Prompt 170, Abuse, "Marked"
Title: Marked
Author: Antgone Rex
Series: Manga/Brotherhood
Word Count: 1090 (not including quote)
Rating: R/M
Characters: Riza Hawkeye, Berthold Hawkeye, Roy Mustang
Summary: Riza reflects on the men that marked her, body and soul.
Warnings: See prompt name. So, yeah… there’s that. Of every kind. Also, spoilers.
Notes: This is a complete departure from my normal writing style. And quite possibly the most depressing thing I have ever written. Yet it is not nearly as depressing as some of the fics I’ve read here. I don’t know how you guys do it. Man, the process just… pulls at you. Maybe I should stick with lighthearted pieces… *sobs*
I cried the first time he touched me. It was after, when I was alone - so he would not see me. Even then, I knew my tears were a vulnerability. Even then, I refused to show how deeply his unloving caress cut through my tender heart.
I was eight years old.
After my mother died, my father disappeared. He threw himself into his work. He left me alone in the stillness of our crumbling house. Everything about life changed. Everything about him changed. He hardly spoke to me. Never said a word either in kindness or in anger, hatred or love. I remember being desperate for it - any semblance of affection - at first. But soon I learned to inhabit the quiet. I was like a shadow - barely noticed. Barely noticeable. It was easier that way. I preferred it to his wayward attentions.
I remember his eyes most of all. They were haunted. They burned with a cold flame.
On some nights, when his goal seemed too far out of reach, he reached for a bottle instead. Then he would see me. I was no longer invisible. His empty eyes would fill with emotion when they fell on me: a terrifying mix of anger, revulsion, and sorrow. Later on, when he’d had his fill of drink and of me, he would call me by my mother’s name. I am told I look like her.
Sometimes he would cry. Sometimes he would hit me. I learned to hide on those nights.
-o-o-o-
I will never forget the day he arrived. He introduced himself to my father with a brash confidence that startled me. He said his name was Roy and that he was here to learn alchemy. How he convinced my father to take him as a pupil I still do not know. But before I knew it, the boy’s presence filled the house. The very walls seemed to stretch with it. He was noisy. Even his voice, his footsteps, seemed too loud to my muted ears. It terrified me. It fascinated me. I was overwhelmed by this brazen, dark-haired intruder.
His eyes were different from my father’s. Not empty, not haunted. The fire that burned within them filled me with a warmth I never knew. And from the moment I looked into their depths I was lost, lost.
-o-o-o-
I was never quite sure when the fascination began. I first knew of it through the cold lingering of his fingers against my skin. Before long, he would spend hours staring at my back, running his hands along the naked flesh. Sometimes he would whisper secrets to me. How it would be his greatest work. How I was lucky to be its bearer.
I did not understand until the day he called me to his study. He rarely invited me into his quiet isolation. It made me feel strangely… wanted. I was then fourteen, just entering the bloom of youth. I felt so terribly alone in those days. Yet I was afraid. Afraid of the raw fervor in his tone. He told me to take off my shirt and lie on my stomach.
He marked me that day - and on the many days that followed. Through it all, through the pain, I never cried.
I would not allow it.
-o-o-o-
I did not know what to feel as I stood before his grave. Triumph mixed with sorrow. Regret mixed with relief. Roy understood. His gloved hand grasped mine and anchored me to the present.
I nearly gasped when I first saw him. He left a boy and returned a man. He made me feel strangely juvenile. Time stood still in the crumbling house, and I remained unchanged while he grew into a soldier. Yet enough of his boyish charm remained to comfort me. There was that, at least.
I had already resolved to show him long before my father’s death. I knew what it would mean to him - what it would mean for him - and in my own girlish heart I would do anything to please him. And so I promised him my father’s secrets and drew him back to the empty house.
I expected his surprise. I had stolen glances of the tattoo in the mirror many times, and I knew how the ink stood stark against my skin. But I did not expect his tears.
And so I found myself holding him as he quietly cried against my hair. He said he was sorry. Sorry my father did this to me. Sorry he was not there. Sorry I had to bear the burden. He was sorry for me - an empty shell of a girl that dwelled in her own desolate isolation.
Afterwards, when I lay on the couch so he could study the array, he touched me - once. It was a soft, innocent caress down the length of my spine. A human touch. It resonated through me like a bell. And at that moment, I remembered what it was to be loved by another.
-o-o-o-
I did not tremble as I lay upon the cot. I was proud of that. The war had strengthened me in ways that could not be measured. I was a woman now: powerful and confident. And with that power, I took the lives of others . How profoundly sad that the price of my freedom was human life.
It took me some time to convince him. He did not want to do it. He begged me, again and again, to reconsider. There has to be another way, he said. Just give me time to find it. His eyes were so filled with sorrow I almost relented.
But I could not wait. I wanted to be rid of it, forever. To shed the last vestige of my father’s hold on me.
And so I allowed another to mark me. I lay on the cot, open to this man - this unwilling savior - as he used my father’s secrets against me. And though the pain was nearly unbearable - though I cried out - it did not hurt me the way the inky needles pierced my starving heart so many years before.
I cried afterwards. I did not hide. I could never conceal my feelings from the man who had become my purpose. He held me and whispered against my stinging skin. He filled my empty heart. And finally - finally - I felt complete. My skin marked by two men: one I had once loved, one I would always love.
And now I can claim this flesh as my own.
Tattoo the pristine flesh
What is permanent anyway?
This ink only lasts 'til the grave,
Skin and ideas decompose
That which we did compose.
-Corri Alius