When Roy is eighteen years old, he learns the hard way not to bury a body in the sand.
It isn't even his duty to bury the body, hell, it's an Ishbalan, and not even someone who has died at his hands. The body, this anonymous dark-haired dark-skinned red-eyed so-dead body, it's face is shot in, collapsed and bloodied and barely there, laying admist teeth and bone fragments and blood-soaked sand. It's sickening, it's horrible, it's a war horror that makes even the most jaded generals turn their heads.
And Roy, poor naive Roy, he sees the mutilated body and has to bite his lips and swallow the bile rising in his throat.
Poor naive Roy, he throws his jacket over the body's face, puts gloved fingers under cold, stiff arms and drags it out of the street, out of the city boundaries and into the desert. Poor naive Roy, he scoops sand away with those killing, claw-hands of his and pushes that anonymous, mutilated corpse into the hole, facedown.
And then, poor naive Roy, he walks back to camp and pretends nothing happened (nothing did), but he doesn't touch his jacket for the rest of the night.
The next day, under a burning yellow sun and a blinding blue sky, they're traveling through the desert, that land of sand covered in heatwaves, when Roy's foot hits something soft. He almost trips under the back-breaking weight of his supplies and his oh-so-heavy heart, but he steadies himself and looks down. And there's the Ishbalan, no longer buried, what's left of it, stinking and beginning to decay and covered with spiderwebs.
And again, poor naive Roy, he chokes down bile.
He feels a hand on his shoulder, and it startles him so much, snaps him out of his wide-eyed, slack-jawed horror at seeing the body. He turns to brush noses with a long-haired young man whose teeth are stained sickly nicotine yellow and whose eyes are bloodshot and rimmed red.
This young man, he smiles and says, "Look at that."
Putting his hand on Roy's shoulder, he says, "Do you know, they say in a desert like Ishbal, in a desert like any desert, you can bury a body six feet underground and it'll resurface in six hours. The wind blows the sand away, and the animals, desert foxes and snakes and spiders and scorpions, they crawl over it and dig it up and eat the remains, birds and foxes do, they're scavengers." Pointing a finger toward the sky, he says, "See those vultures, Mustang? They eat anything that falls down, dead or not, practically anywhere. That sorry Ishbalan son of a bitch, he'll be gone in a few hours. Nothing but picked-clean bones."
Roy is shaking, plastering a thin smile on his face as the young man licks his cracked and bloody lips and goes on ahead. Poor naive Roy, he looks up at those vultures, and he doesn't know whether to cry or vomit.
When Roy is eighteen years old, he learns the hard way not to bury a body in the sand.
When Roy is nineteen-and-a-half years old, he uses a gun for the first time.
He has used them in training before, rifles with long barrels he has gotten used to staring down, rifles with triggers he is used to pulling, rifles with bullets he is used to seeing slam into a wooden target.
Thinking about it now, the cool end of a handgun pressed against his chin, so hard he'll always be able to feel it there, he should never have had to use a gun in battle. That's what some officer told him, some officer who was found guilty of treason and put to death by a firing squad. They'd told him that, with his skills in alchemy, he would never need to use a weapon. He, himself, was a killing machine.
When he had been ordered to kill the doctors, poor not-so-naive Roy, he had almost said, No, I won't do it.
The Mustangs are a military family. His father and his father's father and his father's father's father and so on, they'd all served in some military. Fought in some war. His mother, who was weak-bodied but strong-willed, his mother, whom Roy called by her first name, she had been a field nurse.
His mother was a field nurse, and Basque Gran was ordering poor not-so-naive Roy to assassinate two doctors only because they worked for both sides, dressed the wounds of Ishabalans and Amestrians alike.
What a sin.
And Roy, he agreed to kill them because he wanted to make a name for himself. He could die tomorrow. Do what you can, when you can.
It took two shots to kill them (one, two, bangbang), and one torn picture of a smiling blonde toddler to push Roy against the wall and over the edge, to push the gun against his chin. Roy, he wanted his brains on the wall. He wanted his body on the floor, bleeding and cooling and dead.
A year ago, he cried over a corpse. But now, now he is murdering parents, making orphans, for some good he doesn't understand.
Everything is mausoleum-, cotton-quiet. And with the cool end of a gun pressed against his chin, with the various material representations of his ranks buttoned and pinned and snapped on his uniform, poor not-so-naive Roy begins to cry.
When Roy is thirty years old, he cries at a funeral for the first time.
But no one, not even Riza knows, because it's raining this time and his newly-polished boots are stained with mud and he is soaked to the bone and shivering, cold.
With his fingers on the headstone, tracing shapes and letters and numbers and symbols, Roy cries. Choked sobs and ragged exhalations. In the rain, he is already useless, he has nothing to lose by crying.
Poor jaded Roy.
He's missing a war right now. Another war that puts his back against the wall and a gun to his chin. Edward is dead, Edward was alive, but he is dead now, six feet under soil that will not blow in the wind, that will not be dug up by desert vultures. Edward, he's in a beautiful, pitifully small coffin, safe from resurfacing and being reduced to meatless bones by desert foxes and vultures. This is no consolation to Roy, but grabbing that tombstone, missing a battle and crying, he starts to cough, then laughs.
This is funny because he knew it would happen.
Poor jaded Roy. Poor jaded Ed.
Slumped over in a trench, grotesquely gorgeous and bleeding and looking so much like some sort of sleeping doll, that's how Roy found Edward. A gunshot wound, from some killing machine who breathed bullets and bled gunpowder.
Edward, prodigal envy of the military Edward, Edward with nothing left to lose, Edward with a deceased brother and no family to speak of, well, he was dead.
And Roy, honored, respected, General Roy, Roy with nearly everything to gain, Roy with a reputable family at home, well, he was still alive. And crying because Edward (Edward with nothing to lose military dog Edward solitary Edward envied Edward deceased Edward) was dead.
This is funny because he knew it would happen.
Roy wonders if he can remember a time without war, a time where he didn't have to fight and didn't have to mourn and didn't have to see death every day. He can, vaguely, but god, it's hard.
Poor jaded Roy, his fingers moving across his dress uniform, he starts unpinning his medals and unsnapping buttons and removing ribbons and badges and the ropes on his shoulders. Every material sign of his rank, he takes it off, Roy with nothing to lose and everything to gain does, useless, wet Roy, he takes them off and scoops dirt with his killing, claw-hands and puts them in the hole, facedown. Like the toothless, splintered-jawed Ishbalan.
And removing his gloved hands from the tombstone, standing up all muddied and wet and shaking, cold, poor jaded Roy puts his hands in his pockets and leaves the cemetary.
Edward is dead. Seventeen, with absolutely nothing left to lose. Not even his life.
This is funny because he knew it would happen.
Walking away from the cemetary...
When Roy is thirty years old, he forgets who he is and what he has done for the first time.