Chapter Text
"Lieutenant Hawkeye will be my eyes."
And she also became Roy's guide.
And his cook.
And his overall caretaker.
A fucking nanny, that's what she was. This time, for real. He'd already hated that nickname for her before, but now? He loathed it.
"Tea at three o'clock."
Roy was sitting at his own tiny kitchen table, head in his hands. The day had been exhausting. Rehabilitation was exhausting. Physically. Mentally. It was also frustrating. The pain in his eyes spread into his whole head. It joined the chorus of his hands and the burn in his side. Hawkeye's stern voice and proper manners were getting on his nerves. It wasn't what he needed.
But the hot tea would at least soothe some of the tension in his hands. Roy extended his arm in the direction he was told to--
And pushed the cup off the table with the back of his hand.
The cup crashed on the floor, exploding in an almost cristalline sound on the kitchen tiles, splashing scalding hot water against the legs of his trousers.
" Shit. "
"It's okay, General. Just step aside, I'll--"
General. Do you hear yourself, Hawkeye? General?
Roy kept his thoughts to himself and pushed the chair aside, still sitting on it. A light hand came to rest on his knee. The touch -- Hawkeye's hand is on your knee -- sent a jolt of something up his spine, and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. They touched so rarely, even now that he actually needed it. He wished they did so more often. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure she was really there. And now, he couldn’t turn around to glance at her, catch her eye and immediately know what she was thinking.
He couldn’t help it, though. He reveled in this touch, and maybe felt a little more at ease than he'd been all day -- until she talked.
"Are you okay, sir? Did the tea b--"
"I have suffered far worse burns, Hawkeye. Stop this."
Roy's whole day really had been awful. He'd been so slow at preparing he'd made Hawkeye wait, and he got himself and her late. He'd managed to get lost during mobility training, and he knew his frustration and anger were visible -- he hated that. Especially now that he couldn't see it in others. He had not been prepared for this feeling of vulnerability, of feeling everyone could see everything in him -- while he, himself, had lost all the non verbal communication he actually relied on a lot more than he'd thought. He had carefully avoided being seen for years, crafting his persona, maintaining the very image he wanted everyone to have of him. And this image was shattering, the façade altering. He couldn't have this, not now, not when he needed more than ever to prove he was fit for the role he was aiming for.
Roy sat, waiting for Riza to tell him he could get up without stepping on porcelain shards, mulling his day over.
The true highlight of the day had been the random conversation one of the older trainers -- one who had never interacted with him prior to this day and apparently didn't even know Roy's identity -- at the rehab facility had tried to start with him.
"You know, you're kinda lucky, boy," he'd said in a gruff, cigarette heavy breath. "Before Ishval, and all the people injured by the war, this place was a lot smaller. It's awful, in a way, but we got lots of new students, and experience. Changed the way we train. Now the students get back on their feet faster, they're a lot more independant. We changed the canes we used, too," he went on, patting Roy's left hand, in which he'd shoved a surprisingly long cane a little earlier. "Really, somehow, you gotta thank that war, son."
Roy had listened, his jaw clenching harder at every word.
He had answered through gritted teeth.
"You said it. Awful. Trust me. I know the war brought casualties."
And while he tried to keep his head low and embrace the fact that being dressed in civvies allowed him more anonymity than before, he almost snapped and coldly informed the trainer he was General Mustang.
The goddamned hero of Ishval. He probably had brought many of those injured men and women here himself. But he didn't say anything, and went on with his training, the smell of ash and dust, and the screams of agony in his mind.
And now, this.
And now, Hawkeye, Captain Hawkeye, the best soldier he'd ever had on his team, someone who was so dear to him he’d felt his heart turn to dust when he'd seen her close to dying, who had never one word above the other, always calm and composed; Captain Hawkeye was silently crouching on the floor of his flat, cleaning yet another mess he'd made.
Never a complaint.
Never a word.
He thought about a man looking way older than his years on his dying bed, coughing blood, when his always dutiful daughter took care of him, of his house, of his self absorbed apprentice, also. He remembered her frail wrists bending under heavy loads of firewood, the dirt always stuck under her nails from running various errands.
She was nothing near frail now, and he didn’t need to be able to see her to know. But here she was, taking care of him, in the exact same way.
Nausea crawled up Roy's throat, choking him. In something that should have been rage but felt very much like despair, he shot his hand where he knew she was crouching, from the angle of her hand on her knee, earlier. He caught the first body part of hers that brushed his fingers, and grabbed it.
"Stop this."
A steel grip caught his hand in return. Fast. Hard.
"Don't."
Roy moved his fingers, feeling his wrist bones grating against each other under Hawkeye's tight grip, to understand what sat under his hand. Her shoulder.
He’d startled her.
Roy didn’t know if he really felt bad about it. He let go, and Hawkeye's hand left his wrist.
"Stop this. I don't need you for that."
He had no idea how he'd clean it, but he'd find a way. He just loathed the idea of her cleaning his mess. What was she thinking of it? Of him? Hawkeye, always so silent. Always so cold. Only he could decode all her little signs showing that she wasn't that withdrawn, aloof woman people thought she was.
And now he couldn't anymore.
"You do. You don't start the training for this until next week."
Damn you and your thoroughness, Hawkeye. Damn you and your memory.
Damn you.
“I don't. Need. You.”
It'd been alright, at the beginning. If there was one thing he could rejoice for in the disaster that had befallen him, it was that he could spend more time with her. Alone together.
But, no matter how hard set he was on keeping his head up, on learning and making progress as fast as possible so he could get back on his planned course, being dependant on others was really something he had not expected to be this hard to swallow.
Especially not this way, especially not from her.
He used to like it. He used to be happy to have her by his side all the time, her almost always neutral tone balancing his outbursts, her thoughtful nature reminding him of everything he forgot, or overlooked, pushing him to work, or to take care of himself.
Hawkeye was the ever patient one.
But now he couldn't put up with it anymore. It infuriated him. It made him crazy. He wanted to hurt her, to hurt her feelings, as much as his own were hurt, each time she did something for him, in his place, each time she overstepped. He was aching, and all the burning pain from his scars was nothing from the one that had made its nest under his ribs, just there. And this one never fainted, it only grew in intensity.
And today, it was too much.
Hawkeye’s voice didn't betray anything when she replied. Roy heard her get up. She was done cleaning. Her answer echoed in the bare kitchen of his small flat.
“I'm your personal assistant, sir.”
He got up, too. Stepped towards her, towering. At least he had a pretty good idea of where she was.
“You're nothing , because I am nothing.”
"Yet." Her voice stayed even. It was always even. "You're only on medical leave until you get your bearings back and can work again.”
He snickered.
“Am I? Will I? Tell me Hawkeye, what do you think?”
Silence.
“Not with that attitude, no.”
This time, ice crept under her words.
He felt a jolt of sour contentment at this sound. He finally got her to react. After all this time. She was something more than an overbearing nurse. Finally, she was herself .
“Well then. I want you out. Of my home. Now. Because that attitude won't get better, trust me.”
“But, sir, I - “
The ice had gone. Now she was pleading. This - this set his anger aflame once more. This, he couldn’t allow. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. He couldn’t tolerate her anywhere near him.
“OUT, CAPTAIN. Go get a life. One that is not tied to a human wreck, for once. Go. Away.”
Another silence. A very long silence, during which he could all too well hear his own heart pounding in his ears, his short breaths, his teeth grinding, even. Maybe.
But now, as usual, nothing from her. Imagining her looking at him at this moment made him nauseous.
“Fine.” She was cold. Collected. “I'll have Lieutenant Breda pick you up in the morning and Fuery drop you back in the evening.”
“I don't care.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
He turned her back to her.
“Piss off, Captain .”
"… you're useless."
"I know, lieutenant, it's the rain. Let me--"
Riza frowns, a sad expression dawning on her face.
"With all due respect, sir, it's not the rain."
Everything is dark, suddenly.
"Hawkeye? What-- where--"
No, not dark -- more like there is nothing. He walks a couple of steps, calling his lieutenant. Might use her first name too, in his panic.
He trips.
He falls.
Roy startled up, disoriented, tangled in his bedsheets. Or was it really his bed? It felt more like the sofa and its cover. What time was it? He wasn't supposed to dream with the pills he took. He was supposed to sleep. Soundly. No dreams.
Passing a hand over his face, he felt around for yesterday's clothes with the other. They were always neatly folded down on a chair next to where he slept -- that had been drilled into him by his aunt, and only now did he fully appreciate it.
But of course, that'd have been the case if only he had slept in his bed. Not on the sofa.
The clothes he was looking for were still on him, he realized. He fished into his pocket, retrieving the new watch he'd been gifted by his team. You could feel the hands on it, they'd said. He'd tried a few times. Failed. Then put it in his pocket and forgot about it.
Gingerly, he passed the tips of his left hand fingers on the face of the watch. Over. And over.
It took so damn long.
Focus, damnit.
… Five past ten? Was it?
… But? Am or pm?
The watch couldn't tell him that. His hand closed over it, and he was ready to throw it against a wall, when the injury in his palm reminded him of its existence. His arm spasmed, he caught his wrist with his other hand, and let the watch fall onto the covers with a muted sound.
At least it wasn't broken. And eh. You did it. You finally could tell the time all alone. Good job, as if you didn’t learn that when you were five years old.
With bile rising at the back of his throat, he got up, and walked straight to the window without thinking -- after all, he was in his own home, the flat he'd started renting when he arrived in Central, and while he had not spent much time in it, it was a familiar place.
It was so small and empty, anyway.
He opened the window in full, the crisp autumn air cooling his face.
Please be night.
Please.
He stood next to the open window, one hand on the sill, eagerly listening to what was happening outside.
Nothing much. Maybe a car in the distance, but definitely not on his street. He strained his hearing. Wind. A church bell -- morning or evening, this one was five minutes late, as he trusted his team to have set the watch on military time.
Silence.
Night, then.
Of course, he couldn’t know for certain. But someone would have woken him up in the early morning if it had been ten am. Right?
His first thought was for Hawkeye. But of course, she wouldn’t. For the past couple of weeks, as she had announced before she left to never return again -- as he himself had commanded - it was Breda in the mornings, Fuery in the evenings.
Roy mulled all this over, hand still on the windowsill, wind bringing the smell of dead leaves and the coming rain into his empty flat. He was shivering, but the cold made his mind clearer.
He never, ever got that angry at either of them, when they came to pick him up or bring him back from the hospital rehab facility. Even when Breda had casually offered to help him shave the next time, cause he’d nicked his neck pretty badly. Even when Fuery had sheepishly redirected him towards his door a couple of times before leaving.
The fire under his ribs had subdued. The whole fire in him was down. Something was missing, in fact. Instead of fire, there, only there, there was a hole. And he knew exactly what would fill it, but he also knew he couldn’t think about it. And that it was a bad idea. He didn’t want to hurt Hawkeye anymore. He had hurt her so much already. Everything that happened to her was his fault. And he had kept on hurting her. On purpose. And he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t do it again.
The bitter taste of bile rose again at the back of his mouth. He loathed himself.
He closed the window.
He was a good little student, he was learning, and actually seeing improvement. He did what he was told, he spent awfully boring hours learning stuff he had been taught before, only when he was a little kid. Re-learning, being taught new ways. Dull hours with his hands sprawled over thick paper sheets, his leg jumping up and down, restless, trying to make sense of these goddamned little dots. And, day by day, it actually started to make more sense, little by little. And he sometimes felt surprised, even sometimes proud about it, for a fleeting second. And then the pain in his chest would flare up and remind him that was pretty sad to feel pride about. That he was useless and would stay useless, no matter what Hawkeye or Grumman had to say, and a blind general was just not something that would happen.
But he carried on. What else could he do, really? He’d use spite instead of pride. Spite was a pretty good fuel. He’d show them. He’d show himself.
He’d show Hawkeye he didn’t need her.
Not this way.
That he had and would always need her. But not this way.
He sat on the sofa, laying his head on the backrest, his right hand massaging his left, kneading at the scar in his palm, then swapped one hand for the other. It was night, and he had slept for god knew how long. Judging by the hunger tugging at his insides, probably since he had closed the door on Fuery that late afternoon.
He’d been warned about this. He’d been told that totally blind people weren’t that common -- unless you’d been to war, he’d thought then, because he had in fact seen pretty gruesome injuries in Ishval, and a very vain part of him was actually relieved to think he got to keep his good looks, at least. Doctors knew one thing, though, and it was that the brain, without light input, had no idea when it was night or day, and would follow its own rhythm. And that his was absolutely skewed.
The difference four hours made. His sleep schedule was already messed up, he didn’t know it could become that messed up. He frequently dozed off during the day, falling asleep during his reading sessions. It didn’t help that Braille was hard, especially with his mangled hands, and that what he was supposed to read about was excruciatingly boring.
He went for a tour in the kitchen, feeling around empty cupboards. He found a piece of stale bread in one of the pantries and nibbled on it. He shouldn't have slept. He should have had something delivered. Too late now.
It was going to be a long night.
At the back of his head, the face Hawkeye had made in his dream was still there.
Useless .
With a groan and a sunken feeling, he pushed himself to pick the Braille book he had brought home. He had a mirthless smirk, thinking these dull reads about Amestrian history he practiced on made him miss his office paperwork. He read those because he knew them by heart.
He’d show her. He’d show Hawkeye. He’d show her and maybe they could speak to each other again, as human beings. As equals.
Roy stopped reading after a couple of sentences, his hands already sore. You wouldn't think reading with your fingertips asked for so many muscles in the hands. The ones that weren't yet totally healed. That spasmed every couple of sentences.
He needed to relax the muscles. Something hot would do. Maybe, tea… simply warming his hands around a cup of tea. It would warm his heart, too. He knew Hawkeye had stored some jasmine tea somewhere in here.
He sighed.
He missed her.
Focus.
How would he make tea, though? A little idea was worming its way through his brain. He'd been warned about pouring hot liquids, but… the other students weren't alchemists. Warming water directly in the cup would be a piece of cake for him.
He felt a little lighter, all of a sudden. He had an immediate plan, something to experiment on. Something to pique his curiosity. He had not done this in years -- he always had his lieutenant to make tea for him. He pushed this idea at the back of his head.
Focus, Mustang.
He pushed the book to the side, and got up. Somehow, even walking to the kitchen felt a little easier. He opened the cupboard in which he kept his surviving teacups -- second to the left when you're in front of the sink -- and fished for a cup.
He almost felt it happen. Almost.
He reached for a cup at the back of the cupboard, a little too far for his arm, and his sleeve caught something. Roy brought the cup back without thinking, his mind already on the experiment he was going to carry on, and his sleeve brought with it another cup his hand had not touched.
Which landed on the floor in a crash, exploding once again with a high pitched sound.
Roy's ears rang.
He muffled a yell through gritted teeth.
Useless.
Useless.
Useless.
Roy let himself fall to the ground. He sat -- cut one of his fingers on the debris. He brought the small injury to his mouth, tasting the blood surging from it. There was no point. He would never learn. He would never make it. He would never --
"Oh no. I'm sorry, Mr Mustang. I'm so clumsy, I'll -"
"It's okay, Miss Riza. Look. I'll fix it."
Roy draws a small circle with the pencil he keeps on his ear -- trying to emulate Master Hawkeye in that, a pencil always comes in handy, after all -- and places his hands on it. A small flash, and the cup that had fallen from Miss Riza's tray is as good as new, the tea back in it, clean and warm.
"Oh." Riza's cheeks are still red -- she's angry at herself, Roy realizes, seeing her frown -- but her eyes glisten. It's odd, Roy thinks, that she reacts like this to alchemy when her father is such an accomplished researcher.
And then she smiles. Roy smiles back, happy to witness such a rare sight.
"Here you go, Miss Riza. I'll drink it. Thank you for bringing it."
Roy's hand fell from his mouth. He didn't think. He clapped his hands and placed them on the ground. It was as if he could feel every little, tiny piece of the broken cup. Every molecule. Every atom. It was insane. He could feel everything. It was so easy. So natural. More than it'd ever been.
And then. He knew. He reached for the cup, gingerly feeling the ground for shards of porcelain. But he knew.
There was nothing.
In front of him stood only a cup, and it felt perfect under his frantic fingers. As if it had never broken, never exploded in dozens of pieces on the ground. Roy brought the cup to his heart, cradling it.
And he chuckled. It had a hard time leaving his throat.
Truth . Truth had given him this. He'd used it in combat, with Hawkeye at his side, instinctively, to protect them, mostly. It had worked, of course, or he wouldn't be there, but he didn't know how -- he had no time to dwell on it, nor did Riza have time to describe what it looked like. He'd always been good at alchemy, always got the hang of it faster, always understood better than his fellow students -- and even now, he still prided himself as being the (second) youngest to be awarded the title of State Alchemist -- but it was different. It was all on instinct, flowing through him. Roy couldn't help but feel the cup, again and again, the perfect porcelain so smooth under his fingers.
Truth had taken his sight, but he had seen it all. And it was still there, somewhere.
Roy got up, slowly, protecting the cup, holding it against his chest. A furious smirk tugged at his lips. He would find Hawkeye's jasmine tea, and he would fill the cup, and he would warm it, and he would drink the damned tea that he fucking made himself.
And he did.