coyote (sister_coyote) wrote in ironman7, @ 2007-08-22 06:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | fullmetal alchemist, sister_coyote, week 1: prompt 2 |
Fullmetal Alchemist (Ross[/Hawkeye]) [week 1, prompt 2]
Title: No Secret
Author: Sister Coyote
Rating: PG
Warniings: Spoilers through the end of the anime.
Word Count: 500
Summary: "You just go on," Hawkeye said.
Afterward, Ross could put no name to the way she felt. She should have been -- not happy; she had been fond of Ed, and he was gone to someplace unknown -- but at least content. There was peace again, after a fashion. The creeping corruption in the government had been at least dealt a severe blow. They had won, after a fashion. And yet . . . .
She didn't drink much, or often, so it was chance that found her at the bar that served -- in this interim period -- as a makeshift officer's club, with the remainder of gin and apple in front of her, stirring the ice cubes and trying not to think so much. She was not drunk, though, or even absorbed enough in the glass to miss First Lieutenant Hawkeye's approach, though she tried not to stare hopefully.
"May I?" Hawkeye asked.
"Please," Ross said. Hawkeye sat, sipped her brandy, and said nothing. After a moment, without preamble, Ross asked, "Was it like this after Ishbal?" Then she felt stupid for the question.
Hawkeye did not laugh at her, or even give her a condescending look. "You missed Ishbal, didn't you?"
"Yes," Ross said, and braced herself for a condescending remark about how those who had served in that bloody desert war could never be understood by those who had not.
To her relief, it didn't come. "In some ways, yes, it was like this," Hawkeye said after a moment's consideration. She paused, sipped her brandy again. "In others, no, not at all. There was more bloodshed in Ishbal, and that was harder – much harder, in some ways. But then, too, it was possible after Ishbal, if you wished, to pretend that nothing was wrong. Now we have cut out the rotten heart – but cutting it out exposes it to full light, and we cannot but recognize the evils that were a part of us. It is a difficult thing to accept." She looked up, full into Ross's eyes, and Ross felt her throat tighten. She knew that she must appear very young, a naive soldier seeing the horrors of war for the first time.
"How did you manage?" she asked.
"You just go on," Hawkeye said. "There's no secret to it."
Ross didn't say that she wondered and worried what had happened to Ed, or that she still woke up in a cold sweat over those she'd seen die, or that she would never look at her fellow soldiers quite the same way again. What she said was, "Thank you," and she meant it.
And she was grateful that Hawkeye didn't reassure her with platitudes. Hawkeye just gave her a quiet smile, finished her brandy, and got up. But just before she left, she brushed her fingers -- so subtly even Ross did not see it coming -- across the back of Ross's hand, and though Ross was too startled even to jump, she felt fire in the traces of that touch.
She kept herself, barely, from watching Hawkeye go.