The Colonel stood over the two dead doctors, the guilt he felt over so many innocent lives lost during the War slowly suffocating him. He strove to shut his mind down, to just forget it all, but the pain wouldn't leave him in peace.
There is no pain, you are receeding; a distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
He tried to ask forgiveness from the souls of all of those that he had killed under the pretext of following orders, but as loudly as his heart cried out for forgiveness, none seemed to come.
You are only coming through in waves; your lips move, but I can't here what you're saying…
Mustang thought of the girl in the picture that he had just made an orphan, and how much he had just taken from her without ever having seen her face, and tears began to sting at the corners of his eyes; memories of his own parents and how they had cared for him came unbidden into his thoughts…
When I was a child, I had a fever, my hand felt just like two balloons; now I've got that feeling once again…
Roy told himself over and over again that he wasn't really a murderer, that he would have saved these people if he had been given that chance, but the fact of the matter was that the blood on his hands would never wash away.
I can't explain, you would not understand; This is not how I am!
Realizing that the only way to truly make amends would be to trade his own life for the lives he had taken, the Colonel raised his gun and put it under his chin, pulling the hammer back. His finger shook on the trigger, but Roy closed his eyes, begged one last time for forgiveness, and moved his finger down.
Click.
The magazine was empty. What did this mean? Was it a sign?
"Stop that!"
The voice of Dr. Marcoh brought Roy back into the real world and he turned to face him, his eyes still hazy and his legs shaking with the joy of life. But from that day on, some part of the Colonel would never be the same.
But I, I have become… comfortably numb.