#julian is ink with a touch of thunderstorms

[lumiolivier]

Chapter Twenty Four:  Journals From Central

Word Count: 1856

Chapter No. 24/?

Notes:  This, my dear children, is another fic chapter (because during NaNo season last year, I missed my babes, so I had to write fic in this story just to keep my sanity)!  And for this chapter, if you can’t guess from the chapter title or from the bit of dialogue from last week’s chapter, it’s some Fullmetal Alchemist fic.  And just as a slight forewarning, for those of you familiar with the series, it hurts.  It hurts my soul.  I wept while writing it.  I wept while editing.  In short, I’m sorry in advance.  And because I’m posting this so early, I might be editing another chapter and posting today.  Don’t hold your breath, but I’m just saying it’s a possibility. 

Chapter Twenty Three:  Stepford Nightmares

January 17.

A terrible night for rain.  The storms were awful tonight.  All of them.  Master Hawkeye had come in late again for the third time this week.  He told me that he was going to spend some time with his daughter and that I was not to interrupt, no matter what I heard.  It was hard to ignore, though.  Even while I was down in the basement with some of Master’s written notes, Riza’s screams upstairs still shook me to my core.  I had no idea what was going on.  Until later that night when her screams woke me up.  Only this time, it was accompanied by a heavy rumble of thunder.

 I went straight for her room and found her in the corner on the floor, shivering uncontrollably.  Of course, me being the nice guy I am, I got down next to her and asked what was wrong.  I’ve been studying with Master Hawkeye long enough to know about Riza and thunder. Nothing upset her more than a heavy storm like this.  I did all I could to keep her from crying.  That was the last thing I wanted to see.

 But when I touched the skin on her back, she winced under my fingers. I couldn’t help but notice some of the blood on her shirt.  And the red and black ink on her skin.  Strange. This looked like a transmutation array. Definitely flame alchemy.  I didn’t understand why these were even here.  Riza wasn’t an alchemist period, let alone a flame alchemist.  That was her father.

 Later on, she told me the horrors of what Master had just put her through.  As we spoke, Master was outside burning all of his research notes.  He always was a paranoid old man.  But according to Riza, some people from Central were going to come for his research soon enough and he refused to let any of the military have it.

 “What are you doing?” Julian peeked over my shoulder.

 “Nothing,” I brushed him off, “I’m busy.  Go away.”

 “Can I read it?” he asked so innocently.  

 “No,” I shot him down.

 “That doesn’t look like Free! to me,” Julian teased, “That looks like some Fullmetal Alchemist, if I’ve ever seen any.”

 “Shut up, Julian,” I took a heavy drink from my blueberry Red Bull, “Let me live.”

 “I’ve never read any of your Fullmetal stuff yet,” he whined, “Come on.  Please?”

 “This is a warm up,” I told him, “There’s a good chance this is probably shit.”

 “I bet you say that about all your fic,” Julian took my pen and my notebook from me.

 “What the fuck, Julian?” I tried to get it back, “Like I said, it’s probably shit!  I’m not even posting it!”

 “Then, there’s no harm in me reading it,” he argued, “I promise I won’t be harsh.”

 “I don’t care if you’re harsh or not,” I jumped.  Damn! Why do I have to be so small?  Why did he have to be so tall?  I reached up for my notebook, “I’m slightly ashamed of it and it doesn’t need to be seen by anyone but me!”

 “Actually,” Julian put his hand on my forehead, keeping me away from him while he read, “This isn’t that bad.”

 “Really?” I gave him a look, “I don’t know how delirious you are, but that’s shit.”

 “Not at all,” he assured, “I’m serious.  I like it. This needs to get posted.  If you don’t put it in your library, I want to steal it for a caption on one of my pictures.”

 “I don’t know,” I sighed out, “Maybe with a little tweaking here and there.”

 “No,” Julian stopped me, hitting me with my own notebook, “No tweaking.  No editing.  No taking anything away.  This is good, Mimi.  I promise.”

 “It’s not done yet,” I yanked my notebook out of his hand, “I need to finish it.  Then, I’ll start working on Free!.”

 “You know what would be really cool?” he critiqued, “If you did another one of these from the same night, but from Riza’s perspective.”

 “You’re saying to make a parallel fic?”

 “This would make a killer parallel fic,” Julian beamed, “Please?  I need that in my life.”

 “I’ll think about it.”

 “Please?” he begged.

 “I said, I’ll think about it!” I reiterated, a bit annoyed with him, “Don’t you have to go to work?”

 “Yeah,” Julian gave me a quick kiss, “So do you.  Love you.”

 “Love you, too.”

 As Julian pulled out of the driveway, I went back to Mustang’s journal entry.

 I could understand, though.  If the military got their hands on some of Master’s notes, there’s no doubt they’d be weaponized.  And Master hated the fighting more than anything.  He always said the world would be a better place if we saw past all our differences and started looking at the ways we were the same.  In a perfect world, I guess.

 But all of his research notes were tattooed on his daughter’s back.  As long as the military never got a hold of Riza, she’ll be ok.  Maybe I can take the flame alchemy I learn from Master and use it to keep her safe.  But because he destroyed his notes, that means I can’t learn flame alchemy from his books anymore.  I’ll have to learn it from Riza’s bare back…Uh-oh…

 I had to hand it to Mustang. He probably got his first boner learning flame alchemy from Riza’s back.  On the same token, I still wanted for this to have a little bit of bittersweet hope that Roy probably had when he was still learning.  Little did he know, the military wouldn’t be weaponizing the flame alchemy notes, but the alchemists themselves.  And he’d become one of those humanized weapons.  And the research notes he studied from that were so meticulously embedded into Hawkeye’s skin would end up being destroyed by the same alchemy he was taught from them.

 Kills me every time to think about those two.  Everyone always focuses on Edward and Winry’s trials and tribulations, but they seem to forget about what Mustang and Hawkeye have gone through together.  Not saying that those weren’t important to the main storyline, but if Arakawa were to add on to the Fullmetal Alchemist saga, I’d love to hear everything from Mustang and Hawkeye’s childhood together.  From their childhood to the Ishvalan Civil War to post Promised Day to the day Mustang finally becomes Fuhrer until the day they die together.  I needed that like blood in my veins.

 It might not have been my primary objective for the day, but that little distraction was enough to get the creative juices flowing.  And soon enough, I’d be able to get back to work on the Free! fic about the mermaid in Rin Matsuoka’s bathtub.  Although…Now that I got Mustang’s thoughts on paper, I kind of wanted to get a start on its parallel that Julian was so desperate for.

 That meant getting into the head of Riza Hawkeye.  As much as I loved her, I wasn’t sure how prepared I was for that.  She’s seen so much.  She’s been through literal hell and back and still stood strong.  There was no telling how dark it got in there. Hawkeye had her back tattoo forced on her at a young age.  She had to take her shirt off every time Mustang needed to look at her father’s research.  She had that tattoo burned off in Ishval.  She deserved all the love in the world.  More specifically, she deserved all the love that Mustang had to give to her.

 Getting back to planning out Hawkeye’s journal, did I want to set it on the same night?  Did I want to set it in current canon?  Did I want it to be in the future after Mustang becomes Fuhrer and the two of the have gone through coronation already?  I think current canon would probably be best. Hawkeye doesn’t strike me as nostalgic, but I’m sure there are a few choice memories she likes to think back on. Yeah.  Present timeline.  But because I’m evil and I like to tear out the hearts of my readers from time to time, I know exactly what moment in the timeline I’m putting it in.

 It was never easy losing a comrade in arms.  Especially him.  Maes was such a good spirit to have around.  No matter what the situation was, all Hughes wanted to do was help people. And he died doing what he loved.  Telling Edward and Alphonse isn’t going to be pretty. I knew that much.  Seeing Gracia break down so many times was hard.  Hearing Elicia ask her mommy whey they were putting dirt on her daddy was hard.

 But when one sees their rock completely crumble?  That’s what killed me most of all.  In all our years of knowing each other, I’ve never seen Roy so upset.  It was heart wrenching.  I knew that Roy and Hughes were close.  They were best friends whether Roy wanted to put the label on it or not.  Every time Hughes would call his office just to gush over Elicia or Gracia, he’d pretend to be annoyed by it, but now, I’m sure he’d give anything to get that call again.

 Even worse than seeing him upset was the words he said at Hughes’ grave.  The exact words.  When we were younger and he was still studying with my father, he told me one night during a horrific thunderstorm that it was a terrible night for rain. And while the tears he had tried to hold back streamed from his eyes, he could only say one thing.  It was a terrible day for rain…

 I knew he thought the was useless without Maes, but he keeps forgetting one thing.  He lost one pawn.  Not all of them.  One day, he was going to become king.  He would make it all the way to the top.  He’s worked way too hard not to.  there was something big going on in the military, but the thought of investigating it now, especially after losing Hughes, was absolutely out of the question. We had to do it.  We couldn’t let Hughes die in vain like that.  Whoever was responsible will pay for their sins one day, but we had bigger fish to fry.

 I just hope the king doesn’t lose sight of who he is in the process.

 I needed to take a minute. Or two.  Or maybe a bit longer than that.  What started as a quick warm up turned into me ripping my own little Royai heart out and holding it in front of my face still beating.  I took a quick glance at my phone, checking the time. Ten o'clock.  Ok.  Late enough in the day for me to go out and take a walk.  Both my parents worked in Kansas City, so I was in the clear.  I ran home and grabbed some clothes (Today was a day to cosplay Princess Peach.  I don’t know why, but I was in a Peach mood.) before finally heading downtown to clear my head.