[closed] The Mis-Adventures of Derpman and the BangBang Baby
Who: Roy (ignite_the_sky) & Riza (firebornfidelis)
When: Soon after this thread
Where: Park
Format: Paragraph
What: She wants answers, he wants..?
Warnings: Nothing as of yet
( This is some cut text. )
When: Soon after this thread
Where: Park
Format: Paragraph
What: She wants answers, he wants..?
Warnings: Nothing as of yet
( This is some cut text. )
She'd gladly take the heat of the summers at Eastern Headquarters over this any day.
Hayate, however, did not seem to share her distaste for the cold and snow. He ran through the white drifts like joy on four legs, racing around with a manic expression on his furry face, barking and leaving crazy zig-zagging tracks on the snowy sidewalk in his wake. But the fact that the little dog was happy did something to lighten her mood at least. It was difficult to be as stony and grumpy as she may have wanted to be while Hayate so enraptured with the season.
When they finally reached the park, Riza unclipped Hayate’s leash and let him run a bit more though she was careful always to keep an eye on him just in case. He raced back and forth, running circles around her and stirring up little clouds of fluffy snow as he went. But even with half her attention on the dog, her sniper’s eyes caught her target almost immediately. Why he had felt the need to build a tiny fortification was at the moment beyond her ability to fathom. She could only assume that, like Hayate, the snow had gone to his head. She made her way toward him with feet - cold even in her military issued boots - prepared to stand her ground.
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He'd have to apologize for asking her to come out, and maybe accompany it with the offer of something warm to drink, but that would come later. For now, he was "lying in wait for his prey".
As he peered over the top of his little fort, watching her draw ever closer, his mind raced to calculate her distance... and the moment he deemed her close enough, he let the snowball fly.
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The offending projectile exploded damply on her shoulder, snowy bits clinging to her coat. She hadn't really bothered dodging except enough to be sure it didn't hit her in the face. She extracted her hands from her pockets only to brush away the remains of the snowball before offering a glare in her commanding officer's direction.
"Colonel." There was enough warning in her voice to let him know she was really not in the mood for games. Not that she actually expected him to heed it.
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It was worth a shot...
Sinking down behind the bunker with his back against the wall of snow, he sighed and huddled up for some vague semblance of warmth. Had he been thinking about it beforehand, he'd have grabbed some branches to use as firewood and cleared a little spot out, but now he didn't have any desire to. He knew that tone, he knew he was probably in trouble and he knew why ... he just hadn't expected her to find out so quickly.
He pulled one of his pyrotex gloves from his pocket and held it up, waving it like a white flag of surrender. She wasn't in the mood for games and he wasn't in the mood for a lecture, so it was best to get this over and done quickly.
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Crossing her arms, she looked at him critically, almost expectantly. He'd made her come out here just to hear an answer to her question and she intended to have that answer. But she allowed none of her storm of internal confusion show on her face. It wouldn't really do to let him see how much not understanding his intentions bothered her.
"Having fun, sir?" A little lighter, though not quite forgiving. She wasn't planning to back down but she also had no real desire to get in an argument with him right off the bat.
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"Not particularly, Lieutenant. Can we get this over with? I'm freezing." He didn't even look up from the dog, perfectly content to direct his attention to someone who wasn't going to want to bury his head in the snow when his answer wasn't up to par. "That 'something relevant' you wanted to tell me... If it's what I think it is, you won't like anything I have to say about it."
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"Dawn told me it was you who signed me up for that auction." Might as well fill in all the gaps now. That was her 'something relevant' and she assumed it was probably what he expected to hear from the way he was speaking. What she didn't know was why and what could possibly be so damning about his explanation that he felt the need to dance around it as much as he already had. "And then you bid on me, and well beyond what anyone would consider a reasonable sum." She stared at him, unflinching, though her feelings were far more jumbled than her unwavering gaze she was afraid they bled a little into her voice. "Why?"
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He was fine with words. He could be as eloquent as the next person and easily talk his way out of most situations if he really tried. But this..? This was already in a realm unto itself. This was emotional, and his hold on that was about as secure as his ability to get FullMetal to listen to him without some sort of barbed retort forthcoming -which was to say not very good at all.
"It's probably better that she told you, because she saved me the hassle of trying to come up with a way to say it that wasn't going to be met with too much argument."
No, really. He'd definitely have to thank Dawn later for that, and apologize for whatever reaction his Lieutenant might have had.
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"I know I said I wanted to make an effort, but I don't appreciate that this attempt to make me more attainable, as you say, happened without my knowledge. I'm sure you know, now, what it feels like to be bid on like livestock. But I didn't wish that on you." She could have protested that she did have at least one interest outside of guns and dogs, but that was rather more than she was prepared to admit in her current mood.
"Besides which, sir, that was only half an answer to half of my question. You've only said part of why you signed me up." And what she really wanted to understand was why he had bid what he had. Holding Hayate against her chest, she continued to look down at him, expectant.
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His gaze shifted to the snow at his feet, and he raised his hands, cupping them together and blowing into them to try and warm his fingers. "I know that, and I only gave you half an answer because you won't like the rest. I certainly don't, and I'm the one who used it as a means of justification." A pause as he deliberated his next course of action, because she wasn't going to like this. "It was a means by which to convince myself that I didn't care. That there wasn't some underlying reason behind things. That I was just overreacting before, and it didn't matter who you were with."
He still couldn't bring himself to look at her, afraid of what he would see when he did, but more so of what would be visible to her. "You asked why I bid on you. That's because it didn't work. It did matter, and I did care. You asked why I knowingly exceeded that which I could reasonably afford -why I didn't bat an eye about putting myself on the street over it... but..." He paused, his usual mask of indifference slipping back into place, but it felt wrong -like it didn't quite fit- so it was hastily discarded. He wasn't good at this. She was putting him on the spot and asking for an explanation he didn't know how to give.
And so he hoped that the fidgeting came across as something done intentionally to keep warm, the faint color that crept into his face just a reaction to the frigid air, the somewhat shaky note in his voice only present because he was cold, as he raised his head to fix her with a rather resigned look. "...you already know the answer."
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He had put her name into the auction in order to prove to himself that seeing her with another man wouldn't bother him. But it hadn't worked. Even though the man was not of her own choosing, he had been willing to bankrupt himself rather than let someone else win her? But still it didn't make any sense! Why should he care who she spent time with? Unless...
He looked up and suddenly it was hard to breathe, cold air burning into her lungs, and she felt frozen. Afraid to step forward or to move back. Afraid of falling out of the safety of this limbo they'd been living in for... she didn't even know how long.
She set Hayate back on the ground and knelt down facing the Colonel. The cold seeped quickly through the layers of fabric she wore but now she barely even acknowledged the discomfort. For a moment it felt like slipping back into a different shell, as if the person she had been those few months ago when her Colonel had come back to her blind was separate from the person she was now. And maybe it was. But she was finding it hard to communicate with him now, sight intact, and she wanted to reach out and touch him to explain herself. But she didn't know how to say what she wanted and her hand shook and hesitated and ultimately she didn't quite have the nerve so she left it planted on her knee. She needed something... more from him before she could move on her own.
"Do I?" was all she could finally pronounce, her voice soft, her wide eyes searching his face, uncertain and confused but no longer upset. No, not upset, but something else now, something softer and more difficult to define and harder still to explain.
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Actions speak louder than words, huh? No, actions got him into trouble. Then again, so did words. Regardless of how he looked at it, it was an unknown territory for him.
"...yeah. You do." He couldn't bring himself to say it, because he didn't know what "it" was, and without something in his past experience to compare it to, he couldn't even begin to know what that something was let alone decipher the meaning behind it... but it was something, and it was there, and no amount of denying it or trying to bury it could make it go away.
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In her head, there had always been a set of rules, strict guidelines to follow when she was with him. She had never really given them much thought but rather kept them there in her mind as if they were natural. How far away to stand, when and what kind of physical contact was permissible, when to stay calm and when to lose control. It had seemed to make perfect sense not only because dealing with him could be like handling fire, but also because of how important he was to her. The rules were meant to keep them both safe and stable and unchanged. To keep them side by side.
And she had, since coming to Anatole, probably broken every single one. It was harder without the military, without the goal, to stick to a plan she had laid out for herself almost ten years ago, but she knew that crossing those lines were where the confusion had come from. And yet, she did not know how to back up and step back behind the line now that it was behind her.
Unfortunately, she didn't really know how to step forward either.
"... what now? What does that mean?"
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He didn't want to lose her, and that's what stood to happen if any of this meant something. It was like being on a wire, dangerously high above the ground, where even the slightest misstep could send everything crashing down around him. She was his best friend, his not-quite-sister, his supporter, his subordinate. She was his entire life wrapped up in a pretty blond package. To let himself get this close was going against everything he'd ever known.
Or was it?
Was it really that she was so untouchable like he'd come to believe, or was it that he'd thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, she'd still be there when he was ready to settle down? Had he really never looked at her, or had he been looking at her all along without ever realizing it? Was it that he wanted her near him as his own personal executioner or was it that he wanted her near him because he didn't want anyone else to be near her? Was the reason he turned down General Grumman's attempts at playing matchmaker because he wasn't interested, or because it hadn't fit in with his plans at the time? Was the way he'd reacted when she was in danger only because she was a precious subordinate and friend, or was it because there was something more he just hadn't acknowledged on a conscious level?
He'd never actually thought about it, his own motives and reasoning. He'd satisfied himself with building a persona that was capable of masking his real intentions from others, but had never noticed if and when it began obscuring himself from himself ...and by doing so, had he completely shot himself in the foot?
The thought that there might have been something he missed, something so small yet so big, stung. How could he have missed that?! His life had been so meticulously plotted out along a marginally changing path that left no room for error, and yet here was a glaring red mark. Here was something he hadn't planned for, something he had no real preparation for, and it was sending all of his carefully laid plans to hell faster than if he'd burned them himself! That outward persona he'd constructed held no room for things such as this... so why was it happening?
And if that were true and he really had missed it, then for all of his grand visions and dreams, when had he lost sight of himself?
He raised his head, finally able to actually look at her, a slightly dazed look in his eyes, confusion written all over his face, "... Or did I just inadvertently fuck everything up?"
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And the truth was that she had no better answer than that. She had already been wondering if whatever it was they were to each other hadn't been irreparably changed by the things that had happened to them here. All the weird occurrences that could never have happened back home in Amestris, like seeing one another's dreams and meeting a version of him from ten years in the future. Watching him die and learning just what it felt like to have to live without him. She didn't know exactly what all of that had done to them but it had to have changed them at least a little, in small ways if not large ones.
He looked so lost, so confused as to appear almost unwell and all she really wanted to do was touch his face. To show him she was here and solid and she wasn't going anywhere, no matter what. But part of her knew that the things informing that impulse had all originated here, in this city. The months she had spent without him, living in a world that was alternately grey and bloodred, waking up screaming in the middle of the night or day without warning. Losing him had destroyed her and she had spent three months wanting nothing so much as to touch his hand or feel the warmth of his skin again, his presence an infinite comfort in a world where she didn't deserve to live.
And from that other him, the blind man with whom she had desperately tried to make up for her deficiencies in the ability to make herself understood through touch. A hand on his face, on his neck, on her heart. The steady hands she had used to lead him in that odd turn of the tables.
... And maybe the other night as well. When the wine had dulled her inhibitions enough to allow her close to him without being afraid of going to far. And she had rested her head on his shoulder and held his hand and slept by his side. And even after, when she woke in shock and then hid from him, she couldn't think of a time when she had felt more comfortable than she had when she was close to him. All that had given her a taste for his nearness, for intimacy like that. Touch. And she didn't know what it meant or how she had changed but she knew that touch was something she was not allowed if she followed her own rules with him.
And she followed them now. For a thousand small huge reasons, not the least of which that she was afraid. And that she was confused and he was confused and she didn't know how he would react. In part of her mind it annoyed her that it worried her so much, but she didn't know what she would do if he pushed her away.
"... Are you all right?"
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Wait. That meant this whole thing was on him, didn't it? He was the one with the emotional hangup. He was the one who had just put everything on the line. Whether that something was there or not, it didn't matter one bit because it was all him.
Which meant it was one-sided.
He could deal with that. He'd figured it would be something of the sort, after all.
He gave her a small, somewhat sheepish smile, "You can go if you want, Lieutenant. I know you don't like the cold. I'll probably stay out here for a little while. I can still feel my toes, and my fingers aren't quite numb yet."
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