AN: enjoy work that is mine with charecters that are not!

xxx belle

Roy Mustangs office was in its usual state of disorder, stacks of paperwork or desks, threatening to topple. The tedious, long hours of the monotony work that required, after so much boring reading, a simple signature.

There was little to distract him, the boring work sometimes lulling him into drowsy stare, Of which he always realized he was staring at the only picture on his desk, and suppressed he painful thoughts that came to mind and continued his work with more gusto than it was due.

None of the files came to eye personally, he never noticed the warrant form in the same pale folder as all the rest.

A form to investigate an are where apparent screams had been hear along with bright lights and crackling sounds, the obvious signs of a transmutation.

Nothing out of the ordinarily.

Except one difference. There was a bunch of white lilies on a empty desk in the corner. The desk was always empty, bear save the carvings of complex array and comical drawings craved into its surface.

Today was the anniversary of Edwards disappearance, Four years ago.

*

"Asha, is the array ready yet?" a voice husked behind him, soft breath smelling of rot as it stirred the short spikes of hair at his neck.

"Yes, I think it is ready." he said, just as softly, as though not to disrupt the dreamy air that surrounded the woman at his back.

"Good, the pull is getting stronger; I don't think I could have held out much longer anyway." Clara said as she slid into his view, gliding on bare feet that looked far to frail against the cold stone beneath them and the heavy velvet of her skirts.

He didn't say a word in reply, he knew of what she spoke; the addiction. He saw it become worse since he had arrived here, growing from simple thrill to something she could not live without. He himself could feel the pull, but for a different, forgotten reason.

She sat across the wide circle from him, face pale as the moonlight caught on the green stones embedded in her skin, littered in a spiraling decent from just beneath her left eye to the tip of her thumb. He had put them there when she had asked, along with the eyes, so large on her face, not quite human. One was a dark purple, so deep in it's nadir it looked black- barely distinguishable from the slit iris. The other was a dazzling blue-gray, so clear it appeared to be made of fine glass or crystal, but watery like cut ice, a gaze hard to keep without looking away. They looked for all the world to be cat eyes, but they both knew the truth.

"It's pretty," she muttered, one hand snaking out to stroke the white outline of the curling array, long sharp nails caressing lovingly over the source of power she was so bound too.

"Yes, it is. But I don't know how I made it." I don't remember how to draw them, but I still do. Asha thought, she couldn't explain it anymore than he could. How he knew the alchemy before he drew it, how he already knew how to circulate the energy, how to design the most complex arrays without a second thought, and still don't know how he knew.

"That doesn't mater now." she said, reaching across the stone to grasp a plaid bad that held shards of ivory. She placed them carefully on her lap as he sat in the center of the array, each piece sharp enough to slice the skin of her fingers as easily as a knife slicing through butter. "it matters that you have such a glorious gift, it matters not how you know the things that bring us what we desire."

Inwardly he sighed, Asha knew full well Clarabell's envy of his talent with alchemy. But she was glad enough to take what he offered. His transmutations made her happy, and she in turn soothed the ache of loneliness that had embedded in his soul since he could remember.

He clapped, circulating the energy that thrummed through his body like a swarm of insects looking for escape. His palms fell down to the chalked outline that circled the swirling array, they did not match; just as Clarabell's eyes did not. But he spared this barely a moments thought before concentrating on the task at hand.

Dingy blue light flared up around them, cocooning Clara in swaths of wind and color. The blue, he remembered, used to be a pure, clear crystal aqua. But now it was a dull, dirty color, tainted by the tendrils of gray and olive that spun around the blue and turned it dark and polluted. The energy itself felt greasy and oily as it left his body, leaving behind an echo of the feeling, the residue of the foul energy. Something that no matter how hard he tried, would not wash away.

The world surrounding them washed white, slowly draining the color till there was nothing but bright white light encroaching across an open plain that stretched further than even Clara's eyes could see.

"You know what we are here for, gate." Asha said towards the hulking mass of stone, he was always the one to do the talking, Clara did not have 'the right blood', as she called it.

True enough though, the arrays never worked when they mixed her blood with the chalk dust to draw the arrays. But it never failed with his.

The ivory spikes drifted free from the grasp of Clarabell, cutting her skin as they slid from the vice like grip. She didn't flinch, her face a mask of pure ecstasy, the air around her flowing vibrant with the energy she so loved.

If you would pay the price?

Th ominous voice boomed into his head, a thousand tenors melting into the monotone sentence that screamed directly into his mind.

Always. He answered, the same word as always tumbling through his empty mind.

Clara convulsed. Asha forgot.

Edward disappeared.