Mnemosyne, Mother of the Muse
Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction

Genre: general, horror, Elric!kyoudai
Rating: T (PG-13)
Word Count: around 5200
Summary: There are some serious flaws in the theory of human transmutation. The fact that is has never worked, for one.
Notes: Technically manga!verse, given the presence of the Little Gate Guy. Started 15 July 2006, finished 23 July 2007. (Er.) Dedicated to and inspired by Elfinragdoll on LJ who posted a theory in May 2005 and birthed this idea in me. Who could tell that a year later, we would be friends? XD I'm not sure if her actual theory presents itself in this story, but I know that it's definitely where I started. Oo

"He who tries to enter the Rose-garden of the Philosophers
without the key is like a man wanting to walk without feet"
- Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens (1617), Emblema XXVII

--

Nigredo

--

Alphonse doesn't remember sleeping. He must have, though, because remembers the Waking Up. He remembers being small and soft and delicate – cold and naked, too; he was compromised. It wasn't his fault. It was never his fault. There wasn't anything he could have done.

He remembers holding up ten fingers because he couldn't find his voice when the strange paper cut-out child asked how old he was.

"Only ten?" the little ghost had replied. "Then I've been here nine times longer than you and lived nine times as many different lives."

Alphonse tried to ignore the cut-out. It wasn't hard, because Alphonse couldn't really hear and couldn't really see and everything was so strange and warped inside he couldn't really understand what the cut-out rattled on about. He could make out doors, however. The way out.

The closer he got to the Gate, the less clouded he seemed to feel. The wood smelt nice, he found, though he didn't know what sort of tree it had been crafted from. The designs were very pretty. He thought maybe he recognized parts, but he was really too light-headed to tell. He blinked a few times and traced the contours of the designs.

The doors were beautiful, but jagged. Unfinished. Or rather, little used.

But now the cut-out was irritated. "Don't dare ignore me here. You humans ignore me your entire lives. But this is my home! Pay attention."

Snap. And Alphonse did listen. And for the first time, the words sunk in. He wasn't home, and there was nothing familiar to show that he was anywhere near it, that he was anywhere near their house, or their kitchen table, or Granny Pinako or Winry or Brother or Brother or Brother–

"Are you…" What a small voice. (And it's just like school again, asking questions to which he knows the answers, but would like to make sure. In school, you could do that. Double-check. In alchemy, you couldn't. And they had gotten something wrong on the Big Test and now he was here and Brother was nowhere to be found and what what WHAT was he going to do?) "Are you not human?"

"I am Truth."

Al's mind raced in no particular direction. The thing in front of him claimed it was not human. He knew very well that the stuff beneath his feet was not his world. This meant (and how could it not?) there was nothing he could do.

But finding the courage to speak again came easily once Alphonse became painfully aware of the more pressing matters at hand. (The disturbing leakage of liquid black snaking across white, for one. And the fact that it was spilling from the dark doors to pool at his feet before rippling up his calves.)

In that moment, Alphonse knew that I've been here nine times longer than you meant I know the rules here, and I can kill you at my leisure. Empty threat or no, any attempt to befriend the cut-out boy would be better than nothing. "Only nine?" Al parroted Truth, though in their haste, his words tripped over one another and melded into one. A chill ran across his shoulders, like a ghostly arm wrapped around his neck. Be friendly. Be friendly. He'll know if you're afraid of him; you can't be afraid of your friends… He took in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to recall the last time he had been so scared.

Mom on the floor, vegetables strewn about like funeral flowers. But he hadn't been truly scared, really; Brother had been there. What he had felt was devastation.

Water over his head, hitting him harder than Brother had ever dared. Sand in his mouth, and him opening reflexively to spit it out. Ocean down his throat.

Thinking that if he clung to these two strong legs, Brother and Mom would at least find his body so they could take it home and he wouldn't just be gone, like Dad was.

When Alphonse was scared, he rationalized. If the cut-out child wanted to talk, then maybe it would call off the tendrils before they took him. He needn't be friendly. He just needed to be brave, like Brother. (But what was he supposed to say? Here's a nickel; take me back to Brother, please and thank you?)

Unfortunately, Truth's next actions told him otherwise. As Truth watched (almost gleefully, to Al's dismay) the snakes coil around Alphonse's legs, it laughed. Laughed. A tinkling, unmemorable sound, but proof enough for Al.

The cut-out fiend wanted to see him taken.

Life makes you bitter, if he's lived nine times mine. Life became harder to live the longer you kept it, it seemed to Al. After all, his eighth year had been especially hard. He must be lonely, stuck here for almost a hundred years.

"But then you'd only be ninety," came his detached croak, shortly after this realization. He was slipping away, wraith-tendrils pulling at his skin, pressing against bone and pulling muscles taut. Constricting. Asphyxiating. Simple math was all he could think to do while the darkness took over inexorably.

Truth laughed, and folded its arms behind its head, rocking as though he was sailing in a hammock. (Remember when–) "I only count the lives I can remember. If I don't retain any memories of the times before ninety, how can I prove it was ever there? How can I count it as 'life'?"

Alphonse wanted to say that there was never an absence of matter – there must always be something, somewhere. Even if science couldn't prove air was comprised of oxygen and hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide… alchemists could manipulate air; it wasn't just empty space. Then, something struck him. It could be –

Truth licked its flat whiteness where there would have – should have – been lips. "But if you choose to go by my principles… Then you haven't ever lived at all, have you?" It pulled him back from the gaping jaws and lick of the Doors, out of the pall of a pregnant storm and into the heart of a new rain. Truth was taking him back. He was giving him back (to Brother?).

– manipulated.

Al's heart fluttered and cheered because Truth had changed its mind – spared him – but the elation was veiled heavily by doubt. What does it want, now?

Back, and back, and back, the doors pulled Al in inch by inch. The black eclipsed the white as it spewed from the Gate and around him, and at close range Al saw it was not pure black. There were swirls and slow-running currents within, the flutter of faces and of dark stars that blinked white light under Al's eyelids whenever he closed them –

(It seems like forever.)

– until Al caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of his eye. He was standing on the fringe of reality and Truth. Truth brutally pulled him back, and at once Al was horrorstruck – had it been a game? Was he to be kept here after all?

"Give your brother my heartfelt regards; tell him I'll be waiting for his next visit." Truth neglected to mention that it had no heart from which it would give 'regards,' or that Big Brother might not give a damn about its regards (though Al didn't realize this piece of information had been withheld until much later).

Instead, it grinned, slack-jawed and toothless, an expanse of white that was hardly discernable from the ghost of its face. It watched as Alphonse cringed away from the leer that he could see. (He could not see, but he could feel.)

The doors began to close.

"I can't – I don't," Alphonse whimpered, his resolve and strength spirited away, leaving only a plaintive bleating – like a sheep with a wolf's fangs already around him. Tendrils of the Nothing and the Everything from the Doors stretched out to claim Alphonse for themselves once more.

Truth preened. "This little lost sheep of a boy does have a wolf at his neck!" Al didn't think this was such a big accomplishment for the cut-out boy.

And it was funny. Hilarious, even. That he should be so proud.

Alphonse looked up at the phantom uncertainly, large pale eyes (so innocent! so delicious! he felt Truth thinking) watering from the light issuing from beyond Truth. "I think I've seen enough."

"Oh?' Truth cocked its head. "But I'm giving you a treasure. I expect at least a 'thanks' or some groveling – at least some groveling – when you next come to call."

"I've seen enough," Al repeated, firmer this time. Beyond these doors was home – of that Alphonse was sure now. A little laughter trickled out, because before he had been so afraid. But now he was going home. (And it had been so easy.) It's even an equivalent trade, by Truth's standards. Truth is fair and just, so Truth dealt kindness to the little sheep Alphonse where it was due. (Truth always plays fair when it's winning.)

And winning it is.

Just before Al toppled over the fringe and back towards life (color, feelings, lifetimes) he caught a glimpse of Truth's left leg.

It's different now – wrought of flesh and bone instead of Nothing. Alphonse can't help but feel there's something...

– familiar about it.

--

Albedo

--

"What's familiar?"

"Huh? Oh. I was just remembering what it was like, inside the Gate…" Alphonse muttered. He'd been staring at Brother, crouched like a dog over their old notes.

In an instant, Brother's expression darkened involuntarily. "I see." He'd been thinking about it, too, but from the practical perspective. Now he seemed frustrated. "How in hell did we manage this?!" Their determinations of the circle's properties, the proofs for each series of causal figures (air and water, earth and fire); change. Rebirth – everything was taken into account and translated into alchemic shorthand), and their reciprocations. "We were ten and eleven! We've learned so much between then and now. I mean, it's been how long? And this is still… Impossible."

"We knew what we wanted," Al said. And making impossibilities reality had always been Brother's trademark talent. "And we were positive we had enough to make it real."

Brother shoved his hands into his spacious coat pockets and pretended to be wildly interested in the arrangement of his bootstraps.

Al sighed. "This isn't going to be like last time. We have the Philosopher's Stone."

Brother let out an unsatisfied grunt as he extracted several small splinters of the red Stone from his pocket. He glanced at them distastefully. "This thing's just the bargaining chip. We're going to need more than that to get what we're asking for."

This was the first time Alphonse had heard Brother speak of needing more than the Philosopher's Stone. Before he could press information out of him, however,Brother shot up. "Time to get to work!"

And what was Al supposed to say? Wait, hold on, I don't trust you enough to follow you today? He'd reread their notes as well. They needed no base materials, for his body existed within the Gate. And there was no fabricating a soul, this time. It was bound to this armor. It was a (relatively) simple matter of transferring the bond. 'More than the Philosopher's Stone' had to mean their state of mind; that was all.

He remembered that last time, it was like jumping from one riverbank to the next; you could have no inhibitions or second glances. If you did, you wouldn't jump far enough and you would be swept away with the current.

There was no turning back, now. Time to get to work.

They had burned the study they used for their original human transmutation, so their second site would be the rubble of their home. It seemed only fitting. Much of it had since decomposed, leaving behind dark, rich soil.

A sandbag was propped against the skeleton of their childhood.

The screen door slams, something is flung to the floor (Winry's workbag, Al presumes), and Winry rushes from her workshop and into the living room. "I got one of the neighbors to truck a bag of sand up to your house," Winry explains. She is breathless; also very happy, and very proud. "Isn't it nice to know someone who owns a car?"

Neither of the Elrics had answered at first; they were too focused on Winry's smile. I'm going to make you cry tears of joy had been Edward's promise. So of course, Al had taken it upon himself to do the same.

But they were not doing this for her. If we think like that…

Brother slipped a pocketknife from his jacket pocket and slit a small hole in the top-right corner of the bag. Swiftly, Al dug an outline for the circle in the dirt, but the sky already bled a late-autumn red. The light emitted by their transmutation would be far more conspicuous in the dark; this had to be done quickly.

"I really thought it was going to work last time. That we could do it," Brother whispered as he poured the sand and the circle came to life, bright white against black soil. "Now I want to think the same thing, but I can't help but wonder if I'm being just as reckless and deluded as last time."

"This isn't last time," Alphonse reminded him once more. He almost mentioned the Stone again, but Brother did not like to look at it, think about it.

Edward seemed to brighten instantly. "You're right, Al! What am I worrying about? We know what to expect now, and we know what doesn't work. And besides, we have the Philosopher's Stone! What can possibly go wrong?" Well, so much for that caution.

Brother worked with renewed vigor, but before he had even finished detailing the core arrangement, his smile had vanished and he was brooding again. And so it went, sudden transitions from anxiety to utmost confidence, until the circle was complete and he had situated himself beside Al.

This was the final moment. There wasn't time for second-guessing.

"Wait."

No. There's nothing wrong. We doubled checked-everything. NonononoNO. All the math – it's fine. We can't do this right now; we can't doubt. We have to jump from one bank to the other, we have to fly – "Everything is perfect, Brother."

"That's what's wrong! Everything's been pristine. Equivalent exchange says we're probably going to fuck something up about now." It was difficult to resist the compulsion to strangle him. They absolutely could not afford –

"Brother, what are you–"

"Let's wait for a natural disaster or something."

"Brother! You can't be thinking like this now." And Brother knew that. He knew, because he was the one who had told Al in the first place! And if he got all hesitant on him now, Al didn't know if he could keep his resolve. Alphonse edged closer to Brother. "This is it. We have it."

But Brother wasn't hesitating, that Al could now see. He was stalling. He was terrified.

Alphonse trusted Brother. He trusted him with his life. And he trusted him with everything so long as he knew Brother had a plan. But for Brother, terror was reserved for those instances when he did not know what to do, or if there was a possibility he could do nothing. And when Brother had no plans, his decision-making tended to suffer.

"You're not allowed to do anything dangerous–" Al stopped. Everything was dangerous. "More dangerous than necessary. I mean, we don't have to do this. It's really not –" He stopped again.

A thin smile slid across Ed's lips, but it did not reach his eyes.

"It's a rule; you remember that." Now Alphonse felt the fear, as well. The fear that he was dealing with something unpredictable, unrelenting, and completely uncontrollable. And it was not the Stone; it was Brother.

"I promise I'll get your body back, Al." The Elrics were known for keeping promises, not rules.

--

Rubedo

--

He could hardly breathe. All the potential energy in the world was working its way up his body, gathering at his throat, paralyzing his arms, his lungs, his chest, as it surged through him. He couldn't do this.

But they couldn't stop now, because Al was right – this is the moment they had worked toward for half their damned lives. Even longer, if one counted the childhood hours they spent trying to understand alchemy. And still, it came down to understanding.

That was just it, though; they didn't understand. They couldn't. Truth had slapped them in the face, permeated their very beings, and they couldn't comprehend. (Weren't meant to.)

If they had taken away anything from that night, it was the understanding that never in their mortal life should they attempt this again. Forbidden once, twice as forbidden the second. It was the acute possibility – no, the certainty – of failure that froze Ed now.

But they had to. They had to they had to they had to because…

Because otherwise everything –

…it couldn't all be worthless now. He tried to take a deeper breath, gather the air in his lungs and push it back out in one fluid motion, but his breath hitched and all he could manage was a series of shallow intakes, building off one another and mounting like tiered glass before they collapsed in a shuddering, shivering exhalation.

Knowing what lay in store for them – if, indeed, they survived long enough. Al was without a body; maybe the Gate would just take his soul this time – awarded no confidence. There was only terror.

He couldn't see It again. He couldn't feel that – he couldn't realize –

But part of Al had spent seven years in the company of It.

And he had endured, possibly without even realizing that there was something beyond the void. Ed held his breath – it wasn't worth the effort it took to force air in – and plunged his gloved hands into the array painted in sand on the ground.

They were better at alchemy now; not nearly as much energy was wasted in creating byproducts like light and heat. It might even have been a quiet, surreptitious affair, had he and Al been careless enough to allow spectators. But to the alchemist, this was the heat and crux of passion, a taste of untainted and limitless power. A thousand voices screamed furious nothings in his ears, a thousand sparks of energy danced within his frames of vision. He was fully at the command of his art, and this was giving, this was giving everything – the bit that equivalent exchange failed to factor in. Surrender human control to gain control over the universe, huh?

Alchemy was a science at the surface, but there was nothing, nothing at all scientific about the surge in his chest and his total weightlessness as he fell forward, forward, forward until there shouldn't have been any more forward to fall.

But maybe that was the truth behind truths.

"Welcome home." Still-familiar voice.

Edward hissed.

"Well, home is what you're looking for, isn't it? And since you came back, I inferred…" Ghosty, leering bastard.

"Happened to be in the neighborhood," Ed responded callously. "I'm not exactly looking into real estate– "

"I'm not talking about quaint little houses in that quaint little town of yours, with that quaint little girl who loves you both so much she can't think straight. You're looking for the unconditional acceptance of 'home'; the safety." 'Truth' seemed impatient today.

"I'm looking," Deep breath. Damage done; it was easier to breathe now. "For my brother."

"And you got him. Last time." Truth somersaulted in the Nothing, draping it across his ghost-form and giving it form. It made Ed's head spin just to watch. The brat was already playing with him.

"I'm not going to buy you any more brothers if you keep breaking them," Truth admonished. "Where did you put the last one?" And Truth's every feature flaunted Knowledge: he knew exactly where Alphonse was.

Truth may be playing with him, and Ed couldn't help but slip into the game. (Angry marionette on strings.) "You! You never gave me anything. So just this once: Fucking even the tables! I need – "

"You need, you need. You're alive now, aren't you? You don't need anything. And actually," Truth had begun to pace about the Nothing, but stopped. "If you were dead, you still would want for nothing!

"We're even."

Every aspect of It made Ed's skin crawl, his muscles tense. It was just so. Unbelievably incongruous, incomprehensible, untouchable. All he could think was the question he'd been asking himself since Night One. "What the hell did you ever give me anyway!"

"Everything, sweetling. You know what I gave you. You know, just as well as any kid on Christmas day who snuck out to see what he got, because he can't wait until Mommy and Daddy wake. Because he was a terrible hungry little thing with no patience.

"Because he wanted.

"But that's another universe entirely, so I guess the metaphor did nothing for you, did it? Best that it didn't; then I'd have to exact my pay."

Edward tried to ignore It. If it wasn't talking outcomes and consequences, he didn't care. "I want my Brother whole again. I want him to lead… the life he was meant to live."

Truth broke off from its self-indulgent rambling. "Impossible."

Silence.

Edward struggled to execute his next move. He had expected laughing, or haggling, or gloating – 'the price is too great for something of such perfection' – and instead reaped simple Truth.

He was getting closer. All or nothing.

"Nothing is impossible here, is it? This–" Edward flung out his arms. "This entire construct is impossible. I'm not dealing with the middle man; so long as I give enough, you can get me what I want."

"What happens, I wonder, when you don't have enough to give? If 'everything' isn't enough?"

"He's not what you want. You want him back so you can be assuaged of guilt. You want him back so everything will be 'okay' again. You want him back so everything will feel the same again, even though it won't be. So you see, your brother's body is just a stepping stone. It means nothing to you unless it is the cause for your desired effects."

Edward refused to admit that was even a little bit true. But it was Truth; it didn't need his validation.

"If everything's not enough, then I use this." Slowly, carefully (it might break into a hundred bitter lies) he withdrew the Stone, shards a heated red, sharp against pure white.

He would swear Truth brightened at the sight, and he was sure as hell it licked its lips in gluttonous anticipation. But it quickly regained composure. "You didn't make these."

"But I know how they were made. What does it matter? I have the stone, and I know what its existence means."

"No you don't; not truly. When that thing is created… you humans drive yourselves to madness, if you weren't already there." And this isn't madness?! "You don't know the lives, and they can't ever touch you because YOU didn't ever hurt them. But someone did, someone paid the ultimate price. And it wasn't you."

"Do I need to?" Ed demanded petulantly. "Isn't it, as you said, the cause of the effect?"

Truth was silenced. But what it could not win through intimidation, it hoped to sway through reason. Edward had resolved to be immune to both the moment he put his hands to the circle.

"This isn't what he wants," said Truth. It reminded Ed of Winry (because isn't that what she'd wanted to say?), but Truth had fucked up the delivery. He didn't need to hear that from some infallible, preternatural – fucking dispassionate bastard. In answer to his thoughts, Truth pressed close, as though planning to breathe secrets into Ed's ear, chin balanced on his shoulder, hands digging at the seam of automail and skin.

One of these hands was Edward's.

An unexpected wave of fury swept into him, swelled, crested, and rushed out in a torrent of words. "I don't need you to tell me anything! I don't need you to show me anything, or remind me of anything! I promised I'd get Al his body back and that's what I'm going to do! So just… exact your pay and do your job or whatever the hell this is to you!"

Truth's lips hardened, and his entire form seemingly increased in density as do clouds before a storm. "Oh, you–"

Edward hadn't expected Truth's hold to be so strong, as he struggled to free his flesh arm from the thing's grasp. But then, he hadn't known Truth could touch him at all – that the gap between what had life and what was (principle? philosophy? ideal?) Truth had been bridged.

Luckily, Truth did not seem intent on continuing its monopolization of his body. It clung in stillness, save for the shallow breaths that heaved its chest like a drum beat against Edward's shoulder blades. (Why it bothered with the breathing, he could only guess. Practice?) "I want this, you have no idea how mu–"

"Oh don't I?" Edward broke in, grinning impishly. He wasn't going to let that Thing have all the fun. "Funny you should mention that, since–" The remainder of his words mutated into an unintelligible snarl as his boot flew straight up and smacked Truth in the jaw.

Evidently amazed at his flexibility (or his gall, Ed amended), Truth drew back like a snake poised to strike and swung his legs around Edward's, clinging like a–

First trip to the beach; he had just turned five and Alphonse was still a baby three. He was taller, more wordly (or so he would have Alphonse believe); he was Big Brother. As they stood at the edge of the dune and waited for the swell of sea to sweep over them, Alphonse clung to him, arms gripping his shoulders and legs locked in a vicegrip about his thighs. He was one of those large tentacled things in the book, a – a – a kracken clinging to shore for fear of being swept away.

"Little Brother thought of the same day, when he came to pay his respects." And what had happened to him?

He could see how the Gate-born homunculi were like a flirting taste with impossibility. This was like drowning in it. He hadn't planned to negotiate; he had assumed the Gate would give him what he asked for, so long as he was willing to give everything it demanded of him. The Stone fragments were supposed to clinch it. So what the hell am I doing? For the first time, Edward understood just how far out of his league, out of what made sense and what he could manipulate, he had wandered.

And he'd hit the Gate's keeper, or whatever the hell that thing was supposed to be. Edward was sure that would make it much more complacent. (Of course it would.) Fuck. FUCK.

What the fuck did I think I was doing?

That I'd march in here, demand my price, and do whatever it took to get Al's body back. In my unsurpassed fucking genius

But he didn't know the rules (and thus couldn't decide to break any), didn't know the world.

And for fuck's sake, now it can read my mind? Back home, Edward Elric was known for achieving the impossible, but what could he do when it was already impossible? He was balanced precariously on the edge of relative satisfaction (as he knew there could be no truly happy endings) and having everything stripped away without any discernable reward.

"Such is the price of awareness.

"Give yourself over to me and I assure you, you will never wonder what you can and cannot do."

Edward met this with an indignant expression. "Stop that."

"This is my impossible world," Truth crooned. "But it can be yours."

Edward didn't fully understand; he was sure he never would. But only one thing mattered: Will it bring Al back?

It shrugged. "This is your chance to make your every ideal Truth. It's your world, now."

He never truly said yes, but he could not imagine a world in which he would be forced to explain to Al why he had said No.

Edward had not expected a physical exchange. Raw power hit him full force, slamming him upwards like a broken doll. His chest exploded; to breathe was to lift all the weight of the world.

He could feel the sheer energy all around him, his limbs (two strong legs; get up and use them) deadened, vestigial. It pounded in his head and pulsed through his entire being. He felt himself give into its force, felt himself bend and become one with all the power in the world. This was the same was human transmutation. Surrender human for universal control. Surrender the self for the universe. That Day, Ed had simply let the waves crash over him. (And when he wasn't watching as closely as he should have, Alphonse was pulled under.)

Now he was manipulating the entire sea. The power was his.

He watched as hid body was taken by the Gate, in strands of DNA that uncoiled and unwound like birthday ribbons.

What did a body matter?

Truth was the boyish cut-out of wraithlike fog no longer. Instead, it was like salt, worked into a thin crust that broke and cracked as it stepped into the Gate. (But it wasn't Truth any longer, was it? Not in Edward Elric's impossible world.)

"How easily Truths are shattered. But always, new ones crop up in their place–" The last word was a hiss as the cut-out's face crashed upon the ground like a mask of thinnest glass.

Nothing was infallible.

At once, he (It) intrinsically knew Al was alive and whole. (In a few minutes, he would only be alive and grief-stricken, though still physically whole; nothing in Al's power that could fix that). He (Truth) knew, yet hardly noticed.

There were no epiphanies. No sudden understanding of the workings of the world. There was only Nothing.

And it was madness.

fin

Nigredo, the black; primal matter. Albedo, the white; unity. Rubedo, the red; reanimation.

This fic made me remember how much I hate writing Edward Elric. D: Constructive criticism is much applauded.