I've started several multi-chapter stories that I refuse to post until I'm finished and feel secure with them—which could be a while because my home is currently a madhouse—but I take a break to make a one-shot every so often. This one was written with a more personal vendetta in mind. I included the dedication at the bottom, and it is relatively brief but has strong-ish words, so if you'd rather avoid it, it'll be easy for you, and you can just read the story itself.
Regardless of said vendetta, I do not claim to own FMA in any imaginable fashion; I simply wanted to express a point that hits close to home, and the illustrious Arakawa provided a grand (and relevant) vessel for it, so I'm just borrowing Roy for a moment. (Since I haven't encountered much in the way of a canon history for him, I took a few liberties that I thought plausible.)
Even with that said, I'll add that the scenes I depicted here are loosely (sometimes very loosely, but still) based off real events.
Anyway, about the story itself, I don't think I feel completely satisfied with it. It's all right, but I didn't feel at my best while writing it, so it's kind of grating at me. Could just be that I feel stretched really thin these days. I intend to fix it up some more. Just thought I'd put the general concept out there for anybody else to rip up as they see fit. :)
I'm tired. Sleep is hard to come by lately. But I have to go to work. Blah. Work on Halloween night is probably going to be crazy.
P.S. I made up Roy's full name. It just sounded good to me.
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Hero
"Punishment - The justice that the guilty deal out to those that are caught." -- Elbert Hubbard
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" -- Eleanor Roosevelt
"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars." -- Franklin Roosevelt
"And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves." -- Ender of Ender's Game (a really excellent book, one of my favorites; I highly recommend it)
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"ROY ALEXANDER MARCUS MUSTANG!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Although he flinched at the sound of his full name being screeched at such an unholy decibel, the four-year-old Roy looked up at his foster mother without a hint of apology in his eyes. Instead, he grinned and waved at her, dancing gleefully in the middle of the chaos he had created single-handedly in the kitchen. There was flour and sugar coating the floor, ice box, table, and cupboards, the spectacle of white occasionally broken by a littering of cracker crumbs, toilet paper, and the two sticks and three rocks he brought in from outside. There was also evidence of water having been splashed about, as some of the food and dirt was still drying after having been caked to where it was thrown. Although Madam Chris stood before the room with her hanging open in an expression of anything but pleasure, little Roy exhibited nothing but delight in his handiwork.
"Look, Mom!" he exclaimed. "I've killed all the bad guys!"
His sisters all peered at him from around Madam Chris's skirt, knowing that if they dared step into the kitchen and got their feet powdered and sticky, they'd never hear the end of it. Roy continued to be oblivious to their reactions, instead picking up his sticks and running around the floor, swinging recklessly.
"They started coming at me, and I went like this"—Swish, swish went the stick—"and then like this"—swish, swish, whap—"and then I said, 'AAAAAAHHH!!"—swipe, swash, swish, whap, and so much for using that box of crackers to make the meatloaf. "And do you know why I could do that?" Roy bounded up to Madam Chris with a thoroughly self-satisfied and excited expression. "It's because I'm a hero!"
Madam Chris pursed her lips, staring down at her foster son until his grin was slowly reduced to his lower lip sticking out in a confused pout.
Five minutes later, he was still throwing a fit from his chair in the corner of the living room, his indignant wails chasing his sisters as far away from the room as possible. Madam Chris paid him no heed as she prepared a mop bucket. At length, the boy's volume rose as he addressed her.
"THIS IS NAUGHTY, MOM! YOU ARE VERY NAUGHTY!"
She didn't bother to hide her snort from him. "I'm naughty, am I? You're the one who made such a mess in the kitchen. You know better than that."
"I already told you! I had to kill the bad guys!"
Madam Chris shuddered. A boy so young shouldn't be throwing out the word "kill" so easily. "There was no one here. You didn't need to throw flour and sugar around," she quipped as she set the mop bucket near the kitchen floor. Then she glanced sharply into the living room. "Hey, you're not supposed to be talking in time-out anyway!"
"But I've got to tell you—"
"Hush! You're in time-out."
Rather than hushing, however, Roy merely began crying even harder than before. Madam Chris clenched her fists and paused mid-step to allow herself time to fight off her impatience before she exploded. At last, she yelled just loudly enough to be heard, "Remember, you don't get to come out of time-out until you're happy again."
A pause. A very distinct pause. Then a despairing, "I'M HAPPY NOOOOOOOOOW!"
Shaking her head and filling her mind with thoughts of what a handsome and well-behaved man her foster son would eventually grow up to be, Madam Chris managed to tune out his rueful assurances of his happiness long enough to wring out every trace of flour, sugar, and dirt from the kitchen floor into her bucket. By that time, Roy had finally quieted down, so she peeked into the living room to see him still facing his corner, slumped and bored. She sighed inwardly and walked over to him, gently turning his chair toward her until her gaze met his sullenly downcast eyes.
"Look at me," she said. When he didn't comply, she repeated, "Look at me, Roy." Now his slightly slanted black eyes focused on hers, and though they occasionally wandered elsewhere out of a sense of awkward discomfort, she made sure they always returned. "Can you tell me why I sent you to time-out?"
"I don't know," he mumbled.
"I think you do," Madam Chris pressed.
"But I don't," Roy insisted. "I told you, I was just killing the bad guys. I was being a hero."
Madam Chris sighed and folded her legs underneath her, prepared for a long talk. "Who were the bad guys you were killing anyway?"
"Um," Roy perked up, all his frustration having suddenly dissipated at the chance to explain himself. "There were bad guys who were stealing things, and not sharing, and Ishbalans, too."
"Ishbalans?" Madam Chris furrowed her brows. "Why Ishbalans?"
"My dad said they were bad," Roy explained in very matter-of-fact tones and sensible nods. "He told me sometimes about how he killed them. My dad's a real hero. He's a hero because he kills bad guys. That's what he said."
Madam Chris bit her tongue before she could spit out anything that the boy didn't need to hear about his father. Not yet. Instead, she gave herself a moment to study this four-year-old child, why he had been taken from his father and put into foster care in the first place, and what he could become. Keeping as straight and neutral a face as possible, she finally replied, "You know, I don't think that's what it means to be a hero."
Roy's eyes widened as his chin rose. His interest was piqued. "What do you think it means?"
Madam Chris considered how to answer. There didn't seem to be a good place to start. Until she suddenly realized that the boy himself was the starting point.
"Well, Roy," she said, her eyes level with his, "why do you want to be a hero?"
"Um," Roy paused, let out his breath as he thought, then inhaled deeply before answering. "Because I want to be strong. And fast. I want to be so strong that I can stop any bad guy."
His foster mother nodded. "That's a start. But you have to remember, Roy, that heroes don't become heroes because they want to be liked. They do it because they want to protect people and good things like freedom and fairness. Do you want to protect those things?" The boy nodded, but Madam Chris caught the hesitancy. She frowned a little. "Well, why do you want to protect your sisters?"
He seemed lost for words for a moment. His eyes searched every nook of the room, trying to find the answer. Finally, he looked back at Madam Chris and said, "Well, I really love my sisters. They're very nice to me."
Madam Chris nodded. "Yes, they are. Do you want to protect me?"
"Um, yes."
"Why?"
Roy considered for a moment, then broke into a grin. "Because I love you, too!"
Smiling softly, Madam Chris nodded again. "That's very sweet of you. I love you, too. But why do you love me?"
"Because you're a good cook," the boy replied. "And because you always hug me and kiss me and don't yell at me too much."
"Okay," Madam Chris relented. "That's a good start. But heroes want to protect everyone because they see something good in everyone. They see something to like in everyone. That's what makes them want to be heroes. So you want to be a hero, right?" At the boy's emphatic nodding, she continued. "All right, then we'll start training you to be one. Every day, I want you to pay attention to the good things you like about other people, and do something nice for them. And every day, I'll ask you what you good things noticed about the people you saw. That's the first step to being a hero."
"Oh," the boy's mouth was round, his eyes wide, his eyebrows raised.
Madam Chris allowed herself a small smile at his awed and excited expression. "But," she suddenly raised one finger, "that includes Ishablans. You have to find good things about them, too."
At once, Roy looked perplexed again. "But my dad said they're bad guys!"
"What makes them bad guys?" Madam Chris challenged. When Roy's answer was a blank stare that tried very hard not to look so blank, she elaborated, her heart almost sinking. "Roy, I want you to understand that it's not as simple as your dad being the good guy and the people he fights being the bad guys. Most of the bad guys probably think your dad is the bad guy."
"Why?" Roy asked. He seldom held such strict attention on one subject for so long; Madam Chris couldn't help but feel impressed with the importance of it.
"Well," she shifted into a more comfortable sitting position to avoid making her calves fall asleep, allowing the time it took to settle down again to stall her answer as she tried to think how to word it. Looking confidently into her foster son's eyes, she said, "You know how I sent you to time-out even though you thought you didn't do anything wrong?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I thought you did do something wrong. Which of us was right?"
"Um, I was right," the boy answered with hardly a pause.
Madam Chris grimaced. "See, I still think I was right. But I sent you to time-out anyway because I'm the grown-up and get to do that." She shrugged. "You see? It's kind of like that. You thought I was the one being bad, and I thought you were the one being bad. Your dad thinks the Ishbalans are bad, but the Ishbalans think your dad is bad." She watched him as he stared thoughtfully down at his lap. "Do you understand?"
After a moment, Roy nodded. "Yes, I understand."
It was hard to say for sure, but the way his face had calmed made Madam Chris decide to believe him. "That's why it's important see the good things in people. It helps them understand each other so that they don't see each other as bad guys anymore. Heroes fight to protect people and to help them live together peacefully. They don't really want to kill. Killing doesn't make you a hero."
"But don't bad guys have to be killed sometimes?" Roy inquired.
Looking into his pleading face, her mouthed firmed into a thin line as she steeled her resolve. At last, she answered him in a hard, reluctant voice. "I won't lie to you, Roy Boy. I think that sometimes there are people who can't be trusted to live. There are people who won't try to understand others no matter what you do, and they will keep doing terrible things until somebody makes them stop. Sometimes people have to be killed. But"—and here, she made sure Roy could see the honesty in her eyes—"you must remember that it is always a last resort. It's what you do when there is nothing else you can do. And you must remember that no matter the circumstances, killing is always sad. Always." Noticing how wide the boy's eyes had become, she looked away from him, trying to let him relax. "That's what I think. But I want you to think about it for yourself. Don't just listen to your dad or to me. Think about it on your own and then tell me."
"I...." Roy trailed off. Then he sighed despondently as he went back to scrutinizing his lap. "I just really want to be a hero."
Madam Chris glanced over at him. And she smiled. "All right, then," she said as she held out her arms to him. He fell into them happily, and she took him to the kitchen with her. "Like I told you before, we'll start training you to be a hero. Every day, I'll ask you what good things you've noticed about other people. Try to find something new every time."
"And that's the first step to being a hero?" Roy asked.
"Yes."
"What else does it take to be a hero, Mom?"
One look around the kitchen, and Madam Chris knew her answer. "Well, heroes are also responsible and always want to help other people. It goes along with wanting to protect them. Do you know why I got so mad at you for making a mess in the kitchen, Roy Boy?" When he shook his head, she continued. "It's because I have to clean it up so I can use it again. It wasn't nice of you to do that. You didn't help me, you made a mess. That's not very hero-like at all. But you know what a hero would do?" He shook his head again. "A hero would help clean up the messes he makes. It's part of helping people."
"Oh," Roy spun around slowly, taking in what was still left of the chaotic results of his playtime. Suddenly, he bent down to pick up one of the rocks Madam Chris had set aside to throw out later. "Do you know how I killed the bad guys?"
Madam Chris sighed but took the bait. "No. How did you do it?"
"I put them in here," Roy explained. "I put them in this rock. Now they're trapped in there forever."
In a moment of silence during which Madam Chris's heart plummeted to her stomach, she stared in consternation at the rock. "You put them in there?" she said quietly. "And that's how you killed them?"
Roy nodded. "And they can't come out and hurt people again."
Placing one hand gingerly on his cheek, Madam Chris descended to one knee and looked her boy in the eye. "Roy, do you know what it means to kill someone?" He merely looked confused at the question. She stroked his hair as she went on. "It means to make their body stop working so that they can't use it anymore. They never come back. Never. Do you understand?"
This time, his nod was slow and cocked, and she knew he only half-understood. She pulled him into a hug, and his tiny arms held onto as much of her back as they could. She kissed his cheek before standing up again. As she did so, her elbow knocked Roy's occupied hand, and dirt particles from the rock fell to the floor. Roy jumped back and gasped, "Oh, no!"
Then he looked up at Madam Chris, shoulders hunched, mouth already set to pout. She only gave him a small smile. "Don't worry," she said, opening a drawer, taking out a rag, wetting it, and handing it to him. "Just clean it up."
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His memories of that day were blurred at best. Mostly, he couldn't remember a day while he was still living with his foster mother that she didn't ask him what good things he had noticed in those around him and whether he had done anything kind for them. She treated it like a game, cheering him on when he was especially attentive, frowning with a playful sense of disappointment when he was not. As he grew older and felt the rules of the game sink into his mind and become a natural part of his being, it was Madam Chris who reminded him of the game's origins once in a while. Not that she really needed to remind him. He may have grown up, but his desire to be a hero remained strong.
As far as everyone else seemed to be concerned, he got what he wanted.
"Hero of Ishbal!" the other soldiers would shout as they waved their fists in the air.
"Hero of Ishbal!" the newspapers printed underneath a picture that was taken at a particularly good angle.
"Hero of Ishbal!" his superior officers would clap him on the back, nodding at him like he was an equal, or would be soon. Like he was on their level now.
Hero of Ishbal. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open when he flicked his wrist and sprung towers of flames along the streets of the day's city.
Hero of Ishbal. He gulped down a cry when he passed a family of people writhing and beating against the windows of their home before the fires engulfed them entirely.
Hero of Ishbal. He struggled to keep from falling to his knees as the soldiers who had been waiting for him to finish began surging into the city, shooting down any survivors and then moving on without even bothering to watch them die, planting explosives in every corner they could find, some of them muffling the girls' cries as they ravished them and ravished them and then finished them.
Hero of Ishbal. The words screamed in his head almost as loudly as the screams of the prisoner locked up in the ward he was passing as interrogators yanked out his fingernails, one by one, before getting around to pinching off his thumbs with pliers and using a spoon to open his ears a little wider in case he wasn't hearing their questions properly.
Hero of Ishbal. The words were reverberating and slamming against the sides of his head when he took in the sight of a child whose only remaining recognizable feature was a pair of red eyes that stared up at him but couldn't see him.
Hero of Ishbal. The words were a maniacal whisper in his mind as he witnessed three laughing soldiers kicking and punching an elderly Ishbalan man until he stopped moving.
Hero of Ishbal. The words cackled at him when he narrowly escaped being stabbed by a survivor of one of his attacks. The man was brutally gunned down by a nearby comrade who then went off on a tangent about what filthy mongrels the Ishbalans could be. If Roy's breath hadn't been taken by the sight of the dried tears that had made a trail in the dirt on the man's still face, he might have managed some kind of response.
Hero of Ishbal. They gasped as what was left of his survival instincts kicked in and caused him to knock down another attacker who had managed to slice his arm, frantically snapping his fingers and then stumbling back as the man arched and flailed until the flames had incinerated his voice and last nerve endings.
Hero of Ishbal. They resounded grimly when the "doctors" told him the specimens he had brought them were especially interesting that week, the blackest and foulest yet.
Hero of Ishbal. They wheezed as the scent of rotting flesh, ponds of blood, and burning life rammed into him via the high winds.
Hero of Ishbal. They wailed and wailed in his mind when the daughter of his alchemy teacher gazed up at him with the eyes he knew so well and that looked so horrible on her. The eyes of his best friend slowly closed themselves to the world, losing a spark he hadn't even realized they'd had before, before all this. Now it was gone, gone, it was all gone....
Hero of Ishbal, Hero of Ishbal, Hero of Ishbal.
What good do you see in them, Roy? Do you understand them?
What good is there in this? Do you understand what you're doing?
Why are you killing them, Hero of Ishbal?
"Keep it up, Hero of Ishbal," Fuhrer Bradley said to him when he caught him slumping against a wall. "Keep it up," the Fuhrer repeated as he turned away, shoulders back, posture upright, and stepped grandly over the bodies strewn in his path.
Hero of Ishbal, Hero of Ishbal, Hero of Ishbal....
"Roy Boy?"
He saw his mother's concerned face studying him as she applied a wet cloth to his forehead. The light was dim, but it still made his head ache. His feeble attempt to sit up was promptly and easily stopped by Madam Chris, which turned out to be for the better, for if he had made it all the way up, he surely would have regurgitated every meal he had eaten over the past year. He coughed and sighed up at the woman, who patiently wet the rag again and then wrung it out.
"What are you doing here, Mom?" he croaked.
"You've been shut up in here for a week," she said. "I figured I'd come see if you were okay, which you weren't."
"Mom," he breathed slowly. "You saw the papers."
She nodded but said nothing for a long time. Once she decided his forehead had had enough cooling down, she let the rag sit in its bowl of water and leaned back in her chair.
"Well," she sighed. "So, Roy, what good things did you notice about the soldiers you fought with?"
If he'd had the energy, Roy would've cast her a surprised and indignant glare. Settling with throwing his forearm across his eyes, he answered, "There's nothing good about what we did, Mom. Nothing. It wasn't war, it wasn't even a restoration of order—it was genocide. It was genocide, Mom...." He choked and let her finish the sentence in her own mind.
"I know," she nodded grimly. "But that's not what I asked you about. What good did you notice in your fellow soldiers?"
"There's nothing, Mom," he almost growled his response. "What we did was atrocious and unforgivable. We have no right to live. Not just the soldiers, but the civilians who supported it. We're all bloodstained beyond hope. But I've decided something. I will get a team of people together who can help me become Fuhrer. I can protect the people below me, and they in turn can protect the people below them, and so on until everybody is protected. We can have peace and justice. No more senseless wars. We can finally put an end to all this madness."
Madam Chris listened quietly. Then she spoke gently but firmly.
"How can you properly become a Fuhrer if you no faith left in the people?"
The question struck Roy such that he began to cough. Then he vomited from the effort, though Madam Chris was prepared, holding a bowl underneath his chin. After she had set the bowl aside in a place where neither of them were likely to step in it, she folded her arms and glared sternly at him.
"They call you the Hero of Ishbal in the papers," she said. "And everybody seems to love you. But you aren't a hero yet. I'm sure you know that." Roy shook his head slowly, and a tear fell across his cheek and onto his pillow. Madam Chris brushed it away before continuing. "But your decision to become Fuhrer is a good one. Your sisters and I will support you in that." The creases from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth only deepened. Madam Chris frowned at that. "I'm still proud of you, Roy Boy."
He chuckled wryly. "How could you possibly be proud of me?"
"You made a mess," she replied simply, "and now you're going to clean it up."
Then he allowed a small—if ephemeral—smile to cross his lips.
"I know you wanted to be a hero," Madam Chris continued. "You wanted to help and protect people. You thought the military might help you do that. But you were wrong. You can't undo the past, and you know that. There's no revenge or sacrifice great enough to make up for what you've done. But for those people you hurt to not try to understand you would be as great a sin. It's that sort of attitude that causes wars like these to happen. It is what caused this war—one horrible attack from one horrible person gets snatched and built up into a hellish genocide. Nobody is absolved from responsibility in this case." Noticing that the sweat had started to form again, Madam Chris wrung out the cold cloth and resumed wiping it away. "But we've all learned something, at least. Perhaps the saddest thing about humanity is that we must learn our hardest lessons collectively, not individually." She sighed. "You can still be a hero, Roy. But you have to remember what the first step is." She sat back and smirked at him. "What's the first step, little boy?"
Roy shook his head. "I get it. You don't have to keep lecturing me."
"I've lost count of how many times you've said that," Madam Chris quipped.
There was a tentative knock at his door. After gently thwarting Roy's second attempt to sit up, she stood and opened the door to find Hawkeye and Hughes waiting. They nodded politely at Madam Chris before turning their attention to Roy, hurrying to his side. Hawkeye set the back of her hand against Roy's forehead.
"You're burning up," she murmured briskly, grabbing the wet cloth and urgently patting his face with it.
"Really, Roy," Hughes sighed. "How are you going to be Fuhrer if you let a fever get to you so easily?"
Roy narrowed his eyes at him before looking back at his mother, who smirked and gestured at his friends. "There you go."
"Thanks for checking up on him, Madam Chris," Hughes nodded at her with a smile.
"Well, I'll leave you two to watch him for now," she replied. "I'd better get back home and make sure my girls are all right. Besides, they'll want to know how their brother is doing."
"Thank you again," Hawkeye bowed. "We will make sure he recovers."
Madam Chris nodded and ruffled Roy's hair before picking up her purse and heading for the door. "I'll come by again tomorrow," she said before shutting the door to the room that held the hope for Amestris and the proof he needed that saving this bloody country would be worth it.
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This is dedicated to my four-year-old nephew.
And to the scumbags on the paternal side of his lineage.
And to the people his father so cheerily bragged about killing in Afghanistan, after which he and his parents praised him as a hero.
Hero, indeed.
Please keep your twisted morals to yourselves and away from my nephew from now on. Thanks.
*Note: My feelings about war in general are complex, and I have yet to feel sure of what I think about the war currently going on in Afghanistan, but rest assured that I never automatically think ill of anyone who fights, as I know that some of them have noble and personal reasons for doing so. Also, many of them look upon death as sad no matter its circumstances and try to avoid killing when possible, taking no joy in it when they must do it, and I think that's important and respectable. People like my former brother-in-law and his parents, however, who take such a simplistic black-and-white view that puts themselves on a pedestal and reduces heroism to mere slaughter and submission of those they deem "bad" and then try to pass such a philosophy on to young children (along with firm assurances that they are smarter than their actual caretakers)—those are the people toward whom I would direct my wrath. I may not use a sword as a manifestation of said wrath, but I think I'm pretty damn good with a pen when I want to be.