#AND THIS 11 YEAR OLD GOES //PUT ME THROUGH PAINFUL SURGERY AND REHABILITATION FOR TWO LIMBS AT THE SAME TIME//

[fullmetall]

for y’all who aren’t familiar w fma: ed joined the military when he was like. 12 btw

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The Rehabilitation of Ava Bekker (11/12)

Over the course of a week, Ava thinks less about Connor and more about Robin. Robin is real, and she’s had this sudden revelation that her perception of Connor wasn’t. Not really. He wasn’t a person but an object, a feeling, a taste of what could have been and what never was. In all reality, Connor was an idea. But Robin is real and concrete, and feels like home when she opens her arms every night for Ava to sleep with her as opposed to in her own bed. There’s nothing else and no one else. The two of them are the only real people in the world, and it’s worth the boredom and homesickness that tears little pieces from her one after another.

But still, she thinks about Connor because she can’t stop. Every night, she sees him in her nightmares, and every day, she can’t help staring at his photo and remembering his hands on her. It felt like something, even if it didn’t give her what Robin’s soft touch does. She misses it, and the safety it brought with it, even as she comes to understand how much better this is than whatever she lived with before.

She cooks with Robin. They tend the farm. Life is good, but God, she aches more often than she doesn’t, and the homesickness comes and goes. But she breathes through it every time, as much as she possibly can.

Lying in bed, tired but alive, she busies herself tracing careful fingers up and down Robin’s arm. Goosebumps rise in her wake. She’s had them herself, but it’s different to see them on another person, to feel them, to know they’re because of her. Robin shivers. And Ava wants to see if she gets the same reaction with her lips, if it’s more intense, even. She’s nervous.

Life is better and worse here. She misses her old life, but there are parts of this new one that she lives for now. Surgery meant the world to her. Being a doctor was all that mattered to her. But now, she has Robin and the cows and the harsh overhead sun. She has the warm quilts draped around their bodies. She has something, at the very least, which she can pull the last dregs of life from in hopes of a fresh dose of serotonin in her brain to make her feel less like a zombie.

“I’m so glad I met you,” she says.

Robin hums and her fingers are gentle running through Ava’s hair. They’re close. They’re together. Ava wants to kiss her. She doesn’t. Instead she rests, reveling in the skin to skin touch and trying to recall a single moment she felt this content with Connor, with anyone. As far as she reaches, she can’t find anything. Not a single memory.

“Thank you for everything. For taking me in.”

She lifts her head from the pillow and suddenly Robin’s kissing her. Gentle. Her hand cradling Ava’s head, steadying her and making her feel held. For lack of a better term, she melts. Everything is Robin. Just Robin, real and concrete and not just Ava’s fragmented perception, but a human being. And it’s killing her slowly.

“I love you,” she says when Robin pulls away. 

The distance between them grows. They’re not touching anymore, and now Robin is staring at her like she’s grown another head. It aches, it burns, it hurts. She wants to sink into the earth and never exist again.

“We’ve known each other less than a month.”

“I know, but…”

But it doesn’t feel like less than a month. But Ava has never felt  like this before. But there’s something real here worth clinging to. But. 

Robin draws her legs up to her chest, protective, like she’s afraid. And why would she be afraid? Ava would never hurt her, would never- would never-

She would never hurt Connor, either.

She looks at her own hands and hates them with the same ferocity she hates the emptiness enveloping her. Killing her. She should be dead on that floor, bleeding out and pale and lifeless like Connor became. He didn’t deserve that. It should have been her, and she shouldn’t be here, and she can’t fucking breathe but Robin is still staring at her.

“Ava, do you know what love is?”

“Yes,” she says. She reaches out, wants touch again, but Robin refuses. “I- Love is- I feel it, with you. It’s different than before, I love you.”

“Did you love Connor Rhodes?”

The words are a sword. Cold. Sharp. Piercing. Ava’s chest is closing in on itself. She’s collapsing. She’s dying. “I…”

“I recognized you on the news at my friend’s house. I called my dad.”

Ava is falling apart now. She thought she had something. She thought she deserved something. Now it’s too late, and she doesn’t know how much time she has before someone shows up to arrest her. Maybe gun her down. Put her out of her misery like a sick dog who’s had too many painful years already, although this would be out of hate rather than love.

“How much time do I have?”

But Robin reaches for her, slow and careful. “I wanted to know what he thought about you. I didn’t tell anyone you’re here.”

Her hand, warm, on Ava’s shoulder. 

“I don’t think you know enough about what love is to say that you love me. But I- Ava, I don’t think you’d hurt me.”

“How do you know?”

Her hand on Ava’s cheek now. Steady and safe. Gentle. 

“Would you?”

Ava shakes her head. “Never.”

Robin smiles, strokes the angle of her cheekbone. But then she pulls away and buries herself beneath the covers again. Empty, cold space between them. Ava won’t bother trying to fill it, and slips out of bed to return to her own. Her own which she has only slept in a couple of times, and feels oversized, empty, when she slips into it.

Of course, the isolation brings back the nightmares in full force. Connor’s body, empty of life, dying in front of her. That sound again. The choking again. His blood on her hands and her clothes. And now, Robin beside him, with accusation in her eyes as she chokes and coughs and wheezes. Both of them die. And it’s her fault, and although she drops to her knees to try giving Robin CPR, try helping her, it’s far too late. She’s alone. It’s her own fault. She did this to herself. To them.

She wakes up in a cold sweat. Early morning, just before the rise of the sun. And she knows, the way she always knew how to perform a surgery, she knows that her peace is over.

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