#kimblee drabble

When he looks at you, it’s more like that of a predator than that of a man. His gaze is as sharp as a knife. Between that and the pristine white suite that he wears, you couldn’t be more certain of the man’s identity even before he gave you his name and asked for your own in turn.

“Oh,” he murmurs, recognition seeping through his expression. “So you’re the Blood Alchemist. I’ve heard of your… work. Your record in the war was very interesting.” His eyes linger on your face for a few moments before he takes in a breath and crosses his arms. “Not a single casualty connected to your name and yet you excelled on every mission you had been assigned.”

You’re not quite sure what to say to him at that, even if what he’s telling you is only the truth. It’s not as if any of your missions had been kept a secret—no more than any other State Alchemist at the time of the Ishval Civil War. But your skills, so unlike that of your peers, had been put to a very unique form of use. Sure, you had not been the direct cause of death for countless innocent lives, but your puppeteering had certainly pushed more than a few into the direct sight of a sniper.

Kimblee seems to take the silence with continued interest, eventually deciding to take a seat across from you on the train heading towards Central. You had almost hoped that he would have passed you by entirely, but his familiarity with your face (something that most alchemists from the war seemed to have) was the downfall of such yearning for a peaceful ride home.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” you finally say. “I never wanted to be a tool in the first place.”

“We were tools the moment that we signed up for the military,” Kimblee argued, tone oddly soft for the harshness of the truth in his words, “and like it or not, there’s some pride to be taken in your skills. A man like you shouldn’t forget how much time and effort went into the research of your alchemy.”

“Research that killed hundreds,” you say, turning your eyes sternly out the window. “…Perhaps even thousands, or even more.”

“True enough.”

Kimblee doesn’t seem all that deterred, but he drops the subject without fanfare, his own eyes finally falling from you and towards the window overlooking some rolling hills and grasslands. For a few minutes, the silence is blissful—you even wonder if he might get up and leave you be. But of course, the man is nothing if not curious (and always had been in the few times the two of you had crossed one another), and finally turns back to look at you with a smile like that of a snake. Hungry. Dangerous.

“So tell me,” he says all too casually, resting his chin on his hand against the window, “what business does a man like you have in Central?”

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The marks scare you from the day you find them on your palms. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the symbols, alchemical in meaning but lost to you in details. They sit on the skin of your hands, revealing themselves in a slow, dripping flow of dark ink over the course of a few days after your 18th birthday.

You sought out the meaning of the symbols from several family friends, but few of them could give you any insight on their meaning, and you were too nervous to try them out in any actual motion for a year or so after finding them. Afraid of what they would do, who they might hurt–you had only a basic understanding of Alchemy as a science or practice, so to try and figure them out through trial and error would only produce more questions than anything else.

They didn’t hamper your day-to-day life though, and over several years you found yourself happily living in an apartment in Central City, the marks long-since forgotten. They became no more than conversation starters than anything else, people catching a glance of them on the train or on the street and asking if they were your own or your soul mate’s.

Soul mate. You wondered what kind of person they were, if they had tattoos like that on their hands. They had to be alchemists, all things considered, but it threw you for a loop and a half to try and figure out what kind of alchemist they were since you couldn’t decipher much of the marks. 

Traveling was something you found enjoyment in soon after moving to Central City. The fare of the train was cheap to travel south, so you often found yourself visiting Rush Valley, Dublith and even South City whenever you had the spare days to take from work to do so. It was calming, exploring the country, and it led you to meeting all sorts of interesting people and, of course, they would all find interest the the marks on your palms.

The man who you had struck up a conversation with was much the same.

“Your soul mate must be an alchemist,” he said, tone polite and gentle. “But what do you think about it?”

He seems very kind, perhaps a buisiness man of some sort. He wears a white suit, clean and pressed of wrinkles. While it may stand out in some way, you can’t help but like the cleanliness of it, his appearance, especially when it’s so stark against his long black hair. It’s tied back loosely, but let you catch the gaze of the man’s bright blue eyes every now and again as the two of you speak.

“Well,” you say. “I hope that my soul mate is someone who is a good person, who uses their alchemy to seek out knowledge and learn more about the world.”

You can’t help but feel his gaze even when you’re not looking over at him beside you. It’s hard on you, unmoving, but it doesn’t unnerve you. It feels…curious? Firmer than most, at least, and you’re not sure why his interest and close proximity in the seat directly next to you isn’t making you feel uncomfortable.

You’ve felt your share of unnerving men and women alike, but he is….comforting? Odd to describe a stranger in that way, but it felt appropriate.

He flashes you a smile, knocking you out of your thoughts. You were staring at him.

“I’m–I’m sorry,” You say to fix your momentary lack of manners. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s not a problem,” He murmurs, gently adjusting the white gloves over his hands.. “I’m not bothered by it any. Your thoughts seem to be weighing on you after all.”

You take a moment to compose yourself and let out a breath. You can feel his shoulder bumping against your own.

“You just feel….” 

“Familiar?”

The word catches you off-guard, finishing your sentence perfectly. 

“Yes. You feel familiar, but I know I’ve never met you.” You shift in your seat, not sure if you’re being impolite or awkward by the sudden shift in the conversation. The two of you had to have been talking for twenty minutes before your thoughts had begun to sour it.

Silence filled the air between the two of you.

It must have lasted for several minutes. After some time you figured that the conversation was over, and you had turned your head to stare out the window, watching the scenery fly by to frame the setting sun. The sight is rather beautiful, but the sound of the man’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts for a second time.

“…What if your soul mate isn’t someone who seeks knowledge with their alchemy?”

You blink. When you turn your face towards the man, you find him staring at you; how long had he been looking?

“Wh-….what?” The question falls from your lips in a whisper. You’re still trying to catch what he’s getting on about.

The man’s gaze hardens, and his expression is hard to read beyond seeming neutral. 

“What if your soul mate isn’t a good man? What if he had done terrible things in the eyes of others in his life? What if, whether he wanted to make amends or not for his actions, your soul mate was not the pure-hearted alchemist you seem to hope for?”

There is weight in the questions. Heavy weight. These aren’t the questions you’re used to, ones that normal strangers ask. These are heavy questions, ones that thinly-hide a level of connection behind them to the man asking them. Between the solemn tone of the man’s voice and his hard gaze on you, you can’t find the will to answer. Instead, your mouth opens and closes uselessly as you try to find the words or thoughts to even begin to form an answer.

By the time you’re any closer to a response, the man is already pulling off the white gloves. The motion seems unrelated, but then–

You catch the sight of familiar marks on the palms of both the man’s hands. Marks that you remember seeing years ago, marks of mystery and intrigue that, even currently, lay on your own palms.

The man sitting next to you is your soul mate.

He looks at you as you slowly come to the realization, watching in such a level of intrigue as a predator might of prey. Tension fills the air, but you feel no poison in his gaze, no harm in his eyes. Curiosity, apathetic curiosity is all you feel at first between you both. 

The questions begin to make sense, giving you a shallow, but concrete sense of who the man was sitting next to you. What the marks meant and what they meant of the man himself. 

Though you had a plethora of further questions, you let out a breath and began with only one:

“…What is your name?”

“Solf. J. Kimblee,” he said, watching your breath catch at the sound of the name. Regardless, he must not have found the fear, the apprehension or terror that he might have been expecting. His face slowly morphs into a look of satisfaction and amusement. “I suppose that means we have a lot of questions to answer for one another.”

You take in a slow breath, then glance towards the window and the setting sun outside, flickering from the constant, passing trees and small hills as the train ran on through the countryside. 

“We do have several hours more on this train, after all.” You look back at Kimblee, at his hands, and then at your own. There were certainly stories that came with the man’s name, but you felt no fear under his bright, blue eyes–only curiosity. Intrigue. “I’ll save my judgement on you being a terrible man until after then.”