Stand Up and Walk

Alone In the World

"Beckoned now by the snow-white backdrop, I go into a yet unseen world. Lost as I traveled under a gray sky, with a different map each day, so many dreams ran together. I wonder if someday, even with my modest stride, I'll be able to get beyond those clouds. Falling raindrops provide a persistent diffuse reflection, as though able to see into my heart, wounded for acting tough. Beams of light crisscross and shoot on forever without announcing where they're headed; faint afterimages burn into my eyes. Wherever I am under this sky, I should still arrive at a yet unseen world."

—Nico Touches the Walls, Hologram

※※※

Your boots are full of blood. The red liquid soaks into your socks, squelching around your toes.

You trudge through the sea of blood drearily, your leg muscles burning from exhaustion as you slough your way through the viscous stuff, which provides resistance against your persistent gate.

The darkness around is absolute, save for a few pieces of burning debris that litter the landscape. You navigate by using a transmuted smokescreen as a set of sensory feelers, allowing you to map out your surrounding area and avoid obstacles.

You've already been walking for hours, continuing straight in the same random direction you'd chosen, hoping to bump into one of your friends.

You don't know where you are. The last thing you remembered was you, the boys, and Ling fighting against the homunculi, and then...

...and then your memory gets frustratingly fuzzy, and the next thing you knew, you were waking up in an ocean of blood, completely and totally alone.

Fear for the boys is a lead weight in your stomach. Somehow, you'd been separated from them, and you can't stop all of the worst-case-scenarios from running through your mind.

Dried blood crackles in your long hair as you rake it away from your face, and you cringe at the sensation. You're used to blood, of course, but this is too much, even for you.

You walk through the muck for an unknowable amount of time. Your pocket-watch has stopped completely, and there is no sun to track in the sky above you, no stars to tell the time.

You continue forward for hours, maybe even days. With a struggle, you are able to transmute small amounts of the blood at your feet into drinkable water, but reconstructive alchemy is difficult for you, and the transmutation fails during many of your attempts.

You'd succeeded in securing water, but food is another story entirely.

Your stomach growls loudly, hunger gnawing its way through your guts, leaving you feeling hollow. Slugging your automail around all the time consumes a large number of calories, and you've always eaten heartily, squaring away three meals a day for as long as you can remember.

Thus, your tiny body is not used to being denied, especially as you continue to push forward, ignoring the ache in your feet and legs, and the shaking of your hands.

You can't stop until you find Ed and Al and manage to escape this horrible place. If you keep heading straight, you're sure to either find the boys or reach some kind of wall that you can follow to an exit.

And so you push yourself for even longer, walking and walking until your knees literally knock together with the force of your legs shaking. In the nearby distance, you spot a large piece of rubble with a flaming top, and you stagger over to collapse in the lightsource.

You press your back to the crumbled piece of wall, sliding down to sit in the pool of blood.

Sweat drips down your features as you lower your head to rest in your hands, palms over your eye and empty socket.