Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ The Sands Are Bleeding ❯ One-Shot

It was hardly more than a flicker. She hardly paid it any attention, and would wish later that she'd gone to someone for help, or dropped an innocent question, or asked the sage if maybe it was possible the sun was hurting her vision. Instead, she flicked her head to the side, just in case that little flutter of black had been a stray lock of hair, and adjusted the way little Rick sat on her hip. He burped sleepily, flailing a tiny fist near her ear just so that he could feel his year-old muscles working, and near her knee Leo smiled because in those days he loved Rick like nothing else, and she forgot about it.

 

She didn't really notice when, but some short time later it happened again. Chin tipped high to read the parchment price card that was posted just above his three year-old eye level, Leo awkwardly spelled out a word under his breath, scuffling his rawhide sandals against the sandy brick underfoot. She watched her intrepid toddler with one eye, looking over the bin of pomegranates with the other, and when Leo made a mistake in his spelling she corrected him. Bewildered, he told her that no, it was O-N-S, not O-N-E. She looked again. He was right, so she waved off her accidental misreading and 'let' Leo to pick out a good melon. Nonetheless, she carefully counted out her money twice, instead of palming it over to the shopkeep after a mere glance.

 

Before morning devotions, she went out to draw water from the well down the street. Leo still thought it was magic, how the water jar was always refilled before the sun's golden rays released him from his childish dreams and sleep-stories. She blamed the hazy pre-dawn light, the blurry shadows, and maybe she was a touch sleepy that day. Going up the front steps, she faltered. The next moment there was a crash, and she was sitting sprawled on the ground, surrounded by wet sand and shards of pottery, the fabric of her soaking-wet robes twisted around her calves. She couldn't give an answer to how she'd somehow missed the step and tripped right off the stairs, given that they had no railings. It wasn't a long fall or anything serious- just a broken pot and a sore ankle. Her motherly old neighbour told her not to worry about it and helped her up, clucking over the smashed pot. The dear woman was kind enough to give draw water for both of them that morning. Neither of them thought anything of the broken dish, but deep inside she really couldn't understand how she just hadn't seen the step.

 

Days went on, and while her ankle mended she walked more carefully. She favoured the leg, yes, but held herself with a bearing that wouldn't suggest to anyone that something was wrong. These mishaps were her problem, these injuries no fault of anyone else- they ought not to bear her pain.

 

The tenderness was almost gone from her foot when she injured it again. A grave frown of concentration on his face, Leo knelt beside the wash basin and dried clean dishes, his soft rag wiping away the last little grains of scouring sand. Beside him, Rick was occupied with a bent spoon, holding it up to his face and going cross-eyed over the crooked handle. She put the dishes away as her oldest handed them over, having given each and every one a scrupulous inspection. That time she actually noticed when her vision greyed dangerously around the edges. She started, accidentally bumping a bowl off the shelf. It dropped onto her sandal-clad foot, the weighty base impacting on her toe. Leo gaped, appropriately horrified.

 

She brushed it off glibly, asked him to take Rick to play in the next room over. Scornfully, he muttered that mom, the bowl had been right there. If nothing else, however, Leo was a dutiful son. He teased Rick out of the room with the promise of another crooked utensil- this one he had to bend out of shape on purpose, and she would scold him about that later- all the while oblivious to the fact that she was struggling not to collapse and sob over her broken digit.

 

And then she moved carefully all the time, measuring her paces, curbing her strides, slowing her turns. She stood erect, despite Rick's wriggling weight on one hip, and held her head aloft, neck straight, gaze level, shoulders set. She moved with deliberation, as graceful as a venerable old man: not entirely faultless in her motion, but impressive in the breadth of her composure and all the more beautiful for the little stumbles she brushed calmly off. Behind her back, neighbours wondered at her newfound bearing, and asked each other if there was a reason she walked like a woman completely at peace with everything under God's sky.

 

Inside she was less than peaceful. Careful to keep the worry off her face, she treaded slowly so that she could see the obstacles before they came, so that she would have time to stop unobtrusively if her eyes flickered. And as the flicker happened more and more often, she walked slower, prayed more fervently, and left the house less often. It wasn't sudden- the pace at which blackness encroached on her was agonizing. Some days, the sun was greeted with heartfelt devotions and clear eyes with which to see the blazing dawn. On others, she woke with an aching head, knew that it would be a bad day, and quietly made sure that she had enough food in the house that going to the market wouldn't be necessary.

 

Weeks of near-solitary living passed, in which she emerged only for visits to the temple. The world went on around her, divided into frightening sections by bursts of blackness that prevented her from living outside of the snapshot. She went to church once in the morning, provided she could get there before the prayer bells rang and brought everyone onto the streets to witness her feeling her way along gingerly. Rick trotted into the temple and quietly knelt down beside her just before devotions began, leaving Leo slumbering at home. They were the last to leave, and where the priests commended her for teaching such steadfast faith to her son, she did it because she wanted the temple empty of crowds so that she could find her half-blind way out without clinging too closely to Rick, still unawares. After the sun had fallen and evening devotions were finished, another trip to the temple was made. Others ate their suppers inside, their perfectly visible worlds marked by the squares of orange-yellow lamplight that shone through unshuttered windows. These bright lights were a blessing to her; they glowed like embers in her cloudy vision, clearly marking the edges of the streets. Surrounded by stone effigies and brilliantly painted murals whose details she couldn't make out, the scent of incense strong in her nostrils, she knelt near the great marble altar for hours and sometimes rested her forehead against it, trying to absorb Ishbala's healing powers through the cool stone.

 

Too absorbed in his childhood to pay attention to the parent that cared for him, Leo absorbed his lessons quickly, both the ones he learned at school and at home. At first he didn't mind reading the occasional label or tag for her, only too glad to show off his newfound literary skills, but by the time he was five he had grown out of such flaunting. Leo would read a price tag aloud if she asked it of him, but his voice would be exasperated, his face weary, his eyes embarrassed. There would come a time when he would have started demanding to know why she had to keep showing him off in public, because mom, he'd been able to read for ages, it was baby stuff. That would be the time when she needed him to read everything for her, not just the fine print. She headed off those demands preemptively by entrusting him with the entire job of grocery shopping. It soothed Leo's wounded pride and boosted his self-confidence, and she breathed a sigh of relief even though their fruits were bruised and their food supply was erratic for a while.

 

Rick was less of a problem. Lacking the serious work ethic and somewhat grim world view of his older brother, he wanted to skive school and chase rock lizards in the gulleys, to leave dishes unwashed and hard questions unanswered. If he ever thought about why she entrusted chore after chore to he and his brother, slowly getting them to bear the entire workload, then he posed the question to Leo and was content, if not satisfied, with whatever answer he got. When she cut her finger slicing bread, Rick fussed and bandaged it; when she got fevered during the too-hot midday hours, he stubbornly made her wash her face. He did, where Leo would have asked.

 

Leo turned seven, and she didn't realise it until Rick had his fourth birthday six weeks later. Her eyes were so dark that even reading the calendar was difficult. Her oldest son was wounded by the perceived slight. Although he shrugged it off moodily, his voice was still laden with childish hurt. She wanted to soothe the mistake with a smile, maybe a kiss, and to pick Leo up and tickle him until he finally gave up his too-serious, grown-up attitude and shrieked with laughter. It never happened. Rick wandered close to his brother, and their silhouettes blurred into a single, lumpy blob. She couldn't make out Leo's individual shape from the mess of shades and shadows and grey-tinted colours. It hurt awfully inside, but she would surely grab the wrong body or limb if she reached for him now. Unable to think of another thing to say, she asked them to run outside and sweep the stairs while she made breakfast. Trying to pretend that she hadn't heard Leo's muffled sob was almost harder than holding in the tears until her sons were gone.

 

Her skin burned and tingled, flashing damp unexpectedly until the sun dried away her perspiration. With so much precious water being leeched out of her body by the desert's heat, she grew thin beneath her robes, hands weakening. Her sinuses hurt constantly. They throbbed in time with her heart, sensitive tissues swelling and pulsing as pus flooded in, inflaming them painfully. All the incense she burned in the temple didn't help, fragrant vapours scorching like a noontime sandstorm where before they had soothed her senses and mind. The knives of agony that lanced through her temples and sinuses brought tears to her faltering eyes. As hard as she cried- silently, at night, when the window shutters were closed and she was curled up on her sleeping mats, feverish with pain- the saline liquid never cleaned the disease out of her body.

 

When Rick and Leo left their toys out, she stumbled dangerously over them. She snapped and scolded without warning. No longer quite able to make out anything of their faces except for a blur of dark hair and browned skin, she nonetheless knew they stared up at her with apprehension, hurt, even a little fear. She wasn't the kind of woman to get so angry over such a little thing, but it would be worse if she was reduced to feeling her way around her own house, unable to locate obstacles that were only a few inches away. Then, far too suddenly, her vision failed entirely. Blackness descended like a wraith, cloaking even the jilted haze of colour and impression that she still clung bitterly to. She wanted to kneel, to hug her children, to soften her harsh words, and couldn't find them. Couldn't tell if they were in front of her, or had crept away silently, shamed and sulky. Couldn't see so much as a lighter shade of grey in the mire she was drowning in, frozen in, trapped in.

 

Children moved. Inanimate objects didn't. All she knew for sure was that she had just come down the staircase, and it was still clear of obstacles. Very carefully, with precision that belied her inward panic and pain and terror, she turned on her heel and made her way back upstairs, to where she had memorized every inch of her surroundings and never moved anything. Halfway along the upstairs hallway, Leo's whisper to Rick reached her ears. One of them was sniffling as they slowly began to gather up the toys. After that, she never stumbled across a single one.

 

Perhaps her desperate prayers reached Ishbala, because the blindness faded back into hazy vision once more. She clutched her locket and murmured frantic thanks, opening her shutters to blink out at the setting sun. It wasn't right to involve someone else in this struggle, to push the burden that God had given her onto another person. But... there had to be a way for her to fight this terrible sickness, didn't there? How could she simply let the rest of her life pass her by in darkness, her days only lit by the white lightning of searing headaches? She shuddered, the awful thought twisting her stomach.

 

It took her days to scribe a letter in the unfamiliar Amestrian language, her hand even more uncertain than her vision. Whenever the light seemed brightest, she wrote, and when premature darkness fell without warning, she put down the paper and prayed dearly that her eyes would work again the next time she opened them. The letter was surreptitiously hidden beneath the edge of her woven straw mat whenever she heard one of her sons entering the room.

 

Rick and Leo minded most of the chores, a blessing for which she was thankful. She had a feeling that the younger boy was the one who quietly left plates of food for her by the door, although both of them knelt down on either side of her to say devotions, morning and evening. While they were absorbed in prayer, she took the chance to cautiously pat each of her sons on the head. They were little more than vague, twilight shadows to her. Was that what she was to them? A shadow of a mother, present only in body while her soul reached beseeching arms to Ishbala?

 

It became apparent some while later- perhaps five days- that others in town had noticed her withdrawal. Her father, Rick and Leo's grandfather, came to visit her one afternoon, while she was in a particularly bad state. The only warning she had of her father's arrival was Rick, charging into the room with unusual brashness to press a wet cloth into her hand and urge her to wash the sweat off her face, because she had a guest. Her father wouldn't particularly have minded his daughter feeling a little feverish, but it was another thing entirely to see her being cared for by her four year-old son. Submerged in inky blackness and hardly able to hold her head up for the pain lancing through her skull, she nearly panicked when her felt her father kneel down and grasp her hand, take the cloth, dab her face with it.

 

He spoke gently to her, sparing her aching head. Glad that she was expected to bow her head to her father and listen obediently to his wisdom, she did so, and couldn't find the pride to ask him to stop soothing her pain. She only raised her eyes to him once he'd spoken, once she had a fix on the location of his voice, and didn't dare let her blank gaze wander uselessly to the side. She turned aside his offer of assistance, assuring him that her illness was nothing, would pass, would be fine. Her pain was hers. God had given it to her, and her alone. Seizing a chance she might not have gotten again, she pressed her letter into the old man's knotted hand and asked him, only a little shakily, to get it on a train to Amestris for her. And please, would he check for a reply? She was expecting a package, wouldn't he pick it up for her when it arrived?

 

Of course he would. Kissing her gently on the forehead, her father rose to his feet and left. They both understood that she was suffering, but that this was the way of their people. He said nothing of the pain that must have plagued his joints at such an age, and she spoke no word of her disease- never let on that it was anything more than a fever and ache.

 

The day finally came when she opened her eyes in the morning and greeted only darkness: total, complete, and unrelenting. It did not fade, nor ease, nor even crack to allow daylight through in flashes or flickers. The blindness had consumed her.

 

Listlessness seized her for several agonizing days. She struggled through the dark alone, so mired down in misery that she couldn't rise from her knees to reach to the heavens for strength. At last, however, Rick and Leo's frightened whispers from down the hall roused her. The heavens would not lend her strength- instead she drew on her brave, stubborn children for that support. They ought never to tend her like an animal, helpless and needy.

 

Never. Not until the day she died.

 

While they played outside in the scorching afternoon hours, desperate to escape the sweltering confines of brick and sandstone for open air, sunlight, and shifting sand underfoot, she relearned everything she had been taught as a young woman, hardly old enough to wed. Lacking eyes to see- damn the terrible, wretched, sickening blindness!- she touched and felt her way through the days. The alcoholic scent of yeast told her when the bread dough had risen, her fingertips could tell when the dishes were scoured clean, and she stepped out onto the front stairs every evening without her sandals to feel if they needed sweeping.

 

The day after the Festival of Rains, her father returned with her package from Amestris. In private, she pried open the box and found a glass bottle of pills, wrapped in padding for rough travel. The inside of the package still smelled green and wet, like the orchards outside did as the vegetation flourished on warm winter rains. Amestris had to be awfully cool to have rain all year round, she thought. Her sensitive fingers found a letter enclosed in the wrappings. She burned it in her incense dish, careful to leave no scrap of ash for Rick or Leo to find. How could she read that letter, after all?

 

Although it seemed too late, she took the medicine anyway. The tiny pills were foul on her tongue, their faintly bitter scent lingering in the air even after she closed the bottle and carefully stowed it away in her robes. The headaches lessened, for which she was thankful to her very bones, but no shard of light pierced the blackness.

 

Even though she knelt at her window for most of the day, face turned into the invisible sunlight, rumours still reached her ears. War. The Amestrians- the selfsame people whose medicines eased her crippling pain- had begun waging war upon the far eastern part of Ishbal. She said nothing of it to Rick or Leo, though doubtless they knew more of what was happening than she did. God will take care of us, she calmly told Leo, when he asked. Have faith.

 

Have faith. She had little else, least of all any means to fight in a war.

 

For long, uncertain months, the town was rife with tension, indecision, anger. She felt it as people passed along the street beneath her window, speaking to one another as they went about their lives. Every mention of the encroaching war terrified her all the more deeply: how could she ever hope to find her way in a war zone when she could not navigate the streets of her own city?

 

She prayed with a ferocity and devotion like she'd never known, and still it wasn't enough.

 

Bombshells broke in the distance one evening, their lethal thunder rumbling across the dunes and canyons like a harbinger of war. It was not coming. It was there. Now a new horror crept up on her, stealing a few greedy inches every day, sinking new tenterhooks into her life at every turn. The headaches returned with a vengeance as she rationed her dwindling supply of pills to two per week, uncertain of when she'd ever be able to get more. Every explosion and gunshot that went off in the distance reminded her of the danger there. And they got louder- closer, closer every moment. Her country was dying, their sacred lands lost in a flurry of artillery and gunpowder. The sands themselves must be bleeding for the pain and fear of it.

 

Six pills remained. She closed them up inside her locket, wanting to have them with her at all times in case the fighting came too close, in case she had to take her sons and run- somehow. She would. Somehow.

 

Four pills were left on the day that she woke to the sounds of screaming and gunfire, crawled dazedly off her sleeping mat to smell smoke and sulphur in the air. It was too late to leave. Her somehow was a never. Rick and Leo burst into her room, one or both of them sobbing raggedly. Whispering prayers and lullabies and hymns, she cradled them close, let them huddle beneath the blankets with her, their thin gangly bodies pressed next to her emaciated one, their limbs all clutching and pulling her closer so that it didn't matter whose hand she held, whose hair she stroked, whose forehead she kissed. Rick cried himself to sleep, listening to the rockets going off nearby with only her encircling arms to shelter him from them. Leo said his prayers in a hoarse, shaky voice, evidently doing his level best to keep the battle at bay with his faith.

 

The sounds faded somewhat once the sun had dawned, all-out warfare reduced to the occasional crack or explosion. By midafternoon she felt safe enough to allow the boys out of her room, but forbade them from leaving the house. She wanted to take Leo aside into the kitchen, heedless of her own stumbling for once, and make him promise that he would always care for his younger brother, no matter what- wanted to, so badly it hurt. If only the lingering spectre of her blindness had restrained her, she would have done it: groped in the darkness until she found his arm, looked in the wrong direction while she spoke... confessed her weakness, her disability, her uselessness. But there was something else holding her back from that desire. She couldn't terrify Leo with that kind of responsibility, strip away his seven year-old innocence with the implication that she might be killed, turn him from a serious child to a childlike adult. Ishbala willing, they would all survive this destruction. If she bore her blindness bravely, lenience would be granted.

 

After all, Leo was no less a child of Ishbala than she was. He knew the importance of the familial blood that bound them.

 

Clinging to her pride- perhaps the last vestiges of pride she had- she knelt at the window, lit incense with shaking hands, and opened the shutters to let in the sun. It was there... she could feel it caressing her face, warming her skin, heartening her courage. The sun shone even while war was waged, and would continue to shine no matter what. Ishbala loved her people.

 

Late in the afternoon, she fumbled open her locket with shaking fingers to choke down another pill, not noticing through the splitting pain of her headache that only two remained. Nearby, there was a soft click, like the latching of a door. She jerked bolt upright, listening intently for approaching footsteps, for an intruder, but heard nothing. Rick and Leo must be upstairs, she thought. So quiet, they were.

 

She didn't hear them come back into the house again, later on in the afternoon. A little prickle ran down her back when they tiptoed behind her back, and she dismissed it as tension. Several streets away, a house combusted in a burst of sulphur and flame.

 

She knew- had known for years- that death was coming for her. She'd just never assumed it would be like this: booted footsteps on the street, the bang and splinter of the front door tearing off its hinges, jilted roaring in a foreign language, a loaded silence as the soldiers waited for her to do as they said, trigger fingers already anticipating a violent refusal.

 

And when death took her, in an all-consuming blast of heat and stinging smoke and roiling fire, it didn't rise over her like a monolithic wave of darkness to steal her breath, because her world had already been black for months.