Summary: At the right angle, in a line of sight, one might wonder why he never stopped staring at her for so much as a second.
Theme: 090. Hidden Feelings
Disclaimer: I do not own Full Metal Alchemist.
Angles
090. Hidden Feelings
"This should not be a celebration."
Riza murmurs to him. Roy agrees, nods his head silently. They won a cruel war by slaughtering civilians and women and children, and this is their reward. A masquerade night of languid pleasure which they are either too young or too bitter to appreciate. He smirks coldly at the irony; masks may shield their faces, but they will not dull the nature of the pain they have inflicted. They will not hide the blood on the hands of their war heroes; they will not cover up the horrific genocide of a race which they have taken part in. It is true when they say history is only ever written by the victors.
"At least you look like a princess, or something."
He returns, and Hawkeye looks positively affronted. When she was a little girl, she had not wanted to be a princess; she had just wanted to escape her false home. He had made that dream come true. Why be a woman turned on by her own people - with too much power and responsibility being led to a guillotine with sharp panic setting in but bound with nowhere to go - when she could be a soldier.
"We killed all those people and now we are supposed to enjoy it."
Her sneer is just as vicious as his. She had traded her aristocratic beautiful dresses and made up face where other women saw beauty and glitter for war, because where they saw glory she saw responsibility no amount of love could ever make her want. And Roy, Roy and his fire and the guns she had were far better than that. It was power, but she did not need to control it. At least now, she saw where she had made her mistakes. He loved that in her, that she never wanted more than that.
"It does not have to be about that for us."
He tells her. Just like one of them, she had been raised by people who were not her mother; and had gone to bed in a cold manor house that had no lights at night; no way to see herself out. But he had been there; and now he had led her to war, to the ends of the earth; and at least although they are not celebrating murder like all the other people here they can learn to celebrate for her. Because she needed it more than he ever would. After being stopped, he has learned to live with the guilt for a higher purpose; this is what she has been doing her entire life just to survive each day. His fingers catch the edge of her mask, and she slaps them away, irritated with the notion of celebrating the death of an entire race of people.
"You know I do not like to hide things, sir."
She answers curtly. He thinks her a liar. For all this time, she has lied about what has happened between them. The war has made them close, too close, and in those nights in the desert he went to her; dirt smeared and bloody but needing companionship. She had given it to him, desperate for something other than the smell of gunpowder and military grade vanilla soap. Nothing could make them clean, so they made themselves as common as the supposed barbarians. The upper classes always were hypocrites, he mused. In the corner of the room with nobody looking, he catches her lips softly with his. He can feel the tears of anger under her mask, and when he finally stops knowing everybody has chosen to ignore his rule breach for this one night, her cheeks are burning. Of course, the only hidden thing is not political views; but them. Their feelings are deemed inappropriate, for now. He will change this.
"Not all of this is politics, Hawkeye. Some of it is us. It always will be."
Because not everything is about politics. People do things for love that can never be understood.
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