TW: mild nsfw (kind of lime territory to use old words), body horror/surreality, alcohol, homophobia, misogyny, rape threat, transmisogyny, manipulation, racism/genocide…. Yeah, this is a tough one, yall. It's not really gonna get better until the end of Dog of the Empire, either.
Song is by Rise Against!
~39~
I took one last look from the heights that I once loved
and then I ran like hell
I count the times that I've been sorry (I know, I know)
Now my compassion slowly drowns (I know I know)
Now I'm standing on the rooftop ready to fall
I think I'm at the edge now but I could be wrong
-Ready To Fall
He's handcuffed. Metal, but it feels good, not being able to move, his control given up, and the more he struggles, the tighter it gets up –
"Of course you like this, you fucking whore."
He's not sure who's talking to him, but their voice is low, gravelly, breath warm on his ear as they hold him down onto the floor. He thinks, maybe, he knows – but he's never been this cruel to him, never, and Will doesn't want to be enjoying it this much because it says things about him that he doesn't want to know.
He's naked. It hits him suddenly, and then of course I'm naked, I knew that, and the man behind him isn't, he can feel the rasp of leather and fiber against him. And when the man's hand grips his chin from behind him, pulls him upright and drags a hand down his front, he leans into it. It's like he's being appreciated, shown off.
"Tell me what you want," the man whispers. It's Jareth – of course it's Jareth, and Will can't feel ashamed about that, not here, not dreaming (is he dreaming?).
"I don't… I don't know what I want," he replies, his voice coming from far away. He never knows what he wants. That's the problem. He drifts, carelessly, helplessly, from one thing to another. He's afraid to want things.
"Of course you do." It's Selim, now, and suddenly Will feels even more vulnerable, pulled back into his lap, feeling so open it hurts. He is open. His rib cage is getting pulled apart, and it doesn't even hurt that much, not enough for his whole body to stop throbbing, not enough for him to stop bucking against the hand between his legs. (filthy)
Kimbley is in front of him, smirk on his face. And Will can't stop, he doesn't want to stop, he hates him, he hates this, he doesn't – (are you just crushing on everybody who gives you attention now) (it's not a crush it's not even anything real I don't want him to be here I didn't invite him here) It's his hands pulling his ribs apart, Selim holding him in place. "Don't worry," Kimbley croons. "This won't hurt a bit."
He's lying, of course. But there's no real pain in dreams (if it hurts, does that mean I'm not dreaming) and so when he reaches in and closes long, blood-stained fingers around Will's heart, it doesn't hurt. And when he leans in and kisses him, that doesn't hurt either. And it doesn't hurt when Kimbley yanks his heart out of his chest, leaves the veins and arteries hanging out of him –
-not until Selim whispers, "There. That's what you wanted, right?"
His dreams, Will thought in the muddled horror as he startled awake, had been getting stranger. Stranger, and worse, and increasingly surreal.
"Nightmares?"
He glanced over at Kimbley, then away with a scoff. The older man had clearly decided to take a shower – and, apparently, continue his lack of boundaries. He was shirtless, wet hair dripping down his back. At least he had trousers on. "No. None of your business."
Kimbley just gave him a curious look, then smiled. "We're heading out in five minutes." The fucking smile. Like he had a choice.
Great. Another full day of travel, and now he had to try get the image out of his head of Kimbley with his heart in his hands. He hated this. It was like he'd turned sixteen and his idle, blossoming attractions had decided to go into overdrive. Or maybe his libido was overcompensating for the amount of stress he was under.
Yeah, because the thing I need most while being held captive is a boner over somebody I'm planning to kill at the soonest opportunity. Lovely.
Did he really mean that? He hadn't thought too much about what he was going to do to Kimbley, given an actual chance. But it sort of answered itself, didn't it? He'd been paying the 'appropriate' price, in jail. And then the military had hauled him back out and given him back his rank like nothing had happened.
Will squeezed a hand into a fist behind his back, then released it, feeling a twinge in his wrists as he restored circulation to his fingers. Keep your head. It only got harder when the soldiers hauled him outside and he noticed the little star-shaped scorch mark on the ground outside, complete with dark stain on the wall. That poor inn
It certainly put a damper on things when he stepped outside and saw the little star-shaped scorch mark on the ground outside, complete with bloody stain on the wall. The poor innkeeper. With his luck, it would get pinned on him, too. Almost involuntarily, the thought came that Alex would know how to talk to the innkeeper and her kid –
-and he closed his eyes, sitting down in the back of the truck without any complaint.
Alex was going to think he'd killed those soldiers. This one, too. He didn't have any reason to think otherwise, did he?
You tried to get better. Didn't you? And you had a plan. You had a plan to improve, and show him you'd improved, and –
And that had done jack shit.
Will opened his eyes just enough to watch Kimbley through the haze of his golden eyelashes. New plan. He'd spend the rest of the car ride to Central planning how, exactly, he'd kill Kimbley once he got the chance. At this point, if he was going to get called a violent lunatic, it didn't really matter.
She hadn't slept. That was fine. She had everything, every piece of information she could find, everything spread out in front of her. Brigadier-General – posthumously promoted – Maes Hughes had been shot in a phone booth outside the 2nd Library Branch. The gun used had been a standard-issue Browning M1900, serial number registered to Maes Hughes. The bastard had shot him with his own gun. The body had been left where it was. Two shots; one to the liver, one to the heart. One phone call, to Jareth Valjean. Theoretically completed, said the operator. Hung up after only a few words exchanged – on Valjean's side. Hughes had bled out within minutes, most likely. He'd died around four thirty in the morning, before the sun had even started to rise.
Diana read it over and over again, and tried to make the pieces fit. Somebody had wanted Maes dead. Wanted it enough for a professional hit, basically. The Halky? It would make sense with Archer's arrival, and the cleanness of the hit. Except Maes wasn't the one who had stolen from them. He'd stayed well out of their way, and even made a clean, professional break of his minor association with them. The mob didn't kill people unless there had been grievous insult. Even by association, he would have gotten a threat at worst.
She'd looked at all of this before, and there wasn't any more information. That was the problem. Professional hits like this were almost impossible to track. Even if they tracked something from Maes's body to an actual person, the person in question wouldn't be traceable to anybody else – if they even found them alive. And that was all without the fact that somebody else was going down for it. Jareth. They were trying to send Jareth down for it.
Diana poured herself a finger of whiskey, then stared at it, trying to tell herself that she didn't need it. It wasn't going to help. She needed a clear head. She needed to have her shit together. She needed –
She grabbed the crystal glass and threw it at the wall in fury, the cup splintering into a shower of fragments and the whiskey splashing onto the plaster, dripping slowly onto the carpet.
"Have I come at a bad time?"
Diana took a deep breath, trying to push away the urge not to murder Mustang where he stood. She turned, flipping her hair back over her shoulder but not bothering with a smile. "Mustang." No sir or Fuhrer.
Mustang let herself the rest of the way into her office, and just smiled at her. "You seem stressed."
"I am."
"I heard about your subordinate's arrest. Deeply unfortunate, really. But you never know these days, really. People hide the darkest secrets-"
"He didn't do it, Mustang."
Mustang glanced up at her, looking completely unsurprised and almost bored. "Oh?" He closed the door behind him.
"Hughes was our best friend. And Archer is trying to use the Wilde Act on him, which is absolutely despicable."
"Ah, yes, the Wilde Act." Mustang nodded thoughtfully. "Of course, if young Valjean is innocent, it won't be an issue. I'll be sure that it's a fair trial."
"He is innocent. Of murdering Maes Hughes. That's what matters."
"Well, if the Wilde Act is being invoked, clearly there's some doubt. And Archer seems to think it's relevant to motive."
Diana scoffed, unable to help herself. "Cut the shit, Mustang. The Wilde Act is outdated garbage. Archer's spinning a story in hopes that it'll stick because he can't find the real murderer. He knows that people will buy into the idea of the jealous homosexual murdering the man who rejected him, and – and how on earth are you fine with this?"
Mustang just shook his head. "Diana, Diana, Diana. You're so idealistic. We can't simply do away with laws we don't like when they're inconvenient."
"Half of your armed forces are queers," she shot at him. "How's that for idealistic?"
"Respect me enough not to use that kind of vile language-"
"Vile language?" She laughed, feeling like she was going to shake into pieces. "We exist! Our existence isn't vile! And if you really thought it was, then it wouldn't take this made-up farce of a case for you to start caring!"
Mustang made his slow way across the office. Diana glared at him, standing steady, refusing to let him terrify her into submission the way he had before. He didn't have Hawkeye with him this time. He didn't even have a weapon – and she always had her gloves. She wasn't going to assassinate the Fuhrer. She wasn't that stupid. But… she was tempted. God, she'd liked him, almost.
"You're almost there, Diana," he said, closing the space between them to barely a foot. He was shorter than her, but that barely seemed to matter now – not when he was exuding such menace.
"Valjean hasn't done a damn thing to you. And if you have some grudge against homosexuality, this is an odd time for it to surf…"
Mustang's mouth crooked into a humorless smile.
"Surface," Diana finished at hardly a whisper.
"There you are. I was wondering if you were going to put it together on your own. Actually," he said conversationally, "I thought you might have already. You keep dragging your feet on hunting down the Beast. With your history, I thought you'd be eager."
"Whatever appetite I had for killing Ishvalans is long gone, sir," she spat, hating how it sounded in her mouth.
"And yet you went ahead and killed one of my subordinates. Bad manners, really." He gave her a cold look. "Did you really think you could get away with that?"
She'd thought – she'd hoped – The homunculi had clearly had protection within the military. But –
The door. Mustang was between her and the door. If she ran for it, he'd stop her, but she had the height and weight advantage. Maybe she'd surprise him. Maybe-
Do it, she told herself.
She threw herself towards the door, but Mustang grabbed her around the middle and slammed her against the wall, his gloved hand over her mouth. The other hand dug something sharp into her abdomen, finding one of the half-healed cuts from Lust and teasing at it where her uniform jacket lifted.
"Nice try," he whispered. "But I'm not letting you go that easily. I'm short on alchemists, Diana. And I need you."
She bit at the fingers smothering her, but there was no give to the hand across her lips – it was like biting metal. Automail? Was that what he was hiding under those gloves? But she'd held his hands for a dance before, she would have felt or noticed something, wouldn't she?
"And now look," he sighed, pulling his other hand away from her abdomen, and she caught a glimpse of something dark-blue that vanished before she could get a good look at it. His glove was in shreds, but it was normal flesh underneath. "I've destroyed a perfectly good glove." He wasn't holding a dagger or anything that she could see, but he put the glove to his mouth and pulled the torn, useless fabric away.
Underneath the glove was a perfectly ordinary hand, ordinary flesh, ordinary fingers. But on the back of his hand, in the same blood-red as it had been on Lust, was a tattoo of an ourobouros.
Mustang flexed his hand, tendons rippling underneath the tattoo. "I suppose by now," he said, with a small smile and his eyes fixed on hers, "you can more wholly appreciate my situation."
His situation. Of course. And she should have seen it a long time ago. Perhaps she had simply wanted to believe that he was a good man, just misled by well-meant intentions or led astray by power. Perhaps it had simply been something she'd accepted with everybody else in the country – that Roy Mustang was almost inhumanly youthful, that he would show his age eventually, that it was just one of those things – and she'd simply failed to adjust that acceptance with new information.
"Please don't take this as an insult. I do enjoy your company, all else aside," Mustang said with a little sigh. "But you just keep doing the most inconvenient things. I ask you to take care of the Beast, even tell you how to do it, and you kill one of my siblings instead. I encourage you to show off your alchemy in front of a crowd, and you're mad at me for it. I send an easy spy ring bust your way and you don't just let her escape, you bravely and nobly try to save her life. I invite you to a gala and not only do you bring the last woman in the world I want to see," he shuddered a little dramatically at that one, "but you even let yourself get shown up by a teenage boy in a dress."
Diana managed to tear her face away from his hand. "Don't you dare-"
"Oh, settle down. He cuts a striking figure, but I needed you to be the center of attention. Even when I wasn't there. I have been setting you up for success, you clueless airhead, and you refuse to take it at every opportunity."
"Success?" Diana echoed hollowly.
Mustang grabbed her chin with what could only be described as a leer. "I do need a successor at some point, you know. Although I'll settle for a puppet, if that's what it takes. Or a wife."
"You son of a bitch."
"I'll spare you and not tell my mother you said that."
Diana clenched her jaw so hard it hurt, frustrated tears gathering in her eyes. More than ten years in the military, things she'd never be able to scrub from her hands or her memory, and-
She thought, horribly, she might faint. Not until he left. She refused. She refused. She took a deep breath, tried to process the new information, but it wouldn't budge. She kept getting stuck on the tattoo on his hand, and insisting to herself because it meant – it meant –
Red Stones are made with human lives.
She'd kept reading that over and over in Will's letter, with a dull, horrible kind of shock. Not really shock. She'd… almost known. Because of course they were. No monstrosity or horror that came out of the Ishvalan War could horrify her anymore. So she'd read it over and over again, and accepted it, and put it in the part of her heart that she had hollowed out and used to lock away all of the hurt and the sorrow. No one person could feel all of that pain and survive it. So she didn't.
Red Stones are made with human lives.
And the creature in front of her wasn't human. One of her questions to Lust sprang to mind. One she hadn't worried about much.
You don't bleed. What is that?
Red Stones, or Red Water. Elixir. Whatever you'd like to call it. You can't use it, though – good luck trying.
There was a scream building in her throat, and she wanted to let it out, she wanted to tear his eyes out, but she couldn't do anything. She was frozen in place, not just because of him pinning her – he was barely restraining her now, and besides, what would she do, now? She couldn't kill him. She still didn't know why Ranfan's blood had worked.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, and her voice trembled. No, please. All she had was the myth of being strong in front of him. If she broke down, she'd have nothing left.
"Finally, some productive conversation." Mustang rubbed his thumb across her cheek. "You're an idealistic girl. You want things to change, right? You've got lots of big ideas in that head of yours."
She nodded, staying silent.
"I'm afraid that lieutenant of yours is doomed. I can't do much for him at this point, and somebody has to be punished for Lust's death. This way, see, we kill two birds with one stone – the lovely Gracia gets closure, and my master gets revenge for the death of one of her children."
Diana wanted to beg, but she knew it wouldn't work, even if she could shame herself enough for it. "A-And Will?"
"I see you caught on," Mustang said, almost kindly. "That depends on him, sweetheart. But if you cooperate, that will help a lot. Forcett… did not go well. He needs some treatment, one way or another. But the form that takes – well, you can decide that. You know what's best for him, after all."
She didn't believe that for a second. It seemed like every decision she'd made for Will so far had been the wrong one. But there was nothing else to do, was there? "You're putting him in the asylum."
"At least for a while. Usually, soldiers who turn on their own are executed-"
Her breath caught in her throat. "What?"
He clicked his tongue. "It's unfortunately to be expected with his type, although I was hoping it wouldn't go so badly. Twenty men dead, it seems."
He wouldn't, Diana insisted. Then – He has before. Claiming that Will wasn't capable of murder was just as delusional as anything Will had claimed during his breakdowns. "He's sixteen, and he's sick. Don't – don't execute him."
"See? This is exactly why I need your vision. So many people would judge him differently, you know."
She nodded miserably. He'd never forgive her, but it was this or let him die – and god, maybe he did need treatment. It had to be better than forcing him onto the front lines again. "And – and we can talk about the Wilde Act. Right?"
"Let's see Valjean's trial out. But yes, I'm actually deeply interested in repealing it. Like you said, Diana," and Mustang smiled, baring his teeth and fixing his sloe-black eyes on hers, "half our forces are affected by it. Why not change with the times?"
Diana nodded again. "…I need you to leave."
"Why, Diana, I-"
"Call me an equal and a visionary all you like. But right now," she really was going to start crying, "I need you to leave."
He paused for a while, then nodded, almost respectfully. "That's very fair. You've processed a lot today." He stepped back, and Diana moved to sit down – then he held out his hand. "Those files, please."
She froze. "What?"
"You're not smarter than me, Diana. You think that if you can find Hughes's murderer before the trial's up, you can save your precious lieutenant. Give me those files."
Wordlessly, Diana gathered up the files and handed them to him. "Was it you?" she asked, words clipped.
He blinked in surprise, then laughed. "I doubt you'll believe me, but I actually wasn't involved at all. No, I'm simply taking advantage of a convenient situation."
"A convenient situation. Wonderful."
"And one last thing, Diana." He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. Then he whispered, "If you even think about telling anybody about our conversation here today, little William Elric will be dead before the sun rises. And you have my word that he won't die a virgin."
Diana threw a fist at Mustang's face, but he blocked it with one hand, seemingly unperturbed. "Settle that temper of yours. I think the choice is pretty clear, don't you?"
"Crystal," she practically spat.
"Have a good day, Colonel." He let himself out, and the door clicked shut behind him. It sounded, to her, like a round being loaded into a gun.
Diana stared at the door, trying to work up the courage to move, to sit down, to do anything. Then she lowered herself down to the floor, ignoring the chair, and bit down on the inside of her hand, trying to suppress the sob rising in her throat. She couldn't do this alone. She couldn't. And she had to. So much for 'Empress Diana'.
Only a few days ago, she'd let herself admit to Jareth how much it terrified her to be without him – how much his death frightened her. And now she was staring at it, knowing it was inevitable, that she couldn't stop it.
You can still fight it. You can still save him.
At what cost? They'd both die, and take Will with them.
Alex. Where was Alex? Was there any chance of reaching him? She didn't know where to start, but increasingly, she was convinced that he really had ended up in the hands of the homunculi. No doubt under false pretenses; but between what Dr. Holland had said to Will, and-
In all of his terrible threats, Mustang had let something slip that said more than he had probably planned on. I'm short on alchemists, and I need you. Unless he was trying to bait her –
No, no, no. She couldn't think that way. She would drive herself crazy.
The Beast was unreachable. Alex was unreachable. Hughes was dead. Havoc was just as caught as her. Falman – she couldn't risk that. Falman was the only person keeping Selim and Bradley out of trouble at the moment, and the official record was that Falman was on holiday. If she contacted Ayi, she was putting all of them at risk as well.
"I don't know what to do," she whispered into the empty office. She'd half-crawled under the desk, like a kid, and she felt like one too. She wanted her mother, but she knew that her mother wouldn't have been any use either. Maybe she just wanted the idea of a mother… or a father.
Diana put her head on her knees, still quietly crying, and thought about Hohenheim. Not the versions of him she'd heard about from other people, or the version of him that she'd had to build from the empty gaps that Will and Alex had notably not talked about. The man who'd give her an alchemy book and sat with her in the cold for a little while, and told her that if she wanted to be an alchemist, she could be one. Who had given her a bit of taffy from his coat pocket, and listened to her complain about her mother locking her out again, and let her sing Bicycle Built For Two and clapped when she was done even though she'd forgotten some of the lyrics.
Maybe that was all it took to be a parent, sometimes. Being in the right place at the right time, and happening to stumble onto the right thing to say.
There were two Black Ops teams, but Jareth had never actually met the other one until now. He'd suspected for a while that their orders were crossing; somebody wasn't doing due diligence and giving them conflicting instructions. So when the blonde woman sprung at him from the dark corner of the bombed-out house, he didn't swing back at her as hard as he would have otherwise. Instead, he raised his arms and blocked her dagger strikes; and when he lowered his arms, the look of confusion was worth it before he swept her legs out from under her and planted a foot on her sternum.
"Shrike, Amestrian Special Forces," he said before she did anything else. "Also, they're plated."
"I figured," she sighed. "On both counts."
"Name and rank?"
"Fang, Amestrian Special Forces. Martel," she added, and he managed not to chuckle. She wasn't the only one who hated the code names. They were mostly for radio use, but training insisted that you identified yourself with them before you used your actual name. They didn't even have official ranks.
Jareth moved his foot off her chest and offered a hand down. She eyed it, then took it with a groan. "I'm Jareth. You're not supposed to be here."
"Could say the same thing."
She gave him a wary look, sizing him up. "…Orders were to make the streets unsafe, keep them indoors."
Christ. Well, that explained a lot. Jareth ran a hand through his hair with a grimace. "Yeah, somebody in Command's fuckin' up bad."
"What are your orders?"
"Destroy the churches."
"What? Half of them are living there!"
"Hey, I do what I'm told."
"How's that working out for you, big fella?" Martel lifted her lip in a half-sneer. "I guess when he made you he put all the stuff meant for brains into brawn instead-"
Jareth grabbed her by the shoulder and slammed her none-too-gently into the wall. "Watch yourself, lass," he growled. "Nobody calls me stupid."
"Then don't act stupid and use that brain of yours. Something's wrong here."
"Yeah, figured that out a while ago. We're getting different orders, and we're not supposed to be."
Martel glanced outside, where it was – thankfully – still quiet. "That's what I'm concerned about."
"What does that mean?"
"We've all been stationed here for almost two years, and it's been near seven since this feckin' war started. We're supposed to be ending it." Martel returned her gaze to him. "Think it's working?"
"Of course," Jareth started to say, then paused. "I mean – we're trying."
"Are we?"
"Nobody wants wars to last."
"Uh huh." Martel seemed to be letting it drop. "You're right, it's probably a mistake. We'd better start communicating to make sure we're not working at cross-purposes again."
"…Yeah. That sounds like a good idea." And… whether or not she was right, Jareth did like that she cared about ending the war. Sometimes it felt like nobody else remembered that. "You should, uh, come by our camp tonight. All o' you."
"Seems all at peace here." Then Martel paid attention to him again. "Wait, are you –" She sighed. "Are you hitting on me?"
"Maybe?"
She rolled her eyes, but there was a bit of a smirk on her face. "Takes an awful lot of confidence for you to hit on a Special Forces lady with a crew cut and a neck tattoo."
"Happens to be that's a turn-on."
"Boor." She tucked her dagger back into her belt. "We'll see you tonight. And you'll have to try harder than that."
"I will," he shot back with a grin. Still, what she'd said was bothering him. Nobody wanted wars to last… but guns cost money. Bullets cost money. People were making dough off of the war – just not the people who were suffering. He didn't like thinking about that.
And then there was the other stuff – the doctors and their labs. But he didn't go there for a reason. What Marcoh and Knox and the others were up to wasn't his business, and he was fine with that.
DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS (INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION)
OFFICIAL MEMO: CLASSIFIED
The following personnel are ordered to appear in front of a court martial and are required to be released from all other duties for the given time span. Failure to appear will be considered insubordination, except for reasons of medical incapacitation. Postponement may be negotiated in other extenuating circumstances on a case-by-case basis.
COLONEL D. SOLARIS, NATIONAL DEFENSE
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL Z.J. KIMBLEY, SPECIAL FORCES
MAJOR A.L. ARMSTRONG, INVESTIGATIONS
MAJOR W. P. ELRIC, NATIONAL DEFENSE
SECOND LIEUTENANT H. J. BREDA, NATIONAL DEFENSE
SECOND LIEUTENANT J. HAVOC, NATIONAL DEFENSE
SECOND LIEUTENANT M. ROSS, INFANTRY
SERGEANT ERIK CHAMOND, INFANTRY
CORPORAL J. A. DAVIDSON, INFANTRY
PRIVATE SHESKA THOMAS, ARCHIVE & CIRCULATION SUPPORT STAFF
The court martial will begin at 0600 sharp tomorrow, July 14th. Outside viewers are prohibited except by written permission of the Fuhrer's office. Recording equipment is prohibited except by written permission of the Fuhrer's office. All personnel will be searched upon entering and leaving the court. All involved personnel, and family and friends of involved personnel, will be surveilled for the duration of the trial. Transgressions will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Signed,
Fuhrer Roy Mustang
