A/N – I'm so sorry this update was slow in coming. When the semester ends, I'll have more time to write. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed thus far, and also, especial thanks to the anonymous reviewers. I can't send you guys nifty replies, but I am thinking of you.
Chapter Seven – Naming Nameless Men
"That's a pretty tattoo you've got there, Sweetheart."
Hakuro traced the exquisite array on her back with sand-crusted fingernails. Her own were just as ruined—she could see them resting on the sheet in front of her face—but the General's fingers mattered more. The entire cot rocked as he moved to study her back more thoroughly. She remained flat on her stomach, listlessly watching her fingers.
"Thank you." She pressed her head into the nook of her shoulder and wished he'd stop touching the sigil. That was Roy's.
"Where did you say you got it again?" he asked.
It was too hot. Even naked as she was, she felt like an animal roasting on a spit. The sheets, the man beside her, Ishbal itself, it was all too damn hot for any sort of war. Too sandy too. She started to compile a mental list of grievances in her head to distract herself from the General's ministrations.
"I got it . . . a long time ago," she muttered distantly. "Mostly just to make my father angry. It's nothing special really."
"It's beautiful," he sighed like a man at prayer. "Come to think of it, it looks like an alchemic array . . . What do these words here say?"
"It might be. I have no idea," she lied. "Must not be a very good one if it is, but enough with tattoos. They are so boring."
She rolled onto her back under the pretense of stretching, and he watched her move appreciatively. Her distraction worked flawlessly.
"Such white skin." He smudged a finger across her stomach. "You my dear, you are incomparable."
She stared up at the canopy of the tent. "If you say so."
When Riza woke the world was cracking in two.
There was a deep, persistent ache that seemed to start in the very center of her head and work its way outward, popping in florescent flashes of lemonade yellow behind her eyes. Her stomach pitched and rolled in a most obnoxious manner, and she felt dulled to everything but pain. Pain sliced into her like a knife newly sharpened. She knew her head would only get worse if she moved, but the nausea had to be dealt with.
She squinted. Her bedroom was a blur of fuzzy shapes that became clearer as she blinked. Thankfully, the blinds were drawn, blocking out any stabbing rays of sunlight. Silence buzzed in her ears and ticked like a faulty metronome. Her stomach turned over and lurched unpleasantly into her throat.
She threw on a robe and stumbled into her bathroom.
When she emerged, her stomach was a bit more complacent, but her head was still setting up a tantrum. She winced, tapped a finger against her temple with a low moan of pain, and wished she was still asleep.
"You look a little green around the gills."
She yelped like she'd been scalded and whirled at the unexpected voice. The Colonel was standing at the end of the hall with a paper under one arm and a glass of water in his hand.
Her mind did a summersault around that. What was he doing here? In her apartment. In the morning. With her Central Times. She remembered him stopping by last night but . . . but . . . had they done something? No, she remembered waking up with her clothes from yesterday still on. Even so, the look he was giving her was quite peculiar. She patted her hair self-consciously.
He stuck out the glass. "Drink this."
She took it and drank. The water slid cool fingers down her throat with every swallow. Roy watched her with an imperturbably dark gaze. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. Did she even dare? She took the glass from her lips and opened her mouth.
"What . . ." Her head hurt. "What time is it?"
"About eleven o'clock," he replied calmly.
"What?!" She pushed the glass back into his hands and made for her bedroom. "We've got to be at work! I've got to get dressed! What are we doing standing around here?!"
"Don't worry about that," he said. "It's taken care of. You wouldn't be very productive today anyway."
"Huh?" She turned around and braced herself against the wall with a hand. "How is that going to look? You and I . . . you know what the others think as well as I do."
"I went to the office this morning, did some paperwork, and made a big show of not knowing where you were. I told them I'd look around for you, and lo and behold, I've found you." He smiled and held out the glass again. "You just drink all of this. I'll call the office and tell them you are so incredibly ill that I simply must look after you for the rest of the day."
"Oh really." She accepted the glass again and took a languid sip. "And do you? Plan on staying the rest of the day, that is."
"I'd like to stay for a little while, if that's alright with you," he murmured. "You know, because you are not feeling well and all. I'll make you some breakfast. Think you can manage breakfast?"
She was doubtful of her stomach's ability to endure anything edible, but he looked so hopeful that she couldn't possibly refuse the offer. "Perhaps. Just let me get dressed and cleaned up first."
When she entered the kitchen a half hour later, her hair was damp and clean, and her clothes were fresh, but she still felt grumpy and disoriented. Her headache had not abated. Like a demanding child, it refused to be anything but the center of her attention. The Colonel had a plate of toast and another glass of water prepared for her. She sat down and dragged the plate closer with a small grin of gratitude. He pulled out a chair across from her and opened the paper.
She propped a piece of toast against her lip and flicked a surreptitious glance at the cardboard box that was still sitting on end of the table. Had he looked inside it? The liquor was put away and the shot glass was nowhere in sight. He must have looked inside the box. Her gaze turned to the black crown of his hair, peeping out from over the top of the Central Times. The headline was about a woman on the southside of Central who had given birth to triplets. The world was mundane today. She chewed thoughtfully. He turned the pages disinterestedly.
He waited in perfect silence until she'd swallowed the last bite of her toast. Then he turned the full searchlight beam of his attention on her. His expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts, but she still felt a sudden surge of discomfort at the scrutiny.
He laid down the paper. "Are you well enough to answer a question?"
She looked at him warily. "I think so."
"Good." He leaned toward her with his chin resting on his knuckles. "Do you have any idea how dangerous aborting a child can be?"
She choked on a gulp of water.
Roy's face was still blank as a slate. "I take it you do know what I'm talking about then."
"How did you . . . Where did you . . ." Her headache buzzed angrily in the back of her mind. "What gave you the right to start snooping through my things?"
She glared at him, but he didn't flinch. The Colonel was not easily cowed into submission, even when she showed her teeth. Normally, she admired this, but at the moment she was irritated. She could raise her hackles and snarl all she wanted, but he would not respond favorably to her posturing.
"The pills were sitting on the sink in full view. I'd hardly call that snooping." His eyes blazed, and his cool demeanor started to slip around the edges. "Now, you still haven't answered my question. What the hell were you thinking!?"
"Roy . . . Colonel, Sir, I haven't—"
"Bullshit! You bought those pills for a reason, Hawkeye!" he growled. "Now I don't care if you want the baby or not. I really don't, but if you intend to hurt yourself, I care very much."
She stared down at the crumbs on her plate. "I knew there were some risks."
"I've seen a woman die trying to terminate an unwanted pregnancy." His voice raised and tensed, like an angry river building speed and purpose before a fall. "It wasn't pretty. I'm not about to let that happen to you. I don't care who the hell fathered that child or what family members are going to shun you." He drew his tongue over his teeth and sucked in a dry breath of air before his discourse tumbled over the edge of his authority. "You are not taking those pills."
Silence followed the crash. Her jaw slackened and fell slightly ajar. He folded his hands over each other and met her incredulous stare unwaveringly. There was something very piecing about Roy Mustang's eyes when he issued commands. His slanted brows and thick lashes gave him a very proportionate and calculating gaze, and his dark irises added a compelling lilt of self-depreciation and certainty. He always seemed to know just where to put the chess pieces, and his tone was that of a man unused to being questioned.
She was going to call him on that last move. She was becoming more ambivalent about the pills with each passing day, but that did not give him to right to sanction what she could and could not do with her own body.
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head in a dangerous imitation of curiosity. "Was that an order, Sir?"
"The next time I try to commit suicide, you have every right to order me to stop." He didn't move, but his eyes softened. "I'm telling you this because I will not survive your death. I know both of our lives are far from certain given our line of work, but my policy has always been the same. I simply cannot let you risk yourself unnecessarily. That's all there is to it."
She clamped down on the side of her mouth to keep from revealing any expression his words might have provoked. "I don't think I was going to do it anyway. I mean, I thought about it at first, but now I've had too long to think."
Roy nodded and listened to her, but instead of looking satisfied he leaned further forward. Something told her she was not going to be leaving her chair any time soon, and she wasn't going to like what was coming next. She wasn't out of the woods, and she needed more painkillers.
"Thank you, Hawkeye." He pinned her down with his gaze, and a corner of his mouth turned down as if what he was about to say tasted sour on his tongue. "But this brings me to the next topic in our little carousel of happiness. Now that we both know you were considering abortion, I'd like to know why." He took another steadying breath. "What were the circumstances of this child's conception? And try not to lie to me."
She balked. "Sir, please don't do this. I don't want to discuss that right now."
"But I do. I've had enough of you avoiding the truth." He drummed his fingers on the table and stared into her the way someone would look into a reflecting pool before tossing a penny. "Were you forced?"
"That's not—"
He cut her off before she could launch into her protest. "It's a simple yes or no question, Hawkeye."
She shook her head and frowned. "No it isn't, Sir."
Roy glared at her. Why did she always have to be so obstinate? He knew he was striking a nerve though. He'd noticed that the more disconcerted or defensive she was becoming, the more frequently she dropped 'Sirs' into her speech. She seemed to think it was a distancing mechanism, but it only made him want to pull her closer. He wanted the truth, and he wasn't going to let her play slippery this time.
"Pray do enlighten me then," he told her. "Tell me exactly what happened."
"Why should I?"
"Because I care about you and because I'm your friend." He searched for a more substantial word than 'friend' but he couldn't think of anything that wouldn't cross a line, a line they'd blotted out last night . . . but that was beside the point. It was reinstated now, and she had given him no indication that she even remembered what had happened last night.
"If I tell you . . ." She turned and swallowed a lump in her throat. "If I tell you, you must promise me you won't seek retribution, Colonel. I need that promise."
He looked at her, his lieutenant, watching him with her flashing, bourbon-tinged eyes. Her request seemed so simple, and yet, he wasn't about to lie to her or gloss over his anger. Whenever he imagined someone hurting her, he knew he could make no such promise.
"I can't."
She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up. "Then I can't tell you."
"Fine, fine, fine," he hissed. "Just wait a minute. I . . . I . . ." He needed some kind of ambiguous commitment that would appease her. "I promise I won't do anything rash."
She remained in her previous position. "I don't believe you."
"Well I don't believe you when you say you weren't forced, so I suppose we are in the same boat," he pointed out.
"Colonel, listen to me, please. There is no easy way to tell you this, but I've been in sexual situations where I wasn't entirely willing my entire life." She stared down at something fascinating on the floor near one of the table legs as she said this. "Don't pity me because of that. That's just the way it is."
She wasn't lying. She wouldn't have been so avoidant of the issue if she was trying to lie to him, but he still found it hard to swallow her confession dry. He gulped several times, and his stomach heaved dangerously. Riza Hawkeye being forced to do anything was surreal and chilling, like stepping into someone else's dream. His indomitable, steel-jawed, straight shooting Lieutenant. How was such a thing even possible? But then again, he knew very little about the enigmatic subject of Hawkeye's sex life. His was no secret, but hers was not out there for public dissection, and the eyes he could just make out from under tilted lashes were full of pain.
"I didn't know," he whispered.
She laughed ruefully. "Of course you didn't. You were the last person I wanted to know."
"Lieutenant, look at me."
She did so, reluctantly.
He sighed. "I wish you would trust me more than that."
She could have killed him for his perfect sincerity. "Fine. Fine. I'll tell you. But this is a long story."
He spread his hands and smiled humorlessly. "I've got time."
Very true. They were both off for the day, and she had no where else to go. He had her right where he wanted her. Now, she only had one problem; where to begin. She worried her bottom lip thoughtfully. After going through several starts and stops that crackled like static in her head, she decided on something simple.
"This . . . situation of mine started in Ishbal."
Roy was floored. "Ishbal!? That was nearly—"
"Four years ago," she finished for him. "Please don't interrupt me. In Ishbal I started sleeping with one of my commanding officers." She paused. "Don't look at me like that, Sir. You know as well as I do how virginal your own experience has been."
"I'm just shocked . . ." Roy tilted his head in disbelief. "During a war?"
Truth be told, he was more than shocked. He was upset. He had been with her in Ishbal. They weren't exactly a couple, then or now, but he had always secretly and guiltily thought of her as belonging to him. He hadn't even noticed her taking up with another man. Evidently, she didn't belong to him as much as he thought.
She must have seen where his thoughts were going. "I made sure you didn't know. Nobody knew. It's not exactly something I would have flaunted, and people were willing to turn a blind eye on his behavior as long as he comported himself with discretion. He was very persuasive, and I was very young. He used me for his own ends, but I never resisted him, so he isn't entirely to blame."
Roy's eyes darkened. "How old were you?"
She bit her lip and slid a finger across the dip in her throat. "When it started, I was eighteen."
Her words tore a jagged slit in the fabric of liner thought. He saw a flash of color, a perfect shade of rage that sizzled in the marrow of his bones. Again, she tapped into the vein of his thoughts, and her eyes darted over his face like panicked birds with wispy black wings, looking for a safe vantage point to observe him from.
"That's practically statutory rape! How dare he!?" he ground out between his teeth. "You didn't have to give in to that sort of coercion! Why didn't you file for sexual harassment?!" And finally the root of his discontent. "Why didn't you tell me!? I would have taken care of that man. I could have made it look like an accident too."
"And get yourself executed for treason," she retorted. "Yes. I can't see why I didn't tell you."
He frowned a deep trench into is brow. "Well, you could have told someone at least. Did he hurt you? Did officer bastard hurt you?"
"Not very much." Her expression retreated again, down and away. "It doesn't matter anymore. I've moved past that."
He stared at her. "Have you?"
There was no adequate answer that wasn't either painful or untrue. Her past was a deep gash that still oozed blood if she poked at it. She had never attempted to heal it because feeling sorry for oneself is more enjoyable than anyone wants to admit, and blood didn't turn her stomach. But now, more and more, she thought she ought to see someone about suturing the wound. Mothers with psychological issues tended to hurt their children.
"Anyway," she hastily continued with the story. "The affair ended with the war. You saved me."
"Me?" He looked completely dumbfounded. "I didn't even know about it. How could I have saved you?"
She stretched out her fingers and peered at them intently. "You took me under your command. You kept me close. Someone would have to be incredibly stupid to try to touch me when I became your right hand woman."
He nodded. "I'd have incinerated them."
"I believe you, which is why this next part is going to be difficult for you to hear." She stood up and busied herself with the toast plate, running it under the tap and scrubbing it compulsively. "The man who took up with me during Ishbal was General Hakuro."
She heard a chair scrap backwards and the sounds of Roy getting up. "I'll kill him."
She didn't turn around. "Sit down, Colonel Mustang! Don't think I'm above shooting you in the foot, to keep you from getting yourself in worse trouble!"
She waited, eyes burning into the plate in her hand for some sort of sound from him. He wasn't moving. As far as she could tell he wasn't reacting. She couldn't see his face, but she knew he was watching her. She felt his eyes burning into her spine, and knew she would have to turn around eventually. She was going to have to face the consequences of her unmasked deceit head on.
"He left me alone after Ishbal." She made a straight line out of her shoulders and turned around. "I thought that was the end of him, but about two months ago you went on a campaign in the east, and something happened."
He took a step toward her. "What sort of something?"
"He came to me about the sigil." She gulped. Only four people had ever seen that sigil in its entirety, and letting Hakuro examine her naked back seemed more like betraying Roy than anything else she had let him do. Even his taking her to bed. "He knew it was yours. He . . . he . . . he wasn't happy when he saw what we had done to make it unreadable."
Another few steps. He could have reached out and touched her now. "What the hell did he do to you?"
She gripped the counter and smothered her expression blank. It was now or never.
"Well, I know for a fact that he is the father of this child."
He didn't say anything for a long time. He just stared at her, swallowing and swallowing the prickly truth that cut up his insides. He had feared as much as soon as she mentioned the General's name, and now, even with the padding of his suspicions, the words were indigestible. He didn't want to believe it could be true. It couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't be true.
He ran a hand over the top of a chair. "Did you or didn't you give yourself willingly to that man?"
Something pinpricked the back of her eyes, and she angrily brushed at them. Now was not a time to start crying. She looked at him looking at her looking at him, and time was reduced to an endless train of looking and being looked upon. Perpetually skipping stones across a lake. Love felt like being pocketed with bullets, but she couldn't turn away.
"How could I not?" Her voice rose from her lips with the lightness of water vapor, disconnected and soulless, as if an invisible woman behind her had spoken. "He was going to hurt you . . ." Breath inside a wineglass. ". . . I let him hurt me instead."
"Dammit Hawkeye!" He slammed a shaking fist in the table. "Goddammit!"
She leaned closer to place a hand on his shoulder, thinking that was all he would let her do for the moment. He took her completely by surprise when he grabbed her in one lightning strike motion and pulled her flush against him. No hesitation. He pulled. She yielded. They were both dimly aware that the embrace was much more like that of two lovers than two friends, but desperation took precedence over decency. She sighed softly and smiled through the haze in her eyes when he buried his nose in her hair. He really did like her hair.
After a time, she heard his voice, soft and warm against her shoulder. "Riza."
"I'm here."
"Why would you do something like that?" He clutched her tighter, folded her into himself as if they could become one being by the sheer force of his will. "I can't even . . . ."
She squeezed her eyes shut and felt something wet trickle down to the end of her nose. "Because you're my Colonel," she whispered. "Because you're mine."
"Good afternoon, Sir." She maneuvered her way to the General's desk with a box full of files and set them down with a sigh. "These are the incident reports Colonel Mustang said you wanted to see."
Hakuro didn't give her any sort of verbal reply. His eyes roved over her lazily, from head to toe, as if trying to remember a snatch of something sordid. It was always this way whenever she was forced to interact with him. He was never going to let her forgot how intimately he knew her, or how much he despised her Colonel, and she didn't know which of the two irritated her more. She wiped her bangs off her forehead and turned to leave, but his voice stopped her.
"You and Colonel Mustang are very close, aren't you, Lieutenant?"
She froze. Her posture didn't falter, but the nerves at the base of her neck quivered in alarm. What was he trying to imply, and what did he mean by implying something? He couldn't unseat Mustang with accusations of fraternization alone, especially if the accusations were technically baseless. Could he?
Her guilty conscience failed to process anything else. She barely noticed the sound of his approaching footsteps, and she thought nothing of them until he placed a hand against her back. She jumped at the suddenness, as if he'd jammed a livewire into her spine, but the haze of pure shock rendered her unable to move away.
"The Colonel's power. It's been puzzling me for awhile now, but I think I always knew the truth." He sliced a finger down the center of her back and back up again. "His array is the one right here on your back, isn't it? How fitting that all of his secrets should be kept on a woman's body. It suits him rather well I'd say."
"General Hakuro." She cleared her throat and attempted to step away. "Colonel Mustang and I . . ."
"I really don't care for any explanations, Sweetheart." He caught her by the elbow and held her in place. "He's got a territory complex about you. That explains enough for me. I just want that sigil."
"Don't touch me." She tried to jerk away, but his hold tightened.
"Why not? Because he'll burn me to a crisp if I lay a finger on you?" He chuckled snidely and pulled her close enough to murmur against her ear. "Must be nice to be his little pet. But have you ever asked yourself what his real motives are? Does he really give a damn about you, or is he just guarding his merchandise?"
"I said don't touch me."
"He is in the east now, is he not?" He grabbed the hand that was reaching for her holster and pinned it behind her back. "It would be so easy to get ride of him. You know I have connections, and every reason to want him out of the picture. Then he would stop threatening what is mine."
Her eyes narrowed. "If you hurt him, I'll kill you."
"You will do nothing of the sort," he said. "The only way to help him now is to shut your mouth and let me see that beautiful sigil. That's all I want. I might be much fonder of him if you obey my request."
"I . . ." She swallowed on the word and fought back the trembling in her fingers, like a thief caught in a game of cops and robbers. Fear was irrational. So embarrassingly irrational. She'd tried to master it for so long, but now she was losing the battle.
Her mind checked out. A soft purplish detachment rose up and consumed her, a detachment she knew all too well from Ishbal. He made it hard to differentiate between what she had been and what she was. He began to tear at the buttons of her jacket. She made a feeble attempt to shrug away, but he stilled her easily. For the most part she was paralyzed by memories. Shock. Fear. Disgust at her own acquiescence. Any of the above.
"Think of this as a sacrifice for your dear Colonel." He divested her of the jacket in one jerk. "God, you'd do anything for him wouldn't you? But what, my dear, what would he do for you?"
He lifted his hands from her body, and she came to herself again, but it was only for an instant. Long enough for a horrible premonition of what was to come to dawn on her. She hovered, weightless, rapture of pain for a bleeding moment, before he brought her down. Her hands went to her throat, expecting to feel the sticky, rust-red sheen, and his hands went to greedily the sigil.
Whisper of fabric. Cool air blowing kisses. Horrified gasp from the man behind her, and then his fingers digging anger into her shoulders.
"What have you done to it!? What the hell have you done to it!?"