for mar. kimblee is really fucking hard to write.
title taken from billie eilish's bellyache
warnings: zolf j. kimblee, graphic-ish? depictions of death and a bit of non-con implied
When he sees her for the first time, he is taken aback at her appearance. She is a slight thing, malnourished by childhood and the rations of war. She cradles her rifle like it is her lifeline, and she shies from the larger gatherings in the encampment. Whispers surround her and shroud her. They idealise and idolise her as an angel of death.
She never misses.
She never fails.
She never stops.
He thinks he would like to know her better, understand her as more than the stuff of legends. He can relate. They also talk about him. Not in whispers that border on reverence, but on fear. He can't rationalise the dichotomy that their fellow soldiers place between them. They hunt their prey with methodical and clinical precision. There is no hesitation when they lift their hands to carry out their orders. He considers good old-fashioned sexism for a moment; the kind that reduces her value and reduces her actions even more.
They are all murderers out here. He does not know why it frustrates him that lines are being drawn in the sand – quite literally so.
Zolf J. Kimblee decides that he has more important things to worry about than a single desert rose. He has more Ishvallans to kill, more idiotic soldiers to command. He is not vain enough to admit that he does not enjoy power, but there are some forms he enjoys less than others. Dealing with the bureaucracy of war is tedious and detracts from the battle he ought to be fighting.
In the field with his alchemy is where he belongs. The rules are simple: kill or be killed. He transmutes rock and sand and the structural integrity of buildings, watching desert rats scuttle about and scream for clemency. All he hears is the ricochet of bullets on the stone, the whistle of the wind, and the emptiness left after his alchemy has done its job.
He does not think when he transmutes. Comprehension is easy for him, when dealing with alchemy in its purest, most base form. He does not even need to think about deconstruction. His alchemy rips and tears. It does not follow any logical principle beyond finding the weakest point and exploiting that. Reconstruction is his favourite part. It is where his knowledge marries, it is where his theories become more that electrical currents along his synapses. Reconstruction is where he becomes more than his name: more than Zolf, more than Kimblee, or Major or Alchemist or even Crimson. Here he is more than himself, openly defying any God through the mere fact of his existence and ability to corrupt absolutely. It is a particularly satisfying irony that Ishvalla forbids alchemy for its heretical dismissal of His great power. Kimblee has seen power. He has felt it with every echo of a distant explosion, with every shower of blood that he baptises himself in. The other soldiers can whisper that he goes too far, but they are wrong. Death is death. Life is life. There is no such thing as a 'mercy kill'.
It does not ultimately matter to these Ishvallan's in which way they will die. They will never die with any kind of dignity. Their blood seeps into their holy land and their throats choke with pleas for their God to save and curse in equal measure. Whether they go by a lone sniper bullet, or by his hands, they will die and be taken back by the land that did not protect them.
Kimblee prefers to watch them die, to let them know that they will not pass without someone to witness the most old and archaic form of transmutation. Death is but a transmuting of energy: whether it is kinetic or potential. His alchemy works in the same way. It is not structured and honed in the way the Strong-Arm Alchemist's is, it does not have a result as tailored as the Iron-Blood Alchemist's: his alchemy is as everchanging as the moon on his left palm and as violent as the sun on his right.
The method changes for every Ishvallan: obviously the skin is the easiest to tear through, the squelch and squish of fibres pulling against muscle is a sound he will never personally tire of. He enjoys the more complicated methods, however. His alchemy works against itself, the sun and moon each vying for power as he systematically boils and evaporates the marrow in someone's bones. That sound is a softer one, a slower ebb that still allows for a raucous and almighty finale. The shot of a gun is too clinical, too detached, too quick. Perhaps that is why he is so frustrated with the treatment his little desert rose gets. She is pretty to look at, sure, but she is a coward in how she kills.
Kimblee detests cowards.
He comes along, and suddenly Kimblee can see the puzzle pieces sorting themselves out. Acquaintances, friends, lovers – none of that matters to him. A soldier without a fuckbuddy in times of war is a poor liar because there is always somebody and Kimblee can see from a mile off that while they put on airs of regret and guilt there is that small part of them that takes pride in their work, and an even bigger part that thinks they are fooling those around them. They couldn't be more overt if they tried and it is a sickening image: two star-crossed lovers meeting once more on the field of war. Soldiers whisper about him too. How he destructs and combusts with such rigid efficiency. Kimblee thinks he could find a kindred soul if the Flame Alchemist wasn't so obviously already vying for the top position. The man is too desensitised now, anyway: he sees hundreds, if not thousands of bodies conflagrating in the harsh desert sun every day. He is a man determined to see this through until the end. He is a man who does not concern himself with the ethics of his choices once he has made them. Kimblee admires his resolve.
His desert rose is still far too separate from this chaos. She skulks in shadows with her spotter and loses her understanding once she puts down her scope. From her lofty perch in one of the abandoned Ahmanhe-va towers in the Malkhā district she has a birds-eye view of the war in its entirety.
Riza Hawkeye does not See.
He waits for them to finish one night. He will give them this – they are quiet, almost alarmingly so. Regs are the last thing on any commanding officer's mind right now though – not when there are whispers of supply trains being bombed and raided before they pass into the war zone. He watches as Mustang slinks back to his own tent a few hundred metres to the east. He finds it strange that they wouldn't engage in pillow talk; the amount of hovering that he does over the cadet implies a relationship that goes deeper than fucking for sensation and sanity. He pauses, unsure of whether it is wise to accost her like this. He knows a wrong move will end with him clutching at his spilling guts, or dead between his eyes before he realises it. His need for her to understand, however, outweighs his own common sense, and so he strides towards her tent.
She's been waiting for him, a pistol held loosely in her hand as he ducks through the flaps of the tent. Her eyes are tired, and her mouth is set into a thin line as he raises his hands in surrender. She's curled up on her cot and the smell of sex is still tangible in the air.
She does not say anything, instead opting to glare, and curl further into herself.
"Sniper," Kimblee begins, but she cocks the pistol and readjusts her grip. An uneasy silence settles between them and stretches on uncomfortably.
"Whatever shit you think you're going to pull," she says, finally, lowly, "I will not hesitate to shoot you." Kimblee is surprised at the lack of fear in her voice, how steady her arm is, even in these small hours when he knows as well as she that their day starts far too soon. She betrays no hint of emotion in the deep lines already carved into her face.
"You won't though," he replies smoothly, calculating his chances and figuring that she's unlikely to actually shoot a superior officer. She enjoys the routine of authority too much; enjoys the subjugation that comes with it. "You know what happens to those who go AWOL. There is no court out here. Every man-" he takes a step closer to her, enjoying the thrill of a loaded gun trained on his forehead "- and woman for themselves out here." Innuendo drips off his tongue like honey and he takes note of the way her arm tenses, to his immense pleasure. He keeps his pace slow but steady, until he's hovering above her. She has still not taken the shot.
He crouches down to meet her hard glare properly. He can smell the sweat on her, the tang bites and bursts on his tongue. It glistens on her skin in the flickering light of the oil lamp. She is every inch the desert rose he sees her as: still and unmoving and created by the harsh environment around her. She is glacial and sharp; Kimblee wonders if her tongue is as cutting as she appears to be. She is breathing deeply, her gun still trained on him. His hands rest on the edge of her cot.
Riza Hawkeye does not shoot.
ahmanhe-va and malkhā come from my personal ishvallan conlag which i developed for another fic (The Possession of Isra Wright). an ahmanhe-va is a small building of worship (think along the lines of ur community church/temple/mosque); malkhā is taken from the main tributary river that runs through the land of ishval.
the desert rose i am referring to is the crystal variety, rather than the plant.