Fanfic: East and West, part 2 of 2
Title: East and West, part 2 of 2
Characters: Riza, Roy, Dr Marco
Universe: Fullmetal Alchemist, first anime
Word Count: 2002
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Suicidal thoughts, PTSD, death, minor anime spoiler
Summary: The conclusion of Riza Hawkeye's experience of Ishbal
Notes: More Royai and less violence than the first part (link to 1st part here), hope you like it
For three nights after the Rockbell murders, Riza took her gun to a flat rock near the officer’s billets and lay there until dawn. Mustang’s grin kept circling her darkened brain, but there was nothing the girl who’d gone to Ishbal would have called emotion. She couldn’t even imagine what she could say to him.
Murderer. Two hundred red eyes opened up around her body. A hundred recoils struck her until she wept. From every rock and wall in the dreams that hid to kill, the little splashes of blood went on and on and wouldn’t stop and the terror would never stop until she was dead.
She could suppress; she’d had to learn. But tonight, there was nothing left in her when the killing was gone. A cold abyss where love and anger and a reason for living had been.
Riza always believed she would have shot herself right then, if not for Roy. His fire filled the darkness. The fire she had nurtured and loved since they had been kids in a rickety wooden house, the fire that would burn up Roy and all the good of the world. He had always run further than her, when they were children, and always into trouble. It was her job, once again, to find him and save him from himself, so they could go back to that little house together at evening, and sleep forever.
A figure, trudging nearer, from the direction of the officer’s billets; thickset, hooded. Peering at Riza-she rose like a wooden soldier, and marched past the man, eyes front. He reeked of cheap whiskey; probably a black-marketeer leaving camp, no one who mattered-
“Miss Hawkeye?” Riza stopped, “I’m an...acquaintance of Major Mustang, I suppose. He mentioned you-and I’ve heard from all over that you’ve watched over him through the heaviest fighting. Probably saved him from death-so I’d like to thank you. As I said, he’s a friend. A good officer-the only one in Ishbal with no aim but protecting lives.”
“Soldier’s lives. And I’m afraid that I hate every soldier in the world.”
“Soldier’s lives are the ones in danger, Miss Hawkeye; that’s how it should be. And the ones that sell their souls, so everyone else has the choice of keeping theirs...like Equivalent Exchange, we pay for the country’s peace and we pay for our sins. Mustang understands it; this massacre couldn’t be paid by anything we can do right now, alone. If he were running this country-”
“The Rockbells had a six year old daughter. All they did was keep saving Ishbalans when the Military told them to stop. What exactly could ever pay for that?”
The hooded man sighed.
“I used to really believe it; that I could repay the ones my work had hurt with the lives I would save in the end. I’m an old man now, and I can’t believe it any more. You’re still young, Miss Hawkeye, you and Major Mustang. I pray that your experience is different.”
The man trudged on, looking warily around every few steps. Riza watched him go, then turned, and marched on.
* * *
Roy Mustang slept in a small room on the edge of a burnt out city. He raised his head as Riza walked in, blinking like a tousle-headed child, albeit one with a smell of whiskey detectable from outside the door. He stared into the mirror from his chair, as Riza raised her gun to the back of his head.
“Good to see you again, Cadet. I shouldn’t have done it; shouldn’t have done any of it. This is the way it should end-take care of yourself.”
Riza fought not to look away; she would break down if she did. Guns had always been simple, never time to feel or think-she had to pull the trigger, save thousands of innocents from death.
But they were lost, and Roy was here. Her only Roy Mustang. If she didn’t call to him now, he would remain for life or death, in the pit where he had fallen. They were soldiers. Whatever their sins, they left nobody behind.
“Is this your wish, Major?” Riza spoke very softly. Mustang looked at her over his shoulder.
“I think I...does it matter what I want?”
Riza uncocked and holstered her gun, speaking quickly.
“At 0900 hrs tomorrow, 10th Division will attack the Ishbalan town, Jasparting. Get some sleep, right now. Take a shower in the morning and drink a pot of coffee; if you’re hung-over or exhausted, men will die for it. Whatever state you’re in, whatever you’ve done, major...you’re needed.”
“...okay. Take care of yourself, Cadet. Please.” Riza didn’t look back, as she walked away through military tents in the night. Someone in the distance was playing the guitar very badly A window was lit in the Medical Research facility; two yawning orderlies were carrying out a burden toward the mass grave in the empty city.
She could fight, to save these undeserving lives, and put off putting a gun in her mouth. Until a day no brighter than any other, when the fighting would end. Then she would have to find something else to cover the grave-pit in her head. Because Major Mustang had asked her to take care of herself; he had thought of her after all the years and deaths. It mattered more to her than all the murdered doctors in the world.
At 0830 hrs the next day, Riza’s bedroll was wet with tears. It was a selfish, stupid obsession. Just like her father, buried in his alchemy; careless of all the people it would end up killing. If God really looked down from the burning sky, as Riza marched on towards Jasparting, he should have condemned her. But the dust whistled around the town and the soldiers, and nothing happened.
* * *
Hours after the city had been cleared, Riza kicked open a bedroom door, and stood by the window, rifle at her side. The Armestrian sniper in the opposite house had been killed with a single shot; the hostiles were now exchanging fire with a patrol at the far end of the street. In the five minutes before Major Mustang arrived, they would have to escape the house where they were holed up, by the back door that Riza’s gun was now fixed on.
A harsh call made her glance up; she smiled thinly at the shadow hovering over the sun. Another rifle crack from the house down the street returned her eye to her sights. In last year’s failed attack on Jasparting, both sides had knocked through thin connecting walls to outflank their opponents in street battles, but Riza had checked her house already.
It was definitely an Armestris rifle firing; of course the Ishbalans had captured scores. Then there were stories of soldiers who went mad with fear, and would shoot anything they saw within range. That would be a terrible way to go.
They would flee away from the patrol, to her. She would hear them if they broke through the wall downstairs-there had been a wardrobe against the wall. She had checked it, but not carefully-outside the door to the room, someone breathed. Riza gasped.
There was a second, and then both women moved. Riza saw it was a woman, and she didn’t bring her gun round and fire, but the Ishbalan woman did. Something slammed in her chest; she fell back through the window behind her and hit the dust in the street below with a crack.
* * *
The sun filled Riza’s eyes; her arm screamed when she tried to lift it. She moved her eyes, and stared at a scorpion resting in the wall’s shadow, pulling a cricket apart with its claws. The hawk’s shadow moved across her face; an old symbol of justice. When she drew a breath, she would feel her wound, and it would suck life out. Heaven and hell would devour her between them, like the scorpion and the hawk would.
Breath. Coughing, pain in her lungs and chest, no bullet in there. Nowhere in her body-in her rifle. The carefully polished side was rent where the shot had ricocheted off.
Her gun. Riza had cleaned and wrapped it for years, like a baby. Tried with her soul to understand all of what it did, even when she hated the burden. Now it had protected her, as if a flower had sprung up on a plain of death. No matter the weight, the world still made hope. She was alive.
The next back door along slammed open. The Ishbalan woman burst out and ran, to fire on other troops in another place. Riza drew her pistol, rolled over, sparing her fracture and rested the gun’s butt on a rock as she aimed. With a cry the hawk dove on the scorpion; sometimes the war totally surprised, sometimes it was sickeningly predictable.
The woman turned to the sound, fumbled with her gun. Half the row of houses behind them exploded in flames, as Riza fired.
The woman fell, but she was breathing. Riza trudged to her side, gun aimed. The Ishbalan woman had the strong, fleshy body made for hard living in the desert; her hair was a torrent of white curls under her scarf. Riza saw her spit blood into the dirt as she prayed.
“Why...why’d you fight? Your religion doesn’t let women fight.” It was all Riza knew about Ishbalan religion, apart from the rubbish the Military had put out about facemasks on women and beatings to drive out demons, “For your children?”
“Uh-uh-all dead,” The woman gasped, “Protect from you...anyone. Somewhere. Don’t know. Fucked if I know,” She grinned, and Hawkeye suddenly smiled with her.
She choked out the last line of the prayer. It was the prayer all the Ishbalans said before they died, in Armestrian, and her eyes were fixed on Riza’s all the time.
I am a mote of sin, on the great plain of Ishbala’s mercy. Oh God of the universe, grant us peace and salvation. With love like the sky you take our sins from us; as far as the East from the West.
The woman breathed out, and was dead; as far from Riza as could be imagined. She stood over the woman for a time, looking up at the sky, before she left to find a medic.
The next day she buried a child’s body that had been left where he’d been shot, beside the road. She hoped it was as good as a prayer, and tried to imagine having children herself. Maybe that was why the Ishbalan woman had shot first.
* * *
“Once your arm mends up, Lieutenant, we’re going to have a lot of work ahead. I want you to watch my back. That means if I stray off the path again, you can shoot me. You have that right.”
“If that is your wish. I would follow you into hell, Colonel Mustang.”
“Well, you’ve done that already. But if anyone goes back there, it should be me.”
“You haven’t heard from Dr Marco have you, Sir?”
“The State Alchemist who deserted? Sadly, no-I mean, of course not.” As Roy coughed, Riza gave a small, proud smile. She silently wished Marco what happiness he could find.
For her, even with the war over, happiness remained a dream. She understood now that it had been a dream for her father too, hidden in his alchemy and its brighter tomorrow, after her mother had died. She could hope she had been a comfort to him.
As for her own dream, Roy Mustang was here with her. They could only say what Lieutenants and Colonels said, but she could be a comfort to him. He was her reason to live, so she could die for him quite easily. They were sinners, expelled from Eden without knowledge of God-together. Their sin would always be close to them, but far away, because forgiveness was even closer.