II.
When Scar wakes up, he's flat on his back. Sprawled. His body has taken advantage of the mattress to stretch its limbs out, enjoying freedom after so many nights spent cramped into sewer tunnels and garbage bins. At first he thinks he's dead -- how could he not be, with a smoke-stain ceiling above him, four walls, no cars. He's somewhere safe, which can only mean the afterlife.
His arms are stiff when he bends them up to rub at his eyes. There's a pinprick of fear upon realizing his sleepy vulnerability, the exposed stomach that begs for a knife, but Scar controls himself. He sits up slow. The spark-quick tickle of danger vanishes, and Scar's left feeling empty without it, bereft of adrenaline. This hostel is not hell. He is not deceased. Ishbala's judgement has not come.
Too bad.
He didn't have much time last night to gather impressions of the building he's taken shelter in, but daylight does nothing to grant it charm. The curtains in his bedroom used to be white lace once, but now they are yellowed beyond any hope of recovery. Down the hall, pipes rattle. One man plods past the door, smacking his gums while his feet creak the floorboards in a steady, tormented tenor.
It doesn't take long before the rest of Scar's body rouses. It's hungry; that's nothing new, which is a fact that Scar accepts sour-mouthed, the grumbling and faint nausea of an organic system in disarray. He can't afford to flee before breakfast, not when he skipped dinner the night before. Whether he likes it or not, he needs to eat. Now.
Halfway down the stairs to the living room, he freezes.
The instinct saves him. Mabel is standing at the window with her hand on the drapes, keeping them pulled open so she can get a good view of the military cars driving by outside. Two army vehicles cruise into sight together, the drivers turning their heads as they scan the street. Their expressions are pinched underneath identical military caps. Scar's heart makes unsteady rolls inside his chest as he presses against the wall, and only when he sees Mabel's hand drop the curtain does he dare to move.
She notices him quickly once he's left the protection of the stairway, the last few steps groaning underneath his weight. "The army's in one of their fuss-ups again." Unruffled, the woman turns towards the kitchen, hands burying themselves in a dishrag as she walks. The air smells like candied socks. "Sleep fine, Mister Nothing? You'll need to have your things out by this afternoon. I can strip the linens myself, don't worry about them."
Scar finds his eyes fixed on the grime-tainted curtains. His attention is so firmly engrossed that he is forced to turn his body towards the woman and order his face to catch up. Belated, he shakes his head. "No." Then, "I need to stay longer."
"Do you," she asks, inflectionless. Her eyes are watching Scar; they flick once to the window when a stray van rumbles by. Then back to him. "You going to have the pay for it?"
Another shake of his head. Scar lets go of the railing gingerly, and, just as quickly, takes hold of it again, feeling the withered wood scrape his palm. His grip is awkward. The irony of this situation sticks like soap against his gums, a chemical warning of bitterness. He's getting by on the mercy of his enemies.
Ishbala must be testing him.
Mabel does not fight. The rag slides over her fingers before getting turned into a neat square, the woman not even having to look down for this automatic task. "I'll be out today for errands," she announces, chin up as if to overlook her own generosity. "I need to pick up some things. If you can finish all the chores for this place by the time I get back, I'll give you another evening." Another flip of cloth, and Mabel has finished with the dishrag and is disappearing into the kitchen, which has begun to ooze a thin trail of hog-flavored steam. "You didn't come down for dinner last night," she calls back, "so I saved you a plate. Second shelf in the refrigerator. Breakfast is in thirty minutes, so better eat it fast before someone else does."
The kitchen is cramped. Stacks of dirty dishes are lined up by the sink. It is polite for Scar to perform service first and receive sustenance after, so he digs his meal out of the fridge and sets it on the counter where he can keep an eye on it. The plate contains a slice of meat surrounded by yellow-green vegetables, and a thin layer of fat has congealed over it all, leaving a milky veil behind. He'll have to eat it cold.
After he's finished with the washing, that is. Pushing his meal reluctantly to the side, Scar studies the sink. He looks automatically for the basin of powder-sand before he remembers that these people do not scour their bowls clean; instead, there's a dingy sponge that's crumbling into grey disease. It leaks a cold slime over his fingers. The tap creaks when it's twisted on, guttering an imperfect flow of water; spitting bubbles first, and then running a dangerously brown tinge before straightening out to clear. Scar stares warily at the liquid even after the sink has begun to look innocent again, reaching his fingers out carefully, half-expecting the drops to burn.
Once he gets used to the feel of the water, he lets the river pour over his fingers. Soap lathers into bubbles on his pitted, dark skin. Mabel hums to herself as she cracks another egg into the frying pan, ignoring Scar's presence as she digs through the kitchen for forks and cups.
She doesn't talk to him. For the first ten minutes, Scar keeps trying to watch her, keeps trying to have the woman in clear view at all times, but Mabel doesn't act suspicious. The drawers rattle when she yanks them open, but her hands never produce knives, cunning blades forged for carving roasts.
Eventually Scar gives up and works on the saucers.
Breakfast is served while he is working. Mabel doles the rubbery eggs onto a platter and hefts it into the dining room, following it up with a pitcher of watery orange juice. She does not force Scar to stop work and eat with the other diners, which Scar is grateful for. It keeps him out of sight as much as possible. There are not many darker-skinned folk in Amestris, and even fewer with white hair and red eyes to match -- and that's ignoring the fat X streaked across his face, the angry double-slash of malice.
She's gone before the end of breakfast. Many of the renters disperse on their own schedule, leaving wedges of half-eaten toast behind. A few of them enter the kitchen; Scar is cautious of them too, even when they only drop off their dishes and depart.
After the washing is done, Scar picks his own meal off the countertop, and cleans his plate exactingly. His stomach is greedy. Once he has a bite of real food, it's hard to stop, until Scar discovers that he's running his thumb over the dish to try and sop up every shred of beef sauce, smearing cold fat into the peas.
The temptation to pick up the plate and lick it like an animal is strong. Evoking the destructive powers of his arm drains the energy out of him; deconstruction gives him a ferocious appetite, one he's been trying to ignore. Eating reminds Scar that he's alive again, which is a blessing and a curse. It shouldn't feel good to live: he has a mission that could kill him any day now, and Scar must remain intent upon his path. Self-preservation gets in the way. Relishing food -- hungering for it, craving it -- is a sign of impulses he must train himself to ignore.
The more he lets himself live, the less willing he will be to die.
Once he's finished with his own dishes, Scar dries off his hands and wanders through the hostel. The rooms upstairs are for sleepers; many have left their doors closed, but here and there a door is cracked open to reveal a resident going about their business. Occasionally, a renter exits to the hall. They give Scar only the briefest of glances before looking past his shoulder in the politeness of mass-bedders.
Surprisingly, there are no whispers marking his presence. These individuals are uninterested in his appearance, and turn their faces away so that he cannot glimpse their identities clearly either. The unspoken anonymity is comforting. No one cares what he is doing here, so long as he does not care about them.
Mabel left him a list on the kitchen table. Scar gives it a wide berth at first, skirting the deceptively innocent scrap of paper before he sighs and forces himself to pick it up.
She wants him to wash the linens stacked in the lower bathroom. When he goes there, flicking on the weary yellow lights, he's greeted by a thick bar of amber lye soap and the smell of old sweat coming off the sheets. There's a smaller plastic washtub sitting in the corner, but the paper instructs him to plug the bathtub and fill it to boiling.
Despite his expectations, Scar isn't arrested that night. Mabel comes home just in time to prepare dinner, and she returns alone, no military police in tow. There's a canvas envelope in her hand which she clutches tight to her chest, but the only official stamp it bears is from a library. She asks briefly if he managed to get everything done, and in answer, Scar points out the window to the backyard where rows of grey sheets are hanging out to dry.
- - - - - - -
Mabel is busier and busier as the week goes on. In exchange for the laundry, she lets him stay an additional eight hours. Hauling the trash down three streets to the nearest dumpster earns him another night to rest. Meals are interspersed during these hours, platters with greasy chunks of ham and pale yellow eggs. Black vans still cruise the streets, but Scar sees them less each day, the army all too willing to ignore this sector of disrepair. The dark roads, as Scar's brother once cautioned. The dark roads that Scar is lost on now.
One night, Scar opens his eyes from nightmares of sand dunes melting into rivers of glass. He stares into the mottled darkness of his room without breathing. There was a sound in his dream that kept playing again and again, and he holds himself perfectly still until he hears it once more, and can identify it.
What woke him wasn't the noise itself, but the fact that it's different from anything else in the hostel's nighttime static: it sounds like a woman crying.
Women's tears have always had the ability to bother him. They remind him uncomfortably of home, of his brother or his brother's lover. As Scar lies there in bed, acutely aware of the rough sheets and mildew stains on the ceiling, he realizes he can't possibly go back to sleep now.
When he eases his way downstairs, unable to keep the floorboards from entirely creaking underneath his weight, Scar discovers Mabel sitting at the flimsy living-room table. Papers are spread out in front of her. The texts are fanned in a radius of lines, ugly forms with a hundred empty boxes to fill with cramped penstrokes. Mabel's cheeks are tight, flattened in a grimace as she stares at the verdict spelled out through the language of bureaucracy, the pages which cross-reference other documents and require triple-checking twice.
In her desperation, the woman is making little sounds. They're far beyond the realm of Scar's familiarity; he can't figure out what to do about it. She's whimpering as if there's something wrong inside her -- a broken rib or crushed larynx, internal bleeding. Collapsed lung. A death that will come slowly, but which can't be fixed, so it will linger on painfully until the flesh simply gives up.
Scar's feet scuff the carpet. At the noise, Mabel jerks her head up. She's caught exposed. Scar starts to move gingerly towards her with his hands spread low in a shepard's hurt-thee-not, but she doesn't bolt for safety like a spooked ram. Instead, the woman drops her face into her hands and begins to leak tears over her palms, awkward dribbles that seep out from between her knuckles and down one wrist.
Scar retreats.
- - - -
The next time he dares to leave his room after-hours, there's no noise to disturb him this time. Nothing that obvious. There's a light peeping under the crack in his door, and when he pushes it open, he notices that the source comes from downstairs. Not the living room this time -- the kitchen. Whoever has left the lamps on can't be one of the other renters, and if it is, then they're up to something. Maybe they're stealing extra meals.
He descends the stairs more carefully this time, wondering if he will catch the culprit in the act. Some part of him is amused; he is no guard dog for this foreign woman. It does not matter what happens to the hostel, so long as Scar is gone before it occurs.
But there is no mischief out tonight. Mabel glances up when he enters the kitchen, her eyes bleary and red. There are stacks of dirty dishes on the countertop, left there by sloppy eaters. When Scar glimpses them, he knows he has to catch up on work. At first he wonders why Mabel's up so late if she's not cleaning, and then he sees the papers spread out like dull burial shrouds again, this time covered with tiny ink answers.
There's a stack of photographs mixed in with the documents on the table, and when Mabel catches him looking at them, she pushes the top one out.
"Jacob," she offers. Then, the wisp of a smile struggling in her mouth, "My husband."
Scar does not pick up the photograph. Instead, he slides it closer to him with one finger, looming over the faded picture on the table. The man has a weak chin. His ears are too long and stick out from the tufts of an embarrassing haircut, a trim that makes it look as if the man has a blond rat glued to his scalp.
When Scar makes no comment, Mabel speaks again. "He's still up north -- or was, last I heard." Slouched shoulders make a shrug, a loose, painfully indifferent gesture. "The military doesn't give us many choices. He goes wherever there's an opening, and there's not much of that if you're not a soldier with 'em, or some other kind of fancy officer."
Scar's fingers spread themselves over the picture. If he closed his hand, he could destroy the image of the man's skull with the same ease as he could the living being.
The question is necessary. "He's an alchemist?"
"Yes. No," Mabel corrects herself, a flurry of emotions marching across her face before she has a chance to turn it away and focus back on the documents. "He could be. He's good enough, or he will be, with just some more training. But the military won't give him any, so he's got to go do paperwork for them up north until they let him retake his tests.
She's babbling. Scar lets her, attempting to let the woman's words run past him like filthy water from a sink tap. "But they've been giving him the runaround for years. My Jacob, he says that one of his uncles got on the bad side of their generals a long time 'go, and that's why they're making it so difficult. It's all he can do just to have his clerk job -- he sends me every penny he can, but it's hard sometimes when the bills come in, particularly in winter and... and this ain't your business, stranger." Pulling a wrinkled handkerchief from her pocket, she daubs her eyes with a fierce pride. "Don't you mind me, Mister Nothing. Ain't your trouble to worry about. You got your own problems, I'd imagine."
Awkward, Scar releases the picture and moves away. He needs to fill his hands with something other than potential murder. Gravitating towards the counter, the Ishbal man seizes upon the dirty dishes and plunks them into the sink.
Mabel speaks again after a few minutes. Her voice no longer wavers, except on the longer vowels. "We've spent the last four years just trying to get the right forms together. Some of these things, they're the original records -- no copies." A pat of her hand on the table. "All those stamps and signatures... but my Jacob managed to get one of the alchemists up there to sign a registration chit for him. Took six months for the mail to get it to me." A sniff. "Guess we're just not an important enough part of the military for proper service."
The sponge feels like a cotton slug in Scar's hands. He squeezes mechanically. One of the plates starts to slip and he readjusts his grip, trying hard not to pay attention.
Mabel is still talking, unaware of the damnation of each syllable. "Now we've almost got everything together though. Just have to get the paperwork in order, and then Jacob can come home and become a real alchemist after all. I know what folks say," she interrupts herself, her voice growing stronger with each word, taking courage from ancient hopes, "about them being dogs an' all. But he won't have to go into the front lines anywhere. He won't have to fight. This alchemy of his'll give us a better life. It'll help us so much. It really will."
From the sink, there's a cracking sound.
Scar's face is perfectly blank as he turns, and says simply, "I broke your plate."