A/N – The italicized flashback in this chapter comes right after the one in the previous chapter and deals with very sensitive subject matter. Proceed with caution, or skip it if you choose. Before anyone asks, I am not suggesting that any cousins fathered her child, and I am not suggesting that this could have actually happened in the manga/anime timeline, but for the purposes of this fanfiction, the events in her past play a big part in explaining her actions in the present.
Also, some slightly theological discussion takes place. I don't mean to insult, convert, offend or preach to anyone. Neither character is mouth-piecing my personal beliefs by any means.
Chapter Five – Bleeding
The Ruby Throated Hummingbird.
Her delight and her despair.
Nestled in the Magnolia with her twin cousins, she reminisced upon him.
Riza thought her first hummingbird sighting would never leave her. The iridescent insect bird she'd seen yesterday had enthralled her with the buzzing blur of his wings and the delicate slope of his beak. The hummingbird was a dancer, hovering weightless, as if suspended on invisible hooks, backing up, side-winding, alighting (just for a breath) on a flower petal, and then hovering again, never growing tired. He was a master of his craft, and she loved him at first sight. Then Curtis had shown her his red-clot throat and told her the lie. The lie that she'd believed before she understood the mechanics of deceit.
Her beloved, prideful, flashy, dancing bird had sliced his throat because his own blood was the most beautiful crimson adornment, and now he was paying the price for vanity. If he stopped to rest, he'd bleed to death, and he could only fly until exhaustion claimed him.
Curtis believed his little story was rather clever at first, but he grew bored easily. She knew he'd already forgotten it. She had not.
Her thoughts were still shattering like Christmas ornaments around her. She couldn't let go of the poor creature's fearful fate, and the more she tried to look away, the more it crept upon her. She tugged at this strange, new notion of 'suicide' until tears pricked at her eyes whenever it floated to mind. Why would anyone cut their own throat?
She had no way of knowing then that she wouldn't even begin to remember this question until she was a grown woman. This day and others like it were soon locked away in the deepest places of her memory, and her first hummingbird was sealed with them. The mind is almost too adept at protecting itself from wicked memories.
"Hey," The children in the tree started when they heard a voice from below, "You kids up there!"
They peered down through the branches at the interloper. It was only Bobby.
He stood grinning up at them with his fingers hooked in the pockets of his slacks, like his grip was the only thing holding them up. Years later, she could not readily call his face to mind, but she still remembered his fingers.
"Are you guys going to come down and play or what?" he called.
The twins looked at each other and slithered down the tree with the grace of spider monkeys. Their brother was twenty-five, and he owned a shiny automobile. He never wanted to play with them, so every opportunity was eagerly snatched. Riza padded to the ground behind them with a carefully blank face. Bobby looked at her once, but then he was talking to the twins again, sharing a confidence between brothers that she wasn't permitted to interrupt.
"We can play cops and robbers," His suggestion was more like a command, but Will and Curtis snapped up the worm, hook and all.
"Okay," Will grabbed her and held her to his side like a satchel, "It's us and Riza against you."
At the mention of her name, Bobby smiled politely at her, "Then I get to be the cop."
She leaned against the tree and watched with her arms crossed over her chest as the boys staked out the bases and the prison. There was nothing impressive about Bobby as far as she was concerned, and yet his brothers fell all over themselves to please him, like dogs clamoring for table scraps. When Bobby was around, Will and Curtis always ignored her. That in itself was enough to condemn him in her eyes.
The exact details of the game were lost to the passage of time, swallowed up in a blur of unimportant events that flavor every life and leave no mark. They had run around the yard until the sweat glistened on their foreheads and necks, but that was the typical play of children. The important part, the part that stained her despite her mind's best efforts, happened behind the woodshed. So many things happen to so many children behind nondescript woodsheds.
They were well into the game when the odd thing happened. Curtis was in prison, and she was following Will through the maze of weeds behind the shed. They were gasping for breath and shushing each other, caught up in the adrenaline rush that came with being chased. They hadn't been caught yet, but the police were still out. She was watching and mimicking Will's fawn-tiptoe until an unexpected hand clamped around her wrist like the closing of a shackle. She cried out in alarm, and Will skittered away with a yelp.
"Well, well, well," Bobby laughed and pulled her backward in a flailing octopus tangle of limbs, "I've caught a little pretty."
Will laughed uproariously at his brother's witty epithet and slunk away, crowing the words at the top of his voice, "Riza's a pretty little girl!"
She felt her face heat up and her teeth bare. She wanted to scream that this wasn't true, but Bobby's hands were on her shoulders, pinning her indigence to the spot. She fluttered like a trapped butterfly, but it was only a half-hearted attempt to escape. She didn't believe Bobby would actually hurt her.
"I need to search you, thief," he pressed a finger into her collarbone until she pivoted to face the shed, "Hands up. Against the wall."
She'd seen him do the same to Curtis before sending him to prison, so she complied, still growling about being teased. It never occurred to her that this would be any different. Even in memory, she knew her nine-year-old self had suspected no subversive designs in Bobby's actions. How stupidly, wonderfully innocent.
Her cousin's hands were firm and large, like warm dinner plates, except she could feel his slithering fingers strumming her ribs. Ten smooth digits glided down her back and sides, teased her thighs, and circled to slide over the taut muscles of her stomach. It tickled. She jumped and tried to press away, curious and frightened of slippery things she couldn't explain.
He laughed at her. She felt the rumble against her back. If there was one thing that could override her nervousness, it was teasing and derision. Perhaps he knew this.
"What?" he chuckled, and she clenched her fists, "Are you scared?"
She pressed her lips together until they were white and shook her head vehemently. Her fists tightened until her nails dug crescent trenches into the flesh of her palms. She wasn't scared of Bobby Hawkeye. She wasn't scared of anything except death and dark cellars. The man behind her was neither of those things.
"Good. Because you aren't allowed to scream in this game," he told her, "Or pretty little girl will be your new name."
She rested her forehead on the rough hewn timbers of the shed, determined to stop the twitch in her belly when his hand crept beneath her shirt. She thought about the hummingbird with the gossamer wings that Curtis had shown her yesterday. She thought about his opalescent blood and his desperate struggle to stay alive.
Bobby's mouth panted hot and wispy on the back of her head, and his hands plucked at private places. One in the flax gold of her hair, and one beneath her pleated skirt, a horrible juxtaposition of what was affectionate and what was perverse. The woodshed smelled like pine resin and bruised her fingers.
She remembered tiny green birds and wondered if it was possible to stop the bleeding.
She had a rifle in her hands when Roy found her behind the house. He had to smile at the picture she made, wielding an almost antique weapon that must have belonged to her grandfather with her incongruous little skirt rippling over her thighs. It was a pity he wasn't a painter. Or a poet. Poetry would slip around her like a gown.
Her stance was flawless. Her entire body tensed on the trigger, rigid, disciplined, and sublimely shaped. The skirt made that last detail especially pronounced. He was suddenly grateful she didn't dress like that on the field. Something told him he would have been driven to distraction. She didn't even glance his way, but the slight twitch of her lips told him she knew his eyes were wandering. He was surprised she didn't turn the rifle on him given the coiled stress in her spine and shoulders. She was agitated, and if he didn't understand her body language, her severely drawn brows would have been a giveaway.
There were six plastic targets pinned to a post about thirty yards away. She leveled the weapon in her hands and fired six times. He didn't need visual conformation to know that all targets were toast. Instead, he watched her take the kickback without so much as a flinch, and marveled at the way the tension in her shoulders visibly drained away as she discharged the weapon. Hawkeye had an interesting strategy for dealing with stress. After one last calculating look, she lowered the rifle, apparently satisfied.
"What do you want, Colonel?" she asked after a time.
He flashed his teeth at her, "Just a moment of your time, Lieutenant."
"Oh?" She set about inspecting the rifle, but her eyes tilted toward him, "Maybe I can fit you into my schedule. How long of a moment are we talking about?"
He loved those elusive moments when he could swear she was teasing him, "I just wanted to talk to you."
Her hands slipped, sliding the bolt back with a jarring clang, "About what?"
Her back stiffened all over again, and her mouth hardened. There were so many things he had every right to bring up that she didn't want to discuss. Fight or flight instinct flared. The uncharacteristically jumpy look on her face alerted him to all of these unvoiced misgivings, and he backtracked quickly. He hadn't meant to make her nervous. Not yet anyway. Someday he was going to make her lose her composure completely, and he was going to enjoy every minute of it.
"Well you see, I keep having this dream," he leaned back against the split rail fence with a smirk, "And in it, I'm Havoc . . ."
She snorted, and he could tell she was arranging her face to keep from smiling, "Please not that again, Sir."
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a cunning pout, "It's a horrible reoccurring nightmare. You ought to have more sympathy."
"I'm sure," she shot him a look that was as much exasperated as it was amused, "But since you won't leave me alone, I suppose we could talk. Just give me a moment."
He waited while she put away the rifle and tried to formulate exactly what he was going to talk to her about. He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn't think "Who the hell have you been sleeping with?" would be a good opening line, especially if she had guns on her person. No, he needed a more circuitous route. Broaching the plan he was concocting was going to take all the finesse he possessed. He wanted answers, badly. He wanted her, badly. And he didn't want her to know what he wanted. He didn't know if he could hold all of those cards close to his chest.
When she returned to him, he proposed a walk. They followed an old riding trail over the extensive grounds with no destination in mind and busied themselves with flavorless talk. They crossed acres of meadow that may have been fields once, but now the fallow land was being reclaimed, by wild grass and pine saplings. The still air puckered and swelled with the rising humidity. The lace-colored sky darkened, casting a reddish shadow and promising rain later in the day. The flies took that as their cue to bite, and the astringent smell of a forest before rainfall rose around them. They ran the risk of getting rained on if the sky decided to open, but he didn't care. Rain wasn't as bad with her around.
There was a dirt trail through a wooded area, and she led him along aimlessly. He marveled at everything from the rusty earth to the cluster of giant oaks springing out of it. The forest hummed like a well oiled machine holding its breath for rain. A fluttering wisp of tangerine drew his eye, and he stopped. A black-winged bird that looked like a piece of orange fruit was rustling through the branches of a young red oak, skipping, stopping, twittering and then bobbing along again.
"Oriole, right?" He looked at her, and she nodded, "I remember orioles."
Her face was quizzical, "You don't get out to the country very much do you?"
"No," he admitted, "It's been years. Your grandfather's estate is always reminding me of things I used to miss about Isis, like the orioles . . ." The little fire-tinged bird tilted his head and looked at them as if he knew they were talking about him before taking flight, "I don't think your grandfather likes me very much to tell you the truth."
This didn't seem to surprise her, "Grandpa doesn't like anyone very much. He and the General don't get along splendidly either," she sighed, "They are both wonderful grandfathers in their own ways, but they used to compete for my affection when I was a girl. You know, whose lap I'd sit on at family parties, whose present I'd open first at Christmas, or whose house I'd visit over the holidays. You probably didn't notice. It wasn't outright war, but I didn't like it after awhile, being made to chose who I loved more."
"It's a wonder those two didn't spoil you rotten," Roy chuckled just picturing Hawkeye as a pampered little girl, "What about your father? Didn't you love him?"
"I did, but . . ." she looked down and away, "You know how he was."
It was Roy's turn to feel uncomfortable. He knew all too well what her father had been like, and it shamed him. She never said it in so many words, but he knew what she was thinking. Her father had whittled his life away, obsessed with his alchemy and his research, until Roy had arrived. Then he spent his life absorbed in the training of his apprentice. At neither point was she ever a particularly important fixture, and Roy had never noticed this distance. Would that he had only realized then what he knew now.
"Were you ever jealous?" he asked softly.
"I'd be lying if I said no," she murmured, "But I never held it against you," Just her father. The dead were easy to blame, and there was very little she could hold against Roy. He had to have realized by now.
"I should have spent more time with you. I'm not sure why I didn't," he gave her a look that told her he found what his younger self had done to be inconceivable now, and it made something in her throat jump pleasantly. "I think I always assumed teacher's pretty daughter wouldn't give me the time of day."
She blinked, "You thought I was pretty?"
He scratched his nose, "I think you're gorgeous."
They were both aware of the tense shift, but neither of them commented on it. She swallowed and straightened her skirt compulsively. He wondered where she was hiding her customary handgun. Several scandalous options came to mind, and he enjoyed every one.
She stopped at a clearing where the woods broke into underbrush. Along the edge of the forest, there was a thicket of blackberries presided over by a lordly pair of blue jays. They yapped shrilly at the other birds who tried to encroach on their territory and screeched in alarm when the humans appeared. Then they were both gone in a flurry of blue.
Hawkeye was interested in the blackberries. She picked her way over the unruly ground cover that surrounded the bushes, and he watched her pluck a plump berry between two fingers. She turned it once in the light, and then popped it into her mouth without prelude.
"Sweet," she smiled approvingly and beckoned him over, "You like blackberries don't you?"
He found his way to her side, "I can't remember."
A berry was in his mouth before he had finished, accompanied by the light pressure of her fingers on his lips. He shuddered, noticeably so, and rolled the saccharine taste around between his teeth. It didn't matter. Hawkeye was looking up at him as if she knew what she was doing to him, smiling mischief in a very tempting package. He watched her with a mixture of astonishment and elation. Was she ever that bold with anyone else? God, he hoped not.
"Well?"
He gulped carefully, "I think I need you to do that again."
She raised an eyebrow, "I obey your orders, I watch your back, I keep you on task, I do half your paperwork for you, and I even submit to following your commands after hours. I am not going to start feeding you, Sir."
"Fine. Be the stick in the mud, Hawkeye," He drew his brows together, seized a branch, and de-berried it himself, as quickly as possible just to show he was capable.
Her eyes were half-lidded as she selected her own handful, carefully choosing only the fattest berries and watching him covertly. Wind toyed with their hair and stirred the blackberry leaves. He released the branch in his grasp, and the rebound whipped at his palms.
"Make sure you eat the ripe ones," she instructed, "Those are the sweetest."
He shrugged, "I like them sour."
"Really?" Her eyes widened, "You like sour things? That's weird."
He nodded and ate another. For some reason none of them tasted as good at the first, "No it isn't. You liking sweet things, that's weird."
She shook with silent mirth and licked her lips. Her tongue was purple. He told her so and got another laugh from her, soft and cool, like a hand against his cheek. Hawkeye had a very cautious dance with laughter. She rarely ever let down her guard enough for so much as a chuckle, and when she did laugh, it was hesitant, as if something inside her would break if she let it consume her.
They made themselves comfortable on the ground beneath the bush, bodies lazy in the heavy heat. He sprawled out with his head pillowed on his arms, the blackberries a perfect arm's reach away, and she sat beside him with her legs curled under her. He glanced at her—staring at something he couldn't see and brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear—and smiled. Why did she make him so happy? Even in the torment of his unanswered questions, she made him forget that there had ever been such things as death or anguish. Instead of being a reminder of Ishbal, she put him in mind of pleasanter things, respite, five drops of water in a land of choking sand and rancid blood.
His eyes gravitated to the shallow curve of her back, reminding him of something from earlier that day, "You never mention the military around your mother."
"No," her eyes folded shut for a moment, "She doesn't like or understand that part of my life, why I did it then, or why I'm still doing it now, and I know she never will. It's a bit like explaining to a dog or a cat why people dance. War and the dehumanization tactics of the military are not things that any sane human should understand, so I don't find fault in her naïveté, but she and I will never be the same. Soldiers like us have been desensitized to death and killing, and we can't go back to higher moral ground now."
His mouth took on his trademark frown of contemplation, "They say you can't understand that life unless you've lived it."
"Exactly. You and I, we know what it means to murder in the name of fierce, unyielding loyalty," she looked directly at him as she said this, "Not to Amestris though. Despite propaganda, people never kill for their countries. People kill for the sake of their comrades, the us or them mentality, and we love desperately."
"Love for one's comrades is strange and overwhelming," she smiled ruefully. Did he have any idea how impossibly strong her feelings for him had become on the battlefield? There were so many things she'd sworn she'd never do, but war changed everything. "We would die and we would kill for each other, and my mother has never looked death in the eye."
The Colonel nodded and picked another blackberry, "We are one. I'd do anything for any of my men, and woman," she grinned at him, "Without question. You are mine."
Of course, he meant, 'all of you are mine,' occupationally speaking, but she flushed nonetheless. Her only distraction from that thought was the blackberry bush. Colonel Mustang never meant anything exactly the way he said it, so she shouldn't have been surprised. He lived with a double entendre under his tongue at all times.
"This one looks sour," she scrunched up her face as if tasting it already and passed the offending berry to him, "Without question love. That is a good name for it. It sounds far better and greater than romantic or sexual love."
"It's not greater, just different. Desire can be pure, and the love between families and comrades can be twisted," he breathed in sharply and studied the smooth, white curve of her jaw, "And sometimes things progress to a certain point where physical contact is inevitable."
It was horribly, tantalizingly, impatiently inevitable, in a forbidden sort of way. He knew that now. They were closest in all ways except one, and even that didn't seem to matter sometimes. For one thing, he was already a jealous lover. She was denying him what he'd never asked for, and he was wanting what she'd never relinquished. At least not to him. Maybe not to anybody. It was hard to read her on this matter.
She turned her head, "There is nothing selfless or kind in the act of sex. It is always humiliating and unpleasant for one or both of the participants. People can be horribly cruel to each other."
Roy masked his alarm at her words surprisingly well, "Well, I guess if you think about it from an objective viewpoint, the mechanics of it are rather ridiculous. You must be vulnerable, and that does mean opening yourself to hurt, but if you find the right person, it's supposed to be . . ."
"Incredible?"
She was stripping a blade of grass, very intent on not looking at him.
He decided to see if he couldn't use that admission for information, "What makes you think that?"
She didn't take his bait, "It's just something I've been told."
He was struck forcibly by a memory from not so long ago, the way she had looked at him when they found themselves under the mistletoe taped to his ceiling. He could still remember. She had been fearful, embarrassed, shocked . . . expectant? She was waiting for him to make a move. Had he been missing that look in her eyes all along? It winded him like a sucker punch now. Someone else had taught her about things like kissing and love while he wasn't paying attention, and it never had to be that way. Did she ever think, as he was thinking now, that it should have been him?
He clenched his fists and nearly screamed at the injustice. She was still waiting. He was still holding back for fear that she would be shattered by his enemies if he pulled her closer. It was times like these when he almost wished he had a God, an all-knowing omnipotence that he could have a splendid rage at.
Hawkeye had a God. Suddenly he was very curious about that whole phenomenon.
He sat up, "Do you think I'll go to Hell for not believing in God?"
"Huh?"
"Hell. Do you think I'm going there?" This mattered a great deal to him all of a sudden.
"No." She didn't have to think about that answer, "I'm not even sure I believe in Heaven and Hell. Nothing as absolute as eternal damnation as punishment for a comparably short life of sin," here she smiled, "That's not exactly equivalent exchange, as you alchemists say. But I do believe that there is something greater than us, God, as you like to call it."
He leaned back on his arms and watched the wind play in the silver-bottomed blackberry leaves. It was hard to remember that there was snow in Central at this very moment. The leaves shook and flapped against each other like unwilling participants in a universal dance. That was what this whole God business amounted to, a spider web of predetermined lives. No creature deserved to be imprisoned by the shackles of fate. He needed a measure of control, even if it was only imagined.
His whole life, he'd been trying, in the heedless way of youth, to define and control the chaos that was humanity and existence. First, it was a simple matter of helping people. Then, during the war, he realized that it was actually a matter or helping the right people. People were essentially good as individuals, but put them in a group and pin labels on them, and they could become monsters. He could fight until he couldn't remember what the war was about, or who started it, or even a name that wasn't a rank, but he couldn't stop once he started because war was too personal, and he always remembered her name. He thought he could translate the gibberish of the world into something that made sense. The effort only depressed him.
"What do people live for?" he asked her, very aware that he was skirting the line of her patience with an inquiry like that.
She blinked, "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that question, Sir. Volumes have been written on the subject . . ."
He rolled onto his palm, "Just humor me with your opinion."
She sighed. He watched her lips as she spoke, "Love. Everyone's got their own answer. Mine is love."
Love. He'd half expected her to say firearms. She was always so certain in her opinion of things.
"I don't," his sudden vehemence caused her to stare at him, "I don't have a reason like that, and I'm still afraid of death. I don't want to die without finding some meaning first, and even if I do, I don't think I'll be any less scared of that finality."
"We are all afraid of something," she whispered. He saw her eyes move unconsciously to her abdomen. "Perhaps all other things are just fear of death under a different heading."
There was a gentle pressure on her fingers. He'd caught two of them in a loop of two of his. The sudden creation of a palpable current between them was enough to pull her out of her musings with a start. She dragged her eyes from her lap to his face.
He examined her thoughtfully, "You are afraid of this, aren't you?"
No need to ask which 'this' he was talking about.
Another hand moved up to trace the hollow of her cheekbone, and for a time they just looked at each other. Then, ever so slowly, she leaned into the touch like a timid cat, tentatively at first, but then her eyes slid closed, and she almost purred. Why did his touch never feel like an invasion?
"Tell me," his voice was low and soft, like chick down. She'd never heard that tone before. "Tell me what you're afraid of."
What choice did she have when he asked like that?
"I can't tell her," the words seeped out between his fingers, salty and long in coming, "She might die. How can I tell my mother on her deathbed? She wouldn't love me if she knew who I really was."
He regarded her curiously, "Because you aren't married?"
She shook her head, "It's more than that. This wasn't supposed to happen. He's not . . . I mean, he isn't . . ."
Roy sat up straighter. This was the first time she'd mentioned the father, a topic he wanted to know everything and nothing about at the same time. It was also beginning to distress him. This wasn't just some boyfriend he'd never met. This was a man who had quite possibly hurt her, and that notion brought on a blinding array of homicidal thoughts. Due process of law would be far too swift and painless if that was the case, and he knew his men would share his sentiment.
He couldn't think about that right now, or he'd go crazy. There was something else he had to ask her.
"This man . . ." he swallowed and nearly choked on the word. Goddamn this nameless man. "He isn't going to claim the child, is he?"
She shook her head. Somehow he had always suspected as much. He wondered briefly if she'd even told the father of the child's existence, but he figured that was her business.
"Would it help if . . ." He chose his next words carefully, "I know we aren't exactly a 'we', but we do get along, and it wouldn't be so hard to pretend that . . . that . . ."
"That it was yours?" She was charbroiling him with her eyes.
He nodded, "Mine."
The implications of that sunk deeper and deeper with no foreseeable bottom. His eyes were the culmination of the very darkest depths, where reason began to unravel and gravity crushed bones.
"Sir . . ."
He watched her scoot away and knew he'd made a very dangerous mistake.
"What? Why is that wrong?"
"Because it isn't true!" she hissed, "I don't know what you'd like it to be, but I can't let you delude yourself. I'm not worth the ramifications of you claiming an illegitimate child. I won't let you throw away your career with both hands. I simply won't let you."
"I'll decide what is and isn't worth it, Lieutenant!" he snapped, but it was more from the bitterness of being spurned than an infallible counterargument. She was right. She was always insufferably right and fair, never passionate or emotional.
"Just tell me this," he grabbed her shoulder and drew himself closer, "Tell me who I have to thank for taking you away from me. He did an excellent job of it, touching you, taking you, and then leaving you with something that will pull you away from the military, away from my side when I'm useless without you! Tell me his name, and I will appreciate him."
His eyes were so frightening.
"You could ruin everything you've worked for, Colonel—"
"Why? Is he some goddamned military higher up?" he snorted derisively at his own joke, "Have you been sleeping with the brass to further my ends? Why Lieutenant, I'm flattered."
"Stop it!" she wrenched herself out of his grasp, and for a moment she looked so murderous he could almost feel the lead in his chest.
"This baby isn't yours, Colonel," she snarled, "You are making this hurt!"
And then she was up and walking away. She didn't run. Lieutenant Hawkeye never fled from battle. She walked away like the victor, with her shoulders squared. He didn't follow her. He stared ahead with his lips pursed, and touched his temples where he could feel a headache building. Neither of them had won.
Midway Point Thanks and Praise
Thank you to all the people who are reviewing, and thank you to all the people who are just reading. Especial thanks to Tarotgoddess who told me it was good before I posted it.
Thanks to Maya Angelou for "Humpty-Dumptied" and thanks to Yann Martel for the idea of tipping the estate upside-down. And most importantly, thanks to Hiromu Arakawa for FMA. It rocks my socks.