66Note: This is a result of a challenge fic with Purplehood, in which we were to write a darker version of a canonical character. This is my response. It will be several chapters long at least and it... might get a little dark before the end. At this point, I don't know what warnings to include. There will likely be violence and blood later on, but those warnings will be posted at the top of the chapter.
Current warning consists solely of a slightly unreliable, eventually unstable narrator.
"The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves." William Penn.
She lets the brush drop from her fingers and pulls her hair back behind her head. It's a look she'd never entertained for herself back home on earth, electing instead to wear her hair modestly down with only a few braids to adorn it.
But now that her home has changed, perhaps she should as well.
She'd brushed her dark hair until it shone and she colors slightly, regarding herself in the mirror. Vanity was not a luxury she often indulged in, but she can't help but notice how becoming the new look is.
Suddenly ashamed by these new thoughts, she lets her hair go and it drops softly to her shoulders.
Winry wears her hair up, she notes.
Noah doesn't actually think she's ever seen Winry with her hair down.
She looks in the mirror one last time, heart aching, and lets her hair fall down to her shoulders.
She won't touch it today.
The next day, she gathers her courage and puts it up. She's never had any practice before beyond her braids, but it looks decent to her so she doesn't try to change it.
She runs her fingers through her hair and tries to give it some flare.
There.
Noah swallows painfully.
Maybe, she thinks. Maybe.
Noah forces herself to go down the stairs, step by painful step.
There's a churning in her gut and a throbbing in her heart and it's not hard to admit to herself that she's terrified.
She understands what she wants- what's she's hoping for- and it scares her.
She wants Ed to notice her.
Is that too much to ask? she wonders.
After everything… so many people have looked down on her, like she was trash beneath their feet.
Hasn't she been through enough?
Noah wrings her hands at the bottom of the staircase and almost turns to flee back up the staircase.
What is she thinking anyways?
That one look at her and he'll take her back? Forget about the girl he's tried for two years to come back to?
She slumps back against the wall and nibbles her bottom lip.
Her heart is racing and she shuts her eyes, wishing she could stop up her ears to the roaring of blood in her head.
Noah briefly allows herself to fantasize what it might be like. Ed will look up- he'll see her and, for just a second- just for one magical second- she'll be all he sees.
She'll take his breath away, so completely that he'll forget about anyone else in the world.
He'll forget about Winry.
Noah swallows thickly and ignores the way her bottom lip trembles with emotion.
Is it so wrong of her to want that?
All her life, she's been stepped on and abused- can't she just have this? The one man who never looked at her like she was dirt beneath his feet?
She takes a breath and she steps out.
It's not Ed who notices her first.
It's Winry.
Ed isn't even present when she walks down the stairs. Later on, she learns that he's out of town, purchasing supplies he'll need to help repair the Rockbell home.
Noah freezes, mouth dry. For an irrational moment, she's afraid Winry will know what it is she's come to do. What fantasy she had embarrassingly been entertaining only moments before.
But the other woman only smiles at her.
"Did you want help with your hair?" she asks.
Noah fights the urge to raise a hand to her hair, blood warming her cheeks. She'd tried so hard- had she done something wrong?
"It doesn't look bad," Winry assures her, as if she were the one with the power to read minds and hearts.
Noah frowns and chews her bottom lip.
Her hands lift, like she wants to bring them to Noah's hair, but she stops. Looking almost uncertain, she chews her bottom lip. "But… I could show you some tips?"
Noah glances over Winry's shoulder into the room.
No one is there.
Ed isn't there.
She has nothing better to do.
"Great." Winry smiles, relieved, and Noah wonders distantly what Winry has to be relieved about.
Then she takes Noah by the arm- Noah notices that she only touches her sleeve, not her bare skin, and the thought is enough to fill her with resentment all over again.
Together, they go back up the stairs. Neither of them says a word.
Winry is gone when she next encounters Ed. He's at the kitchen table, bent low over some papers. His long hair is tied back, flicked casually back over his shoulder. His flesh knee is bouncing up and down in a steady, rapid-fire rhythm. He doesn't even seem to notice.
He's not aware of her when she first enters the room. It's not until she's almost at his side that he looks up but it's only with disinterest.
"Oh," he says, looking back down after a passing glance. "Hey. Haven't had much time to see you. Sorry. How are you?"
"I'm fine," she lies and if her voice comes out strained to her own ears, who could tell?
Ed doesn't answer and she reaches for his arm. He pulls away the moment her fingers brush his skin- not enough contact for her to read anything.
She steps back and tries to ignore how much that hurt.
Ed looks at her- something like regret in his expression- but he doesn't apologize and he certainly doesn't reach out to touch her back. With a sigh, he looks away.
"What are you doing?" she asks him.
"It's an array." He looks down at the sheet of paper and turns it over with a lazy flick of his wrist. Something about his action seems forced, however. Like he's acting as though he cares less than he actually does. "I know I can no longer do alchemy, but… I just wanted to see." But he doesn't tell her what it was he wanted to see. Instead, he crumples the paper up in his fist- an action that brings a small gasp to Noah's lips.
Maybe he looks at her then, but Noah can't tell. Her eyes are glued to the paper still visible between his fingers.
Then, in an action that belies the seeming indifference from before, he carefully smooths it out, folds it up and slips it in his pocket.
"Teach me," she blurts before she can think better of it.
"What?" Ed stares at her, completely baffled.
Noah colors when the full extent of her sudden change in topic hits her, but full-on determination grabs ahold of her and she pushes on.
"Teach me alchemy," she elaborates for him, even though she's sure he can probably guess what exactly she was asking of him. Just as she's aware of how mortifyingly desperate she sounds. "Please. I… I can help if you'd just give me a chance."
"By learning alchemy?" He may not have scoffed at her but his words hurt her just as deeply as if he had. Ed shakes his head wearily. "There are other ways to make yourself useful, Noah."
Then he's gone, out the door, leaving Noah standing there alone.
It feels as though her heart has been shattered and left in frozen pieces on the ground.
Slowly, she stoops to pick them up, one by one, but there's no fitting them back together.
Noah stands, holding them in her hands.
Ed never once looked back at her.
They get a visitor the next day- a man. He's big, bigger than any man Noah has ever seen before in her life and she is instantly afraid of him.
In her world, the big men she's encountered are bullies.
He enters without a knock to announce his presence, moving with a kind of stealth that belies his large presence.
Noah flies up from her seat at the table, a frightened cry on her lips. Automatically, she darts around her chair, putting it between her and the giant. It will do nothing to protect her. She knows this with perfect clarity. But in her terror, she needs something-something-to make her feel safer.
The cry draws Edward from the kitchen.
"Noah, what…?"
He stops short when he sees the intruder.
Noah takes a step in his direction.
"He…" She reaches out with a shaky hand.
He doesn't love her. Won't love her. Not in the way that she wants, that she needs, to be loved. But he will protect her.
Even if not for her sake, then for Winry's.
But Ed doesn't react the way she expected.
"Sig?"
Edward's voice is raw with disbelief. His face is bloodless, eyes wide.
He looks like he's just seen a ghost.
"Hello, Edward." A sad smile paints itself across the man- Sig's-bearded face.
Ed looks past him, looking for someone who never walks in the door.
"Teacher?" he asks. There's something in his voice that makes him sound a lot younger than he is. Something desperate and lost. Something that already knows the answer to the question left unasked.
"I'm sorry, Edward." There's real pain on the big man's face, in his voice. "Her illness took a turn for the worse."
Ed disappears from the room shortly after that.
Noah casts a look at the big man who still stands in the same spot. It doesn't take a psychic to see that this woman he and Ed spoke of was his center. Without her in his life, he's having trouble keeping himself grounded.
Still, she isn't comfortable in the same room as him.
"I-I'm sorry about your loss," she stammers out, before she flees the room.
She stops just across the threshold, pressing her back against the wall. Why did she do that? She curses her cowardice and then moves away. Even aware of her own shortcomings, she can't find a way to change them.
Ed.
She needs to find Ed. A little flutter of hopefulness awakens in her heart. She can comfort him. She'll be close to him.
Ashamed, she pushes those feelings away.
Noah does find Ed.
Collapsed on the floor, his head in Winry's lap. She strokes his hair and Noah sees her lips moving as she murmurs consolations into his ear.
Whatever she's saying, it remains private.
Noah swallows painfully and turns away.
The window is open. The wind carries the hoot of an owl into her bedroom.
A shiver curls its way up Noah's spine.
It's ominous.
Noah wraps her arms more tightly around herself, staring at the wall.
The moon shines through the gap in her curtains. It paints the perfect picture of tranquility on the wall opposite.
It should be peaceful, but her thoughts are anything but.
Abruptly, she sits up straight, kicking the covers away and sliding her legs over the side of the bed.
She can't sleep and she can't stay here in this stifling room either.
She needs to move and there's a tug on her heart, telling her exactly where to go.
Noah steps quietly. In her bare feet on the wooden floorboards, it isn't hard to do. And Noah is plenty used to the need to move soundlessly.
A stair creaks under her weight as she makes her way down the stairs.
Noah freezes, holding her breath, until she's certain that nothing in the house has stirred. The hour seems to amplify every sound, till even the rustle of her nightgown's skirt seems a racket fit to awaken the dead.
She can breathe again and she slips silently down the rest of the stairs.
There, she finds him.
Edward had sacrificed what would have been his room for her.
He's sleeping now on the couch, one arm draped over the side, his fingers brushing the floor. The sheet is bunched into a ball at his feet.
Noah approaches slowly. Dropping to her knees before the couch, she regards him in silence.
"I would have loved you," she whispers.
Ed doesn't stir, save the heavy rise and fall of his chest. There's no danger in revealing her heart here and now.
"We could have been happy."
She traces patterns on the floor with her fingers, averting her eyes.
"Would it really have been so hard for you to love me back?"
Her bottom lip trembles and she clenches her hands into fists. The nails dig painfully into the flesh of her palms.
Tears slide down her cheeks.
There's a soft moan from Ed.
Noah flinches, afraid that he might wake up and catch her here.
But Ed doesn't wake up.
Slowly, the tension in Noah's shoulders bleed away and she studies him.
The corner of his mouth twitches, lips dipping down. His eyebrows scrunch and another moan escapes his lips.
Noah holds her breath and reaches out to touch him. Just a hand across his brow. Her touch is gentle enough not to wake him. Her hand hovers a mere few inches from his flesh and she hesitates.
That love. The love he has for Winry. She wants to feel it.
Even if it's unattainable for her. She just wants to know what it feels like to be loved. To be cherished.
Is it so wrong of her to want that?
Noah doesn't want to think so.
Without giving herself anymore time to think, she clutches at his much larger, broader hand, cradling it in both of hers. She rubs her thumbs over the worn knuckles. There's so much history in his hands.
She can feel it.
It hits her like a flood, a steady torrent of memories, of feelings. It's always like this. And each time she has to sort through them, until she finds what she's looking for.
Those times in Ed's room, the times she had slipped in unbidden and unnoticed, the times she had touched his face, run her hands through his hair- those times she had been seeking for glimpses of his home. That forbidden paradise she longed so deeply for. The place where she could finally belong.
This place.
Now she's looking for something else. Everything hits her too quickly, much too quickly for her to absorb.
She has to consciously will herself to slow them down, to find what she's looking for.
She closes her eyes and concentrates.
It washes over her like a stream. Its warmth soaks into every fiber of her being.
Laughter. Children laughing. And a slender, brown-haired woman with a smile that rivaled the stars in its beauty. Hands that touched only to caress and love and never to harm.
A girl whose golden hair shines like the sun, whose every step is a dance to her own beat, whose every breath only serves to make Ed's heart beat faster.
And it… hurts.
Noah's hands drop to her side.
Note: This is a possible sequel to Unrequited, meaning that, in order for this to take place, the events of Unrequited also have to already have taken place. That being said, as this is a darker version of Noah than I typically see her, this may not be what necessarily transpires after that story. I may change my mind on that later.
This is a mashup of both the 2003 anime and Brotherhood. As such, it does contain elements of both. I apologize for Izumi's death, but I believe that was how her story ended in the anime of 2003. My reasoning for that is that I didn't want Ed's homecoming to be 100% a happy one. He's been gone for two years. Things happen. I'm sorry if it seemed there wasn't much going on between Sig and Edward- the story was told from Noah's point of view and so there would only be a limited amount of things she would see. I do plan (probably, maybe, at some point) to write a separate, companion piece with more details and more angst. And then some Izumi/Elric brother fluff to make up for killing her off in this universe.
Certain things haven't been expanded on, like Sig Curtis' presence at the Rockbell home (I have a headcanon that, in this universe, Winry and the Curtises became close after Ed disappeared) and Ed going over an array. Again, this is because of the limited point of view. Noah doesn't know everything, nor is everything going to be explained to her. While I think Ed is going to try to do everything he can to help her get on her feet, he doesn't completely trust her in this universe. She betrayed him (and all of Amestris by default, in the movie) and I just don't see Ed as coming to trust someone without them earning it first. Noah hasn't earned that. Whether she does or not will be up to her.
I did do a lot of research into obsessive love disorder for the purpose of this fic. However, I'm still not sure how accurate this will be. I'm sure some things are a bit stretched for the purpose of plot. But since the disorder is a psychological matter and it's a lot harder to squeeze psychological disorders into a box, I hope you'll forgive me.
I already made my thoughts on Noah pretty clear in the updated Note at the end of Unrequited-I thought she was selfish and entitled and I don't understand the purpose of her supposed relationship with Ed at all. Or her purpose in the story, for that matter. I think an alt. Winry would have been more interesting to see. I think she could have been an interesting character, but I ended up being too disgusted with her ultimate betrayal to care. She is, however, an interesting character to write.
