Summary: Can solace be found on the battlefield?
Warning: Soft yaoi (Mustang/Hughes)
Author's Note: Intended as a brief moment of salvation, to set a scene and invoke empathy. And arouse the Mustang/Hughes lovers.
2/09
Shake
The scene is nearly deserted now. Alchemy and firepower have reduced homes to rubble, crops to cinders, human beings to carcasses. Scattered blue uniforms dot the immediate landscape: no stone must be left unturned, no survivor spared. The war must be ended and we must win. A bleeding corpse does not know it is dead already and curses a fellow officer to the ungodly hell we are all already living in. My body begins to shake.
I maintain the composure for which I am known long enough to find my way behind a half-crumbled wall that was once an Ishbalan home. My eyes dart left to right, and I give way to the shuddering that has threatened to overtake me for days now. The sun is setting on this scene of desolation, this evidence of the wreckage of the human soul. My soul. I press my face to the mudplaster, warmer than my feverish body, and moan.
Moments or hours later I feel you, Maes, prying my fingers from the broken edifice and murmuring something, soft and low, that I cannot get my mind to comprehend. I don't resist you, don't really even know you are there until I fall back into your strong arms and you bring me to another demolished little hovel.
I should pull myself together. I must. I will. But you are carrying me and then laying me back in the rubble, continuing your gentle, soothing words. Removing your jacket and wrapping it around me, your voice is a lullaby in a foreign language, beautiful and protective. I look up but it is too dark now make out your features, and my head is heavy. I imagine your eyes behind your glasses capturing and holding mine, keeping me from slipping further away. I say your name to make it real, but I cannot stop shivering and I don't know if I am truly speaking or just imagining I am.
You bring your lips to mine, and I open to you. The tremors cease. The world is your embrace.
Bring me back alive, Maes.