A/N: I wanted to attempt writing in present tense, as I've never done so before. Love to hear your thoughts 3
Ash drifting downwards, it's beat soft and unrushed, it falls. It finds place over the broken bricks. It sprinkles atop the cracked ground and the scattered fountains. Down, like molasses, gentle, it peppers over their still faces. The ash is grey. The buildings are grey. The sky is grey. Their eyes are red.
Like a flawed projector spitting out images, acid-like, savage and unfair, she sees this, she sees them, and she wonders if it is them, not a mirage but a ghost, a militia of the claimed, calling for her, crying for her, tears fall down their dead faces or maybe it's only the ash of once-flesh trickling down them-
Her cheek feels wet but she how can she know? She does not see herself, she does not see her hands, she is not aware of her body, blinding flashes of white precede the gunshot images of Ishval striking her and she believes she must be dead and she must be on her way to hell because nothing of the life above would bring her such cause.
The young man is no older than 17. Old enough to bear arms. Old enough to fight for his slaughtered people. Old enough to be murdered. To be shot. Killed. Forgotten.
His eyes are open. They stare at her. Dry, parched, from the desert air, his dead lips are cracked and open in stillness. Little grains of sand are scattered in the side of his hair that lays against the sodden dirt saturated with genocide.
Everything about him is frozen even as his lips move.
"Lieutenant."
Ice befalls her blood so swiftly she grows numb.
"Lieutenant, please don't do this-!."
The image of the boy fades briefly before returning as her sight condenses, the scene blackening slowly, as she entices her total fatigue.
"Please…!"
The word doesn't come from the boy's lips. It exists astrally, perhaps woven within the thin layers of ash falling down from the sky as though the atmosphere itself was made of it, never ending, always drifting, rarely breaking, it continues to feather through the air. Hardly fair, she ponders, as she watches it through half-lidded eyes; it drifts so gently, so innocently, that it must not know what it's done.
"Keep your eyes open dammit!"
Rushed words, and angry. Dim, and far away.
The darkness over the topside of her vision bleeds down, fading out the imagery, becoming part of the ash, and she begs it to quicken so it could coat over the boy's face, too. She does not wish to see it. But you should, spits the devil, or more likely God, into her ear.
She would like to sleep.
There is an uncomfortable warmth in her left side, as though a rag dipped in steamed water had been placed there. Her throat vibrates with a groan.
It is all far more than she can carry. The curtain falls over the boy's face, the rest of the image, and she shares a gaze with black. She is unsure why, but she feels as though she ought to have been sleeping when the curtain fell, that that's how things were done, but she wasn't. Offended, she questions this; why won't you let me rest?
"Lieutenant Hawkeye!"
It is still angry, harsh like sandpaper. As though she is being reprimanded. The voice is more recognizable, now, so suddenly it's like a whip of clarity, she knows who it belongs to and it is not the boy. Disappointment reigns down into her chest. He should not be here.
Aches run down through her but the pain belongs not to her body.
She'd heard the Flame Alchemist was sent to Ishval, when whispers fluttered between the lips and ears of cadets. There was little else to be done besides shoot, run, train, talk. They sent The Flame, whispers a man proudly, because Amestris First and everything else Second.
Isn't Ishval apart of Amestris?
She wondered.
Aren't they our people too?
She hoped to not see him when the orders were shoved into her hands. Congratulations on being our sharpest shooter, your punishment is this, said the papers, you will be reprimanded for your skill by using it. Amestris First. Everything else Second.
She did see him. Like a beacon in a stormy night, the image of him struck her so brutally she'd immediately frozen and all things around her became blurry for he was the sharpest thing she could see.
He should not be there, she had thought. He should not be there.
He should not be here.
"If you do this, I will never forgive you, do you hear me?!"
The deep black soaked in his shouts and kept them within its fibers, allowing the decibels of his voice to vibrate all around her even after the voice had gone.
"DON'T! NO!"
Different…
Desperate. Choked. The anger is gone. Something has changed.
I didn't want to, I didn't want to do this, I never desired this I never desired the harvest of their lives, I didn't want to leave the academy, Roy, they never even asked me, I'm sorry -
The warm rag returns to her side, wringing liquid through her, but then it is no longer warm but scorching and the feeling is so grave and monstrous she screams.
No sound emits. She only feels herself screaming. She screams for a long while, hours, it seems, and years, but perhaps only seconds. Bound, she cannot speak, she cannot move, she cannot hear, she only feels and she only screams, unable to do anything to relieve it, until something new fills her body and she feels heavier, fuller, and the burn falls away like chipping rust and she's left foggy and matted.
Rise, spell her fingers. She does. The tips of them feel cold and it is now that she remembers she even has fingers at all. The rib cage she once, and she thought still, possesses is sore like an instrument strummed for a long performance.
She feels her body, she feels it ache, she feels it exist, and the natural inclination to open her eyes make sense to her and she does.
The sky is quite grey. Dark clouds skim by overhead, floating and moving with purpose, as though heading a call. The aura of a dim streetlamp fuzzes warmly somewhere behind his head, casting a soft yellow light on the back of his dark hair. She blinks slowly up at him.
He is yelling at someone, she thinks. Sound does not accompany sight, she hears nothing as though deaf, but sees the veins in his neck strain terribly, his mouth moves angrily, one hand gestures wildly and the other rests on her shoulder, she realizes, holding her. The floating hand makes a particularly harsh movement, causing his body to move with it, and she feels a fine little prick in the crook of her arm.
The effort to move her head to look isn't difficult in terms of energy, but in fact in terms of mobility. The desire to sleep has been replaced with a simple, organic need to be awake, but her body does not share these wonderings. Moving her head to the side, as she does, was like learning how to do so for the first time.
The street under her is cool against the right side of her face. Her eyes flick down to the pin in her skin asking for attention.
His hand is not on her shoulder, as she thought, but holding her arm, holding the thick needle in place against, inside, her flesh, and she follows the red tube upwards, wondering how it manages to float up by itself like that, until she sees it stuck into the arm of another man just behind her. Lifting her chin to have a look, her eyes rise to find the wide and shocked ones of Jean, staring back at her, and his mouth moves in words she cannot hear.
Something tells her to look back. Turn your head back. Look at him now, because he is looking at you.
She did. He is.
Lieutenant, spells his lips.
"Colonel…" she manages through her own, and the sound of her voice hits her like thunder and suddenly the world rings to life and she hears the sound of water, a lake, somewhere not so far, waves rushing ashore with the wind howling in the distance, the running engine of a car nearby, the irregular breathing of the second lieutenant behind her head, the run of blood in her ears,
"Oh, thank God," come the unsteady and murmured words from her colonel. "How-how do you feel?"
He asks it with incredible hesitance, uncertainty. She feels her eyebrows furrow as best as they can in her unwilling state. He rarely sounds so unsure.
"Fine, I think...I don't feel much…"
The look in his eyes turns strange. She cannot read it. Something holds him back.
"What do you feel?" he asks quietly. She hums softly through her nostrils as she assesses herself, taking in a breath of the chill and drinking it like water.
"The needle...n'my arm…" she answers wearily. The breath of Havoc's weak and unhumored laugh hits the top of her head.
"Did we catch'im, sir?" Her eyelids feel thick as they blink at the colonel. The man, she remembers. She was there for The Man…
"He...he got away, Lieutenant."
She closes her eyes briefly, profoundly upset with herself, but his sharp shout forces them open again.
"Hey!"
She stares at him after snapping her eyes open again.
"Don't close your eyes, Lieutenant, for anything!"
It is an order made in fear. He's frozen like that until the features on his face fall and he becomes victim to hypocrisy as he closes his own eyes and brings his head down a few inches, somehow seeming smaller and inviting an air of defeat she realizes she detests.
"You were shot three times," he says, eyes still shut. He opens them and studies her. "It wasn't your fault. He was ready for us."
"...Three…?" she asks. He nods.
"With a .45. Close range."
He needn't have said anything more. A powerful hand weapon, capable of ripping flesh into gaping holes, capable of severe damage, of death, of extensive bleeding, of having a needle in her arm feeding her a source she likely was in incredible need of.
"Is anyone else…" she begins without finishing. If they were, she was to blame, for it was her who last saw The Man and it was she who did not detain him.
"No," comes the short answer.
She sees his dark eyes flick up to look behind her head, at Havoc, who seemed to wish for his attention, but the look on the colonel's face contests whatever it was Havoc communicated and he looks back down at her. The grey clouds march slowly above him, unfazed by what lies below, and she feels the depth of the chill they've brought to the night. She is too weak to shiver.
"I sent the rest of the squad to go after him."
"You should...go…"
"No," he says too quickly. "Havoc and I are going to get your in that car and drive you to a hospital in a moment. I just...you need more blood before I dare move you."
"That bad...huh…?"
"Yeah." She hears Havoc's voice finally. It is deep and troubled, a grumble that comes lowly from his throat. "That bad."
It is then that she feels the hot rag press against her side once more, a bridge that reminds her of the boy's eyes, applying deep pressure so it fills her whole torso, and it throbs there dully, pulsing, pulse, pulse, reminding her, telling her dimly, I'm here and will find you full strength soon, lest your state of shock subside,
I am here, I am what is keeping you alive, and I am what will make you wish death, I am familiar to you and I am what you've never dreamt of fondly or without terror, I am what bound you to him and I am what separates you from who you once were, and she understands then what had happened just after looking into the eyes of the boy.