AN: In thanks to the wonderful and talented AntigoneRex for her patience and talent in betaing PS, and for her surprise!fic. Thank you, my dear... many thanks.
ENEMY
Every time the blood runs to my head, I hear the ring
Something to remind me I'm not dead or caught in between
Both ears felt blown out from the blast. After the explosion, she couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched and persistent ringing, could see nothing but white dust that filled the air. Hawkeye coughed and spat to the side to clear her throat, still holding her hand over the oozing wound in the young man's side as he leaned back into her chest. Both of them were covered in the dust of blasted concrete, the grit mixing with the slick blood over her hands and his clothing into a black muck that cut sharp lines in the pale powder that coated every inch of skin. The blast dust even turned their bright blue uniforms into an unbroken gray. Both heads of blonde hair were also doused in the debris fragments, as gray as the rest of them.
The Ishvallan attacker had tossed something stronger than the usual Molotov cocktails into the room beside theirs. Hawkeye had been focused on the square below, and unfortunately it was the young sergeant that took the brunt of the blast, knocking him into the bare slip of a girl and shielding her from most of the shrapnel.
"If they place snipers in an active quadrant, they ought to know to give them more cover," she hissed under her breath. They had been properly stationed in the top floor of a tall building, but the squad leader hadn't bothered to secure the exits.
"Medic! Medic!" Nothing. "Is anyone here?" Hawkeye called out into the dust-covered room.
The sergeant groaned and shifted in her arms, snapping her attention back to him. His brown eyes looked over to hers, the edges pinched in pain. She was sure he would have looked pale if he weren't wearing a uniform coat of the concrete grit. "Hawkeye..."
Hawkeye shook her head. "Don't talk now, save your strength for the trip back." Lifting her hand away from the wound, she saw that it did indeed bleed faster. She took his hand in her own and pressed it to his left side. "Hold pressure there." While he did so, she gently slid out of her own white coat and folded it on their laps into a thicker bundle of cloth, then moved him as carefully as she could to tie the arms tightly around his waist. That would have to work until they got out of there.
"Medic!"
I listen to the voice and what it says, it's never sweet
Something I was born into I guess, living in me
She stood her ground when it was time the truth of her father's secret should be revealed. She stood her ground to join the military academy so young, and especially being a young female. She stood her ground to join the forces in Ishval as a cadet and protect fellow soldiers with her own unique talent. When the time came, she stood her ground so her flesh could be burned away, erasing the only potential her father ever saw in her.
The Lieutenant that now stands at Colonel Roy Mustang's side never remembered a time she fell asleep to lullabies. She does, however, remember the lines of the array stitched with care on his gloves in a way the Flame Alchemist shuddered to wonder. Her own father pierced it into her flesh, pinprick by pinprick. Many long hours passed; eventually the girl tired of picturing the shapes being made indelible upon her body and dozed off.
Those long hours were the most time she had ever spent with her father, consecutively. None of it she remembered with fondness.
That all changed yesterday. In his duties for managing State Alchemists, Colonel Roy Mustang had to examine a crime scene wherein lay the remains of a little girl transformed into a chimera and her alchemist father. The man at her side murmured to himself that he should have seen the signs and prevented this from happening. His First Lieutenant knew better than to argue with his guilt. Staring at the child's body joined for eternity with her pet dog, she bowed her head and breathed a sigh of relief. Alchemists may make lousy fathers, but all told, she had been the lucky one.
No price, nothing I pay will make it all alright
Nothing I see will make it lose sight
Nothing I take will make me sleep at night, sleep at night
Equivalent exchange. What is given is what is returned. She knew this having been raised by an alchemist, reinforced often by her work with alchemists.
She gave death in the form of bullets, in a tragic method of giving life to the soldiers on her side of the war. If she died by gunshot, she could imagine herself dying with a small smile on her face. Her hope was to pay as much of the price she owed the universe as possible before she died. Using her own life as a sacrifice, maybe in a small way it would balance the scales of universal justice.
Even though there was no reason she should believe in justice. That was a concept she had never seen before, but wasn't she still a dreamer?
Is it all right to believe in such a dream?
Bad nights called for brandy; really bad nights called for scotch whiskey. Tonight was a brandy night.
Drinking was serious business. The difference between drinking and drinking was not in the proof. It was in the company. Hayate lay curled by her side tonight. Anniversaries should be spent in the best of company, after all.
Unfortunately, each time she let the lightly sweet, burning amber liquid slide down her throat, she saw cross-hairs at the bottom of each empty glass.
This was going to be another long night, she knew. Hawkeye sighed and let her head fall against the back of the couch, eyes sliding shut. The usual small lights converged in her vision, then began to dance and shift until they became shapes. The shapes ran across the back of her eyelids until one by one, they jerked back with a spray of color. Some sick part of her brain supplied the bark of gunshot and sometimes accentuated it with the screams of unfortunate witnesses.
Maybe someday she would drink socially to celebrate some happy anniversary. But not tonight. Hawkeye lifted the glass for another sip.
When I look within I feel like I should be running
I will never shake this feeling 'till I feel nothing
I am the enemy, enemy, enemy inside of me
Self-loathing requires the initial investment of giving a damn. That sentiment was left behind a long time ago. The living agent of death does not deserve life. The righteous release of this existence will be the day death turns on her, for once.
After all, Hawkeye created the "Hero of Ishval". She was responsible, personally responsible, for every single death by Flame Alchemy. If they were to revile him, they had better revile her as well. But she was the invisible woman at his side in this line of soldiers holding back an angry mob; the invisible enemy.
They had reason to be angry. The search for the one named Scar meant all Ishvallan refugee camps and homes were to be searched, and all Ishvallans registered like cattle for slaughter.
Colonel Roy Mustang, possibly the worst person they could put on the front lines in a situation like this, stood alone in the way of an all-out bloodbath. The man must have been mad to stand out in the open before hundreds of people he made homeless and worse. They cursed him, cried out his crimes against them, and he silently took it all. She had no way to protect him in such a vulnerable position.
Then the worst happened. Shots were fired, a man lay dead with his blood a growing stain on the soil, and in seconds, Ishval was reborn before her eyes. A stone struck her head and she felt blood well up and trickle down her brow. She lifted her weapon and readied to fire to once again protect this man at her side - when he forced her to stand down and stopped everything with the power of his fire alchemy.
When she moved to return fire and make war, the man she empowered ended up making peace. He surpassed her in many things, and one more thing was just added to the list.
Shouldn't she be more horrified at the roaring beast within her? The same bloodthirsty beast that prowled within her also hungered in all people, to hurt physically or simply to leave invisible wounds and scars on the hearts of others. But she should have at least seen a better option than either running or firing... Shouldn't she? Did anyone expect better of her anymore?
Every time I take another breath I feel the sting
Everyone around me seems so numb, I feel everything
Major Matsudai, The Blade Alchemist, turned anything into blades such as swords, scythes and knives - dozens of them within seconds. She threw them with accuracy and they can conduct electricity on contact. For that reason, she was of very high value to the military's efforts and needed extra protection. Hawkeye found herself assigned to her later on in the war, during the "clean up" phase.
Around the fire at night, Matsudai liked to drop rank and be one of the boys, so to speak. She never became one Hawkeye would call a friend, but they had a good working relationship. Hawkeye preferred it that way.
The subject worked its way around to everyone's worst war story. Hawkeye remained quiet throughout the conversation, everyone trying to best the last story told, until she picked up her rifle and excused herself to go to bed early with the claim she had KP duty the next morning.
The sound of boots crunching on hard, dried soil were impossible to mask. By the cadence and amount of weight put down, she knew who it was without having to look.
"Anything I can help you with, Major?" she asked without turning around, slowing or stopping.
"If the conversation back there was too troubling, I wish you would have said something," Matsudai said lightly. She could hear a smile in her voice.
Hawkeye shook her head. "I'm not running from anything, Major. It's always with me. Me, and the other snipers. So let it remain with us. No reason for you to carry it, too."
She stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Matsudai turned her so they stood face-to-face. She looked troubled. It didn't fit her young face. She was only a few years older than Hawkeye herself, freshly recruited and given a rank that didn't quite fit yet only a few months back.
"Whatever it is, can it be so bad as stabbing men and women who don't fight back and leaving orphans crying in the road?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," Hawkeye answered firmly. "Can you leave it at that?"
Matsudai remained standing there silently, her expression saying she wasn't going anywhere.
"Eighteen," she whispered. The wood of the rifle stock creaked within her firmer grip. "Be careful, Major. Not all of the bodies are dead."
Hawkeye closed the distance between them slowly, her movements dreamlike. She lifted her hand to grasp a handful of the other woman's coat lapel. "They seem dead and hide in the piles of other bodies, but they'll jump out and attack our soldiers. Be careful." Her voice was focused and intense, but slowly began to calm until she spoke nearly without emotion.
"How they can lay in the stiffening, stinking embrace of their kinsmen to attack is beyond me. I have to look closely at the dead and make sure their wounds are just oozing and not bleeding, and their chests don't move, and their eyes don't move behind their eyelids. I hate that. Just to make sure they're dead, I have to watch even my own kills and sometimes shoot twice so I can deliver an accurate kill count to my colonel at the end of the day. But the tally for those surprise attacks are eighteen throughout all of the Ishval War so far. Just once would make us all wary of the bodies, but it's happened eighteen times... and I caught eight of them myself."
She straightened out the coat lapel neatly and turned on her heel to leave. This time, the alchemist didn't move to stop her.
Taking my time to untangle the wires
And stare into my sanity
Dropping the hammer and pulling the trigger
I know now the bullet is me
Sometimes she recited The Rifleman's Creed to wile away the hours as she sat in wait under her white hood in the highest towers and abandoned apartment homes, watching the world below through a scope. I am nothing without my rifle... A teenaged boy ran across the street with a flaming Molotov cocktail in one hand. Her finger squeezed; her shoulder and arms caught the recoil. The teenager fell at that same instant. His pitiful weapon spilled around him and slowly scorched his corpse. ...And my rifle is nothing without me.
This isn't her story. Life, that is.
She can't remember exactly when she came to realize this, but it was in her late teens shortly after enlisting in the military. Soon after the close of the Ishval War and her subsequent return to the Academy, she took advantage of some brief time off to read a romance novel on her bed when she realized that she felt different about it in some way. She saw the stories with new eyes. No longer did she feel invested in the main character, usually a heroine. In time she recognized a closer connection to all those secondary characters that fell back or died in order for the main character to progress. Hawkeye stopped reading and slowly lowered the book to her lap. For the first time since before she was deployed to war, she smiled and even felt a warm feeling in her chest. Finally. She knew her path in life. The knowing, even of something that meant she was trivial in the grand scheme of things, brought relief.
All that was left was to find the real protagonist.
I should've looked back sometime alone, a long time ago
Chris Cornell - Enemy
AN: I do not own the series or the song, but listen to the song. The emotion in it makes this even more enjoyable.