// 026. [video]
[A thunk. A jolt as the Forge strikes the ground and finds itself face up. Dropped in movement, the sounds of breath and the edge of a red sneaker in an uneven beam of light against brick and pavement. On closer inspection, the shoe's only half red - stopped in a skidded trail of the same red (darker, thicker, god it's almost black but for the
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But it's been a week, and he's reached the point where he cannot stand the silence, anymore. Being left with nothing but his own thoughts, with the last few moments (fake or not, it didn't matter anymore) replaying over and over behind his eyes. He can't take it, and he checks the network again simply out of a need for distraction.
Once the video begins, he only watches, dully, at first. He doesn't think about what's being broadcast until that bloodstained uniform appears in the corner of the screen. Even then, his eyes only widen in marginal surprise, until that blond hair and the slashed face comes onscreen.
No.
No. No, no no, no no no no no--
His heartbeat quickens with the gasp he doesn't hear himself taking and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing it to be a lie, a projection of the dark mess inside his mind right now, but he opens them again, and it's not her but Dawn. And that should be a relief, but then he hears the damning words that confirm it.
He replays the video, this time watching it with a sick sort of clarity--clarity that has been absent from the man all week. And there it is, again.
Scar begins to shudder (in grief? horror?) and then.
And then. All of a sudden something snaps inside and the deluge spills over the broken dam. Rage, blinding rage and bitterness and hate that has been bottled up, pushed behind a barrier of who he was and who he wanted to be here, explodes all at once--there is a look in his eyes that only three people in Anatole would be able to recognize, and one of them is dead.
He screams--a raw, primal sort of noise of pure, undiluted emotion, and the Forge is smashed against the wall, exploding into its component pieces as his arm glows a bright red.]
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This sound. It is almost worse than what she remembers in the Mist, bent and keening and watchful over his brother's corpse. Had Commander Kuchiki dragged him out after all? (Yes?) Yes. She almost remembers that.
It's a melange of things she doesn't even begin to identify. Grief that isn't hers. Fear. What is this fear? An irritating tug beneath her chest at the realization that it's Riza again - that uniform again (Scar again) - and that he would never - in an eon's worth of borrowed time - show such a display if it were she on the screen.
A pause as she wishes it were - just barely - so fleeting the thought's gone before it really solidifies.
She's happy to let it go. On its heels comes a wave of self loathing and spite - this is a dead woman and a stricken girl - Alphonse's friend - and is she really thinking about---
---why is she thinking about any of it at all?
Why is she moving toward the door, wincing at the distinctive sound of the Forge coming undone as it disconnects?
She doesn't have answers. For any of it.]
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