarray.
Well. Not quite. He’s overexaggerating the story just a little, but not even a blind man can deny the way Ray and Maya had grown to be more and more silent as every day without Wu passed. There are reasons Kai can’t wrap his head around. Sure, he liked Wu, but it’d been easy to forget about him when he’d left them all so easily.
Maya tells him he’s on an expedition. Something about research. Something about alchemy.
Kai thinks it’s all bullshit. It’s stupid. He’d seen Wu on the day he’d left – the man’s eyes held anything but a piqued interest. Nothing akin to excitement. Nothing like he did whenever he told Kai stories about his past.
He’d watched it all happen. Watched as his family took their first step to chaos when he left.
There is clearly something he’s hiding. Something about alchemy and adventures but nothing that they perceive. Something unknown to all but him.
So it is within Kai’s needs to have that curiosity satisfied. The unknown is beautiful, but also annoying when it stays an incomprehensible blur. He has to solve it.
And it’s most definitely not because he wants to cherish something that he had shared with Wu. He doesn’t miss that man. He doesn’t. He’d left them all and his parents are sad, and Lloyd is sad, so he hates him now. He hates Wu. He has to figure this all out for only his curiosity. For only the others.
Nothing more.
Another squeal from outside.
He lets out a steady breath.
At least, even if only for a brief moment, both of his siblings can enjoy life without having to strain themselves with these concerns.
His eyes fall back onto the books stacked on his desk. A sheet of paper full of his rugged handwriting decorates the wooden surface, hardly comprehensible, but it’s all he has to know about alchemy before attempting to study it without the presence of a guide anymore.
The squeal gets louder and louder. Footsteps thump against the ground and he lets the sounds interrupt the tranquillity of the room when knocks can be heard from the door.
“Kai! Come on, we’re bored!” Nya’s voice rings, sounding just about ready to let herself into the room with a hard kick. “Play with us!”
“We want to take over the world and you have to play as the general!” Lloyd follows up.
Nya whispers something along the lines of “I thought you wanted to be the general” .
The younger boy whispers back, “not anymore!”
Kai’s gaze shifts from one thing to another. Uncertain. There are things he’d much rather be doing than research, and he’s been down under for a long time. He deserves a break for all that hard work. It’s only fair. It’s the law of equivalent exchange.
His chair screeches as he pushes himself out. He’s running to the door and tackling his siblings before either of them realises he’s there.
It was his near obsession with the unknown that had gotten him interested in alchemy. Children his age tend to be this way, he thinks. Lloyd is more than obsessed with the concept of taking over the world – and everyone tries their best to steer him out of that path, albeit the always conclusively futile result – and Nya has her fair share of moments with her own obsessions with automail and the such, so it’s only fair that Kai has one too.
It’s weird to think about. He hadn’t started studying alchemy with an actual interest in the subject. It was just something that came along with his need to solve Wu’s mystery, and the abandoned problems Wu had left behind. But now it was all he really thought about — The laws behind it, the way it’s done, the glyphs and transmutation circles.
“What’s so cool about alchemy anyway?” Lloyd asks, one hand wrapped around a toy staff and his free one tapping along the edges of Kai’s closed notebook. “You’re always going on about it. Sounds kinda dumb.”
Kai rolls his eyes. “Like taking over the world is any better.”
Nya smacks him on the shoulder. Kai would flip her off if Lloyd wasn’t present.
“It is!” Lloyd exclaims, looking incredulously at his older brother as though he’d said the stupidest thing in the world. “Alchemy looks boring! It’s all just reading and reading and yada-yada-yada . Taking over the world is a lot funner!”
He’ll give credit where it’s due — in concept, taking over the world does sound a lot more entertaining than drowning himself with words written in a book. But that was far from anything that he wanted to achieve. He’s given the idea a shot, thanks to Lloyd’s constant pestering, so he says that with certainty. His younger brother on the other hand…
“Well, give it a try first,” he responds, grabbing one of the books piled atop each other and handing it over to Lloyd. The cover of the book reads ‘Alchemy for Beginners’. “It’s boring at first, but it gets cool when you understand it.”
Nya nods beside him. She knew nearly as much as he did about it. Would probably know more if she was more interested in the topic. Wu had taught them both after all.
Lloyd frowns as he inspects the book, scrutinising it with a keen, judgy eye, and sighs as he sets it down on his lap, thumb reaching in to open it. “ Fine. But only because you promised you’ll take over the world with me. If you change your mind then I’ll burn your house to the ground!!”
Kai is pretty sure he was joking.
Mostly, anyway.
Lloyd ends up joining his and Nya’s mini alchemy study sessions.
His parents are sick.
He’s not sure what happened. One day, he was walking along the streets of the village, carrying a basket full of weapons and metal over to Ronin’s house, when Nya and Lloyd start screaming and running towards him.
Their eyes are watery when they meet him. Lloyd can’t get a word out, panting for breath, choking on the tears that won’t stop infiltrating his mouth, and he looks exactly the way he had when he’d been told that Wu had gone.
Nya looks panicked too. Which is never a good sign, because she was oftentimes the most rational of the three, so seeing her so distraught made him distraught.
She steadily pulls away from Lloyd and reaches out for her older brother. “Kai!” she calls, eyebrows furrowing. “I– It’s mom and dad!”
He doesn’t have to hear Nya’s cries of ‘they fainted!’ before he’d gone off running back home, away from Ronin’s house, but he was sure the older man will understand.
And it’s good that he did.
The doctor tells him his parents might’ve required further medical attention had he gotten to them any later.
A pregnant pause had fallen between the siblings. The quietest they’ve ever been as they wait outside of their parent’s room. Lloyd’s lip hasn’t stopped wobbling all day and Nya looks like she might punch a wall.
Kai listens with a strained chest as the doctor delivers his diagnosis. He doesn’t understand the big words that he uses, but his solemn expression is really all he has to know.
“They don’t have long,” he finally says, and Kai had been fully expecting that sentence, but his heart falls into his gut anyway. “These can help them sustain their time a little longer.”
Kai still blames it all on Wu, even though he’s not there.
Or, rather, it’s because he’s not there that it’s his fault.
All his parents talk and speak of in quiet mumbles and mutters are about Wu. So it has to be his fault.
He’ll punch that bastard when he sees him.
Lloyd’s fingers stay on the piece of paper longer than it has to. He's been staring at it more and more since their parents were bounded to their beds.
He looks down at it. Its dry surface is suddenly invaded with small, wet circles, and Nya has to pull the picture out of his hands to bring him back to the moment.
Kai immediately rushes to comfort Lloyd as Nya grabs onto the image with a grimace. The blonde won’t look at anything but the floor, so Kai momentarily tears his gaze away from him and over to his sister.
She lets him see what it is.
Anger boils in his gut at the familiar face. Wu.
He’ll burn everything remaining of that fucker once he’s done with his research. He swears it.
“Mom! Dad! Look!”
Ray and Maya turn around from where they’d been talking outside. Colour had returned to their faces with the help of medicine, but their knees still wobble at their slightest movements.
Maya still forces herself to crouch down in order to face Nya and her brothers that were making their way over.
“What is it, sweetie?” she asks, her voice a smooth-sailing ship, said like a melody.
Nya grins wide, all teeth, as she brings her hands out, revealing a small statue of a robot made of rocks. It’s messy. Sharp edges and round shapes in places they don’t belong. But it’s cute. It’s sweet. It makes her smile.
“I used alchemy for this!” she continues on, as Kai and Lloyd show off their own creations. Kai’s of a small katana and Lloyd’s of a small ship.
“Look at mine!” Lloyd exclaims, bouncing on his feet. “Look at it, Mr Ray, Mrs Maya!”
It is endearing how respectful he is despite his talks of taking over the world.
Maya and Ray have told him many times to just refer to them as mother and father. The younger boy refuses to. They’re not sure if he’s doing it on purpose. It’s a likely possibility.
Ray joins her on the ground with a smile that reaches his eyes for once as his hands reach over to mess with Lloyd and Kai’s hair.
“That looks awesome, guys!”
Anything to do with alchemy reminds them of Wu. Kai sees it in their eyes.
It’s gone way too fast.
His parents are gone in mere seconds. They’d been bedridden for the past months, but they were still breathing just this morning. Yet now, he’s forced to look down at the limp and pale bodies of his parents that lay dead on the ground, against the wood of their floorboard.
Lloyd lets out a loud sob that brings him back into reality. His hands are shaking as he crouches down and shakes Maya’s leg in hopes that she’ll wake up, the way she normally did when he bothered her in the middle of the night because of a nightmare. Maybe he’s doing it in hopes that this was a nightmare, and that he would wake up if she did.
Nya stood petrified by the door, the basket of fruits long forgotten about on the ground as she just stares at the sight in front of her. Her eyes are glassy and wide, but she’s not crying, not yet.
And Kai has to sit there uselessly. Unable to get his mind to focus on anything but how ruined his family seemed. Tears are falling down his face, forming rivulets when they cross paths, but he’s not really crying. He doesn’t feel like he is. He’s just staring mindlessly at everything in front of him and he can’t do anything but watch.
Watch as his family crumbles even more.
It’s only when Nya slowly crouches down to the ground beside Lloyd that he runs out, screaming and yelling for help, relief flooding his system when Ronin exits his house and runs straight to his at the sight of his tear-stained face.
But it’d all happened too fast.
Now he had to watch as they were buried. He had to watch. All he could do was watch.
Lloyd is sniffing loudly, hiding his face on Nya’s shoulder. Kai’s hand is intertwined with hers, both their grips far too strong, far too forced, and he can’t tell if he’s crying or if it’s the rain on his face.
It felt like acid. People around them grieve, but they left after just mere hours. The three of them had no other choice but to sit right by their graves. The clouds had stopped raining and Lloyd was still hiccuping even by then. Tucked between Kai’s warm arms, yet he still shook like a loose leaf in the wind.
Familiar footsteps brush against the grass. Nya is the only one who looks up at the intruder, but the three of them know who it is.
He looks down at them with sympathy.
“I’ll make you guys dinner, hm? Just be there, okay? Whenever you’re ready. It’ll be your favourite.”
Ronin is unofficially their guardian for the time being.
Rain has been particularly harsh these past few days. Kai isn’t sure if the world is trying to be melodramatic about his loss, but he doesn’t like it. His home already feels so… empty and cold. The rain did nothing to help that cause.
Lloyd likes the rain, though. He sleeps to the soothing sounds of the water that drizzles against their windows — His talks of world domination had ceased, and the only time he’d be completely awake is if he were to indulge in a study session of alchemy with his siblings. Even then, he would always be caught dozing off just half an hour into reading.
Nya is the opposite. She’d glued herself to tasks that weren’t even necessary to do, unwilling to rest unless her body forced her to. If she was not at Ronin’s house, working on something, then she was at their home’s workshop, continuing a personal project. She joined the study sessions more than Lloyd did, but Kai could tell she wasn’t exactly as interested as she used to be.
It’s more of a fact than a guess; She only joins so Kai wouldn’t feel so lonely in these times.
And Kai appreciates that his siblings spare him their time. Even if they don’t actually read the books or understand the material. Even if they don’t actually comprehend the words in which he drowned himself. He’s just glad they’re there.
He’s just glad to know that he still had a family, despite their losses.
It goes on for a month. The Smith household is eerily silent, but no neighbours speak of it. The rain is neverending. The sky never seems to stop crying for them, or maybe Kai’s too deep in his own head to realise that it’d already transitioned to Autumn within the weeks he’d been grieving. It only hits him when their village is flooded, people piling mountains of rocks together in the hopes that it’ll prevent the water from reaching deeper areas.
Kai was only there because Nya and Lloyd wanted to see the commotion. It was the first time in a while since Kai had left the house willingly.
That’s when they meet who would later become their teacher — A seemingly unassuming old lady who went by the name of Mystake. Her face was full of wrinkles that emphasized her age, and yet the way she moved had been quite lively as if she were a young woman. Her brash attitude hadn’t been the only thing that caught their eye, though. It was her alchemy.
(Alchemy is a powerful tool. As long as the law of equivalent exchange is at play, anything could be achieved.
‘Except for human transmutation,’ he’d read. But maybe those who attempted it hadn’t quite mastered it. He’d never seen anyone transform something without a circle. With just hands.)
She’d transformed the ground into a wall of hard soil and rocks, all stacked in a tidy and neat row. But the most interesting detail about her was the fact that her alchemy wasn’t just her precision, it was the way it was performed; She hadn’t needed to draw anything before doing it. It was with a simple clap of her hands, then against the ground, that had allowed her to transform what she did.
That marks the first time in months the kids were able to genuinely feel anything but sorrow and longing.
She’s brought to their local clinic right after, coughing out blood and startling everyone around her as they thanked her for her help.
None of them like being in the familiar building, but they set that aside when they decide to pester the old woman as she sits on her bed — Kai is the last one of his siblings to beg for something, and yet it’s with clenched fists, big eyes, on his knees with his siblings, that he pleads for the woman to become their teacher and lead them to better alchemy.
“ Please! ” He says, bowing down onto the floor, head thumping loud against the ground. “I’ll do anything, ma’am!”
Nya and Lloyd follow suit, always ready to back Kai up, the latter’s expression a little bit more convincing than the former’s, possibly only because he’s younger. “ Please!! ”
“No!” was their original response, but sympathy takes over the woman’s features before long and she agrees with a resigned sigh. Kai has a feeling it’s because somebody in the crowd had mentioned that they were orphaned not so long ago. It makes his stomach churn, but he ignores it.
He has a thought in mind. And he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it. He’s tired of just sitting and watching.
Ironically, he finds himself sitting on sand and watching as Mystake rows her boat away from the island she’d left the three of them on. The sun is blazingly hot against his skin, and it almost feels like he’s sizzling because of the heat. The sand does it no better, but he luckily has sandals protecting his feet.
Nya stares at the growing distance between the boat and the island with wide eyes, mouth agape. They’d all been surprised at the sudden drop-off, although Mystake had told them early on that they would be given a trial before they were to be her students — What they had in mind was an exam that they could surely ace after many years of studying alchemy. Instead, they’re given a life challenge of surviving on an abandoned island.
Lloyd lets out a little sound as he sits down beside Kai, eyes squinting as light shines directly in his eyes, almost tauntingly.
“Maybe when I take over the world, I'll put her in jail first.”
That was the first time Lloyd had even mentioned anything related to law and its punishments in his world-overtaking plans. And he’d sworn his world would have no rules.
Kai just continues to watch in astonishment as the little spec his eyes had been trained on finally disappears.