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In the aftermath, Greed finds that he will never be alone again. Ling chatters incessantly in the corners of Greed’s soul, and often takes control of the body they both share. Sometimes they work together: Ling moving the fingers of one hand and Greed matching the gesture with the other. What results is a peculiar synchronicity, and Greed likes it.
He does not like all of Ling’s wives; having is having, and Greed has always desired the bodies and hearts of women, but the clanswomen are strange to him. They are possessions in name and in face. They are containers. Greed finds that they upset him. The way they consent without consenting upsets him.
LanFan, however, does not upset him in the least. She is fierce and brilliant and Greed finds that he could bask in her desire for Ling, and in Ling’s tender feelings toward her, for a long time. Greed is an expert on wanting what one can and cannot have, and he knows that things would never really work, between Ling and LanFan; she gives too much too freely, and Ling, as emperor, is spread thin enough over the whole of Xing that his time and selfhood are not his own, and he has little left to offer in return. (Ling’s body is not his own, either, but Greed does not see how this is in any way an obstacle.) Greed's another matter entirely; he's too selfish to step back.
LanFan talks to him now, sometimes; mostly at night when she is as certain as she can be that her master is asleep within Greed’s skull. Greed likes this very much, he wallows in the tiny confidences she offers him; LanFan is young and full of desire. Her presence is heady, and there are nights when Greed wants to eat her up, to swallow her whole and entire, and keep her nestled inside of him, alongside Ling, for as long as Greed’s stone heart can last.
It’s funny, because she is not beautiful—Greed has seen better—but despite what she thinks, LanFan does not belong to Ling. Anything Greed has with her, he owns and keeps to himself. He doesn’t see how he could not want LanFan, who has gone through fire and blood and come out refined and tempered, lovely in her aggressions.
Sometimes Greed has nightmares about dying (not the first time—who could be scared of a fucking bathtub?—but that last time). He can feel his legs buckling under him, he can feel his father’s teeth in the back of his neck, he can feel the weight of a star crushing his heart, and then he wakes up. He usually doesn’t scream.
The dreams don’t bother him, really; he thinks they’re probably appropriate. The lingering despair he feels is another thing that is his own, and Greed embraces the baggage that comes with it.
+
The Chang kid corners him one day; obviously Greed has been lazy about time again, because he remembers her as being just a little brat, and now she’s a woman and taller than LanFan.
Homunculus, she says, I want to thank you. If it were not for you, the son of the Yao clan would not have become our most esteemed emperor. I would not be free to do as I wished with this life. I would not know the things I have come to know.
Greed’s heard that she’s going West soon, and there’s been talk in the Dragon City of an unsuitable love affair. Greed is pretty sure he knows the guy. I did it ‘cause I wanted to, sweetheart, he tells her, showing all his teeth.
Her irritation flickers—Chang’s emotions have always run so close to the surface that Greed could probably lick them off of her skin—but she still bows, and she does seem grateful. Greed immediately feels responsible for her, because that is how he operates; his people love him, and he keeps them close. But he also remembers being born again, the diagram of Chang’s knives, a bright light, his soul painfully coming back together, the sudden familiar and unfamiliar space Greed was given inside of Ling’s body. He’s pretty sure Chang owns him too, and that he ought to be grateful in return. It’s easy enough to tell that Ling is grateful, and, in some small way, so is LanFan; the nice thing about sharing a body with an emperor is that it’s easy enough to grant ridiculous favors, or bestow hideously lavish gifts.
Ling fumes a little over the bridal trousseau Greed selects for Mei Chang, even though the brat is his sister and his retainer and his responsibility. Greed has excellent taste, and the contents of that box cost a fuckin’ fortune.
+
Ling has fifty wives, because apparently he can’t change his whole empire overnight, and probably because he’s a selfish bastard. Each week brings a new wife to his bed. They are soft women, for the most part, good for carrying sons, and their round faces are powdered so white that it is impossible to read their external pulse (Greed thinks of LanFan’s hot and unwilling blush of embarrassment, the way every passion burns bright on her face and neck, and thinks that these cool women are lacking). Ling screws them dispassionately, and Greed finds himself looking away. His mind wanders. Sex is boring when all you’re after is one orgasm.
He thinks about LanFan, present in the room but unseen, fulfilling her duty to her emperor and country and probably breaking her own heart in the bargain. He can’t understand why she sacrifices so much and is content with so very little; LanFan needn’t ask for a blessed thing in this world, she should be able to reach out her mismatched hands and take until she is satisfied.
Greed bets that if he and Ling touched LanFan, it would be anything but dispassionate. He amuses himself by thinking of how he would touch her, and how she might blush in response; his imaginings bother Ling, which is even more amusing, because Ling is actively getting laid.
Don’t let me interrupt, Greed tells him. I’ll just be over here.
+
Later, they leave the silent wife lying in bed and return to the emperor’s hidden chambers. LanFan follows, on every guard, and after they are concealed within the maze of inner chambers, Greed takes over the body. Ling is cranky and exhausted and he makes a valiant, if misguided attempt to keep control; Greed pushes hard, and the Philosopher’s Stone inside of him is overwhelming, an unrelenting force. Greed gets his way. He knows that LanFan will notice—there’s a shudder that runs along Ling’s spine as Greed asserts himself, a dozen little shifts of balance and countenance. LanFan always notices him. It’s gratifying, and more than that, arresting; the way her eyes settle on him make his chest constrict and his blood sing.
She looks at him; he can barely see her eyes underneath the porcelain of her mask. It’s just me, he says, tapping the mark on his hand. He bolts the door and crosses the room, flopping untidily on Ling’s ridiculous bed. Come here.
She looks at him for a measure of time before coming to his side. Greed takes her hand, the metal one, and grins at the sensation of her claws on his skin; if he wanted to, he could harden his own flesh and more than match her automail, but he instead lets her fingers dig in a little too hard, and feels his flesh open and knit itself back up. Greed grins as wide as he is able, letting all his teeth show; it’s a rude gesture in Xing. The line of LanFan’s body informs him that she is not impressed.
She is so rarely awed; Greed doesn’t mind so much, but he’d like to shake her up a little, shock her, catch LanFan with her dark hair down. With her mask off, her teeth bared. It’s a lot to hope for. It’s a lot to want. Because it's LanFan, it's not too much at all.
She does come to him, though, and the smug satisfaction makes Greed grin wider. She’s not going to ask him what he wants—LanFan knows better, for one, and he isn’t her master right now—but over the past ten years he’s gotten pretty good at anticipating her, and she’s always been good at anticipating Ling. Greed isn’t that far removed.
She sits upright, for a while, while he lies next to her and holds her hand too tight; then the iron flows out of her bones and she settles next to him, not touching him any more than where he’s already touching her.
He’s going to need an heir soon, she says. Ling has been fucking the wives for years now, long enough that the gossip at court is gaining force and weight. One or two have gotten pregnant, of course, but it was to be expected: they had taken lovers. Those wives have been replaced, quietly, another one of those ugly tasks LanFan undertakes without ever being asked.
It’s not gonna happen, Greed answers. He’s sterile. It’s a side effect. He doesn’t usually say it so plainly, not even in private; it seems weak. LanFan doesn’t chastise him, but she does bow a little under the weight of it. Greed reaches out and tugs at the ribbon binding her mask in place, and pulls it off her face. The ridges catch on her cheek and nose before she reaches up with her free hand and pulls her mask off. It doesn’t matter who actually removes it. He gets what he wants: she looks him in the eye, no flinching. LanFan cares about the succession—she cares about dynasties—but the last few years have been long, and she’s spent a lot of waking minutes with him. His cynicism is rubbing off on her.
He’s strong enough now, she says. She hasn’t let go of his hand; her shoulder is pressed even with his. But it’s not going to last forever.
Chang got married. Maybe we could use one of hers.
Mei Chang got married to a foreigner, LanFan says. And she’s not from the right clan, anyway. Her offspring won’t be acceptable. She doesn’t say that Chang would never allow it and she doesn’t sound angry; they’ve had this conversation before. Greed is too much himself to offer the obvious suggestion, and over the years, it’s been the only part of herself that LanFan has reliably protected. But something in her has gone thin and weak, and she offers it now: I was adopted into the Yao clan when I was a child, she says. And if I gave the Emperor a son, no one would ask any questions
He’s angry that she says it, even if it makes sense. The whole court has been writing furtive love poetry about LanFan for years; a pregnancy would ruin her, but it would ensure the succession in public. Greed knows this is true, the way it’s true that he and Ling cannot get any of the wives with child. He releases her hand and slumps deeper into the hideous brocade coverlet. He’s sulking, which is a mild name for how angry the idea makes him. Greed famously asks for more than anyone every wants to give, but even he thinks this is asking too much.
It’s an option, she says, even though he hasn’t said anything. He knows he can trust me.
Not an option that any of us want, Greed says.
Don’t be so cocky, she says, which means Ling might take the choice if it was offered. He’s always been selfish—it’s his right, and Greed doesn’t have any room to talk—and Ling would definitely take the child if she had one, even if it wouldn’t be his own spawn. LanFan has never offered before. She sounds tired, and Greed knows it isn’t because it’s late.
LanFan rolls onto her side and faces him. She holds very still for a moment, breathing in and out in the way she does when she’s counting down to something. For a moment Greed can’t bear it, the way she gives everything up for Ling and gets nothing in return, even though Greed is one of the main beneficiaries of the arrangement. Very deliberately, he touches her face, molding his hand around her jaw, lining his thumb along the bone of her cheek. She doesn’t move away.
Are you already pregnant? He doesn’t really want to ask, even if he owes it to her. He’d know, if he bothered to extend himself—he can’t read her chi the way she can read his, but he knows the way she moves and the way she smells and the way she talks when a terrible choice has already been made.
Soon. She closes her eyes. Greed is close enough to count her eyelashes. If not now, then soon.
+
She goes through with the plan. Greed retreats into the hollow part of Ling’s skull for most of LanFan’s first trimester and Ling pretends not to know why. It’s not that Greed thinks it serves Ling right; it’s that he doesn’t want this—doesn’t want to imagine some second cousin from the Yao clan pawing at LanFan or grunting over her. It helps that they’ll kill the father once LanFan’s far enough along that they won’t need his services again. Greed wants to be the one to do it, and as is so often the case, he gets what he wants.
It’s halfway through the second trimester, when she starts to show and stops shadowing their every movement that the gossip starts up. Surprisingly, hearing rumors at every corner cheers Greed immensely; enough people believe that LanFan is carrying an imperial child for it to seem true. Ling ignores it for the most part—he’s got a lot on his mind, Mustang’s been sending ambassadors to talk over trade routes—but Greed holds on to the thought, polishes it until it gleams. LanFan and her child will belong to them. Greed has never cared much for children, but now that it’s on the table, he realizes that he wants LanFan’s child, and all that it will signify.
This train of thought makes Ling uncomfortable. Since the whole situation is mostly his fault, Greed makes sure to bring it up at least six or seven times a day.
The only real bright spot is when the Chang kid and her husband visit, sometime late in LanFan’s seventh month. Greed takes a back seat and thoroughly enjoys the way Chang rails at Ling—she knows enough to put two and two together, and she’s furious.
You pig, she says again and again. She’s pregnant with her third child, which makes her even more terrifying. I don’t even like her and I’m angry.
This isn’t strictly true; over the years, LanFan and Chang have formed a truce, even if they aren’t bosom companions. But Greed thinks he knows what Chang means: he’s seen women with children before, and he understands ownership, and he understands LanFan. If Ling had actually asked LanFan, instead of just letting her do it, the situation would be even worse.
It’s Chang’s husband that points this out, though. Alphonse Elric usually looks faintly pleased, but he corners Ling and towers over him. You’re an idiot, he says. And I know from idiots.
Listen—Ling starts to defend himself, which is a rookie error. He hasn’t been a rookie in years; Greed’s glad to know he’s feeling guilty enough to make a mistake.
You don’t deserve her, Alphonse says. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she has nowhere else to go.
Neither Greed nor Ling are stupid enough to point out that this is not their mistake to make.
Things settle down again after their visit, though; Ling has official duties to perform and for the first time since Greed came back to life, LanFan isn’t the one watching over them. She’s never far away—it would be bad for gossip if she disappeared entirely—and she’s all of a sudden visible in her invisibility. Greed notices she doesn’t bother to remove her mask any more than she ever did before, which probably helps.
+
It’s bad luck for the father to be present at the birth, the midwife tells them. Greed shows her all of his teeth in an expression one couldn't even begin to call a smile.
I make my own luck, he tells the midwife. He’s very careful to use Ling’s voice. I’ve waited ten years for this.
LanFan looks up from the mat on which she is laboring. Let it be, she says, mildly, though Greed can see she’d rather be left to her own devices. Honored Master will have his own way. He usually does.
The midwife looks distressed; Greed can smell her anxiety. She probably thinks they’ll kill her once the baby’s delivered, and she’s not far off. The Chang kid is on her way to the capitol and she’s promised to escort the midwife to the far northern provinces.
The labor is long and terrible, but the midwife acts as though she’s seen worse. Perhaps she has; but Greed can’t think of much worse that watching LanFan struggle and wait. Ling is solicitous and uncomfortable; he believes in luck more than Greed does, and he loves LanFan, but Ling doesn’t want to be here. As he’s been doing more often, Greed pushes Ling to the back of their mind so he can kneel beside LanFan unimpeded. She wouldn’t accept this from Ling; she can take it from Greed, and he wants her to have whatever she can hold on to. She ends up squatting over the reed mat, Greed behind her and holding her up; she doesn’t let him take her weight until the very end. By then it’s been hours and she reeks with exertion and pain and blood. Greed probably doesn’t smell much better. For the first time in a long time, he is afraid. She's tough as nails and she's clawed his hand open more than once with her automail, but until she gives the last push, Greed doesn't quite believe her labor will end.
When she does finish, LanFan doesn’t cry out. Greed’s not surprised; it’s her duty to protect the emperor and it will be her duty to protect his heir. He doesn’t believe in evil spirits, not particularly, but tradition is what got them into this situation to begin with. He knows LanFan; she’s rarely willing to take a risk when it comes to this.
She pitches forward a little before he steadies her, and the midwife darts between LanFan’s thighs to retrieve the child. It’s nothing to sneeze at: the baby is thin and wrinkled and sticky with blood. It makes a tiny, mewling noise before LanFan gives it her breast (how odd, Greed thinks, to see LanFan’s breasts; she’s never before had them unbound in his presence).
It’s a girl, the midwife says. Let the father wash her.
Tradition again; Greed is surprised that despite all these months of looking forward to LanFan’s child, he rarely thinks of himself as the father. It was, after all, one of Ling’s cousins who got her with child. But Greed is the one who stayed, and he supposes that’s what counts. He thinks LanFan probably hadn’t thought of it that way, either; if anything, this has all been for Ling and for her country. Mostly for Ling; LanFan is generally single-minded. Greed wonders if that will change, and if he wants it to.
He watches the way she slides her little finger into the baby’s mouth, detaching it from her breast; instead of handing the baby to him, LanFan switches her hold and allows her daughter to latch again.
We’ll need a name, Greed says, mesmerized; LanFan’s daughter nurses wholeheartedly. She’s still covered with muck and blood. She’s a child after his own black heart; Greed doesn't really care where she came from.
She’s Bao, LanFan tells him, matter-of-fact. He wonders where she got the name. When she’s eaten, you can hold her.
Ling is paying attention, Greed knows. It’s about time.
+
There are at least thirty days before anyone can say anything about Bao in polite company, which means the servants have been talking since LanFan went into labor. By now, most of the far provinces probably know that emperor’s prize bodyguard has given birth to a girl, and that the emperor didn’t leave her side during the delivery. If the midwife is to be trusted, the general public does not know the baby is named Bao; if she isn’t to be trusted, there’s a fair chance the entire country knows.
The rumors fly all the faster when someone lets slip that the emperor was the first person to wash the baby. It’s a lot of fuss for one small person, but it has been over ten years now since Ling took his wives, and longer since he came into power; people are hungry for information, and the scandal is too good to leave alone. It’s a good thing. LanFan did this in order to keep Ling’s dynasty safe, and it’s not going to work unless the people believe it. Greed knows firsthand how powerful belief can be.
Partially to make the rumor stick, and mostly because this is LanFan and her child, Greed and Ling bring her back to the imperial chambers. It’s nothing new, having her there, and it’s not even unusual for her to be lying in Ling’s bed, but it feels very different from how things used to be.
It’s been a long day and it gets late fast. LanFan is resting and Ling is nearly asleep, leaving Greed to stare at Bao and count her eyelashes. She’s very small. She looks a great deal like her mother, which Greed imagines will come in handy as time goes by.
He’s a little sorry there won’t be any more babies. Greed hated his siblings, but they ensured life was never boring. He has decided he is very fond of children.
He hears a noise and turns to look; LanFan is stirring, one hand flat on the bed and feeling for movement. She looks over and sees him with Bao.
Greed knows as many of LanFan’s expressions as she’s shown him, over the years. This one is new and sweet, even though she is not actually smiling. Greed thinks he could see that look on her face every minute of every day of the rest of her life and still not have enough. It is a look he will fantasize about when Ling is wasting time with his fifty useless wives, and—most importantly—it is a look that LanFan seems perfectly willing to give to him.
Come to bed, LanFan says. She says it to Greed; she’d never speak this way to Ling, not even now.
He walks back to the bed and LanFan reaches out to him and takes Bao from his arms; he helps her guide Bao down safely, away from LanFan's prosthetic.
Of all of them, Greed knows he’s had the better part of the bargain. He’s lived more than ten years in Ling’s body now, and he’s fairly certain now that they’ll have LanFan for the rest of her life. She’s not the type to leave.
He breathes in and out in a way that means he’s counting down to something; it’s a trick Greed learned from LanFan, a trick she uses when she needs to be honest. He lies down next to her on Ling’s bed and turns on his side to get a better look at her profile, and at Bao lying against her chest. Lanfan’s belly is still soft and distended, her thighs thick, her bust full. Even her face is rounded out with the weight she gained and the muscle she lost, carrying Bao. It’s funny: Greed knows that this was her last choice, but she doesn’t seem to regret making it, even though she’s lost almost all of what she was. Greed wonders what the odds are of her resenting it later.
LanFan reaches over the baby lying between them and touches his face, mirroring the way he touched her face a year ago, before this whole thing had quite gotten started: palm to jaw, thumb along his cheek bone. It’s her real hand; in the past, when she’s touched him, it’s been with her automail hand, and there has always been a bite to it. Greed has never minded her sharp edges because he likes being the one to see them, but this is better.
Go to sleep where I can see you, Greed, LanFan says. It’s the first time she’s ever called him by name.
Don’t get pushy, Greed tells her, but he’s already closed his eyes and settled in. He’s looking forward to waking up in the same position and finding her still in bed. There are thirty days of rest before LanFan can leave the imperial chambers, and he hopes by the end of them she won’t want to.
Greed has a whole new life of desires to add to the old ones, and the things he wants are so close.
It comes down to this: LanFan and Bao and Ling, all the things Greed loves, lying together in the center of their bed.