In his life, Roy Mustang has done many thing he regretted. He regretted being a human weapon (but only in the physical sense since he considered his moral humanity to have been gone long ago) in that unholy desert, killing thousands on innocent people in their own territory. He didn't hate flame alchemy, per say. He just hated how he had to use it. That regret and more ran through his mind daily, constant melancholy reminders of his mistakes.
Some of his most irreparable regrets, though, were the ones involving Riza Hawkeye.
He regretted bringing her into everything: into Ishval, into the military, everything. Even if she insisted time after time that protecting him, seeing that he made it to the top, was her choice, Roy knew that Riza never would have felt the need to protect him had he not filled her head with his idealistic talk of changing the country with his hands when they were younger. If he hadn't done that, she probably would have lived a normal life. She wouldn't be risking her own life every single day for him. For the man who could never fully protect her the way she did him.
He regretted burning her back. Once again, it was by her own insistence that this was done. Insistence or not, Roy still hated himself for doing it. It had been shortly after Ishval, in that nightmare of a place, when he did it. On his worst nights, Roy could still hear her screams clearly, could still see her ruby blood flowing from the burns. Afterwards, he tended to her, placing damp washcloths on her burns and speaking softly to her, trying in a possibly futile attempt to distract her from the immense pain that she was in. It was his own small repentance for his sin against her. He later made a promise to both her and himself that he would never hurt her again. It was a promise he knew he shouldn't have made, since it seems that he always wound up hurting her in some way, but he made it all the same. Now, he knows he's already broken that promise.
His final and biggest regret, though, wasn't one he's always had. Unlike the others, he didn't have time to relive this regret repeatedly. Maybe that's because, when this regret formed, he was lying on the ground with a stab wound in his chest, feeling his life slip away much too quickly for his liking.
His biggest regret is that he never told Riza Hawkeye that he loved her.
He hopes that she'll appear soon. That she'll come running around the corner and kneel next to him, yelling his rank (not his name, never his name) and telling him to hold on, to hang in there. He would know he couldn't do that but, before he dies, he would tell her. It would not be in detail, for what good are tiny details to the dead? It would only be those three words. They would be more than enough.
That's not what happens, though. What happens is that, much too quickly, all the blood drains from his body. His eyes grow dull and his body becomes cold. The eternal curtain of darkness falls.
Roy Mustang lived with many regrets. Now, he dies with a new one.
AN: And now for something completely different! This is by far the saddest fanfiction I've ever written, at least in my opinion. My heart hurt as I was writing and typing this. I wanted, however, to try and write something that was predominately sad with little to no fluff in it. I hope beyond hope that I achieved that. I promise, the next one-shot I put up will up lighter! Promise!
This fic was loosely inspired by this post I saw on Tumblr that asked this question: 'What if Roy and Riza never told each other how they felt and they spent their whole lives never knowing how the other one felt?". Thus, this was born.
Reviews would be appreciated.