Disclaimer: I don't own the FMA fandom, so none of these wonderful characters are mine.
-/-/-/-/-
The train stretches on forever in the emptiness of the desert, far beyond the horizon. Black meets white meets blue meets red, and those are all the colors that can be seen for as far as the eye can see.
Human sanity and clarity becomes tainted by these four colors, and no longer is is it possible to see anything but the painful brightness of the sand, the crisp, clean uniforms of those newly deployed, lifeblood spilling out onto to the sands and staining the barren landscape black.
Good and evil...
The concept doesn't exist here.
Its survival of the fittest amongst the ruins of this once proud city.
This is the place where nightmares are born, where the faces in the day become shadows haunting your dreams for years to come. The smile of an innocent, forever lost to the raging flames that consume the district, will haunt you more than the scent of burning flesh..
A single scream can echo the span of time, and while it may not bother you now, in two, five, ten, twenty years perhaps, you will wake up in a cold sweat with that person's name on your lips and your hand going for your gun.
He has seen sights so horrible that he's blocked them from his mind, not out of whim but necessity, because for the longest time he was afraid to close his eyes in the darkness. He wasted his time other ways, with distractions that would certainly get him kicked out if anyone had the heart to care anymore.
The other day, a child died in his arms.
Hot, crimson blood seeped from what was left of the body into the tattered remains of his uniform, ravaged by a weapon he hadn't meant to create. It's dying breathes were painful and drawn out, gurgles of blood as life left what had once been a human being.
He hadn't been able to tell if it had once been a girl or boy, and something in him had twisted and broken. His once bright eyes had dimmed, and he'd lost the hope that he'd once had going into this war.
His hand had been curled around the butt of his gun, ready to put the poor child to rest, but in the end, he hadn't been able to do it.
'Major – We need to get going.'
He remembers that he had remained silent, and that his partner and crime had sighed and placed a gloved hand on his shoulder.
He remembers flinching away.
'Major Armstrong, you can't let the Colonel see you like this, you need to get off your ass.'
The rest had been hazy, but he remembers being covered in blood that isn't his as Roy Mustang lead him away, the still smoking gun in his hand, gunpowder and blood staining his gloved hands red.
That had been yesterday.
He manages to stumble onto the platform with Mustang's help, his legs wobbling as though they are going to give out, and his eyes are clouded with lack of sleep, and it is only Mustang's steady hand on his back that keeps him standing.
He feels like that is the only thing keeping him sane any more.
On the horizon, the blackness spreads across the sands, filling the blue sky with smog and making it as black and white as everything else. With it, it brings the genocide of thousands.
And it will carry away the cowardice of one.
-/-/-
This was written for a challenge given to me by someone on tumblr; 'Armstrong's thoughts, feelings on the Ishval War, depicted in a flashback'. Hope you guys enjoyed it!