Fic: The War Prayer (2/3)
Part 3 still in progress, but the wait for it won't be any longer than the wait for part 2.
Title: The War Prayer (2/3)
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Character(s): Scar, Scar's brother, Scar's teacher, OCs
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I no own. Please to not be suing now.
Warnings: Spoilers for Scar's backstory, but nothing for the rest of the series. Themes of impurity -- rape, violence, revenge, incest, the guilt of the victim, the lesser of two evils.
Summary: The man destined to become Scar was once a refugee like any other, concerned only with taking care of his mad brother. But long before he gained an injury and a mission that would change his life, he had to learn the hard lesson that not all victims are innocent.
Author's Note: This has proven an extremely difficult story to write, if only because it requires me to maintain a certain mindset that is uncomfortable if not downright nauseating. I think it's one of the strongest things I've ever written, though. In this chapter especially, I've played around with some uncomfortable ideas about the relationships between emotional closeness, innocent sexuality, incest and rape. Hopefully, the subtleties will play out the way I meant them to.
The title is from the Mark Twain story of the same name, which is extremely short and can be found here. I highly recommend it, and I can assure you that it will take far less time to read than this monster sucker of a fanfic.
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The War Prayer
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Chapter Two: Mattias
He was walking towards something... someone, a woman in the distance, but the longer he walked the further away she got, and he kept stumbling, though he couldn’t tell why. Something was... off. He felt unbalanced. He tried to hold his arms out to regain his balance and he looked down and there was only one, the right, not his own, and the left was simply gone --
Awareness of severing flared through him; his arm was gone, cut off, he was bleeding out and the pain
Hiram woke with a start. “Mattias,” he gasped.
“You should be glad no one else heard that.”
Hiram rolled his head to the left to see who’d spoken. The motion caused his eyes to water and his insides to feel like they’d just turned inside out. He groaned.
A large hand touched his forehead, uncomfortably warm against his already- fevered skin. Hiram forced his breathing to slow and his eyes to focus on the strangely familiar shape -- a man kneeling next to him, broad face, like...
“Teacher,” he said hoarsely. “How...”
“I arrived here with the last group passing this way,” said Baruch, the Master of the temple in Hiram’s village, Hiram’s mentor in the years of innocence when he’d still wanted to follow in Baruch’s footsteps. “Two weeks ago. We haven’t been allowed to move on. Gurney’s men have killed a few of us, detained the others.”
Hiram exhaled. “Mattias -- is he --”
Baruch shook his head. “Your brother hasn’t been seen.” He lowered his voice, sorrow and apology thick in his tone as he added, “And you are lucky, my son, that no one else has heard you call him by the name Ishbala gave him. You must leave the matter be. He is only exile, now.”
Baruch’s words cut deep. Hiram closed his eyes and suppressed the overwhelming urge to scream that Ishbala chose nothing, that his parents had named Mattias after their family’s greatest ancestor and that it was just a name, nothing more -- that he could and should be left that much, at least, if not his dignity or his country or his lover or his life.
But society and faith dictated the law, and deep down some part of Hiram still believed. To be branded exile was to have forfeited the love of Ishbala and all the gifts He bestowed on mankind. Exiles were nameless. It was only right.
Still, Mattias was only that -- Mattias. Nothing could change that for Hiram, ever.
Baruch rested a hand on Hiram’s good shoulder briefly. “Your brother was a good man,” he said softly.
Is, thought Hiram.
Hiram took a deep, aching breath, opened his eyes and changed the subject. “How long have I been unconscious?” He looked around as much as he could without lifting his head, noting that he was inside a small tent, alone but for Baruch. The opening of the tent was to his right -- he could just make out a sliver of graying pre-dawn sky.
“Only one night,” said Baruch.
“Ma -- my brother -- where was he taken?”
“Gurney’s tent. North edge of camp. But you won’t get in, and it would do you no good even if you could. Gurney will let him out when he’s finished with him.”
Hiram tried to convince himself that it was only the broken arm that made him feel so ill. “Gurney wants to break him,” he muttered, needing to explain, to justify, to... rage, he supposed, against the unfairness of it, except that he didn’t have the energy to rage. So his tone, meant to be angry, came out merely dead. “There’s nothing left to break,” he said.
Baruch shook his head sadly. “There is,” he said. “You can’t see it because it is you. If Gurney has his way, your brother will not know you the next time you see him. Gurney doesn’t want to hurt him -- you were the one who defied him. You’re the one he wants.”
But he took Mattias anyway, Hiram thought numbly. Because he’s a prize. A gelding exile. No resistance from any quarter.
Hiram closed his eyes and felt around within himself for some vestige of surprise or anger or grief. Nothing. Numb.
Numbness and exhaustion, he realized suddenly -- exhaustion beyond any he’d felt before in a lifetime of war and pain. Constant pain throughout his body kept him from resting, kept him from relaxing so he could heal. His broken arm, though set and bound, glowed red-hot under the skin with a fever of torn nerves and damaged muscle. He thought about trying to move and realized that none of his limbs would respond to any command he gave them.
He let out a deep breath. “If I sleep,” he said quietly, “swear you’ll bring M -- my brother here when Gurney lets him go.”
Baruch hesitated, then said, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“My son... you should understand the gravitas of exile more than anyone. I cannot acknowledge... I have said and done more than I should here, with you. In the eyes of Ishbala, comforting a fellow soul is acceptable. If you have the strength to atone for your contact with your brother, you are safe. You are his blood. I am not. I cannot touch him.”
“Stop,” Hiram said softly. The word came no easier to him this time than it had with the wind knocked out of him, bleeding into the sand.
Baruch pressed his hands into his temples as if he had a headache. Hiram had no sympathy if he did. “I will wake you and direct you to him...” he said at length.
“Just wake me,” Hiram interrupted sharply. “I’ll find him.”
The atmosphere between them went as stale as if it had never been friendly in their lives. “I wish I could do more,” Baruch said stiffly.
“No, you don’t.” Hiram closed his eyes and turned his face away, forcing himself to relax and let the pain flow through his body, hoping the heartbeat-rhythm that pumped the ache through his veins would lull him to sleep.
Baruch stood. “Goodbye, my son.”
“None of yours,” Hiram muttered.
Above him, Hiram heard Baruch sigh and imagined the gesture of blessing the old temple master was probably making over him right then. “Peace be upon you,” Baruch murmured, and another short prayer. And then his footsteps retreated through the tent flap and he was gone.
Hiram opened his eyes and stared out at the lightening sky.
“His name is Mattias,” he whispered to no one.
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It was dark again when Hiram woke, more rested, the pain in his arm abated. He didn’t feel any warmer than the desert air ghosting over his dry face. No fever, no infection. Good.
Thinking back on it later, he couldn’t remember much of what had happened in the next few hours. Images survived, branded deeper than the ink of Mattias’ tattoos or the jagged scar that shaped his identity for the last years of his life, but Hiram couldn’t remember the moments of transition between the images. Couldn’t remember the cool breeze of the desert night on his bruised skin or his labored breathing as he stood, refusing Baruch’s help, and pushed past his former teacher to head north through the twisted maze of tents and small fires.
He remembered finding Mattias, though -- remembered that more clearly than anything else, probably. The pathways between tents opened up into a wide space towards the cliff, a small area that was always in shade even in the hours of high heat; the natural little open-air amphitheatre served as a refuge for the masses during the times of the day when tent roofs were no better than fire pit covers, retaining heat and baking those inside. He remembered rounding a corner and seeing his brother crumpled on the ground in the center of the hollow, curled on his side like an infant, deep in shade but visible enough... visible enough. The red stood out, his old tunic (torn) and the blood beneath it. He didn’t look much more human than the old man outside the camp who’d been taken out by Sol. For a cold second Hiram found himself wondering what he would do if Mattias was dead. He couldn’t dig a grave with one good arm, and no one else would help him.
Walking towards Mattias (couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t tell if he was even giving his body the order to move forward), memories of youth flashed across Hiram’s mind -- Mattias, twelve to Hiram’s six, picking him up and spinning him until Hiram felt sick and screamed to be put down and couldn’t wait to do it again. Thirteen and seven, Mother dead in the temple, Mattias not praying, just watching, and Hiram had been tearful and so scared each passing second that Mattias would be rejected by Ishbala for his dry, distant eyes, until days later, when Hiram had heard Mattias strangling harsh sobs in a pillow and Hiram had fallen on his knees praising God that his brother could still feel. Sixteen and ten, Mattias defending Hiram against an older boy, the first fight Hiram had ever seen, and Mattias had gotten a bloody nose. The color of blood against that familiar olive skin, the smell -- Hiram still hadn’t gotten used to them, and prayed he never would. Hiram had thrown up after that day when he was ten, walking home from the temple, intercepted by an older boy and rescued by his brother. The other boy had knocked Mattias down in front of him, kicked him, cursed him, while Hiram had watched and done nothing. What could he have done? He didn’t understand until later that it wasn’t his fault, that Mattias had been proposing unpopular and unsettling ideas at the Master’s house where he had been taken in as a pupil to learn books and writing and numbers, and that some of the other students had not taken kindly to Mattias’ impromptu lectures. Even after he found out the truth, some part of Hiram still thought it was his fault that Mattias had gotten hurt.
Mattias, twenty-four -- Hiram, seventeen. Hiram hadn’t been able to find his brother since the previous morning, and had started panicking because of the confluence of abstract concepts and ominous asides Mattias had been making for weeks, ever since her death; but it wasn’t until late afternoon that Hiram remembered a place they’d frequented when they were younger, that Mattias had still gone to study up until very recently. It was towards the outskirts of town.
Some intuition in Hiram had clicked that day, a feeling of awful truth that wasn’t some archaic prediction in a religious text because it wasn’t about some untold event in the future, it was now. The world, Hiram had thought, was surely ending. So he ran.
The smell of blood on his brother never changed, no matter what happened to his body.
They were eerily similar, the days Hiram had found his brother gelded by his own sin and the other time, five years later, when Mattias had committed his final heresy and walked naked into the fire, tears in his eyes. The second time, Mattias had not been injured... and yet, Hiram had still smelled the blood on him, and in all the time since then the scent had never completely faded.
Hiram found himself on his knees next to Mattias in the small hollow under the cliff, lights from the small cooking fires some distance behind him. He knelt facing his brother and the dark.
A hand on Mattias’ shoulder elicited no response. Hiram shook him slightly, and when Mattias still didn’t move, Hiram tugged gently and turned him onto his back.
The bile rose, scorching his throat, and the smell of blood overwhelmed him. But he did not vomit; he refused to be that ten-year-old again, convinced that it was his fault his brother always got hurt, his fault that there was blood on Mattias’ hands and face and soaking through in patches around his wrists and pelvis and --
Because it wasn’t his fault. It was Gurney’s fault, and the war’s fault, and maybe even Mattias’ fault. No one and everyone was to blame. But a small voice at the back of his mind still said, Gurney only wanted to hurt you, and this is how he got the job done. See how well it worked?
Hiram put a hand hesitantly on Mattias’ face, getting tacky, half-dried blood on his fingers. Mattias jerked a little at the touch, and his breathing changed -- became quicker and more shallow. Slowly, like butterflies pinned but not yet dead, his eyelids flickered open.
For a second he and Hiram stared at each other, a blankness overtaking them. So much to process. Too much. Hiram wondered if Mattias was remembering anything or if he really was that broken, that lost to the world -- did he remember Mother’s funeral? Did he remember Hiram’s birth? Or was all that was left to him the memory of whatever he’d seen that day, with his dead lover laid out on the floor and the walls glowing with a bloody light?
Hiram moved his hand again, touched Mattias’ cheek, higher, where sand clung to a patch of raw skin that had stopped beading with blood a good while ago.
The touch broke whatever spell hung over them. Mattias’ face contorted suddenly with pain and confusion and pathetic hopelessness, and he began to cry, the ugly, uncontrollable kind of crying that came with death and degradation. The last time Hiram had heard Mattias cry like that was in his room that night a week after Mother’s funeral. Hiram remembered the way he’d praised Ishbala back then for showing Mattias the way of purity, of proper feeling, and he felt sick with himself for ever having thought so lowly of his brother as to believe that there was ever a point when Mattias hadn’t been ravaged by grief. Hiram could barely even bring himself to think of Ishbala now, much less praise Him. Praise Him for what? For sending divine punishment to the young man now staring into the middle distance and choking on his own spit and phlegm from the tears that wouldn’t stop? For creating the situations that birthed true madmen like Gurney and sad, violent people like Sol? For taking away Mattias’ name and gender and leaving him shredded like so much meat?
Mattias wasn’t making a sound, only the occassional breathy gasp as he tried to suck in air between spasms. When Hiram heard a sob, it took him a moment to realize that it was his own voice.
It took Hiram the better part of an hour to coax Mattias onto his side, to let the mucus clear from his air passages and allow him to breathe again, and then to help him gingerly to his feet and, inch by grueling inch, back to Hiram’s tent. It was still empty when they got there -- Baruch was long gone, of course, but no one else had commandeered it either, which was a sign of just how taboo the presence of the brothers had become. Normally, if there was room to spread, the Ishbalans knew how to use it. To leave a whole tent to two men was unthinkable.
Unless those men weren’t considered men any more, but demons.
The only demon here lives on the north edge of this camp, Hiram thought grimly, making Mattias undress and lay down on his stomach on top of the coarse blanket Hiram had been sleeping on earlier. Mattias didn’t resist anything. More than likely he couldn’t.
Baruch had left some things... another blanket, clean bandages, some tough cloth and sturdy sticks in case Hiram had to make a splint. Water that had probably been hot an hour ago, but which was now only a little hotter than the surrounding air. Food. Hiram was almost ready to forgive Baruch, not for being thoughtful or kind, because those were self-serving things that went back to gaining grace before Ishbala -- not for that, but for the fact that by leaving medical supplies and food, Baruch had at least conceded that Mattias was still human. If that much of a concession was the best Hiram could hope for, he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at it. Settling Mattias as much as he could, he tore off a strip of cloth, soaked it in the warm water and began to clean his brother up.
It was slow going with one good arm, constantly having to tell Mattias to move this way or that, knowing how much pain it caused him. There was the indignity of it all... Hiram wanted to be able to tell his brother to roll up in a corner somewhere and hide -- wanted to join him, really. If they could make themselves small targets, if they could protect each other as they’d always done... if they could just have a moment’s peace to rest and regain a little humanity...
Instead, Mattias lay spread-eagled on the ground while Hiram, knowing what Mattias had just come away from but knowing how much worse it would be if he didn’t get this over with immediately, washed the blood and other substances from every part of his brother’s body. Mattias was limp under his ministrations, and never once said a word.
When Hiram finished there was almost no part of Mattias left unbandaged. Thankfully the splint materials went unused -- the only deep wounds Gurney had inflicted were sexual and mental. Some fairly rough abrasions made Mattias’ back look like ground meat, but Hiram had picked out the slivers of stone and washed out the dust, and as it hadn’t had time to get infected yet, he guessed it would heal intact.
All of Mattias’ body would heal. His mind was another matter.
Hiram stayed awake until Mattias fell asleep, watching the little catches in his brother’s breathing slowly even out as the breaths became deeper. Healthier. Even when Mattias turned his head and opened his mouth ever so slightly -- he could only allow himself to relax during in the deepest of dreamless slumbers -- Hiram’s gaze remained on his brother’s back, tracing the slow rise and fall.
Imagining the markings beneath.
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He woke for the third time to a touch.
It was a soft touch, but abated pain and enough sleep had made him alert again, and the softest touch was all that was necessary to snap him from darkness to light. He left his eyes closed for a moment, not daring to startle whoever waited for him in the world of the waking.
With the touch came a voice, even softer, and familiar. It felt like he hadn’t heard it in years, though it could only have been two days.
“Wake up,” whispered Mattias. “Wake up, little brother, wake up. Please. Please.”
It was a mantra, on and off in volume and frequency, not pleading, not emotive, but something solid to cling to. Something to say, something to wait for -- to hope for. Hiram wanted to go back to sleep for a guilty second when he heard it, remembering in agonizing detail exactly all the unwanted places his hands had been just a few hours ago. He wanted Mattias to be angry with him, not this... using him like a lifeline, using him like an object of worship. And, in a fit of intense selfishness, he simply didn’t want to deal with it. Not now.
Mattias didn’t stop. At length, Hiram opened his eyes. He forced his feelings away, made himself detached. He made himself stone, then and there, realizing that Mattias might dash himself to death trying to get at him and not caring.
“Brother, please. Wake up. Wake up.” Mattias’ eyes were fixed on Hiram’s arm, not his face. Hiram had a second to assess the situation -- he’d lain down sometime last night, facing Mattias but not too close, and he knew he hadn’t moved. Mattias had, though. The blanket on which he’d slept was askew, bunched to one side, as if Mattias had tossed and turned on it -- but he couldn’t have moved that much, not without waking up or crying out. Now he sat cross-legged next to Hiram, hands fluttering over Hiram’s arm and side and chest, always stopping just before his face and returning downward. Not shaking, not prodding. Just touching, barely more than breaths of wind. His mouth kept moving even when no sound came out,.
It took Hiram a moment to realize that there was blood spotted on Mattias’ blanket and that some of his bandages were either loose or soaked through with crimson. Hiram immediately made a move to sit up, his first inclination being anger at his brother for aggravating his wounds.
Mattias jerked back violently at the movement, his eyes widening and his mouth opening in a mockery of a scream. No sound emerged, but the terror on his face was enough. He was still too weak to get up and run, though, which Hiram gave rueful thanks for.
Hiram slowed, rising unthreateningly from the ground into a sitting position. “It’s just me,” he said firmly when he was upright, holding up his empty hands, at least insofar as he could move his left arm. “Brother. Mattias. It’s me. I’m awake.”
Mattias’s breath was shallow still, but his mouth closed and he seemed to focus on Hiram for the first time. “Hiram,” he said, barely more than a breath with the shape of a name. “Hiram.”
“It’s me,” Hiram repeated. He held out his right hand, palm down, and barely rested it on Mattias’ shoulder for a moment, a life-reaffirming contact more than anything else. Mattias’ shoulders were warm... and one of the few areas of his body without tattoos.
Hesitantly, Mattias crept one hand up to his shoulder, touching Hiram’s fingers first and then tracing up the back of his hand, mapping the familiar strength there. Inch by inch Mattias felt along the side of Hiram’s arm, raising his other hand to do the same thing on the other side, his touches slowly becoming less frightened and more firm. Watching Mattias’ face (for Mattias still wouldn’t meet his eyes), Hiram felt the pull of old love softening his heart, breaking down his stone wall a chip at a time. For as long as he could remember, Mattias had been with him. Not just near him, but there for him when it mattered (and sometimes when it didn’t), to share... well, pain, grief and loss, of course, things with which both brothers were intimate, but also joy, of which there was precious little in their lives and which needed to be shared to grow.
Mattias was the only person Hiram cared about protecting anymore. Compared to saving Ishbal, saving his own brother seemed like a trifle of a task. But it was everything. Everything. It was Hiram’s all-too-narrow world, small not because he was small-minded but because every other door had been closed to him by war and death. Mattias was his only family. His only blood. If he couldn’t protect anything else...
Mattias’ eyes were flat as the red stone of the cliff outside, his exploring hands betraying his disconnection from the world, if it took him this long to recognize his own little brother.
Hiram choked on his own self-loathing then, eyes and throat burning. Sitting across from him was the result of his protection, bleeding through cracked scabs in half a dozen unspeakable places. Mad with loss and needless hurt. Branded blood-deep with sin.
Mattias’ hands finally reached Hiram’s shoulders, then his neck, then his face, paper-dry palms pressing against damp cheeks as firmly as any touch Hiram had felt yet. “Don’t,” Mattias whispered, focusing on the tears. He moved his hands to wipe them away, thumbs fumbling high against Hiram’s cheekbones, trying to stem the flow. “No, don’t cry, don’t cry. Brother...”
“Stop,” Hiram choked out, grabbing Mattias’ left wrist with his good hand. Mattias stiffened but didn’t pull away. “Your injuries,” he began, scrambling for a legitimate excuse to make this impersonal again, and easier.
Mattias cut him off with a sudden shifting movement, clumsy with pain and uncertainty, but determined nonetheless. With his knees half-under him at strange angles, Mattias clutched Hiram’s upper arms with a childish possessiveness perverted by the muscular strength of a full-grown man, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. And Mattias leaned in, and he kissed Hiram.
Not quite full on the mouth but not quite at the corner; close enough to brush noses. It was a violent kiss, loving, maybe, but in all the wrong ways, and it left an impression of... the purest of impurities... a feeling Hiram couldn’t shake for days -- maybe even years -- even though he pushed Mattias away almost instantly, nauseated by the insane kaleidoscope of emotion playing itself out within him. The confusion he’d like to feel was tempered by an understanding he didn’t want; horror cut with attraction that bred more horror and love and regret and somewhere under the surface, in the bloody depths, a truth that couldn’t bear consideration. Hiram found for a second that he couldn’t breathe, not because he was overwhelmed or his heart was pounding but because he’d simply forgotten how. He choked on the forgetfulness, swallowed it whole, welcomed it. He didn’t want to understand himself any more.
“By all that is holy under the eyes of Ishbala, never, ever do that again,” he heard himself telling Mattias in a harsh voice. His brother’s eyes were full of blank fear. Hiram realized that he was bruising Mattias’ left arm in the same place Mattias had bruised both of his. He let go abruptly.
He loved his brother. He always had. He always would.
“Hiram,” whispered Mattias, reaching out again. Hiram slapped his hand out of the air. “Hiram,” Mattias kept saying, tears of frustration welling up unnoticed; his tone was desperate. “I love you, do you understand? I love you, I --”
Hiram struggled onto his knees and from there to his feet, stumbling backwards away from his wide-eyed brother, completely at a loss for what to feel. Is this what Gurney did? he wondered suddenly, bile thick in his already-swollen throat. A fire burned in his chest. It’s not what Baruch thought, it’s not a separation. Gurney didn’t take Mattias away from me. He told Mattias to take me back...
The sheer art and cruelty of it took a moment to hit, but when it did, it brought Hiram to his knees. He staggered and fell, still facing Mattias still but now several feet away.
“I brought her back for you, too,” Mattias cried, or rather rasped, his voice broken from screaming. He could barely make sound, but the impact of his words was strong enough.
“This isn’t you,” Hiram managed through the bitter nothing in his chest and the blinding salt burn in his eyes. “This isn’t you, Mattias, wake up --”
“I loved her so much and I wanted to give you --”
“-- stop doing this to me, you don’t know what you’re saying, you --”
“-- you save me every day, little brother, you know all of me, all of --”
“-- ENOUGH!”
Hiram surged back to his feet with that word, voice breaking, stone wall shattering beyond recognition. Mattias’ whisper-screams faded to nothing. He sat there staring up at Hiram, legs sprawled beneath him awkwardly, like a child’s. He shook a little.
“What did Gurney say to you?” Hiram asked at length, arms held tightly over his chest as if holding in his heart.
“Gurney?” Mattias whispered. His eyes registered memory, then vacancy, then pain... “Gurney... said... nothing. Said to be still. Said to wait... said... you’d come...”
“Before that.”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
Hiram shook his head, closing his eyes tight. Whatever had transpired the night before, it wasn’t for him to know. Mattias honestly couldn’t remember.
“Mattias,” he said at length, still unable to meet his brother’s eyes. “You’re confused. You’re in pain. I know that you love me... I know that. Maybe you want more than just my word, but it is my word and it’s all I can give.” All I’m willing to give. “Do you understand that? You don’t have to... you shouldn’t think it necessary to express -- other than words --” Hiram faltered. “What Gurney did to you was evil,” he said finally, all pretense of shielding or glossing gone. “Learn to recognize evil, brother. I’m not Gurney. And I’m not... her.”
Mattias’ face twisted a little, but he didn’t cry. Maybe he was dried out. Maybe they both were.
Hiram felt unutterably exhausted again despite his long sleep. He cast weary eyes over Mattias’ unkempt and soiled bandages and mentally steeled himself for repeating last night’s process. But first, he needed some sign of understanding from Mattias.
“Brother,” he said softly, kneeling once again in front of Mattias. He put a broad hand against Mattias’ forehead, feeling for fever, then ran it back through tangled hair, dark and rich... like hers had been. “We’re all we have,” Hiram said, finally meeting Mattias’ eyes. “Leave it at that.”
Slowly, Mattias nodded. Hiram still wasn’t sure he understood, but even if he did for the moment, there was no telling how deep Gurney’s scars would run or when the ideas he had implanted would choose to raise their ugly heads again. But at least for now, Mattias was calm and quiet. It was easier to be impersonal with him that way.
“I need to change these,” said Hiram, reaching around to touch the base of Mattias’ neck, just at the top of the bandages on his back. “Can you handle that?”
Slowly, Mattias nodded, looking away. His expression was more lucid than it had been in several days. Hiram tried not to dwell on the thought that Mattias was much more aware of his surroundings and more capable of analysis than Hiram had been giving him credit for since the day he’d gotten the tattoos. After all, exiles were supposed to be somehow less than human, and social and religious habits died hard. Even though he knew better, even though Mattias was family, Hiram sometimes caught himself treating Mattias like a child.
But wasn’t he? All those moments when Mattias did something clumsy, something childlike, something too honest to be true. Maybe it really was a reversion to an inferior state of mind, or maybe taking away his sexuality took away some of the complications and preconceptions that had made him adult. Considering how often children were able to see truth before elders were able to reason it out, it was entirely possible that Mattias’ state of mind was not inferior but rather a gift. Or perhaps a curse? To be able to see the truth in people and situations as a child would, but at the same time to be forced into an adult role?
Over the next hour Hiram changed Mattias’ bandages, a little faster this time since he’d had time to acclimate to using only one arm. Then he split the last of the food Baruch had left, ignoring Mattias’ complaint that Hiram was taking a smaller amount for himself, and refused to look away until Mattias had eaten every bite of what Hiram gave him. It was more than Hiram’s portion, of course, but it wasn’t as if Mattias could get anything by begging outside like Hiram could. He wasn’t above it these days. In fact it seemed quite honorable compared to other things.
It was another couple of hours before Mattias went back to sleep, but Hiram waited. There wasn’t anything else to do. He couldn’t go out. He didn’t know if he could show his face to the world.
Under the surface, twisted things that had barely tasted the light of day were beginning to put down roots and grow, reaching for a full cognizance that Hiram was afraid to give them. Watching his brother sleep for the second time, though, he feared that they would break free in the end -- with or without his consent.
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Chapter One: Gurney
Title: The War Prayer (2/3)
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Character(s): Scar, Scar's brother, Scar's teacher, OCs
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I no own. Please to not be suing now.
Warnings: Spoilers for Scar's backstory, but nothing for the rest of the series. Themes of impurity -- rape, violence, revenge, incest, the guilt of the victim, the lesser of two evils.
Summary: The man destined to become Scar was once a refugee like any other, concerned only with taking care of his mad brother. But long before he gained an injury and a mission that would change his life, he had to learn the hard lesson that not all victims are innocent.
Author's Note: This has proven an extremely difficult story to write, if only because it requires me to maintain a certain mindset that is uncomfortable if not downright nauseating. I think it's one of the strongest things I've ever written, though. In this chapter especially, I've played around with some uncomfortable ideas about the relationships between emotional closeness, innocent sexuality, incest and rape. Hopefully, the subtleties will play out the way I meant them to.
The title is from the Mark Twain story of the same name, which is extremely short and can be found here. I highly recommend it, and I can assure you that it will take far less time to read than this monster sucker of a fanfic.
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The War Prayer
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Chapter Two: Mattias
He was walking towards something... someone, a woman in the distance, but the longer he walked the further away she got, and he kept stumbling, though he couldn’t tell why. Something was... off. He felt unbalanced. He tried to hold his arms out to regain his balance and he looked down and there was only one, the right, not his own, and the left was simply gone --
Awareness of severing flared through him; his arm was gone, cut off, he was bleeding out and the pain
Hiram woke with a start. “Mattias,” he gasped.
“You should be glad no one else heard that.”
Hiram rolled his head to the left to see who’d spoken. The motion caused his eyes to water and his insides to feel like they’d just turned inside out. He groaned.
A large hand touched his forehead, uncomfortably warm against his already- fevered skin. Hiram forced his breathing to slow and his eyes to focus on the strangely familiar shape -- a man kneeling next to him, broad face, like...
“Teacher,” he said hoarsely. “How...”
“I arrived here with the last group passing this way,” said Baruch, the Master of the temple in Hiram’s village, Hiram’s mentor in the years of innocence when he’d still wanted to follow in Baruch’s footsteps. “Two weeks ago. We haven’t been allowed to move on. Gurney’s men have killed a few of us, detained the others.”
Hiram exhaled. “Mattias -- is he --”
Baruch shook his head. “Your brother hasn’t been seen.” He lowered his voice, sorrow and apology thick in his tone as he added, “And you are lucky, my son, that no one else has heard you call him by the name Ishbala gave him. You must leave the matter be. He is only exile, now.”
Baruch’s words cut deep. Hiram closed his eyes and suppressed the overwhelming urge to scream that Ishbala chose nothing, that his parents had named Mattias after their family’s greatest ancestor and that it was just a name, nothing more -- that he could and should be left that much, at least, if not his dignity or his country or his lover or his life.
But society and faith dictated the law, and deep down some part of Hiram still believed. To be branded exile was to have forfeited the love of Ishbala and all the gifts He bestowed on mankind. Exiles were nameless. It was only right.
Still, Mattias was only that -- Mattias. Nothing could change that for Hiram, ever.
Baruch rested a hand on Hiram’s good shoulder briefly. “Your brother was a good man,” he said softly.
Is, thought Hiram.
Hiram took a deep, aching breath, opened his eyes and changed the subject. “How long have I been unconscious?” He looked around as much as he could without lifting his head, noting that he was inside a small tent, alone but for Baruch. The opening of the tent was to his right -- he could just make out a sliver of graying pre-dawn sky.
“Only one night,” said Baruch.
“Ma -- my brother -- where was he taken?”
“Gurney’s tent. North edge of camp. But you won’t get in, and it would do you no good even if you could. Gurney will let him out when he’s finished with him.”
Hiram tried to convince himself that it was only the broken arm that made him feel so ill. “Gurney wants to break him,” he muttered, needing to explain, to justify, to... rage, he supposed, against the unfairness of it, except that he didn’t have the energy to rage. So his tone, meant to be angry, came out merely dead. “There’s nothing left to break,” he said.
Baruch shook his head sadly. “There is,” he said. “You can’t see it because it is you. If Gurney has his way, your brother will not know you the next time you see him. Gurney doesn’t want to hurt him -- you were the one who defied him. You’re the one he wants.”
But he took Mattias anyway, Hiram thought numbly. Because he’s a prize. A gelding exile. No resistance from any quarter.
Hiram closed his eyes and felt around within himself for some vestige of surprise or anger or grief. Nothing. Numb.
Numbness and exhaustion, he realized suddenly -- exhaustion beyond any he’d felt before in a lifetime of war and pain. Constant pain throughout his body kept him from resting, kept him from relaxing so he could heal. His broken arm, though set and bound, glowed red-hot under the skin with a fever of torn nerves and damaged muscle. He thought about trying to move and realized that none of his limbs would respond to any command he gave them.
He let out a deep breath. “If I sleep,” he said quietly, “swear you’ll bring M -- my brother here when Gurney lets him go.”
Baruch hesitated, then said, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“My son... you should understand the gravitas of exile more than anyone. I cannot acknowledge... I have said and done more than I should here, with you. In the eyes of Ishbala, comforting a fellow soul is acceptable. If you have the strength to atone for your contact with your brother, you are safe. You are his blood. I am not. I cannot touch him.”
“Stop,” Hiram said softly. The word came no easier to him this time than it had with the wind knocked out of him, bleeding into the sand.
Baruch pressed his hands into his temples as if he had a headache. Hiram had no sympathy if he did. “I will wake you and direct you to him...” he said at length.
“Just wake me,” Hiram interrupted sharply. “I’ll find him.”
The atmosphere between them went as stale as if it had never been friendly in their lives. “I wish I could do more,” Baruch said stiffly.
“No, you don’t.” Hiram closed his eyes and turned his face away, forcing himself to relax and let the pain flow through his body, hoping the heartbeat-rhythm that pumped the ache through his veins would lull him to sleep.
Baruch stood. “Goodbye, my son.”
“None of yours,” Hiram muttered.
Above him, Hiram heard Baruch sigh and imagined the gesture of blessing the old temple master was probably making over him right then. “Peace be upon you,” Baruch murmured, and another short prayer. And then his footsteps retreated through the tent flap and he was gone.
Hiram opened his eyes and stared out at the lightening sky.
“His name is Mattias,” he whispered to no one.
---------
It was dark again when Hiram woke, more rested, the pain in his arm abated. He didn’t feel any warmer than the desert air ghosting over his dry face. No fever, no infection. Good.
Thinking back on it later, he couldn’t remember much of what had happened in the next few hours. Images survived, branded deeper than the ink of Mattias’ tattoos or the jagged scar that shaped his identity for the last years of his life, but Hiram couldn’t remember the moments of transition between the images. Couldn’t remember the cool breeze of the desert night on his bruised skin or his labored breathing as he stood, refusing Baruch’s help, and pushed past his former teacher to head north through the twisted maze of tents and small fires.
He remembered finding Mattias, though -- remembered that more clearly than anything else, probably. The pathways between tents opened up into a wide space towards the cliff, a small area that was always in shade even in the hours of high heat; the natural little open-air amphitheatre served as a refuge for the masses during the times of the day when tent roofs were no better than fire pit covers, retaining heat and baking those inside. He remembered rounding a corner and seeing his brother crumpled on the ground in the center of the hollow, curled on his side like an infant, deep in shade but visible enough... visible enough. The red stood out, his old tunic (torn) and the blood beneath it. He didn’t look much more human than the old man outside the camp who’d been taken out by Sol. For a cold second Hiram found himself wondering what he would do if Mattias was dead. He couldn’t dig a grave with one good arm, and no one else would help him.
Walking towards Mattias (couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t tell if he was even giving his body the order to move forward), memories of youth flashed across Hiram’s mind -- Mattias, twelve to Hiram’s six, picking him up and spinning him until Hiram felt sick and screamed to be put down and couldn’t wait to do it again. Thirteen and seven, Mother dead in the temple, Mattias not praying, just watching, and Hiram had been tearful and so scared each passing second that Mattias would be rejected by Ishbala for his dry, distant eyes, until days later, when Hiram had heard Mattias strangling harsh sobs in a pillow and Hiram had fallen on his knees praising God that his brother could still feel. Sixteen and ten, Mattias defending Hiram against an older boy, the first fight Hiram had ever seen, and Mattias had gotten a bloody nose. The color of blood against that familiar olive skin, the smell -- Hiram still hadn’t gotten used to them, and prayed he never would. Hiram had thrown up after that day when he was ten, walking home from the temple, intercepted by an older boy and rescued by his brother. The other boy had knocked Mattias down in front of him, kicked him, cursed him, while Hiram had watched and done nothing. What could he have done? He didn’t understand until later that it wasn’t his fault, that Mattias had been proposing unpopular and unsettling ideas at the Master’s house where he had been taken in as a pupil to learn books and writing and numbers, and that some of the other students had not taken kindly to Mattias’ impromptu lectures. Even after he found out the truth, some part of Hiram still thought it was his fault that Mattias had gotten hurt.
Mattias, twenty-four -- Hiram, seventeen. Hiram hadn’t been able to find his brother since the previous morning, and had started panicking because of the confluence of abstract concepts and ominous asides Mattias had been making for weeks, ever since her death; but it wasn’t until late afternoon that Hiram remembered a place they’d frequented when they were younger, that Mattias had still gone to study up until very recently. It was towards the outskirts of town.
Some intuition in Hiram had clicked that day, a feeling of awful truth that wasn’t some archaic prediction in a religious text because it wasn’t about some untold event in the future, it was now. The world, Hiram had thought, was surely ending. So he ran.
The smell of blood on his brother never changed, no matter what happened to his body.
They were eerily similar, the days Hiram had found his brother gelded by his own sin and the other time, five years later, when Mattias had committed his final heresy and walked naked into the fire, tears in his eyes. The second time, Mattias had not been injured... and yet, Hiram had still smelled the blood on him, and in all the time since then the scent had never completely faded.
Hiram found himself on his knees next to Mattias in the small hollow under the cliff, lights from the small cooking fires some distance behind him. He knelt facing his brother and the dark.
A hand on Mattias’ shoulder elicited no response. Hiram shook him slightly, and when Mattias still didn’t move, Hiram tugged gently and turned him onto his back.
The bile rose, scorching his throat, and the smell of blood overwhelmed him. But he did not vomit; he refused to be that ten-year-old again, convinced that it was his fault his brother always got hurt, his fault that there was blood on Mattias’ hands and face and soaking through in patches around his wrists and pelvis and --
Because it wasn’t his fault. It was Gurney’s fault, and the war’s fault, and maybe even Mattias’ fault. No one and everyone was to blame. But a small voice at the back of his mind still said, Gurney only wanted to hurt you, and this is how he got the job done. See how well it worked?
Hiram put a hand hesitantly on Mattias’ face, getting tacky, half-dried blood on his fingers. Mattias jerked a little at the touch, and his breathing changed -- became quicker and more shallow. Slowly, like butterflies pinned but not yet dead, his eyelids flickered open.
For a second he and Hiram stared at each other, a blankness overtaking them. So much to process. Too much. Hiram wondered if Mattias was remembering anything or if he really was that broken, that lost to the world -- did he remember Mother’s funeral? Did he remember Hiram’s birth? Or was all that was left to him the memory of whatever he’d seen that day, with his dead lover laid out on the floor and the walls glowing with a bloody light?
Hiram moved his hand again, touched Mattias’ cheek, higher, where sand clung to a patch of raw skin that had stopped beading with blood a good while ago.
The touch broke whatever spell hung over them. Mattias’ face contorted suddenly with pain and confusion and pathetic hopelessness, and he began to cry, the ugly, uncontrollable kind of crying that came with death and degradation. The last time Hiram had heard Mattias cry like that was in his room that night a week after Mother’s funeral. Hiram remembered the way he’d praised Ishbala back then for showing Mattias the way of purity, of proper feeling, and he felt sick with himself for ever having thought so lowly of his brother as to believe that there was ever a point when Mattias hadn’t been ravaged by grief. Hiram could barely even bring himself to think of Ishbala now, much less praise Him. Praise Him for what? For sending divine punishment to the young man now staring into the middle distance and choking on his own spit and phlegm from the tears that wouldn’t stop? For creating the situations that birthed true madmen like Gurney and sad, violent people like Sol? For taking away Mattias’ name and gender and leaving him shredded like so much meat?
Mattias wasn’t making a sound, only the occassional breathy gasp as he tried to suck in air between spasms. When Hiram heard a sob, it took him a moment to realize that it was his own voice.
It took Hiram the better part of an hour to coax Mattias onto his side, to let the mucus clear from his air passages and allow him to breathe again, and then to help him gingerly to his feet and, inch by grueling inch, back to Hiram’s tent. It was still empty when they got there -- Baruch was long gone, of course, but no one else had commandeered it either, which was a sign of just how taboo the presence of the brothers had become. Normally, if there was room to spread, the Ishbalans knew how to use it. To leave a whole tent to two men was unthinkable.
Unless those men weren’t considered men any more, but demons.
The only demon here lives on the north edge of this camp, Hiram thought grimly, making Mattias undress and lay down on his stomach on top of the coarse blanket Hiram had been sleeping on earlier. Mattias didn’t resist anything. More than likely he couldn’t.
Baruch had left some things... another blanket, clean bandages, some tough cloth and sturdy sticks in case Hiram had to make a splint. Water that had probably been hot an hour ago, but which was now only a little hotter than the surrounding air. Food. Hiram was almost ready to forgive Baruch, not for being thoughtful or kind, because those were self-serving things that went back to gaining grace before Ishbala -- not for that, but for the fact that by leaving medical supplies and food, Baruch had at least conceded that Mattias was still human. If that much of a concession was the best Hiram could hope for, he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at it. Settling Mattias as much as he could, he tore off a strip of cloth, soaked it in the warm water and began to clean his brother up.
It was slow going with one good arm, constantly having to tell Mattias to move this way or that, knowing how much pain it caused him. There was the indignity of it all... Hiram wanted to be able to tell his brother to roll up in a corner somewhere and hide -- wanted to join him, really. If they could make themselves small targets, if they could protect each other as they’d always done... if they could just have a moment’s peace to rest and regain a little humanity...
Instead, Mattias lay spread-eagled on the ground while Hiram, knowing what Mattias had just come away from but knowing how much worse it would be if he didn’t get this over with immediately, washed the blood and other substances from every part of his brother’s body. Mattias was limp under his ministrations, and never once said a word.
When Hiram finished there was almost no part of Mattias left unbandaged. Thankfully the splint materials went unused -- the only deep wounds Gurney had inflicted were sexual and mental. Some fairly rough abrasions made Mattias’ back look like ground meat, but Hiram had picked out the slivers of stone and washed out the dust, and as it hadn’t had time to get infected yet, he guessed it would heal intact.
All of Mattias’ body would heal. His mind was another matter.
Hiram stayed awake until Mattias fell asleep, watching the little catches in his brother’s breathing slowly even out as the breaths became deeper. Healthier. Even when Mattias turned his head and opened his mouth ever so slightly -- he could only allow himself to relax during in the deepest of dreamless slumbers -- Hiram’s gaze remained on his brother’s back, tracing the slow rise and fall.
Imagining the markings beneath.
-------
He woke for the third time to a touch.
It was a soft touch, but abated pain and enough sleep had made him alert again, and the softest touch was all that was necessary to snap him from darkness to light. He left his eyes closed for a moment, not daring to startle whoever waited for him in the world of the waking.
With the touch came a voice, even softer, and familiar. It felt like he hadn’t heard it in years, though it could only have been two days.
“Wake up,” whispered Mattias. “Wake up, little brother, wake up. Please. Please.”
It was a mantra, on and off in volume and frequency, not pleading, not emotive, but something solid to cling to. Something to say, something to wait for -- to hope for. Hiram wanted to go back to sleep for a guilty second when he heard it, remembering in agonizing detail exactly all the unwanted places his hands had been just a few hours ago. He wanted Mattias to be angry with him, not this... using him like a lifeline, using him like an object of worship. And, in a fit of intense selfishness, he simply didn’t want to deal with it. Not now.
Mattias didn’t stop. At length, Hiram opened his eyes. He forced his feelings away, made himself detached. He made himself stone, then and there, realizing that Mattias might dash himself to death trying to get at him and not caring.
“Brother, please. Wake up. Wake up.” Mattias’ eyes were fixed on Hiram’s arm, not his face. Hiram had a second to assess the situation -- he’d lain down sometime last night, facing Mattias but not too close, and he knew he hadn’t moved. Mattias had, though. The blanket on which he’d slept was askew, bunched to one side, as if Mattias had tossed and turned on it -- but he couldn’t have moved that much, not without waking up or crying out. Now he sat cross-legged next to Hiram, hands fluttering over Hiram’s arm and side and chest, always stopping just before his face and returning downward. Not shaking, not prodding. Just touching, barely more than breaths of wind. His mouth kept moving even when no sound came out,.
It took Hiram a moment to realize that there was blood spotted on Mattias’ blanket and that some of his bandages were either loose or soaked through with crimson. Hiram immediately made a move to sit up, his first inclination being anger at his brother for aggravating his wounds.
Mattias jerked back violently at the movement, his eyes widening and his mouth opening in a mockery of a scream. No sound emerged, but the terror on his face was enough. He was still too weak to get up and run, though, which Hiram gave rueful thanks for.
Hiram slowed, rising unthreateningly from the ground into a sitting position. “It’s just me,” he said firmly when he was upright, holding up his empty hands, at least insofar as he could move his left arm. “Brother. Mattias. It’s me. I’m awake.”
Mattias’s breath was shallow still, but his mouth closed and he seemed to focus on Hiram for the first time. “Hiram,” he said, barely more than a breath with the shape of a name. “Hiram.”
“It’s me,” Hiram repeated. He held out his right hand, palm down, and barely rested it on Mattias’ shoulder for a moment, a life-reaffirming contact more than anything else. Mattias’ shoulders were warm... and one of the few areas of his body without tattoos.
Hesitantly, Mattias crept one hand up to his shoulder, touching Hiram’s fingers first and then tracing up the back of his hand, mapping the familiar strength there. Inch by inch Mattias felt along the side of Hiram’s arm, raising his other hand to do the same thing on the other side, his touches slowly becoming less frightened and more firm. Watching Mattias’ face (for Mattias still wouldn’t meet his eyes), Hiram felt the pull of old love softening his heart, breaking down his stone wall a chip at a time. For as long as he could remember, Mattias had been with him. Not just near him, but there for him when it mattered (and sometimes when it didn’t), to share... well, pain, grief and loss, of course, things with which both brothers were intimate, but also joy, of which there was precious little in their lives and which needed to be shared to grow.
Mattias was the only person Hiram cared about protecting anymore. Compared to saving Ishbal, saving his own brother seemed like a trifle of a task. But it was everything. Everything. It was Hiram’s all-too-narrow world, small not because he was small-minded but because every other door had been closed to him by war and death. Mattias was his only family. His only blood. If he couldn’t protect anything else...
Mattias’ eyes were flat as the red stone of the cliff outside, his exploring hands betraying his disconnection from the world, if it took him this long to recognize his own little brother.
Hiram choked on his own self-loathing then, eyes and throat burning. Sitting across from him was the result of his protection, bleeding through cracked scabs in half a dozen unspeakable places. Mad with loss and needless hurt. Branded blood-deep with sin.
Mattias’ hands finally reached Hiram’s shoulders, then his neck, then his face, paper-dry palms pressing against damp cheeks as firmly as any touch Hiram had felt yet. “Don’t,” Mattias whispered, focusing on the tears. He moved his hands to wipe them away, thumbs fumbling high against Hiram’s cheekbones, trying to stem the flow. “No, don’t cry, don’t cry. Brother...”
“Stop,” Hiram choked out, grabbing Mattias’ left wrist with his good hand. Mattias stiffened but didn’t pull away. “Your injuries,” he began, scrambling for a legitimate excuse to make this impersonal again, and easier.
Mattias cut him off with a sudden shifting movement, clumsy with pain and uncertainty, but determined nonetheless. With his knees half-under him at strange angles, Mattias clutched Hiram’s upper arms with a childish possessiveness perverted by the muscular strength of a full-grown man, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. And Mattias leaned in, and he kissed Hiram.
Not quite full on the mouth but not quite at the corner; close enough to brush noses. It was a violent kiss, loving, maybe, but in all the wrong ways, and it left an impression of... the purest of impurities... a feeling Hiram couldn’t shake for days -- maybe even years -- even though he pushed Mattias away almost instantly, nauseated by the insane kaleidoscope of emotion playing itself out within him. The confusion he’d like to feel was tempered by an understanding he didn’t want; horror cut with attraction that bred more horror and love and regret and somewhere under the surface, in the bloody depths, a truth that couldn’t bear consideration. Hiram found for a second that he couldn’t breathe, not because he was overwhelmed or his heart was pounding but because he’d simply forgotten how. He choked on the forgetfulness, swallowed it whole, welcomed it. He didn’t want to understand himself any more.
“By all that is holy under the eyes of Ishbala, never, ever do that again,” he heard himself telling Mattias in a harsh voice. His brother’s eyes were full of blank fear. Hiram realized that he was bruising Mattias’ left arm in the same place Mattias had bruised both of his. He let go abruptly.
He loved his brother. He always had. He always would.
“Hiram,” whispered Mattias, reaching out again. Hiram slapped his hand out of the air. “Hiram,” Mattias kept saying, tears of frustration welling up unnoticed; his tone was desperate. “I love you, do you understand? I love you, I --”
Hiram struggled onto his knees and from there to his feet, stumbling backwards away from his wide-eyed brother, completely at a loss for what to feel. Is this what Gurney did? he wondered suddenly, bile thick in his already-swollen throat. A fire burned in his chest. It’s not what Baruch thought, it’s not a separation. Gurney didn’t take Mattias away from me. He told Mattias to take me back...
The sheer art and cruelty of it took a moment to hit, but when it did, it brought Hiram to his knees. He staggered and fell, still facing Mattias still but now several feet away.
“I brought her back for you, too,” Mattias cried, or rather rasped, his voice broken from screaming. He could barely make sound, but the impact of his words was strong enough.
“This isn’t you,” Hiram managed through the bitter nothing in his chest and the blinding salt burn in his eyes. “This isn’t you, Mattias, wake up --”
“I loved her so much and I wanted to give you --”
“-- stop doing this to me, you don’t know what you’re saying, you --”
“-- you save me every day, little brother, you know all of me, all of --”
“-- ENOUGH!”
Hiram surged back to his feet with that word, voice breaking, stone wall shattering beyond recognition. Mattias’ whisper-screams faded to nothing. He sat there staring up at Hiram, legs sprawled beneath him awkwardly, like a child’s. He shook a little.
“What did Gurney say to you?” Hiram asked at length, arms held tightly over his chest as if holding in his heart.
“Gurney?” Mattias whispered. His eyes registered memory, then vacancy, then pain... “Gurney... said... nothing. Said to be still. Said to wait... said... you’d come...”
“Before that.”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
Hiram shook his head, closing his eyes tight. Whatever had transpired the night before, it wasn’t for him to know. Mattias honestly couldn’t remember.
“Mattias,” he said at length, still unable to meet his brother’s eyes. “You’re confused. You’re in pain. I know that you love me... I know that. Maybe you want more than just my word, but it is my word and it’s all I can give.” All I’m willing to give. “Do you understand that? You don’t have to... you shouldn’t think it necessary to express -- other than words --” Hiram faltered. “What Gurney did to you was evil,” he said finally, all pretense of shielding or glossing gone. “Learn to recognize evil, brother. I’m not Gurney. And I’m not... her.”
Mattias’ face twisted a little, but he didn’t cry. Maybe he was dried out. Maybe they both were.
Hiram felt unutterably exhausted again despite his long sleep. He cast weary eyes over Mattias’ unkempt and soiled bandages and mentally steeled himself for repeating last night’s process. But first, he needed some sign of understanding from Mattias.
“Brother,” he said softly, kneeling once again in front of Mattias. He put a broad hand against Mattias’ forehead, feeling for fever, then ran it back through tangled hair, dark and rich... like hers had been. “We’re all we have,” Hiram said, finally meeting Mattias’ eyes. “Leave it at that.”
Slowly, Mattias nodded. Hiram still wasn’t sure he understood, but even if he did for the moment, there was no telling how deep Gurney’s scars would run or when the ideas he had implanted would choose to raise their ugly heads again. But at least for now, Mattias was calm and quiet. It was easier to be impersonal with him that way.
“I need to change these,” said Hiram, reaching around to touch the base of Mattias’ neck, just at the top of the bandages on his back. “Can you handle that?”
Slowly, Mattias nodded, looking away. His expression was more lucid than it had been in several days. Hiram tried not to dwell on the thought that Mattias was much more aware of his surroundings and more capable of analysis than Hiram had been giving him credit for since the day he’d gotten the tattoos. After all, exiles were supposed to be somehow less than human, and social and religious habits died hard. Even though he knew better, even though Mattias was family, Hiram sometimes caught himself treating Mattias like a child.
But wasn’t he? All those moments when Mattias did something clumsy, something childlike, something too honest to be true. Maybe it really was a reversion to an inferior state of mind, or maybe taking away his sexuality took away some of the complications and preconceptions that had made him adult. Considering how often children were able to see truth before elders were able to reason it out, it was entirely possible that Mattias’ state of mind was not inferior but rather a gift. Or perhaps a curse? To be able to see the truth in people and situations as a child would, but at the same time to be forced into an adult role?
Over the next hour Hiram changed Mattias’ bandages, a little faster this time since he’d had time to acclimate to using only one arm. Then he split the last of the food Baruch had left, ignoring Mattias’ complaint that Hiram was taking a smaller amount for himself, and refused to look away until Mattias had eaten every bite of what Hiram gave him. It was more than Hiram’s portion, of course, but it wasn’t as if Mattias could get anything by begging outside like Hiram could. He wasn’t above it these days. In fact it seemed quite honorable compared to other things.
It was another couple of hours before Mattias went back to sleep, but Hiram waited. There wasn’t anything else to do. He couldn’t go out. He didn’t know if he could show his face to the world.
Under the surface, twisted things that had barely tasted the light of day were beginning to put down roots and grow, reaching for a full cognizance that Hiram was afraid to give them. Watching his brother sleep for the second time, though, he feared that they would break free in the end -- with or without his consent.
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Chapter One: Gurney