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setaripendragon · 5 years

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The Light of a Pole Star - Part 1

This idea just sort of possessed me after that Royed Soulmates fic I wrote. Because there was one version of soulmates that wasn’t on the prompt list that I really, really love; Reincarnation. And then I thought of how amazing that would be in FMA in general, and then this happened. Idk how many parts there’ll be (four? five?) but I’ve got the whole thing pretty much finished, I just gotta fix a few scenes and figure out how to split this monster up XD Disclaimer: I watched FMA and FMA:B a long time ago, and I never actually finished either of them anyway, so although this is meant to be sort of canon-divergent, I probably messed up somewhere. (There are also some little nods to some of my favourite fanfics out there, including Son of the Desert, because it’s amazing.)

Ed shouldn’t remember. Oh, there’s all the stuff the Gate shoved into his head that he remembers and Al doesn’t, and he probably shouldn’t remember that either, but that’s not- That is so far removed from him, such impersonal knowledge. It’s the same – he figures, anyway – for anyone who passes through the Gate. Just knowledge drilled into them soul-deep and agonising. It’s fine.

It’s the memories that bother Ed the most.

Because he shouldn’t remember. He shouldn’t remember what Aerugonian wine tastes like, and he shouldn’t remember the customs of the Imperial Xingese Court, and he shouldn’t remember the exact combination of old parchment, dusty leather, and warm sand smells that permeated the Great Library of Xerxes. He’s never even left Risembool. He shouldn’t remember how to navigate Aquroya’s canals, or the back streets of Central City’s slums. He’s Edward Elric, and yet he also remembers being Natan bin Mordechai, and Yi Feng, and Leon Blackburn, and Lucia Guardia, and Proteus of Atossa.

It’s too much for his eleven year old mind to hold. Centuries of memories, so many different versions of eleven. Eleven in Xerxes had been less than half way to adulthood, but eleven in Drachma had been old enough to start work as an apprentice. Sometimes he loses his childhood in Risembool in amongst climbing through Xingese orchards and scampering across the flat roofs of Ishval.

It isn’t until someone grabs him by the front of his shirt, hauls him up and shakes him, and he looks up into coal black eyes that he comes back to himself. Because he knows those eyes. In different shapes and colours across the centuries, they’ve been there. They’d met in a library, in a sickroom, in a workshop, in an alley, in a bar, in the market, in a temple. So many differences, so many variables, but Ed – his name is Edward Elric – latches onto the soul underneath, which has always remained constant.

It’s the anchor he needed. Even after Mustang’s left, it’s just easier to put the pieces into the right places inside his mind. He drags himself out of the mire of centuries, and demands automail from Granny. He can do this. He doesn’t know how, because he wasn’t always an alchemist – how could he not always have been an alchemist?! – but he’s going to get Al’s body back. And Roy Mustang is going to help him.

He’s pretty sure everyone can tell something’s different, but Al puts it down to failing to bring Mum back, and Winry puts it down to the trauma of his injury, and Ed’s not entirely sure they’re wrong. It’s all of that, and maybe that’s why it’s so much harder to push the memories away. It’s easier remembering a life that isn’t really – is – his, than dwelling on what he’s done in this life.

“Okay, pipsqueak, spill it.” Granny commands, a couple of weeks into his recovery, when he’s sitting on the back porch, looking out over the fields and comparing them to the rice fields in Xing. Looking at his automail and comparing it to automobile engines.

“Who’re you calling pipsqueak, tiny old hag?!” Ed snaps, turning to glower at Granny.

Granny glowers right back. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you think?” Ed retorts bitterly.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.” Granny fires back without missing a beat. Then she sighs out a large cloud of smoke and puffs rapidly on her pipe for a moment. “You’ve got a lot to be upset about, I’ll grant, but I know you, Ed, and this isn’t what you’re like when you’re wallowing. This is what you’re like when you’re lost inside that big brain of yours.”

Ed snorts before he can help himself, because, okay, that’s accurate. And maybe… he can’t tell Al or Winry, he can’t burden them with this, but Granny… She’s lived through two of Ed’s lifetimes, more or less. “When were you born, Granny?” He asks.

“1839.” Granny replies, slow and confused. “Why?”

“Did you ever see much of the war with Aerugo?” Ed continues without answering.

After a beat of suspicious silence, Granny nods. “I saw a lot of soldiers come through while I was studying in Rush Valley. And I worked with the medics near the front for a few years when it got bad. That’s where I met my husband, as it happens.”

Ed smiles a little wistfully. “There’s this little town, not that far south from South City. Walston. You know it?” He begins, and Granny is outright frowning now, but she nods again. “It used to be over the border, but the military used their brand new horseless carriages to out-manoeuvre the Aerugonian troops and take it in 1874. It was pretty close to a river, which made it an ideal new base to operate from, so all the support people, the medics, the cooks, and of course their new engineers got carted in and dumped among the locals for the next however long it took to conquer the next town. Which was a recipe for trouble even ignoring the fact that the only place worth visiting in the evening was Valentino’s Bar.”

“I remember.” Granny murmured. “Ed, how the-”

“Oh, you were actually there?” Ed asks in surprise, blinking at Granny and trying to find a fiery automail mechanic in his memories. “Huh. Maybe we met.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Edward?!” Granny snaps, losing her patience.

“You didn’t happen to meet an engineer by the name of Lexi Spitfire, did you?” Ed asks.

Granny stops, mouth open in preparation to demand more answers, and gives Ed a deeply unnerved look. “Short, curly brown hair, freckles, always bickering with the barkeep?” She asks.

“I was not short!” Ed grouses. “I was perfectly normal sized, thank you very much! Just because Aerugonians tend towards unreasonably tall does not mean-” Granny makes a worrisome noise, kind of like a ‘glrhk’, and sits down heavily on the porch steps, staring up at Ed like she’s seen a ghost. “Granny?” Ed asks, maybe frets, a bit, because while he’d sort of hoped his knowledge of things he couldn’t possibly have been there to see would convince her he was telling the truth, he didn’t want to give her a heart attack.

“That was- Fucking hell…” Granny breathes, and then she shakes herself and goes right back to staring at Ed in shock. “I remember walking into that bar and hearing that exact rant. Spitfire was trying to haul the barkeep over the bar-”

“And Val was being a smug bastard. ‘Oh, sorry, is it too far for you to reach? Should I lean down a little to make it easier?’” Ed quotes with a snarl. “Wasn’t so smug with a bruise the size of my fist around his pretty little eye, was he?”

“What the hell happened, Ed?” Granny demands. “If you’re even still Edward-!”

“I am!” Ed interrupts quickly. “Jeez, Granny, I think you’d have noticed if I wasn’t me by now.”

“I thought so, too, but then you started talking like someone else!” Granny yelps.

Ed sighs, and looks back out over the fields of Risembool. “Not really. I mean, different name, different face, different life… same soul.” He pauses and shrugs. “I think. I didn’t exactly get an explanation. It was just suddenly all there, in my head.”

Granny draws in a sharp breath, but she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t say anything for the longest time, and Ed lets it settle, lets her have the time to absorb everything he’s said. He thinks he remembers her, now, thinks he remembers toasting with her to the notion that machines are just better than men. Thinks he remembers drunken conversations about how automail works, how engines work, how many people they’d seen die already because their machines weren’t quite good enough. He thinks Val had cut them off at that point. He thinks he remembers Val carrying him – her – to bed and tucking her in like the fucking stupid sap he was under all that bullshit. “So… Spitfire’s dead, then? I had wondered.” Granny says finally.

“Yeah. 1889. Car crash.” Ed tells her.

Granny snorts. “Ironic.”

“Tell me about it.”

Central City is both familiar and not, and it takes Ed a day just to get his bearings. He goes for a walk, past the university, which is bigger than it used to be, and through the wealthy districts that are basically unchanged from two hundred years ago, and into the slums, which go from painfully familiar to completely wrong and back again every few alleys. He finds a brothel where he remembers a dilapidated ruin he’d slept in for several months as a child a long, long time ago, and pauses, staring at it and trying to get a grip on the sheer irony.

“Brother…” Al says, audibly judging him.

“What?!” Ed huffs. “I was looking at the architecture, Al!”

“The architecture?” Someone drawls in a husky smoker’s rasp, and Ed turns to see an older woman leaning in the doorway, a cigarette between two perfectly manicured fingers. “Well, that’s a new one.”

“Could do with a few more gargoyles, if you ask me.” Ed informed her with a sharp grin. Given her age and her perfectly ostentatious make-up, he figures she’s the proprietress of the brothel. “You’d be the eponymous Madame Christmas, I guess?”

“That’s me.” She confirms. “And you’re way too young to be a customer, kid.”

Ed snorts, because that’s funny. If he adds up everything he remembers, he’s more than five hundred years old. “Not looking for work, either.” He points out dryly.

“Good.” Madame Christmas says, with a whole weight of emphasis behind her words. “The hell are you doing in this part of town, then, kid?” She demands. Doesn’t mince words, this one. Ed decides he kinda likes her.

“Just looking around. Getting a feel for the city.” Ed answers.

“You should go home.” Madame Christmas instructs, in a tone that very much expects to be obeyed. Ed’s never really responded to that sort of tone. Not in this life, not in any other.

“Eh.” He shrugs. “Don’t feel like it.” That earns him a glower, and replies with another knife-sharp grin, just daring the woman to push the issue. She blows out a tight stream of smoke, rolls her eyes, and capitulates with a long drag of her cigarette. “Besides, the guy we’re staying with is a fucking creep, so I’ll take any excuse to get out of there for a while.”

“Oh?” Madame Christmas prompts, one eyebrow arching slowly.

“Brother, Mr Tucker isn’t that bad.” Al protests, but it’s weak and they both know it.

Madame Christmas’s other eyebrow rises to join the first. “What’s he done?”

“Nothing.” Ed waves a vague hand in the air. “It’s not… He’s fucking shifty. He won’t look at me head-on, he’s nervous all the damn time, except when he thinks no one’s looking at him, and then he gets this- this sharp look, like there’s broken glass behind his eyes. You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah.” Madame Christmas confirms, and she’s watching Ed with her own sort of sharp look, now, only this one doesn’t give him the creeps at all. “We see a lot of men on the edge of doing something dangerous in our line of work.”

“Exactly.” Ed agrees, pointing at her.

“Fair enough, kid.” Another puff of the cigarette, and then she stubs the butt out in a little portable ashtray she pulled out of her pocket. “But there are better places to sight-see in this city. Safer places.” She informs him, giving him a pointed look. “So get out of here.”

Ed accepts that, and turns to go, but hesitates, and turns back a moment later. “Just out of curiosity, do you employ boys here, or just girls?” He asks.

“Brother!” Al yelps.

Madame Christmas gives him a clinical once-over, and then a dryly amused look. “Come back in about five years, kid,” she tells him, “and I’d have people paying through the nose for you.” Al gives a scandalised sort of squeak, but Ed’s just mildly flattered by that assessment.

“I told you I’m not looking for work. I was just curious.” Ed corrects, marvelling at the strange synchronicity of his different lives. “Klaus would’ve laughed himself sick if he could see this.” He muses quietly, but not quietly enough, apparently.

“Klaus?” Madame Christmas prompts.

Ed shakes his head. “No one, just… just an old friend, sort of.”

Madame Christmas gives him a deeply sceptical look. “You’re way too young to be talking like that, kid.” She informs him, and Ed shrugs, because he can’t exactly argue without looking insane. Instead of saying anything, he just waves, and sets off down the street.

“What on earth were you talking about, Brother?” Al asks once they’re well out of earshot of the brothel. “We’ve never known anyone called Klaus.”

“Says you.” Ed retorts. “I could have friends you don’t know about.”

“No, you really couldn’t, Brother.” Al says, deadpan.

“Ouch.” Ed laughs, and then sobers up as he tries to figure out how much he ought to tell Al. “It’s just… something I remember, from- from the Gate.” He says eventually, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching a little. He doesn’t know why Al doesn’t have the same problem as him. Maybe because he doesn’t remember the Gate at all, but that doesn’t seem right to Ed. The only thing he can figure is that he remembers because the Gate pulled him apart, pulled him open and everything that had been wrapped up inside had spilled out, all the things imprinted on his soul but tucked away out of sight had been laid bare and forced into the light. But he doesn’t know, and surely if that was the case, Al should remember, too, whether or not he remembers it happening.

“Oh.” Al says quietly. They walk in silence for several long minutes. “The Gate showed you… things to do with… with prostitutes?” He asks eventually.

Ed huffs a laugh that doesn’t have much humour in it. “Sort of. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Okay, Brother.” Al agrees. “But if you… if you ever do, you know I’ll listen, right?”

“Of course, Al.” Ed confirms, rapping his knuckles lightly against the side of Al’s breastplate. “Come on, I’ll race you back to the main street.” He says, and then bolts, laughing at Al’s indignant cries of ‘BROTHER!’ echoing behind him.

“Met your new recruit today.”

“What?!”

“Mmhm. Weird kid.”

“Weird… how?”

“He’s a lot more grown-up than he looks.”

“Yes, well, I knew that much.”

“Also said he got a bad feeling about that Tucker bloke.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“Very. Articulated it well, too. You’d think he’d seen people that fucked up before.”

“Fucked up?”

“I’ll talk to Helen about it, see if she can’t give me some better insight.”

“I see.”

“Perhaps you ought to look in on the man, too. Make sure he’s doing okay.”

“I will. And what exactly was Edward doing in your part of town, anyway?”

“Sightseeing.”

“…Sightseeing.”

“Mmhm. Stopped to appreciate the architecture.”

“The… architecture?”

“Thinks we should add some gargoyles to the front of the place.”

“Good heavens. I hope you’re not going to take his advice.”

“Mmm…”

“Madame!”

“Heh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, Roy-Boy. No; no gargoyles.”

“Good. I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better. Good luck.”

“And to you as well, Madame.”

Ed feels sick. Ed has seen a lot of awful things before, but there’s something so much more awful about the botched, mangled chimera that used to be Nina Tucker. Maybe it’s because all those memories are… just a little detached. Old and faded and worn. This is immediate, right in his face, so starkly fresh that he can still smell the ozone of the transmutation.

There’s a bang upstairs, footsteps, and Al calls out, shouts for help, maybe. Ed’s barely paying attention, because he can barely breathe, and his mind is racing. Because while he can’t clearly remember the knowledge the gate pounded into his head, he does remember five different lifetimes of learning alchemy, and there has to be something in there that could help.

“Shit.” Ed’s head snaps around to stare. Roy is standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking into Tucker’s lab and staring in pale-faced horror at the whimpering chimera in the middle of the room. “Where’s Tucker?” He asks, the moment he registers that Ed is looking at him.

“We- we knocked him out and put him in one of the cages.” Al informs Roy, because Ed can’t find his tongue. Can’t find even a scrap of attention for anything happening in this century. He’s back in Xerxes. Back in Xing. Because Xerxes hadn’t had laws against human transmutation like Amestris does, their concept of biological alchemy had been entirely different, and possibly – probably – more accurate. And Xingese alkahestry was focused on and centered around healing, the body and the soul, in harmony.

Pieces start coming together in Ed’s mind, and he scrambles up. “Edward?!” Roy demands, as Ed lunges for the desk. “Brother?!” Al yelps, when Ed comes up with a piece of chalk. He needs to draw this one out, because it’s so, so fragile, so tenuous, and if he’s wrong- He needs to draw it out to make sure he’s not wrong.

“Get Nina out of the way, Al.” Ed orders, dropping to his knees and clapping to clear the array already laid out in chalk. Nina-the-chimera flinches, whines like a beaten dog, and Al leaves off questioning Ed in favour of coaxing Nina out of the way.

“Edward, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” Roy demands, stepping up to Ed’s shoulder as he starts drawing out the array.

“Tryna fix it.”

“Edward, there is no fixing it.” Roy tells him, stern and aching. “You can’t undo a completed transmutation.”

“It’s not complete.” Ed retorts. “Bungled patch job piece of shit. Soul’s out of alignment with the body. Shit, Tucker didn’t even account for souls in his circle. Did he even study anatomy? I mean, shit. No, that’s wrong-” Ed scrubs out the beginnings of a sigil and steps back for a moment, eyeing the circle. “If you account for the lóng de màibó, there needs to be-” Nodding, Ed dives back in again, putting the details into place in a flurry of inspiration.

“The what?” Roy asks.

It’s a good thing Ed’s almost done, because that question knocks him clean out of his head-space. For a moment, he sees double when he looks up at Roy. Fuller lips painted blood red, longer hair bound back with jade hairpins carved to look like plum blossoms and butterflies, narrower face that only emphasised the cunning behind dark eyes. But this is Roy, not Xiaoli, and of course he doesn’t know what the Dragon’s Pulse is.

“It’s a- Never mind.” Ed shakes his head and finishes the array. “Okay. Okay, Nina?” He calls, turning to where Al and Nina are crouched together at the edge of the room. “Hey, Nina. I think- I think I can make it stop hurting, if you’d like?” He offers.

“Big brother?” Nina rasps, and Ed’s heart breaks.

“Yeah. Could you come here a sec?” Ed asks, and Nina gets up and staggers over, butting her head against his chest and whining. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Big brother will make it better.” He promises, and drops a kiss onto her shaggy head before backing away. “Stay right there a sec, okay?” He prompts, when she makes to come after him. She whines, but sits down hesitantly.

“Edward, are you sure…?” Roy asks.

Ed chews on his lip. “Eighty-two percent.”

“Brother, isn’t this… this is human transmutation.” Al protests weakly, coming to stand beside Ed.

“Technically? Maybe not.” Ed hedges.

“What do you mean?” Al demands, bewildered.

“Technically, if Tucker could get her here without having to face the gate, then I should be able to… well, to heal her without crossing that line, too. I don’t think I can… I can’t make her human again, is the thing, but I think- I’m pretty sure I can make her… better.” Ed tries to explain. Then, before he can second-guess himself, he drops to his knees and places his fingers on the edge of the circle. It immediately lights up bright white-blue, and Nina screams.

Ed screws his eyes shut, because he knows that sometimes healing hurts, but this is worse than anything he’s seen before. Not surprising, given that her entire body is a patchwork mess that needs streamlining.

The light dies, the screaming stops, to be replaced with the harsh, wet, gasping sobs of a child. “Nina?!” Ed calls.

“B-big brother?!” Nina calls back, all herself, without any rough, raspy dog-vocals. Ed goes boneless, even as Al and Roy both gasp. He scrubs out part of the outer circle to make sure the array can’t be reactivated, and then crawls forward to where Nina is naked and shivering on the floor.

“Hey, hey there.” Ed murmurs as he scoops her up and cradles her against his chest. “Does it still hurt, Nina? Can you- can you tell me if it hurts?”

Nina presses her face into his chest and sobs, but she’s shaking her head as she does it. “No. It hurt so bad, but- but it’s b-better now.” She mumbles weakly, and then dissolves into wailing, crying so hard she’s shaking with it. Ed looks down at her and grimaces. He’d been right when he said he couldn’t make Nina human again. Her proportions are just a little off, and she’s got a fine coat of golden-red fur over her back and limbs and climbing up her neck, and her nails look more like claws, and Ed’s pretty sure she’s got a tail now. But she’s not in pain anymore, and that’s all Ed could ask for.

Dark cloth appears in Ed’s vision, and he looks up to see Roy offering him his black great coat. Trying for a smile of gratitude and falling miles short, Ed takes it and bundles Nina up in it. They wait in silence as Nina cries herself out and then falls asleep still half in Ed’s lap and half on the floor. “Let me-” Roy murmurs softly, and Ed doesn’t even hesitate to let him scoop Nina up into his arms. He clambers to his feet and stares at her tear-streaked sleeping face. Her face, at least, looks mostly normal, although there’s something about the shape of her eyes that looks not-quite-right.

“Where are you going to take her?” Al asks, and Ed snaps to attention at the thread of fear and steel he hears in his brother’s tone.

He looks up at Roy, and Roy looks back with a pained grimace. “Somewhere she’ll be safe, I promise.” He swears.

“Where?” Al presses, sharp and high and angry. “Because I know you know what the military would do with her if-”

Roy gives a singularly humourless laugh. “You don’t need to worry, Alphonse. As far as any official report goes…” He trails off and glances towards the stairs. Only then does Ed even realise that Hughes and Hawkeye came with Roy. He scrubs at one eye and wonders at how bad his tunnel vision had gotten.

“Unless we can come up with a suitably convincing mess, I think we’d best go with missing.” Hughes interjects grimly.

“We could vaporise him.” Ed suggests darkly, jerking his thumb at Tucker.

Roy looks startled, and then thoughtful. “Claim it was Nina and that Tucker fled, and then at least the manhunt would be for someone they’re definitely not going to find. I’ll… handle that when I get back.” He sighs, looking down at Nina.

“Back from where?” Al asks belligerently.

“My mother’s.” Roy replies wryly, and all the fight goes out of Al. “She’ll take good care of Nina.”

“Let me take her.” Hughes interjects. “You need to be done with him when Military Police catch up.”

Roy nods, and hands Nina over. Hughes cradles her like she’s precious, and there’s a momentary look of heartbreak on his face. Then he’s gone, back up the stairs, and Roy is turning towards Tucker. “Hawkeye, if you could take the Elrics upstairs? I’ll join you in a few minutes.

“Sir.” Hawkeye replies, and then turns and gestures for Ed and Al to precede her up the stairs. Al moves towards her, but Ed doesn’t. “Edward?” Hawkeye prompts, her tone surprisingly gentle. It really doesn’t help with the sick feeling bubbling in Ed’s gut.

“Do you know how to make it look like a failed human transmutation?” He asks Roy.

Roy goes still, and hesitates long enough to answer that Ed doesn’t need him to actually say the words. “Not specifically, but I can make a good enough guess.” Roy says finally, decisively enough that if Ed didn’t remember, if he hadn’t had nearly a dozen adulthoods to draw on, he might have let it nudge him from the room. But he did, so he doesn’t.

“Not as good as I can.” Ed points out.

“Brother!” Alphonse protests, horrified.

“It’s fine, Al.” Ed snaps. It’s not, it’s so far beyond not fine it’s not even funny, but Ed’s been in the military three times before. He’s seen how ruthless they can be, how gleefully malicious they can be. He remembers how casually they can toss aside the lives of even their own people. If there’s anything – anything at all – that he can do to protect Nina from that, he’ll do it.

“You don’t have to do this, Edward.” Roy tells him, quiet and solemn.

“No, but I’m going to anyway.” Ed replies, meeting his gaze. “I couldn’t save Nina, but maybe- maybe I can help keep her a little bit safer now.” He hesitates, but this is Roy. This is Val and Malka and Klaus and Xiaoli and Dimka and Huang. If he can’t trust them, he can’t trust anybody. “I- I don’t think I can… kill him, though. Can-”

Roy looks like Ed just stabbed him. “I can handle that part, Edward.” He assures him.

“Yay, teamwork.” Ed jokes weakly. Roy flashes him a smile that’s hollow, but his eyes are touched with gallows humour, so Ed will take it. “You should- you should go with Hawkeye, Al. You- you don’t need to see this.” He says.

“I hate that you keep hurting yourself to protect me from things.” Al tells him, in a quiet, wounded voice that stabs straight to Ed’s core.

“Tough shit.” Ed replies, a little more brusquely than he meant to, what with the sharp pain in his heart. “I’m the big brother, that’s my job.” Al gives an angry grumble, but he leaves with Hawkeye. Ed shares one more weary, determined look with Roy, and then they get to work.

#Fullmetal Alchemist #RoyEd #soulmate AU #Edward Elric #Roy Mustang #reincarnation #soulmates #Maes Hughes lives #Nina Tucker lives #yes I know Spitfire is really cliche as a name #but I couldn't help it okay #it was too perfect!#biological alchemy isn't human transmutation #the line is fuzzy #but there is a line between them #and the only power-limit on alchemy is knowledge and understanding #idk I just really like the idea of Nina being a healthy human chimera #yes Ed was an alkahestric healer in a past life #imagine his bedside manner XD

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