(no subject)
Title: Got One Hundred Steps To Go
Author: genarti and bookelfe
Recipient: yhlee
Rating: PG-13 for violence?
Characters/Pairings: Lust, Rose Thomas
Summary: After the crisis, the most important thing is to get up momentum.
Notes: Title comes from the song One More.
The hardest thing Rose does on the first day after the automail boys leave is get out of bed.
Not that the rest is easy - far from it - but everything takes a little less effort when you have momentum, and, to begin with, she has none. The real question is, what is she getting out of bed to do? Not to go to the church, nor to the graveyard, as her first habitual thoughts suggest. She can't look at Father Cornello or his followers right now, and she can't - no. Forward is the way to go. One step at a time. If she just takes it one step at a time, she'll be able to figure out what to do next.
So, the first step for facing the day. Clothes. She pushes herself up on one elbow and looks over at her closet: neat white churchgoing dresses in front, neat black mourning dresses behind. The sight makes her suddenly angry, and it's the surge of anger that gets her finally out of bed, settles her feet on the wooden floorboards and pushes her up. She has clothes with color. She used to wear pinks and reds and greens, and her friends would tease her about the way the colors clashed with her dyed bangs. She’d kept her hair dyed the same so that it would be familiar when he woke up; so that nothing would have changed.
She's not ready to think about that.
And not-thinking about that is hard, and it hurts, hurts as she's been keeping it from hurting for the past few months. Maybe she's not ready for colors after all.
But you can't wear colors like that to church, and in the end, that decides her.
Half an hour later, she stands outside her front door in a green skirt and butter-yellow vest, deciding what her next step will be. A frowning woman passes by her on the way to the church; Rose recognizes her vaguely, one of the strangers who came to town after hearing of Father Cornello's first miracle. She's dressed in demure black from head to toe. Rose, looking after her, decides that her first step was the right one, and turns in the opposite direction.
* * * * * * *
The first day, of course, is damage assessment.
They had the town nicely in hand: religious fervor, loyalty to a charismatic leader, a few displays of power that seemed miraculous to these uneducated townsfolk. The same old pattern history has seen a hundred times, pitifully simple to replicate. Soon, it would have tipped over into a fever pitch, with just a little nudging, and the deaths would have swept across Liore. Humans never learn.
But sometimes they do notice things shoved in front of their faces, and Fullmetal and his brother did just that. Months of hard work, undone in a single radio broadcast.
It's a pity that the sacrifices have to be resourceful people.
It's even more of a pity that they need to be kept alive. But Lust has a purpose in existence, far greater than any of these muddling humans around her would understand, and the Elric’s lives are promised to it. Meanwhile, Liore must carve a crest of blood into the land, and soon - and that means it's time to assess what the humans are saying to each other, and how to use that to reshape their little lives back into the plan.
"Stay here, Gluttony," she tells her brother.
He stares at her with empty, hungry eyes, before he droops. She pats his bald head soothingly. "I'll be back in a few hours," she says. Gluttony has his skills, but blending into a crowd isn't one of them.
"Can I come, Lust? Can I eat them?"
"No, Gluttony. We need to use them later."
Gluttony rests his chin on the railing with a deep, gusting sigh, and stares forlornly across the city. The railing’s heavy iron is already wet with his drool. Later, Lust thinks, maybe she'll let him eat a stranger passing through town. Vagabonds disappear more easily than churchgoers.
For now, though, she chooses a high-necked black jacket to demurely hide her ouroboros, and slips down through the secret stairways in the church tower until she reaches the street. She passes dozens of humans along the way: grimly devoted church guards, the recently faithful lurking near the church with shattered expressions, others come to sneer and feel self-righteous. Shopkeepers trying to pretend it's an ordinary day, gleeful gossips, the little desperate girl who fell in with the Elrics yesterday. Murmurs of I never would have dreamed, of I knew there was something fishy about him.
None of them give her a second look, of course.
Humans are easy to fool.
* * * * * * *
In Semele Square, everyone is talking about it, airing out their shock and disillusionment, saying the same things over and over. It's what you do in a small town - wear down the raw edges of the hurt through sheer repetition, turn it into a communal story - and Rose understands the impulse, but she really doesn't think she can take all the circular conversations turning around the theme of oh you poor thing, so disappointed and I told you, didn't I, that that man was no good? She keeps her head down, wishing her hair wasn't so distinctive, and sidles into the baker's.
"Rose!" says Mr. Hartfeld, as soon as she comes in. "I've been worried about you, you must be so dis-"
"Could I please use your telephone?" Rose interrupts. She doesn't have one of her own yet - they're useful devices, but expensive, and there aren't many telephone wires running through backwater Liore yet either.
"Yes, of course!"
Rose ducks her chin in thanks and follows him to the back of the shop.
"Hello, Mrs. Roberts, it's Rose - is Julie there?"
"Rose! It's been a while since you called. Sure, she's in the back loading boxes - hold on." Crackling silence on the line for a while, and finally Julie's voice on the line.
"Rose?"
"Julie, I was wondering - when's your lunch break today? It's been a while, and I think - I could use someone to talk to today." She waits, holding her breath, with her finger still in the rotating dial-plate of the telephone. It's well within Julie's right to say no; they haven't spoken in at least a month, maybe two.
"I've been waiting for you to ask," Julie says simply, and Rose lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Meet me out behind the store in twenty minutes, okay?"
One step, and then one more; she makes it to the back of Julie's mother's shop without being accosted, and she sits with Julie, and they eat sandwiches and talk. Well, mostly Julie talks, pausing occasionally to give Rose space to answer if she wants; about how the store is doing, the new streetlamps, what Julie should do with her hair, about anything other than the boy who is dead, about anything other than Cornello. Half a dozen times throughout the conversation, Rose wants to interrupt and flat-outask her: what do I do now? What do I do? But she doesn't. It's not fair to make Julie decide that for her. The next step needs to be her own.
Still, she listens to Julie talking about the day-to-day of the store, about little pieces of small-town gossip unfolding inside and who has a new job and who’s been fired, and then realizes she's spent the last ten minutes thinking, less and less idly, about where there are spaces in the town’s job market that she might fill. And that's a start.
When Julie's lunch break is over, Rose heads back, more boldly now, cutting directly through the town square. She wants to go home and make a list: things she needs. And then, maybe, another list: ways to acquire them.
But as she walks, she starts slowing, almost unconsciously - because the mood isn't the same now as it was, even an hour ago. The mutterings, the repetition, have somehow gotten more frustrated and anxious rather than less. Tempers are rising, and so are voices. A group of Cornello's devotees, including the woman in black from before, have started loudly praying in the middle of the square. Another group, a combination of the long-term skeptics and the most bitterly disillusioned of the congregants, look about ready to bodily throw them out.
Two days ago, Rose would have felt the need to do something. But what can she do? Cornello is a fraud, and yet - she's barely standing herself, just now. It’s not her problem anymore. She looks away, and hurries on.
* * * * * * *
Lust doesn't smile. Not outwardly, at least, here in the humans’ view. Inside, she almost wants to laugh, because it's so easy. Humans are so pitiful, with their desperate needs, their lonely emotions waiting for a channel.
All it takes are the right words. "Maybe this is a trial from Leto for us all," murmured to an old woman with wide frantic eyes and her life savings sunk into Cornello's church. "Haven't heathens always tried to divide the faithful?" to a young man with broad shoulders and anger in the set of his jaw. "Our prayers are a more important example now than ever, don't you think, sir?" humbly offered to Assistant Deacon Bianco. Everyone is eager to latch onto suggestions in this tumult.
She kneels with the rest on the cobblestones of the square, her back straight and head bowed in supplication. With the humans around her, she chants the morning prayer in loud unison over the rising mutters. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the furious knots of protesters, growing ever larger, and clustering spectators. The Thomas girl has just joined them, and Lust catalogs and sets aside her brief cool fury.
The girl is a pawn, of course, as pitiful as the rest. But she did have a hand in the Elrics' actions. It would be a minor satisfaction to see her die to serve Father's plan.
That plan comes first. There’s no time yet for self-indulgence. Rose Thomas might still be useful.
From the sound of the shouts around them, this prayer meeting might yet turn to a riot, after all.
* * * * * * *
There's no riot that day.
But the next day, when Rose's slow steps take her back to the town square - her larders are empty, have been for weeks; yesterday she ate with Julie, but she needs to start stocking for herself again - the knot of loudly-praying faithful has grown, and so has the angry group around them. Rose recognizes the black-clad woman and a few others who were there yesterday, and wonders if they've been there all night.
If she still had faith to sustain her, she could have stayed all night, supported by the circle of common belief. Now she walks on her own, the second day of walking on her own, and it's far harder than she remembers.
Though there's the outer circle to join, too, if that's what she wants - anger and frustration feeding on itself, group rage dictating a group path, no individual decisions required. It's tempting, for a moment, like a way to retroactively kick your past self for being so, so stupid. It's tempting, until someone in the center turns up the radio and Father Cornello's voice crackles out, crisp and clear: "Stand firm, my friends! We will not be silenced by ---"
There's another, louder crackle, and the radio falls silent, because someone has smashed a rock into it, and suddenly everything breaks loose.
* * * * * * *
Lust doesn't believe in self-deception. She knows that she, too, has loyalty; she, too, has a mission in life; she, too, has a higher purpose; she, too, will kill and sacrifice and strive towards that goal. Homunculi have emotions too. Homunculi bleed, and philosopher’s stones crumble eventually.
She knows that the word homunculus is from the old Xerxian - a language made by humans, of course - and that it means little human.
It's hard not to feel superior, though, when you're the one pulling the strings, and Lust doesn't even try. Why should she? She is superior. Centuries of this, and humans still haven't learned a thing.
It's their souls, incoherent and screaming inside her, that knit her bones back together and stitch skin and muscle into wholeness. Around her are bodies - some dead, from rocks and clubs and discreet stabs from Lust's Ultimate Spear. Some are moaning, instead, or limping away in horror or fury or shock.
A dozen martyrs for each side. It's a beautiful thing to see a pattern fall into place, alchemical and perfect.
She was right to call in Envy, she thinks, as she waits for her ribs to finish hardening. He's a brat, but his attention span should hold for a more few rabble-rousing speeches, and that will accelerate everything nicely. He makes a much less annoying Cornello than the real one did.
She pushes herself up and stumbles away, towards a side street and out of the ruined square. The blood smeared across her face nicely hides the lack of real injuries beneath.
Let them think she's as fragile as they are. She'll vanish soon, and if they remember her, it will be as a casualty. One more martyr, innocent and beautiful and struck down in Semele Square.
* * * * * * *
Mr. Hartfield pulls Rose inside the bakery and slams the door behind her, just in time to shatter the thrown glass bottle that was arcing towards her head.
“They’re crazy,” he says, disbelieving, and passes a hand over his eyes and through his hair. “They’re - Rose, you’d better stay here. Thank God you weren’t out there with those -”
Thank God? Rose thinks, but Mr. Hartfield seems unaware of the irony. “No,” she says out loud. “I - thank you for the offer, but I’ve got to go check on Julie and her mother.” Their general store sells, among other things, farming equipment - scythes and mowers and spades. And radios.
“I don’t like the idea of you going out there alone,” says Mr. Hartfield. “Maybe I should go with you -” But his eyes dart to the bakery counter, to the shuttered windows with clasps that suddenly seem all-too-fragile, and Rose shakes her head.
“No - you should stay here with the store. I’ll go out the back, I’ll be fine. Just - do you have a hat or a scarf I could borrow?”
Five minutes later, wide-brimmed sun hat pulled firmly down on her hair and over her face, she hurries out the back door into the alley behind the bakery. If she keeps to the back streets, cuts behind North Mark and then ducks between the garage and the sandwich shop, she should be fine. There’s no reason for anyone to be there -
Except there is someone there, someone huddled up like her as they move down the street - someone bleeding, red startling against pale skin and black hair and a black dress.
One of the faithful.
Before she knows what she’s doing, Rose has hurried forward, taking the woman’s arm. “Are you all right?”
The woman’s rippling mass of hair hides her face until she glances at Rose. There’s a streak of blood smeared across her forehead, a spatter on her jaw. “I -” she murmurs, “yes. Thank Leto. It’s not bad.”
“Do you have somewhere to go? Do you need -”
The woman coughs, flinching a little with it. “The church. I’m going to the church.”
The church. The riots have nothing to do with the fact that this is precisely the last place in the world that Rose wants to go.
But the riots make a convenient excuse - and two days ago this woman might have been Rose; she wouldn’t have had anywhere else to go either. “It’s dangerous at the church right now,” she says, putting false confidence and real concern into her voice, “and I don’t think anything you can there do will make it better. Why don’t you come with me instead? We can go somewhere safer, make sure you’re not hurt worse than you think, and when things are calmer -”
The woman shakes her head. “I need to pray,” she insists. “I just need to pray. Father Cornello will help me.”
“You need to live more than you need to pray.” The anger in Rose’s voice flashes out before she can catch it. “What’s so important that you’re praying for, that it’s more important than that?” Then she stops, shocked at herself - what right does she have to say this? It’s nothing but the worst kind of hypocrisy on her part to lecture, the blind preaching to the blind.
On the other hand, that doesn’t make it less true.
The woman’s head bows for a moment, and Rose can’t see her face. Then her head lifts from its moment of prayer, and her eyes meet Rose’s. “The world,” she murmurs. “The world will see that we are the faithful, if we’re steadfast through this trial.” Her black-gloved hand covers Rose’s, giving it an encouraging press. “You shouldn’t lose heart. Father Cornello will lead us through.”
She wants to say, I’ve already lost heart in every possible way; wants to throw her loss and her anger in the other woman’s face, and force her to acknowledge them. As she did with the Elric brothers, and as the Elric brothers did, in return, to her: who’s suffered more, who’s lost more faith?
She doesn’t.
“You can choose your own path, of course,” she says, instead, and disengages her hand. “But if you’re so steadfast you get yourself killed, Father - your Father won’t have much left to lead. It’s something to think about.”
“I’m not worried,” the woman tells her, with a smile full of confident belief. “God will protect his believers.”
Then she turns and walks away, one slow, limping step at a time. It’s painful to watch her. It makes you want to run up and support her. But she thinks she’s already supported - and there’s not much Rose can do about that. She jerks her head away instead, looking down, and something red catches her eye.
It’s blood, tacky and drying brownish on her hand, from where the woman had pressed it.
Father Cornello would have made something of the symbolism, she’s sure. But all Rose can think now is that it clashes with her pink sweatshirt.
She’ll wash it off when she gets to Julie’s, if there’s a chance, if things are normal enough there that she can wash; if not, other things will be more important. Rose shakes her hand, once, and starts walking again.
* * * * * * *
Lust licks a smear of blood from her lips, and smiles.
It’s taking a little more work than planned, but Liore is going nicely after all.
Author: genarti and bookelfe
Recipient: yhlee
Rating: PG-13 for violence?
Characters/Pairings: Lust, Rose Thomas
Summary: After the crisis, the most important thing is to get up momentum.
Notes: Title comes from the song One More.
The hardest thing Rose does on the first day after the automail boys leave is get out of bed.
Not that the rest is easy - far from it - but everything takes a little less effort when you have momentum, and, to begin with, she has none. The real question is, what is she getting out of bed to do? Not to go to the church, nor to the graveyard, as her first habitual thoughts suggest. She can't look at Father Cornello or his followers right now, and she can't - no. Forward is the way to go. One step at a time. If she just takes it one step at a time, she'll be able to figure out what to do next.
So, the first step for facing the day. Clothes. She pushes herself up on one elbow and looks over at her closet: neat white churchgoing dresses in front, neat black mourning dresses behind. The sight makes her suddenly angry, and it's the surge of anger that gets her finally out of bed, settles her feet on the wooden floorboards and pushes her up. She has clothes with color. She used to wear pinks and reds and greens, and her friends would tease her about the way the colors clashed with her dyed bangs. She’d kept her hair dyed the same so that it would be familiar when he woke up; so that nothing would have changed.
She's not ready to think about that.
And not-thinking about that is hard, and it hurts, hurts as she's been keeping it from hurting for the past few months. Maybe she's not ready for colors after all.
But you can't wear colors like that to church, and in the end, that decides her.
Half an hour later, she stands outside her front door in a green skirt and butter-yellow vest, deciding what her next step will be. A frowning woman passes by her on the way to the church; Rose recognizes her vaguely, one of the strangers who came to town after hearing of Father Cornello's first miracle. She's dressed in demure black from head to toe. Rose, looking after her, decides that her first step was the right one, and turns in the opposite direction.
* * * * * * *
The first day, of course, is damage assessment.
They had the town nicely in hand: religious fervor, loyalty to a charismatic leader, a few displays of power that seemed miraculous to these uneducated townsfolk. The same old pattern history has seen a hundred times, pitifully simple to replicate. Soon, it would have tipped over into a fever pitch, with just a little nudging, and the deaths would have swept across Liore. Humans never learn.
But sometimes they do notice things shoved in front of their faces, and Fullmetal and his brother did just that. Months of hard work, undone in a single radio broadcast.
It's a pity that the sacrifices have to be resourceful people.
It's even more of a pity that they need to be kept alive. But Lust has a purpose in existence, far greater than any of these muddling humans around her would understand, and the Elric’s lives are promised to it. Meanwhile, Liore must carve a crest of blood into the land, and soon - and that means it's time to assess what the humans are saying to each other, and how to use that to reshape their little lives back into the plan.
"Stay here, Gluttony," she tells her brother.
He stares at her with empty, hungry eyes, before he droops. She pats his bald head soothingly. "I'll be back in a few hours," she says. Gluttony has his skills, but blending into a crowd isn't one of them.
"Can I come, Lust? Can I eat them?"
"No, Gluttony. We need to use them later."
Gluttony rests his chin on the railing with a deep, gusting sigh, and stares forlornly across the city. The railing’s heavy iron is already wet with his drool. Later, Lust thinks, maybe she'll let him eat a stranger passing through town. Vagabonds disappear more easily than churchgoers.
For now, though, she chooses a high-necked black jacket to demurely hide her ouroboros, and slips down through the secret stairways in the church tower until she reaches the street. She passes dozens of humans along the way: grimly devoted church guards, the recently faithful lurking near the church with shattered expressions, others come to sneer and feel self-righteous. Shopkeepers trying to pretend it's an ordinary day, gleeful gossips, the little desperate girl who fell in with the Elrics yesterday. Murmurs of I never would have dreamed, of I knew there was something fishy about him.
None of them give her a second look, of course.
Humans are easy to fool.
* * * * * * *
In Semele Square, everyone is talking about it, airing out their shock and disillusionment, saying the same things over and over. It's what you do in a small town - wear down the raw edges of the hurt through sheer repetition, turn it into a communal story - and Rose understands the impulse, but she really doesn't think she can take all the circular conversations turning around the theme of oh you poor thing, so disappointed and I told you, didn't I, that that man was no good? She keeps her head down, wishing her hair wasn't so distinctive, and sidles into the baker's.
"Rose!" says Mr. Hartfeld, as soon as she comes in. "I've been worried about you, you must be so dis-"
"Could I please use your telephone?" Rose interrupts. She doesn't have one of her own yet - they're useful devices, but expensive, and there aren't many telephone wires running through backwater Liore yet either.
"Yes, of course!"
Rose ducks her chin in thanks and follows him to the back of the shop.
"Hello, Mrs. Roberts, it's Rose - is Julie there?"
"Rose! It's been a while since you called. Sure, she's in the back loading boxes - hold on." Crackling silence on the line for a while, and finally Julie's voice on the line.
"Rose?"
"Julie, I was wondering - when's your lunch break today? It's been a while, and I think - I could use someone to talk to today." She waits, holding her breath, with her finger still in the rotating dial-plate of the telephone. It's well within Julie's right to say no; they haven't spoken in at least a month, maybe two.
"I've been waiting for you to ask," Julie says simply, and Rose lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Meet me out behind the store in twenty minutes, okay?"
One step, and then one more; she makes it to the back of Julie's mother's shop without being accosted, and she sits with Julie, and they eat sandwiches and talk. Well, mostly Julie talks, pausing occasionally to give Rose space to answer if she wants; about how the store is doing, the new streetlamps, what Julie should do with her hair, about anything other than the boy who is dead, about anything other than Cornello. Half a dozen times throughout the conversation, Rose wants to interrupt and flat-outask her: what do I do now? What do I do? But she doesn't. It's not fair to make Julie decide that for her. The next step needs to be her own.
Still, she listens to Julie talking about the day-to-day of the store, about little pieces of small-town gossip unfolding inside and who has a new job and who’s been fired, and then realizes she's spent the last ten minutes thinking, less and less idly, about where there are spaces in the town’s job market that she might fill. And that's a start.
When Julie's lunch break is over, Rose heads back, more boldly now, cutting directly through the town square. She wants to go home and make a list: things she needs. And then, maybe, another list: ways to acquire them.
But as she walks, she starts slowing, almost unconsciously - because the mood isn't the same now as it was, even an hour ago. The mutterings, the repetition, have somehow gotten more frustrated and anxious rather than less. Tempers are rising, and so are voices. A group of Cornello's devotees, including the woman in black from before, have started loudly praying in the middle of the square. Another group, a combination of the long-term skeptics and the most bitterly disillusioned of the congregants, look about ready to bodily throw them out.
Two days ago, Rose would have felt the need to do something. But what can she do? Cornello is a fraud, and yet - she's barely standing herself, just now. It’s not her problem anymore. She looks away, and hurries on.
* * * * * * *
Lust doesn't smile. Not outwardly, at least, here in the humans’ view. Inside, she almost wants to laugh, because it's so easy. Humans are so pitiful, with their desperate needs, their lonely emotions waiting for a channel.
All it takes are the right words. "Maybe this is a trial from Leto for us all," murmured to an old woman with wide frantic eyes and her life savings sunk into Cornello's church. "Haven't heathens always tried to divide the faithful?" to a young man with broad shoulders and anger in the set of his jaw. "Our prayers are a more important example now than ever, don't you think, sir?" humbly offered to Assistant Deacon Bianco. Everyone is eager to latch onto suggestions in this tumult.
She kneels with the rest on the cobblestones of the square, her back straight and head bowed in supplication. With the humans around her, she chants the morning prayer in loud unison over the rising mutters. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the furious knots of protesters, growing ever larger, and clustering spectators. The Thomas girl has just joined them, and Lust catalogs and sets aside her brief cool fury.
The girl is a pawn, of course, as pitiful as the rest. But she did have a hand in the Elrics' actions. It would be a minor satisfaction to see her die to serve Father's plan.
That plan comes first. There’s no time yet for self-indulgence. Rose Thomas might still be useful.
From the sound of the shouts around them, this prayer meeting might yet turn to a riot, after all.
* * * * * * *
There's no riot that day.
But the next day, when Rose's slow steps take her back to the town square - her larders are empty, have been for weeks; yesterday she ate with Julie, but she needs to start stocking for herself again - the knot of loudly-praying faithful has grown, and so has the angry group around them. Rose recognizes the black-clad woman and a few others who were there yesterday, and wonders if they've been there all night.
If she still had faith to sustain her, she could have stayed all night, supported by the circle of common belief. Now she walks on her own, the second day of walking on her own, and it's far harder than she remembers.
Though there's the outer circle to join, too, if that's what she wants - anger and frustration feeding on itself, group rage dictating a group path, no individual decisions required. It's tempting, for a moment, like a way to retroactively kick your past self for being so, so stupid. It's tempting, until someone in the center turns up the radio and Father Cornello's voice crackles out, crisp and clear: "Stand firm, my friends! We will not be silenced by ---"
There's another, louder crackle, and the radio falls silent, because someone has smashed a rock into it, and suddenly everything breaks loose.
* * * * * * *
Lust doesn't believe in self-deception. She knows that she, too, has loyalty; she, too, has a mission in life; she, too, has a higher purpose; she, too, will kill and sacrifice and strive towards that goal. Homunculi have emotions too. Homunculi bleed, and philosopher’s stones crumble eventually.
She knows that the word homunculus is from the old Xerxian - a language made by humans, of course - and that it means little human.
It's hard not to feel superior, though, when you're the one pulling the strings, and Lust doesn't even try. Why should she? She is superior. Centuries of this, and humans still haven't learned a thing.
It's their souls, incoherent and screaming inside her, that knit her bones back together and stitch skin and muscle into wholeness. Around her are bodies - some dead, from rocks and clubs and discreet stabs from Lust's Ultimate Spear. Some are moaning, instead, or limping away in horror or fury or shock.
A dozen martyrs for each side. It's a beautiful thing to see a pattern fall into place, alchemical and perfect.
She was right to call in Envy, she thinks, as she waits for her ribs to finish hardening. He's a brat, but his attention span should hold for a more few rabble-rousing speeches, and that will accelerate everything nicely. He makes a much less annoying Cornello than the real one did.
She pushes herself up and stumbles away, towards a side street and out of the ruined square. The blood smeared across her face nicely hides the lack of real injuries beneath.
Let them think she's as fragile as they are. She'll vanish soon, and if they remember her, it will be as a casualty. One more martyr, innocent and beautiful and struck down in Semele Square.
* * * * * * *
Mr. Hartfield pulls Rose inside the bakery and slams the door behind her, just in time to shatter the thrown glass bottle that was arcing towards her head.
“They’re crazy,” he says, disbelieving, and passes a hand over his eyes and through his hair. “They’re - Rose, you’d better stay here. Thank God you weren’t out there with those -”
Thank God? Rose thinks, but Mr. Hartfield seems unaware of the irony. “No,” she says out loud. “I - thank you for the offer, but I’ve got to go check on Julie and her mother.” Their general store sells, among other things, farming equipment - scythes and mowers and spades. And radios.
“I don’t like the idea of you going out there alone,” says Mr. Hartfield. “Maybe I should go with you -” But his eyes dart to the bakery counter, to the shuttered windows with clasps that suddenly seem all-too-fragile, and Rose shakes her head.
“No - you should stay here with the store. I’ll go out the back, I’ll be fine. Just - do you have a hat or a scarf I could borrow?”
Five minutes later, wide-brimmed sun hat pulled firmly down on her hair and over her face, she hurries out the back door into the alley behind the bakery. If she keeps to the back streets, cuts behind North Mark and then ducks between the garage and the sandwich shop, she should be fine. There’s no reason for anyone to be there -
Except there is someone there, someone huddled up like her as they move down the street - someone bleeding, red startling against pale skin and black hair and a black dress.
One of the faithful.
Before she knows what she’s doing, Rose has hurried forward, taking the woman’s arm. “Are you all right?”
The woman’s rippling mass of hair hides her face until she glances at Rose. There’s a streak of blood smeared across her forehead, a spatter on her jaw. “I -” she murmurs, “yes. Thank Leto. It’s not bad.”
“Do you have somewhere to go? Do you need -”
The woman coughs, flinching a little with it. “The church. I’m going to the church.”
The church. The riots have nothing to do with the fact that this is precisely the last place in the world that Rose wants to go.
But the riots make a convenient excuse - and two days ago this woman might have been Rose; she wouldn’t have had anywhere else to go either. “It’s dangerous at the church right now,” she says, putting false confidence and real concern into her voice, “and I don’t think anything you can there do will make it better. Why don’t you come with me instead? We can go somewhere safer, make sure you’re not hurt worse than you think, and when things are calmer -”
The woman shakes her head. “I need to pray,” she insists. “I just need to pray. Father Cornello will help me.”
“You need to live more than you need to pray.” The anger in Rose’s voice flashes out before she can catch it. “What’s so important that you’re praying for, that it’s more important than that?” Then she stops, shocked at herself - what right does she have to say this? It’s nothing but the worst kind of hypocrisy on her part to lecture, the blind preaching to the blind.
On the other hand, that doesn’t make it less true.
The woman’s head bows for a moment, and Rose can’t see her face. Then her head lifts from its moment of prayer, and her eyes meet Rose’s. “The world,” she murmurs. “The world will see that we are the faithful, if we’re steadfast through this trial.” Her black-gloved hand covers Rose’s, giving it an encouraging press. “You shouldn’t lose heart. Father Cornello will lead us through.”
She wants to say, I’ve already lost heart in every possible way; wants to throw her loss and her anger in the other woman’s face, and force her to acknowledge them. As she did with the Elric brothers, and as the Elric brothers did, in return, to her: who’s suffered more, who’s lost more faith?
She doesn’t.
“You can choose your own path, of course,” she says, instead, and disengages her hand. “But if you’re so steadfast you get yourself killed, Father - your Father won’t have much left to lead. It’s something to think about.”
“I’m not worried,” the woman tells her, with a smile full of confident belief. “God will protect his believers.”
Then she turns and walks away, one slow, limping step at a time. It’s painful to watch her. It makes you want to run up and support her. But she thinks she’s already supported - and there’s not much Rose can do about that. She jerks her head away instead, looking down, and something red catches her eye.
It’s blood, tacky and drying brownish on her hand, from where the woman had pressed it.
Father Cornello would have made something of the symbolism, she’s sure. But all Rose can think now is that it clashes with her pink sweatshirt.
She’ll wash it off when she gets to Julie’s, if there’s a chance, if things are normal enough there that she can wash; if not, other things will be more important. Rose shakes her hand, once, and starts walking again.
* * * * * * *
Lust licks a smear of blood from her lips, and smiles.
It’s taking a little more work than planned, but Liore is going nicely after all.