A/N: This is for icarus enjoyed the viewbecause she reviewed the first chapter (or whatever you want to call it. Part, maybe) and also, her review gave me this idea! There are so many for Ishbal! Just in thinking up the title, I came up with about ten different ideas. This is coming from someone who has a really hard time ever thinking up any titles at all, much less ten for one story! Okay, rambling over :D Enjoy!
He was new. They all could tell. Everything about him was clean (to them) and sparkling and everything they lacked. It was then that she realized, as the man wandered about camp at the edge of her vision, that she could never go back to the human she once was, that that person still is. She saw, looking at him, just how easily she could pick out her ribs, just how hard her eyes were. She didn't wonder where that person had gone. She knew. Fucking hell she knew. And now their bodies weren't even the same anymore, her and that girl with the pretty name she couldn't recall. Didn't want to. That would be too easy.
If she remembered the girl from before, that human with a human body and a human heart, it would be unforgivable. To let herself fall back on memories that are growing fainter with every burst of harsh desert air, as if blown away with the tainted sand and who ever she was before Ishbal. She would not put herself on the same level as the men who gulped from their bottles and tried to forget. She was Riza Hawkeye. No name of girlhood. Just a word given to her face that even a drunk could slur to get her attention. It was quick to yell on the battlefield, when mortar is flying past her head and she needs to duck or get her damn skull bashed in like the guy lying beside her. Practical. Harsh. Brutal.
All sharp edges, rough and calloused and cutting. Like the grains of sand that are in her hair and eyes and clothes and probably her heart too. Because she will not face the shame of trying to force them out. To forget this is to sin her soul away. An utterly unforgivable thing, to forget the children dying in the street. To forget the way she leaps over them and uses them as shields of dead flesh in desperate moments in which a bullet is near her and it is not from her gun. To forget the screams of the dead the dying the left behind. To know she is going to have to watch this new man's eyes die. And maybe his body too.
She doesn't know why she wants that fire to continue to burn in the silly black orbs. Suddenly she wonders what he'd see if he looked at her eyes. But the question is discarded because she know's exactly what he'd see if he looked. An impractical question, a weak question. So it is killed. It is the way of life in this hell between the dunes.
He must've felt her gaze on him, because he looks up at her, a smile ready. She ducks quickly, not wanting to see the shock on his face if he notes what is reflected in her glassy, lifeless orbs.
He was so obviously new. No one ever looked at anyone. She kept her head down until he left.
A/N: A simple little oneshot type thing that I'm stuffing into this story because... I can...? well, it's all Ishbal. If you have ideas, tell me! Mine tend to come in the middle of the night, when I'm so exhausted I can't believe it, in the middle of a math test... fire drills... real random times that I can't always write them down. Has anyone noticed that Ishbal follows the war in the middle east really well? I can glance at the front page of the New York Times and get an idea for descriptions. Y'know, background. Reviews are highly appreciated!