[roy/riza; pg] A Formal Feeling Title: A Formal Feeling Author:emilie_burns Theme: 18: The smell of hospitals in winter (52_Flavours) Characters: Roy Mustang x Riza Hawkeye Series: Fullmetal Alchemist Rating: PG Word Count: 1919 Notes: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is copyrighted by Hiromu Arakawa/Square Enix. This is a work of fanfiction for personal entertainment only. Both concrit and comments welcome and desired. Summary:He was already tuning out the disinfectant, but nothing could distract him from the unique odor of lingering, waiting death that leeched out under closed doors and lurked in the halls, wrapping around the passerbys in silent warning, a reminder that it could be them, that their next visit could be the last. Original LJ Post Date: July 17, 2006 @ Chaotic_Library
A Formal Feeling
After great pain, a formal feeling comes-- The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-- - Emily Dickinson
Life went on. as much as he would rather be elsewhere, there was only so much leave Roy Mustang could use to excuse himself from the office without garner too many unwanted questions. He was not entitled to family leave, no matter how much he wished he could argue otherwise. They were a family, all of them. Every last one of his little hand-picked team, they were his. His family. But for as much as they were, they also weren't, so off to work he went, even while his attention remained far away from the rote paperwork he went through on autopilot, firmly fixed on room four-fifteen.
Night came earlier then, the sundown leaving the world prematurely dark by the time he left the building. White snow glowed under streetlamps, darting this way and that to the slightest breeze in a stark world of black and white interrupted by soft, yellow lamplights. The air was too cold to hold any scent but its own, a unique, crisp, frigid sort of absence of everything.
That absence made the chemical stench of disinfectants so powerful that it was hard not to cringe at the harshness when he opened the hospital doors. But despite its strength, it was never enough to fully conceal the cloying, underlying scent of illness. A nod to the receptionist and a few distracted greetings to various staff he'd come to recognize by sight, if not by name, punctuated his walk to the elevator.
The operator wordlessly tipped his hat as he stepped into the car, and the gate creaked and clanged as it was slid shut. He didn't have to give him the floor number, the man already knew. Mustang closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, feeling the low rumble of the motor, and the various creaks and groans of normal elevator operation were loud in the silence. Then they stopped, and he opened his eyes again at the familiar clang of the gate.
"Fourth floor," the operator announced, and Mustang stepped past him with a murmur of thanks.
He was already tuning out the disinfectant, but nothing could distract him from the unique odor of lingering, waiting death that leeched out under closed doors and lurked in the halls, wrapping around the passerbys in silent warning, a reminder that it could be them, that their next visit could be the last.
Left from the elevators. Second right. Set of doors, first left. Another set of doors. Twenty steps. He could make out quiet chatter, the clatter of typewriter keys as he walked. Left again. The rustle of papers and the louder clang of a file drawer closing. Halt. A nurse's desk area was just off to his left at a T-junction lined with doors, some open, some closed.
"Good evening, Colonel Mustang," a nurse said, standing from her work as she tucked an errant orange-red curl back underneath the white cap pinned atop her head.
He gave her a nod of acknowledgment as she approached, and took the offered clipboard, signing his name on the guest registry. "How is today looking?"
Several glances among the nurses were exchanged, and his stomach knotted as a muscle in his cheek jumped. He rather hated it when they did that.
"The same," the redhead replied, her tone apologetic.
He forced a smile as he handed the clipboard back. It felt tight and unnatural on his lips. "It's been said that no news is good news. Isn't that the case?"
"Of course, Colonel," she said, even though they both knew that wasn't necessarily the case in an intensive care unit where some of the patients have remained comatose for years.
But no change still offered more hope than a rapid decline straight into a grave ever could, and he would take what he could get. Aboutface and left. Twelve steps and left. Room four-fifteen.
The lights were low, just enough to see by. Nothing brighter was needed. Nothing brighter was wanted. He didn't want to see how pale the face on the pillows might have become, to see the unavoidable bruises from medical equipment, the chapped lips, the harsh light unforgiving in revealing how bad everything seemed.
Even then, as he closed the door, he took a moment to steel himself before turning around. When he did so, it was with the decisive rigidness of a perfect aboutface, his heels clicking together smartly before he approached the bed. He held his own breath as he watched the still figure intently, releasing it only once he was certain he saw the shallow rise and fall of breathing.
The chair squeaked on the tile as he pulled it closer to the bedside and he made himself comfortable before trusting his voice. "Good evening, Lieutenant." He tried to convince himself her hand only felt as cool as it did because his own was still a bit chilled from the walk there. He held it tight, a lethal hand, a hand which fired guns with an accuracy unmatched by any other in the military as far as he knew, a hand which had protected him, and now a hand that felt far too fragile in his own.
He tried to convince himself he felt her fingers stir in response, but failed. One more ritual as his hand slid up her wrist, feeling a pulse that seemed too shallow for his liking, and he closed his eyes, trying to will it to be stronger, for her to be stronger, to wake up, to open her eyes. He wanted her to wake up and nag him about the paperwork left unfinished on his desk. He wanted her to assure him she was fine, that everything was fine, that she would be okay.
He released a shaky breath, and returned his hand to hers.
"I apologize for being tardy," he said in the most normal, conversational tone he could muster. "There were some problems in the quarterly budget, and I had to stay over to complete the forms for Falman to take to the quartermaster's office in the morning."
Mustang paused for a moment. "Of course, because I spent a good part of the afternoon washing the windows and balancing pencils, there is still a stack of work of lesser importance on my desk that I hadn't had the time to complete. Yes, Lieutenant. I'm procrastinating on my paperwork again. Lieutenant Havoc attempts to cajole me into paying attention, but I'm afraid he's quite ineffective. You've dallied about on this little vacation of yours long enough. The office is falling apart without you."
No response. No change. Following the script established weeks ago, he tried a different tactic.
"Black Hayate misses you. I'm afraid I've been spoiling him terribly. You need to hurry up and get better before he's positively ruined, or you might wake up to find you have a thoroughly undisciplined pup who takes after me now on your hands."
Not even so much as a flutter of eyelashes for his trouble. He sighed. "Now really, Lieutenant. You know this is where you're supposed to wake up and scold me. You're not doing very well at following orders here. I might have to write you up."
It was a bitter sense of irony that gnawed at him as he watched her. After the hell of warzones, the chaos of bloody battlefields, the dangers that they constantly found themselves facing, this was an insult. It was too ordinary, too simple, too mundane, too much of everything that it shouldn't be. It wasn't anything worthy of her.
From everything that they had been able to piece together, from the physical evidence to the eyewitness reports, she had attempted to evade the chaotic aftermath of a drunken driver barreling through a main intersection. Her, and everyone else who had been driving at the time. Some were successful. Others were not. She had been one of the unsuccessful ones. Three cars involved, hers being one. Icy streets. A sloped embankment. A sturdy old tree.
Then the hospital.
The swelling around her brain, brought on by the force of impact, had finally diminished. But she hadn't woken once, nor showed any signs of being near that point. The more time went by, the less optimistic her doctors were that she would recover.
But she would. He knew she would. No other conclusion would be satisfactory. She was Riza Hawkeye. It would take something far more than an ordinary traffic accident to bring her down. She was one of those, if she had to die young, destined to go down in a blaze of glory taking a dozen opponents with her. Not this. He refused to acknowledge any other outcome, any other possibility.
She would wake up. He could not allow himself to believe otherwise.
Every night, he filled her in on the day, and sometimes, read aloud to her from books he'd found in her home when he let himself in to gather up things for Black Hayate. More often though, their evenings together were spent in companionable silence -- after all, words had never been needed between them before.
She would wake up. He studied her, that too-pale face softened by the dim lighting, obscured by masks and tubes, and refused to look at the phonebooth and the blood, or the tangle of cars and skid marks in his mind.
He refused to lose this one too.
Alchemists shaped the elements with their will. The arrays opened the door to that control but ultimately it was their own willpower which drove their creations. Every ounce of energy he could muster went into that will, trying to channel it toward her, into her, to force her into a state of awareness. To open her eyes. To respond. To do something, anything.
Anything except die, except lie there like a morbid statue, a portrait of twilight, neither dead nor living.
A soft click and a squeak of rubber on tile startled him out of his thoughts, and he quickly jerked his hand back from hers as he turned to the door even as the nurse spoke.
"Colonel Mustang? I'm terribly sorry, but it's--"
"It's eleven o'clock, I know. Don't apologize," he said as he stood and returned the chair to its proper place.
"Closer to eleven-thirty," she corrected, and gave him a rueful smile. "I'll see you tomorrow."
He returned it with a faint one of his own; visiting hours were over a half-hour ago, but she'd delayed reminding him of the fact until after shift change was completed to give him a few more minutes. Mustang straightened his uniform and turned on his heel, not daring to risk a look back, to do anything that might be construed as a flicker of doubt, of a belief that it might be for the last time.
She would wake up.
By the time he stepped out, he was so accustomed to the stench of illness, the harsh chemicals of disinfectants, the cloying taunt of impending death, that he noticed no change as he stepped out into the complete absence of smell, into the bitter cold. The streetlamps reflected on the ice like chips of topaz, and the flurries glowed in passing. It was a crisp wind, one that sneaked down the neck of his coat and along his spine, going for his bones.
It was too cold.
He counted his footsteps on the long walk home, and wished for an early spring.