Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye (flame_queen) wrote in knowhereic, @ 2017-08-03 17:58:00 |
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The dreams always begin the same. Out there in the sands of the desert, in the pouring heat, the dead don’t rise but they do burn. There are columns of fire, gunshots, and the sounds of screaming. But more than that, it’s the smell of burning flesh. It sticks to Roy’s clothes, it’s in his hair, in his nostrils. It’s spanning across Ishval and heading West in the winds - Roy wonders if they smell it in Central. In Drachma? The whole world knows Ishval is burning. No one but the Ishvalans care. Tonight’s dream is a little different, brought on by recent events or maybe just because he was thinking of her when he fell asleep. It isn’t as if he’s never had this one like this before. Even waking, he’s familiar with the sound of her screaming. This time though, he watches himself march across the desert, that cold fury in his eyes, toward a woman with a rifle. She’s crouched and facing away from him, eyes pinned on the land ahead. Roy raises his hand- She turns- Snap . In that instant it’s too late to recall the flames. They eat up along her flesh, racing across her back and burn away living flesh and she screams- Roy jolted awake with a shout, “Riza!” His eyes were blurry from sleep and the haze from his dreams, but he automatically threw out a hand in search of the phone that lived by the nightstand. She always answered, no matter the hour, he always asked her an inane question and she deadpanned she’d see him at work and it was usually enough to calm him - to remind him she was alive. But, tonight, like the last few weeks, the Colonel forgot where he was, so when he threw out his hand he overreached and tumbled off the side of the bunk and hit the floor. The pain that arced up was enough to kick his brain into action so when he blinked everything became clearer and he looked around the interior of the barracks without understanding. His shirt was soaked with a cold sweat and sticking to his chest and back like a paper towel sticks to a wet table, his heart hammered in his chest and his breathing made him feel like he’d run a marathon. Damnit. Roy buried his face in his hands for two seconds, before his head snapped back up and he met the wide eyes of his Lieutenant. Not dead. Not burning. He wanted to touch her. He couldn’t touch her. Not with these hands; his touch is of fire and ash. He smells the cinder and smoke. His hands, they’re shaking, he notes it dully. When the hell did that happen? But he sat back and away from her. *** They were lucky the Colonel never wore his gloves to bed. Riza had woken to the sound of a snap seconds before she’d heard her name. Did he even know that he did it? It sent a chill up her spine. How often did he do this? How often did this happen? Every two hours? Was.. was he serious? Wide eyes turned onto the man who’d fallen onto the ground next to her bunk-- she was already moving to swing her legs out of the bed and sleep-bleary eyes locked onto him. Hawkeye was able to slip from the bed and drop to her knees beside him, her brow furrowing as he leaned back away from her. “Sir?” Her voice was firm and steady, so sure of herself. Shifting forward on her knees so she could reach a hand out and press her palm against the side of his face, in an effort to get him to focus, and to check and make sure he was able to focus. He looked like he may have hit his head pretty hard. “Colonel Mustang?” Brown eyes dropped to his shaking hands, her free one coming up to grasp at them and hold. “It’s Riza.” It was clear he’d woken from a dream. But.. to have heard him say her name. Well, he’d only called her ‘Riza’ less than half a dozen time in the twenty years they’d known one another. She was understandably shaken by it. *** Roy recoiled from her, a pathetic little flinch that did nothing in the scheme of things. He was reluctant to let her near for fear, as irrational as it seemed, that he’d break her. He wasn’t the one that did it. The Ishvalan War had taken her too, it swept her up, broke her, and spit her back out in half a shade of what she’d been. And then Roy had- He’d- That’s why he sees her burning in his dreams. Because he did it to her. The sound of her screaming is exactly the noise she’d made when he’d done it. Roy pulled his hands away and buried his face in them for a moment, breathing. She’s here. It’s okay. It’s not okay. When he raised his eyes again they hadn’t quite focused, he was still seeing whatever far off vision he’d imagined. His eyes tracked back down to his hands and he stared at them in loathing, then slowly, very slowly he looked up at her. Seconds ticked by and he focused, pushed a hand through his damp hair and looked around again. “... my apologies, Lieutenant.” No smooth tones of a silver tongued flirt. It was all rough and … and tired. *** When he tugged his hands away, hers recoiled-- moving away to give him room to rub at his face. He clearly didn’t want her touching him, so all she could do was kneel there, sat back on her heels and watch him as he panted, scrubbed at his face, and tried to get himself together. It was hard, watching the Colonel like this. She’d never seen him fall apart in such a way. She’d seen him get angry, yes, but.. Never anything like this. It scared her. So she just sat there, in the silence, in the dark of their bunk, listening to his breathing and the sounds of people rolling over to go back to sleep. This didn’t concern them. She’d wait. She’d wait through the silent seconds, the pounding of her own heart, and the heartbreaking noise of her Colonel desperately trying to put together his broken pieces to look presentable for his Lieutenant. Then, finally-- finally, he spoke. “You fell out of the bed, sir.” She explained quietly, as if he might not know what had happened. But the tone of his voice.. The shaking quality. The roughness, the raw sound of it. It made her heart clench and she shifted again, bringing herself a little closer as she lifted a hand once more, reaching out for him, for his cheek once again. “You’re safe.” *** He fell out of the bed. That would explain the pain in his elbow. It would explain why he was eye to eye with the Lieutenant in the middle of the night. It would explain a lot of things except for how he’d explain it to her. It offered no solution so for a moment the Colonel just stared at her, especially when she touched his face. There was no quick witted reply, no half-assed attempts at flirting. He just stared and allowed her to comfort him in what ways he could. It was foolish. Weak. But necessary if he had any hope of putting himself back together. Safe? You never felt safe again after war. But she said it, and because Roy trusted her, he believed it for those few, precious seconds. She’d promised never to mislead him and he’d vowed never to stray too far from a path she couldn’t put him back on. Wasn’t this a part of it? She wouldn’t let him lie to himself anymore than she would lie to him. Safe. Okay. Yeah. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I told you you should move.” There it was, the smile. The mask slowly coming back. *** Why did her chest hurt so much? She kept her own face as neutral as she could while she watched him, unwilling to look worried, or nervous, or scared-- he needed her to be strong, and she would be. She would always be strong for him, til the very last. Right into Hell, she’d stand beside him and burn. So she couldn’t let a little thing like this scare her. As he spoke again, told her that he was sorry, the sniper let her lips form a small circle as she let out a soft ‘Shh..’ and moved her hand away from his cheek, covering his lips with two fingers, smothering his next words and stopping them in their tracks. Only then was she moving, shifting forward and lifting her rear up off of her heels, her free hand coming out to rest on his shoulder as she gracefully moved to throw a leg over his legs. Soon, she was straddling his lap, her shins running the length of his thighs, her knees pressed into his hips, but she wasn’t sitting. She stayed up on her knees, hip bones at nearly chest-height, which was exactly where they would end up pressing when those killer’s hands came out to gently take hold properly. One thread into dark, damp hair, the other curled around the back of his shoulders and she pulled him in against her, holding him like that against the dark of her turtleneck. Slowly, carefully, her fingers moved in his hair, that same gentle soothing she’d offered all those years ago when he’d been drunk. She was sure he needed it now more than ever. Riza didn’t need words. She never really did. The silence between them was more than enough. *** He flinched again when she moved, more out of confusion than anything, because what she did wasn’t what he expected. It surprised him, because she was there suddenly, the whole of her, very warm and real. She was solid and very much alive. She was right, it was so very deeply necessary to be reminded of it, to feel. Slowly the soldier relaxed into it, leaning his head against her chest for the sure thrum of her heartbeat against his ear. His hands came up, they hadn’t stopped their useless shaking but a little, and wrapped around her back where they curled into her shirt and he simply held onto her. Say nothing for the shake of his shoulders or that little breath of sound and the ones that followed after. His shirt would dampen hers by contact, what difference did tears make? *** Her fingers tightened slightly in his hair, the other set gripping onto the back of his shirt, and Riza held her superior closer, eyes hard and angry on the wall across from her. Oh, she was furious. Angry at the Fuhrer who’d ordered the extermination. Angry at the army for following orders. Angry at herself for not seeing it. For not realizing what it would do to him and stopping him all those years ago. For not noticing this for what’d it been, even after the war. For not doing something sooner. She’d figured out that he must be having nightmares, thus his late-night phone calls (which she always answered), but she’d never thought they’d be like this. This wasn’t a nightmare, it was so much worse. It was a terror. It was reliving what had happened. Why had he yelled her name? Swallowing thickly, she carefully loosened up her hand in his hair again, not wanting to hurt him, and returned instead to just gently stroking her fingers through it. “You’re safe.” She repeated again, just a whisper between them. The war was over, he was here with her, and she wasn’t ever going to let it happen again. She wouldn’t let him down again. Everything that had happened-- all of it. It was all her fault. This was because of her. “I’ve got you.” Another soft promise. *** Her whispers were soft but the force of their care was louder than the demons in his mind, at least for one night. No amount of tender words could make this go away so easily but it helped. It did its part to offer comfort to a man who believed he didn’t deserve it. It eased the pain in his chest, so that slowly he uncurled his fingers from Riza’s shirt and his hands splayed across her back. If he wanted to, he could find the scars there as easily as he could find his own eyes in the dark. He’d left them on her, after all. If he wanted to, he could trace their shape. If he wanted to, he could recall exactly what they looked like. He’d done his part by taking part of her too in the sands of the desert. And still for all of it, here she was, holding him to her breast with her hands in his hair and her soft words for him to hear. And selfishly he took it. When would he ever stop taking from her? When he was dead, he’d resolved. With justice served. But for now? For now his soft sobs had slowed and quieted to silence, his breathing had eased and he held. It wasn’t quite so desperate, but it was necessary. When he could speak again, it was quiet and rough for the force of his earlier cries, and he said only, “Thank you..” And for once his silence said more than his words ever could convey. *** “You don’t have to thank me.” She assured him quietly, stroking her fingers through his hair again, just holding. She’d continue to hold until he gave some signal he was ready to pull away.. Be it minutes, or hours. She’d hold. When he was finally ready, the Lieutenant carefully climbed off of him and pushed slowly to her feet, but she bent so both hands could reach out for his. It wouldn’t take too much effort to get him up to his feet as well, so long as he helped her. And once there, he’d surely move for the small ladder that would take him back up to his bunk, but she was having none of it. A hand on his bicep guided him away from the ladder, smoothing up to his shoulder and pressing down, to urge him to duck so he could climb into her bunk. That would be the last night Colonel Roy Mustang slept in the top bunk, if Riza had anything to say about it. She’d take the top bunk tomorrow night. But for now? For now, he was sleeping down here. “In.” Her soft but firm demand. *** He stared at her in the dark dim lights for just a moment, how many moments they were having tonight must have set a record, but he couldn’t help but to do it. He lacked the will to refuse her though, bone weary and tired inside as he was, so when she pushed on his shoulder he went with the motion and he settled onto her bed. No jokes came to mind. He wouldn’t sleep, not for hours still, but when he did dare close his eyes the dreams wouldn’t come again tonight. Dreams banished, the soldier tucked away, he believed that he was safe and she with him, too. *** Once he’d climbed into her bed, she situated the covers over him and smoothed them out, watching him for a few seconds as he laid there-- watching her. She fell still, the silence nearly deafening. She swore she could hear his heartbeat. And after a full minute of standing there, bare feet cold on the stone floor, she finally moved forward, one knee finding the thin, lumpy mattress, and she slowly settled down beside him, atop the blankets. She’d positioned herself slightly higher, high enough that she had to bow her head so it wouldn’t head the metal rungs at the top. But it was fine. Laid on her side like this, it was easy, and she was able to move her arm out and gently guide his head and upper body in against her once more, just holding him there. He could sleep like this, for the night. For the rest of the night, anyway, no matter how little there was before people around them began to wake. He needed to sleep. His Lieutenant would stay awake, hold on, and keep watch. She wasn’t going to let anything hurt him, and if there were any signs of those nightmares returning? Well, she wanted to be awake to banish them with soft touches. She could do this. He should be able to rely on her for this. She was supposed to keep him safe. She would keep him safe. |