I've decided to try and write something coherent in English, although I am rusty as hell and well… this came out. It might contain: sloppy tenses, weird constructions and all that stuff, but I still wanted to share it, so here we go *braces herself*.

Also, a big thank you to Al and his beta-reader skills.

As usual: I do not own FMA.


Lieutenant Hawkeye hated nights. Of course, it hadn't been always like that. Riza Hawkeye hated the nights after Ishval. She hated them because they gave her mixed feelings which made her sick. She hated them, for they weren't like the ones in the desert, and she hated herself, since she wished they were. She longed for a fire to watch, her cheek on the cold sand, until she would fall asleep without nightmares, only because those nocturnal terrors came later. Although, the remorse had always been there, waiting for a chance to not be a nuisance in the sharpshooter's always precise work.

Riza hated herself seeing how she desired that fire, which had caused so much pain. With its twisted shapes, its bright colors, its cracks and snaps. The crack of a campfire in the middle of the desert. The snap, not the one from his fingers, rather the oxygen reacting around him and the ozone smell the transmutation always leaves behind. She wanted that. And she knew, oh how she knew, that the smell of burned flesh, the taste of despair, and the ashes in her cheap coffee had been the ones that accompanied the mesmerizing scent of ozone back in the day.

That's why she accepted her burden with quiet resignation a long time ago, that's why she had a dog, and on top of that, that was the reason Riza had a candle burning in her nightstand every damn night, even though they warned her that one day she will burn —like Ishval, such poetry—. While she watched the dancing flame, although she was no alchemist, she understood the equivalent exchange. She knew that she had offered him the flame, and they had created hell on earth, and the price she must pay was that aching, burning desire.

However, Riza didn't mind… while she wasn't the only one burning.