Disclaimer: Me, own Fullmetal Alchemist? If I did, do you really think I'd be forking over money every few months to buy the DVDs? I think not.
A/N: Mustang's POV
Memories of the Past
Elric finally left, after all that bickering and complaining. Sure, the witty banter portion of our conversation was entertaining, to say the least, but I'm glad he's gone. Now I have time to be by myself. These opportunities seem to be becoming less and less as time progresses and I move higher and higher on the military rank scale. I'm not complaining, especially when my goal is to be the best, but sometimes I just wish I could spend some time alone every once in a while. Every now and again it's good to reflect on events long past. Especially when this damned pain keeps making a nuisance of itself.
The way I remember it, it was a dark night, the moon and stars hidden behind billowing clouds of smoke and gunpowder. There was chaos everywhere, people screaming, mothers crying, children calling out for their parents. There was blood everywhere, so much blood, soaking the dry, cracked ground, dying it a shade of crimson that has long since embedded itself in my mind. I wasn't outside when it happened. I was in a run down shack, the kind that the homeless reside in when they have nowhere else to go. As it would turn out, that little hovel would save my life.
Then it happened. I knew it was coming - we all did - , but no one knew when. The bomb exploded outside, sending debris and people friend and foe alike flying in all directions. I took shelter behind a broken table, crouched behind it, head in my hands the way a little child does during a thunderstorm when mommy is nowhere to be seen. Thinking back, I am ashamed of the way I acted in that one moment, that one single moment of weakness, when I was left exposed to whoever cared to see. I prayed no one would.
Unfortunately for me, someone did. It may have been the owner of the shack, maybe someone else. I didn't know then and I certainly don't know now. Never had the chance to find out. He raised a gun to my head, the barrel pointed directly at my skull, and I willed him to pull the trigger. I had done too much evil to hope for forgiveness, and death would be the easy way out. And that's why, I suppose, I couldn't let him go through with it.
A loud bang echoed in that little rundown shack in that poor village, a sound that to this day I can not bear to hear. Ironic, it would seem, that someone such as myself would be found as gun shy. Funny how some things work out like that. I dodged, at the last possible second, and the bullet missed its original target. Instead, a searing pain ran through my thigh and I could feel the blood beginning to pool beneath me. It wouldn't occur to me until much later that I had been shot.
The only thing that I was thinking about was how to escape that shack with my life. This man, my attacker, my possible savior, was armed with a gun, of a make standard to the military. I didn't stop to think who else he had killed to take possession of it. But, while he had a gun, I had a resource unlike the likes of him could ever dream of possessing. With a snap of my fingers, he was gone, and I watched him burn alive. At the time I had lacked the finesse required for a clean kill, and I just sat there and watched the poor bastard die a slow and horrible death. It could have been me I told myself It was done in self defense. It's not your fault that he died. But it was my fault. I knew, deep in my heart, that I was the sole reason for this poor man's untimely demise. I wondered if he had any family, a wife, kids, anyone, really. I never knew his name, but the look on his face as his body was incinerated was enough to stay with me for the rest of my life. Never again do I want to have to experience something like what I did on that day.
And that wasn't even the worst of it. I escaped that shack with my life, only to lose something even more precious to me. I wasn't until all the survivors were gathered back at headquarters when I realized something was wrong. Someone was missing, and I prayed to God it was a mistake, that she was just around the corner, about to jump out and embrace me, the way she always did. I waited, almost in shock, for that moment to come. But it never did. Seconds passed like hours, minutes like years. Then Havoc told me the news that would shatter the life I had once known.
She was dead. The love of my life, the one person who I had ever given my heart to, was dead. We had been destined to be together, everybody said so. I was just beginning to believe it myself, as well, as I was never one for destiny, when she was ripped away from me before her time. From that moment on I knew my life would never be the same. I could never go back to the way things had been, not now. It just wasn't possible.
So I thew myself into my work, in a vain, desperate attempt to forget. Research, field work, whatever, as long as it kept me occupied. Then, one day when I was filing a post-event report on that day, I came across something that did nothing to aid my current emotional standing. In the weapons archives, I found a gun, more specifically, the gun that had been used to shoot me. I would know it anywhere, even if it hadn't hit me at the time. It had been hers, her gun, her prized possession. She never went anywhere of importance without it, and it was just unnatural to see her in its absence. Then it hit me - the gun that had wounded me, was the same gun that had been stolen from my one true love upon her death. The bastard who shot me had taken her from me, then had the nerve to attack me with. Her. Gun. Rage flowed through me, but there was nothing I could do. He was already dead, sent to the grave in an act of self defense. But mark my words, if I had known then what I know now, he wouldn't have gotten off so easily.
It's now many years later, but I can still remember that day like it was yesterday. It doesn't help that this old injury of mine still acts up from time to time, a constant reminder of what I have lost. I loved her, and I can never get her back. When will these people ever learn that the things we want most in life are the things we should work the hardest to protect?