This is an AU. That should probably be said first. What exactly it's an AU ABOUT, is probably better read than told.

I originally started telling this story in a series of drabbles, but it started driving me nuts after a while. So I decided to go with actual chapters. Yay! However, I'll be honest – Seven Names of Envy Angevin is my main project, and this is secondary (although it's really not far behind in terms of interest). So I can't promise how fast new chapters will come out :P

The chapters won't be terribly, terribly long (for now anyway) – this is three and a half pages on Word.

The lyrics are by AFI.

Brief edits Feb 8th, 2013: A few missing words, grammar mistakes, etc.

~1~

This is what I brought you, this you can keep,
This is what I brought, you may forget me.
I promise you my heart, just promise to sing,
Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep.

-Prelude 12-21

Selim Bradley woke up at eleven o'clock on a stormy night with the unshakable, unmistakable feeling that something was terribly wrong.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and trying to locate the source of his discomfort. One thing he'd learned in his ten short years was never to ignore his gut feelings – they hadn't been wrong yet. He'd felt like this the night before he'd gotten the news of his mother's death.

It came to him, crystal clear and insistent. Will and Alex are in trouble.

His first instinct was to run down to their house, tumble down the hill and knock on their door until he woke them up, saw their faces and proved his intuition wrong. But fear stopped him – and instead, he crawled out from underneath his covers, touching his feet to the floorboards and trying to ignore the prickling feeling at the back of his neck.

Slowly, quietly, afraid that shattering the silence would bring some danger down on his head, he made his way through the open door to the other room, where his father lay sleeping. "Dad," he whispered, although it came out sounding like a shout in the stillness.

There was no response, although he could see the rise and fall of his breath. Selim touched his shoulder lightly, then grasped it and gave it a shake. "Dad, wake up."

King began to stir. "Selim? What's the matter?" He turned around, one dark eye fixing on his son's dark silhouette and the other, milky white and sightless, staring out into empty space.

"It's…" He swallowed. "I think something's wrong."

"Where?" asked King, already sitting up and reaching for his eyepatch. It hurt him to look at anything for too long with the destroyed eye, and he fitted the cord over his head, making sure the black leather covered not only his eye but the scar that crossed it.

"Down the hill. Will and Alex." Already, the tugging sense of wrongness was starting to fade into the realm of bad dreams, and he was about to smile and dismiss it, when a flash brighter and bluer than lightning ignited the sky and lit up every window.

The feeling returned, twice as strong.

The quiet static of the storm shattered with a bloodcurdling scream. Selim knew it.

"ALEX!"

He ran for the front door, slamming into it as his shaking, sweaty hands searched for purchase on the knob. Finally, he twisted it to the side, flinging the door open and letting it slam into the wall as he hurtled out into the rain.

"Selim, stop." The leathery hand on his shoulder was gentle but unyielding, and he looked up at his father with a scowl. "It's not safe."

He shook his head. "I don't care. They need help!" He tried to tug himself out of King's grip, but to no avail. "ALEX! WILL! I'M COMING!" he yelled, but the wind grabbed his words and threw them back in his face.

"Fine. But stay behind me, son."

Selim growled, but with a sigh, fell behind King – who, he noticed, had his sword with him, belt strapped on over his blue striped pyjamas.

They went slowly, bare feet squelching and sliding in the muddy disaster that the rain had made of the hill. With every cautious step, the prickling at the back of Selim's neck intensified, to the point where he could begin to identify the cause.

Alchemy.

Another scream split the air – deeper, hoarser, although few ears could discern the difference that only a year could make – and unwilling to be restrained any longer, Selim took off down the rest of the hill. The mud, as if sensing his need for swiftness, tripped him up and sent him sliding down to the ditch at the foot of the short tumble.

He immediately sprang to his feet, reaching for the handle of the closest door (the concrete portal that led to the basement). The words he was hearing didn't fully process, muffled as they were by the white noise all around, but just as his fingers brushed the doorknob, another flash lit up the world.

It took a few seconds for his vision to clear, and he'd fallen to the ground. Dad was standing over him.

"Selim, you stay here."

"But –"

"I said, stay here!" King's tone was that of a soldier, and Selim nodded, lifting himself from the ground again.

King laid his hand carefully on the handle, and then twisted it to open the door. It wasn't locked. The air that drifted out smelt putrid, coppery.

It was the smell that pervaded the automail surgery room in their house.

Scarred face growing grimmer and grimmer with every moment, King advanced into the darkness. Selim twisted his toe into the mud, shivering as the rain slithered its way between his pyjama shirt and back. Bad things always happened when it was raining.

Briefly, he wondered if Daddy's knee was hurting. Storms did that – and then he slapped himself. Alex and Will could be badly hurt and he was worried about Daddy's knee?

Through the open door, he saw King bend down and lift something – somebody from the ground, then turn around to face him.

Selim's heart stopped beating for a moment as King approached. It was Will. But Will's golden hair was drenched in red – so were his t-shirt, and his shorts, and his skin, and –

There was something wrong with him. It took Selim a moment to realize what it was, but he nearly threw up when it finally made sense why William was so much smaller than usual.

His arm and leg was gone.

"What…" He gulped. "What happened?" The raw, dripping flesh that was crying onto Daddy's arms attracted his eyes like a grotesque carnival – too obscene to be quite real.

"I don't know." King began to make his way up the hill, his pace urgent but careful.

"Wait! Where's Alex?"

King gave his son a sad, regretful look. Selim didn't understand. He looked down at Will's hand – the one that remained – and what it was holding.

A doll – a little wooden doll, with ball joints, glass eyes and a mat of black yarn for hair – dangled limply from his fingers, in danger of falling.

It was Alex's doll, and it was just as coated in blood as Will's skin.

"No," he breathed, shaking his head.

King said nothing more, striding up the hill with his precious burden.

"No," Selim said again. "No, no, no."

Alex was just…Alex was somewhere, Dad just couldn't find him.

Selim flung open the door and entered the room. The third scream of the Elric house that night came from him, as he took in the scene, and everything it meant.

The floorboards were slick with blood – how had this all come from Will? – but not enough to completely conceal the complex, beautiful circle drawn in chalk in the middle of the room. And in the middle of the bone-white circle was…a monster.

The monster's hair was limp and brown – its fingers delicate, if overlong and skeletal.

"T-Trisha?"

The monster said nothing, blank, sightless eyes accusing and white.

Selim turned and fled, unaware of the frightened tears that streamed from his eyes, or how his heart jackhammered against his ribs. All he knew was Alex, and the sudden, dreadful void that had suddenly grown another person wider.