Thanks for explaining, Morph. Here\'s chapter ten.


I felt someone\'s hand on my forehead, but the feeling seemed almost detached.

\"Ah... Alex?\" I mumbled. \"What\'s going on?\"

\"She\'s awake! She\'s alive!\" I heard Reyna\'s voice shout gleefully.

I struggled to open my eyes to see Mira looking down at me, her eyes full of worry.

\"Cassie?\" she asked.

\"Um... Mira? What\'s going on? Where\'s Alex?\" Mira looked away, biting her bottom lip.

For just a moment, I couldn\'t remember anything that had happened the night before. Then, like a tidal wave, all the pain came rushing back. My eyes automatically filled with tears, and I covered my face with my hands.

\"No...\" I said in an agonized whisper.

\"Cassie, are you okay?\" Mira asked quietly.

I didn\'t answer. All I said was \"Tell me he isn\'t dead. Tell me he isn\'t dead and I\'ll be okay.\"

\"Cassie...\"

\"Tell me he isn\'t dead!\"

Mira took me into her arms as if I were a little kid.

\"I\'m sorry. I... I don\'t know what to tell you.\"

I didn\'t know what to do. I couldn\'t escape reality, but I didn\'t want to face it, either. The only thing I could do was cry. Mira cradled me in her arms, and by the way her shoulders shook, I could tell she was crying too. When I finally had no more tears left in my entire body, I wiped my eyes and faced Mira.

\"Where are we?\" I asked her, unable to raise my voice above a whisper.

\"I\'m... not exactly sure. A prison at the main hedquarters, I think. It was too dark to see when they brought us all here.\"

I nodded, taking in this new information.

\"And what of our old hideout? Is it still there?\"

Mira shook her head. \"No. Geddinger collapsed it with alchemy.\"

I clenched my fists and looked away, staring at the opposite wall of our prison cell. Reyna sat quietly listening in the other direction.

\"And... Alex?\"

Mira said nothing for a moment, but I already knew what her answer would be.

\"They left him inside.\"

Again, I nodded. There was nothing to be said. We sat in a silence as heavy as lead, not knowing what to do. There was no visible way out of this one. I scanned the walls of the cell, which were made of a crumbling stone. There was no way to draw a transmutation circle on it. It would just crumble away.

The floor was no better, as it was made of iron with thousands of markings on it already. The bars were just the same. There was no way out. We were trapped. After an hour or two, Reyna whimpered,

\"Mira? I\'m hungry.\"

Mira tried to smile, but it seemed an impossible feat for her.

\"I\'m sorry, Reyna, but there\'s nothing to eat.\"

\"Where\'s everyone else? Do they have food?\"

\"I don\'t know where they are, and I don\'t think that they have any food.\"

\"Oh.\"

Mira and I both turned our heads toward the bars of our cell as the sounds of footsteps echoed outside. A soldier appeared at the spot we were watching, his blue uniform making him seem invisible in the dark.

\"Cassie Anderson?\" he asked.

\"Who\'s asking?\" I demanded.

\"Colonel Geddinger would like to speak with you.\"

Mira gasped. \"Don\'t go. You don\'t have any idea what he wants.\" she warned.

I stood up.

\"No. I\'ll see what he wants.\" I said.

The soldier unlocked the cell and led me down a long hallway, stopping at a door at the end.

\"Right through here.\"

I nodded and continued through the door, where Geddinger was seated at a desk.

\"Good evening. May I offer you a chair?\" he asked mockingly, gesturing to a chair on the opposite side of the table.

I sat down stiffly, not letting my back touch the back of the chair.

\"What do you want?\"

\"Don\'t be so rude. I only want to make you an offer.\"

I narrowed my eyes. \"What kind of offer?\"

\"Out of all the alchemists in that little group, you seem to have the most potential. I want to make you a state alchemist. What we do is track down illegal alchemists like yourself and give some of them a chance to live by working for us. What do you think?\"

I clenched my fists so hard that my knuckles turned white.

\"So you murder my family and Alex, and then ask me to work for the people who took them away? Heh, you must be really screwed up to think I\'d do that.\"

\"Don\'t turn it down just yet, Cassie. It could work in your favor. You wouldn\'t have the priveleges that the normal officers do, but you\'d be able to sleep in the dorms, eat in the cafeteria, and I won\'t have to kill you.\"

I stopped to think for a second. It really could work in my favor, and isn\'t that what Alex would want? I\'d hate to become one of the goons who hunted down other alchemists, though. It would kill me, and every time I had to betray someone that I could relate to, it would feel like I was killing Alex a thousand times.

So right there, I made a decision. I had to block my past out of my mind completely and forget that Alex had ever exhisted. From now on, I was the only person I had to look out for. I raised my head to look Mr. Geddinger in the eye.

\"I\'ll do it.\"

EGOIST! EGOIST! KILL THEM TRAITOR! KILL THEM TRAITOR! YOU BETRAY ALEX! FIEND! FIEND! KILL THEM TRAITOR!

A little enthusiastic, are we? Well, this is the last chapter. I might write a follow up thing if i\'m bored enough. But anyway, here it is.



My blue uniform rustled slightly as I walked through the crowded city streets, people frequently stepping aside to let me through. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead, a technique I had learned from years of military training, and kept walking. If I stopped now,

I would never have the courage I needed again.

\"Step one, two. One, two.\" I whispered.

I was already starting to have second thoughts. I knew that I was being stupid, but I couldn\'t stop stupidity. On the outside, I was just another obedient soldier, cold and heartless toward the rest of the world.

But on the inside, I was still a fourteen year old girl, broken down and crying over everything that she had lost. I couldn\'t hold my weaker side back anymore. It had waited long enough. Finally, I reached the clearing that had once been so familiar to me. It had been eight years since I had been back, seven and a half since I had blocked it out of my mind completely.

It looked the same as I remembered it, except that the feeling of being somewhere safe was gone. Now it felt like any other empty lot. I walked to the center in silence, remembering everything that had taken place here, and what lay somewhere down below.

I stopped where I knew the transmutation circle had once been.

\"Most of the other alchemists are either dead or in jail, Cass. We\'re lucky. Nobody\'s killed us yet, and nobody\'s locked us up. And they\'re not going to. We\'re smart, Cassie, and we\'ve got heart. Nobody can ever take that away. And when the non-alchemists realize their mistake, we can go live up in the real world again, start new lives. This is only temporary.\"


I recited the familiar words as I took my gun from my belt and raised it to my head.

\"Never forget that we\'re the lucky ones.\" I whispered.

Then, just like I had wanted to do for so many years, I pulled the trigger. The blast echoed and quickly faded as my lifeless body fell to the ground, completely meaningless now.

I watched as I fell, smiling for the first time since Alex\'s death. It was finally over.

\"Cassie!\"

I turned to see the familiar face of a seventeen year old boy smiling at me.

\"Alex...\"

He reached out, waiting for me. I ran into his waiting arms, a fourteen year old girl again, just as it should be.

\"I missed you.\" Alex whispered as he held me close to him. I buried my head in his chest like I had wanted to do for so long. This was where I was supposed to be. I was finally home.



[Edited on 24-2-2006 by SoulofaDeadRose]

My fanfic writer senses are tingling...

Hello, Rose. Nice job. I wsa wodering if ANYONE here knew how to write right... Hehe, \"Write right\".