Note: FMA Angst Week on tumblr inspired me to start this story, and while I won't finish it before the week is over, it's my contribution to the event. Please favorite and review!
It is all dizzying.
The white space in front of him.
The blinding lights in his periphery.
The cacophony of voices talking over one another.
The emptiness in his mind replacing all knowledge of his location.
All feeling in Roy's body is lost to him, save for his pounding head, and the stabbing sensation in his lungs catalyzed by his shallow breathing. He doesn't know where his is. His head is so woozy he can't even come up with a list of places he might be. No, it just draws a large blank where that information is supposed to be, and leaves him floating in space.
It doesn't register to him how he could even have gotten to this place. His body has just regained consciousness after resting for only God knows how long, and much like the old radio in his Aunt's bar, it needs time between playing empty static and breathtaking symphonies.
Spinning and unfocused, Roy's eyes don't catch much of his surroundings. They are white- blindingly so- and blurred to the point that he can't pick out individual ceiling tiles he knows must exist above him.
Things come back to him slowly, nothing completely, but enough for him to take notice of his surroundings. Everything is white, and blindingly bright. Shapes move in front of him and back and forth at each of his sides. It takes an embarrassing amount of time for him to realize the shapes are people. They wear a combination of white and light blue, and though Roy can't yet pick out exactly what they say, he knows they're talking amongst each other. Faint as a whisper, and possibly a hallucination altogether, he swears his last name is somewhere in the commotion. They're all talking about him.
The room has a sterile scent to it, much like that of the chemicals he and his Aunt use to scrub down the bar's bathrooms to keep them clean. His face is too numb to feel if his nose wrinkles at the strong odor. The room he's in is too bright to be a bathroom. And there is too much commotion around him- people walking, people talking, something beeping. It almost sounds like the medical dramas that come on the radio every friday night about the doctors having scandalous affairs and the nurses trying desperately to save patients while their heart monitors go from patterned beeping to the high tone of a flatline. He isn't proud to admit that the program is a guilty pleasure of his.
The sound next to him sounds exactly like the heart monitor on the radio show.
None of his nausea subsides, but rather, it worsens as Roy comes to the sickening conclusion of where he is, and what needed to have happened for him to get there.
Unable to move his head, Roy strains his eyes to look downward, and sure enough he sees himself wearing a teal gown and covered on his lower half by a white sheet. All four of his appendages rest on the table, strapped down with sturdy, padded leather so that he is rendered immobile. The bed he finds himself strapped to is angled slightly so that his head and torso stay above his legs, and he can see forward at least a little bit. A transparent tube runs from his left arm to an IV stand just barely out of his eyesight, and he can see wires coming from various other places on his arms and chest, hooked up to the machines beeping whirring beside his head. No matter how far he strains eyes, he can't quite see them. But the thought is enough to cause an increase in his heart rate in panic.
As Roy's consciousness returns, so does his pain. The air in his hospital room, despite the bustling activity, is cold, and the tips of his fingers sting as if there were icicles growing on them. The starched sheet spread over his legs is irritating, and his toes twitch against the rough fabric. His face as a whole feels numb, but small slivers and spots feel wet, exposed, cut open, and completely at mercy to the chill occupying his room.
The worst pain, however, resides not in his face or his limbs, but rather, it stabs into his chest. Hundreds upon thousands of knives digging into his skin and twisting hard, making their way through his ribs and puncturing his lungs. The sensation feels like liquid fire in his veins, coursing through his body without giving a damn what other organs it ruins. Everything hits him hard at once, and Roy sputters and chokes, drawing the attention of every doctor and nurse in the room as they crowd around him.
What had happened to him?
How exactly, could those thousands of invisible daggers lodged themselves in his chest and cut him open?
The last thing Roy remembers is a warm, spring day, laughing along with his alchemy teacher's daughter as she read him a passage of her favorite book. He remembers the way they swung their legs alongside the wind as they sat atop a branch of the thick oak tree in her front yard, and how sunlight filtered through the leaves and warmed them both up.
Nothing about sitting alongside Miss Hawkeye could have even come close to devastating his body to this extent.
Not while she was there with him.
What was this?
The number of medical professionals in the room is stifling, and it isn't helped by the way they surround his bed, chattering amongst themselves. A number of them talk about his condition, asking one another to check the heart monitor, or to ensure that the IV is still properly administering his fluids. He sees the doctors with their pens and clipboards, writing things and pointing at different parts of his body while explaining God knows what to the nurses. The noise amounts to a cacophony, yet none of them even decide to address him.
They appear to speak to another patient in the room with him, and suddenly the amount of hospital employees makes sense. A seventeen year old boy in the hospital does not warrant half the staff crowding around him as if he were some kind of foreign dignitary or career politician.
"General?" One of the doctors speaks, and Roy can't tell which one it is because their mouths are all moving at the same time. He feels sorry for the room's other occupant. They must obviously be an important officer, and their peace and quiet are interrupted for Roy's awakening. He attempts to look to his side, but sees nothing.
"Sir, can you hear me?"
How did Roy end up sharing a room with someone of such high stature?
"General, can you understand what I'm saying?" Roy hears the words crystal clear, and he blinks his lethargic eyes to find one of the doctors leaning in and staring directly into them, "General?" It was the same voice as each previous address. If he could shrink back into the bed, Roy would, but he's stuck looking back at the doctor, racking his mind as to why she's analyzing him, but talking to some General.
"Wha…" Roy attempts to speak, but his lips are sore, and they only open a fraction of an inch, "Who… are you… talking…" The incomplete phrase comes out as a faint whisper, and the cold air hitting the back of his throat causes him to clamp his mouth shut once again.
But he needs to try again, so he reopens his lips and attempts to repeat the phrase, "Who are… you talking… to…" He feels a rumble in his chest and a rawness in his airway as the words come out, louder than previously, but warped and dissonant. The voice he hears is deep and gravelly, like that of some sort of grisled action hero. In short, it is nothing like the voice that belongs to him.
"Where…" He starts again, and the discord remains.
"It's alright, General, you're in the hospital," The doctor makes relieved eye contact with him, and Roy draws in a large breath. She's talking to him. Not someone on the other side of the room. Him. He is by no means a general, and his already clouded mind hurts when he tries to think of reasons she might be addressing him as such. He's not an officer, and he's too old to be babied by anyone with a working set of eyes.
"Why…" He wheezes, the word rolling off his tongue with more difficulty than before, quieter than the woman interrupting him.
"Just rest now, General Mustang," The doctor smiles, "Your sedatives are still wearing off. You'll be fully alert shortly."
Sedatives. That made sense. The fog around his mind, and the weight that kept any of his limbs from moving could easily be explained by sedatives. Well, sedatives and the oppressive pain that worsens with each second.
Without missing a beat, the doctor turns to the door to Roy's hospital room and shouts to someone in the hallway, "The General woke up!"
Roy uses his energy to wonder who she might be yelling to rather than exhaust himself thinking about why she once again called him the General. Time passes, and he can't tell exactly how much, but soon enough, two more sets of footsteps enter the already chaotic room.
From what he can see, the newcomers are nurses, one holding metal instruments in each hand, and the other a roll of white bandages, no doubt to wrap around the wounds devastating Roy's chest. As the two enter, others make space for them to flank him on either side, looking upon him with an odd mixture of awe and relief. The relief, he can understand, but he feels undeserving of the amazement. He is strapped to a table, delirious, and has never been able to captivate a room in the same way he was currently.
"Sir," The nurse holding what now appeared to be scissors begins, "It's time to change your bandages." Roy cringes at the use of "sir" for someone who is at least twenty years younger than the nurse addressing him. Perhaps it has something to do with "General", but Roy isn't privy to the answers of that mystery either.
He's nothing more than a debilitated, disoriented alchemy student who feels like he's dying.
The nurses untie the restraints on each of his wrists, then prop their patient up to a sitting position, taking care to support him on both sides, ensuring that Roy doesn't fall either forward or backward. He's embarrassed to admit he doesn't have the strength to keep himself up.
"Just bear with us, sir," A hand tickles the back of his neck and unties the knot holding his flimsy hospital gown together. The same hand travels down to his arms and slides them carefully out of the gown, allowing the fabric to fall and pool on his lap. Head lolling forward without the strength to keep it up, Roy looks down on his chest, expecting to see the source of his agony, but is met with the sight of countless gauzy, white bandages. He questions the purpose of the blue hospital gown if his torso is fully concealed by the bandages underneath it.
The sudden movement of himself and everything around him worsens the throbbing in Roy's head, and his vision spins with uncertainty once again. He wishes he could rub them once or twice to get rid of the stars, but his muscles remain noncompliant, and his arms hang limply to his sides.
He curses, and he isn't completely sure if the expletive was just inside his mind, or if it were broadcast to the entire audience of the room. He refrains from cursing again, and decides to put his mind to use with something else. Analytical and sharp as a knife, Roy can't keep himself from using his new position to glean more information about the scope of his injuries.
The bleached bandages on his torso extend all the way up to his neck and down to his hips, their stark white close to the pallor of Roy's skin. His legs are under a sheet, but compared to the rest of his body, they feel the least wounded. The gauze on his chest isn't wrapping around his legs, and though he feels stinging and soreness running through his calves and thighs, he deduces that they can't be as horribly injured as the rest of him. His hands are unmoving, save for the occasional twitch, and they too are covered in white bandages. Only on his right arm do the bandages extend all the way from his fingers to past his elbow.
He can hear the heart monitor increase in frequency as he takes it all in.
His left arm, the exposed arm, is bruised with a sick combination of yellows, purples, and greens, interrupted only by the the occasional adhesive bandage covering a small spot. What could have caused such damage, Roy doesn't know, and he isn't given a chance to think about it before his attention snaps back to the two nurses holding him.
The nurse with the scissors makes a clean cut through one of the bandages wrapped around Roy's torso, and after setting the scissors down on the bed next to Roy's legs, the nurse tugs the edge of the bandage free. The two nurses work in tandem, unwinding the gauze as gently as they can, taking it layer by layer, prying it free.
Each layer of gauze that comes off removes one more barrier between Roy's sensitive skin and the cold, sterile air of the hospital. The gauze is nowhere near fully removed, but he can feel ice cutting through to his open wounds and freezing them shut. He wonders how long it takes the average person to die of hypothermia.
The cold is distracting, numbing, even, but despite it, Roy still watches his bandages unfurl around him. They begin coming off stained with flecks of red. Blood.
His blood.
And the longer the nurses work, the more of it he sees.
When the nurses finally unwind enough to reach the last, flimsy layer of gauze, he can feel the way the air moves around the hospital room and brushes against his skin. The draft is chilling, but when Roy draws a deep breath in, he feels better. The layers upon layers of crusty, blood stained bandages wound around him had constricted his chest, and the cold is bearable compared to the freedom Roy feels.
Roy sucks in another breath, but his reprieve is cut short by a tug on the last layer in the bandage. It's a miniscule movement from the nurse, but it stops the beat of his heart. The bandage, completely red and completely stuck, is melded to Roy's chest by half-congealed blood and yellow pus.
Another tug and Roy feels the area light up like an explosion.
The nurse give each other a glance, and try tugging once more, freeing another small portion of the bandage from the trap his skin ensnared it in. It's as if someone is tearing the skin from his body.
Any free hands the nurses have are used to tighten their grip on him, their fingers holding down strong enough to no doubt leave bruises on his already tender skin.
Roy can't help himself, and with the next tug, unleashes a frantic cry.
He hears the noise come out of his mouth, and like before, he can't recognize the sound. It's too deep, too gravelly, too distorted to ever belong to him. It sends his mind reeling.
Upon hearing his cry, the nurses quicken their pace, pulling the bandages free faster and faster, leaving strips of burning flesh in their wake. Once more, Roy yells out. The audience in the room circle closer to Roy, whispering encouragements into his ears and giving him sympathetic looks. They're absolutely stifling.
The nurses keep their almost frantic pace, and Roy is unable to keep himself from crying out once more, the same unfamiliar roar reverberating in his crimson-stained chest. He clamps his eyes shut. It's almost too much to handle.
There are shouts from the hallway, but Roy is too concerned with his own plight to pay too much attention to the goings-on outside. His eyes don't open when he hears footsteps rush to the door or the sound of glass dropping to the floor, "General!"
The sound is too loud in his sensitive ears, and shouts from a woman in the hallway roll over him like waves. It's deafening, and if it it's possible, Roy's head throbs even more than it did before. But at the same time, Roy can't shake the sense of familiarity from the stranger's sound.
He dares not open his eyes again, lest he catch another glimpse of his ravaged chest and panic, but he feels like he's heard the stranger before. Perhaps she visited his room while he was still unconscious, because no names are popping into his head other than the fact that she sounds a little like Miss Hawkeye.
The voice is too deep, too mature to be hers, however. Riza Hawkeye is a fourteen year old girl, trapped in her father's manor. Her voice is light when she uses it, quiet and often hesitant, and it's impossible that the frantic shouts of the hallway woman belong to his friend.
The voice from the hallway belongs to an adult woman, and the resemblance it bears to Miss Hawkeye's comes through her tone. The shock, relief, and urgency coming through are predictable for someone speaking to a hospital patient, but the emotion combined with the ability to command a room and everyone in it belonged entirely to Miss Hawkeye. It reminds him of every time he had gotten hurt within the Hawkeye household and gone to the girl for help. Even when he just skinned his knee or accidentally burned himself on the stove trying to make himself a pot of coffee at dawn, Miss Hawkeye could take control of the situation and quickly ensure he was healed.
Thinking of Miss Hawkeye calms Roy's racing heart for a second, but once again, his peace is interrupted. Thoughts of her are ripped out of his mind with the last of his bandages, and the fire in his veins reignites. The sensation is accompanied by one, last, alien shout, but Roy manages to silence himself once cold air hits his exposed chest, and the nurses' grips loosen.
"Let me in right now," The hallway woman demands, and Roy finds the strength to open his eyes.
It's a blonde in a military uniform.
Much like everything else in the room, she's hazy, but Roy sees her with one hand on her hip, one hand pointing directly at his bed. She stands with her back straight as a ruler, more authoritative than the nurse blocking the door frame in front of her.
Roy stiffens, and a pang of fear enters his chest. He doesn't know anybody in the military, and the woman outside seems furious.
"Ma'am, the General just woke up, and our staff is currently changing his bandages," The hapless nurse attempted to explain to the woman but she didn't take his words to heart, "You can't see the patient at this moment."
"I could hear his screams from the lobby," The woman puts her second hand on her hip, "As his personal bodyguard, it is my job to ensure his safety."
"That's just not possible," The nurse moves more directly in front of her, but she retaliates by putting a foot forward.
"You will let me into the General's hospital room at this instant or I will have you arrested, is that clear?" Her voice is quiet, and deadly serious, and after a moment of hesitation, the nurse steps aside for her to enter.
The cobalt blue of her uniform is a sharp contrast to the light colors of the hospital staff uniforms and the white walls surrounding Roy on all four sides. The shock of dark color is accompanied by rubber boots hitting the ground with fierce determination, and Roy squirms as she approaches him directly. He doesn't know what's going on, and his body feels like it's on fire. He's drugged and his legs are strapped to the table, though he doesn't think he could move them even if he tried. He can't escape whatever she wants to do or say to him.
"General!" Her voice upon entering is quieter, but it still somehow manages to clear her a path directly to his bed. All staff members, save for the two nurses currently holding him up, part as if she were a hot knife slicing through a pad of butter. He hopes she doesn't do the same to him.
"Wh…" He manages to wheeze, but the movement burns.
"Thank God you're awake," The woman is too close now, and his eyes take all too long to focus back on her as she reaches a hand out toward him.
"Who…" He tries again, but winces. It takes all of his willpower to breathe the next two words out, "...are… you?"
As if she accidentally placed her palm on a hot stove, the woman jerks back, her hand shaking in the air.
"General, it's me…" She tells him, attempting to keep a smile on her face, but allowing fear to crack through the mask. As her lips move, Roy's eyes finally decide to focus on her face.
If the contrast between her and the hospital had been intense before, it's fierce now. Her blonde hair is long, most of it pinned to the back of her head, but strands escaping and ticking the shoulder pads of her uniform. The offending piece of clothing looked wrinkled, as if she had forgotten to iron it after taking it out of the wash. If it had been there in the first place- faint stains graced the jacket in more than one place.
Roy focused on the uniform, never having witnessed one up so close before, and hoping desperately that it would calm him down before having to deal with the woman in front of him. Even in it's disheveled appearance, it was breathtaking. Gold stars adorn the woman's shoulders, indicating her status as an officer, and a gold rope hangs from one of her epaulets, matched on the other side by various pins hanging above her left breast, indicating honors and awards from various conflicts. The observation does not soothe Roy's nerves a single bit, and he attempts to control his frantic, shallow breathing before blinking twice and looking into the woman's face.
It's like seeing a ghost.
That face is so similar.
The small, delicate mouth.
The straight, slightly upturned nose.
And those eyes.
Those rich, mahogany eyes that seem to stare directly into Roy's soul.
Those eyes belong to Riza Hawkeye.
Suddenly, her voice pops back into his head. Of course it sounded familiar.
The officer in front of him looks exactly like he imagined Miss Hawkeye would if she were older. All the details were perfect, from the way her bangs brushed the top of her left eyes to the near-invisible scar below her jaw from when she'd gotten into a fistfight with some of the boys in her town. There were bags under her eyes, and wrinkles crossing her forehead and curving in between her eyebrows, but it was her. All the baby fat rounding her cheeks out had melted away, leaving a hardened visage in its wake.
But this isn't possible. It's not possible. How could it be? Riza Hawkeye is a girl just shy of fifteen, too young to enlist or even enroll herself in one of the military's academies. She lives with Roy in a big, empty house that creaks and groans sometimes, but with her, still manages to feel like home. Her father teaches Roy alchemy. Miss Hawkeye isn't in the military, she's laughing at Roy's side as they read the weekly newspaper cartoons a whole week late because by that time, she can buy the paper discounted from the shop on the corner of Oak Street. Miss Hawkeye is kind, and quiet, and reserved, and at the moment, she's probably worried sick about her friend as he lays helpless in a hospital bed. She's not here. She can't be here.
But the enigma of a soldier opens her mouth again and shatters the carefully crafted image in Roy's frantic mind.
"It's me, General. It's Captain Hawkeye."
No. Not Hawkeye. Not her.
Miss Hawkeye's father hated the military- he chased recruiters from the gates of his manor with nasty curses and even nastier threats. If they wanted his flame alchemy so much, why didn't he give them a little taste of it? Master Hawkeye would die before becoming involved with the Amestrian military, and he kept his precious little daughter crushed under his thumb. She would never even have had the opportunity to talk to a soldier.
"General?"
His world spins, and it's almost too much for him to notice the heart monitor rapidly increase in frequency. This isn't happening. This can't be happening. This isn't real.
The last thing Roy remembers is sucking in a deep breath before he hears his nurses yelling, digging their fingers into his arms once more, and catching him before his entire world goes black.