Archive of Our Own

It is not perhaps with the sanest of minds that Hohenheim had decided his itinerary for the day.
Nor had it been a week ago when he had chased that Wayfarer Corp team leader for information on their latest project. It could be argued that he had discarded his decision making skills entirely when drawing up a plan to enter the House of Spiders, and then proceeded to execute it without any input from the others.
Now here Hohenheim stands, alone and defenseless, in the middle of a gory exhibition. With the Maestro who had been immediately alerted to his arrival and now greets him with all the enthusiasm of a surprised, but not displeased, curator.
“This gallery has received a sudden uptick of uninvited guests as of late. You are…” Callisto contemplates, resting a hand against his chin. He takes in Hohenheim’s appearance; it is with purpose that Hohenheim still dons his AEDD E.G.O Suit, though the effectiveness of his warning signal is yet to be discovered. “That frail staff from Yoshihide’s workplace.”
Hohenheim says, “I am the chief researcher of the LCE Team. You should do well to address me by full title and be aware of my position. As a recognised member of the Ring, you should know the failings of such a limited assessment."
“That’s a rather inelegant way of putting things, but bold nonetheless. Do not worry. I heard you loud and clear our first meeting,” Callisto mur-murs. “You have the advantage of me. What is your name?"
“Call me Hohenheim,” he says through a sigh.
“And so, my visitor,” Callisto replies, markedly not addressing Hohenheim by his name. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Hohenheim heaves another sigh, this one directed to himself.
Callisto prompts again. “It is nothing so uncouth as revenge that draws you here, I hope.”
Ignoring his words, Hohenheim’s attention drifts from one artwork to another. They all blur together before his darting eyes, before his gaze comes to rest on another piece. The lauded magnum opus. Callisto’s blade gleams a vivid sanguine under the fluorescent, sterile lights.
“I’m on vacation,” Hohenheim says finally.
Just last week did Marton raise his E.G.O attunement to unsafe levels, and now Hohenheim is here to do… what? Can it even be labelled a suicide mission when he had wandered in here without a guarantee? ‘Sacrifice’ by definition requires something or someone to save. Like Marton had done. For him. Perhaps when they retrieve Hohenheim’s carcass from being modelled into Corporist art they’d label the cause of death as a profoundly stupid venture into insanity. This time, he has not even research to hide behind.
“A sabbatical,” he corrects. “I’ve developed a sudden appreciation for the arts.”
The maestro stands tall before him. He towers above Hohenheim, in fact, a man who is of average height. At eye level, Hohenheim would be left staring at the shimmering tunic that wraps around Callisto’s body. He has to crane his neck to make eye contact. Enough to crick it and cause it a piddling hurt.
“That’s wonderful to hear!” Callisto exclaims, instead of skewering Hohenheim where he stands. “I, Callisto, shall take you through a step by step guide through this gallery. Do you have any subjects you are interested in?”
Hohenheim curls his lips into the barest of smiles. “I’d like what the artist thinks best.”
He has to presume it is the default itinerary that Callisto guides him through. He is aware that this is a private gallery, with dedicated timeslots saved for aspiring students or curious critics. Those with the etiquette to reserve in advance.
When Callisto talks him through the thesis of deconstruction through disassembled tendons, and the crux of reinvention with venules sewn together in a new whole, Hohenheim notices. The art, of course, in center display. That and despite the gallery’s obvious lack of traffic, there is not a single speck of dust to be found.
Hohenheim hums in ambiguous agreement with each new explanation, listening closely even as his mind strays. He comprehends the topics easily—nevermind that this exhibition was essentially artisanal carnage—that he ponders if his time employed in Lobotomy Corporation had inveigled him towards gore. This is why he could never place faith in the game of numbers; what was the statistical probability a researcher like him would ever be charmed into disaster by the Ring?
Non-zero, apparently.
Hohenheim might just throw up. Right between the exhibit of an anatomically accurate human model constructed out of fused skulls and the installation art composed of way too many skinned carcasses immobilized through the collective thorax à la rotisserie. It all looks the same anyway, drained of their blood that they are, so why not throw in a little extra color? Wouldn’t acidic bile make a pleasing accent?
“It is a fascinating exhibition you have,” Hohenheim flatly says, when the tour routes back round to the entrance.
“I have heard your acknowledgement,” Callisto says back. More empty words to meet his.
“Beautiful, artistic.” Hohenheim scoffs. “I could use those meaningless adjectives. But that’s not what you’re asking for, is it?”
At his will, sparks of electricity dance around his suit’s nails. Hohenheim extends a finger, and the current travels a short distance to where Callisto stands. For no longer than a second, Callisto’s exposed organs gleam a cyanic blue. The gallery lights flicker, dimming those characteristics reds and whites. For no briefer than this connection between them, Hohenheim dyes Callisto in his colors.
Hohenheim’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. That conductive finger of his twitches, in time with the convulsions of Callisto’s organs. The remaining static build-up flickers around the latter’s metal plates before dissipating in a faltering phosphorescence.
When the electricity cedes, Hohenheim clears his throat. He maintains an aloof air, all too aware of the short distance between them two.
Callisto laughs. “Performance art. I like it.”
The hinges of Callisto’s metal jaw hang open in a shadow of a smile. No longer do the mechanics of his body allow his lips to curl up, but still the emotions are evident. Excitement, delight. A cruel satisfaction that makes Hohenheim’s back shiver, for a reason no less mundane than like recognizing like.
“Now, I do have to ask, are there any critiques you have for my gallery?” Callisto asks. “I’d like to hear you say it aloud.”
Hohenheim tenses his jaw. “Said out of obligation or honesty?”
Callisto tilts his head slightly, mouth still agape. His presumed smile seems to widen.
“Honest it is,” Hohenheim huffs. “The exhibits are tiresome. There’s too much red.” He looks up—the unpigmented ceiling is overwhelmingly pristine. The trait shared with the walls and the floor and every tiled square covering the gallery from one end to the other. Clean. A faux-perfect juxtaposition between that and the carefully propped up art labelled ‘corpus’. Grime against whiting, he would call it, or: “I’d prefer to see another colour to break up the monotony.”
Bones that are, by right of birth, naturally white have been dyed an oxidised brown. Even when they’ve been contained in their clinical, tailored conditions since first extraction, there is no stopping the touch of time on the body.
There is no odour that plagues the air. Yet when Hohenheim sniffs, it is metallic blood that meets his nostrils. It could be argued, in layman terms, that the very purpose of art is to draw from perspective. That the sight of such gore, in absence of other stimuli, being able to elicit a response from memory is a sign of art achieving its goal of connecting with its beholder—ah, who is he kidding, it’s honed nonpareil. All of it, down to thought-through marrow. It’s all disgusting.
“These three exhibits,” he points with his finger, “utilise the same technique of capturing the exact moment of death. By tensing the musculature and weaving them together with the most delicate of blood vessel, you preserve the ephemeron into something permanent.”
Callisto nods along, following where Hohenheim gestures to.
“While technically impressive, there is no substance. To the average consumer, the aesthetics have no distinction upon recollection. To the more learned connoisseur, it appears as though the artist is wallowing in treaded waters.”
Hohenheim closes his eyes, and pretends he doesn’t see.
“I can’t tell what you were thinking when you were making it.”
Again, he opens his eyes, and pretends that it is not an echoing emptiness that is pounding in his chest.
“And yet… it moves me still.”
vHohenheim's voice quietens, losing steam. His tongue rests heavy, as if it were choking him.
It“The easiest rectification is through expanding the spectrum of your colours,” he continues, even as he deflects, “though it’s clear that the delicate weaving of your medium is where your strength lies.”
“Pray tell, forget the posturing,” Callisto asks, painfully earnest. “What do you have in mind? I will do my best to meet your expectations.”
It is no secret that Callisto was damned to obscurity in the spider’s web. Even if one isn’t in the know, a single look at his deserted gallery would leave no other interpretation.
If Hohenheim had chosen this instant to lose his mind, he would have remarked how it isn’t a surprise at all the Maestro had lost his standing. When was it that inspiration had last struck? Has he no other end but to keep recreating what was once praised?
The crux of the problem remains that Hohenheim’s mind, a genius though it was, had far beyond shattered many years prior. Here he stands, a hypocrite.
A lesson posited; those photocopy museum slips, so easily discarded after a visit, are the discourse of art. They purposefully transpose the visitor into the role of the critic, to pique their fleeting thoughts—that little spark that springs forth the very moment art takes hold of the reactionary mind.
Held in his hypothetical hands, under a lined ‘what are your thoughts’ section, Hohenheim pens his thoughts: how derivative.
Therein lies the other issue: should an artist seek to carve their names into marble, they must make their presence within their piece known. They must grow beyond the simple arm wielding the brush.
And Hohenheim, primed as the consumer—with a terrible lucidness, he’d see faces in skeletons. Each jut of bone climbs higher into a spiral that grafts onto another, set grasping against each other. A corporeal synecdoche. But in such placement, a whole that lives in isolation to the vascular world—it exists to never, ever take hold of him.
If only he could, he would shatter sharpened bones upon his teeth. It is only by consuming that he then could topple that chiselled marble, and so too would the artist’s name transpose onto his corpus. Finally, he would finally take hold of that cruellest of ‘potentialities’ that must reside in him; to live, to persist.
At the heart of the gallery, in an exhibit invisible to the naked eye, there it lies: a burdensome duty called remembrance.
Phlegm rests clammy on his tongue. By right, him being the picture of so-so health, he knows it to be a sickly, translucent white. Still, he wonders if upon spitting it out, he’d be greeted with choleric black and pallid green, or an anemic red that’d fit right in with the rest of the artwork.
Instead, Hohenheim swallows, and says, “A rather personal sentiment, but I vastly prefer other colours to red.”
“Such as?” Callisto prompts.
Hohenheim already knows his answer before he has a need to think about it. “An incandescent, beautiful teal.”
“Hm.” Callisto inclines his head towards him. “That is a wondrous colour indeed,” he says, and they both act, for a brief second, that such a hue would have any place within this gallery to begin with.
There is a moment of silence they observe, before time resumes once more. Callisto walks with him all the way to the exit, resuming the role of the gracious, amiable curator.
“I look forward to your next visit.”
Hohenheim, for his part, keeps mum until he reaches the edge of the Corridor. Set to exit to the Backstreets and return to the unchanging life of research the company had planned out for him.
He turns towards Callisto, a bitter smile fixed on his face.
“Thank you for this enlightening exhibition, Maestro Callisto.” For all the sarcasm evident on his tongue, the genuinity within his callous expression is impossible to hide. “I shall never visit again.” Hohenheim laughs. His shoulders shake. “You’d better wish for that, or I’ll soon earn a name as your biggest detractor.”
“So be it, dear Hohenheim. We will take your criticism into account for the improvement of this gallery.” Callisto bows towards him, a hand extended. “Though that future you suggest does not sound as terrible as you would make it. My art’s appearance in your eyes… Without doubt, it is beautiful.”
Callisto rises back upright. Through the holes of his hat, his face gleams a twinkling silver. His hands rest by his waist, and by the weight of each distinct curved line his amalgamated body bears, Hohenheim’s eyes are naturally drawn upward. Again; to that transparent display of organs that keep contracting. Fettered as it is, if Hohenheim dares to stare long enough, he could feel the matching rhythm beating away in his body.
It makes Hohenheim’s chest burn.
Art abhors a vacuum.
In every carved detail, there is intent. From the veins entwined into the arteries, the museum carves a distinct line, down to the sinew that is woven and the blood that is drawn.
After however many years toiling after his craft, the decades spent sacrificing his body and others’ same for the so-called artful macabre, what does the artist cry for, if not to be heard?
As much as this artist would lambast camaraderie as a loathsome matter, that is what Hohenheim derives from it.
In every artistic movement that Callisto reproduces in his creations, no matter they be Fauvism or minimalism or structuralism alike, Hohenheim reads a story. For all that is objectively beautiful in its technique, it tells so futilely ugly.
Perhaps that is where meaning lies.
“I have an offer,” Callisto proposes, an extension made with his grace. “It is rare to find someone who resonates with my art as you have. A mind like yours… I’ll preserve it perfectly. I could complete you.”
“Using my brain, you think?” Hohenheim muses. “The cerebrum’s awfully fragile, even more than these frail bones you disparaged.”
“It’d be a new medium for me, especially from a body not my own. But not to worry. I’d treat it with care, and enough lack of it to elevate you into artistry,” Callisto says, attention rapt. “My new masterpiece.”
Unsaid, implied: a culmination of your life, a pictorialization of mine.
“You have great knowledge of humans, and a greater understanding of anatomy,” Hohenheim states. “Outside of this momentary flicker, you’d have a constant source of inspiration as long as there is life in the City.” He clenches his teeth. A minor thrum of adrenaline chances his tongue: “You are far from my favorite artist, and I find your art, by and large, style over substance.”
“Right now, it is those words that speak to my art,” Callisto croons. “It doesn’t change that at this moment, you are the one who moves my hands.”
Callisto reaches out. A mellifluent clacking emanates from the joints of his fingers when they, one by one, bend to meet the curve of Hohenheim’s chin. Sharp as each digit is, there is an unmistakable tenderness that Callisto uses to incline Hohenheim’s head up. Those pinprick-like sensations is what he feels most when Callisto scrutinizes him like some delicacy, attention focused on each stiff swallow Hohenheim forces down. As if he is enthralled by his goosebumps, the cold sweat that beads on Hohenheim’s skin and slides down to meet where Callisto holds him. Callisto’s hand slowly but surely moves downwards, examining his material with a gentleness that hurts, and soon his entire palm covers Hohenheim’s neck.
Hohenheim’s heartbeat flutters fast. Experimentally, Callisto’s grip tightens.
Something stifling grows in Hohenheim’s throat. Something more than the frisson of a bird clipped. Without hesitation, he steps away. He pulls Callisto’s grasp off of him, and shakes his head. “I’d rather stay unfinished.”
He looks towards Tibia resting in Callisto’s grip, his eyes methodically trailing down every notch. Once more, his gaze lifts to Callisto’s face, at his eyes shrouded under his wide-brimmed hat. And at last, he turns away, back towards the Backstreets beyond the Corridor.
Callisto sighs. “A shame. I will not ask again.” So easily said, as much a dejected acquiescence as it is a promise to discard the prospect of choice if next they meet.
“Though you do make me curious. One last question for the maestro, as a parting gift.” Hohenheim asks, “What do you feel about mediocrity?”
“Unneeded in art,” Callisto answers, with full sincerity.
Hohenheim scoffs. He crosses one foot out the door, refusing to look back.
“That is precisely why I could never become your art in the first place.”

Do you pledge to

keep making art?

Hohenheim returns to the LCE offices that very evening, his hair still wet from the rain that soaked him upon leaving the House of Spiders.
He opens his drawer. Sees a research proposal peeking out from the middle, never to be fulfilled with the names he had first penned upon it. He pulls out two blank sheets of paper from the drawer below.
On one, he writes the same request he had two times prior. On the other, a resignation letter.
In hindsight, on the hypothetical survey form of Corporism’s banner, maybe he’d write an additional word: ‘overcorporealized’. He is rather tired of this hysterical fascination of the bleeding body, after all.
If the corpus, the vessel for the subject ‘I’ and the object ‘I’, is a medium for art to be created, then it was time he made use of his own brush and make tableau vivant:
a portrait manifest of the mind.