regenerated | you will surely shatter

The blood smelled sweet. Claire had once been told in her youth that death smelled different to each person, that scent was the memory which dug itself deepest into the recesses of anyone's mind and lodged itself firmly there, only to appear again in a person's last days. And if this was what she smelled in her last moments, vanilla hanging lightly in the air, she couldn't complain. There was a warmth trickling down the length of an arm, and her head pounded with alarming frequency. Thud, thud, thud. Pinpricks pressed against the lengths of her nerves until they met each end, digging ferociously, but Claire welcomed the pain. Passing in one's sleep had never held any romanticism to her. This was better.

This reminded her that she had been alive, once.

But then her chest squeezed tight, lungs breathing fresh as Claire gasped for breath, a long draw that seemed to have no end. Where her vision had been blurry before, now all the details were returning, down to each speck of dirt on the floor of the school hallway. Somewhere in the distance, a clock counted down the seconds, but Claire's body traveled backward, the sticky sensation of blood still holding her fingers together as she sat up.

"Get out of bed, Claire, or you'll be late," a deep voice reprimanded in the background, easing into a chuckle, one which made her blood run cold.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No, don't—"

Claire tried her best to keep the other woman from grabbing at her wound, wishing that the two of them could just continue running away from the music which had started playing faintly down the hall, a xylophone that seemed out of tune, occasional notes running along piano keys. But before she could put up a defense, her hand was tugged away. Claire cringed as she looked down at her shoulder, hoping not to find what she already knew she would, a patch of skin unharmed and unblemished, no trace of a wound left. She inhaled shakily as soon as her eyes confirmed it, then looked up to the other blonde.

What would she think? That Claire was some kind of freak, maybe.

She hated it when people looked at her with fear in their eyes.

"It must've just... glanced me," she offered doubtfully, licking her lower lip and praying for the best, trying to move her hand back to cover the shoulder again— even if she knew it was already too late.

Riza didn't need any time to think or to process what she saw. In battle, your life depended on snap judgments. The moment she saw unblemished flesh, she was several feet away, her pistol in hand.

She didn't bother listening to the creature's excuses. It could lie all it wanted, but there was only one creature that could heal that quickly: homunculus. The monsters who stole people's lives to achieve immortality, the monsters who had created her country for the sole purpose of causing death and suffering, not the least of which had been the slaughter at Ishbal.

Just as the creature finished speaking, Riza began to fire with fatal precision.

The shot itself didn't really come as a surprise, but the pain shivered and stretched all the way to her fingertips, splashing her with cold and burning her up all at once, a mix of clashing sensations that pulled a sharp scream out of Claire as she fell to her knees, a hand clapping over the spot on her heart. Before she could even stagger back to her feet, there was another one, in her lung, all the air rushing out of her body as her chest collapsed. One bullet wound closed up as another broke free, and Claire took the time to cough, a few rounds splattering to the ground with a clatter along with deep, blackened blood.

"What are you doing?" she managed to wheeze out, no longer crying out with every single bullet, because she couldn't. Claire got to her feet, pushing backward, holding up both hands in surrender. "Stop, please. Please."

Riza was too well-trained for the creature's pleas to have any effect on her. Hughes had died because he hadn't been able to shoot the creature that looked like his wife; she would not make that mistake.

"I won't let you recreate your work here," she said. Her gun ran out of ammunition; she pulled another clip out of her pocket and replaced it with brutal efficiency, firing again within moments. "It'll be easier for us both if you just die already."

She could hear the deathless children coming closer, drawn by the sounds of her gunfire, but she didn't let that stop her. The homunculus couldn't control them, and if she was lucky, they might even attack it and save her some trouble. Getting away again would be difficult, but stopping the homunculus was more important than her own life.

I'm sorry, Colonel. I might have to disobey you.

"You have to get me in the back of the head," she screamed, hoping her voice was piercing enough to work past the sound of constant fire. With every hit, her fingernails scraped against the ground, her nails bloody with blood that trickled down from her injuries, but also from where they tore with the effort, gradually patching up time after time. "I don't have any work, but there's—"

She knew that she shouldn't have been giving away the answer, the only square inch of her body that could leave her destroyed for good, but with the pain, death sounded merciful. Would this woman take the option? Would the woman torture her instead, try to pull out whatever information she was talking about? Perhaps she was from the Company.

"I'm Claire Bennet, I'm from Odessa, Texas, I'm just a cheerleader."

Riza's ears were ringing; even for a professional, the sound of that much gunfire at such close range was painful. She didn't hear the creature explain how to kill it.

She stopped again to reload, and the bloody mess cried that it was just a cheerleader. Right. And Selim Bradley was just a little boy. Outside of a nightmare, Riza would have noticed the difference between the girl and the boy who had threatened her life, but in the dream the only fact that matter was Claire's infernal ability to regenerate.

So focused was Riza on the threat that she believed Claire presented that she did not notice that the deathless children had arrived until one attacked, biting deeply into her shoulder. She cried out, dropping her weapon.

So glad was Claire for the reprieve that for a few moments, all she could do was breathe and wait for her wounds to heal. As painful as it was to receive the wounds, waiting for them to heal was equally as excruciating, pain and itches shooting through her entire body as her skin wove itself back together and vessels flowed naturally once more. She got up as soon as everything was in order, eyes resting on her assailant and on the strange-looking child who had bitten into the woman's shoulder.

Claire should have run. She knew that she should have run, but instead, she headed straight in the blonde's direction and pulled a kitchen knife (she wasn't even sure how it got in her hand, only that it was there, like the drawer back in home had managed to follow her to this place) out to drag through the boy's shoulder.

"Run," she shouted at the woman. "Get out."

The deathless child cried out in pain, a disconcertingly human sound that tore at Riza's heart, even as she stumbled out of its grasp. Bloodloss caused her vision to blur, and for a minute she thought she saw Winry. Shape-shifting? Delusion?

Why was the girl protecting her? She wasn't an alchemist; she couldn't become one of the sacrifices. Was was her plan?

Her gun was gone, vanished. She was completely helpless and at the mercy of the homunculus she had just tried to kill.

Slowly, over the din of the deathless children, she heard an achingly familiar voice cry out in pain.

"COLONEL!"

Nothing impeded her as she ran.

As soon as the other blonde started running, Claire exhaled with a shudder, looking around at all of the children around her, children who so obviously were anything but, judging by the blank looks in their eyes. The upstanding thing would probably be to stay and try to stop them as they dragged themselves along. Even if they were slower, they looked tireless. Like they would stop it nothing to come across that woman again, the one in the military outfit, her shoulder still bleeding a bright red against white as she stumbled away into the distance.

But Claire could only be so strong, and to have the woman leave was enough of a relief that she turned in the opposite direction, also running. Running faster than she ever had before, no oxygen in her lungs, causing all of it to be stifling. Impossible to bear. She wondered if she needed oxygen like everyone else did, how long she'd be able to survive underwater, but none of it mattered as she flew with the wind and gasped as the air was suddenly different and she came to a rolling stop in a field of soft grasses.

She stared up at the stars above.

And it was all so quiet that it could have been a dream.

you will surely shatter

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