Chapter Text
“Do you hate me, Hawkeye?”
They were standing at the threshold of her father’s study, watching inside the dusty room. They had been standing there silently for a long while before he asked his question, although she wouldn’t have been able to quantify exactly how long. “I did. For maybe two or three seconds, when I first caught sight of you in Ishval.”
He turned his head in her direction. “When you saved my and Hughes’ lives?” He was frowning. “Why?”
The question was vague enough that it could refer to a million different aspects of that event. Why did you hate me? Why were you feeling that hatred even while you were saving my life? Why did you save my life, if you thought I didn’t deserve it? But among the various possibilities that crossed her mind, she chose to answer the one question that she herself would have asked. Why did you stop hating me, when I clearly don’t deserve it? “I am as much of a killer as you are, Major, if not more. It’s not for me to play moral judge.”
She knew it was an impersonal reply, perhaps even too impersonal, but in all honesty, it was all she had to offer. She could have maybe tried to wrap that truth up in some rosy, consoling pleasantry, but she didn’t even consider that possibility. She may have done that with someone else, but with him, it would have been meaningless, and also, in some obscure, intimate way that belied the detachment of her words, disrespectful.
“Besides,”—she breathed deeply in, then out—“how could I hate you for the skills that I’m counting now on you to use?”
He averted his eyes again. She was sorry for her choice of words—skills. She herself didn’t know if she meant his flames or his ability to use them on people.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she added, not to soften the blow she had just dealt him, but because it was the truth and she wanted him to know it. “I’m afraid of what I might have done if you hadn’t agreed to this.”
He bowed his head and clenched one fist. It was her imagination, surely, but she could’ve sworn she heard the tendons in his hand creak. “Let’s go.”
He had prepared everything when she was still in the kitchen, cleaning up the remnants of their dinner. Neither of them had managed to eat much.
She was briefly taken aback when she saw the bathtub filled with water. “Why did you…”
“It’s for… after. I also put a little ice in it, so it won't get too warm,” he explained, pointing at the now empty but still wet bucket on which he had drawn in chalk what looked like a transmutation circle, presumably for transmuting water into ice—a reasonable measure, considering how hot summers in the East were.
“All right then.” She shed her shirt and then her bra. She covered herself with her arms, but she did so without urgency, simply for form. It wasn’t just that Ishval seemed to have upended her normal conception of modesty or decency; rather, she now felt towards him such a deep sense of complicity (the word carefully chosen, because it applied to friends and lovers as much as to criminals) that it seemed absurd to fuss over a bit of exposed skin. When it came to him, she had already been feeling as bare as can be for a long time. She suspected it might be the same for him.
“Here.” He was handing her a pillow, and as she had expected, he seemed utterly unphased by her partial nudity. “Kneel in front of the tub and lean on this.”
She thanked him and did as he suggested, clasping the pillow to her chest. She heard the rustle of the ignition cloth as he put his glove on, and then he kneeled by her side. “Are you comfortable?” His voice was shaky.
She wished she didn’t have to make him do this. “Comfortable enough.”
“Right.” He moistened his lips and shifted a little on his knees. He wasn’t looking at her. “You can bite on the pillow if you need to, and if you want me to stop, at any time—”
She touched his gloved hand, which was tightly clutching at the fabric of his pants. “I’ll be alright.” She cocked her head, trying to meet his gaze. “But will you?”
A tremor went through his body, and he still would not look at her. But suddenly, he lifted the hand that she was touching, and with his fingertips, in phantom touches, he started to trace the lines of her tattoo. “I thought it was so beautiful the first time I saw it.”
She pictured how his gloved hand would look when splayed atop the tattoo, with its miniature replica of the symbols inked on her back, flashy red on gleaming white, and gleaming white on the blood-streaked pink of her skin. “You don’t think that anymore?”
The pression of his fingers increased slightly. “I don’t know. I only know that ‘beautiful’ feels like too reductive a word, now.”
She wished once more that she could spare him this, but she was also starting to realize that maybe, twisted and morbid as it was, they both needed to go through this horrific pantomime. Perhaps it would help them both feel a bit cleaner.
She tightened a little her grasp on his thigh, where her hand had slipped when he had removed his own. “Let’s get it over with, sir. The sooner the better.”
He repeated, “Right,” and she leaned over, resting her head the edge of the tub, partially sustained by the top of the pillow. The position was reminiscent of someone kneeling at the chopping block. She found it appropriate.
She braced herself for the pain, but none came. She cast him a glance: he had his gloved hand poised to snap, but his face was contorted in what looked like pain mingled with hesitation. “Hawkeye,” he called softly. He had taken to using her surname—no ‘Riza,’ no ‘Miss’ in front of ‘Hawkeye’—In Ishval, and the word now sounded as unsure as it had the first few times he had used it back in the desert. “You said you don’t hate me now. But will you hate me afterwards?”
She turned fully toward him. “No, I won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m choosing this. If anything, it will make me admire you more, because I know how much it’s costing you. I could never hate you for helping me doing this.”
He looked like he didn’t believe her. “Do you promise?”
She straightened again and placed a cold hand on his colder cheek. “I do.” Just barely, but he relaxed, and she knew she had managed to get through to him. “But you, sir... you have promise me back that you won’t let the guilt cripple you. Not just your guilt for this, specifically, but for all of it. You won’t be able to achieve anything if you can’t do that. So do you promise?”
She was asking a lot, she knew it, and for a moment she wondered if it was altogether too much; but then he took a deep breath and said, “I do,” so resolute and sure, and she felt herself being flooded with awe and gratitude. “Let’s go ahead.”
She quickly resumed her position against the bathtub, and he quickly raised his hand again. For a split second, in a flash, she thought she could see her father’s face, right there by her side. He was smiling a knowing smile, but still she couldn't guess what he might be thinking, at this moment when he had to relinquish his hold on her.
She suddenly felt Roy's cool palm rest on the back of her neck, and then he snapped. The pain was excruciating, but still less than she had expected. He had explained that to burn the ink off, he would probably need to go deep enough to reach the nerves, and that the one positive thing about having to inflict so much damage was that it would mean a little less pain for her during her convalescence.
She knew the risks. She could go into shock, he could make a mistake and burn too deep, she could have respiratory failure—and afterwards, the burns could get infected, they could heal badly and forever reduce her mobility—she hadn’t let herself think about all that, she hadn’t wanted to. He, on the other hand, had taken every conceivable precaution. After grueling negotiations, he had convinced her to have him burn only a few portions of the tattoo, the ones without which the rest would become all but unusable. She knew he wouldn’t let himself make a single mistake, and she knew that he had made sure the village doctor would be available if they ended up needing professional help. He had come equipped with all sorts of medicines, salves, and bandages, which he had procured in the few days he had spent in Central after leaving Ishval before hopping back on another train and joining her in her father’s country house.
He had been marvelous through it all, and never, not once had he tried to talk her out of it, after she first asked him in Ishval. She was particularly grateful for that, and, strangely, also a bit flattered. He trusted her to have made what she thought was the right choice for herself. It involved obvious pain for her, and a less visible but no less real kind of suffering for him, too, but he had accepted it. She hadn’t lied when she’d told him she would only admire him more, if he did this for her. And he had.
“Shh, shh, it’s done now.” She felt his hands lifting her gently. Had she been screaming? She couldn’t remember. “It’s over, it’s all over, Hawkeye. Come here.”
The water wasn’t as cold as she had expected. And she thought dazedly that she must have been biting the pillow, because she could still taste the roughness of the cotton on her tongue and between her teeth. She gasped painfully as she came to rest fully in the tub.
“You have to tell me if you have difficulty breathing.” He was keeping her head out of the water with an arm looped under her neck. “Hey. Hawkeye. Hawkeye, answer me. How does breathing feel?”
“Alright,” she wheezed. “It feels alright.” She gripped the edges of the tub with trembling fingers. “Is it gone?”
She thought he might be shaking, too, with how jerky his nod looked. “As much as we agreed. It’s indecipherable now, I swear.”
“Thank you.” She shuddered in discomfort, but in that moment, an absolute certainty descended on her that the throbbing pain coursing through her back was Justice. It was the closest to a religious experience she had ever had in her whole life. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.” He was swiping a hand across her cheeks. If it was to wipe away some water or some tears, she couldn’t tell. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry, because I know you don’t want to hear that, so you don’t get to thank me either.”
He was right. They were past the sorrys and the thank yous.
She saw him reach with his free hand up to the sink. His arm came back holding a glass, which she guessed must contain bourbon, another of the supplies he had brought from Central. He took a long sip himself, and then held the glass to her lips. “Should help with the pain.” She drank.
He let her soak for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and then he helped her change into a pair of dry pants and eased her on her stomach onto her bed. He gave her a few pills to swallow: one was some new kind of medicine, he explained, that should prevent infection. The rest, instead, were for the pain, even though at this stage her whole body already felt numb and insensitive.
“I think it’s safe for you to sleep a bit, now,” he said, and right on cue she fell asleep to the sound of his softly spoken reassurance: “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
A couple of days later, he thought it was time to apply some unguent and then bandage the burns. The injuries had been too raw to try to soothe them with anything but cold water or even try to cover them up, but hopefully enough time had passed for them to have started healing.
“Does it hurt right now?” He was sitting on the floor by her low bed, examining various ointments and salves.
She squirmed. “It’s more like… pressure. Mostly I’m just tired of lying down like this.”
He really must have done a number on the nerves, he thought, if all she felt was pressure. He kept the acidic comment to himself and screwed one of the jars open. “This shouldn’t feel too uncomfortable.”
He used his fingers and was as gentle as he could, and she never showed the smallest sign of discomfort, but he still felt sick having to look so closely at the open wounds on her back, knowing he was the one who had inflicted them. He was almost done when she said uncertainly, “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’ve already taken up too much of your leave.”
He stopped and looked at her in silence, a cross look on his face.
She blew out a small, resigned breath from the corner of her mouth. “I know. I just thought I should say it.”
He collected some more ointment on his fingers and resumed his task. “I have three more weeks until I have to report at Eastern Command. I’ll stay here until then.”
She didn’t object. “I’m glad.”
He finished and wiped his hand clean on a cloth, and then he picked up from the floor a slim paper package. “This gauze is soaked in a special salve. They told me it accelerates cicatrization, and since it’s humid it shouldn’t get stuck to the flesh, so it’ll hurt less when we have to take it off.” He smiled feebly at her. “We’ll see how it works, all right?”
She was smiling at him, too. “You went all out, didn’t you?”
He cocked his head playfully. “What do I always tell you, Cadet? Go big or go home.”
She grimaced, and since he hadn’t touched her yet he couldn’t fathom why until she said, “They offered to make me second lieutenant. For my services to the country.” Her eyes had reddened. “I’m not a cadet anymore.”
That was quite the speedy promotion, especially for a soldier fresh out of the academy. “I’m sorry.”
She laughed while a single tear slipped out the corner of her eye and onto the bedsheets. “Rebecca congratulated me when I told her. Figures you would know what the right response was.” She wiped shakily at her eyes. “You always know.”
He wanted to console her, but how could he, when he was the cause of her unhappiness? He laid the first piece of gauze on her back, fixing it in place with small bits of medical tape. His hands had started to shake.
“Why are you crying?”
He wasn’t sure what she meant until he felt the wetness from a tear that had fallen on the back his hand. He finished fixing the bandages, and then he put the last supplies away and shifted until he could rest his arms on his knees. “Sometimes I wish you’d never met me, and sometimes I thank every god who would listen that if I absolutely had to drag another human being down to keep me company in my hell, it ended up being you.”
She sighed softly, though she still didn’t get up. “I feel the same, on both accounts.”
He remained silent.
“Do you think,” she started, but stopped abruptly, a little choked. “I know it’s crazy and self-centered, but it struck me that maybe all the suffering we left in our wake was the equivalent exchange we had to pay for the blessing of finding each other.” Her breathing had become fast and ragged. “Is that an exchange you would make?” she asked feverishly, watching him with shame. “Because I ask myself that question and I can’t—”
He kissed her. It was the first time, but it felt like the hundredth. “Listen to me now. We are together, and we are here. That’s just how it is and we can do nothing to change it. If we can find some small comfort in having each other, then that’s okay.”
She laughed through her tears. “You say that to make me feel better, but do you really believe it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said truthfully. “I’m just glad you could find it in yourself to stick by me in spite of everything.”
"You never have to worry about that." She pulled him on the bed with her.