[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. )
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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"I don't want to go." The words slipped out without her having thought about them, bold as anything, but they were true so she kept her gaze even on him, a tugging at the corners of her mouth. She turned and sat beside him, her back to the snow wall of the bunker and her shoulder just brushing against his. Looking up at him again, she smiled genuinely. "Someone has to look out for you and make sure you don't get frostbite, sir."
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"Any better?"
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"That doesn't exactly sound like a promotion, sir. I fill out paperwork all the time. I'm sure I qualify for something better than that." The smirk played across her lips again. "But I wouldn't complain if you wanted to go inside."
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No, couldn't be. This was Riza, after all. Best to just ignore it and move on. She probably just meant that she wouldn't mind if he went inside because it would mean she could go home.
"Okay, then a double promotion: Handwarmer and official Paperwork Filler-Outer. Next step is Tea Maker. After that, I'm not sure what the order is."
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"In fact, I'll be making tea as soon as I get home." She raised her eyebrows slightly, the only mark of hesitation on her otherwise unperturbed face. "I'm frozen. If you'd like to come with us," she gestured to encompass Hayate as he trotted back up beside her, black fur speckled with snow, "I can make you some too."
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His gaze traveled from her face to her hand and back. There was something he wanted to clarify first, if just so that he wasn't misinterpreting things anymore than he already was. Not knowing -period- was bad enough, but spilling and getting nothing in return was worse. "Not that it really matters since it won't change anything, but I'd appreciate knowing if this is going to be one of those unrequited affairs or not because I don't want to be left grasping at straws when I shouldn't bother."
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She ran her fingers against the seam on the outer edge of one of her gloves and looked out across the park. Breathing in, she tried to think of what to say and how to say it, how to adequately express herself without going too far, giving too much or wandering into the realm of speculation, trying to choose her words carefully as she pressed her lips into a thin line. She couldn't come up with a declaration that would make it past her lips. Eye contact was not possible so she kept her face turned aside.
"You wouldn't... be grasping at straws," she said softly and wondered why even this was so hard to say. Fear again, she reasoned, and she hated it. It felt cowardly to be afraid of a few words but still she couldn't come out and say quite what she felt. "It isn't unrequited."
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Now what was he supposed to do?
Using the wall of snow for support, he got to his feet and brushed the snow from his coat, shaking his head in an attempt to get it out of his hair. The entire situation had gone from innocent to embarrassing, and he wanted to give her an out so that it didn't have to be that way. "I have no intention of forcing you into anything, Lieutenant. It's just information, nothing more, and whatever you choose to do with it is your decision. As you said, I'm not going anywhere and the only way it can change things is if we want it to." He pulled his gloves back on, though they provided little warmth for already numb fingers, and put a hand on her shoulder as he readied himself to walk past her and back to his apartment. Despite the little voice in his head that screamed at him not to leave things like this, he didn't think she wanted him around to make things any more awkward than they already were.
"I only told you because you asked. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have said anything at all. It's not that I didn't want you to know... it's that it's something I don't feel I have any right to say to you."
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