Alphonse Elric is (not_fullmetal) wrote in elsewhere_rpg, @ 2017-12-09 20:48:00 |
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Marco was carrying a shovel. The boy sighed as he dragged it across town. Carrying it as a gorilla would have attracted too much attention, so he was doing it as himself. Which meant he had it hoisted over his shoulder as he went back toward Jacob’s house. Or rather, the house Jacob used to live in. He didn’t live anywhere anymore since he was dead. Which wasn’t great, he had to admit. See, this is why acting like Rachel was never a good idea he thought to himself. Jacob had friends, and they didn’t need some kind of fucking blood feud or whatever. Of course, maybe fewer people here would be murdered if they weren’t assholes. He wasn’t sorry Jacob was dead. He was just mildly annoyed that now he had to take the time to figure out what to do with the body so it looked like the guy disappeared instead of died. After all, weird shit happened here, who looks at a disappearance that closely? It might buy them time anyway. *** It was dark, it was late (or, was it early?), and it was long past the time sensible, good people should have been in bed. So why in the world was Colonel Alphonse Elric out? He had his coat wrapped around himself against the chill and was moving calmly but quickly down the road, his eyes focused ahead of him. As Marco glanced a few steps behind him, he’d see why: two men were following behind the young man, one smoking a cigarette and both looking far too intent on the thin, pretty blonde. Luckily, Al would see Marco at almost the same time Marco saw him and he diverted his path almost immediately, to intercept the dark friend of Roy Mustang and fall into step with him. “Hi.” He said with a little smile. He knew Marco didn’t like him, but he wasn't overly concerned with that right now. The two men who had been following him slowed down, then eventually went another direction. They had no interest in whatever they’d been thinking, now that there were two-- and one with a weapon. They’d find easier prey. “Where are you headed?” Could he walk with you? *** Marco paid enough attention to his surroundings to be aware of both Al and the men following him. What was it with this town? Did everybody here just suck? He glanced over at Al as the blond fell into step behind him and shrugged, “Hey.” He said. Where are you headed? Oh boy. Marco was, at heart, in many ways a troll. That had led to him and Al in the brothel that one time, it had led to him bugging Riza at work… it led to a lot of things. Including his decision to deadpan the truth to Alphonse Elric, “I’m going to go bury a body.” He said. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the men had taken off. It amused him that he had apparently scared them off, “That’s always fun, huh?” Being followed, “Does that happen to you often?” *** Had he scared them off? Not really, they’d just decided to find easier prey. And it was pretty clear Marco wasn’t carrying any money on him, so there was no need to get him involved, especially when he had a weapon, it made the odds even and criminals liked it better when the odds were in their favor. They’d find someone else. But as the darker boy said he was going to bury a body, it made Alphonse frown just a little, but he didn’t respond. He held his tongue and just kept walking with him. It was clear he didn’t believe him, he thought Marco was just trying to get rid of him. Really, what had he done to make this kid hate him? His hands pressed deeper into his pockets. “It’s fine.” Yes, he got followed often. And he usually managed to keep himself safe. He’d go into a store, or stop in for a meal somewhere, he’d find someone to walk with, or he’d manage to lose the people trailing him. Of course it happened often. Al looked like fantastic prey. He was young, he was pretty, and he smiled often. It made him appear weak. It made him a great target. “I won’t stay long.” He’d only walk with him a bit further, until their paths parted and Al had to go down the long, unlit path to his house at the edge of the woods. He didn’t love that walk. *** Marco snorted, “Dude, I’m not going to make you have a chaperone. I’m just making conversation. The people in this town are kind of sketchy.” It was like when he’d been poor, but with even less indoor plumbing and people were a lot bolder now instead of just trying to ‘offer him rides’ or stealing shit out of his pockets. “I mean, you can stay as long as you want. I don’t know if watching me bury a body is going to be that interesting. I’ll be a gorilla for part of it,” Marco said conversationally, “I actually don’t know how deep to dig. I’ve killed a lot of people, but I’ve never dug a grave before.” “Do you know?” He asked curiously. *** “It’s a town full of criminals, murderers, and rapists, Marco.” Alphonse reminded him in a ‘come on, are you kidding me?’ tone, pulling his coat tighter around himself. It wasn’t that cold, but it was chilly-- and he was keen on keeping covered up. But then Marco was going on about the stupid fake body and Al was proud that he didn’t roll his eyes. If he wanted to get rid of him that badly, why didn’t he just tell him to go away? Instead, he was remarking that watching it might not be interesting? The Colonel had never done well with passive-aggressive behavior. “It’s standard to bury a person six feet under, but in different locations, you need to be careful about it. We’re surrounded by a river here, it comes from a spring a few miles North, so the water table likely isn’t very high down here. And we’re pretty high above sea level. Technically, you could bury one at three feet, so long as you piled up a bunch of dirt atop it, so as the body decomposed the dirt would settle flat, instead of leaving a hole and less matter between the body and the air. But with all the animals in the area, three feet isn’t really deep enough, they could dig it up. Still, six is really overkill. Four or five feet would be acceptable for a grown man, so long as he isn’t excessively overweight.” Those golden eyes turned back over onto Marco. Al was a genius, full of useless knowledge. Ed was, too. But thankfully, they were full of different types of useless knowledge. “I’d suggest four, for someone our size.” *** Well, what do you know? Al actually did know! Marco grinned at him, “No, he’s a bit bigger than us, but he’s not fat, so four to five feet sounds good. At least it’s not ridiculously cold out, the ground will be easier to dig. Thanks, Al.” He said it in the same tone of voice that somebody might thank a friend for a restaurant recommendation. It wasn’t that far to Jacob’s house, and Marco turned to look at Al and raised an eyebrow, “He’s in here if you want to come. Otherwise, uh… bye, I guess?” He scratched the back of his head, “Have fun? I don’t know.” He couldn’t think of much to say. He had morphed quickly so he was, unfortunately, sober, but he’d remedy that as soon as the body was buried. Priorities. *** But Al remained standing there a moment, just watching Marco, calmly. But eventually, he spoke up again: “What did I do to make you dislike me so much?” Why was he acting like this? They’d never been close, Al had tried, but Marco didn’t want to be friendly, for whatever reason. He thought Al was fake, or something. The Colonel didn’t understand it. Maybe he’d said something or done something to offend him. If he had, he wished the other would just tell him, explain it to him. He wanted to fix it. *** Wait, what? Marco blinked at Alphonse, and then he couldn’t help it: He broke into laughter. This day was just so ridiculous. He’d fought with Roy and Riza, ended up with an asshole, killed the asshole, and now Al was asking why Marco didn’t like him enough. He couldn’t help it. It was just… one more thing. “I’m sorry,” He gasped, eventually letting the laughter subside, “I don’t dislike you. I was actually about to ask you to teach me more alchemy because Roy’s been driving me nuts and it’s hard to learn when I worry about accidently sending my teacher into a drunken spiral.” He liked Roy. Roy drove him insane. “And I’m not laughing at you, just… man, this has been the weirdest day. Are you coming in or not? I mean, we can talk if you want, but I do want to get this done before sunrise.” *** Al didn’t believe him. Not a single word. Of course he was laughing at him. And there was no body. But surely Marco didn’t believe he’d go in, if there was a body. So, he’d call his bluff. “Fine, I’ll help.” He’d wipe the smile off the other boy’s face if he agreed to help him bury his fake body, right? Stepping up, he’d nod once, now a good three inches taller than Marco-- and with his hair cut short, he looked more his age, not so childish. “I suppose I’ll have to make a second shovel.” Out of Alchemy, of course. *** Marco glanced at Al in surprise, then shrugged before breaking out into a grin. He wanted to see Al make a shovel! “Only if you show me how you do it first,” Al and Ed could do things outside of their areas of expertise. Marco seemed limited to his electricity for now, “I don’t think I’ll need much help because I’ll be a gorilla, but if you want to, you can.” He walked up to the door and pushed it open, ducking through the entryway and kitchen to where Jacob’s body was sitting on the couch. Marco had dumped some water on it to stop it smoldering, but it was pretty obvious that some of the fabric had fused with the man’s skin and other parts of it were scorched away with electrical burns. “It feels sort of obvious burying him in his own back yard, but I don’t want to be seen walking around with it.” Marco explained, “If I come up with a better solution later, then I’ll do something.” *** What was with Marco? Seriously? One minute he seemed so nice, then the next he was making fun of Al and-- “Oh goodness, that’s a body-- Marco!” He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what was still lying face-down on that couch. There was a dead person! Why was he wet?! Wide, bronze eyes snapped up and over to stare at the darker boy. What had happened here? He couldn’t even ask. He didn’t need to ask. The question was there in his eyes. What the fuck, Marco?! *** “Yes, Al, that tends to happen after you kill somebody. You’re in the military, you should know that.” Marco turned Jacob over, letting the body roll to the floor, and then bent over to look it over, lifting limbs experimentally. Sure, he’d be able to lift the guy as a gorilla, but he needed to know how much Jacob’s corpse weighed so he didn’t rip a limb off or something by grabbing too forcefully. Al was staring at him. Marco ran a hand through his hair, “I went back here with him to fool around and he didn’t listen to me when I said no to something. He tried to make me keep going. So I electrocuted him.” It wasn’t that complicated, Alphonse, “Man, why are all the assholes here so stupid?” He complained. *** The slightly older boy let out a slow sigh and pushed a hand back through his hair, finally letting his jacket go. His pale trousers and white button-down were allowed to show then, the blood stains there standing out aggressively against the lighter colors. “That’s not a reason to murder someone, Marco.” He sounded tired, but resigned. “Alchemy comes with a responsibility. You have to be careful.” Moving forward, he knelt beside the man and looked him over, then reached out to take his pulse just to make sure. Once he was sure, he retracted his hand and looked back up at the younger man again. “We can’t bury him in the back yard. We have to bury him in the woods. We’ve got to move him.” Standing up again, he began to look around the small house, hands pressing into his pockets again. “And you’ll just draw attention as some huge animal. If they catch you, there’ll be serious problems.” *** That’s not a reason to murder someone, Marco. “Oh, I’m sorry,” He said sarcastically, “I forgot that when somebody was pinning me to a couch and getting ready to shove their cock up my ass that I should ask really politely for them to stop one more time. I didn’t have any arrays, I used one of his buttons.” Marco tapped on a blackened glass button, “Or do you just think I should have let him for the few minutes it takes me to morph, then kill him that way?” He wasn’t psycho, but he wasn’t a victim either. “Okay, now I’m confused. You think this is bad and you want to help me? Those two things don’t usually go together, Al.” *** “You didn’t have to kill him.” That was a bit sharper, a bit more firm. “Alchemy is not a tool for murder, Marco, it’s something beautiful, and you’ve done something ugly with it.” He breathed a rush of air out of his nose, clenching his teeth as he did. “You could have punched him, kicked him-- you could have zapped him, you didn’t have to fry him to death. And if you couldn’t control it, then you shouldn’t be using it that way.” He was being scolded because he deserved it. Yes, he’d protected himself, but he’d gone far above and beyond what was acceptable. Murder for being sexually aggressive was definitely over the top. Sure, maybe Jacob had meant to rape him, but maybe he hadn’t. Maybe a good punch to the jaw would have stopped him cold. They’d never know now. He rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m helping you because you’re my friend and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.” So of course he would help. He’d cover it up to ensure Marco would stay safe. *** All the things that Al listed off were things he could have done, and while Marco could have come up with some excuses, there wasn’t any point. The boy rubbed his face and his body sagged slightly, and when he looked up, Marco just looked… tired. So he’d fucked up and Al, at least, thought it would have been better to let Jacob if he couldn’t come up with a better solution. Is this how Jake felt all the time? Like people were judging him for not being perfect? “Yeah.” Was all he said, putting the shovel next to the couch and going to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, and sitting mutely on the toilet. “Just leave, Al,” He said through the door in a tired-sounding voice. *** There was a long moment of total silence. Long enough that Marco might think Alphonse had actually left. Then, the door handle turned and the door opened. The young Colonel stepped into the bathroom, then shut the door behind him, and came forward. Passing Marco there on the closed toilet, he sat down on the edge of the tub and bent forward so his elbows rested against concealed metal knees. His fingers linked together. “I know you were defending yourself,” he said more calmly, more quietly, “And I don’t blame you for that, you should defend yourself. But you shouldn’t so carelessly take a life. I know you’ve been through things that were hard, that were horrible.. Things I couldn’t begin to understand. But you’re here with us now, Marco. And everyone here loves you. I mean that-- Sometimes we can be overbearing, but it’s because we care.” Bronze eyes fell away from the other boy’s pretty face, settling on his linked fingers. “But please hear me when I tell you that you shouldn’t use Alchemy as a tool for killing. It perverts it. It turns it from something beautiful and fun, into something that other people will manipulate-- and they’ll manipulate you. And I don’t think you need anymore of that in your life.” His fingers disconnected and a hand came out, catching Marco gently under the chin and urging it up, to look at him. “I need you to believe that I’m trying to help you, not judge you. You did what you thought you had to do, I wish you had chosen another path, not for his sake but for yours.” He carefully released his chin. “You’re a good Alchemist, you’re going to be a great Alchemist, but you can’t turn into one who uses his gifts that way. It ruins good men.” He’d seen it first hand. *** Marco looked up with a sneer on his face, uncomfortable with having been interrupted in the bathroom. He listened to Alphonse’s little speech with a fake, over the top look of boredom on his face. And after Alphonse let him go, Marco gave an exaggerated yawn. “That’s it? I don’t blame you except I totally do because you didn’t think of this magical third solution to things. And for the record, you don’t know how anybody else here feels about me, and I’m pretty sure you’re the type who thinks everybody here loves everybody else.” Even Al’s speech about alchemy got a shake of his head, “Neither of those things are going to happen.” Marco said levelly, referring to him getting ‘ruined’ or being a ‘great Alchemist’, “They’d take too much time. If I can’t get home, there’s no point to any of this.” This being life in Elsewhere. He wavered back and forth between the plan being suicide or trapping himself as a happy animal like a dog. Drastic, but it wasn’t like Elsewhere had all the drugs they’d tried on Marco after the war. “You know, for all your genius, you have no idea right now isn’t the best time to sound like a sanctimonious prick, do you?” He said with a laugh. *** Al sat there silently as Marco gave his retort, those oddly colored eyes resting on his face evenly. Two years back, even one year ago, he might have had tears brimming in his eyes by now, but Alphonse had learned how to curb his emotions, thanks to some hard lessons from none other than Roy Mustang. “Why do you do that?” He paused, but carried on without waiting for an answer, “Why are you mean to people who are trying to help you? Are you trying to chase them away? Do you think you aren’t worth the help? Or is it that you just want to be alone by your choice, because it’s what will hurt less? You don’t have to say things like that. I’m trying to help. You can be kind in return and talk to me instead of make fun of me. All it does is hurt me, it doesn’t make me like you any less.” So it seemed sort of sadistic to keep kicking the puppy. *** Marco inhaled in preparation to answer, and Alphonse just carried on talking. He exhaled and muttered, “I guess it was a rhetorical question.” Because I don’t want the help. Yes. Yes. Yes. Then he gave Al a look that said ‘you are the weirdest person ever’. “Seriously? That’s not healthy, you idiot. That’s like… a mental problem. You need to care about that.” Otherwise people would constantly walk all over Alphonse. “And okay? You want me to talk?” “I think that maybe after I had what was a.) the weirdest day ever and b.) just ended up pinned on a couch and told basically I was going to have sex whether I wanted to or not by somebody that at first was really nice to me isn’t the best time to lecture me on my reaction to those things!” Marco snapped, barely refraining from asking if Al was brain dead, “Like, maybe give me five fucking minutes to process without being berated for not thinking of the perfect solution!” *** Again, the Colonel did well to simply sit through Marco’s reaction quietly, watching him as he started to get more upset and his words turned to shouting. It was only once he looked like he was done that Alphonse spoke up again. “Process it.” He told him calmly. “You just killed a man you didn’t need to.” A statement of the obvious. “Do you really not care at all, or are you just pretending not to care, because caring would hurt too much?” He paused after that, his eyes locked onto Marco. He wanted to make it damn clear there was no rhetorical question in that one. *** Marco eyed Al. Al really didn’t get it, did he? “No, I disagree with your premise.” He said in reply, “ a man I didn’t need to kill.” He knew what Al would expect him to say: it was self-defense, I couldn’t have known another way work work, blah blah blah, but that wasn’t what Marco had to say, “there’s no ‘need’ to death, Alphonse. Death is a thing that happens. I wasn’t thinking of frying him, hell, I tried to limit the electricity,” Sure, mostly so he wasn’t sucked dry, but it was true, “It’s no different than a car accident, those are caused by human error. Or if something malfunctions and kills someone. Death happens, and dividing it into needed and unneeded deaths is stupid.” That’s what he had to say. “My friend Jake killed his cousin because he couldn’t think of a better way,” Marco said off-handedly, “And if somebody had gone up to him right afterward and yelled at him for it I would have pushed them out the airlock.” He told Al. *** He wanted to speak up, he wanted to tell Marco that there was always a choice, that it wasn’t as simple as a car crash, that it was Marco’s choice to take that life, that there was a responsibility that came along with it. But he didn’t. Again, he just listened. “What did killing his cousin do to him?” The question was just as quiet as Marco’s statement of the fact Jake had done such a thing. *** “It broke him.” Marco answered simply, rubbing his face. He didn’t talk about Jake here much anymore, because it got him thinking about whether or not he’d ever see Jake again and if Jake would kill himself if Marco didn’t get back on time and… “And for what it’s worth, I know you secretly want me to be a softie who’s horrified at the fact that I just killed someone, but I’m not. I don’t care that he’s dead. I mean, it’s annoying to not be sleeping right now, but that’s about it.” You wanted to not be pushed away, Alphonse. *** “I can tell that you don’t care. That’s what worries me.” He sat there in silence for a few more heartbeats before he pushed up to his feet, knee-high leather boots squeaking slightly as he did. There was still a smear of blood on the toe of one of them. “He’s too heavy for us to carry without being noticed. And if you’re a gorilla, we’ll definitely be noticed. We’ll cut him up, wrap him in sheets and take him in pieces. We’ll dig a hole and put him in it, then we’ll burn him. When the flame goes out, we’ll put dirt on top.” Why in the world was Alphonse an expert at burying bodies? No one really wanted the answer to that question. “Come on.” They needed to get working. *** “What, you think I’m going to become a serial killer? I just don’t see the point in beating myself up for killing somebody who was trying to r- who was being an asshole. I have a sense of proportionality, Al, I don’t jump to killing for cutting me off in traffic or whatever. It’s generally a panic reaction I get when I’m in danger.” He listened to Al’s instructions, considered them, and concluded that they made sense. “Yeah. Okay, so we’ll need sheets and maybe something to set him on fire with…” This was going to be a long night. |