Disclaimer: you know the drill; if I owned fma it would be all yaoi all the time.
Four. He was four and you could count his ribs. His red eyes were far to big for his filthy skull. Upon seeing Roy he began to scream. Long, blood curdling cries from a throat that hadn't seen water in days. He dashed to hide behind the corpse of a girl in her early teens, presumably his sister. She was almost entirely node, her large bosom bruised and dried semen caked between her thighs. Roy could narrow the perpetrator down to ten men who made a hobby out of raping and murdering local women.
The screaming continued until Roy, over tired and desperate, shouted in the most commanding tone he could muster
"Stop".
Shockingly, it worked. The boy moved from behind the body. He blinked stupidly up at the alchemist.
"What's your name kid?" Roy asked in the same tone he used when ordering around subordinates.
"Charlie," the boy recited, the lesson "respect your elders" filtering through from some past life neither of them could real remember.
"Do
you know who did this to your sister?"
"A man" the boy
recalled.
Roy heaved a sigh of exasperation. "I know a man, but what else. What did he look like, what was he wearing?" as he spoke his voice rose to a feverish cry.
"He was tall and tan and bald and he had a moustache," the kid could have been reciting the alphabet for all the emotion he put into his description.
"Mister, are you gonna hurt me, please don't hurt me. Big sister said men in uniforms would hurt me. But he didn't hurt me. He hurt her. How come she isn't moving? What does die mean?"
Roy tried to remember if he had known the definition of death at that age. Had he ever even been that age?
He knew that Gran would never be convicted and that the military wouldn't help the kid and that if he didn't get back soon Gran would wonder where he had been and that it really didn't take much effort to…
Snap.
The boy's screams filled the night air.
Roy walked away, ignoring it. His death was Roy's only gift.
A/N: there will be more. The next is sitting in my notebook. No one will see it until I see three reviews. That's all I ask.