On broken wings does he crash to the ground.  On broken wings does he plummet back to the earth. 

“Don’t touch me” is all he can declare as he looks to the other man with full moon eyes of molten gold. He wasn’t expecting to be tossed around so easily. He wasn’t expecting to be made into such a fool, even when he was the one who charged in at an attempt to such an attempt to a foolhardy assault. 

He didn’t expect this. He didn’t prepare. Normal people move when he strikes them with his automail. Normal people react when he summons forth is alchemy to assist in his assault.  Normal people - this man was anything but normal and from what he’s been told this man should not look the way he does. This man should be long since dead.   

Go home he says but there is no home to return to. This is no place that holds four walls that are all his own. There is no place that he can see sanctuary that is actually his own. Just hotel room after hotel room. There is no place he can take claim too.   

Cherish the days in which you are allowed to live. 

He hates it. He hates those words being echoed forward all over again. He hates feeling like he’s a puppet on a string. Like he’s at the mercy of another person, and that he holds his life only because someone else has allowed him to do so.  He only draws breath because someone was merciful enough to spare him.  

He hates it.  

He’s tired. He’s dizzy. His world spins. He needs to lift himself from the ground. He has no home in which he can return but yet he has a brother and his brother he should find. He’s tired. He’s dizzy. His body aches.  

Gold falls closed before he releasing what’s happening. Everything’s going black. 

𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 & it dawns on him how much he’s hurt the boy. his opponent is still a boy — & how often it is that jack forgets his own strength. this body is no longer plagued by weakness of a dying heart. this body does not suffer the same pains. this body is no longer human despite its outward appearance. & so he watches, almost in slow motion, as the boy’s eyes close, & for the first time in far too long, he feels dread. 

for the first time in far too long, he worries he’s killed someone. relief floods through him when he sees the rise & fall of the young alchemist’s chest, & after a quick assessment, he deems it safe to pick the boy up & carry him ... where? they can’t return to siam-sid; rather, he can’t take the boy there in the usual manner. so, he leaves the others to be dealt with by golems. he picks an abandoned home to use for a time, cleans it quickly with alchemy, & sets the boy on a hastily transmuted couch. 

in the silence, he takes time to mull over what had transpired. this alchemist used no circles, possessed an automail arm. but, that was not necessarily indicative of the worst case scenario. long ago, the silver bullet alchemist wore gauntlets engraved with the necessary arrays; efficient for what he needed to do. 

examining the automail arm, he finds no arrays. & he’d been accompanied by a woman in a military uniform & hell, it’s awful. he can’t imagine what could drive someone so young to ...

( elma’s body lays before him, everything he’d been carrying in his arms crashing to the ground. he screams, cradles her in his arms & acts in desperation. her body is still there; he’s prideful enough that he can revive her. she’s still warm — he can play god. 

but, he can’t. 

truth stabs through his chest, taking her away from him & he’s left retching. alone in the center of the bloody array. elma’s body is no longer there, only his own. 

not long after, he’s stripped of his certification for his sin. he spirals, but he knows that in the end, it was his own pride. he decides to find another way. ) 

silver bullet alchemist 

@bledcrimson​  🜺   liked for a starter 

          “  It’s not as if I do not desire to assist you, Mr. Crowley, but, I am afraid I still do not quite understand your intentions with your research.  ”     he seemed maddened,  actually, and did not look to her as if he ventured into alchemy as seriously as she had assumed. There was an underlining meaning behind his questions  -  something  desperate  and  hungry. Naturally, the woman could relate, and would not think to pry too deeply… but  -

          She held out a stack of books with the corners of paper stuck out from the top for him to take, not waiting for his response  ( if he had one )    “  It’s all that I could find on golems in my library. Of course, you’re more than welcome to explore it yourself. I don’t think I need to tell you think I do not have the means to produce more of your crimson elixirs either -  nor would I ever wish too, mind. Do you think it will be of some use to you? ”

𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 — this imitation of a man once known as a state alchemist. a scholar & a traveler; they had called him the silver bullet alchemist for his dazzling & lethal skills. but, that was a lifetime ago, wasn’t it? & the jack crowley that stood before the belladonna was no longer the silver bullet alchemist, but a king of the dead ( somewhere in an abandoned home in reole, perhaps the broken pocket-watch still lay on the floor, or had he put it in a pocket of a blue jacket he’d never wear again? ). 

yes, even the dead sought answers. 

        even the dead were desperate. 

❛ miss leota, i assure you i did not come here to ask for your aid in creating the elixir— but your knowledge of bio-alchemy is invaluable. ❜ 

𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐲! 𝐚𝐡, 𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧, wings of the soul still blazing— & here lays the young alchemist in the destruction left in the wake of one man’s sorrow & wrath. it is, perhaps, for the first time that jack recognizes how young his adversary truly is. too young for a sorrow like that. too young to carry the ghosts on his back. he finds himself wondering what tragedy could’ve brought someone so young to ...

" don't touch me. " , @alchemic-elric​ 

the young alchemist’s voice brings the self-proclaimed king from his thoughts; calloused ( recreated ) hand pulling back ( when had he reached out in the first place? ) from an arm bent awkwardly, unnaturally. 

how was it, then, that someone heartless could still feel that hollow calm? the bent arm is metal. he has not broken this youth’s body. he finds himself relieved, despite everything— it seems that this day, mercy still exists in him. ❛ go home, then, young alchemist. tend to your wounds. ❜ 

so i’d like to point out that jack is definitely not stupid; not only is he an alchemist, he’s an alchemist who mastered archaic godlike alchemy. for a refresher, if what arlen says about the kingdom of rebis can be taken as Fact: 

the royals were the alchemists. the king built the golems & those golems essentially powered the ENTIRE KINGDOM. for 1000 years, rebis functioned on the “grand arcanum” & this was done likely in a manner that wasn’t sacrificing human lives. golems don’t have souls, they’re like automatons. they’re controlled by an outside force, so it isn’t necessarily playing god to make a golem. much as it arguably isn’t playing god to make a chimera, because it isn’t “creating a soul”, which really seems to be the big problem. 

so jack was able to use rebis’ grand arcanum to revive the entirety of siam-sid. he populated it with other mythic humanoids, because golems were made as automaton servants, not as citizens. & mythic humanoids DO have souls. it’s been shown that other people have been turned into “golems”, which really means that jack was able to turn other people into mythic humanoids, which means he basically made a bunch of enkidus. of course, since he did a lot of this with the grand arcanum, the mythic humanoids he made were only able to speak rebisic, which is a dead language to basically anyone not jack or arlen. which is why they don’t talk to ed. not that they couldn’t, but because al is right, they don’t speak amestrian. these beings have personalities. they’re talking to each other when ed, al, arlen, & hawkeye arrive in siam-sid. they’re not mindless at all.

now, jack also had a philospher’s stone to help in what he was doing, but as he mentions, it’s flawed. so whatever he was doing really was Unnaturally Divine. by the logic of the method of creating a philosopher’s stone, it actually isn’t infinite. it just has a lot of power. if cornello’s little flawed ring could do “miracles” that convinced people that he was a prophet of god, then what can something like jack’s stone do? obviously, it must have the power to maintain an entire city. 

𝚆𝚁𝙰𝙸𝚃𝙷 — it wasn't fair, how you died. everyone knows it wasn't fair. maybe it was abrupt, or unjust, or just some freak occurrence with one-in-a-million odds. either way, you weren't ready to go, and you're understandably hurt. so now you linger in a place of comfort. your childhood home, your bedroom, the park you walked your dog in, the church you went to; somewhere of personal importance to you. the problem is, you lash out at anyone who invades your comfort area. you chase away people who encroach on your territory before you even know why they're there, and you get angry if they come back. what happened to you was terrible, but not everyone wants to hurt you. remember that people who come into your comfort area may be trying to help you, and try not to immediately respond by isolating yourself.

oh dang i should. talk about ... jack & the elrics? & a few other things lmao like his entire inability to cope 

on the one hand, dang he knows what it’s like to fail at human transmutation. he knows what it’s like to lose a loved one & be devastated, & he wouldn’t wish that pain on any person, because he knows it destroyed him. jack is shockingly self aware. 

but on the other hand, the elrics are in his way. jack wants to revive elma because he thinks that the time they should’ve had together was stolen. which isn’t necessarily wrong; when he married her, he assumed they would live & grow old together, but they didn’t. jack was 25 when elma died. she was 23. so anyway, he wants that time back. & ed & al are here trying to stop him, because they have morals. 

but at the same time, he sorta understands why. jack, in his attempts to revive elma, has sacrificed so many lives & for what? nothing he does works. the body she’s currently in is agonizing. his own body is destabilizing. he’s doing everything for his beloved & that’s just bringing everyone pain & so while he hates that the elrics are trying to stop him, he also... deep down he knows why. & he knows they’re right & that’s probably what makes him infuriated. 

he doesn’t want to see that things are going wrong. he can’t deal with the fact that he’s been causing the love of his life to be in unbelievable agony. he keeps hoping & hoping that maybe something will work. at the post credits, lust says that jack was all too willing to help because he’s a hopeless romantic & then she says that his love for elma is what made him weak & pathetic. she’s not entirely wrong there. jack’s entire fatal flaw is in fact his love for elma. he’s willing to do so much for her that it blinds him to the truth. he wants to see things go right so he’s ignorant of where they go wrong & really what he needed was a support system when her death happened & he didn’t have that. instead of support, jack went & performed human transmutation. after that, he was stripped of his state alchemist certification, which also wasn’t great & it was like a whole bunch of things that just did nothing good for his mental health & while he was grateful for arlen’s friendship, the two also sorta enabled each other which uh. led to horrible things so uhhh