Chapter Text
Greed sat outside on the front step of his house, a notebook carefully balanced on one leg. Occasionally, he would set down his pencil and flip through the textbook next to him for reference before returning to his writing. He didn’t normally do homework outside—his parents would complain that he didn’t do homework at all—but it was the first warm day of spring, and he was bored. At least outside, there was the possibility of something new and interesting crossing his path.
His real name wasn’t Greed, of course, but when he was young, he had a habit of proclaiming everything as his. The teasing term “you greedy kid” from his parents had eventually shortened down to simply “Greed”, and the nickname had stuck. It felt more fitting than his real name anyway, which was something he might have wanted to examine if he was one for introspection. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t.
The decision to study outside paid off about half an hour later when he happened to look up, squinting in the bright sunlight to see his friend Sofia walk up the street towards him.
She waved as she approached, then seated herself on the step next to him, peering over his homework before snorting. “I don’t know what else I expected. Why is Xingese the only class you consistently put any effort into?”
Greed shrugged. He wasn’t the worst student, but he had trouble convincing himself to put much focus or effort into things that didn’t interest him. Copying Xingese characters over and over until he memorized them was very dull and should have been exactly the kind of thing he hated, but learning Xingese felt like it was important in a way that many of his classes didn’t.
In the rare moments when Greed cared to think about it, he might have connected his interest in the language to the time when he was seven and first saw a picture of the Emperor of Xing in a newspaper and felt an utter certainty that this man meant the world to him.
Not fully understanding the feeling but curious nonetheless, Greed had spent over a month learning everything he could about Emperor Ling Yao. At only 23 years old, he had been the youngest ruler in the world at the time and had gained that position by discovering the secret to immortality, which he refused to share with anyone else. During his six year reign, he had already radically changed the structure of the Xingese line of succession and formed a stronger diplomatic connection with Amestris, as well as many other great achievements that Amestrian newspapers focused less on. Which was all very well and interesting, but it offered no explanation for the strange recognition that Greed felt when he looked at the Emperor’s face.
A decade had passed since then, and Greed no longer actively searched for answers, but it had stuck in his mind enough to contribute to his desire to learn to speak Xingese.
“I do well in math,” Greed said at last because he felt Sofia was unfairly downplaying his academic skills.
“You don’t need to put any effort to do well in math,” Sofia said with a scoff. “You’re just good at it magically. But anyway, I didn’t come to complain about your homework habits.”
“Sure doesn’t seem like it,” Greed muttered.
Sofia glared at him. ”My advanced chem teacher told me about a special lecture on alchemy that Central University is hosting for the public.”
“And?” Greed knew Sofia had plans to study alchemy after graduating high school, but it wasn’t something he personally had much interest in. Definitely not to the point where she would come all the way to his house to tell him about a related event.
“Do you want to come with?”
Greed raised an eyebrow at her. Of all the people to ask for something like that, he figured he would be pretty low on the list given his aforementioned lack of interest.
“I would normally have gone with Gertrude, but she’s busy that day,” Sofia said. “And I think you’d have fun—no, hear me out.”
Greed had been about to tell her to ask Fatima who at least was neutral on the nerd-jock spectrum, but he closed his mouth, raising one eyebrow in challenge. It wasn’t that Greed disliked alchemy, but spending his evening listening to a lecture was in no way appealing when he could be doing literally anything else.
“First off, it’s about human transfiguration,” Sofia said.
“And that’s a plus?” Greed said. “I’d kill a man for you, but I won’t spend hours listening to somebody go on about how,” he pitched his voice higher, “’human transmutation is very illegal and dangerous, so don’t do it, kids.’”
“You think so little of me,” Sofia said, shaking her head in mock disappointment. “It’s going to be given by the leading scholar in the field. He’s not going to waste his time on some boring safety lecture that any old alchemist could do. I don’t know what exactly it’s about, but it has a focus on soul alchemy, which includes studies into immortality.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.
That caught some of his attention, though he kept his expression neutral. Greed knew Sofia too well to think she would try to convince him with that alone. “And?”
“And second of all, this isn’t just some stuffy scholar either, it’s Edward Elric, ” Sofia said grinning at him like that was supposed to mean something.
The name struck a chord of familiarity, though Greed couldn’t place even the general idea of where he might have heard it. “Who?”
“The Fullmetal Alchemist?” Sofia said.
That clarified nothing. Greed stared at her blankly.
“You know, the youngest person to ever join the military? Who quit and became one of the most famous alchemical researchers ever? How have you not heard of him?”
Greed scratched his ear. “That’s really your field more than mine. You know that the only things I know about alchemy come from you. So really this is all your fault for not talking about him more.”
Sofia sighed. “Heathen. Anyway, the point is, he’s very famous even outside of the alchemy world, and the last time he gave a public lecture at Central U, a fistfight broke out.”
“And they invited him back?” Greed asked, startled into a large grin. He hadn’t quite expected someone who would give guest lectures at the most prestigious university in the college to start fights. Maybe it was that military background.
“Look, he’s really famous,” Sofia said. “He could probably burn down a building or something and they’d still bring him back. I really don’t know how you haven’t heard of him already.”
So maybe it wasn’t purely personal bias that had Sofia believing that Greed might vaguely enjoy himself there. “What happened with the fight?”
“Well, the subject of the lecture was chimeras, apparently?” Sofia said. “I think the ethics of it was a major point. From what I’ve heard, he’s very against that kind of experimentation. And I guess someone must have disagreed or something. There’s a rumor that it’s why he’s talking about something so theoretical this time. Not much to argue about when it’s all impossible and illegal. But I mean I bet he can still cause some chaos even with this, and if he does, I bet you’d be interested in seeing it happens.”
“How much would you bet?” Greed asked, raising both his eyebrows. “If I go and it’s a waste of my time—”
“I’ll buy you lunch for a week and give you my notes for that one week of history class you skipped out on.”
“Nineteenth century Amestrian history is boring,” Greed muttered defensively. He didn’t actually have anything planned for Thursday night, he figured. And Sofia wasn’t the type to want to torture him for no reason so she had to genuinely think he wouldn’t spend the whole time bored out of his mind. “Fine, I’ll go.”
“Great!” Sofia said, giving him a pleased grin. “I’ll meet you at the train station at six?”
“Sure, sure,” Greed said. He rolled his eyes, though he could admit to himself that he wouldn’t entirely regret even the dullest of nights if his friend was this happy at just the thought of going.
The lecture was supposed to have started one minute ago, but people were still shuffling in from the side doors of Central University’s auditorium, and the lights above the empty stage were dim. The large, echoing room was filled with hushed murmurs and the hazy lighting gave the place a slightly unreal feeling.
Greed looked up at the clock on the left wall, as if time would have moved any faster in the past few seconds since he had last checked. He and Sofia had arrived early enough to snag a couple seats in the third row, and Greed had long grown impatient.
While they were waiting, Sofia had been explaining Elric’s history as a teenage state alchemist. Greed didn’t tell lies, so if asked, he would have to admit that her enthusiasm for anything related to alchemy was normally endearing. This time, however, the topic was making him oddly antsy, and he kept shifting in his seat or fidgeting with the white faux fur around the collar of his leather vest, only half-listening to what she said. Fortunately, Sofia seemed too caught up in her impromptu speech to pay him much mind.
His attention was caught when a middle aged man with close-cropped dark hair walked onto the stage. This could not possibly be Edward Elric, Greed thought dubiously, though he didn’t know why he felt so certain about that.
The lights in the audience section flickered off as the stage lights brightened, and an instant hush followed. Greed shifted back in his seat, ignoring his squirming insides as he mentally prepared himself for a long evening of trying not to appear too obviously bored.
“Good evening, everyone!” the man on the stage said into the microphone. There were scattered sounds of applause. “Thank you all for coming on this fine evening! I’m Darol Krouse, the head of the alchemy department here at Central University. Welcome to tonight's lecture: Human Transmutation and the Value of a Soul, with a following Q&A session with our special guest tonight. I am honored to present, all the way from Rush Valley, please welcome Doctor Edward Elric!”
Greed half-heartedly joined in with everyone clapping as another man stepped onto the stage. Elric’s golden blond hair, pulled back into a long ponytail, shone under the stage lights, and that felt far more correct to Greed. He wondered briefly if he had seen a picture of him before, but before he could investigate that further, Elric turned to look at the audience and Greed caught sight of his face.
All his restless energy suddenly vanished, and Greed found himself perfectly still, cold dread freezing him in place. It was a familiar face, harsh angles under the cold lights, and Greed felt fear and hatred boiling up in his stomach.
Except that wasn’t right, Greed realized as Elric took his place at the lectern and adjusted the microphone, smiling politely at Krouse. His face wasn’t actually that angular, rounder and softer than it had first seemed. Elric was also clean shaven, which felt like an important detail somehow, even though Greed had not particularly expected a beard or mustache of any sort beforehand.
“Thank you, Professor Krouse,” Edward Elric said a little dryly as he adjusted his mic stand. Somehow that voice was all the reassurance Greed needed to start to relax again. It wasn’t quite familiar, but it gave Greed the impression that he would like Elric if they ever met. Which was odd. Greed was an easy-going person, but scholars twice his age were not the kind of people he normally hung out with.
“Before we get started tonight, I want all of you to think of someone you love,” Elric said as Krouse walked off the stage. “A sibling, a parent, a friend, a partner—even yourself.” There were a couple chuckles. “Someone who means more to you than anything else in the world. What price would you put on their soul?”
He paused, allowing silence to wash over the hall. Greed was feeling just spiteful enough at being dragged out here that he didn’t want to obey, so he firmly thought of no one at all. He didn't like picking favorites anyway.
“An arm? A leg? A hundred kilos of gold? Two hundred? It’s hard to name a specific price, right? Because what wouldn’t you give to bring a loved one back from the dead? But can you really say 'Oh this person I love is only worth money or limbs'? That their entire lived experience, the unique sum of their memories and emotions, all of that can be exchanged for something as interchangeable as physical objects? And that right there sums up both the allure and problem with human transmutation.”
What was that even supposed to mean? Greed wondered. Of course he would give anything to save his friends, but it didn’t matter what he proclaimed he would do for them if making that exchange was impossible in the first place. As far as he knew, he couldn’t just offer a deal to the universe and have it come true. There was no point in wondering about hypothetical prices.
“People often look to alchemy to solve problems that can’t be solved in any other way, but even alchemy has to follow the laws of the universe, including the concept of equivalent exchange. And what could you possibly give that would be equivalent to a person’s soul?”
Greed still didn’t see the point of the question. From what Sofia had explained, equivalent exchange in alchemy was more like conservation of mass and energy than haggling at a market.
“Now that gives you an idea of the issue, but of course bringing someone back is much more complicated than figuring your way around this paradox. A soul, if used as a form of energy, does have a definable value. However, a soul that you would consider an actual person is far more than just a source of energy. It’s a full human being with thoughts and feelings and memories and all sorts of things that can’t just be substituted. If I wanted to bring back someone I know from the dead, I couldn’t do it with any old soul.”
This kind of thing was probably far more interesting to a nerd like Sofia than Greed, but even the part of him that was a bit grumpy at being made to come to this couldn’t deny interest in the idea of fishing out some soul to bring back to life. There wasn't anyone in particular he wanted to bring back, but the thought of the death of his friends and family turned his stomach, so it was something he cared about. Besides, he was still curious about what exactly had gotten the Emperor of Xing his throne and this seemed like it would probably be related.
“Not that you could bring any soul back as a complete human being, regardless of whether its someone you know or not, of course. If a soul is gone, it’s gone, and I’m here to tell you why.”
The finality of Elric’s tone and the sharpness of his glare made Greed want to flinch, like when a teacher was yelling at him for something he hadn’t even gotten the chance to try yet. He glanced at Sofia who was staring at Elric in rapt attention. She clearly was enjoying herself. It wasn’t that Greed was having a particularly bad time, but he still felt unsettled by the whole thing somehow.
Elric continued to go on about souls and the impossibility of bringing them back, running through many different theories that had sprung up over the centuries and proving them impossible beyond a shadow of a doubt, going on about entropy and how sometimes when things were gone they could not be remade.
This technically was a preachy lecture, Greed thought disgruntledly. Only this was given by a shouty man who seemed to take smug satisfaction in shutting down every possible avenue of doing doing human transmutation. Greed figured he could forgive Sofia for it, since at least Elric was a lot more interesting and less moralizing than the anti-drug people that were brought in at school assemblies.
It still felt oddly familiar though. Maybe Sofia had been right to be surprised that he hadn't recognized Elric's name. The more he watched, the more he felt certain Elric was someone he should know and that this whole soul business was somehow relevant to him personally. Which was odd, considering he had never particularly wanted to bring anyone back to life. He had always been more interested in preventing the death in the first place through immortality.
“And even if you impossibly managed to by pass the whole issue of the soul,” Elric spat, radiating disdain, “you’d still have the problem of getting a body to house it in.” They were already forty minutes into the lecture, and over the course of it, he had grown less and less composed. His gestures had grown sharp and angry, and several hairs had escaped their ponytail. He seemed to be filled with a barely controlled manic energy, and Greed was starting to understand how he had caused a fist fight to break out in his last lecture.
“Some alchemists will tell you that the physical side of revivification is the easy part. That’s because they don’t fucking know shit.”
A cough sounded from the side of the stage, and Elric paused to glance in that direction, his expression schooling itself into something more neutral. “...Excuse my language. They don’t fucking know anything .”
Greed didn’t think Krouse would be much more pleased with that, but he heard no further sounds from the wings.
“Still, I get where they’re coming from. You can find out the components of a human body pretty easily, right? Proportions of an average human adult: water, 35 liters; carbon, 20 kilograms; ammonia, 4 liters; lime, 1.5 kilograms; phosphorus, 800 grams; salt, 250 grams; saltpeter, 100 grams, and so on. But then you need to know how it all works and fits together, which is a hell of a lot more work than just looking at some diagrams in the back of a medical textbook, believe me.
“And even with all that , if you still want to try, a soul can’t just go into any body. You wouldn’t be comfortable if you just switched bodies with the person next to you, would you? They probably aren’t the same height as you, their limbs don’t quite work the same way, food wouldn’t taste quite the same, and it just isn’t yours. And those are just the surface level things; there are other incompatibilities when you start talking about the soul specifically, but I won't get into the technical details here. What matters is that eventually, even if you managed to get it to stick for a bit, the soul would reject the foreign body.”
Although all those technical justifications for why a soul wouldn’t fit into another body were most likely well thought out and tested, Greed still felt dubious at the analogy.
A new body would be strange, of course, but with a bit of time to adjust, he didn’t think he wouldn’t mind having some other form. He had never felt particularly at home in his own body, which his dad had said was normal for teenagers, though Greed thought he had always felt that way to some extent. He didn't hate his body, but having a different one seemed fine by him. It didn’t seem like all that big of a deal, especially compared to death.
“Okay, you’re probably all thinking, ‘but there has to be some way around that, right?’ Like what if you’re not talking about bringing someone back. What if it’s a brand new soul, human made, having never belonged to any other body than the one you created for it and therefore perfectly compatible? That’s where we get onto the topic of homunculi.”
At the sound of that word, Greed flinched, his whole body seizing up as a flash of pain shot through his head. It was like an hours-long migraine compressed into one mind-splittingly agonizing instant, tearing his thoughts into shreds before fading away into a dull ache. Headaches weren’t too uncommon for Greed, especially those short intense ones which always left him feeling shaken and empty, but this was painful even for one of those.
“Are you okay?” Sofia whispered, staring at him with startled eyes. Greed hadn’t meant to make enough movement for her to notice. One hand came to rest gently on his shoulder.
“Yeah.” Greed nodded quickly. He didn’t want to distract her from this.
She stared at him for another heartbeat before slowly turning back to face the front. Her hand remained on his arm though, which Greed couldn’t complain about.
“—why they’re also described as artificial humans,” Elric was saying when Greed looked back up at the stage, which caused another flash of—something. It wasn’t pain precisely, more like an intense emotion followed by an image of something red and gold that went by too quickly for him to see. “Though I mean if you’re already going through the effort, why stick to a plain old boring human body? Why not mess around a bit and, I dunno, add super tough skin or make them a giant lizard monster or something? For example.”
There was that burst of pain again, a flash of steely dark gray then the image of a large green beast in his mind, gone before he could even wonder what it was. Greed closed his eyes. He couldn’t focus on the lecture, even if he had wanted to. Words drifted in and out of his mind, but they were too slippery to string together into full concepts. Greed felt like his mind was crumbling and he didn’t have the faintest idea why.
“Now, most scientists will tell you that there’s no such thing as a homunculus, but there’s no actual proof they can’t exist. And as a friend of mine used to say, there’s no such thing as ‘no such thing.’”
Sadness slammed into Greed like a punch, like a sudden wave that he was now drowning under. He couldn’t breathe. He felt the overwhelming urge to cry, which was ridiculous. Something very important had been taken from him, and he could feel its loss like a chasm in his own soul, wide and devouring.
“But back to human transmutation,” Elric said, which Greed distantly felt relieved about. This lecture hadn’t made him feel this strongly when Elric had been talking about souls; it had only been the bit about homunculi that provoked weird emotions, and he was sick of feeling like a punching bag. “To sum up what I've spent the last hour explaining, it’s completely impossible both to get back a soul and to match it with a new body. You have absolutely nothing to go off of to bring your loved one back from the dead, and every single law of nature proves it.
“But what happens if you try anyway? What if you’re so unbelievably arrogant that you think you can bend the universe to your whim and do what no one else has been able to do before just because you’re too much of a coward to move on like everyone else?
“All alchemy has consequences if you do it wrong. Smaller mistakes that use less power have less damaging rebounds, and usually don’t hurt the alchemist much, if at all. But I once exploded a glass vase as a kid because I forgot to consider the dyes in it while trying to turn it into sand. I got cuts all over my arms and chest, and bits of glass got stuck into the floor and walls that took ages to get out.
“Can you imagine the kind of rebound you’d experience if you tried to do something humans were never meant to be able to do? You’d get off with your life if you’re lucky. Whether you live or die, you lose something huge, and for what?!” Elric demanded, almost shouting at this point. He paused for a long moment, looking across the silent auditorium with such intensity that even Greed’s turbulent thoughts quieted for a moment.
“Just a deed you can’t even do in the first place,” he said quietly, his voice ringing out in the stillness of the hall. Greed couldn’t look away.
“One thing to note though,” Elric added casually, crossing his arms and leaning against the podium as if he had never tried to scare everyone in this room out of even thinking about trying human transmutation just by glaring at them. “In recorded cases of these rebounds, the effects have only been seen on the alchemist performing it. The area around the attempted transmutation as well as any bystanders all remain untouched. No one knows why.”
Elric paused then smiled slightly. “Or at least no one knows and is legally allowed to tell you. Now my time is up, so I’m going to take a break, but I’ll be back out here to answer some questions in ten minutes.”
Without further comment, Elric walked off the stage.
A moment later, audience lights flickered back on, and the room burst into chatter.
“Legally allowed—what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked someone from behind Greed.
“Wow...” Sofia said, still looking a bit dazed. She brought her hand back from Greed’s arm to her side of the arm rest. “He’s so cool. God, I love alchemy. I’d give anything to have him as my professor.”
Greed snorted, but a strange sense of relief was already starting to wash away his earlier distress and confusion. In the darkness, it was easier to get lost in his own thoughts, but now that there was noise and light and his friend acting in the most predictable of manners, the world was all a bit more real again.
“Hey, were you okay,?” she asked. “There was a moment—”
“Just a headache,” Greed said quickly. “I’m fine now.”
“Right,” she said, not looking entirely convinced. “What did you think of it?”
“It was interesting,” Greed said with a shrug. “No mention of immortality though.”
“Well, you can’t have everything,” Sofia scoffed. “But uh...do you.... do you want to go now? Some people are leaving and I only asked if you wanted to see the lecture, not the rest of it...”
Greed twisted in his chair to look at the people behind him. Nobody in the first few rows was getting up, but there were several others who were sliding their way past those who remained towards the exits. “Nah, I’m good. I want to see what happens, like if any of those people challenge Elric on something he said. Still no fights yet, so I’m a bit disappointed.”
“Typical,” Sofia muttered, rolling her eyes.
“And who was just gushing about short, blond, and nerdy there?” Greed demanded. “You’re the predictable one.”
“Hey!” Sofia elbowed him. “I don’t think he’s short though.”
“He’s not tall,” Greed said. It was sort of hard to tell when he had only seen Elric next to Krouse for comparison, but he felt sure of this. “So is he a professor somewhere else?” Was Sofia going to move out of Central, he didn’t ask.
“Unfortunately no,” Sofia said, to Greed’s guilty relief. “But I hear he does show up in Central a lot, like for guest lectures at the uni and conferences and stuff. It’s just—look, he’s amazing but he’s not the best alchemist to ever exist. Well I hear he doesn't do alchemy at all anymore , only theory—but you heard him, didn’t you? If every class was a quarter as interesting as this, it would still be better than any teacher I’ve had before, and I like my teachers.”
Greed laughed. “Can’t argue there. Did human transmutation personally insult him or something? He really seems to hate it.”
“Yeah, it did seem a bit personal,” Sofia said, glancing up at the empty stage. “I wonder if he ever tried it?”
“Why would someone who did something majorly illegal work with the military?”
“Maybe that’s why he quit,” Sofia shot back.
“I don’t think being a world-famous scholar or whatever you were saying is a much safer position to hide a secret like that,” Greed said.
A couple minutes later, Elric came back out onto the stage, though this time the audience lights remained on, so it took longer for everyone to notice something was going on and fall silent.
“Alright, hello again, I’m here to take your questions for the next fifty five minutes. Who wants to go first?”
Hands shot up around the room, and Elric pointed at someone. “You there in the back left. My left, your right. Speak loudly.”
“You said a soul has a quantifiable energy value, back in the beginning. Do you know what that value is?”
Elric stood there considering for a moment. “You can see why that would be a tricky question to answer, right? You couldn’t find out unless you used a soul or part of a soul up, which is pretty unethical. Plus who does that knowledge help? People who want to get people’s souls and use them for their own purposes. Though actually, that’s a terrible argument because if you’re the kind of person to seriously consider using souls as energy, you’d have no problem with just finding out yourself. But either way, if I did know the answer to that question, it would be classified, so unfortunately I cannot tell you. All I can say is that it’s a lot .”
Murmurs broke out, and even Sofia looked at Greed to exchange a bemused expression.
“I can’t tell if he actually knows this stuff, or if he’s just messing with us,” she muttered.
“Next question...” Elric said, cutting everyone off. His eyes searched the crowd, this time in the front section of the auditorium. His gaze passed over Greed, and he stilled, his eyes locking onto Greed’s then down at his vest. This close to the front, Greed could see Elric's face all too clearly. He couldn’t read whatever expression was on it, couldn’t guess why his gaze had caught on Greed. In this light, he could see those eyes were a strange shade of light brown, almost gold. He had seen those eyes before.
Then the moment passed, and Elric pointed out another person a few rows behind Greed. “Are you trying to tell us that there’s no afterlife?” the person demanded. “That there’s no higher power?”
“Do I look like a theologist?” Elric snapped. “I didn’t say any of that. Who am I to say? But if there is a God, it’s one that doesn’t want us to bring people back, and if there’s an afterlife, it’s one that we can’t access. That’s all I know.”
“Well, can’t you at least guess something? ” the person asked. “Since you’ve done all this research.”
“If you’re asking me for my personal beliefs, then I’m agnostic, but I’m not going to tell others what’s true or isn’t,” Elric said. “I don’t know about any afterlife, and if there’s a higher power, then its a dick, and I’d punch it in the face if I met it again. But that’s just my opinion. Next question?”
A few more technical questions followed, asked by people who clearly knew much more about alchemy than Greed did and wanted Elric to clarify some of the claims he had made earlier. Judging by Sofia’s expression, some of them were a bit hard to follow even for her.
“Why study human transmutation if it’s all impossible and unethical?” was the next question that Greed could make heads or tails of.
“We can’t know our limits unless we study them,” Elric said. “I wouldn’t be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that bringing someone back from the dead is impossible unless I studied it. Now people can quit wasting their time trying. Besides, it’s not only about trying to break all the rules of nature and physics. What if someone was dying, but you managed to catch their soul and attach it to a su—say a doll.”
Greed frowned. This answer hadn’t sent any sort of distress through him, which was a relief, since listening to Elric had started to feel like walking through a minefield. It did tug at his mind though, a reminder of something he had forgotten. Had that been the plot of a movie he had seen or something?
“It wouldn’t be the best kind of life, without food or sleep or sensation, but probably better than nothing, right? At least enough to make you want to consider the benefits, at least enough to look into. Even if you can’t bring back life, human transmutation might have answers for extending it.”
The vague feeling that this should be reminding him of something burst up, and suddenly Greed was certain that before Elric had said “doll,” he had been about to say “suit of armor.” If Greed was in the process of developing psychic powers, they could at least be about more interesting things than this, he thought irritatedly.
Elric chose another person to ask a question.
“You said using soul energy was unethical—and I agree with you. But could you use your own soul instead? Since it’s so powerful?”
“Oh, sure,” Elric said. “I mean, it’s illegal to study or spread knowledge of arrays related to human transmutation, and messing with your soul is serious business. It’d shorten your lifespan if you used that energy, so I wouldn’t recommend doing it unless it’s really necessary. Like if you get stabbed through the stomach with a big metal pole and are bleeding out miles away from any medical assistance. But the theory behind it is exactly the same as transmuting someone else’s soul.” Elric cleared his throat. “Hypothetically speaking of course.”
“I think he knows all this stuff and is messing with us,” Greed muttered to Sofia to distract himself from the growing certainty that he had met Elric before. That highly specific example of using self-human transmutation had sounded familiar, which made no sense. Greed hadn’t spoken to any alchemists before, especially not about soul transmutation. Except that didn’t feel quite right either, because surely he had? He couldn’t remember.
An image flashed through his mind, a forest and a boy in black with light hair, lifting up his shirt to show a truly horrendous scar over his belly. It was clearer than the other memories, but still fuzzy. Greed fought off the urge to clutch his head. It didn’t hurt exactly, but there seemed to be too much and not enough all at once and all the pieces were spilling out with nothing to hold himself together anymore.
“Alright, one last question,” Elric said at last, and Greed jerked back into the real world. Elric’s eyes darted to him once more as he scanned the crowd, moving quickly on to someone else. He called on someone in the row in front of Greed.
“ Can you create a new soul from scratch?” asked the person, and Greed swallowed. Why did it have to be this again? He would much rather end the night with something that had absolutely no relation to whatever was causing his brain to act up like this.
“I personally believe so,” Elric said. “Because that is what makes sense to me based off of what I know. But I don’t have the faintest idea of how. Well, some ideas maybe, but nothing solid, and I don’t mean this in a ‘well I don’t know but if I did it would be classified wink wink’ way.
“I can tell you... Well, I mentioned the difference between a true, sentient homunculi, and taking an existing soul and stuffing it in some new body, but there are other ‘theoretical’ methods of creating a person. Say you collected a bunch of souls, smooshed them together for energy and let them stew until they weren’t individuals anymore, but just a big soup of echoes and energy.”
Greed blinked, and as he did, he could see exactly what Ed—what Elric described, a red and gray whirling mass of souls, moaning as they drifted. Sometimes phrases could be picked out, but they were always the same ones. More echo than individual, just as Elric had said. His heart was beating faster, and he couldn’t tell if it part of whatever weird process he was getting these images from or if he was frightened of the implications. This wasn’t something he should have knowledge of, and the fact that he did surely meant nothing good.
“If you take a portion of that soul energy, not from one particular person but a bit from many, and put it in a body, then it wouldn’t really be the same as any of those original people, but it’s not completely from scratch either. So is that a new soul? What if you took a part of your own soul, not just the energy, but some of your personality too, except not the memories, and put that inside a body? Is that a new person or just a part of you?”
All the air had rushed out of Greed’s lungs, and he couldn’t move, not even to breathe. I’m Greed, he had once introduced himself as before, but he hadn’t been him when he said that, not this version of himself. He hadn’t meant the introduction the same way he would mean it now. It had been more than just a name: an identity.
He looked down at his fingers, curled tightly around the bottom hem of his vest because Elric was too much to look at right now. He was supposed to have a symbol on his hand. Round. Red.
This wasn’t the first time he had felt this, this whirling sense of disconnect, of not being his own self. There were faces, people he had lost, memories, a static that consumed him. He hadn’t been alone then, not like he was now. Someone had been yelling at him amidst the chaos, and it was so important, but he couldn’t remember what was being said.
He wasn’t his own person, just a portion of his Father, the greed of someone horrible distilled into a new person, into him, just like Elric was saying. Greed had always known he didn’t belong. There was a forest, different friends, Ed.
Ed who was up there on that stage, who had been speaking while Greed had been remembering. Except now he was leaving the stage as the last echoes of applause died out, and everyone around Greed was starting to stand up and leave.
Greed stood up, his vision swarming. Before he could fall, a hand gripped his arm just tightly enough to keep him balanced. He blinked, the fuzzy world sharpening back into focus.
“Greed...” Sofia said, warm brown eyes filled with concern. “You don’t look alright.”
“I...” Greed said. He didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t lie. Except he had that one time, but— “I need to talk to Ed.”
“What?” Sofia asked. She lifted her hands helplessly, reaching out for him without quite touching. “You look like you’re panicking... I don’t... what’s going on?”
And he was panicking, wasn’t he? His breath was coming too fast, but everything felt so urgent and overwhelming.
“Just... take a second,” Sofia said in an overly calming tone that would have felt condescending if Greed could muster the energy to care. “And breathe.”
Greed obeyed, taking a deep breath in and out, trying to regain his control over his thoughts. Her voice was helping him stay grounded. His head hurt, but he knew Ed, and Ed might have answers to make sense of all the chaos. His mind was a cracked bowl and memories were leaking through the gaps, but he could ignore them, stopper up the holes, focus on the present. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would have to do. It was better than what happened last time.
“I think I know him,” Greed said. “Ed—Elric. I need to talk to him.”
“Well. I won’t turn down an excuse to meet him,” Sofia said lightly. “So alright, let’s go.”
Everyone else was also making their way out of the auditorium from the back, but Greed and Sofia headed towards the doors near the stage. A few people from the front rows were also leaving through there, but there were few enough of them for Greed and Sofia to push past them with only minor grumbling.
Elric was not right outside the auditorium, but Greed continued on down the hallway in the opposite direction from the exit where all the people were heading. When he turned the corner, he saw a familiar ponytail.
“Doctor Elric!” Sofia called.
“What?” Ed snapped as he turned to face them. He froze for a brief moment when he saw Greed, before his eyes snapped back to Sofia. “Look, I don’t have time to answer questions right now, I—”
“You know me,” Greed said. This wasn’t just something weird his brain was doing, Ed had been giving him odd looks for the past hour.
“You—just remind me of someone with that vest is all,” Ed said. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“I’m Greed!” he said, indignant though he wasn’t entirely sure why. If they did know each other, it would be pretty insulting to be forgotten so easily. Even though a different part of Greed told him that he had never seen this man before in his life until this night.
“You can’t be,” Ed said, his face growing tight. He moved to turn away.
Greed felt a spark of irritation. He was tired and confused and approximately one wrong step away from collapsing on the ground under the sheer weight of everything he felt. He just wanted a moment of clarity, anything to cling onto to keep him from drowning. Instead he received anger and distrust from the only person he knew who could help him. Wasn’t Ed supposed to be his friend?
Words started spilling out of him, and he wouldn’t have been able to stop them even if he had wanted to. “Well, all I know is that that’s what I’ve been called since I was six, and now I came to see some lecture except the whole time I keep getting flashes of this kid in a red coat and a guy who looks like you but with a beard, and killing a lizard guy, and also a different lizard thing that’s huge, and for some reason a bunch of trees! I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I know you, and I want answers!”
Ed had frozen and grown very pale over the course of Greed’s rant, but when he reached the end, Ed burst into laughter. “Of fucking course.” He buried his face into his hands. “I spend the whole evening going on about how people can’t come back from the dead, so you just have to show up and prove me wrong, don’t you.”
“Um, sorry, excuse me?” Sofia asked quietly. “But, uh, what exactly is going on?”
“I think I used to be a homunculus?” Greed said, earning a startled look from Sofia.
Ed sighed. “It’s good to see you again, but let’s go talk somewhere more private.”
‘Somewhere more private’ ended up being a restaurant near the university, full of enough people for them to talk without fear of being overheard even this late into the night. Most of the diners were students, but as it was not actually on campus, there was enough variety than an adult and two high schoolers did not stand out.
Ed looked at both of them suspiciously once they had found a table near the corner and were properly seated. “Are you both actual teenagers?”
“Yes,” Sofia said. “A very confused one.”
“Sure, as long as you ignore whatever weird memories I’m getting.”
Ed scoffed as if they had personally insulted him. “A teenager . Alright, get whatever, I’ll pay for you both.”
“Hell yeah, free food,” Greed said, grabbing a menu.
“You don’t have to?” Sofia said. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
Ed shook his head, his annoyed look vanishing. “No it’s fine, I’m sorry. This is just a very strange situation. And I wasn’t expecting any of it.
“You can say that again,” Sofia muttered.
"Greed, an actual teenager," Elric muttered. He snorted. "And I thought he couldn't get any worse."
"Hey," Greed protested, but Elric didn't even look at him and Sofia hid a snicker.
Elric looked at her. “I never got your name.”
“Uh, Sofia Kalashnik,” she said. “I want to study alchemy in college.”
“She’s a big fan of yours,” Greed said, grinning widely. Now that he had the promise of answers and food on top of that, he was feeling a lot more settled. Enough that he could at least pretend to be fine.
Sofia elbowed him sharply, her face turning slightly red, and Ed laughed.
Once they had decided on their food and called over a waiter to take their orders, Ed set down his menu and said, “Okay, Greed, how much do you remember?”
“Not a huge amount,” Greed said. Since they had met Ed, memories had continued to spill in, flashing through his mind. The pace was slightly more controlled and calmer since he had caught up with Ed. It was probably only because Greed was no longer frantically probing his spotty memory for answers now that he knew he was safe and everything would be explained, but still. He remembered enough to know that there was a definite irony to Ed being a calming presence.
“I should probably tell the whole story to you then,” Ed said. He glanced at Sofia. “If you don’t mind her listening in?”
“Of course not, she’s my friend,” Greed said, vaguely insulted on her behalf. Sofia gave him a pleased grin.
Ed made a strange expression at Greed, which he ignored. “Alright. This is all hugely classified, and the only reason I’m saying this at all is because Greed will probably remember it all eventually, I might as well. Just don’t tell too many people, I want some plausible deniability if the government starts going after you.”
“Sure, sure,” Greed said, as Sofia nodded solemnly.
“Right,” Ed said. “So a few hundred years ago there was this homunculus—Father, the Dwarf in the Flask, I don’t know his name. But he created seven more homunculi from himself, one for each deadly sin. One day, you ran away. I don’t know what you got up to, but I first met you in a bar in Dublith.”
Ed continued to describe the encounter, how Greed had kidnapped Al and fought Ed, how Fuhrer Bradley who was secretly a human homunculus called Wrath had come in and killed everyone.
“Fuhrer Bradley did that?!” Sofia’s eyes were wide, but Greed wasn’t that surprised. He had always been a bit suspicious of the leader who was so fondly remembered by his country. Now he just had a very good reason for it.
“Yeah, he was hiding a lot, there was this whole conspiracy. Anyway, he brought Greed back to their Father who melted him in a vat of gold and reabsorbed him.”
At that Greed sat up straight so quickly that he almost crashed into the table. The death itself wasn’t the startling part, since he had only the faintest impression of a memory two life times away, but he suddenly remembered what happened after that and the most important part of his second life. “Ling!”
“Yep,” Ed said, grinning. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to remember him.”
“What?” Sofia asked.
“That little brat actually did it,” Greed said, grinning at the realization. Many things about his life suddenly made a whole lot more sense, and he felt strangely warm and sad all at once. Ling had become Emperor. He had done what he had set out to do, had gotten what he so desperately wanted, and Greed was so proud. Except he should have been there too, and he wasn’t. “Hey, guess what, Sofia.”
“...yes?” she said dubiously. “What?”
“I knew the Emperor of Xing,” Greed said, doing his best to wiggle his eyebrows.
“What,” Sofia said.
“ Intimately,” Greed said, smirking. “ Inside and out. ”
Sofia blanched. “I don’t think I want to know...”
Ed rolled his eyes. “He means he possessed Ling for six months. They didn’t—I don’t think—You know what, I also don’t want to know. If you’re over two hundred years old, why are you more of a teenage boy than I ever was?”
“Probably because I actually get to be one,” Greed said, grinning because otherwise it would be far too sad. “You just went baby, toddler, dog of the military, adult, no in between.”
“I don’t think possessing someone is actually a better explanation,” Sofia said, but the conversation had to pause because their food arrived.
Once they started to dig in, Ed continued the story, describing Greed’s rebirth, how he left the homunculi again and joined Ed’s group then died during the Promised Day. There had been a lot of details that Ed left out, mostly regarding Father’s plot, but Greed figured those memories would come back eventually.
“I was born on the day of the eclipse—this me,” Greed said. “If I had to guess, it was probably pretty soon after the second Greed ‘died.’”
“Your soul did just float off when your Father yanked you out of him,” Ed said. “I assumed you were gone for good at last, but.... I guess not.”
“I need to go to Xing,” Greed said. He had lied to Ling. He had called on their bond, their trust, their friendship , then punched him in the face. It had been to save his life and he wouldn’t regret that for anything, but Greed couldn’t let that go unresolved.
“What, now?” Ed asked.
“Of course not, I'd need a train ticket and stuff, plus my parents are expecting me back tonight.”
Ed stared at him. “Parents. Now that’s a weird thought.”
“You...” Sofia started. She had been quiet for the past few minutes. “For good?”
There was the briefest of moments when the previous Greed seemed to come forward and he almost said yes. But then the current one retook his place. “Nah. I have things here, and I don’t want to leave them behind. I... just need to see him again though. Let him know I’m alive.”
“Oh...” Sofia said. She laughed. “Okay, good. Because I know uh.... Ed just explained your life story, but I’m still lost as hell. There’s no way I could explain what’s going on to everybody else.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack,” Ed muttered. Then he sighed and flipped open a pocket watch. It wasn’t the silver state alchemist one but instead a gold one marked with the symbol that Ed used to wear on the back of his coat. “I’ll have to leave you to it though. I wasn’t just trying to avoid annoying questions when I said I didn’t have that much time. Winry’s going to kill me for coming home so late.”
Winry. Greed remembered that blonde mechanic who called him Ling and also wanted to have it all. “Hah,” he said loudly. “So did she actually marry you or something?”
“Yeah,” Ed said, then grinned a little foolishly. “She did.” He glared at Greed. “You kids good to go back home on your own?”
“We’re not kids!” Greed said immediately. Especially not now when it turned out he was in fact over two hundred years old.
“Yeah, we don’t live far, just a few stops away on the subway,” Sofia said. “Um, thank you for the food and explanation.”
Ed waved his hand and stood up to leave. “Wait, one more thing.” He pulled out a pen and scribbled some numbers on a napkin. He looked Greed in the eye. “Keep in touch. Call me or I will find you and kill you for good this time.”
“I thought you knew me well enough to know I don’t let go of my—friends,” Greed said, grabbing the napkin. There had been a part of him that wanted to say possessions, but he wasn’t that person anymore, and actually calling a person his possession felt kind of strange now. Which was a bit odd, but he resolved to think about it sometime later, or maybe even never. That option sounded good.
“Later then,” Ed said. He gave them a nod and walked off to the cashier.
“So,” Sofia said, after a moment had passed. She was giving Greed a wide-eyed look. “That just happened.”
“It sure did,” Greed agreed, not entirely sure what to make of the whole evening.
“I’m pretty sure my worldview just got flipped over a bit,” Sofia said. “But also like. We still have school tomorrow.”
Greed laughed. After everything, after remembering the deaths and solitude and a near-apocalypse and centuries of survival, classes should have been the least of his worries. “We could just skip.”
“Absolutely not,” Sofia said fiercely. “I have a quiz in chemistry tomorrow, and you are not leaving it all onto me to explain what happened this evening to our friends.”
“Alright then,” Greed said. That was that matter settled. He grabbed his jacket and stood up. He could already picture everyone’s face when they were met, not with alchemy nerdery and complaints on a boring evening, but instead with a centuries-old conspiracy and past lives and conversations with famous alchemists.
“So... I won that bet, right?” Sofia said at last.
Greed snorted. “Yeah, pretty undeniably, I think.”
“Told you the lecture would be interesting,” Sofia said smugly. Given everything that had happened, Greed figured he couldn’t argue with that.