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Naps = so not my thing. WHY AM I STILL AWAKE GODDAMNIT?! >__________> I skipped out watching the rest of the movie so I could sleep, and yet here I still am, damn it allllll. XD;;;;
Anyway, next round of drabbles. Hopefully will get more done tomorrow, but we'll see. >_>
story five thousand eight-hundred and ninety three, squared [requested by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flyingteapot; Destiny and originality. Or not.]
*****
People say there is no such thing as an original story, and that everything in the world is simply something else, redone and retold.
There are those who rail against fate, who weep of being cheated by destiny and chance. Others still argue for free choice, that nothing is preordained; we must *live our lives* as *we see fit*, for that is what can change the course of our lives.
Laius and Jocasta tried to send their son away to die, only to have him return and slice through the precautions, guilt in the act, though not the motive. Dream laid claim to the child fathered and born in his realm, and Hippolyta Hall moved forward as she believed herself compelled, until the entire Dreaming lay in ravaged ruins.
No one is quite sure who is the author of Destiny's book; no one has ever seen its pages closely enough to read them. Death, perhaps, may guess, but she will not say anything.
The existence of every being is a story, variations on a theme unrehearsed. Destiny answers no questions--but perhaps there was once an original being, a thread of a true beginning that found its spark somewhere that not even the Endless can reach. A thousand lifetimes spin past, worlds blooming and fading like exotic flowers.
And then Destiny lifts a hand, to turn to the next page. Everything that has been said before is wiped away, and all that is left is another blank slate.
--end--
----------------------------
As One to the Other [requested byharukami; Hawkeye and Winry, and parallels]
*****
She tells the girl that she would be glad to see her again, someday. It seems to be the right thing for the situation, to give a small phrase of hope in a house that seems weighted down by gloom.
Her commander sits assured and confident in the rickety old cart. When she questions him, he says, with utmost confidence, that Edward Elric will come to East City, and then to Central, to become a State Alchemist.
A year later, he is proven correct. She would not have believed herself, remembering the catatonic, pale child in the wheelchair: her most generous estimation had placed at least three years before the boy would emerge from his mind enough to interact properly with the world, let alone move freely with his new automail limbs.
She wonders if the little girl--Winry, she'd named herself--helped at all. Eleven years old was not too early to apprentice, not for a line of work as thoroughly detailed and involved as automail installation and maintenance. However, she does not ask, not even when Edward and Alphonse disappear for a week, and return with an air of certain fatalistic determination.
"They'll go far in this world, First Lieutenant," her commander says, without her asking. "Someday, I may even have competition for the top." He chuckles at that, but she sees the weighing and the calculation in his eyes: the Elrics are young, but they will bear watching, and the proper caution when the time comes.
It takes less than a year to learn his faith is not misplaced. Edward begins amassing a reputation for himself with single-minded determination. His eyes, like Colonel Mustang's, are aimed at a goal that can only be reached through unwavering determination.
Nearly two years pass before she hears Winry Rockbell's name mentioned again.
It is afternoon, and the Elric brothers have recently returned from a mission. Edward is rubbing at the join of automail and flesh, complaining of the ache, and his brother suggests going back to Rizenbul.
"Auntie Pinako will be glad to see us," he says, as they walk by. "And then Winry--"
Edward says something else, but Hawkeye stops, and considers. So the girl *did* help to create Edward's automail. The revelation does not surprise her.
On the day Roy Mustang first left home to become a soldier, bright-eyed and straight-backed and convinced he could change the world, she chose to follow without second thought. With sure hands, she picked up the weapon she despised, prepared to kill.
Nearly two years before, in Rizenbul, Winry Rockbell sat on her grandmother's small couch, with the pinched expression of a child forced too soon into adulthood. Too young still to properly follow, as Liza herself had, she could only grieve for the anticipation of distance.
Hawkeye picks up the next file. The words she uttered as encouragement have now, in her mind, become a prediction.
Colonel Mustang resembles Edward more than either will care to admit, years rewound and fast-forwarded and tangled somewhere in between. So it does not surprise her that Edward must have his own support--his brother is too much a part of him, so close and involved with the ultimate goal, so there must be one other person who knows him best.
Perhaps Edward will be surprised, the day the girl arrives to stay. Perhaps Alphonse will be as well, though Hawkeye suspects he will be less so. Liza Hawkeye herself, however, knows it is coming. So until that day, she will take care of the Elrics as best she can, while watching out for Colonel Mustang, because as one to the other, she understands.
She knows.
--end--
----------------------------
firstborn son [requested bypellaz and kuragari; Hoenheim Elric, and his wife and son]
*****
She is, he thinks, like the flowers she loves--delicate and beautiful and far too short-lived. The baby that Rockbell's son puts into his arms barely weighs anything. He has books that are heavier than this strange creature, him and her, created by something alchemy still cannot even begin to approach.
Rockbell's daughter-in-law says something about the baby having his father's eyes, even as she carefully redirect his hands to hold the baby properly--"He's not a book or a letter, Hoenheim, you have to be gentle"--before she steps back.
It regards him with perfect calm, something almost thoughtful on its pudgy smooth face. The eyes are a milky strange blue. He doesn't see how they're like his at all.
And she herself, resplendent in the mounds of pillows, gives him a tired smile. He thinks again of flowers, with their simple beauty and brief lives. When she opens her arms, he is only too glad to transfer that nonexistent weight; his hands tingle even after they are empty.
"He's beautiful," she murmurs, the smile on her tired face radiant. The baby seems more natural in her arms, more an extension a her than a part of himself, and now it watches her instead, still weighing and assessing. When she draws her fingers down the side of its face, and its eyes narrow, like a cat in pleasure, his fingers itch. He wants to decompose this thing, deconstruct it into its component parts, and return the pieces to whence they came.
He finds he cannot look at her face for very long. Something about that radiance blinds him, and the child is such a small, undeserving thing.
She looks at him, inquisitive, when he gets off the bed. A flush still stains her face, high on her cheeks, and if he strains, he can hear how her breathing rasps at its end, just a little. Borrowed time no longer seems like such a cliché or a metaphor, not when she has just given away so much of herself.
He takes a piece of chalk from his pocket, palming it so she cannot see. On the bedside table are a few dried, withered remains of herbs--fragments of the home remedies that are as much a part of the practice Rockbell's son and daughter-in-law follow. Some of them lie with their stems partially submerged in water: so much the better, then.
With quick, sure strokes, he draws the array and touches his fingers to them. She sits up a little, an entirely new glow coming into her eyes, and this is his alone, completely unshared between any third party. But the child watches, too, and he feels its gaze on his skin like pinching fingers.
He tucks the newly-transmuted flowers into her hair, and then cups her cheek; she leans into that touch, and smiles at him, and for a moment, he does not see that milky gaze under her chin.
--"How does 'Edward' sound? He'll be successful in life, if he's anything like his father--"
After he notices it once, he cannot stop. Even later that night, with her body curled between himself and those eyes, they followed him.
Six months later, Edward's eyes have turned solidly gold, and he now sees where Rockbell's daughter-in-law found the association. This disturbs him further. He should not have to look into his eyes, in a face molded by her softness, and find himself wanting.
Her cough has grown worse, and sometimes, when she doesn't know he's watching, he sees her pause and sway, and in her droop he sees her flowers wilting. He's dusted off the top of his suitcase, just in case.
Edward is the "guardian of prosperity." But all he ever sees, in his son's knowing eyes, is the knowledge that names are the first lies a parent ever tells their child.
--end--
Anyway, next round of drabbles. Hopefully will get more done tomorrow, but we'll see. >_>
story five thousand eight-hundred and ninety three, squared [requested by
flyingteapot; Destiny and originality. Or not.]*****
People say there is no such thing as an original story, and that everything in the world is simply something else, redone and retold.
There are those who rail against fate, who weep of being cheated by destiny and chance. Others still argue for free choice, that nothing is preordained; we must *live our lives* as *we see fit*, for that is what can change the course of our lives.
Laius and Jocasta tried to send their son away to die, only to have him return and slice through the precautions, guilt in the act, though not the motive. Dream laid claim to the child fathered and born in his realm, and Hippolyta Hall moved forward as she believed herself compelled, until the entire Dreaming lay in ravaged ruins.
No one is quite sure who is the author of Destiny's book; no one has ever seen its pages closely enough to read them. Death, perhaps, may guess, but she will not say anything.
The existence of every being is a story, variations on a theme unrehearsed. Destiny answers no questions--but perhaps there was once an original being, a thread of a true beginning that found its spark somewhere that not even the Endless can reach. A thousand lifetimes spin past, worlds blooming and fading like exotic flowers.
And then Destiny lifts a hand, to turn to the next page. Everything that has been said before is wiped away, and all that is left is another blank slate.
--end--
----------------------------
As One to the Other [requested by
harukami; Hawkeye and Winry, and parallels]*****
She tells the girl that she would be glad to see her again, someday. It seems to be the right thing for the situation, to give a small phrase of hope in a house that seems weighted down by gloom.
Her commander sits assured and confident in the rickety old cart. When she questions him, he says, with utmost confidence, that Edward Elric will come to East City, and then to Central, to become a State Alchemist.
A year later, he is proven correct. She would not have believed herself, remembering the catatonic, pale child in the wheelchair: her most generous estimation had placed at least three years before the boy would emerge from his mind enough to interact properly with the world, let alone move freely with his new automail limbs.
She wonders if the little girl--Winry, she'd named herself--helped at all. Eleven years old was not too early to apprentice, not for a line of work as thoroughly detailed and involved as automail installation and maintenance. However, she does not ask, not even when Edward and Alphonse disappear for a week, and return with an air of certain fatalistic determination.
"They'll go far in this world, First Lieutenant," her commander says, without her asking. "Someday, I may even have competition for the top." He chuckles at that, but she sees the weighing and the calculation in his eyes: the Elrics are young, but they will bear watching, and the proper caution when the time comes.
It takes less than a year to learn his faith is not misplaced. Edward begins amassing a reputation for himself with single-minded determination. His eyes, like Colonel Mustang's, are aimed at a goal that can only be reached through unwavering determination.
Nearly two years pass before she hears Winry Rockbell's name mentioned again.
It is afternoon, and the Elric brothers have recently returned from a mission. Edward is rubbing at the join of automail and flesh, complaining of the ache, and his brother suggests going back to Rizenbul.
"Auntie Pinako will be glad to see us," he says, as they walk by. "And then Winry--"
Edward says something else, but Hawkeye stops, and considers. So the girl *did* help to create Edward's automail. The revelation does not surprise her.
On the day Roy Mustang first left home to become a soldier, bright-eyed and straight-backed and convinced he could change the world, she chose to follow without second thought. With sure hands, she picked up the weapon she despised, prepared to kill.
Nearly two years before, in Rizenbul, Winry Rockbell sat on her grandmother's small couch, with the pinched expression of a child forced too soon into adulthood. Too young still to properly follow, as Liza herself had, she could only grieve for the anticipation of distance.
Hawkeye picks up the next file. The words she uttered as encouragement have now, in her mind, become a prediction.
Colonel Mustang resembles Edward more than either will care to admit, years rewound and fast-forwarded and tangled somewhere in between. So it does not surprise her that Edward must have his own support--his brother is too much a part of him, so close and involved with the ultimate goal, so there must be one other person who knows him best.
Perhaps Edward will be surprised, the day the girl arrives to stay. Perhaps Alphonse will be as well, though Hawkeye suspects he will be less so. Liza Hawkeye herself, however, knows it is coming. So until that day, she will take care of the Elrics as best she can, while watching out for Colonel Mustang, because as one to the other, she understands.
She knows.
--end--
----------------------------
firstborn son [requested by
pellaz and kuragari; Hoenheim Elric, and his wife and son]*****
She is, he thinks, like the flowers she loves--delicate and beautiful and far too short-lived. The baby that Rockbell's son puts into his arms barely weighs anything. He has books that are heavier than this strange creature, him and her, created by something alchemy still cannot even begin to approach.
Rockbell's daughter-in-law says something about the baby having his father's eyes, even as she carefully redirect his hands to hold the baby properly--"He's not a book or a letter, Hoenheim, you have to be gentle"--before she steps back.
It regards him with perfect calm, something almost thoughtful on its pudgy smooth face. The eyes are a milky strange blue. He doesn't see how they're like his at all.
And she herself, resplendent in the mounds of pillows, gives him a tired smile. He thinks again of flowers, with their simple beauty and brief lives. When she opens her arms, he is only too glad to transfer that nonexistent weight; his hands tingle even after they are empty.
"He's beautiful," she murmurs, the smile on her tired face radiant. The baby seems more natural in her arms, more an extension a her than a part of himself, and now it watches her instead, still weighing and assessing. When she draws her fingers down the side of its face, and its eyes narrow, like a cat in pleasure, his fingers itch. He wants to decompose this thing, deconstruct it into its component parts, and return the pieces to whence they came.
He finds he cannot look at her face for very long. Something about that radiance blinds him, and the child is such a small, undeserving thing.
She looks at him, inquisitive, when he gets off the bed. A flush still stains her face, high on her cheeks, and if he strains, he can hear how her breathing rasps at its end, just a little. Borrowed time no longer seems like such a cliché or a metaphor, not when she has just given away so much of herself.
He takes a piece of chalk from his pocket, palming it so she cannot see. On the bedside table are a few dried, withered remains of herbs--fragments of the home remedies that are as much a part of the practice Rockbell's son and daughter-in-law follow. Some of them lie with their stems partially submerged in water: so much the better, then.
With quick, sure strokes, he draws the array and touches his fingers to them. She sits up a little, an entirely new glow coming into her eyes, and this is his alone, completely unshared between any third party. But the child watches, too, and he feels its gaze on his skin like pinching fingers.
He tucks the newly-transmuted flowers into her hair, and then cups her cheek; she leans into that touch, and smiles at him, and for a moment, he does not see that milky gaze under her chin.
--"How does 'Edward' sound? He'll be successful in life, if he's anything like his father--"
After he notices it once, he cannot stop. Even later that night, with her body curled between himself and those eyes, they followed him.
Six months later, Edward's eyes have turned solidly gold, and he now sees where Rockbell's daughter-in-law found the association. This disturbs him further. He should not have to look into his eyes, in a face molded by her softness, and find himself wanting.
Her cough has grown worse, and sometimes, when she doesn't know he's watching, he sees her pause and sway, and in her droop he sees her flowers wilting. He's dusted off the top of his suitcase, just in case.
Edward is the "guardian of prosperity." But all he ever sees, in his son's knowing eyes, is the knowledge that names are the first lies a parent ever tells their child.
--end--
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
2: EEEEEEe. I love it. It - it says so mucha bout Winry, and so much about Hawkeye, and so much about how history repeats, even if it's not *literal*. I LOVE, love LOVE it!
3: ...holy shit. This is... wow. And also ow; it's *creepy*, and just... it makes so much sense, in an odd way, and it's nearly 5:30 and I'm babbling, but just... it's a strange, abnormal father's jealousy,and even... even *fear* of his son? And... wow. Just. I LOVE the mood you capture here. It's so ... it just edges away from the 'normal' to be disharmonious; it's close enough that you know if it was from Trisha's POV, it'd be a 'perfect' day, a perfect birth, a perfect response, but from Hoenheim's... it's creepy. I LOVE this.
From:
no subject
1. Destiny is FREAKING HARD TO WRITE, kthx. :D;;; When I ran around to look up Hippolyta's last name, I saw the mention that he's the least-characterized of the Endless, which he really is. Damnit. XD;
2. Waaaaah♥♥♥♥ I'm so glad that you liked it, especially--it's rather nerve-wracking, to post things for someone and not hear a peep, so. XD;;;; [wobbles]
3. This is what HAPPENS when I get on a character-kick, and said character is one that barely makes any kind of appearence. [wry] Because, re: the discussions we've had, I honestly DO think that Hoenheim might have loved Trisha--but not had anywhere near the same depth of affection for his sons. >_>
Glad you liked! ♥
From:
no subject
.... I LOVED that last line. *______________*
~~Vikki
(the other two were good too, I just liked the third one best. >D)
From:
no subject
THANK you, I'm really glad you enjoyed them~ :D :D
From:
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...Ow.
From:
no subject
AUGH, and in the finals rush, I totally forgot about mailing you my phone number, I AM SO SORRY PLEASE SHOOT ME NOW. T____@
I have tests around the weekend of the 28th and such, but afterwards, I SHOULD have a decent two-week stretch before my second batch of midterms. :X What would work best for you? :O
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no subject
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It is, of course, amazing. You perfectly capture the way I think Hawkeye would think - she sees clearly, with a patient eye and a mind that catches things others don't, and her feelings for Roy, Ed, and Winry are so wonderfully expressed.
You have a bit of trouble with time and pronouns toward the middle of the piece. You go 'back' to recall Hawkeye following Roy into the military (her hating guns is a detail I looooove), and then say "two years later," which leads the reader to potentially assume you're talking about two years after Hawkeye joined the military, not returning to the subject of Winry and skipping ahead in *that* frame. You might watch out for that in the rest of the fic - that's the one that really caught me, though.
It's amazing, though. Thank you for giving my favorite character a little more background and a lot more life.
From:
no subject
Glad you liked it, though~ :D 'Cos dude, there needs to be more Hawkeye-stuff out there in the fanworld, woobity woo. >_> ♥
From:
March of the Sinister Ducks
March of the Sinister Ducks
From:
no subject
He wants to decompose this thing, deconstruct it into its component parts, and return the pieces to whence they came. Great line; it pinned down not only the main theme of the fic but also Hohenhime's personality and what he was feeling.
Lovely, lovely. Good luck on the rest of the drabbles.
From:
no subject
But, since he IS more subjective than many other characters, I'm very glad you liked this. You can argue him so many ways, so it's good to know I didn't botch up horribly. XD And thanks for the well-wishes--I've been busy this entire week and falling behind, but this weekend! I will catch up somehow! XO
From:
no subject
I'll never get over your knack for characterization and just how eloquent you are. You always capture exactly what I've always thought with the perfect words. More often than not things that didn't even occur to me.
And dude, considering the fact that it's Destiny. I love Destiny, he's so intriguing, but we see SO LITTLE of him. ARGH. SOB. T____T
*swoon* Loved this to death. Have my babies.
From:
no subject
[wobbles, lots] THANK you so much--I actually ended up agonizing a bit over this with a friend before I managed to get it written--"AUGH, I'm writing for SANDMAN which I love so much, and it's about Destiny, who ever appears! I WILL DIE!" XD;;
[sparkles grandly at you] Oh, no, you don't have to give me your babies. :D Just the occasional kind word does sheer wonders♥♥