Chapter Text
Ling becomes Emperor.
It’s everything he’s ever dreamed of. Everything he’s ever wanted.
And it feels good...for a while.
To start with: he locks the Philosopher’s Stone - the key to his ascension to the position of monarch - away in the vault, unsure of how he wants to use it... and unable to use it without an alchemist. He’ll need to import one at some point. Maybe Edward Alphonse Elric.
It’s a problem to be dealt with later: the question of life and the morality of using it for your own gain. Instead, he tackles more urgent things, and revamps the court system and his palace to his own liking.
People are expecting reforms. They’re probably not expecting the extent of them.
He installs Mei in the palace as an advisor in training. Calls for another half dozen of his brothers and sisters to join her, from clans widespread and with personalities as different as he can manage, to provide him with diverse opinions and points of view. Most of them are close to his age. A couple are older, and obviously jealous of his ascension to emperor, but he’d won it fair and square and they all recognize that.
Courtiers quickly realise that he’s much more straightforward than his father, and that he values honesty. It’s amusing to watch them change their approach; within weeks, those who had been simpering suck-ups at the beginning start to angle their words to appear more genuine.
Most of them are spoiled nobles, so in a bid to surround himself with competent and trusted people, he appoints several men and women to the status of nobility who had been allies in his youth, and ensures that Lan Fan is entrenched into the palace security staff at as high a level as he can muster.
He overhauls the Imperial Examination. Installs a new school of alkahestry at the palace which is free to any who have the talent to put it into practice. Puts in motion plans to provide education on general subjects in every clan and to create emergency stockpiles of long-lasting dry food like rice and pickled or salted foods to provide to any clan who might not have enough to eat, especially during the winter.
This means taking a little from the richer clans and giving to the poorer ones. He doesn’t frame it like that. He frames it as it being an honour to provide these things to the Imperial Capital, and that the richer clans should want to do so, to show the magnitude of their contribution to Xing. Naturally the nobles scramble all over themselves in a bid to impress the new emperor, and the stock rooms quickly fill up.
It goes well. He enjoys it. Enjoys being the one to provide for his people, to make changes that he knows will benefit all of Xing.
But then he has to start thinking about marriage, which, for him, is a whole lot more difficult than all the rest of it.
In each clan, Ling is expected to take a wife. This is… awkward, to say the least, but not a tradition he can easily change, despite all the other reforms he’s putting into place. It’s a central tenet of Xingese culture. The emperor has a wife in every clan. That’s how it’s done. It ensures fairness. He’s supposed to marry the woman, deflower them, and leave them there, to be taken care of by their clan leader - almost always their brother or father. Any children he has will stay there too, just as he had lived in his uncle's home during his own childhood.
(Effectively, he realises one day this means that his wife in the Yao clan will have to be his only female cousin on his mother’s side. Yikes.)
Still, it's low emotional commitment for both him and each wife, really. Not all wives had children by his father - there were only 42 children born to 50 wives. Plus, two of them were twins and a few more were full-blooded siblings - and this, he has come to realise, is probably because his father had only copulated with some of his wives once or twice during their entire marriages, and they hadn’t gotten lucky on those couple of tries.
Maybe he did it more with the bigger clans, to ensure an heir from those more prosperous places, or simply because they’re more convenient. The Yao clan is close to the Imperial Capital. He remembers his father coming every few years in the spring to see them for a few days at a time. They would sometimes go to the palace in the summer. Occasionally he’d meet his half-siblings there. It had always been unpleasant to see most of them, since there had always been an underlying danger to the interactions. Royal half-siblings murder each other; this is well-known. Not all 42 made it to adulthood.
So, with all that in mind, Ling marries four women in the first year, despite his reservations.
Choosing them is a strange ritual. He goes and has a tea ceremony with the clan leader and his daughters or granddaughters, depending on their age. Each of the ladies gets a chance to speak, to talk to him for the first and possibly only time before he picks one to marry, and boy... does it ever come off as rehearsed. Almost all of them in every clan list their virtues of patience, humility, and submission. That’s what a good Xingese man would want, after all.
However, Ling personally finds this boring. He thinks of the women he’d met in Amestris, like Winry. Riza. Or he thinks of Mei, even, a girl who had grown up in view of becoming an Empress, rather than a wife. Strong women. Interesting women. He wants someone like that to marry, to lie with, and to bring up his children.
So he asks their fathers and grandfathers to sit out of earshot and asks each of them questions individually as well. Questions designed to put them off balance. Questions about how they would help lead their clan if they were to become an imperial wife. He asks them about their hopes and dreams. Their hobbies. How they would raise a child.
In one of the four clans, he finds someone he likes well enough.
In the other three he just grits his teeth and tries to choose the best option available to him. Then he abstains from jerking off for a couple of days prior to the wedding, just to ensure he can get the job done on the night of the ceremony.
It’s... fine.
He tries to make sure they’re comfortable. For him, it feels good enough, physically, although there’s absolutely no emotional connection. It’s all just...movements. There’s nothing behind it. No affection. No attraction, even. It’s completely empty.
Luckily, that is not his only outlet for seeking companionship.
At the palace he has a harem, too. Mostly for geographical convenience, he thinks, since it’s not like he could possibly need more than fifty women to fulfill his needs.
His father’s concubines had become Empresses Dowager upon his death and now wield great power over the palace. Many of them have positions involving entertaining foreign ambassadors, speaking with the clans on Ling’s behalf, and dealing with marriages and title changes of other nobles. Ling’s mother too had been elevated to the same position upon his ascension.
Almost immediately upon taking the throne, many members of his court offer up their daughters to him as consorts. He knows it’s a position of honour, but Ling thinks it’s kind of bizarre to see men beg him to fuck their daughters. He doesn’t take any at first, despite the insistence of the Empress Dowager Chunhua, who is in charge of selecting women for him. He thinks: there is no need to entrap women in the palace, to sentence them to a life lived in isolation for no other purpose than to provide him with sexual pleasure.
That’s...selfish. Isn’t it?
Even though he wants it. Wants the companionship, to feel like he belongs to someone and they belong to him. His wives are far away, both physically and emotionally and he… he is lonely.
And the hardest thing about it is that his mind keeps going back to the wide grin of the person he knows would fill that void completely.
When winter hits, it’s something of a relief. Life slows down in the winter, as the agricultural industry grinds to (mostly) a halt and construction is stopped. Not too many projects get done during the winter months and he doesn’t have to take any more brides. But the slowing pace brings time to think. To think about what he’s done and where he is. The ability to do this is something of a danger to any man, even to Ling, who is not known for being an introspective person.
Ling wakes up one morning in his chambers, before his attendant comes in to awaken him. He is rarely alone in a room but this is one change he’d made early on. No one else comes into his interior chambers from sunset until sunrise. Even his guards wait outside the room. It’s a private place, his sanctuary.
Nevertheless, he stares at the patterned canopy hanging over his bed, barely illuminated by the cracks of pre-dawn light coming in around the drawn window coverings and he thinks, there’s somewhere else I’d rather be.
He’d rather be sleeping in rough canvas tents, sliced together with alchemy, barely big enough to cover the four of them. He’d rather hear the rough breaths of Darius and Heinkel, the faint clicking sounds every time Ed shifts his automail as he moves in sleep, the thunder of rain hitting the material balancing barely a foot above his head, and the fear that it will seep into the tent so that he is lying in a puddle. He wants to feel the warmth and familiarity of the others’ bodies, the safety that comes in having friends to watch your back, even if you’re in a perilous situation to begin with.
Eating beans out of a can is better than any lavish feast when you have friends to share it with.
And he’d rather share. He’d rather share his own body, even. He’d rather hear the shout of another voice in his head, telling him they need something, whatever that something is. He misses Greed, misses having the presence of someone else within him.
God, instead of this, he’d rather go back to the pain he’d felt, every time he’d looked at Ed, when he had realized --
He throws the covers off, struck immediately by the cold room, and hastens to put an outer robe and slippers on. Belatedly he realises that his attendant usually starts the fire some time before rousing him in order to avoid this morning chill, but he ignores the dark maw of the fireplace and drops into the chair at his desk, twisting the knob of his desk lamp until it springs to life. He pulls his writing supplies towards him, unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen almost hastily.
Dear Ed, he writes on the top piece of thick, cream coloured paper sitting atop the table. He feels better having written just those two words. Dear Ed. Ling is seeking a lifeline from a friend.
I hope you have been well. I’m interested to hear what you’ve been doing for the last year and a half without your alchemy. Fuck, is that going to be a sore spot? Ling taps the pen against his chin.
He starts again, on a new piece of paper.
Dear Ed,
I hope you have been well. How is Al? Is he taller than you yet?
Definitely a sore spot, but a funny one. Ling grins.
It feels like forever since we last saw one another. We went from camping in the woods leading up to the Promised Day to being separated by thousands of miles. I’m sure you know that I have been crowned Emperor. I wanted to send you an invitation to the coronation, but it happened very quickly and since it would have taken you more than a month to receive the mail, and the same to get here, I thought it might be better just to send you a photo of the day.
Are you still working with the Amestris Military? I have been in contact with Brigadier-General Mustang - he wants to collaborate on building a railway through the Great Desert, which would be wonderful because
'You can come visit,' he had been about to write.
He grips the pen a little harder. That’s not a weird thing to write. He wants his friend to visit. That’s normal.
Even as an emperor, he’s allowed to want some things. Allowed to ask for them. It’s normal. His thoughts spin, and he sits there and stares down at the paper as words flood his mind. He wants to say everything. Nothing. He doesn't know.
And then, his attendant opens the door to his room almost silently. There’s a moment of silence where Ling sees him look curiously at the bed, then visibly jump upon seeing him, awake and at his desk. Ling almost drops his pen in reactive surprise, and they both stare at each other for a moment as his poor servant Bai attempts to collect himself.
“I’m so sorry your Imperial Majesty,” Bai manages after a few seconds of recovery, bowing deeply. He seems horrified, “I did not realise that you had already awoken.”
“It’s fine,” says Ling.
“I would certainly have lit the fire earlier for you if I knew you were awake, your Imperial Majesty.”
“No problem,” says Ling.
“Shall I start it for you now, your Imperial Majesty?”
Ling looks down at the half-finished letter. “No,” he decides, “I will dress, and get an early start on the day.” He flips the page over so that it's face down, and he stands. He’ll finish it later.
Two months later, in his morning package, he gets a letter that is very different from the others that cross his desk on a daily basis. The envelope is worn, and stained in one corner by what looks like (and Ling hopes is) coffee. On the front is his name, the first and last names reversed... “Ling Yao”, without any formal title, written in a neat, tight font. Ling knows that the unusual slant on the letters is because a left hand wrote it.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” says Hua, the man in charge of the mail system in and out of the palace, “We were not sure what to do with this letter. The address to you is written incorrectly, however, it came bearing the seal of an official of Amestris. I deeply apologize for the inconvenience, but we thought it best to present this to you so that you might determine its validity.”
Ling flips the envelope over. Sure enough, the wax on the back is stamped deep with the seal of an Amestrian State Alchemist, even though there’s no way Edward Elric should be using such a seal any longer. Suddenly excited, he blurts, “It’s fine, Hua.”
The man steps back out of his line of sight and Ling stabs his letter opener into the corner of the envelope, not bothering to be careful in his haste to get to what must surely be a reply to the letter he had sent to Edward.
He is not disappointed. It’s four sheets of paper, double sided.
Dear Emperor Shifty,
Al is not taller than me, and you probably aren’t anymore, either!!!!!
A face is drawn next to the sentence, a caricature of what is clearly Ed, sticking out his tongue. Ling brings up a hand to cover the wide smile that breaks on his face from the view of the many people in his office.
Pretty rude of you to go more than a year without speaking to me and then to ask that as your first question, so I guess being an “Emperor” hasn’t taught you any manners.
Then again, I guess you can say whatever you want now, right? How does it work, being an Emperor? They can’t kick you out, can they? They’ve got you for life? Can you quit or is it until-death-do-you-and-the-job-part?
The next section is written in a slightly different colour of ink. Ling wonders if it was written at a different time.
To answer your questions: things are going okay. I’m living with Winry and Al and Granny Pinako in Resembool, but Al and I are rebuilding our old house by hand. Doing it without alchemy is the worst; it’s so slow. I don’t know how regular people manage to live - if anyone is capable of learning alchemy or alkahestry, why wouldn’t they? It would make their life infinitely easier… even if you have to draw a circle every time, that’s a lot faster than using a shovel.
Because most people aren’t smart enough, thinks Ling, but this would obviously not occur to Edward.
It’s funny that you happened to send me this letter. We’ve been thinking about doing some travelling. Al is interested in coming to Xing to maybe learn alkahestry. We’re not sure if I’d be able to do it or not - since I can’t access my gate I can’t do alchemy, but I don’t know if the process is the same using the dragon’s pulse. If you know, or can ask someone, insight would be greatly appreciated.
...Not sure if anyone else in the whole freaking world actually lacks a gate though, so there probably won’t be any easy answers.
Probably not, Ed will probably have to try it to know.
Anyway, for now I’m planning to head west. We have a couple of leads on info there and it makes sense for Al and I to split up to cover more ground. It might actually work perfect timing wise though, because if they finish that railway in the next couple of years, I can take it all the way there and avoid dying because my automail got too hot in the desert.
I guess some other big news… feels weird to write this but… probably gonna ask Winry to marry me.
The final few words of the sentence are messy, as if written in a hurry, but Ling’s eyes stop on them. Nausea lurches up his throat, as sudden as the sentence that had caused it.
“Get out,” he blurts.
For a moment, there’s absolute silence in the room, despite the fact there are eight other people in it. Then, tentatively, Hua says, “Your Imperi --”
“Get out!” Ling shouts this time, “Everyone out of the room!”
They scatter, everyone except for Lan Fan who remains shadowed directly behind the throne. He won’t be able to get her to leave, he knows, so he says nothing, just waits until the rest of the room has cleared out and the door has shut, before pressing his hand over his eyes so that he can pretend to himself that he isn’t about to cry.
The sentence and the feeling it had brought had hit him as a complete surprise.
Obviously he’d known that Edward and Winry had feelings for each other - it had been more than obvious in the way they’d interacted - but somehow it had always seemed like something that… that would probably never happen. Edward wouldn’t be able to settle down, would he? He loves to travel. Hates being cooped up in one spot for longer than a couple of weeks.
So marrying a woman and just… living in Resembool for the rest of his life? That’s -- how could he --
Ling feels his breath catch in his throat, suddenly feeling like he’s in agony. The tears come to his itchy eyes against his will, gathering against his palm before dripping out the sides and running down his face.
“My Lord,” says Lan Fan, almost too quietly to hear. She is the only one in the entire damn service to use such an informal title with him, and even then it’s still one of reverence. “Are you okay?”
He knows if he doesn’t respond she won’t ask again. She’s wonderful like that, discreet, quiet, everything a king needs from his personal protection. But right now he doesn’t want protection. He wants a friend.
“No,” he croaks.
“What is it?” she asks, rounding his dais. She kneels at his feet, putting both hands atop a knee. It’s her way of embracing him while still showing deference. One hand is heavier and colder than the other and his heart aches.
“Edward Elric is getting married,” he says. He feels her forehead come to rest against his shin.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” she says. She doesn’t ask why he’s upset about that fact. She probably doesn’t need or want to. But she cares deeply about him, and he knows that regardless of the reasoning she must not like to see him like this.
Who would?
An Emperor? Crying? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Of course, if she says yes, you’re invited, Edward had written after that. But I expect lavish gifts from the Emperor of Xing. Actually, if you have it, I’d appreciate a large quantity of Palladium and/or Platinum. I had an idea for an alchemic exchange that I might get Al to do when he gets back. If it works, I’ll share the results with Xing.
There’s a winking Ed face drawn there next to the last sentence. It’s smudged, and Ling realises belatedly that it’s because the paper is wet.