#roy's continual struggle with expressing anything but rage | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fullmetalscullyy · 4 years ago

Text

uncertainty

summary: Riza sustains her Promised Day injuries at the same time Roy is pinned by Pride in the transmutation circle

an: tldr i was consumed by this idea all evening. the narrator, probably: this is the darkest timeline

this was originally supposed to be “riza gets her promised day injuries AFTER roy goes blind” but it evolved, grew arms and legs, then ran away from me. but. i am still v invested in that original idea so. why not play about w and write the same thing/something similar twice right? yolo

also. its been like. 4 and a half hours of work so if u see any mistakes no u didn’t <3

shoutout to those who left encouragement/interest in this idea and to meg for spurring the bradley being Bad idea along <333

rating: t | words: 3262 | tags: graphic depictions of violence, angst, angst with a happy ending, promised day, canon divergence, royai

read on ao3

“Let him go.”

Riza orders the Fuhrer to step down, to remove his swords from the Colonel’s hands, to stop piercing his flesh. Her gun is trained on him easily and Riza discovers she has no qualms about shooting the man in charge of the country. She will not hesitate to do so if he so much as breathes in the wrong way.

After his appearance, and his assault on the Colonel, Riza had watched the tips of Bradley’s swords pierce through the Colonel’s palms, had seen them bury themselves in the gaps in the stone beneath her commanding officer. With her heart in her throat, Riza had inhaled sharply and drawn her weapon without pause, training it on Bradley’s head.

Riza’s voice didn’t betray her raging emotions within. For years – over a decade – she’d kept them under wraps for a variety of reasons. And even now, faced with this horrifying scenario, she did not let them surface. As much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t do it again. Not after her confrontation with Lust. She’d made a promise to the Colonel, and separately, in private, to Roy, not to.

“You were always an exemplary soldier, Lieutenant Hawkeye, following every order without question or complaint,” Bradley remarks. His spine straightens but does not remove his swords from the ground beneath the Colonel’s palms. He does not stop from looming over Mustang but turns his head to look at her. It’s reminiscent of a shark swimming right towards its prey, going for the kill, but Riza does not let that analogy get to her. She strengthens her grip on her pistol instead. “What has changed now?”

He’s toying with her. If she argued against any of his orders while his hostage, he’d have her killed.

A memory suddenly pops into her mind.

“You could always court martial me, sir.”

Riza’s eyes flick to quickly look down at the Colonel, lying pinned, helpless, and watching her anxiously on the floor. Mustang never would, but she misses the days where she could argue lightly against his orders and do what she felt was right and just by him and others she cared about and supported.

The doctor with the gold tooth writhes in agony above the Colonel, Bradley, and Pride, trying to call out for help and salvation, but the homunculi ignore him. Unfortunately, Riza has to as well, for she has seen how quick Bradley is and has felt the terror and harshness of Selim’s shadows, so cannot let herself slip for a second. If she does, it may cost her life. Or the Colonel’s.

“Simply doing my duty to this country and it’s citizens, sir,” she replies evenly. She holds no remorse for her actions. Not after the Fuhrer took her hostage for so long and the team discovered he was part of a scheme to try and kill everybody.

“Your duties involve following my orders, Lieutenant.”

Bradley is reminding her of her position as he trains his single eye upon her, but Riza tries her best to ignore it. It’s unnerving how piercing his gaze is, but she holds steady. She will not give into him and his intimidation.

“I am the highest authority to you. At ease, soldier.” He bites out the words, forcing them out as he tries to keep a lid on his fury.

“Not this time, sir.” She will not blindly follow his orders. Images of the desert flash inside Riza’s mind. Not again.

It angers him, but before he can react properly, Pride quite possibly saves her hide.

“We don’t have time for this, Wrath,” Pride sneers suddenly. He glares at Riza and she stares back, unflinching. She’s an expert at this by now after so many months under their scrutiny. She will not fall now at the final hurdle.

In response to Pride, Bradley angles his head towards him, looking away from her, and Riza feels herself relax momentarily. She does not turn complacent. Far for it. She’s too wired and on edge with the Colonel pinned in a transmutation circle underneath a homunculus’ feet to be close to any semblance of calm. But with Bradley’s gaze no longer pinning her, it’s a welcome reprieve. Her shoulders relax and lower a fraction.

“Enough of this conversation,” Pride continues. “We’ve got more important things to do.”

“Of course.” Bradley sounds so calm that it causes the knot inside Riza’s stomach to tighten. It’s the same knot that’s filled with unease and uncertainty regarding their current situation. It trembles and contracts as she stabilises herself and recentres her weapon so it’s ready to make a kill shot if need be.

“We have more important things to do,” Bradley repeats quietly to himself. His voice is without emotion, completely different from the rage-tinged tone he’d used just moments ago. Under his moustache, Riza sees a small smirk. One corner of his mouth quirks upwards.

In a flash, he rips the swords out of the Colonel’s palms, causing him to cry out in pain. They must have snagged on his skin because his loud gasp was laced with anguish.

Riza fires unflinchingly as Bradley charges at her.

“Lieutenant!” The Colonel’s cry is a gasp. She knows he fears for her, but she cannot focus on that right now.

Her finger does not let up on the trigger and it is relentless. She doesn’t have time to pay attention to it, but behind Bradley, Pride’s shadows dance around the room and she cannot fathom why. If she could spare enough of her concentration and tear it away from the charging homunculus, she’d realise the shadows were protecting Pride’s main body from her bullets flying behind the Fuhrer.

Bradley is too fast. He ducks underneath her weapon and outstretched arms, swinging around to her back.

Before she can blink, Riza can feel the kiss of cold metal on her throat.

Shit.

Her eyes widen, and so does the Colonel’s. His teeth are gritted together as he’s trapped in the transmutation circle, but his eyes meet hers immediately. It’s interesting to note how her own gaze zoned in on his during her sudden moment of helplessness, but Riza knows exactly why. She does not deny it to her heart.

“You’re a pest,” Bradley hisses in her ear.

The metal moves easily against her skin, like a knife moving through butter, and she hears the Colonel yell. As her body crumples to the floor he calls to her. He barks her rank, pleading with her to stay with him and focus on him. Her head hits the ground hard, and she’s dazed for a second. Her vision turns grey, and she cannot focus on anything, but still hears the Colonel calling out to her.

“Hawkeye!”

The others try to surge forward to intervene, but Pride’s shadows lash out and keep them at bay, pushing them backwards towards the outer wall. The homunculus forces them away from the two on the ground, preventing them from helping.

This is it.

She’s lying on the floor, bleeding out, with no one to assist her, and the Colonel is going to be forced to open the portal against his will.

She was supposed to watch his back and protect him. She was supposed to make sure no harm came to the Colonel so he could forge ahead and set in motion the plans he’d voiced to her over a decade ago. This was not how this was supposed to happen. Things changed in nanosecond and Riza’s brain has whiplash from trying to keep up.

“Do it, Pride.” Bradley’s anger is back under control. The bout of rage he’d experienced while advancing on her is gone. Or, it is back underneath his mask, hidden out of sight but simmering just below the surface.

Riza’s eyes meet the Colonel’s – no, Roy’s. His eyes are wide and panicked. She watches him strain against the dark tendrils holding him in place, but his struggle is futile and probably harming him. Through blurring vision she can see the colour red around his hands and up his forearm. The restraints must be cutting into his skin. Her mouth opens, asking him to remain still and not hurt himself. To not harm himself trying to escape to try and help her.

Impossible, she thinks to herself. Roy Mustang would tear the world apart for you. And you, him.

“Colonel –!” She wants to cry out to him, but with her injury it’s just a croak. A strangled, garbled call that doesn’t sound much like anything.

“Lieutenant!”

The homunculi ignore Roy’s cry, filled with such helplessness and anxiety. His expression is one of horror as their predicament hits him full force. His fight abates slightly, it stutters as his chest heaves with panicked breaths while realisation settles upon both their bones simultaneously.

They’re stuck and completely at the mercy of their enemies, with no hope of escape. No hope at all.

“It’s a shame to waste a soul,” Pride remarks quietly, sounding as though he’s talking to himself as he stares at the struggling doctor. His eyes lower lazily and focus on Riza. “When we have a perfectly good one right there.”

“Do it, Pride,” Bradley repeats, snapping this time. His mask is slipping.

Pride’s gaze lingers on her for a fraction of a second longer before turning back to look at the Colonel. His expression is unbothered by what he’s about to do. The complete opposite to the terror Riza can feel building within her.

You’re going to die, and he’s going to be forced through the gate.

“What will be taken from you Colonel, I wonder?”

Roy’s pained scream fills the air and infiltrates the gaps between her ribs. The sound cuts through her painfully, rattling her bones and constricting around her heart. She was supposed to prevent something like this from happening, but she didn’t.

Her vision fades and blurs even more intensely than before as the blue light from the human transmutation turns almost white. She cannot breathe. She cannot think.

The light winks out, leaving nothingness. The doctor falls to the ground, rolling slightly from the impact but Riza can no longer focus enough to determine what has happened to him.

You’re dying and he’s gone.

There was still a chance… A toll must be paid to pass through the gate so he may return alive, able to press on forward and achieve their goals and beat the bastards who did this to them today…

But it will be without her.

As Riza lies there, in a pool of her own blood, hearing her comrades call desperately out to her, a tear escapes from her lids and runs down her temple. She’s breaking her promise to the Colonel, to Roy. She’s leaving him, but it’s against her will, just like he had been forced through the gate against his.

She doesn’t want to leave him.

Images are flashing through his mind as he travels to the gate. It’s too much to bear inside his head. It feels like information is being stuffed into his brain far too quickly, and there’s too much. It’s overflowing. He sees snippets of his life, his past, and perhaps, what is yet to come?

Then there’s Riza, lying on the ground, clutching at her neck and lying in a pool of her own blood, but Roy blinks and she’s gone.

“Riza,” he gasps, the memory of what was done to her penetrating the fog inside his brain. It consumes him and his eyes squeeze closed. It does nothing though, it’s all he can see. It’s seared into his brain. He cannot escape the image of her dying, and him unable to help her.

The white room he suddenly finds himself in is featureless and unforgiving in its brightness. It hurts his eyes. Roy is reeling from arriving in the sudden and jarring expanse of white nothingness he finds himself in after passing through the gate, but he still squints and looks around frantically, looking for Riza, for some familiarity, momentarily forgetting himself as he’s overcome with his grief.

“What happened to her?” He demands an answer from the white being with the chilling smile. “Where is she?”

His questions go unanswered. When Roy starts to advance on it, the being simply smiles at him. After he takes about five steps, something secures around his aching wrist and jerks him backwards. Looking frantically down, wondering what is halting his approach, he realises with horror that these… things look similar to what Pride had used to restrained him before within the circle.

Not again.

“Is she okay?” His frantic cries are ignored.

Roy fights the tiny hands but there is no use. He cannot best them and it's worthless to try, but he continues to shout, beg, and pressure the smiling being to tell him what happened to Riza. To ask if she’s all right and going to live.

He has to. He needs to know.

Roy is drawn backwards, through a towering doorway, and into an inky black existence. Just like before, the last image he sees before everything goes black is chills him to his core. That white thing is still smiling at him in the distance, and for the first time since arriving there, Roy’s hoarse voice falters.

He will not receive any answers. He can yell until he is blue in the face, but no one will tell him if she’s okay, if she’s alive, or what happened to her. Terror was a constant companion after seeing Bradley’s sword slice through Riza’s flesh, but now panic was threating to overcome him once again.

Roy cannot lose her. He can’t.

The doors slam with a finality, leaving him in complete darkness that Roy gets the feeling he will never be able to escape from.

He’s blind.

The last thing he saw was Truth’s unnerving smile, and before that it was Riza on the floor, bleeding out and dying in front of him. That image was the last thing he saw in this world and it’s burned into his mind forever. It will not leave him be in his sudden pitch-black world.

He hates it. Abhors it. He wants to escape it but can’t. It’s with him always. A companion that lays out all of his failings before him. Roy chokes when he thinks about how she was left lying there, alone, critically injured, and he did nothing, could do nothing, to help or ease her pain.

Father tosses him around like a ragdoll, but Roy is still trying to adjust to being blind. He’s blinking furiously, hoping it will all turn out to be a horrible nightmare, but it’s futile. No matter how many times he blinks he cannot shift that image of her.

Is she even still alive?

He will not accept anything less.

“Sir?”

His head whips up and swings around frantically in its search. Roy thinks he may have been mistaken but… It is entirely possible his mind is playing a cruel trick on him, but he would also recognise her voice anywhere.

There’s a pressure on his forearm that commandeers his attention.

“Roy?”

The voice sounds scratchy. It catches as it pronounces the ‘y’ in his name, but Roy is filled instantly with recognition. The muscles of his face go slack as he stares wide eyed, yet unseeing, at the person he knows is in front of him.

Relief explodes within him. Muscles all over his body quiver and shake with it, and Roy cannot help himself. Every consequence, and everyone else, be damned. He surges forwards and upwards to his knees to wrap his arms – albeit clumsily – around Riza Hawkeye’s shoulders tightly.

He doesn’t even need her to confirm it. He knows it’s her by the smell of her shampoo and the faint smell of her perfume. It’s barely there underneath the smell of blood and the day’s grime, but it’s there, with him. It anchors Roy completely and tears surge into his eyelids.

“You’re alive,” he whispers.

Hands clutch desperately at his back. “I’m alive,” she confirms quietly.

Roy doesn’t care. He buries his face in the crook of her neck, and as an afterthought he realises he was lucky. It was not her injured side his face happened upon. Underneath his lips her skin is smooth and unmarked by the homunculi’s cruelty.

Roy inhales deeply and his eyes squeeze tightly closed as he savours the feeling of holding her, of knowing she is alive.

The last time he saw her, she was bleeding out. Dying. Chance, fate, or whoever, were smiling upon him today though, and Roy is grateful. He will take it. Roy doesn’t question her survival, just takes it at face value because that’s all he’s ever wanted in this last traumatic hour.

She’s alive.

Riza is alive.

His worst fear, his nightmare, had not come to pass after all, when it had seemed so likely before and he’d been left floundering, not knowing what the outcome would be.

The ‘how’ can come later. A tear escapes from beneath his closed lids and Roy simply rejoices in that fact while they have a quiet moment together. Another one follows suit when one of her hands lifts to rest upon the back of his head and pats it twice. It seems like a simple, friendly gesture, but he can feel the way the fingers of her other hand tighten their pressure upon his back. She’s still clinging to him and does not let up.

She’s alive. He can’t see her, but he can feel her touch and hear her breath.

“Are you okay?”

He wants to laugh. The joy bubbles up inside his chest when he hears the concern laced within her voice, simply because he is so happy to hear it.

Even if he cannot see her, this is enough for now.

“Are you?” He has no time to focus on himself. Not when the last time he saw her, she was so near death.

“Mei patched me up,” Riza explains, sounding hoarse.

Roy vows that owes that young alchemist a life debt. He will work until his dying breath to ensure it is paid for saving Riza’s life.

He pulls her in hurriedly for another embrace. It affirms that she is really there and breathing, and alive.

What he’s about to say is risky, but he’s in the mood for it. After what they’d just been through, Roy feeds the impulse because he needs her to know what he’s truly thinking.

Just in case.

When it came to Riza Hawkeye, his decisions always did have the tendency to be ruled by his heart, and while Riza still involved her heart completely, she was always the more level-headed and reasonable one, given their circumstances as subordinate and commanding officer.

Still, the situation called for it.

“I love you.” It’s whispered against the skin of her neck. Roy knows Riza hears him because her body stiffens with surprise.

Riza doesn’t respond until after a beat or two. It’s a simple nod, but it’s enough to know she acknowledges what he’s said. Roy doesn’t expect her to reply. They both know where they stand with one another and have done for years. The first time the sentiment had been expressed was after he returned from the academy, so this is not a shock revelation. It’s a means of comfort. A reassurance. And Roy feels it needs to be said. It’s also been a while since he’d last said those words to her, but right now it feels like it’s been too long. Another wrong in his book, but one he could correct immediately.

“I love you too, Roy.”

He blinks, surprised that she has said it back to him among the company of so many people, but they must not be paying attention to them.

Roy tightens his arms around her.

She’s alive, and she knows how he feels about her.

She knows.

They both do.

She’s okay.

That one thought eases all of his fears and leaves him feeling light, like he’s floating on air, so he buries his face into the crook of her neck once more to find an anchor.

#royai #royai fanfic #royai fic #royai oneshot #emma writes

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cakeandpi · 6 years ago

Text

Turn Left (also on AO3)

Words: 5k

Warnings: Angst

Summary: It's a simple undercover covert mission - infiltrate the Light and don't die. Except it's always the simple missions that go wrong.

Notes: Written for @yjficexchange’s 2018 mini big bang event! Also for @lizziegoneastray

Roy had forgotten just how fast Kaldur could run. Already he's got a stitch in his side, and the footsteps he's chasing are fading alarmingly fast. His heart thunders with the fear that not only not going to catch up, he's going to lose Kaldur altogether. He can't lose Kaldur. Not when he spent so long thinking, believing, Kaldur had turned on them all. That he, of all people, had believed that... It was a testament to Kaldur's acting skills, or to Roy's quickness to judge. Maybe a bit of both. Regardless, he can't let Kaldur return to playing evil. He couldn't hardly handle it before, when he believed the lie Kaldur was feeding them all. He really can't handle it now, knowing the truth. He won't be able to fight Kaldur, let alone help keep up the lie. His heart's already in tatters from it all, from the knowledge that if he can't catch up and let him know the mission's over, that it's time to come home to Roy... He can't take it. He can't stand the thought of having to watch Kaldur act the part, of having to continue to pretend to betray everyone.

"Kaldur!" He shouts. At his thoughts, at the man somewhere in front of him, he's not sure. The echoes of his shout die out before the tunnel opens up into a proper cave and Roy falters to a halt, managing to not quite stumble over his own feet though its a near thing. Kaldur's on the far side of the cave from him, blocking the far exit, standing upright and hardly breathing hard. He doesn't look like he'd just been in a battle and then fled said battle rather than join forces with the team. Roy, on the other hand, has to stop himself from bracing himself against his knees to catch his breath. Okay, that was a stupidly short run to be this out of breath from. Maybe Nightwing had had a point that Roy wasn't in his best shape anymore. That's the only thing he'll give Nightwing.

"Kaldur." Roy says again after a few seconds. Kaldur just looks at him silently, out of place and wrong in that Manta armor. Roy's hands itch to tear it off of him, as if seeing Kaldur back in the uniform he ought to be wearing would make the wrongness of these past months disappear. And he's only a few feet away, just a few dozen steps and Roy could touch him, and yet his feet are rooted in place. Kaldur isn't moving either, looking at him with a blank stare that Roy can't read. Roy's never not been able to read Kaldur's expressions. Always, always he's managed to pick up on whether he's hiding amusement, or irritation, or tiredness, or if he's just calm. This, though. This is just pure blankness and something twists in the pit of Roy's stomach. Something is very wrong here. He hasn't been successful as a solo act by ignoring that feeling.

But maybe, just maybe, that feeling's wrong. Kaldur's in deep cover, after all, and Nightwing hadn't been able to get the message out that he's pulling the plug on this mission. Maybe that's why he can't read Kaldur right now - Kaldur thinks he can't afford that. Thinks that Roy hasn't realized Kaldur hasn't actually changed allegiances. Of course Kaldur would play it safe and not break cover, not if there was a chance that Nightwing would need him to continue. So Roy straightens and holds out the hand that's not gripping his bow. "Kaldur." His voice is weird and echo-y against the rough stone walls. "Where are you going? Mission's over, you can come home now."

And - okay, okay, his feeling must be wrong. Has to be. Because Kaldur's face softens and, stars, Roy's missed that affectionate little turn of his mouth, and the water bearers he's been holding are holstered, and Kaldur's moving towards him.

Roy takes a step. Another. Then Kaldur is there, the distance between them gone, and Roy turns his head into the hand that cups his face, closing his eyes. Kaldur's breath is warm against his cheek, and he swallows thickly against a tight knot of emotions as he feels soft lips press a kiss press against his temple. "I missed you." Roy murmurs into Kaldur's palm, dropping his bow to pull Kaldur into a tight embrace. It had been too long since he'd held Kaldur at all. After this disaster of a mission, he's not sure he'll ever let go again.

"I know." Kaldur murmurs. "And... I'm sorry." Roy's heart squeezes, as does his fingers on Kaldur's back. He wonders if Kaldur can feel that through the unforgiving armor.

"Yeah, you better be, not after not telling me what you were doing," Roy says gruffly. But there's no bite to his words, not for the moment, because despite Kaldur being dressed all wrong and having run from him, for the moment things are right. Better than right. "Come on, the others are probably waiting for us." Or need us to rescue them, he doesn't say. Kaldur already knew that the team was facing an uphill battle against the temporarily united forces of the Light and the Reach. The likelihood of that battle having ended in anything but a route for the team was... unlikely.

He doesn't want to let go. He wants to savor this, holding Kaldur like this, even with the damned armor. But all too soon he's making himself let go and step out of Kaldur's arms. To bend over to grab his bow. A hand touches his shoulder as he straightens, and he smiles lopsidedly at Kaldur. "Going to have to be creative; I've already run through most of my quiver." Not that he didn't have any other tricks, as Kaldur well knew, but his arrows were his favorite. "But after that, what do you say that we go home? Skip the mission reports and all that shit for a day."

It won't work, it never has in the past, even when their relationship had been star-bright new and every spare moment had been spent making out when they weren't busy being naked together. Kaldur's lips tip into a tiny smile all the same. "Roy," he starts, then pauses, the smile disappearing. Roy feels his heartbeat speed up, anxiety blooming in his chest. He glances quickly over his shoulder, back the way he'd come; had they been snuck up on?

But there's no one there, at least no one that he can see. He turns back, then gasps for air as his vision turns white with sudden, searing pain.

Later, he remembers hands catching him, guiding his fall so he didn't just collapse on the floor. Later, he remembers the hand softly running through his hair. But that's later.

For now, he just struggles to remember how to breath.

"I am going home." Kaldur says low in Roy's ear, once Roy manages to suck in a weak breath again. For a moment, it's just words, meaningless and only noise. Then the meaning filters through despite the lack of oxygen, and no. No. No, Kaldur couldn't... wouldn't... Roy sucks in another weak breath, wheezing, and he can feel tears prickle at his eyes. He blinks them back and glares up at Kaldur. From the unimpressed sneer on Kaldur's face, it's far from his best effort.

Nightwing was wrong. Nightwing was wrong, and Roy can feel his world tilting sideways. Can feel his heart twisting and breaking and shattering. He's been betrayed, and Kaldur played him like a fiddle. Maybe Kaldur knew Roy had genuinely believed Kaldur had betrayed them - is betraying them? He can't keep it straight in his head. When had the lie become truth?

That doesn't matter. What matters is that he's the only person who knows where Kaldur is right now. What matters is that he's alone, he has almost no weapons, he can barely breath, and Kaldur's attacked him.

That expression doesn't belong on Kaldur's face. He's seen Kaldur annoyed before, and disappointed, and aggravated, and often as not Roy was the cause of those feelings. But Kaldur's never before looked like he's disgusted with Roy. It's wrong, and if Roy could just breathe he'd be trying to punch that expression off his face. He tries to anyway, and Kaldur just smacks his hand away like it was nothing.

"Fuck you," Roy manages weakly. He wants to say more, wants to rage at him for playing dirty, because fuck Kaldur for using his feelings just to sucker punch him like that. Fuck him for breaking his heart. Fuck himself for letting his guard down to get his heart broken.

Kaldur stands and plucks Roy's bow from his grip, tossing it away from them. Not that Roy's in any real state to use it just now, but at least it would have been something, even without his arrows.

"Don't give me that look, like something's broken, Arrow." Roy snarls and throws another punch at Kaldur - just as weak and poorly aimed, but at least Kaldur takes a step back this time. Even so, it's lazy and just for show, as Roy's fist doesn't even make it to where Kaldur had been standing. It's been years since those words had any control over him, but for a heart-stopping second, Roy's terrified of losing time again. Of waking up and not knowing where he is, or why the sun's changed positions. And then anger surges forward, pure and bright and furious and consuming, and his breathing might be weak and he might feel like there's a hole where his spine should be, but he's alive and how dare Kaldur. There's lines, and there's lines, and that was beyond crossing it.

"Fuck you," Roy says again, trying and failing to sound impressive. Kaldur snorts then grabs Roy's chin with bruising force and yanks hard, forcing Roy to look up at him.

"You're very lucky," Kaldur said, almost musingly, as if this were some thought exercise and not the world turned on it's side because Kaldur always, always pulls his punches. Always. Except not anymore, apparently, literally or figuratively. Roy tries to jerk his head out of his hold but Kaldur's grip tightens like a vice. "Very lucky, that there's no specific orders concerning you. Otherwise... " The musing tone leaves Kaldur's voice, and it turns as flat as the look in his eyes. A bit of cold metal presses against Roy's neck, and with a start he realizes Kaldur's drawn one of his water bearers. A icy chill runs down his spine; Roy's in trouble. "Otherwise this would be a lot messier."

—

The door crashes open as Artemis stalks through. Wally follows at a more sedate pace and closes their apartment door gently. "Babe," Wally doesn't know what he's going to say. Doesn't know what he can say, really, to get through Artemis's anger. Because, if he's being honest, he's just as angry, though he's trying to not let it make his decisions right now. Mostly he's succeeding.

"What the fuck was Dick thinking? If he was thinking? Sending him out like that, without any backup, and not telling any of us?" Artemis fumes, stalking a path back and forth across the living room. Wally watches her for a few passes, to make sure she's not about to hurt herself punching the wall or something, before making his way around to the kitchen without getting in her path. Grabbing the box of protein bars off the top of the fridge, he hears a soft thump from the other room.

"Babe, the furniture did nothing wrong."

"It was just a pillow."

"Still." Wally says, just for the sake of saying it. He hears another thump, and comes out of the kitchen to watch Artemis continue to bombard the living room wall with couch pillows. As long as it stays pillows, and not her fists, he wouldn't need to interfere. "We could go back to the Cave, I'm sure Superboy would welcome a sparring match. Or Wonder Girl." He offers, after she depletes the pillow supply twice.

Artemis snorts, but doesn't make any move to make good on his suggestion. "I just... fuck, Wally. I had really thought... really thought... And Dick knew, and let all of us think that he..." Artemis once again stomps over to grab the pillows she had thrown, and throws them back at the couch. Wally winces as one of them bounces off wrong, and moves to snatch it before it can break a lamp. "Sorry." She huffs, not sounding the least bit so. Wally shrugs and tucks the pillow under his arm.

"It's all good, babe. It's replaceable." It feels weird, to talk so lightly about their possessions, not when Artemis works so hard to make sure the two of them didn't go over budget between rent, going to school, and keeping themselves fed. Not when if one of them is breaking their stuff, it's usually himself in a belated burst of speed once he's realized he's running late for something.

Artemis just sighs and crosses her arms, hugging herself. "You seem very calm about all of this," she says. Wally can feel his eyebrows try to climb off his forehead.

"I'm not." It's his turn to snort when Artemis shoots him a disbelieving glance. "Trust me, I'm as mad at Dick as you are. He shouldn't have done what he did, and his excuses about it being to dangerous to tell anyone are just that - excuses, and piss-poor ones at that. I just got you to do the yelling for me for the moment."

He can see the whites of her knuckles for a moment as her fingers tighten, and for a second he thinks her anger's shifted to him. Sometimes that's easier, to argue over something neither of them really care about - like the ugly as sin wallpaper in the kitchen - than to feel powerlessly mad. This isn't one of those moments, though. Instead of arguing with him, Artemis just shakes her head and all but throws herself onto the couch. "Okay, so we both agree that Dick's plan was dumb as fuck. And that the next time he starts keeping secrets like that, we're going to remind him of this and just how it all blew up in his face."

Wally nods and sits down next to her, bumping their knees together. "Though, I don't think whatever's up with Kaldur is Dick's fault."

"No, that's just Kaldur's. Or M'gann's." Artemis covers her face with her hands. "This is so fucked up, Wally. Dick lied to all of us and sent Kaldur undercover, and now he's either actually changed sides for real, or M'gann left him open to being brainwashed into changing sides, or both, and the only thing keeping the Reach from taking over right now is the fucking Light."

Wally grimaces. The debriefing after that joke of a battle had been... rough. A full third of their beta team members were missing, and most everyone else was scattered to hell and back. Only a few managed to straggle in to the temporary 'base' Nightwing had set up after Mount Justice had been destroyed. Of them, only Wally was uninjured, thanks to a rapid healing ability that had finally started kicking in the past year. Everyone else had been sporting numerous bruises and cuts. Considering how quickly the mission had turned to all hell once the Light and Reach realized their two groups weren't the only ones present, it was pretty impressive that there weren't more injuries. That small, if unimportant, non-victory had lasted until Roy had arrived, looking like he'd fought Killer Croc with his bare fists.

From what Roy had to tell them, that would have been preferable. Having to fight the brainwashed League again would have been preferable. Having to redo high school for ten years would have been preferable.

And then M'gann had dropped that bomb on them - one that Wally would really rather not think about. That she was telepathic was one thing. That she'd use her powers like that - had been using her powers like that - to wreck villains minds'... and then had wrecked Kaldur's.

He couldn't wrap his head around M'gann, of all people, doing that. Which was dumb; he knew she was more than the bubbly 'human with green skin' girl she had pretended to be when she had first arrived on Earth. It had been years since she'd retreated to that act, and Wally knew she was as dangerous as any of them, had seen her prove it over and over and over. It still felt like a betrayal of all he knew about M'gann.

But she said she had. And that, after what she'd done, Kaldur shouldn't have even been walking again yet, let alone be able to do that to Roy.

Artemis's voice draws him out of his thoughts. "I can't sit this out, Wally. Can't just go to school and let the rest of them shoulder this."

Wally grimaces and stuffs a protein bar in his mouth rather than say the first thing that comes to mind. Because it's horrifying. He knows how Artemis's mind works. She's been quiet too long to not be planning something. He steals a glance at her face. She's staring straight ahead, not looking at him, chin resting on her hands and Wally feels his chest tighten. That's a sure sign he's not going to like whatever she's going to say. Which means it's not going to be a 'let's go beat up bad guys as a team' plan. He needs time to think up arguments against it. But by the time he finishes chewing and swallows, he can't think of anything that's not some form of 'I'm not letting you', and honestly he'd rather end this day still being her boyfriend than being dumped on his ass.

"So, what's the plan?" He says instead, trying to hide his trepidation. He suspects he's failed at her wry smile.

"You aren't going to like it," she says, as if Wally couldn't figure that out for himself, before sketching out what she's come up with while she threw pillows at the wall. And she's right, he doesn't like any of it.

He wants to tell her no. To tell her that there's other plans that they could make, ones that don't have her doing this solo. Ones that don't put her neck-deep in a pit of vipers without any way out. Instead he just leans over and kisses her briefly on the mouth. "Let's go talk to Zatanna then."

—

If it was up to her, she'd tell Dick about the plan last, out of spite at his leaving them in the dark for so long about Kaldur's undercover mission. But Wally's right, in that her cover story is going to need to be beyond solid, so Dick gets brought in on her plan first. She takes consolation in that, having worked through her plan with Wally over the course of several days, Dick can't find any weak point in it and thus change things.

Zatanna's her second stop.

This is her third. Artemis stares at the door ahead of her, considers skipping this part for probably the millionth time. Then knocks anyway. She's about to pull out her lockpick set when Roy finally answers. "What is it?" He asks gruffly, door barely ajar.

"I've got a plan to get Kaldur back." Artemis states bluntly, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets. "Let me in?" She doesn't wait for an answer, just walks forward as if of course Roy's going to open the door for her. It works, or her words startled him enough that she gets away with it without an argument about her just barging in. "Woah. You've actually cleaned for once."

"Shut up." Roy grumbles, closing the door behind her. "I don't have a whole lot to do right now."

"If only Wally did the same after breaking an arm." It was somewhat surreal to not see any stray beer cans around Roy's place. The only other time she'd seen his place this clean was right before an apartment inspection. And even then there'd still been dust.

"You going to tell me why you're here instead of going after Kaldur anytime soon?" That brings back Artemis back to the present, instead of calculating if she still owes Roy enough favors that could result in another emergency apartment cleaning session. She flops down on Roy's couch, wincing as the springs squeak.

"Because I'm waiting for my cover story to be firmly in place. And for Zatanna to finish cooking up my disguise." At Roy's raised eyebrow, Artemis explains, "I'm going to go undercover as an up-and-coming shadow that wants to make a name for herself. More specifically, I'll be Zatanna's long-ignored, non-magical half-sister who wants to kick her ass because 'our' dad only cared about her. But in my thirst for vengeance, I forgot that she has magic, so I need someone to teach me to deal with that. Which is why I'll be going to Manta and trading on my reputation as a skilled hunter for lessons in magical butt-kicking. And sometime during that, I get close to Kaldur, then knock him out or restrain him, and bring him back. Then M'gann undoes whatever was done to him."

"That is your plan?"

Artemis smile thinly, having expected Roy's incredulity. "I've done more complicated stuff on less." And she has, though the stakes haven't been as high.

"Also I don't think M'gann should be in Kaldur's head again."

"You got another idea on how to help him? Because I sure as hell don't know any other telepaths that aren't villains or are otherwise untrustworthy."

"And you trust M'gann?" She can hear the silent 'still'. She ignores it.

"As much as any of us." Artemis shrugs. Roy hadn't trusted her at first simply because of who she was related to, and that was before Roy and Kaldur had been dating. Of course Roy would distrust M'gann over this. "Sometimes people make really bad judgement calls. And anyway, yelling at her isn't going to do much good right now, especially if it makes her freeze up and unable to actually fix what she did." She keeps her voice light and airy, knowing it would aggravate Roy. "But that's not what I came here to discuss."

"No, really?" Roy asks sarcastically, sitting down on the far side of the couch and rubbing a hand over the hard cast on his right arm. "What do you need, then?"

Artemis leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. "I need a favor. I need to know what Kaldur did to you. Why you dropped your guard."

Roy sucks in a breath and he looks away. Artemis frowns; just how much of a tender spot had she touched? "I would think that it'd be obvious, what he did."

"I'm not talking about your physical injuries, Roy. I've seen Kaldur spar, and sparred with him. I know what he's capable of physically, and I don't expect that to have changed. What I want to know is how low of emotional blows we're talking about here." When Roy doesn't answer, Artemis asks, "Did he threaten Lian?"

"No." Roy answers sharply. "No, I don't think he knows about her. None of you guys did until after that farce of a battle."

"Then what?" Artemis bites her tongue to keep from sighing when Roy stands up and walks away. She knew before coming here that it was a long-shot that Roy would actually tell her. Roy rarely opened up at the best of times, and that was with people he was close to. And while things had improved between them since they'd first met, calling her and Roy 'close' was like calling Batman emotive compared to a rock. "I'm not asking out of some perverse sense of curiosity, Roy. If I'm going to bring Kaldur home, to you and to Lian and all of us, I need to know."

Roy's shoulders stiffen then fall, and Artemis knows she's broken through whatever was holding Roy back when he turns to look at her.

"He... he was himself. For a little while. It was him, and then... Then he knocked me out, one hit. I wasn't expecting it. Then he called me 'broken arrow', and. Well. Then this." He gestures at his injuries. "He said I was lucky that there weren't orders for me... That'd it'd be messier otherwise."

Artemis feels her breath catch. Stars, that was fighting nasty, to use that phrase on Roy. That had been a bad, bad week, having to hunt down Roy after fighting off the mind-controlled League, to talk him down from his plan of disappearing forever because he felt like a fraud. To talk him into letting M'gann or Martian Manhunter in his mind to remove the code phrases that had been used to control him.

Then the rest of Roy's words filter through, and her eyes widen. "Orders?"

"He didn't elaborate. I wasn't in a position to ask." He rubs his jaw, where his skin has mostly healed, only a few ugly scabs left from ice being forcibly torn from his skin. "I don't know enough of Black Manta to guess what the orders might have been if he'd had any."

"No, that's... Fuck."

"What?" Roy's voice is sharp.

Artemis holds up her hands placatingly. "Before I say anything, there wasn't anything else that stood out from Kaldur's actions? That was all?"

"... Yeah."

"Then... do you think... that was a call for help? A signal, maybe?" Artemis hates herself for saying the words. It's guesswork and she might as well be shooting in the dark with an unfamiliar bow. "I mean, from what we observed with Conner, that's... out of place, to be that talkative. Unless, maybe he was told to say things like that?" They'd had to see how Conner acted while the mind control was 'on', to make sure they could fool Luthor when she, M'gann, and Conner had gone to Santa Prisca. Not that it had fooled Luthor in the end, but it had revealed Conner was talkative compared to when he was being controlled.

"I... don't know." Roy swallows. "Probably dangerous to assume that."

"Right." Artemis nods, then stands up. "Hey. Thanks."

"Heh." Roy snorts and waves off the hand she holds out. "Just promise me that you'll get him out of there."

"Archer's honor." She says with an off-hand salute before seeing herself out. Outside, the air is cool and brisk. Artemis inhales deeply, trying to push down a nervousness that had sprung up with the idea that there was enough left of Kaldur to fight back. If so, if some bit of Kaldur was still aware... everything would be a thousand times more dangerous. She'd have to be extremely careful to not emulate any of her habits, once she had managed to get onto Manta's submarine. If some part of Kaldur was still there, could still break free... those habits would be a dead giveaway. He would notice. And then it would become a question of if Kaldur could keep secrets from himself.

Better to not let it get to that point. Artemis draws in another breath, savoring the smell of rain in the air, before setting off. Zatanna and Dick should be just about done with the finishing touches on Artemis's new identity by now. Soon enough it would be time for to 'fight' Zatanna, lose, and then flee and 'seriously injure' a fake, conjured up copy of herself on the way. With any luck, it would be enough that people would believe the hero Artemis was out of the picture for a while, and enough that Black Manta would believe her story.

It would have to be enough. There wouldn't be any second chances to this.

—

Kaldur frowns at the mirror, at the face that stares back at him. It blinks when he blinks, makes the same faces as he does. But at the same time, its like staring at someone just mimicking him. Making a mockery of him. If he could just smash through the glass and grab the other him, then maybe he could feel in control of himself again.

But neither science nor mystic arts work like that, so Kaldur has to settle for gripping the sink with white knuckled strength.

Not for the first time, he wordlessly curses the plan - his plan - that sent him down here to avenge Tula. He'd known then that this would be no easy 'in and out' mission to finish within a single night. He would have to throw all of himself into it to survive it, and he had done just that. Well enough to still be breathing. Not so well that Nightwing had given him the signal to withdraw. Just well enough to alienate all of his friends and teammates, to the point that M'gann had attacked him. Just poor enough that neither the Light nor the Reach had been toppled, like the plan had called for, and instead the two groups were vying for control of Earth while his friends and teammates hid away.

And.

And -

There's something else. Something he can't quite remember, can't quite reach. He thinks he remembers seeing Roy, out of breath and telling him to come home. He can remember red hair, and an echoing voice, but its not clear like it should be. And after...

And after, he's back on Manta's submarine, giving a speech to Manta's men. He can remember that clear enough. The bile that had spewed from his mouth, about victories and a step towards building a better future. Anything in between just... isn't there. All he has are observations. His body had been tired and sore, and the water levels in his waterpack low, as if he'd been fighting.

He doesn't remember fighting, not after his father had given the signal to withdraw. He remembers getting separated on the way.

He also has a few arrows, the wood damaged and split.

That's all.

That he's been unable to regain any memory of what happened since worries him. That there's been zero media sightings of Red Arrow since then... It all leads to a whirling pit in his stomach.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at himself. Too long, though. There’s a small, soft beeping coming from the next room, a reminder that he has a meeting with his father scheduled in the next half hour. He straightens, gives the mirror one last glance - not a seam on his clothes out of place, and his hair’s too short for mussed to even be a fever dream - and leaves to silence the beeping. The memory gap he can deal with later. For now he has a report to put together on a potential team to take out some former allies in the Light and the Reach.

#yjficexchange #young justice #kaldur'ahm #aqualad #roy harper #red arrow #artemis crock #koy #cake and writing tag

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hawkeyebabe · 7 years ago

Text

The Maelstrom

The Maelstrom Rating: T (language) Summary: If Roy and Riza had a proper fight, what might it look like? AO3

"It isn't about the method, Lieutenant, it's about getting it done."

"That is the falsest thing I have ever heard you say."

Her words were staccato and sharp. There were deep lines in her forehead from the way her brow was turned down. He rarely witnessed her in such a way, and maybe somewhere inside it could have been sobering to him, but it wasn't.

His anger was there too.

"Well maybe you haven't been listening hard enough," he bit off, turning his head away from her to look down the alley. The bricks on each side of the walls were wet with the floating drizzle overhead. The streetlamp several meters away bounced off the scattered puddles pooled in the flaws of the concrete.

"Maybe you haven't been listening at all," she said, her volume raising but her voice keeping it's solidity. He scoffed and took a step forward, deciding to completely ignore her, an action he was wholly unfamiliar with but one he was truly desiring, until her hand caught his shoulder like a wrench and she pulled him back. The grip she had was strong and the pull was not gentle, and he felt a prick of fury from the feeling of being yanked. His foot had to catch him as he was forced round. His head whipped down to glare at her, and he was met with an equally dangerous look.

"You're being absolutely blind, Colonel, and I won't let you do this."

"Let me do this?" He lifted a hand to seize hers and he thrust it off of him. Strange: that space didn't feel empty before she grabbed him, but it did now that he pushed her away. "I'm the one calling the shots, since you've seemed to forget, and you're coming incredibly close of being in my way."

He turned away again, hoping that if he could not see her he would not feel her, but her voice was just as snaring as anything.

"Colonel, you're being tasteless and brazen, and the only one standing in your way is y-"

"No!" he shouted, pivoting around again with speed like wind. Her mouth closed in surprise, but she did not flinch. He felt the muscles in his face twitch.

"I'm moving forward," he continued in a voice that was attempting to be controlled. "And I never would have thought to say this, but you are pulling me back in this moment. Why can't you see what I'm trying to do?"

"I see you playing games with a very, very grey line, sir, and that's not who we were ever supposed to be. We were never supposed to be the grey line soldiers, finding balance between rule and result - that's...that's who we're trying to fight against, Colonel! Since day one!"

"Lieutenant, this isn't a grey area! He's a bad guy, it's black and white, can really you deny that?" Something like true exasperation broiled around his torso, hot and sparking. It felt unpredictable. Unsafe.

What was happening, the tumult and distance between them, was entirely uncommon. It was unwelcome and sour. She was his anchor and her absence in support made him feel loose, whipping like a flag strapped onto a pole by only one rope; why can't you see with my eyes?

"Yes of course he is!" she raised back. "But you are not!"

"You are confusing the meaning, Hawkeye! Me bringing him to justice is not the same as him mauling lives! I can't even believe your logic on this, goddammit, why are you making this so goddamn complicated?! This can be quick, and it will benefit us both! Benefit Amestris! Is that so terrible to you?!"

He was struggling to keep his volume under control.

It was true, he held a reputation in not only Central, but throughout the country; the Flame Alchemist had the temper of a wildfire. Unforgiving and brash.

But never….never with her.

"Colonel!" she pleaded. He saw her eyes searching his own and he hated it. "Tell me that you truly believe what you are trying to do is right!"

"IT IS." The voice that came out of his mouth was a kind of quiet bellow, a snarl held back by a chain. It seemed to faze her, in a way that was only unique to her. The way her eyebrows flinched together when he spoke, the miniscule and minute way her head shook, how her chin moved back an inch in reaction.

"Sir…" She couldn't continue the thought. He supposed she didn't have the words. That the disappointment she felt towards him was muting. It drove him to the brink of rage. A bundle of kindling with a match hovering above.

"Lieutenant, we're going now. And if you're not coming along, then go home."

"I won't."

It teetered on the edge, soaking in the heat of his burning temper.

"You will leave, Lieutenant," he growled icily, annunciating each syllable, his eyes lit, "that is an order!"

"I absolutely refuse."

He inhaled rapidly and so the match fell.

"You are with me," he finally yelled, his booming voice echoing off the damp, dark walls. "Or you are not! Which is it?!"

The face he knew to be calm - comforting, even - fell victim to shock, then a fury of its own, and the emotion in her features was suddenly not so subtle.

"Colonel, stop being so full of yourself and listen to me!" She cut off the last part of the sentence sharply, straining her voice as she yelled. A short lock of hair hung loose from her clip, slightly curled and wet from the rain. The tops of her shoulders were dark with it. "If you kill that man, you become your own enemy!"

"Quit rearranging the words to make this story a tragedy, Hawkeye! He doesn't deserve life, you damn well know that, do not try and tell me otherwise!"

"He deserves a fair trial, sir!"

"Where he will be put to death, anyway!"

"Then let him be sentenced!"

"I kill Hudson," he began as he felt the veins in his neck bulge with the pressure of his rage. It had been some time since he last yelled in such volume, and in such primal anger. When had he last been so truly enraged?

She was not listening. She was not understanding. And he desperately, desperately needed her to understand.

But she wasn't going to.

Regardless. It didn't matter. He would do it anyway.

The desperation of it all was converted to pure madness, and this was translated to him in only anger, and he delved further away from the root of their upheaval and inched closer to a civilized sort of mania.

"I kill Hudson," he continued ferally, "I get promoted, and we are THIS much closer! Isn't that what we've always wanted?! Isn't it?! You - me - it's what we've planned! Tell me it isn't!"

"Tell me what you'd be doing isn't killing for power!"

It seemed like the night was woven with their shouts, that the walls and the wet ground both sponged up their yells while simultaneously thrusting against them so they reverberated off one another.

"Bullshit!"

She scoffed disdainfully and bit her lip, a fresh wave of rage rippling over her face before she fiercely looked away to stare at the sidewall of the alley, not able to stop shaking her head as she processed her disbelief.

"Goddamnit, Hawkeye, can't you see?!" She shook her head even more and looked up to the black sky, as though it held the answer for her. The drizzle of rain had since turned to a light downpour. "Look at me!" he demanded. "Look at me!"

Her eyes then bore into his, intense and dark and so expressive he almost regretted the demand. They felt like ice.

"This alchemist," he implored, "has killed civilians. Innocent people. He's captured them, and he's stripped them of their humanity because he himself has none. Somebody has to stop him, and they asked me to do it."

"They asked you," she reminded lowly, "not ordered, but asked, because otherwise it would be illegal as a demand, for you to kill him. Sir."

"So I will."

"You'll be compromising who you sought out to be in the first place!" she retaliated, her normally stoic face almost unrecognizable. His chest rose angrily.

"But he deserves to die! How am I doing wrong?!"

"Colonel!" He saw her become as desperate as he. "I was inspired to join the ranks of the military by a man who once told me of a future for Amestris that was built with the foundation of fairness and goodness! Is this fair, and is this good, Colonel?!"

"I," he practically screamed, "Get! Promoted! And we are that much closer to our goal! Our goal! I'm not just doing this for me!"

Something flashed in her eyes and she took a few steps forward, touching his shoulder in a way that outlied both of their inflictions. Like when you taste something sweet in a meal cooked with salt, it did not seem to belong.

He could barely stand to look at her anymore. He thought perhaps it was because she was so infuriating, or, he thought, perhaps it was because she was right. He flushed the thought down the storm drain with the rest of the sewage.

"You can still get promoted, Colonel," she said to him quietly, fervently, "but not like this."

He grabbed her hand again and moved to shove it off his shoulder, an attest that he had no interest in her plea, but before he could release it she wrenched out of his grip on her own. The gentleness in her features disappeared into the night and was replaced with a hardness unlike her.

"Stop grabbing me."

In response, blinded by their shouts, blinded by his own mind and by her dangerous glare, not thinking because he was filled with hotness and a brutal anger, he launched his hand out and caught her wrist like a trapper, so quick he surprised even himself, and he tugged her forward without so much of a whisper of gentleness. He didn't know if it was the rain, or the night, or maybe, if he was lucky, a nearby cat, but he thought he heard a quiet inhale of alarm when he did so.

He ignored it as he continued snarling in a quiet and lethal way.

"Stop making me empty promises, soldier, because guess where we are?"

She said nothing, but something unrecognizable, though zealous nonetheless, lined her features. She was so close to him now that he couldn't understand why she was still so difficult to read. Short, quick breaths pumped out from her nostrils. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingertips. It was heavy and powerful and enraged. Or maybe that was his own.

"We're in hell," he continued threateningly. His heart was ripping out of his chest. "I think we have been for some time. And I don't see you following me."

She was tough, strong, and the arm in his hand pulled impressively as she attempted to wring out of his grasp, but he was tougher and he was stronger and he only tightened his grip on her. He pulled her even closer in the struggle between them, her pulling him towards her and him retaliating forcefully so she tripped forward, and his voice dropped to nothing more than a terrible whisper.

"So get in my shadow," he muttered, "or take out your gun and shoot me. Pick one. Because I am finished with this conversation."

The next movement she made was swifter than a storm. Her free hand fled to her back and returned with agility with a sleek handgun, a handgun whose presence he normally greeted with fondness and pride, and he glanced down at the weapon and up at her face and saw a ferocity in it, filling every line and crease with absolute and complete resentment, and the rage inside him was briefly replaced with shock.

His eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise, and for a moment, his heart dropped to his feet. She's going to do it...

The gun came barreling towards him with speed he couldn't register and the butt end of it cracked into his right temple with an incredible amount of strength, striking him so bluntly he for a moment doubted it had come from her. He automatically released his hold on her wrist and staggered backwards, clutching his head, feeling the pain radiate through his skull and down his spine. There was a slick warmth beneath his palm.

"Do not...grab me," she repeated, her voice now shaking openly. "And lose the part of you that is so naive I find you no more wise than a child."

Stunned, he unsteadily rose his head to stare at her. With the pulsing of his skull and the sheer curtain over his heart, his throat turned vile.

"How could you know how wise a child is supposed to be, Hawkeye?" he said quietly, matching the shake in her voice. "You never were one yourself." His hand felt glued to his temple, still lit in throbs. With his arm raised now, he felt the tremors in his muscles. He did not think they stemmed from the pain. "Don't kid yourself into thinking you're any more clever than me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You think I'm a fool, Lieutenant, but you're one too," he hissed. "You think you know what's good for me? You don't even know what's good for yourself! You-!" He somehow possessed the ability to stop his tongue. He forgo what he almost said, closing his mouth briefly before opening it again to move on. "You're self destructive and you are absolutely insane sometimes! Why do you think we got along so well? Because I am too! And I fucking know that, and I fucking recognize it! It's time you step down from your pedestal and do the same!"

"I appreciate the try, sir, but I'm the most level headed person on your side, and for good reason considering how vapidly you operate, so do us both a favor and refrain from letting your anger speak before your faulty logic!"

"Faulty-?!" he laughed humorlessly. The flesh that made up his body suddenly belonged to someone else, and the matter unique to his brain was suddenly turned to dust. He tasted the viciousness before the words left his tongue.

"Next time you find yourself in a bathroom," he couldn't stop himself, "take off your clothes, put a mirror to your back and tell me, tell me!" The words he'd managed to halt before came barreling out of him like thunder. "That you're not as vapid as me!"

She faltered. The look of thick anger dropped from her face. A heaviness burrowed in the center of his stomach.

They hadn't made a sound about what lay beneath her work shirt uniform in years.

He wanted her to shoot him then, in the leg or in the arm or in the head, anywhere.

"I thought we made a good team," she finally said quietly after some time, not even acknowledging his words, "because you wanted to achieve truth and goodness, and I did too. I thought perhaps we were compatible. Was I so wrong?"

The weight inside him felt like the entire strength of gravity was against him, and his legs felt hardly capable of keeping him standing. The man conversing with her did not seem to be Roy Mustang. But still he spoke using that man's voice.

"I think you've already answered your own question."

The gun was still at her side, shining with water. Her brown eyes were so dark he couldn't see their color anymore.

"I have answered my own question," she whispered. "I did a long time ago. You just haven't answered it yourself."

"You don't know me like you think you do," he replied cruelly. A drop of blood rolled down his face as his palm retreated from his head. He felt his face twitch as he fought to control himself. Something burned behind his eyes. "But I know you." The trail the blood left was hot, and it left him frozen. A breath shivered up through his chest. "And I beam at that."

She scoffed quietly and shook her head. Any remaining emotion in her face dissipated completely and she was left to look at him with something more empty, more hollow. It ripped him apart.

"What a foul thing to be proud of."

They stared at each other then, saying nothing and listening to the sounds of the increasing rain. He wondered if she could hear how irregular his lungs were behaving. Everything he'd said was false, and the most obtuse thing was that he knew it.

Nobody knew him, not even himself, save for her. The rain ran down his back.

"So shoot me," he whispered bitterly. The hand holding the gun hesitated, then it was lifted and brought to rest back in the holster beneath the back of her jacket. He frowned at the sound of it being put away.

"You're not going off the deep end with this one, sir," she explained dully. "Like I said before; it's a morally grey area. You're just...losing your sight. And it's hurtful to watch happen."

"I'm not the only broken one. Don't forget how shallow you've proven to see, too." He didn't know why he kept going, why he couldn't stop. Was he so weak?

"I won't."

Her response was quick, and he hadn't expected her to agree with him so readily. For a moment, it made him think of how open she was with herself, how honest she was, and perhaps he wasn't doing the same. It made him think he was being irrational.

Then he thought of how this man was likely going to kill again soon, and he thought about he'd reach a rank that would take him an additional five years otherwise, and he thought about how she seemed to stop arguing with him. His mouth remained closed as he gave her one last stare before experimentally turning on his foot and to take a few steps forward. When he failed to hear a refute or following footsteps, he continued his walk, forcing down a deep breath and lifting his chin in an attempt to suffocate the rising feelings of doubt, and the burning feelings of guilt.

"I could never forget."

He would have told himself 'no', if able. He would have demanded he continued abandoning that scene, to continue forward and to remain committed to his plan. But his feet stopped for him without his choice, forcing him to a dead halt. A few loose pebbles crunched beneath his shoes.

"I could never forget not only how shallow I saw, back then," she continued in a subdued way when he froze, speaking to his back. "But how blind I was."

His breath came to him quicker then, and his shoulders tensed as he felt his prior convictions dwindle.

"I'll be given a medal and an extra star for bringing him to justice." His voice barely held the hint of a quiver. He was suddenly unsure of who he was convincing.

"To death, you mean."

"Sometimes it's the same fucking thing."

It made him almost nauseous, that he couldn't win both the mission and her support.

It was handed to him so easily, this promise of a rank, a rank he'd dreamt of reaching for years, and she, she the person he planned this with, was trying to hold him back from it.

The thought only continued to feed the turmoil inside.

"Then you and I should have been dead a long time ago, if that's what you think, Colonel."

His head jerked half an inch backwards as though he'd been slapped. He felt his twisted features falter. Astonished, he blinked several times into the rain, and he found himself slowly turning around to face her.

"Is this what we're doing?" he asked painfully, still fighting to keep his voice steady. He saw her jaw clench and her throat move with a swallow. She stood there, arms at her side, face flat, hair wet, chest rising and falling. She did not answer.

"Are we going backwards, Lieutenant? Are we bringing...that into this? Are we bringing that up now?"

"'Lieutenant,'" she quoted with a bite, "'when I take down the government, the first thing we must do is answer for what we did in Ishval. We'll be tried as war criminals, and sentenced as such.'" She took in a quiet, shaky breath. '"Will you still follow me, even through that?'"

It was his turn to face silence. His eyes stung harshly. Bound, he could not find the will to move or speak.

"And I said yes," she emphasized the word, "because knowing I would one day face justice is what lets me sleep at night."

The burning in his belly filled his limbs. The unbalance felt like it would rip him apart.

"And Colonel," she cocked her head down, "I guarantee I've killed far, far more than Hudson has. So if you really believe what you just said,"

The boil flipped to nausea, his stomach pancaked, and he felt his heart stop,

"Then kill me."

His fingernails bit into his palms and every muscle in his body turned rigid. The thought of it, even the mere sound of the words being spoken, demolished him more than their worst shouts of anger. A breach of consciousness allowed the flash of an image to cross his mind, an image he may one day face, and it was her, handcuffed and bound and on her knees, with a rifle to her head, and he exhaled forcefully with a grunt to banish the thought from him.

The rigidity of his muscles suddenly disappeared, his ribs racked with the release of all of his wrath, and a crash of coherency stuck his head down to his boots. Something inside sagged terribly and his shoulders lost all tension as his head fell back and his eyes closed towards the sky.

The rain coated his face. He felt his head moving, shaking, just barely so.

He stayed like that for several moments, breathing. It seemed like an eternity before he found the ability to move, and he wondered if she was as cemented as he.

"You really must think me a fool," he finally murmured after some time. With his eyes still closed, he felt the rain more profoundly and heard her voice more deeply.

"Yes," she said quietly, so the word was barely heard to him in the weathered breeze.

He dropped his head back to its rightful place. The intensity of his anger was replaced with the most severe kind of remorse.

"So where do we go now, then, Lieutenant?" he asked the empty space before him.

"If you do this," she answered half heartedly, "we go backwards."

He laughed quietly, giving his head a shake. He blinked and watched the rain come down from the dark clouds to hit the ground. He shrugged, the ghost of a grieved smile crossing his face.

"I already have," he said blankly. He felt her eyes on his back, but he was grateful to be looking into the empty alley. He saw the streetlamp on the other end flicker lamely.

"...Sir?"

"I've already gone backwards," he said again with a small, depriving shrug.

"Colonel, you haven't killed him yet…"

"I'm not talking about him anymore."

At her silence, he forced himself to turn and look at her. He couldn't allow himself to be a coward forever.

With his partition of anger gone, he felt as though he was seeing clear for the first time that night. He was able to feel the chill of the rain, and he saw the state he'd put her in. Her hair was now completely unkempt and falling out of its black clip, soaked entirely and dripping. Her jacket was mildly crooked from the grabbing and sheathing of her gun,

and from the grabbing of her wrist.

He closed his eyes again, and was saturated with something he knew he should have felt far before then: regret.

"What I said to you…" he began as he opened his eyes, half lidded and watching a puddle grow. "I really am a fool."

"Yeah," she agreed, exhausted. "You can be. But I know…" she grappled with herself, "that I have made mistakes, Colonel. My tattoo, and what's become of it...it is, of course, my fault…"

"No, wait -"

She put up a hand, and he immediately silenced.

"You saying it out loud doesn't make that any different," she continued. "So don't feel as though you planted that idea in my head. I've always known it."

"But I didn't mean -"

The hand came up again.

"What's happened to us, has happened. What we've done, is done. But we still have the choice to decide what we do. And...you made a choice tonight, just now, not to kill Jao Hudson. That's what we still have control over. That's what we need to continue focusing on. You haven't gone backwards in my eyes, sir...despite how we ended up here," she inhaled again as though remembering their yells, "we're still moving forward."

He sighed heavily and immediately began walking towards her. She seemed to tense, surprised at his sudden movement, but her eyes only followed him as he came to stop in front of her once more. He felt his hand twitch at the want to make contact with her, but he forced it into a tight fist.

"Dammit, Hawkeye, why can't you hate me for once?"

She watched him warily. The rain, beginning to come down harder, seemed to pay her no mind.

"I just simply can't, sir."

"What I...I didn't mean, what I said...I'm-" The words didn't seem to be enough. They were not enough. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant."

"Like I said," she answered softly. "We can do nothing more than look to the future, and not the past."

"Please don't do that…"

"Do what?"

"Try and protect me all the time. You want to bear everything I say to you, and everything I do. You want to hold onto it so I'm free of it, so I can spit on you so long as I end up focused again. Don't...I can't be allowed to do that. I don't want to do that…"

"Colonel," she smiled slightly. "Your head is bleeding, quite a lot, in fact. I wouldn't say you're getting away with it."

He looked at her for a moment before lifting a few fingers to gingerly touch his temple. He'd forgotten entirely about that, and he was glad to be reminded of the pain in his head.

"Regardless…" he said distractedly as his hand slowly came back to his side. "Do not forget what I said tonight. Do not see me as someone better than I am. I don't deserve that, and neither do you."

She glanced down at his feet.

"I'll hold you to it, then," she said before meeting his eyeline. "You are the man that you are because you learn from your mistakes. So don't make this one again."

The corners of his mouth lifted. The rain mixed with the blood on the side of his face so it dripped over his eyebrow.

Slowly, enough to allow her to step away if she wanted to, he closed the distance between them and he pulled her into his arms. She didn't move away, but he felt her muscles tenses briefly before she accepted the embrace and she wrapped her arms around him too. He tightened his grip and felt her body against his.

"Please forgive me, Hawkeye," he said into her slick hair. Her fingers pressed into his back.

"I have."

When they pulled away, his hand slid down the length of her retreating arm and rested beneath the wrist he'd caught earlier. He couldn't find the words to express the regret of touching her like that, of handling her in such a way, and she answered him just as silently by gently feathering her fingers over the sleeve of his jacket and pulling her arm away, as though it was meant to be forgotten.

A lapse of judgement came over him, or perhaps it was better described as a feeding of his wants, and he brought his hand up to gently brush his thumb over her cheek. At the moment his skin touched hers, he imagined she would have jumped backwards or lowered his arm with her own, but she didn't. For the briefest moment, with their eyes locked, he'd forgotten about the maelstrom they'd just shared.

His hand dropped, and she made the slightest motion with her head, gesturing behind her. He reciprocated the nod and took the first step forward, and she turned to follow beside him.

He was overcome with a wave of fatigue. Tired and downtrodden, wet and useless, he glanced over to the soldier walking silently beside him. Her eyes were downcast on the dreary stone, probably lost in thought.

After touching her, even as shortly and barely of his thumb on her cheek, being one of the most intimate gestures ever made between them, he suddenly wanted more. Overcome then with the shocking desire to just hold her, and push her wet bangs out from her face, he had to remind himself of who they both were.

She was his adjutant, and the most respectable, brave, astounding person he'd known.

He was her superior, and he had said to her the most despicable things he could have conjured.

For more reasons than one, he could not touch her, not matter how strongly the desire had made itself.

#royai #royai fanfiction #royai fanfic #riza hawkeye #roy mustang #angst #there's always angst #language #fmab #fullmetal alchemist

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intoxicatedeuphoria · 7 years ago

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in defense of Riza Hawkeye

hmmm, I cannot sleep knowing that there are people out there saying that Riza is manipulative because of the scene with Envy in the tunnels. I decided to dig up the raw manga scans and try to re-translate the scene with Envy in the tunnels so I can explain my case better. @endertender and @lonepiper5758, here it is!! I am busy AF, but screw real life, I need to defend the honor of my queen!

Remember that in the latter half of the Envy vs. Roy arc, Riza had been desperately trying to convince Roy to let her finish Envy instead, after seeing the colonel savagely burn the homunculus again and again like a madman. Roy refused to stop and let go of Envy (already in his weakened and reduced form) despite the fact that Riza had her gun to his head.

She pleaded and begged, but Roy would not relent. She even tried to reason out with him that what he was doing was not for the sake of the country or for the protection of his comrades/subordinates, thus reminding him of what THEY were supposed to be fighting for. She said everything she could: from the end of Chapter 94 to the start of Chapter 95.

With a pained expression [probably from the realization/possibility of an impeding betrayal by Roy through yet another case of the misuse of Flame Alchemy], Riza warned him that he cannot go down that path -- the same one her father had gone to years before: towards insanity and eventual death. Roy struggled to reign in his anger, but then he remembered Hughes.

RIZA: You cannot go down that path! [lit. trans.:You cannot fall that way!]

AT THIS POINT, IT SEEMED THAT NOTHING WAS WORKING SINCE HE WAS STILL COMPLETELY OVERCOME WITH RAGE AND HIS NEED FOR REVENGE.

In fact, Roy was so angry that he even dared Riza to shoot him.

ROY: It’s OK to shoot me if you want to shoot me.

This left Riza devastated, but then Roy -- for some reason or another -- asked what she would do afterwards. DO NOTE that for a man who seemed to be completely lost to his anger to the point that he’s willing to be shot to death than to be stopped in his quest for vengeance, it’s rather strange for him to be asking somebody else such a question.

ROY: but what will you do after shooting me to death?

and now we have finally reached the controversial “RIZA HAWKEYE IS SUICIDAL: PART II” scene, where she supposedly manipulated Roy by threatening her own life. Viz’s English translation for Riza’s speech is actually pretty accurate, if not a tad bit more dramatic than the Japanese version:

Roy struggled with himself as he considered her response to the “what-if scenario” he himself brought up. In the end, he had decided to back off and opted to release his pent-up fury with a snap directed away from them.

He finally regained his reasoning and became aware of the situation he put himself and Riza in.

ROY: I am bothered [or troubled] by this. JAP: それは困る

ROY: *continues* I cannot lose you [for such a reason]. JAP: 君を失う訳にはいかない

Fast forward to the end of the “what in the hell is this situation I’m in” speech from Roy, where he regretted his actions.

ROY: *to Riza* To have made you deal with this [kind of situation], I am the greatest idiot.

Afterwards, Roy guided Riza’s hand holding the gun down as he apologized and they eventually collapse to the floor in relief.

What I’m really trying to point out from all that prelude is...

It was Roy who asked Riza what she would do after he dies from her shot.

Roy created the hypothetical scenario himself, when it seemed like Riza had reached the end of the line. Riza was not trying to manipulate him in any way. I mean, she already said everything she could: reminded him of their goals and motivations, alluded to her father’s descent into madness, appealed to his morality/sense of justice. Riza was already at a loss on how to deal with Roy: her last resort -- putting the gun to his head -- was not working, and no amount of convincing could go through him at the time.

It was Roy himself who gave her a chance to change his mind -- a last ditch effort -- before she had to decide whether he deserved to live or die. At this point, I think Roy himself wanted to be saved from the anger that consumed him, and he knew that if there was someone who could save him, it would be Riza who knew him inside and out. He knew that she would never lie to him; he trusted her that much. Hell, he entrusted her with his life! And Riza was not one to betray anyone’s trust, and definitely not Roy’s so she simply answered sincerely.

She never intended to manipulate Roy into anything with her answer, as shocking as it might have been. After seeing how Roy lost himself to something close to insanity so quickly, she probably realized once again how all-consuming and dangerous Flame Alchemy was (this is on top of her PTSD that was most likely triggered by Roy’s indiscriminate use of his flames on Envy). This could be the reason why she replied to Roy’s question the way she did. For her final attempt, she decided to give him the cold, hard truth, and if that had not worked, then she would have shot him dead as he had asked and she had promised years ago when they agreed to make Amestris a better place.

As for the suicide part of Riza’s response, I believe that @edwinrys already did a very good job of explaining Riza’s reason for wanting to end her life if she had to live without Roy. I also want to add that Roy is as guilty of the same accusation with regards to suicide because he was willing to perform the ultimate taboo -- human transmutation -- to save Riza even if it meant the damnation of the entire country and his own life. And in the end, the thought of suicide (or even the intention to commit suicide) is not the same as actually doing it. Riza was forced to deal with a morbid what if situation that could very well have become a reality with the way things were going back then presented to her under extreme duress. Her response to Roy’s question was merely the statement of the most likely outcome based on her state of mind at the moment, but you have to remember the circumstances could still change, which could then prompt her to choose to continue living even if Roy do die in the end (thank heavens he did not!!).

In my opinion, if some manipulation really did happen in this arc, it was from Roy’s part when he brought up this WHAT IF YOU SHOT ME DEAD business. That’s where it all began. I love Roy as well, but sometimes he could seriously be a big jerk. But in all honesty, I’d like to think that he wanted to be saved, too, so he gave Riza an opening. He finally recognized the fact that while he could not save himself on his own, there were people around him -- with Riza as the first and the closest person to him -- who were willing to help him and send him to the right path. A few chapters later, we see him proudly stating such realization to Bradley right before the colonel was made into the fifth sacrifice.

TL;DR: Roy dared Riza to shoot him. Then he asked her what she would do after he dies, thus creating an awful hypothetical scenario. Riza being Riza answered him truthfully in her final attempt to snap him out of his rage. She responded to his WHAT IF without any malice or the intention to manipulate Roy. One possible reason why he asked such a question is he wanted to be saved, but needed some reinforcement from the person closest to him. Hmm, who could that person be? Oh, it’s Riza Hawkeye: his adjutant and his appointed judge, jury and executioner!! Once again for emphasis: ROY ASKED FIRST, RIZA REPLIED WITH THE TRUTH.

I want to say more about the other accusations against Riza, but it’s almost midnight where I live. I am so sleepy and about to pass out so I’ll stop right here. Just know that I will defend Riza to death because she’s one of the best positive role models in the series and I cannot stand it whenever people are dissing my queen.

#riza hawkeye #roy mustang #royai #fullmetal alchemist #FMA #FMA analysis #FMA translation #my translations #FMA meta #defending my queen

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0blivion-laughs · 4 years ago

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RAY CAESAR

Many call Ray Caesar the Godfather of Digital Art, and his process is completely digital from its beginning through the printing stage. Though he is certainly seminal in his oeuvre, it is his fantastically disturbing content that has made him a cult favorite, from collectors like Madonna and Elton John to the population at large who not only know of his heartache, but embrace it. Caesar frequently talks of suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Combine this with his time working in Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto and you are faced with a sea of controversial imagery.

“When you grow up in a dark place filled with fear and pain and cruelty, there is a tendency to find hidden places of pleasure and beauty within that world of the night,” mentions the artist. “I have always thought that the greater potential for evil and darkness that there is an even greater potential for good and light. There is a natural inner drive within the human mind to find balance in any situation and find ways of coping in a sea of turbulence. We are all stronger than we give ourselves credit for and when our conscious mind cannot handle something overwhelming in the darkness of the real world, our subconscious becomes very creative and takes its own path into an inner light. For me art is an expression of living in that duality and a visual voice to express fear and rage and sadness… and hope and calm and ultimately, love.”

SALAD DAYS

I was born in London, England in 1958, the youngest of four and much to my parent’s surprise, I was born a dog. This unfortunate turn of events was soon accepted within my family and was never again mentioned in the presence of polite company.

I was a rambunctious youth as was natural to my breed but showed a fine interest in the arts as I drew pictures incessantly on anything including the walls and floors of every room of our tiny house. After some trouble with intolerant neighbors, my family was convinced to move to Canada and it was not long before the burgeoning town of Toronto became our new home. Unfortunately the drawing continued to become somewhat atypical and aberrant and it was impressed upon me that such images might not be suitable for public viewing. In the summer of 69, there was a valiant attempt to stop me from doodling infamous contemptible fascist dictators upside down on my stomach with a ballpoint pen. I was consoled however by the encouragement to continue penciling in faces of flamboyant cowboys such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Tonto on my toenails but was expressly forbidden to talk to them at night. It can be said that there are defining moments in a dogs life that can only be described as pivotal. Mine came when I received a gift of a flesh toned 12 inch plastic movable human doll attired in cheaply made military fatigues called “GI Joseph”. I however named him “Stanley Mulver” and immediately resigned his commission from the light infantry. My Mother helped in this by sewing small business suits and leisure wear out of leftover Christmas fabric embroidered with holly and snowmen, tinfoil shoes and one tasteful Safari suit made of tight fitting powder blue rayon that proudly shone cobalt in the summer sunlight. It wasn’t long before I had begun making enlarged wigs out of gray plasticine. These wigs soon became huge pompadours for Stanley and looked even more grand when I meticulously imbedded small hairs from my daily body and face shavings. This hirsute practice along with walking upright allowed me to fit in with other children even though my father considered it a waste of time. In short, Stanley had become a visage of the Man I could never be, of that elusive self one sometimes glimpses down the tunnel of infinite reflected mirrors. Although ridiculed by my peers, I proudly wore Stanley around my neck at all times as if to say “SEE! This is the man I will be, a good man, a kind man”. I have worked in many fields over the years, attended obedience classes and art colleges, jobs designing horrible buildings in architectural studios, medical art facilities, digital service bureaus, suspicious casino computer game companies, eventually working at computer modeling, digital animation and visual effects for television and film. Some award nominations have been attained and I have been driven in long black liquor filled limousines and walked on hind legs down red carpets in Pasadena while wearing strange smelling rented tuxedos. Things change and summer years come to an end. My change occurred one night when my Mother visited me, which was slightly unusual because she had passed away some months before, a victim to the cigarette habit she could never quite lick. Facing a wall and slowly turning I saw the right side of her face ablaze in light, her hand trying to cover the light as if she were apologetic for having it seep through. Words were said about following rabbits down holes and I was shown galleries of work which were to be my own. My Mother was not the first visitation I have had and it seems she will not be the last. I live in a brick house with my wonderful wife Jane and a coyote called Bonnie. I like eating avocados and I don’t really mind being a dog.

THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN For 17 years I worked in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto from 1980 until 1997. I worked in a department that documented such things as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology and animal research. They were years that I will never forget, years of witnessing great sadness but also great miracles. I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wondering the hallways and corridors of that giant hospital. As I lay there in the dark, I struggle to remember the fading words of those that still haunt my memories of so many years ago. It is so clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery. It is appropriate that I now live my dreams for those that didn’t get a chance to live theirs…. to do otherwise would be a sin.

Much of my work at the hospital was tedious and boring in that I produced tremendous amounts of statistical data before the advent of computers and dealt with a lot of sensitive photographic material and work for publication. Another part of my job was overwhelming in that at any given moment I could typically find myself hovering over a tiny premature infant covered with tons of equipment. I would have to sift through the equipment to make a technical diagram, a teaching tool to allow intensive care nurses to have some idea of all that tangle of machinery that kept that tiny infant alive. Other times I would have to draw a similar thing of some poor animal in the research dept that had the misfortune of being a lab animal. To this day I have developed a profound love for animals that is very important to me. On a few occasions I dealt with forensic material for the court or sensitive medical documentation that would for me be overwhelming. I worked on board games and flash cards for brain damaged children and some of the early computer animations of the cryogenic removal of a brain tumors. Teaching hospitals are like tiny cities and whenever you think you have seen it all, reality slaps you in the face and shows you something that makes you re-evaluate everything. I learned in my life that human hands can be cruel and unkind but more often they can perform heart surgery or write a check to build a new wing of a hospital or just simply brush away a child’s tear.” Miracles do exist but they are often the product of our own actions and the incredible work of of the unsung heroes that care for children.

MY PROCESS

I create models in a three dimensional modeling software called Maya and cover these models with painted and manipulated photographic textures that wrap around them like a map on a globe. Each model is then set up with a invisible skeleton that allows me to pose and position the figure in its three dimensional environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a real world.First the models are sculpted similar to pushing and pulling the surface of a piece of clay. I am often reminded of being in preschool with my huge chunk of Plasticine. I once modeled a Plasticine shoe but my father forbade me to wear it in public. I then create an inner structure of joints similar to a skeleton that allows me to pose the figure with a spine, shoulders, elbows and even finger joints. Many heads are modeled with many a different expression and these can be blended to create a subtle look similar to the one my wife has when I have done something suspicious.I color the models first in a very simple way, then each surface in the model is wrapped with a texture that may be painted digitally such as a flower petal or from a digital photograph such as a wood surface. I collect textures the way some people collect little silver spoons and I have a story about each texture in my collection such as the one about my father’s hip operation scar or the picture I convinced my gastroenterologist to give me of the inside of my colon. My favorite textures to collect are skin textures, as I have a legitimate excuse to ask people to expose large areas of bare skin.As my work is printed I am often asked about my original, but it exists only in the computer in a dimensional world of depth, width and height. I am fascinated by the concept that this 3 dimensional space exists much as another reality and even though I turn the computer off, I am haunted by the fact that this space is still there existing in a mathematical probability, and the space that we live in now might not be all that different.

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abbyfic-updates · 7 years ago

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DC Fanfic: AU!Red Jay

Title: So this is how it is...

Character(s): Jason Todd, Donna Troy, Roy Harper

Rating: PG

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, major character potentially dying

Disclaimer: All characters and things of Batman and Teen Titans belong to DC comics, and Bill Finger and Bob Kane as well as Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. I'm simply borrowing them for creative output.

Author Notes: I don’t know why I’m writing this AU, but I am. I suppose I was inspired by janecat and her brilliant drabbles for her AUs. Thus, I decided to try my hand at writing short stories. I have about four or five written, and I’ll plan to post as I can. Enjoy this one for now.

Description: After waking up injured, Jason slowly comes to realize life as he knows it has changed, possibly forever, for him and the rest of the batfamily. He doesn’t know whether he can handle the new responsibilities or whether anyone is going to trust him enough to let him try.

Jason awoke when he felt cold air skim over his face and arms. It wasn’t like the bitter breath of the autumn air in Gotham. Rather it was a relief to the encompassing warmth that covered him.

Blinking, he tried to get his tired eyes to focus on anything in the bright space around him. When he finally spotted two blurry forms, he found his vision started to clear. Slowly, the faces of two tall figures came into view. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Donna Troy and Roy Harper. He had seen Donna since they and Kyle Rayner traveled the multiverse looking for Ray Palmer. As for Roy, it had been even longer. The two of them were talking in hushed voices or maybe his ears were feeling as unfocused as his eyes. He wasn’t sure which.

Swallowing through his dry throat, he tried to speak. “So, you here to take me to Black Gate?” His voice came out garbled and horse. Still, it drew both of their gazes.

Donna immediately leaned down. “Jason?”

He slowly nodded, despite the tightness of his muscles. They ached horribly. He wanted to rub them so badly, but his arms were being uncooperative.

There was a brief flutter of a smile to her lips, but it didn’t last long. Her gaze swept over him. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired. Achy. More than a bit stiff.” His last description drew a tiny chuckle from the red head behind Donna. “Other than that. I’m alive.”

A new, very tight, and perhaps forced, smile curved her lips. “Good. That’s good.”

Jason’s mind started to work. “Am I… at Titan’s Tower?”

Roy shook his head, before leaning in closer. “No. The Watch Tower.”

“Oh,” Jason said simply. He coughed slightly. “Why?”

Donna leaned back, before giving Roy a worried glance.

“Jason,” Roy asked, ��do you remember anything from the last two days?”

Furrowing his brow, Jason tried to think. His brain was still too tired. Yet, there were brief flickers in his head of sensations, and he thought parts of memories. “Um. Kind of.” He coughed again, much harder this time. His whole body shook with each dry hack.

“Here let me get you some water,” Donna said, before she walked away from his bedside.

Roy moved closer with a very worried expression. “What do you remember?”

Jason couldn’t help his eyes darting left and right. He was kicking his memory to produce something. At first, he swore he could recall nothing since he returned to Gotham over three weeks ago. It was all just a huge blank. Then, slowly, the sensations turned into more vivid feelings and words. He remembered being both cold and warm. He remembered being afraid and angry. He remembered a calm voice that was filled with pain. He remembered –

“Dick.” The name tumbled suddenly from his lips as a sharp pain surged down the back of his neck. He grunted in agony as distorted images blared clear as photographs in his mind. “We were trapped together. Wayne Tower collapsed! Buried underneath! An explosion!” Suddenly, his breath started to hitch, and he could feel his heart racing. Panic was quickly taking hold.

Roy held Jason down on the bed and tried to calm him. “It’s okay. You’re not trapped any more. Either of you.”

Jason’s eyes were still wide, and his breath flew passed his chapped lips. “How long?”

“Red Robin lost radio contact with you late last night. Superman found you unconscious some ten hours ago. Your concussion overtook you,” Roy explained. “The League brought you here to recover. Other than bruises, a few cuts, and a dislocated right shoulder, you’re okay.” Suddenly, Roy seemed to struggle with swallowing. “You’ll be okay.”

That put an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Jason’s stomach. There was something dark and unspoken in those comforting words. Jason watched, scrutinizing the red head. The older man suddenly couldn’t meet Jason’s gaze. Instead, he was watching Donna approach the bedside. “What is it? What aren’t you…?”

Donna interrupted him. She reached towards him. “Here, Jason, have a drink of water.”

Jason raised his left arm at last. He grabbed the Amazonian’s arm, gripping it tightly as he glared. “First, answer my question! What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?!”

There was a steeliness to Donna’s gaze. She looked like rage and fire. With little trouble, she could have ripped her arm free from his grasp. However, behind the coldness, Jason saw a great sadness.

“It’s Dick, isn’t it?” Jason breathed. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No,” Roy said quickly, placing his hand Jason’s hand that was holding Donna’s arm. “He’s alive.”

“Kind of,” Donna added, looking at Roy. “He’s unconscious. In a coma. Unlike you, Jason, he isn’t getting any better.”

“What?” Jason felt a new panic. “How… Why?

A small shrug raised Roy’s shoulders. “We aren’t sure. Doctor Midnight has some theories, but nothing concrete. Could be due to the severe concussion he experienced in the explosion. Perhaps something bacterial got into one of his open wounds. Even possible, it’s a complication due to the extreme blood loss and shock that he underwent. Could even be a combination of any of them.”

“How… how bad?”

Donna lowered her gaze, but did not remove Jason’s grasp from her arm. “The shrapnel of the building really did a number on him, Jason. He lost too much blood. They couldn’t even transport him until he got an onsite blood transfusion. If you hadn’t kept him talking for as long as you did…” Her voice broke.

“He’s alive,” Roy said, putting his other hand on the Amazonian’s shoulder. “That’s what is important. And he will get better…”

Donna turned an angry look at Roy. “We don’t know that!”

Roy returned her look. “Donna, now’s not the time!”

“I won’t lie to myself, and I certainly won’t lie to Jason,” she spat angrily. She turned her gaze to him. “They’re trying… stuff, but so far nothing’s working. He’s just… slipping away… a little more every hour.” There was a bitterness to her tone.

Suddenly, Roy pulled Donna out of Jason’s grasp and took her just out of Jason’s field of vision. He heard their hushed and angry voices. Straining his ears, he tried to hear. There were only snippets he picked up.

“Why would you say…?”

“…told the truth. Dick would want…”

“Dick wouldn’t want him worrying.”

“Jason doesn’t need…”

“… we need and what about…”

Jason’s heart rate sped up. He wanted to get up and yell at the pair. His body didn’t seem ready. All he could do was lie there, feeling a cold emptiness developing inside of him. Suddenly, he started to remember something.

His brow furrowed as he heard Dick’s voice in his head:

‘Promise me, Jason. Please promise me you’ll look after them. Tim, Cass, and Damian. They need a big brother, someone to look out for them, be there for them, listen to them… even when they say they don’t want it. Please promise me.’

Then he heard his own voice:

‘If I say yes, will you just shut up about it.” He remembered Dick nodding and smiling. “Then, fine. Yes. Not like it will matter, we’ll be out of here in no time, and you and the rest of them can continue making my life miserable.”

He remembered the smile marred by bruises beaming up at him.

As then, Jason’s heart ached with a foreboding pain.

#fanfic #dc comics #Jason Todd #Roy Harper #Donna Troy #AU!Red Jay #Dick Grayson

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ohmytheon · 7 years ago

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real gods require blood (fma/noragami au, 1)

I’ve got a few ideas where this is going, hinted at in what I’ve written here, but honestly this isn’t as set in stone as my Fate AU. It’s more than likely going to be a series inter-connected fics like my Star Wars AU (I have so many AUs, oh my god), but with a theme. None of the scenes are in chronological order, but go back and forth. Kind of like how Noragami did. Seriously, that anime messed me up real good. I was not expecting that. This is mainly for @the-musical-alchemist and @scarfblogs who got me into Noragami. I know my AUs are weird.

“The Gods aren’t so much worshiped, as they are blamed.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

It was the smell of blood that always startled him awake.

Roy’s eyes snapped open. There were no rivers of blood around him, only rain, and so he laid on the stone floor in silence and listened. A chill hung in the air from the storm, but he made no move to pull the blanket around him tighter. Instead, he let it seep into his bones until he was shivering. Still, he didn’t move. The cold washed away the feeling of blood.

“You’re going to get sick,” a tired voice sighed from further inside the temple.

Finally, Roy moved, rolling over onto his other side to face her. “Gods don’t get sick.”

“You can get blighted.”

“Are you going to do something terrible?” Roy asked.

Riza frowned and sat down next to him, folding her legs underneath herself. “Are you going to ask me to?”

“What a terrible thing to assume of me,” Roy replied with a smile as he slowly pushed himself up. He gave her a sideways look “What kind of god do you think I am?”

“A foolish one,” Riza grumbled under her breath. She turned away from him to look out into the rain and huddled deeper into her coat. He’d given her the heavier one. She was so small. The second she’d come out of her regalia form after he’d first named her and taken her in, he had been shocked. How could a spirit that was able to take such a fierce regalia form be so fragile-looking?

She wasn’t weak though. She was the strongest regalia he had ever had. He treasured her more than he could ever admit out loud and she had never blighted him despite all that he had asked of her. She could have and he didn’t think he would’ve blamed her. The things he’d done before, as a god of calamity… Another god, a better one with a better conscience, would’ve used a Nora.

Instead, he’d used her, burned her with blood, and she had turned into a Blessed Vessel for him.

After that, he could no longer be the same god as before. She wasn’t the only one that had changed, but whereas she found new purpose and direction, he felt entirely lost. As the years passed, his name was slowly forgotten until only a few remained out of his desperation to stay alive. It would have been easy to revive his name – all he had to do was go back to being what he was – but that wasn’t who he was anymore. She had changed him and he was determined to live up to her.

So yes, he was a very foolish god, maybe even a little broken too. Roy held out a hand, letting the rain spatter on his open palm, and looked up to the sky. But one day, they would know his name – all of them, those from the Near and Far Shore – and they would no longer fear it as they once did.

It was always the whisper of prayers that brought him back to focus.

Fire sang in his blood. It burned through him, vicious and hot, whenever he worked. The wishes that he fulfilled were very rarely spoken with good intentions. They were born out of hate, rage, grief, confusion, fear. Those were the emotions that made up calamity and they were what he answered to at the end of the day. They were whispers in the dark, words not meant for the light of day, and he knew them all.

Gods like Roy weren’t meant to be revered. They were meant to be feared. It had been a long time since he had known anything but that.

He deserves to die. He took her… He took my wife. I want them both dead.

Roy stood in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, while the man sat on the floor with his head in his hands. “Are you certain that’s what you want?”

“I want their hearts torn out of their chest like mine has been!” the man cried out.

He didn’t think the man meant it so literally, but if that was what was asked of him specifically, he would do it. This was easy work. It didn’t take much effort. It wasn’t pleasant and it certainly wasn’t kind, but someone had to answer these wishes, didn’t they? These humans prayed to someone. They prayed to him. What kind of god would he be if he did not answer them?

Sighing, Roy held out a hand and waited patiently until the man dropped the payment in his hand. All it ever took to fulfill a wish were some heartfelt words and a few coins. It turned out that even human lives were cheap. He never counted to make sure he wasn’t shortchanged. Everyone knew what would happen if they crossed him.

He was not a god to wish for – and yet people did.

Havoc jumped cheerfully in the air as he whooped. “We did damn good today!”

“We were adequate,” Falman replied.

“Damn good. Six phantoms all charging at once? That’s not adequate.” The sandy-haired regalia leaped over to Fuery, wrapping an arm around the younger man’s neck so that he could rub a knuckle in his hair. Havoc’s grin was almost bright enough to blind someone. “Our boy here got his first bit of action too.”

“I didn’t do much…” Fuery admitted, blush tinging his cheeks.

Havoc blew a raspberry. “Nonsense!”

“Coordinating all of my regalias is an important position,” Roy pointed out as he brushed past them.

Fuery turned even redder but said nothing in return. He was left to the mercy of Havoc and Breda piling on top of him with Falman sighing at the side. Riza followed Roy into the temple, leaving the four other regalias to hang back. It was beautiful outside, a sunny day, even more lovely now that it had been cleansed of phantoms hanging around the city after a vent was accidentally opened.

Roy paused once inside the temple, gazing at the shrines built inside. They were so shiny. Every inch of this place spoke of devotion and care – of being remembered and known. He could breathe in here. After so many years, he had forgotten what it was like to be known. The others didn’t know. They didn’t know of Roy when he was a god that only a handful of people remembered. Riza, on the other hand – she had known him through all of it.

Maybe that was why having a shrine now shamed him so much, even though he’d worked so hard to get it in order to be worthy of her.

“Do I deserve this?” Roy asked.

Riza peered at him. “Sir?”

“Do I deserve this?” Roy repeated. “To be beloved, to be wanted, to be needed.” When he looked down at his hands, he saw the blood that was no longer physically on them. It would always be there though. Blood followed gods of calamity. He would never be fully rid of it. “After all that I did…”

“Nothing will wash away your sins fully,” Riza said. But then she put a hand on his shoulder and he looked back up. A strong part of him wanted to grab her hand and yet he held back. He always did, but just barely. “But as long as you continue on the path you’re on, you will be worthy of this.”

Roy nodded his head and looked back at shrine.

But will I be worthy of you?

He was dead and he was dying – and there she was, the most beautiful soul that he had ever come across. She was lost and far from home, but she had nowhere else to go. Uncorrupted souls like her in this world either eventually moved on if they were lucky or were corrupted by phantoms lurking in the dark. It would not be long before she was taken and for the life of him he could not let it happen.

Maybe it was selfishness and desperation on his part because he needed her, but in the years to pass, she would always say that he saved her from certain darkness.

Blood poured from multiple wounds and he struggled to breathe as he stood before her bright soul, a god no one would want yet still needed anyways. But he could not be the god he was without a weapon. As terrifying and powerful as he was, his work on the Near Shore was worthless without a regalia and he was so well-known for his work there.

“You, soul, with nowhere to go and nowhere to return!” Roy called, drawing the appropriate symbol in the air as a phantom roared behind him. “I grant you a place to belong. Mustang is my name. Bearing a name after death, you will remain here; and with this name, I make you my servant. I use my life to make you a Regalia! You are Riza! Come, Hawkeye!”

And that soul, so beautiful and bright, turned into a beam of light, driving the phantom back. Roy threw out his hand as it shot into the air and into his grasp. When he opened his eyes, he nearly gasped. A long black whip, sharp as a tack, that he knew deep down was something so much more. He’d never seen a regalia take such a shape and yet somehow he also knew how to use it.

When the phantom gathered its bearings and leapt to strike, Roy leaped in the air and cracked the whip in the monster’s direction. “Rend!” he ordered. The whip squeezed and the phantom exploded into a ball of light. The regalia was incredible.

Landing on the ground, Roy closed his eyes and raised his face to the clouds. The regalia hung loosely in his hand, asking nothing of him. He could feel it patiently waiting. How unusual. Most Regalias were very talkative at first, confused about what was going on, especially if they were immediately used in battle. He had never been careful with them before. Something told him that he should be different now, but he had always been reckless by nature.

“Riza,” he said without a care and the whip glowed and transformed into a person.

He nearly choked at what he saw.

She was a young woman, a few years younger-looking than him, with wide amber eyes and short blond hair. The innocent expression on her face caught him off guard. She was so small, wrapping her arms around herself to brace against the chill of the night. He wasn’t prepared for her to be wearing a thin dress with no shoes or the way she looked at him expectantly as she bit her lip.

“You…” Roy didn’t know what to say.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Riza asked.

Roy took a sharp intake of breath, but then nodded his head. She took a deep breath and looked down at the ground, taking in the situation. He didn’t know what to say. Of course she was dead. Regalia were made of human spirits that had died and not passed on yet. Sometimes they did; sometimes they didn’t. Some avoided becoming phantoms, but most didn’t without the help of a god. He did not doubt her strength – he’d felt it firsthand – and he was grateful that she was a regalia and not a phantom.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Roy promised and Riza smiled.

He lied. She didn’t know who he was and for the first time he didn’t either.

Roy smirked to himself and turned back to face his shrine so that no one would see. He definitely didn’t want Edward to see the look on his face or the kid would blow a gasket. It was enough to watch him freak out as Roy’s regalias teased him about how much he’d grown in the past years since they’d last seen him.

“He looks so…young,” Riza sighed. “He’s barely aged.”

“Well,” Roy replied carefully, turning back to survey the scene, “he’s a child.” The look Riza gave him would’ve been strong enough to shrivel most gods, but he was a little more used to it, so he shrugged his shoulders. “He’s a god – in a sense. There’s a chance that he might look like this for a long time.”

Though he would never talk about it out loud with the other regalias and especially Edward so close, Edward’s appearance was troubling. Even worse was his brother standing to the side, smiling and laughing. Alphonse was an incredible soul, bright like Riza. He was of good humor, optimistic, and very protective. The fact that he was his own brother’s regalia was very disconcerting, however. Gods didn’t die like humans. Only humans could become regalia and only gods could make regalia. Edward’s and Alphonse’s existences were exceptional.

And the Heavens did not like exceptions.

Riza hummed thoughtfully. “You don’t want to spoil his happiness, do you?”

“His happiness?” Roy scoffed and shook his head. “I don’t care about that. But his hanging around might bring trouble on our doorstep.”

“Since when have you ever worried about trouble?” Riza asked, a slight smile on her face. “As your longest regalia, I know you better than that.”

Roy would’ve scowled if he didn’t know that she would comment on that as well. Of course she knew him better than that. She knew him better than anyone in his entire life – and he had lived a very long time. She had seen him at his worst, his best, his lowest, and highest. Hopefully, she would see him for many centuries to come. He did not want to be like one of those gods that reincarnated all the time. Somehow, he had lived through everything and become something more. Somehow, he’d outlived his old name.

If everyone could forget that he was truly a god of calamity, he could die in peace if he was forgotten, but no, he and Riza would never forget.

“A product of a god and human should not exist,” Roy pointed out.

“And yet you watch after him,” Riza said.

Roy frowned and watched Edward and Alphonse laughing in the courtyard. It did not make him happy or upset. To be honest, he didn’t know what it made him feel. Fear maybe – and he had not felt that for a long time.

To wish for the death of a person was no small thing. It only cost a few coins, sure, but very few considered the tax it took on the soul.

Now, to wish for the deaths of many? That was another thing. It still didn’t cost much physically – humans were so cheap, after all – but it was a price a person took to their graves. To Roy, it was nothing. He was a god. At the end of the day, what were humans to him but matter? He had been above them for as long as he could remember. All they had to do was forget him in order for him to die, but petty, cruel, and selfish as they were, humans would always have use of a god like him.

Even Riza didn’t blink. She might’ve been horrified at first, but she had never said anything against what they did. Any other person might’ve used a Nora – would’ve used a Nora – to do what he did, but she was his regalia and to be his was to know him and to know him was to do what he did. It was not pretty or pleasant. It was not kind or beautiful. It was nothing like she was. He’d stained her, but she had never blighted him for it.

He had been called upon to do many a terrible thing, sometimes in the name of revenge, sometimes in the name of greed. In the end, someone usually died. Once Riza had asked him if he enjoyed doing these kinds of jobs, but it was all he had ever known. He didn’t know how to want for something else.

“I’m a god of calamity,” Roy told her as they stood over a dead body. “I’m not meant to bring peace.”

Riza bent down to examine the body, the very one in which she had killed while as a regalia. “But this man killed the daughter of the woman who wished for you and got away with it. Did you not bring the mother peace?”

“Death never brings peace,” Roy said. “It only replaces the rage with emptiness.”

“And what do you feel?” Riza asked, glancing up at him.

Roy clenched his jaw. He’d never been asked such a thing. No one had ever asked him how he felt after fulfilling a wish. Many gods were able to fulfill light and wonderful prayers, but there were gods like him that were left to do the dirty work. Someone had to. No one talked about it, of course, and the other gods scorned them for it. The gods of fortune were so revered and so many more and the rest like him were expected to work and destroy and be hated and be content with it.

He didn’t know how he felt. It had never occurred to him that he might have that right.

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misstinfoilhat · 5 years ago

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I have a prompt if you like it :) I'd LOVE to read some parental Roy or Havoc where Ed or Al start wondering or already know but struggles with accepting or having people know he's not straight, and him going to the parental figure to talk about it or "subtly" "asking for a friend". I feel like this could work even tho they're not that close, similar to how many ppl choose to come out to s/o they're not that close to first (yk bc if they mind at least it wasn't s/o very close to them to lose)

All right! My first prompt. I’m gonna try to write it- I’ve had some time to think about it now, and I hope it’s what you want! The door to Colonel Roy Mustang’s office flung open, slamming into the wall behind it, leaving yet another imprint telling any visitor that Edward Elric had been here. Roy growled silently, pinching the bridge of his nose while assessing how much the damage would cost to fix once he finally moved his way up the ranks and left this office to the next stringed puppet. “Report,” Edward announced obnoxiously, hurling the crumpled paper onto the desk in front of the exasperated man and immediately turned to march back out. Instinctively, Roy reached out and grabbed the red coat that floated in front of him, and was able to drag the brat back. Edward grunted in annoyance, and crossed his arms defiently, while Roy picked up the paper to look it over. “Fullmetal... Is this crayon?” Roy exclaimed in disbelief. “What? I didn’t have a pen!” Edward complained in response. “But you had a yellow crayon?” “I borrowed it from some kid on the train. He said I couldn’t have the red one.” Roy had no idea how to answer that. Instead, he covered his expression with his hands, dragging them down his face wearily. “I can’t... I can’t send in a report to the Fuhrer, barely legible in yellow crayon, Fullmetal. Even that tiny brain of yours has to understand that.” “Hey!” Ed shouted angrily.“That’s what you get for demanding the report the second we’re back in Central, bastard colonel!” “How naïve of me to think that you somehow would be able to access a pen on a four-day train ride.” Edward pouted and blew raspberries at his superior. With mismatching arms still crisscrossed, he turned his face away and pointed his nose towards the ceiling in obstinance. He shot a quick glance towards the door, and Roy realized that he seemed to have a worry knitted in his eyebrows. Roy pondered for a moment, suddenly realizing what was missing. “Edward, where’s Alphonse?” Edward froze up, only seeming to hold his arms tighter. Roy couldn’t help but notice the inner turmoil probably raging inside the fifteen-year-olds brain at his questions. Damnit. He didn’t have time for this. “Fullmetal, talk to me or I swear I will have you court marshalled for wasting my time.” “You can’t do that,” he retorted but didn’t look entirely sure. He did a double-take, watching the exit longingly before groaning loudly and collapsing onto the chair in front of the messy wooden desk. Roy didn’t say anything, just folded his hands and waited for the vertically challenged teen to spill. “We had a fight,” he finally muttered, defeatedly. Roy wanted to roll his eyes. This wasn’t some kind of school counselling office. Talk about wasting his time. He was not paid to sit and hear about two young brothers having a quarrel. But then again, if this was any other teens, they probably would be in school, and having this conversation with an actual counseller. He had made damn sure that didn’t happen. God, he hated karma. “Go on,” he heard himself say, settling in for a tedious recital consisting of “he said, she said”. “I don’t know... He’s just been acting really strange ever since we left Xenotime. I mean, it was a pretty strange mission, but he’s just been really quiet, or irritable and unreasonable when finally speaking, ever since.” Roy swiftly glanced across the report for clarification. “Ah, yes. Where you met those two brothers that pretended to be you two,” he confirmed. “Yeah,” Edward sighed silently. “I don’t know what’s going on with him. He snapped at me when I tried to ask and went straight to the library once we arrived here.” Edward looked absolutely beat by this. The sorrow in his golden eyes twinged something in Roy’s heart, and he tried to get rid of the useless pain he felt for his depressed subordinate. But, he already knew that he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on his work for the rest of the day if he didn’t at least try to help. He exhaled deeply to be overly dramatic. “To be fair, you are pretty insufferable,” he murmured with a cheeky grin. Some of the well known Elric-fire could once again be recognized in the kid, as Ed reacted to his words But as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared again. “I can try to talk to him if you want?”

Even Roy was shocked by the words that left his mouth. That was not what he was going to say. He was just kinda trying to lighten the mood with some... ill-timed jokes. Shit. That karma again. “I guess you could try,” Edward sulked, slightly unwilling to admit that he was, in fact, very relieved. If Roy demanded to know what was going on with Al, Alphonse wouldn’t dare to react the same way as he had done with him.

The small hallway between the offices and library was way too short. Before Roy had even figured out what his opening line would be, he was standing only a few feet from the boy. Alright, Roy-boy. You can do this. Think like Maes. What would Maes say? Whatever you say to a fourteen-year-old boy’s soul stuck to a giant suit of armor of course... This is gonna be a shit-show.

“Alphonse,” he greeted carefully, closing the distance between himself and the suit, seated crosslegged on the floor between a tower of books. Alphonse looked up from the text he was reading. “Oh. Hi, Colonel Mustang.” Edward was right. The kid seemed different. His voice, which was usually so cheery and sounded so energetic, was just a flat mumbling. Also, it always seemed so important for Alphonse to greet the Colonel properly with respect. Now, he was already back into the pages of the book he was reading.

“Are you... reading something useful about the stone?” he tried instead, hoping that would trigger the boy’s talkative side. That didn’t happen. All of a sudden, Al startled violently, slamming the book shut and hiding it behind his back. “I- no, no. I- that was the wrong book. I was gonna get the one next to it,” Alphonse blurted out, fidgeting around- making sure the book was safely hidden behind him and a couple of the rest of them lying with spine facing him, obscuring their titles. That was certainly strange... Wait, did they have porn in that library? Gosh, maybe that would make research slightly more... No. No, no, no! Focus. “Is anything the matter?” Roy tried instead, shaking himself out of his curious musings. “No,” Alphonse replied way too quickly, desperately starting to bag up the shielded books. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired... or, err... you know. I just need some peace and quiet after the long mission.” “Your brother said you two had some kind of fight. Is that what’s been bothering you?” Alphonse visibly paused, his arm still tucked inside his small brown leather bag. Maybe, just maybe... He could talk to the colonel about this... No. No, he couldn’t talk to anyone. Nobody could know. His brother would hate him if he knew he had these strange... he wouldn’t call them urges- he wasn’t actually sure if he was even able to have those- but feelings. Feelings he shouldn’t have towards someone he definitely shouldn’t. “You know, for a suit of armor, you’re pretty expressive,” Roy chuckled, leaning lazily on the door frame. “What?” What had he expressed? Did he know? How could he know!? “It’s your body language. Which, I guess is expected. You don’t really have too many other ways of showing your emotions.” “I... I guess not. What,” he needed to be careful of what he was saying. One slip up and his life would be even more over than it already felt. “...what do you think I’m I portraying right now?”

“Honestly? You look terrified.”

Oh. Fuc-freak! When Alphonse didn’t answer, instead only kept staring at his book-bag, Roy took it as permission to continue.

“You know, your brother is pretty worried. He couldn’t even think of any good retorts to my short jokes.” Alphonse tilted his head towards the colonel for a moment, before lowering his gaze again, clearly guilt-ridden. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he uttered finally. “But he was just pestering me- going on and on about how I was acting strange and I just... didn’t want to talk to him about it...” “He’s not mad, he’s just wo-” “...I mean, I didn’t hit him that hard anyway.” “...rried. You punched Fullmetal?”

“I- The bruise on his cheek wasn’t me, that was this... other kid. Russel, his name was. Mine didn’t leave a mark, I don’t think...”

Roy slowly blinked, trying to digest all of this information. If there was anything in the report about Ed being in a fistfight with some other kid, Roy hadn’t been able to decipher it from the colorful chicken-scratches on the piece of paper on his desk.

But, that was not what this was about.

“Listen, Alphonse. I get that this...whatever it is that is bothering you, is hard to talk about. I’m not sure if I’m the right person for you to talk to anyway. But it’s clearly bothering you a lot. I just think you’d maybe feel better if you talked about it.” Hesitant, he got closer to the hulking armor and lay an awkward hand on his shoulder piece. Alphonse went silent and stayed silent for a long time. Roy was starting to worry if he had hit some kind of off switch when Alphonse finally met his gaze.

“How... how does it feel like to be in love?” That was not what Roy had expected. He wasn’t sure just what he was expecting, but this would probably be one of the absolute last things. But, he had also been a fourteen-year-old boy with a crush once upon a time, more years ago than he liked to think about, so this should be within his comfort zone. Somewhat.

“Uh, well... I guess it’s different for everybody but... I guess the first thing I usually feel is a tingling sensation in my stomach.”

“I... I can’t feel that,” Al sulked. Something in his voice had turned more desperate, which only made Roy feel panicked. A different strategy, then.

“Well, that’s not the only thing do. You... you enjoy her company and want to spend more time with her than other people in your life I guess. She’ll make you feel accepted for who you are, hopefully. You... usually find her physically attractive too.”

Thoughtfully, Alphonse nodded, unfortunately not seeming any more uplifted.

“Anything else that’s on your mind?”

Alphonse hesitated. “And... what if the person you... you love... isn’t a she?”

Roy wasn’t able to hide his surprise at that. Al visibly recoiled and waved his hands frantically.

“N-not me. I’m talking about... about someone else. Someone I met at the mission.”

Roy looked at him skeptically. “Uhu,” he murmured. He wasn’t about to point out the ‘I can’t feel tingles in my stomach’ part. If this was how Alphonse needed to handle this, it would have to do for now. “And this someone, is he afraid of these feelings?”

“Very,” Alphonse answered immediately.

“Well,” this was definitely out of Roy’s comfort zone. “You should tell your friend that he probably has a lot of accepting people around him, who’ll love him unconditionally. And that... the people who don’t, don’t matter. It will be hard at times. There will be people who’ll discriminate against him and make him feel small and unimportant, but he’s not. As long as he remembers that, I think he’ll be okay.”

Roy had Alphonse’s full attention now. In his awe, Alphonse hadn’t realized that he had froze in motion. The last book, the one he’d hid behind his back, was clutched in his left hand, while he was holding the bag in his right.

The title of the book read clearly “Understanding sexuality”. Roy had seen the book before. It was one of the books recommended in the academy. There was a readlist for those who chose to pursue interrogation techniques and profiling.

Roy nodded faintly towards the book. “That’s a good read. I read it during my time at the academy. You should recommend it to your friend too.”

If Al could blush, he would have. He quickly stuck the book into the sack. “Y-yeah, I’ll do that. Thank you, colonel. I feel a little bit better now.”

“Good,” Roy said honestly, aware that this would not be over anytime soon. But it was a start.

“And Alphonse...” The helmet perked back up. “I’m pretty sure that your friend has a brother who loves him very much and will not think any less of him if he shares what on his mind. I think he will be proud.”

Alphonse replied with a couple of rapid, shaky nods and wrapped the strap of the bag over his shoulder and got up from the floor. “I hope so. Thank you. I should probably take brother home now. I think I need to apologize to him for acting irrational. And for punching him.”

He started walking, and Roy quickly matched his pace to walk beside him, holding a reassuring, much sturdier hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about him. I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Al!” a shrieking voice yelled from the open door in Mustang’s office. Edward stood, annoyance and uneasiness rivaling as his main expression. This time, Roy noticed the faint, yellowing bruise on his cheek. He also had a clear, starting black eye which must have darkened in his time waiting in his office.

“I’m okay, brother,” Al exclaimed with a prominent lightness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Roy smiled.

Edward looked unsure, chewing on his bottom lip as he contemplated about if he believed him or not.

“Okay, I’m glad. Let’s go home,” Ed decided and walked over to where the two considerably taller figures stood, just outside the office. He shot a questioning glance towards Roy.

“Yeah, you probably should,” Roy agreed easily. “Fullmetal needs to re-write his report so it’s ready at my desk at nine tomorrow morning.”

Before Edward could get to physically attacking his superior officer and risk actually getting court marshaled for giving Mustang a matching black eye, Al quickly caught him and carried him gingerly under his arm out of the offices, leaving an echo of curses and other profanities behind them as the disappeared out of the HQ. Roy wasn’t actually expecting the report in the morning. If Alphonse decided to wear his heart on his sleeve and tell Edward about what he was going through, the brothers had a long night ahead of them.

Good thing they had each other. If it was anyone else, things might be a lot more difficult. It would still be, but a child that had offered up his arm after already having lost a leg to save his little brother from dying, wouldn’t make that sacrifice go to waste. Al would still be Al. And Ed inevitably would keep on being Ed. Nah. They would be alright.

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thedeadshotnetwork · 7 years ago

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10 things you need to know today: December 13, 2017 1. Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in Tuesday's contentious Senate election in Alabama, a deeply red state that had not elected a Democratic senator since 1992. Jones' victory narrows the GOP's Senate majority to 51-49. Moore, a controversial former state Supreme Court chief justice, slipped in polls last month after several women accused him of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, which he denied. Jones said the race was "about dignity and respect." Moore refused to concede . He lost by 21,000 votes, about 1.5 percent, and said absentee and military ballots could narrow the margin to 0.5 percent, triggering a recount. "When the vote is this close," he said, "it's not over." 2. President Trump lashed out at Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) via Twitter on Tuesday after she called for him to resign over sexual misconduct allegations. Trump called Gillibrand a "lightweight" and a "total flunky for Chuck Schumer" who used to beg him for campaign contributions "and would do anything for them." Gillibrand said the suggestive remark amounted to a "sexist smear" against her, and other Democrats said Trump's tweet only underscored the need to investigate the allegations against Trump at a time when powerful men from Washington to Hollywood are being held accountable for sexual misconduct. Several women who have accused Trump of harassment and groping called for a congressional investigation. Trump has denied all of the accusations, calling them "fake news." 3. Accused New York City subway bomber Akayed Ullah posted a Facebook message hours before the attack taunting President Trump, telling him "you failed to protect your nation," according to documents filed by the federal government, which is charging Ullah with terrorism. Prosecutors said Ullah, an immigrant from Bangladesh and former livery cab driver, wanted to detonate the pipe bomb in the busy Port Authority tunnel to kill as many people as he could. Authorities said they found a handwritten note at Ullah's Brooklyn home that said, "O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE." Investigators also found metal pipes, Christmas light fragments, and screws matching shrapnel in the crude homemade bomb found at the scene of the explosion. 4. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that he was ready to start talking directly with North Korea , with no preconditions. "Let's just meet," he said in front of the Atlantic Council. "We can talk about the weather if you want ... Then we can begin to lay out a map, a road map, of what we might be willing to work toward." Previously, the U.S. said it would only start discussions with Pyongyang if they talked about North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons. Tillerson did say that North Korea, which two weeks ago tested a missile that could reach anywhere in the U.S. with a nuclear warhead, would need to respect a "period of quiet" with no missile or nuclear tests. 5. Republican House and Senate negotiators have tentatively agreed to raise the corporate tax rate from 20 percent to 21 percent in their joint bill, GOP sources said Tuesday. A key element in both the House and Senate versions was reducing the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, but negotiators looked at nudging up the rate to help pay for changes benefiting middle-class families and small businesses, and lowering the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans. To pass the bill in the Senate under budget rules keeping Democrats from blocking the legislation with a filibuster, the legislation can't add more than $1.5 billion in deficit spending over 10 years. Republican leaders hope to iron out the deal in time for final votes next week. 6. The Justice Department late Tuesday released texts between two senior FBI officials who helped investigate President Trump's campaign in which they said last year that it was "terrifying" to contemplate a Trump victory. One said Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival, "just has to win," as both expressed fear that Trump would politicize the FBI. Special Counsel Robert Mueller removed one of the officials, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, from the investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible collusion by Trump associates after the texts surfaced. Republicans plan to cite the texts between Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page as evidence that Mueller's investigation is biased when Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mueller, testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. 7. The Skirball wildfire that destroyed six homes and damaged a dozen more in the Bel-Air area in western Los Angeles last week was started by an illegal cooking fire at a homeless encampment, Los Angeles fire officials said Tuesday. The city has been struggling with a sharp rise in its homeless population for years, and homeless encampments have spread. Investigators say the fire started at a camp along Sepulveda Boulevard where it passes under the 405 Freeway. The massive Thomas Fire, which has burned more than 234,000 acres, continued to spread on Tuesday as gusting winds pushed it down mountain slopes toward the wealthy coastal enclave of Montecito in Santa Barbara County. 8. The Kremlin said Tuesday that it has started interpreting President Trump's tweets as official statements, and preparing briefings on them for Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Moscow considers all statements made on his official Twitter account to be official, so reports are presented to President Putin about them, as well as about official statements that politicians make in other countries," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, as quoted by the state-owned Tass news agency. Trump's tweets differ sharply with those of his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was the first U.S. president with such a social media presence. Obama used Twitter sparingly and signed his posts to emphasize that he had written them. Trump's tweets have frequently contradicted statements by members of his Cabinet. 9. Facebook on Tuesday pushed back against investor and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya for recently saying that the social network contributes to "dopamine-driven feedback loops" that are "ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. No civil discourse. No cooperation. Misinformation. Mistruth." Facebook's response came in the form of a statement noting that Palihapitiya, who was vice president for user growth, had not worked at Facebook for six years. "Facebook was a very different company back then and as we have grown we have realized how our responsibilities have grown too," the statement said. "We take our role very seriously and we are working hard to improve," including investing in research into Facebook's impact on users' well-being. 10. Merriam-Webster on Tuesday revealed its word of the year for 2017: Feminism. From the Women's March on Washington in January to the ongoing "Me Too" movement calling out powerful men for sexual harassment and assault, women's rights have been a focus in U.S. politics this year. Searches for "feminism" on Merriam-Webster.com increased by 70 percent over the year, with notable spikes after key events, lexicographer Peter Sokolowski, the company's editor at large, said. "What does it mean to be a feminist in 2017?" Sokolowski said. "Those kinds of questions are the kinds of things, I think, that send people to the dictionary." December 13, 2017 at 03:53PM

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