#tainted-truth

Anything FMA please!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Esther has spent half her life as the Xerxian ambassador to Amestris and has weathered all sort of political tomfoolery and two wars. King Pakor's newest scheme with Ed is amusing, but ultimately a strange whim of a mostly stable monarch.

She's known many Furhers and many powerful men. She trusts Roy Mustang's intentions.

When Ed slips into her home in the middle of the night, she nearly goes after him with a frying pan. He's quiet and serious, and one of those things is bad but both is disastrous.

Then he tells her that the Dwarf in the Flask has somehow gotten involved in Amestrian politics, is likely embedded in this country in a way that's not good for any of them.

King Pakor must be alerted. This is too delicate and too important for the usual channels, but she promises to take care of it.

~

Al thinks this whole mess that Ed has gotten himself involved in is hilarious and his own fault really. This is what he gets for still going to court instead of ignoring all the missives Pakor sends because, really, what's the king going to do about it? There's no prison that can hold them and they already make bi annual trips to Xerxes to do the work of months of several construction crews. Pakor should just take what he gets out of them and be grateful.

When Ed calls him, he's expecting more whining and funny anecdotes and hearing what the hell he and Ling have gotten up to right under the Fuhrer's nose.

Except what he says is, "Do you know where Dad is right now?"

His stomach drops. "What's wrong?"

Ed never has any patience for their father. Whenever he sends a letter home, he refuses to read it.

"His old friend is in Central," he says, voices carefully casual. "He might want to swing by."

Al locks his knees together. "Get out of there."

"Aw, Al, don't be like that," he says. "If you don't want to visit-"

"I'll be on the next train out," he interrupts. If Ed won't leave, then of course Al will go to him.

The last time his family went up against the Dwarf in the Flask, their mother died.

~

When Van Edris steps into the office, Maes doesn't recognize him at first.

His hair is braided back. His jewelry is gone and the bright red and gold traditional outfit has been replaced by thick black boots, leather pants, and a black tank top with a wide neck. He's got on a long red coat that's not exactly subtle, but also isn't gold embroidered silk. He only has a moment to wonder who took Van Edris shopping when he stops in front of his desk and catches his eye before jerking his head towards Roy's office.

Confusion fills the rest of the office, but Maes only shrugs at the others before following Van Edris, since that's clearly what he wants him to do. He closes the door behind them and Van Edris stands, eyeing them both carefully. Roy doesn't seem to have any more of a clue about what's going on than Maes does and he looks at Van Edris and says something in Xingese.

Van Edris bites the inside of his cheek then says, "You guys are fucked and if you don't want to stay that way, you're going to need some help."

In perfect, unaccented Amestrian.

Roy's mouth drops and Maes tries not to be distracted by all that implies, instead asking, "Fucked how, Van Edris?"

"If that's even your name," Roy mutters. Clearly he's not interested in prioritizing.

"It's my name!" he snaps, then frowns. "Well, one of them. The other is Edward Elric, but that's really not the point."

Elric? Why does that sound familiar...

"The alchemist?" Roy demands incredulously.

Oh, right, that's why.

a continuation of 1

The first time Eliana stumbles upon the garden, she takes nothing.

She’s not stupid. She knows that this garden isn’t mortal, that only a god could sprout fruits and plants that are at once so familiar and so strange. She lingers longer than she should, soaking up the warmth that seems to exist nowhere else around them, but she takes nothing.

But things grow more desperate at home. It’s a struggle to even dig edible roots out of the ground. More and more people die of hunger, of cold, of desperation, and when her sister cries through the night because her hunger pangs won’t let her sleep, Eliana decides she’s had enough. She returns to the god’s garden, determined, because she doesn’t mind dying of desperation but she won’t live that way.

She plucks the first silver apple from the tree with a trembling hand and then, when nothing happens, another.

Her backet grows full and she’s so close to escape, but not close enough. She feels him before she hears him, and her knees have already grown weak by the time he call her a thief.

The god’s power is rippling off of him, and no gods are of the mortal realm, but he seems even less, somehow, this strange overwhelming presence that she’s never felt at any temple. She’s ready for him to kill her or curse her, for trespassing on his domain and stealing from him.

He lets her go.

He lets her keep the food.

He works a blessing into the stolen apples.

“Thank you,” she says, awed, certain that she’s dreaming, that no deity could be this gracious. “Please, how can I – who should I address my offerings to?”

“Oh,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m – well, my name is Zagreus, but it’s best not to say that one out loud. Prince is fine.”

“Prince,” she echoes, ignoring the how awkward it feels on her tongue. It’s not her place to correct gods, so she says nothing.

~

The apples save them.

The nourish them more than they should, they put fat back on their bones when really that’s impossible, but it’s true. There’s color in her parents’ faces again.

She tells them of the god on the mountain and they burn stems in his honor and she thinks his name even if she doesn’t say it.

Their neighbors notice, because of course they do, and her father says they received a blessing at a local temple. It’s almost true, and they all hunch with guilt, but it seems a poor repayment to the god that had saved them to send more people to take from his garden. Besides, it seems dangerous. Just because a god is benevolent once does not guarantee benevolence a second time.

Eliana saved all the seeds from the silver apples. They shine like burnished copper in her hand. Nothing natural can grow in this never ending winter, but perhaps something unnatural can?

She tries to grow the seeds in a pot inside, watering it and giving it the best soil she can find, but nothing grows. Her family is disappointed, but they say they shouldn’t get greedy. Their hunger has returned, but the fat and muscle the apples granted them stubbornly sticks around, doing it’s best to sustain them when they have nothing else to do the same.

Knocking the pot over was an accident.

She bends to clean it and cuts her hand on the shattered clay. Blood wells in her hand falls on the scattered soil before she forms a fist to stop it.

The seed sprouts.

She stares, then opens her hand, allowing her blood to drip onto it.

The little plant absorbs her blood and grows a little taller, roots crawling out of the pile of soil. It stops at only about a foot tall, her blood sliding off of the leaves rather than disappearing into them, but it’s alive. It’s grown.

Her mother comes in to see what the crash had been and gasps when she sees the shimmering copper plant on the floor.

“Blood,” she says, holding up her cut hand. “It grows with blood.”

The go out to their barren fields and dig into them, placing copper seeds as if they were growing an orchard and covering them dirt.

They experiment.

Animal blood does nothing. There’s a limit to how much good the human blood does, since after a few handfuls it doesn’t seem to any good at all.

Their neighbors help. They understand that if they can makes these trees grow, none of them will be hungry anymore. An uncle dies and the offer his blood, gathered while he was still alive and they all understood losing a little blood wouldn’t matter when he wouldn’t make it through the night.

They pour the blood on the seed and it and the soil instantly turn to ash.

The message is clear and they don’t make the same mistake twice.

Only living blood will do.

~

The apple trees blossom but they do not bear fruit. They try everything, and the trees look healthy, they grow taller and thicker, but the blooms never ripen to fruit.

They’re close. They’re so close.

She gives offerings of her own blood to the Prince and even though she swears there’s a faint golden shimmer around the bowl, nothing happens. They need to do something more.

Eliana understands it’s a risk. That maybe Prince Zagreus will be furious at their impudence, for trying to grow his fruit or for bothering him or something else.

She returns to the mountain. He’s not there. She leaves and comes back every day before she finds him.

He’s sitting at the edge of the pond, fishing. She ignores her surprise and drops to her knees. “My lord Prince, begging your pardon, please.”

She braces herself, but she hears him shift and then he says, “Oh, you’re back. Do you need more apples?”

Eliana is glad that her face is tipped towards the ground so he can’t see her expression. “I seek your advice, my lord Prince, if you be willing.”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem. What’s going on?” he asks, then says, “I can hear you better if you look at me.”

She forces herself to raise her head. The weight of a god’s attention is nearly crushing and she’s not sure what to do with it. She’s just a farmer’s daughter. She was never meant to face a god.

Eliana explains what they’ve done in a slow, halting voice, braces for the moment his anger rushes forward, but it never comes.

Instead he hums and says, “Interesting that you can grow it too,” and stands, shoving the fishing pole into her hands, “Here, hold this for me.”

She sits frozen, worried a god’s instrument will kill her with a touch, but it feels like any other fishing pole she’s ever held.

“Here,” he takes the pole from her and places a tray into her hands instead. This close, his divinity feels like a sunburn, the heat too much to just be coming from the flames licking at his heels. One the tray are a half dozen flowers in the shape of saffron but the color is shifting red to yellow instead of the traditional purple. “Plant these along the base of the trees. Soak the roots in blood first if you don’t want them to fight the trees. Then the fruit should come.”

“Thank you,” she says, trying to think of what offering could possibly make up for all he’s given them.

He ducks to look her in eyes, and she some instinct inside of her explains what she shouldn’t possibly be able to know. His green eye is life and the his red eye is death and his irises are born of Chaos, and she barely understands what it means but she knows it’s true.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says cheerfully. “It’s in my best interest to keep my priestess alive. Your devotion doesn’t do me much good once your dead, after all.”

Eliana startles, says, “I’m not,” before hesitating.

She looked Prince Zagreus in the eyes and it didn’t kill her. It should have. Maybe she is exactly what he says she is.

“The dead are beyond my grasp,” he says. “Only life can serve me.”

That doesn’t – it almost makes sense, but it doesn’t, why should it matter –

Eliana looks at him, really looks at him, sees the skulls at his shoulder and around his waist, the fiery laurels in his hair, and something clicks into place.

No wonder he only wants to be known as Prince.

“I’ll do my best to serve you, Prince,” she says, and she means it, even if she has no idea how one goes about serving a god. He’s saved her life, her family’s lives, her friends’. Her service is the least she can offer him.

He smiles at her, burning and whole and terrifying even in his friendliness.

Even knowing the truth, it still feels wrong to call him Prince.

Princes are a mortal concept.

Could I get some Draco in the muggle world or some FMA?

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Draco wouldn’t be willing to give up magic for anything. He loves his home and Hogwarts and all his bitchy pureblood friends.

But the muggle world is just more fun.

He grew up in it just as much as he did the magical one, spending all his summers since he was a toddler in his grandmother’s home. He likes the television and the music and the fashion. He grew up with Mina just as much as he grew up with Pansy and he likes them both, he likes all his obnoxious, rich muggle friends and their horrible parents.

When Draco’s in the muggle world, he’s just Draco, his grandmother’s grandson and Mina’s summer boyfriend and he gets to do things like go to the skate park and spend the night at a rave and go skinny dipping in the freezing coast, and he doesn’t have to worry about his image or what his parents’ friends will think. His last name doesn’t mean anything here so he doesn’t have any reputation to maintain.

Also the sweet potato discourse xD smh🌻

10. What is the line you’re proudest of from [Fanfic Name]?

“If you can’t keep the magic to yourself, tell us now,” Bedivere says coldly, “we’ll give you enough money to be on your way and forget all of this.”

Arthur shoots Bedivere a warning look, and that’s it, that’s the last straw. Merlin snorts, then laughs, and he covers his mouth to try and muffle it, but that’s no use, and soon he’s doubled over with it, until the muscles of his stomach ache. Arthur looks bewildered, and Cedric throws his hands up in the air, “Great, we broke him.”