I am venturing into the realm of political thriller, sort of. Not a place where I am most comfortable, but I'll give it a whirl.

Fullmetal Alchemist/Brotherhood is the property of Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Aniplex, etc. Not me. I disclaim everything.

As it seems to be the case, I am basing Drachma on Soviet-era Russia, but it is not meant to be an exact historical parallel.

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essential estinvisible pour les yeux.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye

Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

Chapter 1

The crack of metal against metal rang and reverberated within the expanse that stretched from one mountainside to another. Uncle Alyokha was using the grip of his revolver to pound on the massive doors of the fort. It was the only way to be heard, and being on the Drachman side, might be answered only by gunfire. Alyokha was taking the chance that they were less likely to be shot by the Briggs guards than by those who were pursuing them.

The revolver snapped where the barrel joined with the frame. Typical. It was a relic from the old regime, supposedly back when workmanship was better. At least it hadn't gone off while being used as a doorknocker. That would have been embarrassing. Mitya wasn't sure why these thoughts were going through his head. Maybe his brain could only take so much terror.

Three nights ago—it seemed like ages ago now—he had been woken and gruffly but quietly told to get dressed. With shaking hands, Uncle Alyokha had tried to hurry him along, pulling a second tattered sweater over Mitya's head before the boy had finished getting his arms through the first one. In Drachma, you dressed in layers against the cold, and Mitya only had a few changes of clothes. Alyokha was trying to get all of them on the boy. He said they couldn't carry luggage.

Mitya didn't really have any personal possessions that he cared much about anyway, but he still didn't understand why they were leaving. Alyokha had been acting a little strange lately, which was wrong in several ways. One thing you didn't want to do was anything out of the ordinary in a place where you never knew who was watching you or what they were watching for. Mitya had learned that lesson early. It wasn't one they taught in school. In school they taught you to be the watcher. You were supposed to watch your neighbors, your schoolmates, your closest friends, even your parents. Anything suspicious was to be reported and vigilance was rewarded.

Mitya no longer had parents. All he had left of them were a small photograph and his mother's matryoshka, the nesting doll made of old folk tale characters. They were the only things he was able to hurriedly shove into the pocket of his coat before Uncle Alyokha laid a heavy hand on his collar and hustled him out the door.

He didn't have close friends, either. He didn't attract them. He didn't join any of the youth groups with their red neckerchiefs and their little red manifestos that they didn't even need to open to quote from. He kept his head down and let people think he was simply unambitious, sullen, and slow-witted. He would be pushing a broom at the munitions factory until he was an old man, which was about as much out of life as he wanted.

Well, probably not now. Having worked so hard to escape notice, he was now getting entirely too much attention. If he even lived to be an old man, which was becoming less and less likely, he had no idea where he'd be pushing a broom.

The distant coughing rumble of a military truck could barely be heard behind them. A bullet pinged off the vast steel wall just above Mitya's head and he ducked down into the collar of his coat as though it would afford him some protection against lead. It wouldn't. The best he could rely on was the bad aim of their pursuers and the thick snowfall. Maybe Drachmans were used to the cold; that didn't mean they had to like it. Mitya couldn't remember ever being this cold. Except for a few school trips to the supposedly state-of-the-art collective to admire the tractors, he hadn't even been out of the city during his entire fifteen years of existence.

With nothing else to use, Alyokha banged his head against the steel doors, nearly sobbing.

"For pity's sake!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Let us in!" He then cried out in another language, Amestrian, Mitya assumed.

Another bullet cracked against metal, traversing through Alyokha's muskrat fur cap on its way. Blood dripped brilliantly against the white snow and Mitya, who didn't think he could get any more scared, got more scared. He had grown so unused to acting on his own initiative that he would be utterly helpless by himself. He grabbed Alyokha's arm.

"Uncle Alyokha!" he cried, his voice cracking.

The old man turned to him, wiping blood as it dripped down his cheek. Apparently the bullet had only grazed his skull. Their plight was no less desperate and he gazed at Mitya with a look of bitter hopelessness.

"I'm sorry, Dimitri Ivanovich!" he cried over the wind. Mitya was a little taken aback by being addressed so formally. Uncle only called him Mitya or Mityukh. "I'm so—"

A deep, echoing clunk rang and rippled through the wall before them and the tight seal between the doors split open. One of the doors slid to the side, releasing a rush of warm air. Hands seized them and pulled them through the opening, not particularly gently. They were unceremoniously pushed to the floor while the steel door was pulled closed, sealing out the blizzard and the Drachman soldiers.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Mitya squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the multiple metallic clicks of several rifles. Beyond that, there was no other sound except for their own labored breathing and the distant hum of enormous machinery. Nothing else happened for several moments and time seemed to stand still.

Finally, he heard Alyokha speak in a gasp. "Please! We need—"

"Quiet!" someone ordered.

Whoever it was spoke in Drachmani. Mitya wondered how much of the language the soldier actually knew because he didn't say anything else. It seemed as though they were not going to be shot just yet, so Mitya let himself relax. The soldiers seemed to be waiting for something, and he was perfectly happy to just lay here out of the cold.

For what was probably only a few minutes, not a word was spoken. Then, preceded by the crisp click of boots on concrete, a man's voice spoke sharply. Hands gripped Mitya's coat and hauled him to his feet. There were still rifles trained on him and on Alyokha. Mitya was spun around to face an officer, the one who must have spoken. He had a broad, clean-shaven, chiseled face, and he considered the two Drachmans with grim interest.

"Who are you?" he demanded. His Drachmani bore a fairly heavy accent but was clear enough.

Alyokha was trembling with exhaustion and under beads of sweat his face had begun to turn an unhealthy grey. "Please, sir, we need—"

"I asked for your name!" the officer said sharply.

With an effort, as though struggling to remember, Alyokha finally replied with a bob of his head. "My…my name is Alexei Afanasievich Golitsyn."

The officer jerked his chin toward Mitya. "And you?"

Mitya was about to reply, but Alyokha held up his hand. "Please, sir," he begged in a wheezing voice. "Before we go any further, I—I must tell you—we're seeking political asylum in your country."

"That's not for me to decide." The officer considered the old man for a moment, then gave a curt nod. "The general is on her way. You can talk to her."

Voices called down from above them and the officer looked up to listen. He answered back, then looked at Alyokha. "There are armed military at our back door. Care to explain that?"

"They were trying to stop us from reaching here," Alyokha replied. "We got a good enough head start, but it was a near thing. We've been planning this for months. Years, really."

The officer frowned. "Who's 'we'?"

Alyokha shook his head with sorrowful resignation. "It doesn't matter. They covered for us. By now they're either dead or worse."

Mitya glanced up at him. "Worse" meant in the hands of the secret police. If you got shot right away, you were lucky. But nothing explained why any of this had happened in the first place. Not that his life was that great, but he hadn't asked to leave it behind. And now he learned that people had likely died because of the two of them. He couldn't think of any reason why they should have gone to such lengths.

While the officer was contemplating them with furrowed, thoughtful brows, there came another set of brisk footsteps.

"Henschel!"

The officer turned and snapped his hand to his forehead in a sharp salute. The guards stiffened to attention as well, their rifles still held ready.

A woman strode into the chamber and approached them. Mitya had heard of the female commander of Briggs. He had overheard talk from the other workers at the factory, and those stories were second or third hand by that time. Most of the stories seemed outlandish.

She was not as ugly as a plow horse's back end. She did not have the aspect of a rabid bear. She didn't even have horns. She had flowing blonde hair, stunningly blue eyes, and full lips. Mitya, who made a point not to stare at anyone, found himself staring. She caught his eye with a forbidding glance and he looked away quickly.

She spoke brusquely to the officer, who replied with what seemed like an economy of words, as though he knew his commander didn't care for roundabout explanations. Alyokha, who knew Amestrian, nodded in affirmation. The general showed little reaction other than a lift of her eyebrow. She considered Alyokha for a moment, then turned to Mitya.

"You!" she said sharply in Drachmani. "Got anything to say for yourself? What's your name?" She bore little to no accent and even gave an elegant sound to it.

Mitya began to open his mouth to reply in his usual slow manner, but Alyokha drew himself up while at the same time swaying unsteadily.

"This," he announced portentously, "is the last remaining member of the royal family of Drachma! He is Dimitri Ivanovich Stoyanov!"

Mitya's mouth remained open. This was news to him.