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speaksoftlylove2013-09-28 12:01 am
dalicious) wrote in speaksoftlylove2013-09-28 12:01 am
FIC - Timeless Like A Broken Watch
fullmetal alchemist/where in the world is carmen sandiego
kimblee + carmen, route cr/au
1445 words
The first time they meet, they're in his world; her name is different and her hair is pale but her face is the same, and she's swept up in the vigor of the uprising, the screams of the people and the single bullet that set the whole thing in motion; she hadn't witnessed it (very few of them had), but everyone in Ishval had heard the shot. The blood had flowed freely for seven years, a gaping wound in the Amestrian countryside, and as much as she detests weapons she does what she can for her people, stealing supplies from the trucks that arrive emblazoned with the white dragon, the seal of the military. The day the trucks fail to arrive on schedule (and "on schedule" is generous; the truth is that they fail to arrive at all) is the day she knows the Kanda district's death warrant has been signed.
She hears of his power long before she sees him, and all she can think is "that's cheating."
Amestrian soldiers find her days after the initial strike; her ability to escape, to blend and remain unnoticed through clever tricks and redirection, is useless against a man who can level cities by touching his palms together. She's not sure whether it was the shockwave or the shrapnel that damaged her spine; she just knows that if walking isn't an option then she's going to crawl, damn it, because she doesn't have any other options and "giving up" isn't even on the table. She's doing pretty well for herself, all things considered, when his men catch sight of her on one of their rounds through the wreckage; they grab her by the hair and drag her up and she's a bit too busy seeing red (from pain, from rage) to register all the slurs they're calling her.
And to her surprise they're silenced - not by retaliation from her people, but by a soft voice with a light accent from the Northern territories, and it's then that she manages to catch a glimpse of the man they're already calling the Destroyer of Ishval.
He's shorter than she'd pictured, long-haired and effeminate and even if he's muscular it's in an unnatural way that doesn't compliment his frame; he's compact in a way that's created for agility, for evasiveness and quickness, but he's forced himself into strength - something made incredibly obvious by the fact that he's dressed differently from the others, the long blue jacket discarded in favor of something white and sleeveless, and when he speaks - saying something about how he values tenacity in people, how he admires how hard she's been trying to stay alive and if anyone else in his unit thinks they can do better then he'll have no trouble testing that eventually - his voice never leaves that soft, cold range that betrays next to nothing.
And when he looks at her his eyes are both alive and empty, bright amber with pupils tightly constricted by something that can only be called insanity, and when he looks at her his gaze seems to shift somehow; there's a sharpening there, a change in focus that seems to see her more completely than any human has any right to, and if she were anyone else she knows that she would be intimidated by it.
As it stands, she tips her head up, because she has nothing to lose.
Let the bastard look.
And because he works with idiots, they still seem to expect him to make a sport of the kill; he doesn't address those expectations, because he's not an idiot himself. He speaks only to her, so quietly that she can't be sure the others can even hear him, and he tells her that he'll never forget her.
His hand finds the back of her neck; the break comes easily.
The second time they meet, they're in a world that belongs to neither of them, and neither of them remember the first time; Nietzsche occupies a space in her mind that she wouldn't give up for the world - partially because of the challenges it puts her through, and partially because, for now, he occupies it.
She doesn't love him, and she's happier that way; the fact of the matter is that she doesn't want to. But he's a lovely game and an excellent puzzle and as much as it kills her he's not a terrible friend, either; he'd been shorter than she'd pictured over their conversations via text, long-haired and effeminate and looking like he doesn't eat enough, and he likes doing crazy things just like she does, and several months after their little meetings start they find themselves sitting together on a ledge near the peak of Mt. Mortar. He's got one leg tucked up underneath him, the other dangling off the edge like he doesn't realize how easy it would be for her to take him off balance and shove him off in that position, and she smiles to herself at the knowledge that he's fully aware of it, he just knows she won't.
And besides, there's nothing like wondering if one day, she will.
When he speaks, she has to wonder what he would sound like if the universal translator were to stop working; if he would have a particularly thick accent if he tried to speak English, if he would sound German or Swiss or Austrian or entirely foreign and impossible to place, if all of his words would be things she could understand or if Amestris has words that she would have no immediate translation for. She's seen enough of his written language to know that the translator here is doing its job well enough, giving him speech patterns that are straightforward but light and strange in some ways, because he's the sort of person to say "so lala" instead of "na gut"; just the same, some nuances are lost and that annoys her somewhat - the change from "Ah, true?" into "Is that so?", "maybe I can try" into "perhaps I'll see about that" - and even if she knows it's a mistake, it's those parts of him that are lost in translation that she wants to hear about.
So she doesn't ask him about the war, and she doesn't ask him about Superior, and she doesn't try to ask him about his plans for this world; today she asks him about the radio he's mentioned and what he would do if he could finally turn it off, and she's unsurprised when he replies that he wouldn't know - that the sound has been a part of him for so long that he can't imagine existing without it.
And then he smirks at her and says that he likes some of the sounds that come out of it, anyway; if he turned it off, he would miss hearing her explosions.
She doesn't love him, but she doesn't doubt that she could.
The third time they meet, it's in her world, and neither of them remember the first two times; his name is different and his hair is shorter but his eyes are the same and he's working as a criminal pathologist in San Francisco, and he's got enough money to blow on expensive artifacts and enough intelligence to set a proper trap for her. And even though she knows she should be wary of people like him by now (because by now there have been several Lee Jordan Incidents, much to her chagrin), when he turns that piercing gaze on her and something behind his eyes seems to shift a bit, she doesn't just let the bastard look.
She extends him an offer; she forces his curiosity. And somehow, she knows he's curious, because he wouldn't do this sort of thing if he wasn't curious; it's an odd resonance but one she's content to think about later because she has to worry about now, and after a moment's consideration on his part, now is more than enough to please her.
And because she works with idiots, half of them want to know where the pun is in "Josef Kreiler"; the other half are quick to spirit him away as soon as he gets to the hideout, curiosity gleaming in their eyes, and she smiles a bit despite herself when he insists that people not touch his coat.
She'll keep an eye on him, as she keeps an eye on Mason and Sarah; she doesn't miss the way his eyes light up when explosives are mentioned, and she finds herself reaching up with gloved fingertips, rubbing away the odd twinge at the back of her neck.
kimblee + carmen, route cr/au
1445 words
The first time they meet, they're in his world; her name is different and her hair is pale but her face is the same, and she's swept up in the vigor of the uprising, the screams of the people and the single bullet that set the whole thing in motion; she hadn't witnessed it (very few of them had), but everyone in Ishval had heard the shot. The blood had flowed freely for seven years, a gaping wound in the Amestrian countryside, and as much as she detests weapons she does what she can for her people, stealing supplies from the trucks that arrive emblazoned with the white dragon, the seal of the military. The day the trucks fail to arrive on schedule (and "on schedule" is generous; the truth is that they fail to arrive at all) is the day she knows the Kanda district's death warrant has been signed.
She hears of his power long before she sees him, and all she can think is "that's cheating."
Amestrian soldiers find her days after the initial strike; her ability to escape, to blend and remain unnoticed through clever tricks and redirection, is useless against a man who can level cities by touching his palms together. She's not sure whether it was the shockwave or the shrapnel that damaged her spine; she just knows that if walking isn't an option then she's going to crawl, damn it, because she doesn't have any other options and "giving up" isn't even on the table. She's doing pretty well for herself, all things considered, when his men catch sight of her on one of their rounds through the wreckage; they grab her by the hair and drag her up and she's a bit too busy seeing red (from pain, from rage) to register all the slurs they're calling her.
And to her surprise they're silenced - not by retaliation from her people, but by a soft voice with a light accent from the Northern territories, and it's then that she manages to catch a glimpse of the man they're already calling the Destroyer of Ishval.
He's shorter than she'd pictured, long-haired and effeminate and even if he's muscular it's in an unnatural way that doesn't compliment his frame; he's compact in a way that's created for agility, for evasiveness and quickness, but he's forced himself into strength - something made incredibly obvious by the fact that he's dressed differently from the others, the long blue jacket discarded in favor of something white and sleeveless, and when he speaks - saying something about how he values tenacity in people, how he admires how hard she's been trying to stay alive and if anyone else in his unit thinks they can do better then he'll have no trouble testing that eventually - his voice never leaves that soft, cold range that betrays next to nothing.
And when he looks at her his eyes are both alive and empty, bright amber with pupils tightly constricted by something that can only be called insanity, and when he looks at her his gaze seems to shift somehow; there's a sharpening there, a change in focus that seems to see her more completely than any human has any right to, and if she were anyone else she knows that she would be intimidated by it.
As it stands, she tips her head up, because she has nothing to lose.
Let the bastard look.
And because he works with idiots, they still seem to expect him to make a sport of the kill; he doesn't address those expectations, because he's not an idiot himself. He speaks only to her, so quietly that she can't be sure the others can even hear him, and he tells her that he'll never forget her.
His hand finds the back of her neck; the break comes easily.
The second time they meet, they're in a world that belongs to neither of them, and neither of them remember the first time; Nietzsche occupies a space in her mind that she wouldn't give up for the world - partially because of the challenges it puts her through, and partially because, for now, he occupies it.
She doesn't love him, and she's happier that way; the fact of the matter is that she doesn't want to. But he's a lovely game and an excellent puzzle and as much as it kills her he's not a terrible friend, either; he'd been shorter than she'd pictured over their conversations via text, long-haired and effeminate and looking like he doesn't eat enough, and he likes doing crazy things just like she does, and several months after their little meetings start they find themselves sitting together on a ledge near the peak of Mt. Mortar. He's got one leg tucked up underneath him, the other dangling off the edge like he doesn't realize how easy it would be for her to take him off balance and shove him off in that position, and she smiles to herself at the knowledge that he's fully aware of it, he just knows she won't.
And besides, there's nothing like wondering if one day, she will.
When he speaks, she has to wonder what he would sound like if the universal translator were to stop working; if he would have a particularly thick accent if he tried to speak English, if he would sound German or Swiss or Austrian or entirely foreign and impossible to place, if all of his words would be things she could understand or if Amestris has words that she would have no immediate translation for. She's seen enough of his written language to know that the translator here is doing its job well enough, giving him speech patterns that are straightforward but light and strange in some ways, because he's the sort of person to say "so lala" instead of "na gut"; just the same, some nuances are lost and that annoys her somewhat - the change from "Ah, true?" into "Is that so?", "maybe I can try" into "perhaps I'll see about that" - and even if she knows it's a mistake, it's those parts of him that are lost in translation that she wants to hear about.
So she doesn't ask him about the war, and she doesn't ask him about Superior, and she doesn't try to ask him about his plans for this world; today she asks him about the radio he's mentioned and what he would do if he could finally turn it off, and she's unsurprised when he replies that he wouldn't know - that the sound has been a part of him for so long that he can't imagine existing without it.
And then he smirks at her and says that he likes some of the sounds that come out of it, anyway; if he turned it off, he would miss hearing her explosions.
She doesn't love him, but she doesn't doubt that she could.
The third time they meet, it's in her world, and neither of them remember the first two times; his name is different and his hair is shorter but his eyes are the same and he's working as a criminal pathologist in San Francisco, and he's got enough money to blow on expensive artifacts and enough intelligence to set a proper trap for her. And even though she knows she should be wary of people like him by now (because by now there have been several Lee Jordan Incidents, much to her chagrin), when he turns that piercing gaze on her and something behind his eyes seems to shift a bit, she doesn't just let the bastard look.
She extends him an offer; she forces his curiosity. And somehow, she knows he's curious, because he wouldn't do this sort of thing if he wasn't curious; it's an odd resonance but one she's content to think about later because she has to worry about now, and after a moment's consideration on his part, now is more than enough to please her.
And because she works with idiots, half of them want to know where the pun is in "Josef Kreiler"; the other half are quick to spirit him away as soon as he gets to the hideout, curiosity gleaming in their eyes, and she smiles a bit despite herself when he insists that people not touch his coat.
She'll keep an eye on him, as she keeps an eye on Mason and Sarah; she doesn't miss the way his eyes light up when explosives are mentioned, and she finds herself reaching up with gloved fingertips, rubbing away the odd twinge at the back of her neck.