Fanfiction: The Sweet Theft

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabble: The Sweet Theft
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Hohenheim, "Father"
Pairing(s): Hohenheim/Mechthild
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 140 (I cheated a bit, but the original part of this drabble is exactly 100 words; the remaining 40 -- the framing dialogue -- are paraphrased from the manga.)
Warnings: None, really, but if you haven't read chapter 75, the context will elude you.
A/N: It occurred to me to wonder what those people whose names Hohenheim remembers meant to him before they were nothing but names. Here's one supposition, long-meditated but written at speed (where is the twenty-six-hour day I ordered?). Concrit welcomed with Chilean grapes. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_het, fma_writers, and fma_fiction).
Dedication: For artemisrae, who is also considering Hohenheim's backstory.

---

‘Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal; / But the sweet theft to reveal,
To be taken, to be seen, / These have crimes accounted been.
--Ben Jonson, "Come, My Celia"
      "It must be inconvenient, being human," mused the homunculus. "Your kind is forced to gather in communities and breed in order to survive."

      "Don't call it breeding," Hohenheim retorted, his face sunset-reddened.

      -- for he and Mechthild did nothing so profitable ("My masters, this lad's worth his weight in copper for the blood in him, out of a weaver by a stonemason, and all unformed yet: you may mold him as you like ... "), nothing so calculated ("She brings a fine dowry and court connections, but if she cannot bear sons, like her sister, then she's a poor bargain!") when they met on errands in the market and lay together behind Mayo's stall, skin chafing skin, transmuting time into pleasure, each moment forced to ripeness like an unseasonal hothouse fruit: hurried, surprising, and sweet --

      "If you say so," replied the homunculus.

---

[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I had the same thoughts about evil_little_dog with this one.

I hope there's a syntax error in that sentence, or else I just learned an interesting new fact about your relationship. :-)

And the chilling pure merchandise value of women at that time was just that, chilling. I could see the homunuculus' disbelief.

It's funny how that evolved as I wrote -- at first inspiration, the drabble was just taking Hohenheim's rejection of the term "breeding" as not applicable to what he was about: too instrumental. Then I started thinking about what "breeding" could mean, besides the continuation of the species, in a patriarchal slave-holding society, and the economics of sexual relations seemed an obvious and interesting "push" against the emotional-relational "pull" of canoodling. Too many years of graduate literary analysis does strange things to the brain.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that'll teach me to work the flist while writing up my lectures. I mess up. That would be I agree with ELD of course

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Phew. (And yes, multitasking is dangerous. Except when it's me listening to anime whilst I catalog. That's just a matter of sanity maintenance.)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i'm prety good at multitasking but last night working on two stories, three IM windows, LJ and my lecture probably overwhelemed me.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ye gods. That's not multitasking; that's a Sulamid's normal workload.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

snort. I can usually add in watching TV too but my computer is no longer in the same room as the tv

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

That's it: I'm calling Area 51. One of their experiments seems to be missing ... :-)