"Sick again, huh?"
"Sir, please do behave. She's feeling worse than usual."
"I see." The sound of a door opening, the front door. "I'll be sure to take care of her."
"Be sure to eat something too."
"Fine, fine."
"And finish up some of that paperwork too. The pile is beginning to get large again."
A sigh. "Alright, Lieutenant. I'll see you back at the offices later."
"Yes sir."
The door shuts gently. Footsteps. Waves crashing along the shore. Broken records and tainted lines. I pull the covers up a little higher to block out the cries. Those damn screams.
"Not looking too good there, Bubbles."
I don't bother to complain. No acknowledgment. No leer. Only noise. So much noise. Why won't it ever go away? Why have they returned? What are these horrid voices?
Roy eyes me worriedly, squatting at my level and trying to draw away my protective layer of sheets. Grudgingly, I resist his attempts and roll to the side, facing away. From behind, he scoffs, remaining close.
"You're not doing too well today are you?" he points out while I continue to drown out those distant sufferings. Past times I'd gone through this process, listening to the voices of the deceased, the moans of my victims, and each time they had grown more desperate, more determined to fill my head with horrendous images and sounds. It was worrisome how awful the Aerugonians appeared now. So out of the blue. Why wouldn't it stop? It's never gone this long.
"Hey," Roy says more sternly, snapping his fingers. Immediately I flinch, expecting some wall of flame to leap out at me, but I foolishly notice the lack of gloves. Startled by my fearful response, he scoots back, raising his hands in sign of harmlessness. "No gloves. It's alright."
He lowers them, softening his gaze. From this close I can note the stunning blackness of his irises. Like some endless abyss. I could fall forever in those eyes.
There's a certain beauty to it. Alluring. Inviting.
I hardly register the contact against my forehead. The warm touch of palms blanketing my temple, comfortingly.
My eyes shut and I breathe out weakly.
"You're a bit warm."
Oceans roar and seagulls nip at my brain. I can't seem to concentrate on anything but the mysteriousness of those black orbs. Something dark, I never knew could be so mesmerizing. Amazing.
"Bubbles. Say something. Your lack of insults disturbs me."
That warmth is drawn away. My head feels so much heavier without that heat, that comforting heat. I'm so lost, and the noise, the noise!
"I'm sorry."
His eyes widen and that only encourages me to continue. I have to tell him. I have to let him know how much I miss him. Have to tell him how much I love him...
"I'm...sorry.."
"Hey. Come on, we need to cool you down. You're ridiculously hot."
I shake my head violently, struggling to a seated position when Roy shoves me back down, strictly but not painfully.
"Take it easy. What do you need? I'll get it for you."
"No," I protest, reaching out to his uniform sleeve, squeezing tightly. My senses are slipping away and my vision blurs. Those pits of black morph into something brighter. Something blue. Noble blue. Sapphires.
Ritzu.
"I'm sorry. Forgive me. Please. Please forgive me. Please," I plead, tugging gently, feeling myself falling, falling, falling forward. Reflexively the figure catches me and I find myself staring at the color blue. Such noble blue.
"What are you talking about?" Ritzu asks and I bury my face into his chest.
"Make them stop. Make the voices stop."
"What voices, Misaki?"
My eyes widen and I shove the warmth away. Neck impacts furniture and the room begins to sway. With a panicked gasp, I clutch at my chest, shivering and willing away the illusion. That horrid illusion.
This isn't Ritzu. Ritzu is dead.
Misaki. They call me Misaki. He didn't call me that.
"Misaki," Roy repeats and I shudder, recognizing my surroundings. The voices leave, but with the way things are, it only makes everything worse. It's too silent. There is a lack of certain people. My people. My beloved.
"Misaki."
I hug myself, refusing to cry. Do not cry. Do not be weak. I am not fragile. I am a warrior. Papa said so.
Papa is dead.
"Misaki!"
Hands wrap around my shoulders and shake me. My head rolls forward and back and the motion clears some of the mess going on through me. With a startled blink, I gaze at the Colonel, grim faces and so terribly close.
Black orbs. Forever falling.
"Colonel," I croak weakly, placing my palms along his wrists, pulling them away. "What are you doing here?"
He breathes a sigh of relief, leaving me to wonder what had come over me. What had I said? Why was I- eh?
With a startled oof', the Colonel tumbles backwards, ramming into the table. Hands poised to strike, I glower at the man, raising a brow accusingly. He immediately reads my rashness of the situation and grumbles.
"Don't just jump to the worse possible thing…"
"What are you doing here?" I ask once again, more demanding. "And why were you so close? What'd you do?"
Closing his eyes, he rubs the back of his neck and pulls himself up to a proper seat. Uniform and all, he takes a quick glance at the nearby clock and reaches down over to a lone lunch sack. While he rummages, I notice the coolness of the room and find myself reaching around my covers, drawing them closer and shivering.
"I only came to keep an eye on you, seeing as the Lieutenant thinks you've caught something nasty," he speaks, drawing out a lone sandwich and glowering at the contents. "You're the one getting clingy to me."
"Ridiculous," I snarl, bending forward at sudden dizziness. With my hands clutching at my spinning temple, I irritably stand up and stalk over to the kitchen, dry with thirstiness. Roy was instantly on my heels.
"I told you that I'd get you something," he says, ducking at my lashing fist. "Would you just take it easy? I'm not going to do anything unprofessional."
"Shut-up!" I shout, storming further away, willing for the boy just let me be. "I'm perfectly capable with getting my own damn cup, so just back off!"
"Alright, alright," he relents, clearly disapproving. "But don't come crying to me if you end up landing on your head and break something."
"Whatever."
At that, he went back to his distasteful pouting with his lunch and I went on to bowing over the counter, lightly dabbing at my face and pulling away to reveal sweat. A ton of it. I'd brought the blanket with me, yet even so, I was still freezing, not to mention famished. If what the Colonel said was true, that I'd been the one to get so uncomfortably close, why was it I couldn't seem to gain control of my memories?
"Are you hungry? I can cook you up something if you don't mind me offering it without you assuming it's poison."
Gritting my teeth, I suddenly feel myself going beet red. With another wave of not so very lady like words, I reach up to the nearest cabinet, relieved to find Riza was at least beginning to entrust me with the dangerous storage, and snatch an empty cup. I don't notice the trembling of my grip and before I could process what happened, pieces of glass were on the ground, a couple of shards nicking my exposed ankles.
Roy dashes on in, blinking astonishingly at me.
Perhaps the sniper was right to keep me away from everything.
"Are you alright there, clumsy?" he asks in a friendly enough gesture. I glare at him.
"Dandy."
He looks over at the mess I'd made, frowning. As I bend down to begin the cleaning process, he interrupts me by extending out his bare hand, cutting me off. I open my mouth to protest when he casts a silencing expression and makes to grab me. Instinctively I dodge the gesture only to fall right into his arms. He knew I wouldn't be too keen on the idea of being touched, so here I was, stuck in his arms, writhing around angrily.
"Put. Me. Down." I warn, pushing against him and desperately seeking a way to escape. He rolls his eyes, walks for a bit while enduring my relentless fights, then roughly plops me down on the sofa. Furiously, I scramble to a seated position, waiting for an opportunity to punch and flee were he to try anything funny, but instead he returns to the kitchen, turning on the faucet. Puzzled, I crane my neck to find him wetting a small towel, squeezing it, testing its sturdiness. When he comes back, I ready to get up.
"You're getting blood all over the carpet."
My eyes shoot down to take in the flecks of red decorating my sore ankles. Sure enough, the glass had left its mark and now I was really leaving behind a gruesome mess. Looking back at the Colonel, I finally realize his intentions and reluctantly relax into the cushions, frowning at the clump of fabric resting in his hand.
"I think I can manage a measly patch up, Colonel," I assure bitterly, raising my foot as to not get Riza's place too revolting. Roy rolls his eyes before snatching my calf and lifting it to a point of resting on his own thigh. The action was unexpected and so I ended up allowing it to happen, blinking dumbfoundedly at him gently wiping at my wound.
It wasn't long before the shock wore off.
"Wait a second," I hiss, struggling to separate myself from his grasp. He's a persistent one, however, and so I awkwardly sit with one leg resting on the man, and the other pushing from the ground beside him. No progress is being made with this uncomfortable attempt at freedom, and so I begrudgingly scowl at the top of his head, holding in the small winces of pain at his every swipe. At my defeated stillness, the Colonel checks up on me to make sure I was actually alive before continuing on to his roleplay of doctor. I hold my tongue and find interest in a piece of lint. A part of me worries being this vulnerable was a big mistake, the other, well I wasn't entirely sure what it felt. Did I actually somewhat feel comfort at having close contact with another being?
Grimacing, I shake my mind of the absurd possibility. Of course not.
"Honestly. Could you not try biting my head off for once?"
"Hmm, tempting, but I think I'll stick with my precautions," I snap at the Colonel, yelping as a sharp sting gnaws its way up my leg. "Watch it!"
"Well, it'd be a hell of a lot easier if you'd just keep quiet and still," he grumbles, extracting gauze from a bag I'd failed to notice. It seemed lately my senses have become a bit lacking. Perhaps I had some training to catch up on.
"Yes, let me just roll over and play dead while you're at it," I reply sarcastically, earning an irritable scowl. At that moment he splashes a bit of rubbing alcohol into the opening. "OUCH." He rolls his eyes yet again.
"You handled a cauterizing just fine. This should be nothing."
With a growl, I wait until he's bandaged up my ankle, rather poorly, before swiping at him with a nail, slicing a measly cut into his finger. Being as quick as I was, it took him a moment to process what happened. When the blood slowly begins to pool together at his tip, he clutches his hand to his chest, twisting his face in an expression of suffering.
"What the hell?!"
"You handled a beating from me, this is nothing!"
Angrily huffing, he pokes at my ankle, triggering another pitiful yelp and earning another swipe from my nail.
"Nothing is ever easy with you is it?" he complains, ducking as I try to make a hit at his ear. My lack of accuracy only provokes me to continue swinging. "Would you stop? You're going to screw up that arm of yours again."
"Piss off!"
"I'm already pissed off as it is!"
"That's not what I meant, mule!"
At my next strike, he catches it, tightening his grip and blocking my other arm. This only ticks me off even more and so I start to kick out at his stomach when I suddenly went out of breath. Like a switch being flicked, my energy was gone and my lungs were dead weight.
"Idiot," he says, helping me to my side on the sofa. Panting, I tug away from his grip and glare to my hearts content. He shows no sign of noticing it. Slowly he redoes the bandages, as I had tangled them during my fit, and secures them with a roll of medical tape. When he finishes, I stare at the result and give him a look of disbelief.
"What? Is it not to your liking, princess?" he asks, leering, but then stopping to acknowledge my change of expression.
"Don't...Don't call me that," I demand, lowering my eyes. When I note my obvious disapproval of the name, I try to cover it up with an added "Mule," snapping my head up in a fearsome scowl.
Roy narrows his eyes, not taking the bait, but thankfully doesn't press into my personal matters.
Instead he pokes at my ankle again, frowning at my startled exclamation.
"Would you stop?" I snap, drawing my legs to my chest and shimmy ing back up to lean against the armrest. "Why are you still here? Get out!"
He rubs at his temple, sighing to the side. "Honestly, I already told you I came-"
"Yeah, yeah," I interrupt, frustrated. "Check up on poor beat up me, I know, I know. But now you see I'm fine and swell and such so do please go home."
"You are most definitely not 'fine and swell and such'," he argues, taking a seat across from me and pulling out a stack of gross looking papers. "In fact, the fact that you're still conscious and complaining with a fever like that, I'm surprised you're not dead."
"You-" I stop, going clueless. My hand automatically goes to my forehead, pulling back stunningly at the intense wave of heat. I'd barely touched skin and my palm now practically felt ablaze. "What in the-?" I look at the Colonel, baffled. He takes the first sheet from his pile of work, pulling out a pen while simultaneously unwrapping his sandwich. When his eyes meet back with mine and notice the utter confusion, he takes a bite out of his meal and stares back at his stuff with an audible click.
"I hope you're not thinking that I caused it just because I'm a flame alchemist," he mutters under his breath, scribbling something on the table. "Because that would be stupid."
I scrunch up my temple annoyingly. "Of course I don't think that," I assure, shaking my head at him for even mentioning such a ridiculous thing for me to believe. "As I recall, you're useless and useless people couldn't possibly do something like inflict a fever."
I watch his fingers around the pen tighten and the scribbling comes to a standstill.
"That's only when I'm wet..." he mumbles.
"Right."
With that he continues his work and I remain in my spot, blinking at his grim expression. Flicking my gaze back over to the stack, I really take notice of how demanding his job must be.
Good. The bastard needed something worthwhile to do anyways. Save people the trouble of dealing with his idiotic ways.
It's apparent our small fight has ended, somewhat peacefully. I can't explain why I went on with staring at the man, but when he took a moment at some point to check up on me, I went tense, snapping my attention away to the kitchen behind him. Huffing loud enough for me to hear, he taps his writing utensil against the wooden furniture, clicking and unclicking to some horrid rhythm. He looks back at his pile, taking another nibble at his food, thinking.
Click. Click.
I randomly remember his urgency from yesterday with asking me to move in with him. Flustered, I squeeze my eyes and shake off the memory, furious with myself for even acting as though it were something important enough to recall. Disgusting. The man was only being a typical pervert. It wasn't as if he were trying to... protect me from something?
Click. Click.
Bah! How ludicrous.
I rest my chin on my knees, staring at nothing and ignoring the radiating heat from my body. Thanks to his kind intentions, I was now officially well aware of how horrible I felt, like a baking potato. Hot. Unbearably hot.
Click. Click.
I find myself glancing at the Colonel's paperwork, catching a brief look at his signature. In a way it's pretty, if sloppy, illegible cursive is considerably attractive. Nothing like his physique.
He looks back up at me and again I find myself avoiding his gaze.
W-Wait.
My face pales when I go over my recent thoughts.
Had I just admitted to myself just how attractive the Colonel was?
Click. Click.
Oh man. This fever was really getting to me.
Click. Click.
And he's still looking at me. I could actually feel his stare piercing straight through the core. What gives?
Click. Click.
A challenge. Did he want a challenge, perhaps? Did he dare me to have a stare down with him? Well then by all means, a challenge he shall get. I would not go easy on him. I'd stare him down to hell if I had to!
I glare at him, willing myself not to turn away or blink, but to my embarrassment, he'd already gone back to his paperwork, leaving me to awkwardly shake off my childish behavior and look more sophisticated. Or non-retarded. Either was fine. Just as long as he didn't witness my wide-eyed stare of determination.
...Why is it every time I'm with this man I seem to lose all my wits?
Click. Click.
Okay. That pen needed to stop.
Click. Click.
Seriously. I get that maybe you're getting frustrated or something, but really?
Click. Click.
Click it one more damn time, Colonel. I freaking dare you.
Silence. His face knots up in deep concentration and he lightly bites his bottom lip.
Thank go-
CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK.
"Hey!" I snap, eyebrow twitching. "Knock it off!"
I mistake his obliviousness for simply ignoring me and angrily snatch away his pen, slamming it down onto the table with a startling 'SLAM'. Jumping, he blinks at me, then quirks his brow questionably.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asks calmly and I lean into his face, snarling.
"Your clicking charade wasn't very entertaining for the ears."
He looks annoyed, reaching back out to the writing tool to which I quickly pull away from his reach.
"Really, Bubbles?" he sighs impatiently, putting his hand into his pocket to reveal another pen. I make sure to make a grab at that too. Surprisingly, he loses it without much resistance, reflecting my expression. Something troublesome must have invaded his mind while he was working. I glance down at his papers, curious of its contents. Of course, I make sure to correct him on my name before considering to engage in a new topic.
That reminded me of our earlier weirdness. Hadn't he called me by my name for the first time? Or had that been my imagination?
"Can't we be adults here?" he says, sounding suddenly exhausted and I pocket the pens, hoping he wouldn't reach back into his bottomless stash of god knows what.
"Let's face it, Colonel," I say not so aggressively, which was really out of character for me. "When it's between the two of us, nothing has been the least bit 'adult-like'."
He looks ready to complain, but mulls over what I've said. There's no denying how immature we seem to be when dealing with one another.
"Okay," he complies, defeated. "But either way, I'd like to have my things back so I can keep my life from the clutches of the Lieutenant." He extends his palm, expecting me to hand it over without comment. I almost laugh.
I gesture at his stash with my eyes. "What are you working on?"
He looks surprised by my interest, but then warily raises a brow.
"Are you suddenly wanting to join the military?" he asks.
"What?" I respond, caught off guard. "N-No. Of course not. Why would I want to serve for the Amestris army? Do you really think I'd be that dedicated to what my people once referred to as enemy?"
It takes a second for me to realize my usage of people. So many wrong ways I used it in that sentence. "My." "Once." "Dedicated."
For a moment I lose face, but quickly recover. Roy pretends not to notice.
"Then why do you care about what I'm doing? It has nothing to do with your country."
So he uses it in a way that sounds like Aerugo is still a living, working civilization. Why does that make me feel grateful? It probably was just force of habit. He didn't purposely avoid reminding me of it's extinction.
I mentally slap myself awake.
"You just seem...troubled."
He eyes me curiously.
"Is that sympathy I detect?"
Reddening, I clench my teeth and pull my hands into fists.
"Hell no! It's just unbearably hideous, that lost, ignorant face of yours you were putting on," I snap, averting my eyes. Roy puts up an arm to his chin, resting it on the tabletop.
"Oh? Is that why you kept on staring at me?"
With an agitated groan, I take out the pens and throw them at his face, hitting nose and mouth. I was too pissed to celebrate however, so I went onto curling back on the couch and tuning out the Colonel's swears.
Easier said than done.
"That temper of yours is going to get you into some serious trouble," he says bitterly, already diving back into his mountain load of mystery military work. The Lieutenant must really be a frightening lady when dealing with procrastinators.
"You don't think it already has?" I point out, suddenly overcome with disturbing images of the past. Instantly I go into defensive mode and shut down, closing the lid to my secrets before they exploded into an irreparable mess.
Roy observes my sullen mood, glancing over at the clock. I note his uneaten sandwich with a series of random questions. Pointless ones like: Did he take the time to eat? Is he healthy? Did he ever get sleep?
When I realize the similarities, I feel myself flush. What? Why would I care?!
"What's wrong?" Roy asks, catching my gaze back within his dark orbs. "You're awfully white."
Defensively, I snap, "Blame it on the temper would you?"
"That...Doesn't really make any sense," he says, unsure of how to take my flimsy burst of anger. Then again, neither was I. There was something comforting about having him come visit me during his lunch break, although I kind of hope he'll finish the sandwich.
...
Fever. It's just the fever, is all.
Hello!:)
Thanks all for reading, as usual!
So yeah... here was some Mustang as I promised! ^.^ Again, I'm making these chapters a bit shorter as to update more often, so the endings may be a tad bit abrupt, so I'm sorry for that!
Still, I hope you enjoy:D
Wonder14 over and out!