Notes: I owe a huge debt of gratitude to 1stTimeCaller for her amazing beta job. This story wouldn't be what it is without her insights. Love to maiisbuns.
who lives
Smoke gathers beneath the ceiling's blackened tin tiles—a match for her mood, and for the roiling green clouds that gather low over the city. Riza could add a little cirrus stream of her own, but all she has is the cigarette holder to tap against her lighter, ivory clacking on silver again and again. They've been waiting nearly an hour, stiffly side by side and still in uniform, as though either of them will be going back to work afterward.
"What's the point of rank if I can't use it to get anywhere?" Roy sighs, pulling out his pocket watch to check the time, and he smiles at her. He doesn't know the way that she knows. "Are you alright?"
"Of course," she says. "I'm sure it'll only be a few more minutes."
A wave of vertigo ripples upward between her eyes—and the half-filled lobby blurs into a slumbering beast, churning, burbling, gasping with thickened lungs. The steady heartbeat of patients marching the corridors and tangled in their IV lines, the thrumming of each slippered footfall that plays her broken nerves to insentience—she calms by pressing her fingernails deep into her palms, carving long purple furrows across the spongy flesh.
The nurses chitter like insects across the floor, hiding their oddly jointed limbs beneath dark blue dresses, pressed leather boots, starch-white aprons crossed over the back. Hats pinned to hair carefully pulled into uniform curls—such dreadful little halos. One of them approaches, with black eyes and pin-pricked red lips and a slithery grayed tongue.
"Captain Hawkeye. Doctor Hauer apologizes for the delay. He's prepared for you now."
Roy's hand on her back is not subtle or standard politeness—he has caught her twice in the last month from falling back down the stairs. Something in the exertion of climbing would send a sheet of foggy blackness across her vision and then, just as her fainting spell during the commemoration parade, Riza would groggily wake to find herself propped up by his steadying arm. Even now they are keeping to a slow pace, passed on every fifth step by an annoyed orderly or harangued custodian.
Doctor Hauer's name is at last set on the glass of his door, in careful white etching—he's new from the north, highly recommended and with a fellowship purchased directly from the führer's considerable coffers. At least, from all this meaningless mess, Central City Hospital can boast of retaining the best diagnostician in the country. He won't look like much in print, but she can imagine, somewhere in a distant memorial garden, his stately stone glower presiding over a mossy plaque dedicated to his advances in various medicinal sciences. Such men are almost never properly paid tribute in life, so she can find some comfort in knowing she probably wouldn't have lived to see it regardless.
"I'm sorry," he says, no preamble, no offer of tea, "but it is exactly as we feared."
"Cancer."
"Yes."
Riza nods. She knew, in all the ways that Roy did not, and his fingers tighten painfully around hers.
"Are you certain?" he asks.
"I spoke to my colleagues in West City and East, and they both concurred with my initial reading. The shadowing on the film clearly indicates wide-spread metastasis."
"What does that mean?"
Hauer glances at Roy and then back to Riza. She can, to some extent, respect his desire to keep her the center of the conversation—but it feels so unnecessary. Like the broken beaks of a thousand furious birds, rain begins to peck at the glass behind the good doctor's head.
"Although the size of the mass in your lungs leads me to conclude that it is the originating site, your previously described symptoms—dizziness, hallucinations, blackout spells—strongly suggest that there may be a mass in your brain as well."
He points, with alarming accuracy for not even bothering to turn his head, at the tacked-up transparency of her chest. The closest she will ever get to witnessing the true complexity of her own desiccated husk, save for running a knife beneath her ribcage and peeling back what flesh is found there.
"It also appears to have reached your lymph system. We could draw blood to confirm the presence of malignant cells moving throughout your body, but at the current rate of growth, in a matter of months…"
A twisting grimace.
"As they say, truth will out."
"Is that—is that how long…?"
Hauer's eyes are a brackish-green, painted with flecks of yellow by an unsteady hand. In one eye, the sclera holds a streak of bright red, and the pulse it hides could almost be visible, she thinks, by changing the angle of her observation. His left eye flickers first, followed by the right a quarter-millisecond after.
"It's difficult to say with any accuracy. The disease process is unique to each person."
"So then what's our next step?"
She is not trying to memorize this moment or even Roy's face—she is merely observing the cool milky sheen of his skin, the youthfully short lines bundling above his brows, the click and clack of his tongue and teeth as he seeks a futile reprieve. They—Hauer and Roy, and not Riza, who folds up her hands in her lap and watches Roy's face without feeling the slightest change in her own—discuss medication and surgery and radium therapies with such naive hope cutting their lips to ribbons.
"No," Riza says. The birds have left the window—for all its crescendo, the storm was brief and will have left only a discomforting haze to line the streets and sidewalks.
"Riza, there's still options—"
"Not for me."
"But they've had success—"
"In skin cancers. And most of the patients went on to develop a different cancer and died anyways, after a few years."
He wants to protest, his eyes a pair of open wounds twisted wide by the gears of coming grief. The clouds have cleared from his side first—he sits in a shower of sunlight and reaches to her, delicately seizes her hands and pulls them to his lap. They stand sharp as plucked feathers against the dark wool of his uniform.
"I read the same studies as you," she finishes.
"But it could work."
It is difficult to explain the logic of what remains so… obvious. Hauer has withdrawn, content to study the bleed and retain his commentary. Riza, in a half-remembered instinct for solace, runs her narrow thumbs across the wide expanse of Roy's palms.
"Cut me open," she says, unblinking, by force of love and misery willing the certainty to bridge the empty air between them, "and scoop out what they can. Then weeks under one of those awful lamps or even worse—a tube of radium sewn up inside me until it burns through."
He shakes his head as she speaks—his imagination is well-stocked with atrocity and no doubt illustrates each word with a facsimile of what its truth might be.
"Is that what you want for me?"
Ruined by all of it—torn open and shredded by the indifferent abyss. She sees him as one might see a lone telegraph pole with its lines all cut loose, fading fast into a horizon that welcomes no minute alteration. He squeezes her fingers, trying to coerce heat from his calloused skin into her. He speaks very quietly—not a whisper, but an inability to draw sufficient breath for each word.
"I want you to live."
She smiles, somewhat, tempering the cruelty with a cold sigh and a tremor which passes, without origin or end, between their joined hands.
"Well," she says, "I'm not going to."
Roy's car has broken down again, so they take a black taxi back to Central Command. The driver seems to sense their disquiet and leaves the divider up, assuming possibly that they have a need to talk—but they only stew in a long silence. The rain begins again, and ends, and then restarts and finally quits the greened sky for yellowing pastures somewhere south.
"Why didn't you tell me about the hallucinations?" Roy asks. He speaks to the closed window, hands curled to fists in his lap, brow knit, frowning, eyes darting from face to face when they stop near a crowd. He will want a solution from his frustration and will find nothing.
"I don't know," Riza says. "It only happened a few times. I thought sometimes it hadn't happened at all."
Anger rolls from his shoulders in cutting waves. It radiates, and she wants to lay her hands along the span of his back, to absorb his heat and make it her own, to become the yawning, roaring void that has opened inside him: a little well of sadness, which seeks an ocean to drown it.
"I'm sorry."
Their attendance at Grumman's table is required, and she tells him immediately, wishing no delay to the plans that now must follow. He rages, of course, stalking the edge of his favorite Aerugian rug as he narrows his sights on the appropriate prey.
"I built that hospital!" he snarls, expelling foul breath with the lie. "Every brick belongs to me, and if they think they can reject my granddaughter for treatment—"
"I don't want treatment," Riza says, turning her fork to cut into a fig. "I made the choice."
He softens to speak to her, just as always—she is glad, again, that he had no choice but to give her up as assistant. Familial affection is smothering at any distance.
"But, my dear heart, you're far too young to give up."
"No, I'm not," she says, arranging her plate and cutlery for the ease of the maids, who will sweep the room spotless once they've gone through to the library, each night making such quick work of erasing all traces of their disorderly occupation. "I'm going to die."
Grumman rages through the nightcap, malcontent as always with realities outside his making. Roy won't defend her outright, but he's far enough to her side to ignore Grumman's attempts at alliance. Riza nurses a tiny glass of port, happy to let silence be her best answer.
She is the last to leave the library but stops short of climbing the first step. Roy will have found a room for himself somewhere in the east gallery—still trapped by the old etiquettes. They will not share a bed under this roof, which seems a trifling thing and yet—she can almost relish the possession of feeling again—some silly part of her is hurt. No matter that they've made love before, or that long before the tendrils of this nightmare began to tug at her ribcage, they had made such public promises.
Grumman had demanded an announcement and then disseminated one himself, when neither of them proved obliging. An alert of required celebration, and the drab party that followed—she thinks she still can smell the smoke of dusty candles and the flowers left too close to open flame. Smoke like meat, like the rabbits she hung inside that big hollow oak and the door she'd made of bark to cover, to pack with clay and come back later when Father lost his patron and they'd gone three weeks without anything but bread and foraged apples—
Riza curls her fingers around the ugly finial at the base of the bannister, feeling the weakness drain through her grip. There is no smoke here. The engagement party was months ago, and all its guests have gone home to sleep. Very carefully, she slides down to sit on the last carpeted step.
This is not the main staircase of the house—the grand incline that sweeps from the gilded foyer up to the narrow walk which runs from the east wing to the west—but a disused passage back to the kitchens. The sort of walk servants might have taken fifty years ago, slipping surreptitiously from their rooms in the attic to the basements. What need did they have for decoration? This landing holds a vase long empty of flowers, a dusty candelabra, and an overly-ornate bureau. And overseeing all, the painting.
Liesel Grumman, aged sixteen years, preserved and pickled in a brine of oil pigments and glaze. Her hair is styled in loose curls, her narrow body draped in white, and her hands are clasped primly on her lap—not one on top of the other, but palm to palm. Her eyes are blue, her throat bare, and her skin smoother than the brushstrokes that conjure it.
But the varnish is yellowing. The painting has gained a haze, and the corner of the frame is chipped of its gild. Riza shuffles herself forward along the carpet, not quite steady to stand on her own, until she is kneeling at the base of the bureau, looking up into her mother's eternally averted gaze.
Berthold had had nothing to say on the subject of his late wife—other than that she was late and his wife—and Liesel had left precious few letters for perusal. Vaguely, Riza remembers a cardboard portrait of their wedding buried somewhere deep in the cellar: a matching pair in black, Liesel smiling gently and Berthold scowling.
If there had ever been anything like a journal of hers, Grumman never spoke of it. Despite the elopement which had separated them forever, he seemed to still think of his daughter as loyal, darling, sweet, pure, incorruptible—but her gaze in the painting is more dead than demure. The bureau is weighted and steady as Riza ascends, leaving her shoes to topple in the carpet, her elbows digging into the rough panels on either side.
Her eyes are a detached, icy blue. Round, large, surrounded on all sides by sclera barely distinguishable from her snowy white skin. Riza presses gently on the prick of her mother's painted iris, flattening the peak. She didn't really look like this. She never could have—and anyway, if she did and Riza knew, the memory is gone now in a foggy haze of black.
It is happening more and more—things Riza knew not because she could conjure the memory itself but because the vague shapes of it still threaded themselves in and out of other recollections. Impressions of a movement, of a tree weeping leaves into a river, a negative space between thought and thought, marked out only by its absence. It's creeping closer as well, swallowing whole days and nights of solitude. She finds herself frantically scribbling out every thought that might someday find importance, before they can flit away from her fingers.
And what she does remember still—played out before her helpless gaze like a zoetrope glued to her face. A whirling vortex that melts to a view of Eastern Command, where Grumman brought her to the painting before even telling Riza who she was. Who she was—peering down from above the fireplace, amber-trapped, perpetually pre-elopement, pre-death, pre-decay, prevented from any comment on her own current condition—and he leered like a supplicant, offering up no sacrifice worthy of the penance sought in such adolated immortality.
Riza slides from the bureau unsteadily, spiked with sudden fear that the world has shifted itself while her back was turned. And it has—the shapes of Grumman's old sitting room recede, bleeding backwards into carpet and empty wall and worn step, and her own shoes, kicked over and empty. She can't remember how to get back to her own room, or what twists and turns will take her to where she is supposed to be. This isn't home—it's a stop in the pilgrimage to the end, and she sets her left hand on the wall, ready to resume.
By morning, Grumman has attained some level of acceptance. He is the last to come down for breakfast, white-faced and gray-shadowed, and he takes his seat without bothering to bring a plate.
"I'm going to see General Armstrong today," Riza says. A maid woke her in the parlor at sunrise and lead her back to her room, where she slipped uneasily behind the mask of a dressing gown and slippers.
"You don't have to," Roy says, as his spoon scrapes across the bottom of his cup.
"I should," Riza replies. "I want to."
The grapefruit tastes like nothing, but she still winces. Grumman's butler, with a stare of gravest concern, brings the old man some eggs and sausages, which he does not touch.
"When you return," he says, barely managing to unfold his napkin, "we might discuss hiring on a nurse or two. To help out."
"There's no need. I'll be going back to the house next week."
His lip curls up like a burning leaf.
"You can't possibly—"
"It is my home," Riza says steadily.
"Wellesley is too far."
"I had a telephone line installed. The tenants left last month."
Roy's stare shifts up from the newspaper he hadn't been reading, fixing on her—furious, offended, incredulous. He must have thought they were in this together. Riza stares back, her mouth flat as her mood.
"I'm going back to the house," she says. "There is no argument."
"Riza, please, you must be reasonable about some of this—"
"Every Hawkeye," she says, slow and deep and clear as a tolling bell, "for two hundred years was born in that house, and now the last of us will die there."
Grumman's fogged glasses clink against his spoon, and he sets his fingertips against each eyelid.
"I wish you would stop saying that word," he mutters.
Roy waits at the bottom of the stairs with her dress coat—undeterred. They have covered the subject of stubbornness extensively in their time together, so she just sighs and turns around, allowing him to slip the sleeves up her arms and slowly pull each button through its slit. Her whole uniform has been freshly mended for this: its last exercise in the sun. The piping is bright white, the braids are neatly aligned in rows, and each metal pin of rank and office and regiment sparkles with shine. He keeps himself to civilian clothes.
His leave of absence has no doubt been expediently approved, or sits atop that neglected pile of forms awaiting the führer's signature. Another piece in its waiting place.
They could take Grumman's car, but she doesn't want Armstrong to be immediately defensive. Roy orders a cab, and she almost wishes it could be the same driver as yesterday. This one is fine enough, although he smiles with too many teeth. Riza dislikes him instantly and wants, viciously and without cause, to see him frown instead, thinking to dim his irreverence with a remark about her condition. But that was her father's way, never hers, and the impulse passes.
Roy keeps to his side of the bench when she steps in and settles against the door. She is beginning to miss him, even inches apart, and soon he'll have his chance to miss her as well. Without hesitation, Riza slides her hand across the polished leather padding and slips her fingers between his.
He looks at their hands first, and then up to meet her gaze. She's still half-sure he'll pull away. There is nothing to say to the darkness growing behind his eyes.
The Armstrong estate suffered yesterday's rain just like the rest of the city—every time, Riza expects it all to be unblemished and opulent, recently emptied of party guests and yawning for new attention. But instead, it is a quiet house hunched up and drawn in, dripping from its cornice like a near-empty wine bottle, unstoppered and tipped on its side.
There is a butler to let them in, and another butler to announce them. Having no business but escort, Roy is shown into the library, and Riza takes the next step without him.
Maybe they're not all butlers. Three of them stand against the wall in the stately dining room, livery pressed to sharp creases and stares scalding. There must be one table for parties, and this smaller table for every day. Lieutenant General Armstrong sits at the head, newspapers spread on her left and correspondence unopened on her right, with her picked-over breakfast plate neatly in the center. Her brother is also on the right, sitting far down the table—but no doubt as close as she would allow—and he stands when Riza enters.
"Madame General, Captain Hawkeye to see you," the door-opening non-butler says, bowing deeply and backing from Riza's peripheral vision before returning to upright.
"Good morning, Captain Hawkeye," Alex says. "Would you care to join us for breakfast?"
"Thank you, no—I've eaten already."
"Is there some urgent matter?" the general interjects. "I didn't send for you. I thought you were off planning your betrayal of a wedding."
She does not look up from the newspapers, squinting to follow her forefinger across the narrow print. Alex gives her a look of almost matronly disapproval.
"Olivier doesn't mean that, Captain. We're both very happy for you."
"Don't speak for me," she snaps, now lifting her coffee for a sip—obstinance. Riza used to find that horribly endearing in a commander. "The captain's choice in romantic partner has already been reflected in her annual review."
"Olivier, don't be impolite."
"I wonder if I might speak to the general alone," Riza says. Her knees are beginning to strain, and the heels of both feet grow hot. She might have laced her boots too tight in her haste to leave.
"Of course, Captain. Please excuse me."
Alex nods, rises, and ushers the butlers from the room. The general turns to her correspondence, unfolding a concealed pair of reading glasses and setting them on the end of her nose.
"I can't believe the cheek of you bringing that worthless cur into my library."
She loves scolding over a meal. How many bottom-rankers had Riza brought to her table at supper, every one of them knock-kneed with hunger-strengthened fear, to receive a lashing of words no less capable of stripping flesh from bone than the stiffest leather strap?
"It's bad enough you've accepted him—and now he follows you around everywhere like a sick dog, so eager to throw his victory in my face."
She points with a butter knife.
"You know I take this all as a personal offense."
"I know, ma'am."
But what could she do about it? Her refusal would have changed nothing more than—distance? Perhaps Riza would never have gone in to check. The air around Briggs is so thin, and she'd been teased for her inferior Western lungs more than once. Perhaps one morning an enlisted aide would have been sent to her bunk, to rouse for inspection, and she would have just been found, blue-lipped and silent forever.
"Don't tell me that he's gone and knocked you up. The thought of that idiot propagating—"
The sting is surprising.
"I've said something cruel, haven't I?"
Riza opens her eyes—surprised again, to find that she had closed them. The general has set aside her letters and her papers and hidden once more the glasses she wants no one to know of, and she watches Riza with her hands folded on the edge of the table.
"I'm sorry," she says. "It's serious. And I've made some mockery of it."
The overly-familiar upward rush of illness—Riza is standing close enough to the table to grip the back of a chair before she can completely collapse.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm afraid I must sit in your presence."
The general returns to her own seat slowly, too startled to conceal her concern. Beneath the table's edge, Riza's hands are shaking.
"What's going on, Captain?"
"I came to submit my resignation, ma'am."
She nods. She might be angry, disappointed, annoyed—but none of this shows in the knit of her brows.
"And I can't refuse. No matter if I wish I could."
"No, ma'am."
"Is it—is there anything—"
A fragment of a generous offer. A lilt in her voice, a downward shift in tone, maybe even something close to a tremor. They are not—will never be—anything resembling friends. And there is such deep relief in it.
"But I'm sure the führer's exhausted every possible avenue—to confirm…?"
Riza says nothing. The general nods, sliding into her earlier pose, back rigid against the chair, hands shuffling through the correspondence pile, eyes averted—but Riza knows she is not done just yet.
"You'll stay here, with your grandfather?"
"No, ma'am. I own a house in the Western District. We'll go there in a few days, when the rest of my affairs are settled."
The room has reoriented itself around its own wavering silhouettes. Riza can stand without shaking, and she sets the chair back against the table with a muffled click of polished wood on wood. She can even manage parade rest, fixing her stare on a single flower carved into the painting frame directly above the general's head.
"I've briefed Lieutenant Falman already on my projects and as specifically as possible on expectations in serving as your interim adjutant."
"There will never be an equal replacement."
Riza's fingernails bite briefly into the flesh of her palms.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"I suppose that's it, then. You are dismissed."
She never looks up. Riza could imagine a slight twitch passing through the general's occupied hands, but why bother? This is almost exactly what she wanted.
Yet another butler meets her outside the dining room. Roy has broken the containment of the library, and he does not smile at her return.