Fanfic: The Four Last Things (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabbles: The Four Last Things
Fandom: FMA (anime version)
Character(s): Hohenheim, Ed
Pairing(s): None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400 (yep, more drabbles. Where do they come from? Where will they go?)
Warnings: End-of-series spoilers.
A/N: This is probably mjules's fault, for publicizing the 4purposes community. Suddenly, when I should be working on "Winry and Paninya go to the movies", I start developing drabbles in sets of four. Sigh. On the other hand, I enjoyed exploring (exploiting?) Hohenheim's late medieval/early Renaissance roots. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers and fma_fiction.
Dedication: For hieronymousb, who also can imagine damnation. (Better'n I can, frequently.)

---

Death

      Death overtook Hohenheim unexpectedly on the road to knowledge. He remembers the palsy in his legs, the strangling weight in his chest ... how, even as he fell, he forced his eyes to focus on the scarlet wonder he had wrought. Think of honor and of wealth!

      But not of immortality. That he never sought -- nor, surely, Dante's parasitic athanasia, this illusory preservation. The ground of la danse macabre sounds in his ears with his pulse: Follow. Follow. Follow. He waits only for the proper moment to change partners (Earth, gape!) and tread the measure ordained for wits and fools alike.

≈
Judgment

      "Why did you leave us?"

      Hohenheim would rather face his Maker all unshriven in his sin than this fair, tormented creature he has made. The night shudders softly around them, too near the burning city where destruction wails newborn. Strange bar for an overdue accounting, but Hohenheim cannot stop his ears against his son's questions, cannot deny the self he sees in Edward's eyes: fool, coward, sophist ... unloved, but still, helplessly, loving. Look not so fierce on me!

      He reaches for his shirt cuff, praying the testimony of his body earn him the mercy for which he dares not sue.

≈
Hell

      Convalescent, Edward rages against the exile Hohenheim coaxes him to accept. "All you've ever done is run from trouble!" he shouts. "Go to hell!"

      Tired of arguing, Hohenheim smiles with unfelt sweetness. "'Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it -- '"

      Edward throws up his hand and retreats with a snarl to his books. Later, nodding in his wheelchair, he murmurs, then calls his lost brother's name, waking himself. Hohenheim pities his uncertainty, his ignorance: a most perfect damnation for a man of science. Yet, eavesdropping on his son's tears, he finds he'd gladly trade for it his own.

≈
Heaven

Munich, 1922

      Hohenheim sits in his corner, ostensibly reading. The boys have forgotten him, heads together over a physics exercise by the window, its sash raised to admit the cool September air. Suddenly Alfons leans back and laughs; Edward grunts, but cannot maintain his gravity: he shakes his head to hide a smile. Alfons returns to work, still venting chuckles, and earns an admonitory poke from Ed's pencil.

      Hohenheim turns a page. He can smell the Sauerbraten simmering, hear quick steps setting the table for dinner. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven ... for I shall never be closer to paradise.

---

Notes: The "four last things" -- death, judgment, hell, and heaven -- are a popular summation of Roman Catholic eschatology since the Middle Ages and a frequent trope in meditation, spiritual writing (Thomas More penned a treatise on the four last things for his daughter Margaret), preaching (James Joyce records one example in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and art (unsurprisingly, Hieronymous Bosch produced a notable painting on the subject).
      In "Death," la danse macabre, the dance of death, is a late medieval image (likely inspired by the Black Death) in which the Grim Reaper leads people of every social rank in a conga line to the grave; its purpose is to remind the viewer of the universality of death and the futility of pursuing earthly gain. "Ground," in this context, is a musical term for a repeated phrase that underpins a contrapuntal or polyphonic work. The "bar" of "Judgment" is not an impediment or a place to get a beer, but a court of law -- the same metaphor that gives us "bar exam" and "bar association." Hohenheim's quotation in "Hell" is a line from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (act 1, scene 3); readers familiar with the play will notice other phrases from it silently incorporated into these drabbles.

[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title and the movie Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa were directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[brennadouglasmw.livejournal.com]

Wow... I am absolutely in love with your writing style. I love your word choice as it gives all of the drabbles a sense of connection while still remaining eerily distant and poetic. Much like Hohenheim himself...

EEEP! *glomps you*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Hey! My first *glomp*! :-)

I love your word choice as it gives all of the drabbles a sense of connection while still remaining eerily distant and poetic. Much like Hohenheim himself...

My English major is showing here -- the only word I had to look up before using was "athanasia". But I'm kind of proud of an inadvertent subtlety: all the funky, poetic and melodramatic language dropped away in "Heaven" (except for Hohenheim's quotation from Marlowe) so I could describe a simple domestic interior. What's truly paradaisical doesn't need to thunder and attitudinize; it just exists and is lovely.

That said, I'm already wondering whether Hohenheim is really the self-dramatizing sort I've made him out to be. He's pretty plainspoken and self-deprecating in the anime, but maybe on the inside he's acting out a bombastic Faustian tragedy ...

[militsa.livejournal.com]

I love your writing style too! You have earned another *glomp*. I adore when writers plunder underused language. I had to look up "athanasia" myself.

My favorite one is "judgment." I love that you use the word "sophist" to describe Hohenheim--so fitting.

I'm with you on the Hohenheim-internal-Faustian-tragedy. I think he's really underdeveloped in the anime but that leaves lots of room for play given his rich history; I wrote a whole long-ass story based around this and it could've been longer if I hadn't stopped myself!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

You have earned another *glomp*.

I'm gonna have to build me a shelf to hold 'em all if they keep piling up. :-)

I adore when writers plunder underused language. I had to look up "athanasia" myself.

It's a tricky balance, though. Stop back in a few weeks and some of the fancier language here may have mutated down to something more common as I get cold feet (and/or recover my sanity :-). It's easy to be seduced by synonyms and say, "Wow, this is real writing!" as they pile up. [wry grin] I like to think that I've paid my dues sufficiently as an artist to justify something as almost over-the-top as "Judgment," where the word choice pushes the style sky-high, hopefully in conformity to the plot/character content of the scene rather than oveworking it into bathos. (Not to mention the collapsed synechdoche in "Heaven," where the feet set the table -- that's a deliberately slide into diction normally reserved for poetry.)

I'm with you on the Hohenheim-internal-Faustian-tragedy. I think he's really underdeveloped in the anime but that leaves lots of room for play given his rich history; I wrote a whole long-ass story based around this and it could've been longer if I hadn't stopped myself!

He certainly chooses an interesting way to lie in the bed he makes. I remember having some long discussions over on rec.arts.anime.misc about how he's always walking away from trouble in the animeverse, so that the couple of times he walks back to face it (against Dante, with Ed) leap out of the story at you without the writers/animators having to emphasize them. And both voice actors, Ebara Masashi and Scott McNeil, do an excellent job of realizing him. (McNeil, in particular, gets so much emotional truth into the line, "I loved your mother!", that his subsequent plea for Ed's belief seems superfluous, and which leads beautifully into Vic Mignogna's answering line, with its subtle shift in attitude, "Why did you leave us?" Not "her", notice ... )

I better stop English-majoring and get back to work. Creativity and analysis together have a tendency to eat my life. :-)

Peace!

[kambeiadaro.livejournal.com]

I'm loving this as well. Glomp x3. I'm always interested in how Hohenheim works, and your drabble seems realistic to me.

Earlier you mentioned "bombastic Faustian tragedy". What exactly does that mean? I know what a tragedy is, bombastic I think means loud, Faust has something to do with writings none of my English teachers have ever bothered to tell me about... Yeah, I can't figure it out. ^^;

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Earlier you mentioned "bombastic Faustian tragedy". What exactly does that mean?

"Bombastic" means loud, grand, and overtheatrical -- imagine someone getting up on stage and delivering one of Shakespeare's speeches in a fruity voice with lots of big gestures. :-) The story of Faust is an old one that's inspired a lot of plays, poetry, and opera and is probably lurking in the background of the FMA anime. Faust is a scholar who, in search of knowledge, sells his soul to the devil (frequently named Mephistophilis), who agrees to serve him and answer all his questions. Faust then uses the power and knowledge he gains in the bargain to do various things (depending on the story, he investigates the universe, seduces women, plays tricks on the Pope, or some combination of these, but his exploits are usually shown to be either empty or corrupt). In the end, the devil comes to claim Faust's soul: again, depending on the story, Faust either departs wailing to hell or, at the last moment, is saved for heaven (by the prayers of one of his victims, by some unquenchable thirst for the good in his own soul, by the mercy of God which will not permit the devil to win ... ).

The "bombastic Faustian tragedy" thing I'm talking about has a bit to do with my view of Hohenheim maybe considering himself something of a damned soul still walking the earth. From a medieval Christian perspective, that's a nonsensical position; while you're alive, you can always turn from doing ill to doing good (though it can be hideously difficult to change and you'll still have to stand the justice due your actions even as they are, in mercy, forgiven). I imagine that Hohenheim, who was raised when Christianity was still a going concern in his world, would be aware of this idea, so his sense of himself as unfit for heaven is going to have a self-dramatizing quality. That is, there'll be an underlying false note to it that he's trying to drown out with bombast and possibly a self-indulgent desire to look pitiable before others to blunt their condemnation of him.

The reason I get nervous about putting that into Hohenheim's internal monologue is that his dialogue and self-presentation aren't actually bombastic in the anime. Whether these drabbles strike a true note or not has everything to do with whether the reader sees them as revealing something about Hohenheim that lies underneath his calm demeanor or just throws up his/her hands and says, "But he's not like that!" :-)

Peace.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I would say more that he's had most of the bombast beaten out of him by the weight of the years, to the point where the only one who still sees it in his character is himself.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Lately I've been thinking of him as a kind of Odysseus-figure crossed with the Wandering Jew -- what might have become of "the many-turned man" if he'd hacked off Calypso enough, say, that she cursed him with immortality as he was leaving. I'm still disappointed that there wasn't more room for him in the FMA movie.

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the dedication! (Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner; have been a bit busy lately) I love Hohenheim-fic. There's so little of it. And you've done some great work here.

I believe this is my favourite part:

But not of immortality. That he never sought -- nor, surely, Dante's parasitic athanasia, this illusory preservation. The ground of la danse macabre sounds in his ears with his pulse: Follow. Follow. Follow. He waits only for the proper moment to change partners (Earth, gape!) and tread the measure ordained for wits and fools alike.

Simply beautiful. :)

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

And yes, I too really like the word "athanasia". /nerd

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I don't know why my letters nominating Peter Roget for sainthood keep being rejected by the Vatican. His handy little reference tool works miracles in my prose on a daily basis.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

(Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner; have been a bit busy lately)

Between NaNoWriMo, Thanksgiving, the school year and the upcoming [insert appropriate solstice-timed holiday here], that seems to be the default state among everyone I know at the moment.

I believe this is my favourite part

[bows] Thank you, thank you -- just taking my English major out for a walk, there. My own favorite bit, now that I've got a little distance, is still the front end of "Heaven" because it does something I really have to work at -- set a scene -- without (much) strain. Of course, it's describing action, which is still easier for me than environmental scene-setting, but not half as easy as writing dialogue. (Winry's just about to walk into the projection booth in the current 'fic and I'm ready to kiss the boots of the person who explained to me that acetone smells like bananas ... a detail! a detail!)

Peace.

[aliasheist.livejournal.com]

Um. Hi. *waves*

It's been a while. So. With the holidays approaching, and all that zen, I've been tracking down all the people I really like and admire and offering up drabbles and short stories, and you're way up there on my list of esteemed peoples.

Would you like a short story/drabblebat for [insert holiday of your choice here]? I am still grateful that you wrote me a short for my birthday, and I'd like to return the favor. Name anything. Anything at all. And I shall write it for you! Please? I'd quite like to write for you.

I'm also offering up Fudgy Deathcake mix and/or recipe for it, because it's easy and fantastic and I've not found anyone that hasn't liked it yet. May I count you on my list? I'm eminently reachable by email and IM program and LiveJournal and just about anything except for telepathy, because, yannow, I'm cool like that.

So. Um. If I don't hear from you, Happy Holidays!

(And by the way, great job on the drabbles. I really liked Judgment; the way you presented it reminded me a bit of Dante [the writer Dante, not that wretched soul-sucking harpy]. The description of London brought Pandemonium to mind. Brilliant, as always.)

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Wow. THis is beautiful, and moving, and totally Hohenheim.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I rather like these myself, now that I have enough distance on them that I don't keep wanting to tweak a word here and a word there ...