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.

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"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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