Rating: PG 13 for implied sexual situations.
Pairing: Roy/Hawkeye
Spoilers: Manga #15-16, anime #25
"There is no such thing as perfect writing. Just as there is no such thing as perfect despair."
Haruki Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing
After the Rain
Contradictory. Rain in a sunny day. But life with Roy Mustang was rich with this kind of incongruence. Perfect blue and black, the uniform and the coat and all Hawkeye could think about was that Roy must have ironed them himself. Alone. She didn´t know how long they had stayed like that, stoically up and rigid by the grave. Like a patient that has just been stabilized, she (amateur doctor) thought he´d live even with a punctured lung (the analogy changed from minute to another, for she didn´t know which organ you lose when you lose your best friend), but she was not sure if the scar wouldn´t kill him in the end. She hadn´t seen such a sunny day in months. Still, she will always remember it like a rainy day. Years from now she will remember it grey and cold and Roy´s hands were cold as she brushed them. A grey rainy sunny day.
So this is how the summer ends. Some time later history would repeat itself and Roy would mutter please let me get to her in time under his heavy, laborious breath. He would learn to expect the worst because the worst had already happened once. That first time Roy had not been so imaginative but enough so to be alarmed at the silence at the other end of line, the wire one last electric impulse instead of one last heartbeat and all that was left was the inaudible hissing of a phone swinging in the air, the muted chorus of muscles contracting and relaxing, post-mortem. The second time he would be unwillingly prepared (he tends to be somewhat morbid and would be making all the arrangements in his mind without letting himself acknowledge it) or maybe willingly unprepared (the horror, the void, was to unconceivable: vertigo) but waiting for it. This would be it and the outcome would be different, but for now Roy did not think he could stand it even once. The time between the snapping of a phone line, static noise, and the ID of the body; he never knew he had it in him to go from A to B.
After the End of the World. His hands remind Hawkeye of the cold wave in East last March; you got out and by the time you reached the office there was blue around and under your fingernails, and it had a dream-like quality because it´s not supposed to be that cold in March. Hawkeye tries not to shiver when Roy touches her. He digs his fingers into her clothes, and in her hands and between her legs, but he cannot get warm enough.
The Scale of the Maps. Distance is relative: Maes always insisted that, in case Roy needed him, he was just one call away. And in case Roy really needed him, well, Roy already had the train timetable (and Maes would always laugh a bit nervously after saying this part: no, he´d never dream of implying Roy Mustang needed anything). But life being life, in the end Roy got to see Maes much less than he had wanted or intended over the years. All through the train ride he cursed himself for always finding some silly excuse not to take Maes´ offer. He should have visited more often. He should have called more often. He shouldn´t have hang up the phone so often. Should, should not, throughout the trip (the presence of the word "often" in those thoughts, a time adverb, reminded Roy that a friendship could be measured in in minutes, hours, rather than in gestures and he and Maes hadn´t had enough of any of those). The ride seemed indistinctly all too short or painfully endless, agonizing. His heart was heavy with knowledge but his eyes, skeptic, retained some stupid, devastating hope; until he saw the body, the corpse (even those words sounded fake, offensive, in his head) nothing would be definitive, death could be reversed. At some point of the journey (when there was no moon or it was over-clouded, and the lights in the compartment wavered, flickering like some kind of secret signal, or omen), he closed his eyes, trying to slow the rotation of the Earth or even stop the world completely. But it was the train which moved with the slowness of dreams, their heaviness and tempo. He wished it would never reach its destination, he wished for a trainwreck, for a catastrophic event of steel and fire. Hawkeye would join him in the next train, an unbelieveably tactuful decision, in respect of his intimacy, and a display of discretion that was her choice more than his. But for the moment the night and its shadows, the railway and its dead sounds found him alone. The thought of loss was as stricking as loss itself.
Love as one of the dead languages. Roy likes to think of himself as written by rather than writer of the language. His hand touching her mouth, drawing her mouth, inventing it, painting it against and from tradition (impressionist, post-impressionist, fauve and abstrack, all is very well with him as long as his fingers can stretch and reach for her lips, everything poured into the empirical moment, shutting out the background of imprecisions and indecisions, the untangible, and even feeling made physical through sheer need). What you don´t say you can make mean anything. Hawkeye doesn´t stop him, but Roy wonders how much she will regret this tomorrow, he wonders how much she´ll hate him.
The Act of Listening to the Walls. Hawkeye could not understand why he had to do it. Hughes had his ID with him. "It´s the legal procedure," Roy explained to her and then, slowing his steps a bit: "And I´d rather it be me here than Grazia." Hawkeye, a hand on his shoulder and a faint smile. She moved towards the blinds. "Do you want me to do it?" Roy stilled a bit against the doorframe. No, he shook his head. "I really appreciate it, first lieutenant but… I´d prefer to be alone." Hawkeye left, bowing to him on her way. She was the one to shut the door and then she rested against it, tightly pressed, so much that if she listened she could hear his breathing. All those years in the army had taught her never to cry, and now it was the only thing she wanted to do. Because he wouldn´t.
Momentum. Roy sits on the edge of the bed, stranded sailor pose, and draws a line between past and future, ahead of them. A past of routine (a word not bad itself, maligned by the modern world: Roy dislikes routine himself, but it is the easiest thing to settle for, when the rest is wayward clouds and dreams): routine for both of them, the safe ritual of loving in silence, in the spaces out of frame, safe perfect invisible love, until one of them gets tired or until one of their dreams come true and all he gets is a have a nice life, bye, it´s been a pleasure and he would be all nods and cowardice. But now he draws the line and pulls Hawkeye into it, confronts her. The metallic sound of hotel room keys clicking inside her pocket. What will it be then? The future: routine: torture so it can match the past. Roy looks at her with visible, physical (the jaw tense) signs of sweet and drunken resentment, his pupils lit up with sudden decision or not so sudden want. He looks at her in deep, grateful resentment. Your kindness has proven deathly.
Larger than fiction. I´m alright. I´m okay. I´m fine. The three most overused sentences that day. On Roy´s lips they acquired the opposite meaning. In Hawkeye´s mind they acquired the opposite meaning (the big, bad monster lurking underneath her thoughts). I´m fine. I´m okay. I´m alright. What a fine and consumate liar you were, my colonel, that you could be unmasked by her and only by her.
Religion. Hawkeye knows he regards her as a universe apart, a human being of an entirely new species, and she is afraid she will not be able to meet his expectations. Roy thinks she is immune to weakness and sin, that she does not share the desires or faults of ordinary people. He has never said it (at least not in the kind of words or phrases that could be contained within a paperback novel) but she knows that for Roy there are only two kinds of women in life: Hawkeye and the rest.
The Glass House. Afterwards neither of them was able to say who asked for adjoining hotel rooms, they just knew it had been one of them and the other had nodded in approval. "I should change for the wake," he said as soon as they were in his room (economic but tasty wallpaper, a faint scent of dry wood and glue). Hawkeye knew he was purpousedly busying himself; she knew he was purpousedly avoiding her gaze. She touched his forearm and the left corner of his upper lip lifted in sychrony. "You seem fine," she conceded. "I told you. I am fine."
Coma. The shortest way from A to B is a straight line. But even though he is a scientist sometimes Roy Mustang likes to write the rules backwards. The shortest distance from me to you is still a secret. The shortest way from me to you is… "I don´t want it to happen like this," Roy says against her collarbone. He speaks his fear into her skin, tattooed by his confession: "I don´t want you to think I consider this a pity fuck." He presses her tighter against his chest, eyes closed to her shoulder. He clutches the fabric of her skirt, lifting it. He bites his own lip and there would be blood, but Hawkeye stops him with her fingers. Her hand is cold now as well and his mouth hot. He buries himself between her collar and her neck. He buries himself. Imitation. Another kind of death. An almost as definitive. Hawkeye is the last sign of life in the universe.
Grey Gardens. A city frozen in its own inanimation; rather because it thought that was the appropiate. The shops opened at nine but there was a feeling of reluctance through the streets. Roy realized that something in the place was trying to avoid silence: that was why the classical or jazz radio stations played, sad and elegiac, from the windows in every floor, from each shop, to give ground or meaning to the pain. Those sounds arose not sensation in Roy. He knew they were a plan rigorously executed. He had never liked to make a show out of his feelings and then sell tickets. Wherever he went he saw blue uniforms crossed by black ribbons over the chest, around the arms, (some kind of predetermination here, like everything was foreordained and Maes never stood a chance) and Roy though it was far too early for condolences but too late for hope.
The wreck and not the story of the wreck. Your surprise (not written in the lines of your face but in the shaking between your thighs, the place where he would leave a human-shaped emptiness you´ve never known before):the shock of muted words in the tip of his fingers, the most accurately transmitted most untranslatable language of the universe, the thumb pressed against your cheekbone, almost violently, trying to memorize your face, or maybe paint you as you are, with your insides clayred, his eyes wildblack. He shivers, no matter where you touch him: scar tissue is the most sensitive skin. You close his eyes, touch his eyelids, kiss them. He wants you to stop him. He wants to stop himself. Reality erases the adjetives and leaves only the empty, charred, unmoving shell. You recover the words, word by word, the fracture of order but still you got the whole abc between your four hands, your twenty fingers. When he kisses you he is not thinking about anyone but you. That´s why it hurts, more than the death of a friend, more than a sharp cut under the ribs, because all he can see and feel and smell and touch is you. You don´t know anything about alchemy (not really, not after all these years with him, something about it eludes you, or maybe you don´t want to grab it, his mystery untouched) but you imagine this may feel like burning to him. You know it hurts to burn.
Handle With Care. Years from now she will realize she was overly concerned and without reason to be so. Roy was fragile but his frailty was of a different kind. At first it had surprised her so much, that he could show up so whole and strong, that she thought it was something of a lie, or at least getting there. By the time she got to Central, clear-eyed, clear-minded, and somehow reflecting a shower of frozen water, awake, Hawkeye had imagined a million different scenarios. But the trouble with Roy Mustang is that he couldn´t be anything else but Roy Mustang, and he was an animal of future: he was predestined to overcome this, even if he did not want to. He rebelled in his own strength. He did not want scars: he wanted to bleed to death. When she saw him that day it was like they hadn´t met in years. He seemed alright. Hawkeye walked by his side along a deserted avenue that left the train station, flanked by anodyne oaks. She did not remember the buildings so tall and ugly. Roy was walking slightly faster than ordinary. She placed her small hand on the hollow of his back, between the fifth and sixth vertebrae. She wondered if he needed the comfort.
25 Times Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. He intends to fill the page but he has things to do. Hawkeye picks him up and while they walk she can hear him reciting still, under his breath, through gritted teeth: "Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead." He starts with the word, tasting it, letting his tongue rest on the upper teeth at the end of it, then one day it might stop being an empty word and he can grasp the concept, and then one day he might begin to think about Hughes as dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
Post-impressionist painters. When your best friend is murdered the edges of all things seem to become extra-wide, full, blotted, cartoon-like. Charged contorns, cezanne-esque but embedding an uglied, cheapened down, plain realistic reality, Cassat-like, pitiless hard pencil and strong, pure but sun-washed unadulterated colours. The perspective cracks and shifts and reverts to the Middles Ages (the table tilted towards your field of vision, the apples in the verge of rolling and falling, thud thud thud on the floor, or so the trick makes you think) when the person you love most stands by you (how tidily she had put up her hair enervated you, like she was betraying Maes and you, like the world should not be anything but a mess and you wanted nothing logical or clean or sane ever again): watching you, waiting for you to burst, or break, or crumble like a tattered wall. The epiphany did not come, however, no, there was not even sweat on your forehead. Your body, your hands perfectly steady. And you wondered… if you couldn´t even manage to tremble, how could she still love you? "I´ve ordered some food," she says grave and casually at the same time. A quarter of hour later the food would arrive and you would leave it untouched (you notice the plastic apples by the window, the narrow vase void of contents, and the flower-decorated curtains, dyed a dingy lilac). She would have been disappointed, had you eaten.
Punctuation. Promises are written in brackets. As if to not conditionate, not to press upon the rest of the sentence too much. One week after Hughes´ funeral she will find one spare bottle of milk in Roy´s kitchen, like he expected her to stay. Two days before that she will whisper I don´t know what we are doing when she knows Roy can´t hear her and she will realize she does not really worry; the evening after that Roy will offer his chest as a pillow while she reads a book, and the sense of familiarity, of warm, numbing solace, will surprise them both.
Post-mortem. He threw up before approaching the main entrance of Hughes´ house. He threw up there, on the side street, behind a bush. Roy hadn´t thrown up since he was four and suffered briefly from some strange stomach illness. No, he rectified: he hadn´t thrown up since the first day in the laboratory in Ishval. Now he would have been throwing up hours, but he hadn´t eaten anything to justify it. His mouth smelled like he is the one they are celebrating the wake for, dead and rotten inside. His teeth ached. His lips abrased and peeling off at the edges. But he was glad that at least nobody had seen him.
Afterglow. The journey back is not entirely useless. They discuss the case. They talk about Armstrong. They throw wild theories in the air, about the Philosopher´s Stone and the Elric brothers and the military. Hawkeye can hear suspicion in the back of his throat, like sandpaper, but he can´t voice it still. The landscape dissapears slowly, as darkness closes in, its tender but pitiless tendrils spreading over the fields. Roy presses his head to the window glass. He cannot think through his headache. His stomach still feels odd. He can still taste her inside his mouth, lingering on his skin, crawling up from under his clothes.
Found among the ruins. "You look very beautiful." Hawkeye turned her head a bit. It was just before the funeral. He pronounced "very"slowly and lush. He touched her bare knee while they were sitting side by side and it gave him comfort. Hawkeye frowned. "Are you okay?" Roy looked up and smiled; not a real smile, more like a clown mask, so many layers of paint that it would take many tears to erase. His smile is not real but his words are: "You are the first person to ask that question and really mean it." He didn´t remove the hand from her leg. Sick people often seek physical contact. Hawkeye guessed Roy did the same; his terminal illness, one that had no cure. But she didn´t want to think there was nothing she hadn´t tried. She brushed the hair from his eyes, soft and excriciatingly clean and she imagined him washing his hair that morning, waking up and getting ready as if it was any ordinary morning. Only not.
Pre-emptive Attack. Of course that first night, that first morning she would wake up alone in a bed inhabitated by ghosts, twisted sheets and strong manly scent; and besides her cold, untouched breakfast on a silvery tray. Of course she has known Roy would leave and she is not surprised now. But one more thing she knows: Roy has left because he was afraid she would leave earlier. He was afraid to be the one who´d wake up alone.
The Wake. Rooms of grief barely illuminated; a hollowed out hallway. Recognizable features and patterns: the shape of a face, the nervous tipping of fingernails against the hip, two hundred strokes of a comb before the hair is perfect. A soft hand cupping his elbow, the bones inside trembling. Get me out of here, he muttered but the words were born dead. Get me out of here, because only you can. There were glasses (beautifully crafted, hand-carved) with various drinks; he didn´t touch them. He wanted everything to remain this unbelievable clear, focused; he enjoyed savouring his own pain like very thick and sour liquid. Surrounded, their little island atrociously attacked from all the flanks. Roy tried to avoid the kitchen and near the bathroom because he knew that was where he was most likely to crash into Grazia; Hawkeye tried to avoid letting him go anywhere without her, in case that encounter happened.
Something Heard in a Jean Eustache Film. Once they were as young as to think that big things never happened without death involved; so young as to believe that death was not permanent and that past could be undone just because none of them had any past to undo; those days, in Ishval, in a war that was not theirs and at the same time the only real possession they had ever had, Roy came so close to stop believing in everything that Hughes and her, watching the subsequent resurrection, thought it was very fitting Roy was always associated with fire, memories of childhood classrooms and reading greek mithology from a heavily ilustrated book: they made Roy their own phoenix, and never dared to question the how of it all. Hawkeye remembers this only because she tastes burnt blue feathers in Roy´s mouth. She remembers that this was exactly what she has been expecting.
Impressionist painters. Afraid that he had vanished, she searched the rooms, half-ashamed by her indriscretion, half-hysterical. In the end it was Grazia´s gesture, a subtle head movement, a simple glance (through the age-stained windows -the house had been charmingly old and robust when the Hughes had bought it-, and into the backyard, eyes on the back of a lone figure, ceremonial black and blue, hands to the temples, shutting off the world) what pointed and found him sitting on the wooden stairs of the porch. "You don´t have to follow me around," as soon as he heard the door and smelt her perfume, and in the precise tone that did not meant to but told Hawkeye that follow him around was exactly what she should be doing. She said nothing, which was a pretty average answer in her, Roy pondered in amused and comforted familiarity. He held his glass up to the sun, light crashing and decomposing in a thousand coloured rays, the dying of the afternoon, smooth and brown and autumn-dyed; the wind and the sky and the landscape soft and sweet and cold. Cold. "I wish I liked drinking." Roy sighted, putting the glass away from him. "I wish I could get drunk at times like this." Hawkeye sat by his side, startling him, distracting him, for a moment. Very close, shoulders touching and Hawkeye was invaded by the same kind of awareness she would experience later that same night, when Roy lifted her skirt and touched her knee, his fingers icy cold. Cold. Over the wooden stairs she almost brushed his hand. "I wish for it, too."
Vocabulary List: Stay. The second time is different: this is home, not some cheap (not really cheap, or at least not monetary cheap, just the whole scenario felt that way) hotel room. This is his house, full of books and full of the smell of books, the pages, the dust, and that kind of dead air hanging over, usual in houses where people spend a lot of time locked, alone, (reading). His bed is small and you hardly fit: his back against the wall because your back against the wall would mean he is caging you. You can move even if he cannot. What hits you first, after a whole night there, is that everything smells of Roy. This is something you had imagined, but only inside the dreams you can´t remember. Here a lot of things speak of solitude, but also of a feral yearning to leave solitude behind, in the same way he tries to conect all of the bones in your body with his touch, and his fingertips are soft like a plea. He is still afraid he´d be left alone in the morning, you sneaking out in the middle of the night (one more reason for insomnia). He does not voice this concern, of course (his back to the wall because inverse positions would mean he is caging you) but at some point during his sleep his arm circle you waist, and that says it all.
Fiction/Non-fiction. If they were alone Armstrong would selfishly (yes, even Armstrong is capable of egoism sometimes) hug him. Roy was glad it never came to it. Hawkeye greeted the major with comforting words and a sad smile, because Roy offered neither. A moment after (he was pouring him and Hawkeye some drinks they would never finish) he caught Armstrong looking at him from the other side of the room, staring with curiosity. Roy imagined he was wondering if all that Hughes might have told him about Roy was true. Suddenly he was very interesed in what was said about him and for a moment he remembered how much he missed Maes already.
The Length of Daylight. They have been in East for so long that Hawkeye has forgotten that there could be life somewhere else, and it´s only when she sees Roy beginning to collect boxes to pack his stuff that she realizes everything is being pushed forward and she is not sure she can keep up the pace. She does not tell Roy this; and also she does not tell him, when they lie on his bed, Roy lifting one leg over her, Hawkeye lifting his t-shirt, Roy throwing one arm back, around her shoulders, that this is an ironic materialization of his words about not separating personal and professional (she came into his apartment in uniform and that´s how she´ll leave). Instead: she traces the line of his in-drawn abdomen with her finger, chiselling it.
Follow Me. "I´ve brought major Armstrong": just as she said it Hawkeye could feel the edges of her words, the last lingering note of each syllable, crack like old paint, her voice splintered like bone. Roy looked up and directly at her, like he should comfort her and not the other way around. They moved to a back alley where shadows played with their features like children chasing a kite. When he asked if she would follow him he really meant forever. Hawkeye was so close to him when she answered that Roy could smell the soft cologne she used, something like peaches and wildflowers mixed together, he could smell the soap from her shower and a faint scent of burnt coffee from breakfast. It all summed up to a cut-clean, clear, simple smell. She smelled like cold winter mornings, everthing focused and washed. This was the smell that would always pull Hawkeye to the surface of his brain, like she was part of his cells, and swiming down his bloodstream. That was how close she was, really. When Hawkeye answered she would follow him, she meant forever, too.
The Cliché of the Morning After (take two). Back where Hughes body was found she risks one more step than she would normally towards him. He looks down at the dried blood on the floor of the phone booth. His hands make an involuntary gesture, as if he was cleaning them. Hawkeye never knew you could ache so much without being physically hurt. "You left early," she says, no warning. Roy lost in his thoughts. "I didn´t want to wake you" and Hawkeye´s fingers rest upon his elbow. Roy breathes out, longer than he has in days. At least she is not prone to misunderstanding. Roy touches the telephone, he lifts it, as if he could still answer that last call.
Details of a Sunset. She lost him somewhere between the crime scene and the hotel. She was not really worried until the moment she was, and rushed her steps. There was a pounding and a sense of danger inside her chest, between her ribs, among the blood, calcium and bone. He was not at his room. She exchanged a couple of polite and hysterical (Hawkeye didn´t do contradiction until she met Roy) words with the clerk and headed upstairs again, tired, uncomfortable, her hair almost undone. She found Roy sitting on her bed, drumming with his fingers on the night table. The expression in his eyes was deranged and distant, like the afterglow of a light-bulb on a dark room. He was barefoot, with the blanket humped over his shoulders. So absorbed was he that he did not notice the door open. Hawkeye tried to say something but it came out the words all messy and scattered, inaudible, moan-like, curse-like. Roy looked at her, like seeing a human being for the first time; sad, like seeing a human being for the last time. The blanket started to slide off his shoulders.
The Invention of the Dictionary. He loves Hawkeye in no way actual words (the kind diligently learned by schooboys) can convey. He fears she would think this means he loves her less. He emerges from shower when she is spooning some sugar into their coffee, the tips of his hair dripping over the collar of his shirt. They sit facing each other. When Hawkeye places her hand on the side of his neck Roy circles his fingers around her wrist and gently removes it, letting it rest on her lap. He ruffles his hair, now all messed up and rebellious. "I didn´t want to get your hand wet," he claims. Lately he seems to be always saying the wrong thing; for the simple reason he believes nobody´s invented a word for the right thing yet.
Caryatid. He stood in the grass when the rest had already left, proud, still like a stolen snapshot. Hawkeye studied how his beauty was smeared across the place, in ranges of burnt blue, burning black, his best suit.
A Note on Public Health. "He was goofy but he wasn´t careless," Roy says, writing down the distance between two blood stains on the booth floor. Hawkeye still does not know why he insisted in coming back here, af he missed something the first time, as if he just realized something he could not share just yet. She still does not know why he wants to be put through this torture again. "He was a fucking good soldier." He was, and Hawkeye can read this in Roy´s clogged and tiny handwriting, familiar and round, the low part of the letters smooth and graceful (a graphologist would tell you what a psychologist won´t: the way he writes the letter f, the top of the line long, hanging over the rest of the word means that he is a loving, very protective person); she reads how Maes Hughes knew his murderer, he must have, the shot was point blank. She reads how Roy began scribbling "killer" but settled for "murderer" at the last moment and how that word was heavily pressed against the paper whereas the name "Hughes" seems slightly hurried, the pulse faltering. The rank added as an afterthought, shrunk and abridged to fit in. Graphology: Anything that falls below the bottom of the word hints at the subconscious and Roy displays a contradiction; the tail of the gs swing to the right, meaning he leans on the future, but the ys fall to the left, showing he is somehow stuck in the past. Roy closes the notebook and gets up, carefully re-acting his former steps so he won´t contaminate the crime scene. "What´s this smell?" he asks, craning his head, eyes away from the phone booth. "The river," Hawkeye answers unconfident, her voice a bit taken, "the water runs dirty here." He takes his coat from her hands and places his notes in the inside pocket. "Yes, I remember we submitted a request to clean the riverbed. The local authorities rejected it...because?" "Budget," she adds. Roy presses his lips together and into a half-smile. "Of course. Budget," half a smile, dark and almost nostalgic. Then it occurs to Hawkeye that they are the only ones left at the crime scene.
And the Infinite Sadness. While she witnessed how a general was offering some condolences to Roy (one of the few who actually did this, the rest acted like he and Hughes hadn´t been friends at all) Hawkeye reflected how she wouldn´t have to ask Roy to put down the phone slowly ever again. He was not recieving anymore of those calls.
Insomnia: owner´s instructions.There is some kind of symbolic understated meaning in her paying the coffee. The cafe just around the block from his house. She insisted on inviting him, after all. "I slept a bit tonight, you know?" he says and she holds his hand over the table. He doesn´t really respond, his fingers still, but he smiles; the first true smile she has seen in a long time, even if his voice cracks suddenly at the edges, like the beginning of a dam-break. "I didn´t expected to sleep so sound," tone raw, with the memory of her warmth against his chest, and his hands in her hair and her smell inside his dreams.
Only you know my name. Roy looked enough like an orphan (at least to Hawkeye, but she had always built a bit of myth to justify all those feelings that had seemed unconceivable in life-before-Roy), even though reality was not as romantic, to know what it meant to lose someone. He had not been to many funerals, though: they did not allowed him at his father´s, he was too young and all he could remember was that it was winter in his town, and sand looked like snow for a bright, painful moment (he would confuse the two and almost ate sand, thinking it would melt inside his mouth). You didn´t think anybody got the right time, ever. Death does not work like that. "I wonder," Roy began and Hawkeye leaned a bit to listen but he never got it out (he was looking at Elisia and he was wondering, wondering, wondering), her proximity somehow scrapped the rest of the sentence off his lips like sandpaper. "Nothing," and Hawkeye was relieved and felt bad about it, that he had not finished. Because she knew him too well. Because she knew what he was wondering. And she did not want to hear it. And with Hughes dead, she reflected for the first time and it came to her like a treacherous wave, she was the person who had known Roy longest.
Diving Into the Shipwreck. "I don´t want to cheapen it saying it´s a matter of need," Roy says just when his hand slips under her t-shirt, fingers gently cupping her breast, small and firm, perfect. There is something very serious in his words, something he can only hope she would understand because he cannot explain it any better than he can restrain his wanting to kiss her raw and rough right now, clashing of teeth and skin, as if he could erase himself completely into her, death by abrasion. Need is too brittle, too unspecified. Still he is aware he needs Hawkeye; like one needs the sunlight, you could physically go on living without it but that would not be life at all, and in the end the vitamin unbalance would kill you.
Self-preservation mechanism. After a couple of hours it was like Hughes had been dead for years and Roy was so tired that his eyelids stung as if the sun had burnt his cornea. There was only so much one could do and still it seemed to much for a moment, to him, his body moving out of its own will, because staying still hurted more. He had made such an effort to shut out the pain (like he did, years before, until he convinced himself that the person who had been to Ishval was not really him) that he became completely functional, quick and efficient that day, and even Armstrong looked at him a bit offended by how composed Roy looked. It was just fine. He was used to be considered some sort of villian. He was only too glad to play the role, for the sole reason he could. But there were things that Roy knew and nobody else did: that Hughes had been afraid of darkness until he turned fifteen and afraid of loneliness until his death; that the cross-shaped scar he had carved on his right shin came from a bike accident and he never told anyone when because he was embarrased at how late he learned to ride a bike; that he whistled when he was nervous and he only talked seriously to people he cared about. The rest of the world might believe Roy never deserved Hughes´ friendship. Roy would probably agree. But the fact remained that the rest of the world didn´t know a shit about them, really.
Last Song. The coffee routine repeats and spans over the days, she taking care of him, like a sick baby, one that needed constant supervision. It is their ritual; drinking coffee, talking about Hughes, holding hands. To the rest of the world it looks like nothing special: to the waitress, to the other clients, to the pass-byers that see Roy and Hawkeye through the window. To anyone who knows them well enough it doesn´t seem like anything different, there is nothing scandalously new about it: a couple of friends sharing a break time. But it´s the last love song of the universe.
A Hole In My Heart. "Right now... a part of me is desperatedly trying to develop a theory on human transmutation." Hawkeye herself did not know how to react, how to handle death. Even though Hughes had been first and foremost Roy´s friend, not really hers. Not hers. She could not allow herself to fully feel his loss because the amount, the intensity of Roy´s loss was so devastating it left no room for anything else. She contemplated it as odd (she had never lost a close friend or a member of the family; or at least not one that could evocate these powerful images), ironic and more than a bit unfair: yesterday Maes Hughes had been a person to her; now he was just one endless void inside Roy, much like those blank spaces in the maps, those warnings that mark "terra incognita" and you know what it means not because you recognized the words but because the way it sounds and you wonder if it is the end of the world; one big black hole that will suck you into oblivion, the nothingness. Dead. Hughes.
After the End of the World (the Who Am I remix)."This time you´ll have to stop me, if you want me to stop." His volunteered tenderness, for which she will always tell him apart from the rest of men. Back in East, the blinds pulled carelessly and his house smells of brown leaves and feels like a century has trampled over it. It´s only been a couple of days and he almost doesn´t recognize his room. "You´ll have to stop me," repeated like a plead, as his fingers tread up her bare shin. Hawkeye tries not to think how there is something dangerous in his voice, profoundly dark and savage. "If that is what you want," she answers coolly, but soft, bending and speaking into his ear. Roy stops, rising his knees from the floor. Is that what you want? in a tone that the last remainings of his male ego flattered as a bit dissapointed. He gets up and looks at the silent mess he left the house into. These walls belong to a different life, to the time before the end of the world, and he can no longer recognize himself living in here, like Roy Mustang died in between those two journeys to and from Central, and now he is the stranger in somebody else´s skin, wearing it like a mask. He doesn´t know how to fill in the role, how to go on with the play. He never learned the lines. Hawkeye takes his hand and lets it go in the same movement. "What I want is of no consequence," he lets out, in a casual tone.
Grazia. The official had handed Roy the photograph that morning. He had cleaned the blood stains as well as he could. At first Roy thought he would keep it to himself (much like a reminder of what he had robbed Maes and Grazia and Elisia of, a way out for his own masochism) but he knew it was far too beautiful and precious and he placed the photograph in Grazia´s hand without a word, when she was surrounded by friends and relatives and Roy was sure she couldn´t confront him. All day he had been thinking how to make Grazia angry or mad enough so she would slap him, hit him. Roy could have asked for forgiveness and she would have granted it. But Roy did not want to be forgiven.
Exhibit A. Fourth day and Roy fears he is beginning to forget things about Hughes. His features and gestures are beginning to be erased and not by time but by memory itself. The authorities are really impatient to show (to show off, Roy corrects between his teeth) their consternation and surprise at the crime while the investigation is conducted with the utmost inefficiency.
Elisia. Roy saw, in the lines of Elisia´s round and sweet face, the beautiful woman she would one day become, and he wondered if she´d grow up to resent him.
Intersecting Parallels. "I don´t want to use this as an excuse," and he doesn´t want to think that in the end you would believe this is what brought it all. This pain. This desperation, punctuating his insides like a broken rib. It´s not the reason. This (he refuses to pine it down to a name but maybe it´s just fear, his deep terror of breakable things, that he thinks you would be gone as soon as he says the magic words, that he would be gone) was here before Hughes died; and it will last long after the stones turn to dust. You wonder if this could have happened, had Hughes not died. Yes, you feel horrible and you know you should apologize for merely thinking about it, for merely doubting. And you realize something more: It is exactly why Roy wanted to avoid this. "Stop it," he says. He knows what you are thinking. "I know what you are thinking. Stop it." That is why he grabs you by your wrist, twisting your arm, so tight it actually hurts; only when it hurts you really hear what he is saying, you rub your wrist and for a moment the skin around turns hot and red, itchy. "Sorry," he says: he knew this would happen. And he knows something more: maybe you can live with your doubts but he can´t. That is why he tried to stop this. Up to this moment you have never really understood how much smarter than you Roy is; only now you discover how painfully aware he is. You almost feel pity. "Stop it," he repeats and again he knows exactly what you are thinking.
The Irish Tradition. They were among the first to leave Grazia´s house: Just as Hawkeye was wondering which car was theirs the Fuhrer took Roy apart and told him something she could not hear. Later, when she asked about it he shook his head in the same solemn and false way he had nodded to whatever Bradley had been saying. It was harder than it should have been to fit in the protocol; the technicalities of death elluded them. Roy placed his hand casually but not carelessly on her shoulder, dancing his fingers (uneven pressure, like he was writing on her body) over her coat, and asked if she remembered one particular New Year´s day back in Ishval and the party Hughes had organized for the lesser rank soldiers there. Everybody had gotten drunk except Roy and Hawkeye, who were left behind the morning after to clean up the mess. Maes had gotten drunker than anyone. She remembered, of course. Roy told her it was okay to smile, there was no better time to celebrate Hughes´ life than now.
Exhibit B. Fifth day and Hawkeye is the first to wake up. Later: "You wouldn´t let go of me while you slept." Taste of salt and sand and seashells in his mouth. "I dreamt I was drowning." Hawkeye nods, one leg lifted upon the bed, Roy´s face to her thigh. "We drowned together." I wouldn´t let go of your hand. Now: she opens the blinds, raising sunlight, red jewelled sky, in a white robe. She touches Roy´s uniform coat, folded upon a chair. On the fifth day you wake up in his house and only when you check yourself in the mirror (she checks herself in the bathroom mirror and then she pauses; she imagines Roy looking at the same mirror each day, hating the reflection there, wishing it was someone else instead looking back at him) it ocurs to you that the two should not arrive at work together. You don´t want to go in late but it is better if he goes first. You reflect this with a kind of selfishness you always believed impossible (in you) under these circumstances. This way you wouldn´t have to be alone with the rest and fend off questions like (and this rings of Havoc) How is the boss? and this way you wouldn´t have to lie and say He is fine with your eyes on some paper you are not really paying attention to, head low, very low. When Hawkeye emerges from the bathroom her clothes still remain by Roy´s, incriminating proof.
Last Will and Testament. Everything ended up so formal and kind of flashy that it was hard to believe it was Hughes they were burying. All those perfectly cut uniforms and Bradley leading the cohort, somber and dignified; Roy reflected, rather bitterly and with a kind of angered energy inside his chest, tickling his ribs, that Maes would have wanted a very different funeral for himself.
Slightly Wrong Calculations. Given the moment she has thought she would have the advantage of her calm, her cool. That she would be able to analyze the situation rationally, to take him by the hand and guide him like a child. But this is Roy and the pages of the manual are all ripped off. Equally surprising is that her hands are trembling and his are not. Roy is so tired he doesn´t even notice. It´s been three days and he already looks ten years and ten minutes older. He tries to fix a bit of dinner and she knows he will not touch it. He is placing the dishes on the table and Hawkeye hugs him from behind, childishly and the gesture lasts only a moment. She murmurs an apology but Roy smiles, slowly letting her go of him. He got an automatic hard-on, the kind you don´t know you are getting, it´s just there. "Sorry I don´t know how to cook shit," but he obviously enjoys the process and that is enough to get at Hawkeye. To hide that fact she does something childish again, like roll her eyes maybe, or cover her mouth where laughter should be but isn´t. Actually, the whole scene would be nice, under other circumstances. But seven minutes later Roy presses her to the bed and rest his face on the hollow of her neck, like a marooned ship. "Tell me a lie," he begs. "Tell me it wasn´t my fault." Hawkeye wants to hole-punch Roy´s hair; it seems wet, like he just came from the shower, but what happens it´s that it is actually very thick and soft and Hawkeye knows that, objetively, it is beautiful but she doubts it´d be so beautiful were it not Roy´s. "I can never lie to you," she whispers, the heavy weight of his body pressing her lungs and in each of her words. Roy tightens his embrace. "It´s not your fault."
Something Beautiful. What struck her at first was how young he looked. His best clothes, the wind, the sun, the formality, how he managed to seem isolated even between the rest of mourning soldiers, how he managed to look one step aside of everyone. The painful evidence of his extreme youth, how his eyes and face and expression seemed blank and still how he looked down when Elisia began to call for his father. The smooth and elegant lines of his face, how pale he was, the hair combed backwards, the perfect blue against his milk-white skin. Something about it was dangerously endearing (there is always something beautiful, something romantic in all this suffering) to Hawkeye and something about it made her want to rebel, to rip something off, to tear it apart: how fucking young he looked.
The balancing of equations and the lesser properties of hydrogen. He scribbles odd figures and equations, a maze of letters and numbers Hawkeye cannot decipher, something so private that she feels like an intruder. Roy notices her looking, silently hunting for a strand of meaning, for her place within that world of smoke and logic. She sits by him, one arm over the arm of the armchair and bending to see more clearly, silent like a predator and not wanting to disturb him. When she asks what he is doing Roy tries to explain and watches the information sinking in, he reads the light lines of her face (she looks so young, trying so hard to seem interesed, trying so hard to imagine and understand), amused and touched by her confusion. He speaks in particles and reactions, for every human emotion a dry, rational explanation; he dissects the mystery in front of her and Hawkeye thinks maybe it is really too late for them. But a couple of minutes later Roy rips off the corner of a page and writes something down: he slips it into Hawkeye´s hand, closing her fingers over the scrap of paper, his thumb travelling her life line down to the wrist. In black, rich ink: I have always been a scientist but this is more than chemistry. There are still mysteries. While she reads the note Roy leans in to press his forehead against her cheek.
Stolen Kisses. Hawkeye had never been good at abstracts but Roy was. If he felt pain, he felt the whole concept, the pain of every single human being that ever lived. This might seem unbearable but for Roy it was nothing more than a familiar presence and in a sense (in the same fashion one puts his hand under hot water to scalded fingers and watch in fascination rather than horror) it helped, he felt he was part of history´s pages. Not alone. And because of that he had imagined this would hurt infinitely more. In a way he was dissapointed at himself, at his own limited capacity for despair. Like it meant he never loved Hughes well enough. He should get crazy, go insane with grief. Hawkeye had never been good at abstracts and when days later Roy would rush her out of the office and fling her against a bathroom wall she would feel the cold tiled wall first, and then, an almost as a surprising afterthought, post-scriptum, his wet lips on her neck.
Paper Hearts. Only later it occurs to her that Roy speaks of himself as a scientist in the same tone and manner a poet would speak of his work, this is: something adventurous and romantic in his voice, and the hopelessness of not a choice but a vocation. A fine and passionate chess player, Roy believes in the words on the paper more than he does in the fire that surrounds him, he believes that magic is made of language and that language is unintelligible as love and therefore he never says I love you. A Saint-Exupéry memento: how Roy always says that the important things are really transcient, that meaning that love is learning to change together and as much as he cherishes the fact that they share a past he also knows that the key is that he and Hawkeye look ahead to the future, in the same direction (this also shows in their caligraphy, Hawkeye refusing to believe that graphology is really a science but maybe their fate is plotted in the stars and in the lines across the palms of their hands, an ancient notion) because faltering is permited but it helps to have somebody to catch you if you fall. Not that Roy would ever phrase it so cheapily (Hawkeye knows this in the same way she knows Roy would probably never buy her flowers); no, Roy, with his careful worded letters and his careful spoken words, would always look for some new, more accurate way of saying old things, asking the old questions. Five hours after Roy writes her a note in a small piece of paper Hawkeye finds him frozen, in front of his desk. For a moment he had forgotten about the photo of Maes and him upon the table and it caught him unguarded.
Self-loathing as one of the fine arts. "Alchemists are horrible people, first lieutenant." Like a warning. Like the thunder. Caution. Run for your life. Get out, get away. (Leave before I kill you too. Leave). Roy takes the coat from her hands. The weather is odd and cold and bright in the same sense the sun is cold, falling in stencilled squares over the gravestones.
Damocles´ Sword. Fourth day and she is practically living in his place (that is beginning to become the debris of the house it used to be, Roy already preparing to move out). Hers is a mess from rushing in and rushing out and she smells of his soap and his shower gel. It´s not so much that she spends a lot of time there but the fact that she spends the rest of the time thinking about it. Or rather thinking about not thinking about it. The cool approach did not work. Now the over-rationalizating approach is not working either and (as early as) the third night she did not mind the uncomfortable human heat or the stealing of blankets or the moving (she did no longer mind her cramped head resting under his, her neck hurting, elbows against ribs and legs sprawled uncomfortably over each other) from all his insomnia kick-ins, and she did not have to even try. It is nice, not having to try. Because Roy feels natural to her and she is fast learning to touch him without having to make up an excuse to do so. But Roy has a wider peripheral sight than her and a strange ego and his eyes always seem like waiting for Hawkeye to close the door behind her and never come back. There is a tension in his fingertips and every time he touches her (at the base of her neck, gingerly, some kind of ghost, or above the hips, dabbing at her t-shirt, his prints a guilty path towards her navel) there is an inflexion in his sadness, his quiet and feral desperation that tells her don´t fuck around if you are not staying, like he has already lost enough this week.
Havoc. He called Havoc, while they were in Central. (Twenty-four hours, I hope the place is not falling apart without the first lieutenant and me but what Roy really wanted -checking on them was fine and fun, but he knew they could manage without him, even much longer than that, and he was proud-, really, really wanted, was to hear his voice). There was a charged silence on the other end of the line and Roy thought Havoc was much younger than he was, even if that fact did not reflect in their birthdates.
Incessant Life. When they come back it´s all uncomfortable silences and even more uncomfortable stolen glances at Roy, and Havoc smoking cigarette after cigarette, more because the act of lighting them keeps him busy rather than for the cheap nicotine shot. They all liked Hughes but they love Roy better so who they are really mourning for is Roy. She is terribly sure that, as soon as they saw Roy and her, people would think they are sleeping together; only that most of those people believe that already (the one time Hawkeye pointed this out he gave her one of those oh-so-roy-ish answers that made her roll her eyes, something in the lines of I´m honoured that people might think you´d go out with someone like me, or similar, smiling and she wondered how he could look so over-confident and ego-boosted while saying this kind of thing, and for a moment she pondered if he knew that would work marvellously as a pick-up line and how easily she fell for it) so it does not make much of a difference anyway. Roy is unreadable and she is afraid to ask. Every time she tries is all I´m fine, I´m fine until they are alone and he has no reason to lie.
First love, last rites. Roy wondered what Maes had thought about Hawkeye almost as often as what she thought about him. He knew they did not think often of each other. Roy was the only thing they had in common, their bridge. Still they cared about each other like two people who shared a life-long passion, but nothing more. As soon as Maes realized that Roy loved Hawkeye more than he did him, he stopped fighting her. This was only at the end of the war. Later he´d joked about his own friendly jealousy. But never in front of her. Hughes saw from the beginning that for Roy there had been no woman before Hawkeye and there would be none after her, whatever that meant (he teased but never really pressed on the subject). He liked Hawkeye a bit more than he resented her, because he had always, a bit naively but nothing seemed to prove adverse, regarded Roy as uniquely his. He had loved Roy first, after all. Half-way through the funeral Roy caught himself remembering the oddest things, like he had memories for what had not happened or could recall conversations he never had. Like from then on, everytime the phone rang, Roy would still believe it was Maes and his latest new/bragging/amazement about his daughter. The graveyard, the place, the ritual, everything was so tranquil that for a moment Roy saw it all become transparent, even pain. He saw the coffin descending and what he felt for his friend was like a warning, and he decided he would not let himself be buried, even if he must break the wood that trapped him to prevent it. In death he wanted to be as free as ashes, or even a bit more, if he could. Roy made a mental note to tell all this to Hawkeye later; because if somebody could care enough to bury him in the end, Roy hoped it´d be Hawkeye. Only he could never reciprocate in the gesture. There were many things in the world Roy had no control over, and many things he allowed even though he should not, but one single truth he was in possession of: no matter what the rules of life were he would never let Hawkeye die before him. He would never attend her funeral, like he was now attending this one. Roy felt more than a little guilty that he couldn´t make the same promise to Maes.
Apples are the only fruit. At twenty-nine he always remembers to be dumbfounded by the simplest things, marvelled by the world and its little incongruences, its small wonders: the taste of freshly cut green apples, sour but impossibly soft on the tongue at the same time. For not many people knows that Roy likes to sit on his living room, on the carpet, legs crossed (an old habit from Ishval, the days when he and Hughes and later Hawkeye drank coffee inside his tent, keeping each other awake until the next battle because sleep was full of vultures; he believes it´s war what made him an insomaniac), a stack of old newspapers tugged under his arm and cut out faded photographs that fall swiftly on the floor. He cuts portraits of happy children and sad girls; daguerrotipes of houses where he´d live in another life, grow a garden, bring up a couple of daughters that looked like their mother -he is a romantic, after all-; improbable drawings of cars and engines that would never work; penciled maps to countries that don´t exist. Roy likes to collect the things that never were, that would never be. Hawkeye finds him like that, spread on the floor, biting the collar of his t-shirt like a child. She knows he keeps all those newspapers and cuttings hidden under his bed, sleeping the slow death of dust and moth. "You had me chasing you all day," she says tossing her raincoat over a chair, much more casually than she really meant. "I was here," he answers but Hawkeye reminds him they were to meet at the cafe. Roy looks up and drags her to his side, fingers around the sleeve of her coat; Hawkeye complies (she is getting used to this stop-and-start pieces with him, this slow dance, his unpredictability) and he studies her mouth, not too timely, before slanting to kiss her. He says he forgot their date but Hawkeye knows Roy Mustang never forgets anything. The apples are far more sweeter when Hawkeye eats them later -the light, watery green gone-, but they lack the amazement tasted in Roy´s mouth.
Friend. At the cementery: rows and rows of people Roy didn´t know and he wondered if they really knew Maes at all.
Breda. "You cannot leave real life forever deferred because you have something more important to do meanwhile; and then expect to pick it up when you want," Breda, coffee-stained teeth, very grave and Roy nodding, calculatingly patronizing. Their coats resting on the fence of an abandoned house. Roy knows, whenever he goes next that evening, Hawkeye will be waiting for him there. He does not tell Breda this. The subordinate makes a guess and guesses right but keeps it to himself. "I should not speak to you in this tone, sir, I apologize." Formality does not become him and he always shows respect, but mixed with excessive doses of irony, deathly doses, and his good manners somehow always seem unpolite. He wears silence like one would everyday´s coat. But apart from Hawkeye he is the only one Roy has talked to about Hughes.
Cartographies of Silence. One of the things Roy had always liked about her (and one of the things that always made people nervous when around her) is how she seemed to be a very quiet person. He loved how Hawkeye was able to fill the worst parts of the day (the places where the universe felt painted over and sanpapered but peeling off) with a silence more alive than the rest of the people´s whole conversations. He welcomed and let it show that she soothed the path out of the graveyard with her absence of hypocresy, that she was loyal to him even in her refusal to offer hollow words of consolation. It was odd that Roy felt comfortable enough with Hawkeye (you know all of my secrets, my weakness, my faults) to wipe his tears in front of her, only that when he did they had already dried on his cheeks.
Inflammable bridges. The skin of the lower side of his upper arm is the most sensitive part of his body. You know this now and in knowing it you can feel pride uncurling in your belly. The old habit of holding back clasped between his fingers and in his white knuckles, clinging at the sheets as if they were your body. You breathe from his lips and your stomachs touch, pressed together. This is a quieter part of the night; still, a couple of cars outside and their lights drawing circular patterns on the ceiling.
The Weather Today is... For a moment, standing there, not really looking at Hughes´ gravestone but rather at Roy´s hands, Hawkeye thought the rain would never stop.
Home. "This is no longer a pity fuck." Roy shakes his head slowly and takes her by the wrist. She smells of toothpaste. "I guess not," and pulls her against him, the kiss slow and rhythmic, a bit deeper than the kiss before, and the kisses before that, no longer captive of guilt and doubt and remorse, only caution holding him back. It´s been a week. It feels like years and years and years. Roy thinks the whole world should have changed, but things seem oddly untouched, except for the boxes that contained what has been his life, home, for so long. Now he has a half-empty house and a half-full bed. She hovers over him, Roy kissing her throat, and for a moment she busies herself tracing the ringed coffee stain on his night table. When she looks back there is something quietly fierce in his eyes. But there is something hopeful, finally, too.