The Flesh Failures
Author's Notes: Manga spoilers. Very serious fic. Death. This is a deathfic. If the title didn't give that away.
Title isn't mine (neither is FMA). The title is from a song in the musical Hair.
The office was incredibly large. The wall was decorated with a tapestry bearing the military's insignia, hanging behind the ornate oak desk and taking up much of the free space there. His desk chair was dwarfed beside the sheer magnitude of the desk it stood behind, slightly off kilter as he pushed himself back from it, looking warily at the mountains of work that he was currently not addressing.
"General."
"Sir?"
Her hair was clipped severely to her head, brows furrowed. Disapproval lined her features, etched deeply into the crevices formed in her skin over years and years of worry. Her eyes had darkened over his months in this oversized office, and over time the glowing pleasure in her features from seeing him achieve his dream had completely vanished, replaced with discontent.
"This is not as easy as I had expected," he said quietly, folding his arms on the desk, looking down at the pens gathered in a cup to his left. "Things aren't going quite as I had planned."
She had wondered, then, when he would bring it up. Somewhere, she hadn't the heart to mention it: the values, the ideals that had been sacrificed along the way. She hadn't the heart, because she knew where that conversation would go. And yet lately, the questions had been nagging her late at night, the worry eating away at her. She had decided just a few days earlier that she would bring it up within the week. He had beaten her to the chase, as he did so often.
"I've sacrificed things, General."
As things had grown progressively out of what they had devoted their lives to, many of their long-standing coworkers, supporters—friends—had abandoned them, In the year following their absence, she realized she couldn't blame them: for leaving, or for their anger at her for staying. The abandonment of those friends had hurt much more than she cared to admit, but not nearly as much as what she saw change in the man sitting before her.
"Ideals. Values. Everything I worked for."
He had always been a politician at heart. She knew that. Well aware of how to finagle and trick, to work with the government that was in place to try and enact things that he wanted to see. She had admired the talent, at first, when it was used for the idealistic dreams he had shared with her when they were still only children, facing the horizon of their lives with fresh faces and hopes that hadn't yet been shattered.
"This is not how things were supposed to end up."
But things had changed. And she had wondered, wondered if he would ever be man enough to bring it up—or if the time would come when she would have to betray him so completely. She wanted desperately to keep a memory of the man she had loved for so many years treasured safely in her heart. She had watched him change. It was becoming unbearable, and the images of idealism that she had loved him so dearly for were growing more and more distant, as like memories of a dream from years ago.
"This isn't what I wanted to become."
She stood from her desk, and he could see from the way she stared, the way she watched his every move, that she had expected this. Maybe, even, that she had been waiting for it to come. For him to realize. Because, even for the promises they had made so long ago, she would never just turn her back on him. She wanted him to know—know why, when she finally did press the pistol to the back of his head, she stood there and agreed to pull the trigger in his name one last time.
"I know that, sir."
Her breath was slightly hitched, uneven. He had asked so much from her, over the years. To stand beside him, behind him, to protect him and watch over him. Looking at her from across the room, he couldn't remember the last time he had thanked her for something she had done—for everything she had done. For staying with him, even when everyone else could no longer stand the man he had become.
Did she stay so she could be the one to pull the trigger?
"Your orders are to report to my home at 2300 hours this evening. Am I clear?"
She stared, her arm snapping up to meet her forehead in a stiff, proper salute—not unlike the one she had given the previous Führer—and turned on her heels, closing the door silently behind her.
It was 2300 hours on the dot when he heard the knock on his door. The guards had let her past, of course—when had they ever stopped her? Would knowing she planned to kill him have had them stop her in her tracks? Would it matter, even? He was going to dismiss them when she entered the building. That was his plan. Should the guards say, she would certainly be arrested on his behalf immediately, and be either killed by firing squad or imprisoned for the rest of her life as a murderer.
She came in. He asked the guards to leave, explaining that his sharp-shooting second-in-command could care for him well enough, adding that she had been fully capable of it for nearly fifteen years before they arrived on scene. And she had always been fully capable, hadn't she? More than prepared and more than alert, more than he deserved. Why hadn't he thanked her? It didn't matter now. A man facing his death by the woman he loved—the irony made him sick to his stomach. It was too easy to tear at old wounds, to pick her apart in the way only he could. Even as guilt wracked him, as he felt himself crumbling at the thought of everything he had done so wrong, he couldn't stop himself from behaving as the man he hated to admit he became.
"I have one other request to ask of you."
He hadn't noticed when she first walked into the dim room that she was in black. Black, the color of mourning. A deep, black dress, not unlike the one she had worn to her father's funeral so many years earlier. He looked down at his white shirt and uniform pants, wishing that perhaps he had had the chance or will to change, and then deciding that it was fitting for him to stay in this—the uniform that became his ultimate undoing.
"Of course, sir."
She sounded sad. Wounded. Hurt. And it was his fault, he knew.
He wouldn't have to torture her much longer, he swore to himself. Just a few more minutes.
"Continue in my place, Riza," her first name rolled off his tongue so easily, and he knew from the way her shoulders shifted and her body turned slightly that he had hit a nerve. Somewhere in the depths of his stomach, he hated himself for doing this to her. But he couldn't stop.
"I can't promise that, Roy."
It was silent. The clock from his mantle ticked quietly, the passage of time agonizingly slow though he knew that time maintained its pace. She stood at attention, so still and formal—the girl he had met at the Hawkeye residence so many years ago, in a little black dress with short cropped hair, mourning the loss of her mother at far too young an age. Almost seven years after meeting her, she would mourn the loss of her father. And now, she mourned him. If she mourned for the death of his body or the death of his character, he didn't know.
Finally: "Do you…have anything to say for yourself?"
She could've slapped him, and it would have hurt less. "No."
Her breath hitched. He heard it, the slight, soft hiccup. And then he felt her hands, pushing him, downwards, onto the floor, onto his knees—and with the weight of her hands along with the weight of the air, it was easy to drop to his knees and beg this blonde-haired, forever-loyal woman to forgive him.
It was too late for forgiveness.
"Close your eyes, Roy." She sounded angry. And the hurt was still present, audible despite the irritated tone she used. She had devoted her life to his dream—and he had failed her by sacrificing everything he had planned to stand for. She had, as a sixteen-year-old child exposed herself to him, to reveal the alchemical array her father had transcribed onto the pale flesh of her back. She had given up any dreams she had ever had: a home, a family, some semblance of normalcy—had she even wanted them? He loved her, even as she placed the pistol against the back of his head. He loved her, and yet he never once asked her these things.
The safety of her pistol was clicking off, and the metal was cool against the nape of his neck. The bullet would travel upwards, burrowing deep into his skull. Death would be instantaneous. Angry as she sounded, disappointed as she was, and hurt as she felt, she would spare him an agonizingly long death. After everything he had stolen from her, she still pitied him.
Her hand was on his shoulder now, left hand, the touch surprisingly soft coming from a woman who was holding a gun in her other hand and pressing it against his neck. She clicked the safety again, to make sure. She was never wrong with that weapon. She never hesitated to pull the trigger before. Why now?
He would hate himself for the rest of his life for the comment he was about to make—but with the thought that he would be dead in less than a minute firmly lodged in his mind, the words tumbled from him without a second thought. "You've pulled that trigger many times before without hesitation. You've killed many men. Really, Hawkeye—what's one more life?"
The last thing he heard before the world went dark was crying.
It was 0100 hours. One o'clock in the morning. The graveyard shift keeping watch was supposed to be the easiest—there was a reason he took it. Patrolling Central Headquarters was far from interesting work after having been in the field for so long—but anything requiring much contact with other officers was too much for him to bear now.
Someone was banging on the door to the security office. Groaning, the blonde got to his feet, yawning as he looked out the peephole. His surprise at seeing who was trying to get his attention only prompted him to open the door faster.
The last time he had seen General Riza Hawkeye, she was the only one of their team standing beside Mustang was he was finally promoted to Führer. She was the only one still standing beside him, supporting him. Perhaps in hope that he would change his ways one last time, pull through and do as he had promised. Perhaps out of foolishness. Which of these, he didn't know—but here she was now, crying, and now banging on his chest inadvertently, having missed the door opening.
"Hawkeye?"
The pounding stopped. She looked up, meeting his gaze, as though she was surprised to find him there and not someone else. His presence only upset her further, the tears now becoming hysterics, her breathing ragged as though she had sprinted to the door to get his attention. He had never seen a woman look so guilty—much less her.
"Hawkeye, calm down. What's going on?"
Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc had not climbed the ranks with Mustang and Hawkeye. He had stayed behind, no longer willing to sacrifice ideals to meet the other man's dreams. He had maintained his status with their other coworkers, hurting all the while that Mustang had failed them already—and knowing that things would only get worse. He was angry with her, for devoting her eye and her heart to the man who had failed her so miserably.
But he couldn't help but pity the woman standing in front of him now, her hands pressed over her eyes, shoulders trembling violently as she hiccupped, trying to get her voice together. Broken was the first way he could think to describe her when she finally pulled her hands from her face, wiping her eyes. She held her hands out to him, wrists up. One hand clutched a small, white scrap of fabric. She still cried, and the fact that she didn't move to hide the tears confused him.
"I…I'm turning myself in."
Confusion spread rapidly through him. What could she possibly be turning herself in for? Havoc took one wrist in each hand, gently pressing against them, running his thumbs soothingly over the thin skin there to try and calm her down. The attempt had no impact on her, and she continued to cry—if only harder than she had been a moment earlier. It hurt. "Turning yourself in? For what? Talk to me, Hawkeye."
"I killed him," she finally breathed, the words quiet and almost lost in the hysterics. "I killed him…"
Him. Damn the bastard, ruining her not only in life but also in death. It was bad enough she had sacrificed everything she had had to him while he threw away all of his ideals, but to torment her in death was more than Havoc could stand.
"I killed him," she repeated, a broken record, stammering through the phrase over and over again. Her hands were shaking. Gingerly, he tried to pry the scrap of fabric from her left hand. She clutched it tighter, yelling something about how she couldn't, how she needed it. "I'm a murderer. I killed him. I'm Führer Mustang's murderer." She hiccupped, wiping her eyes. "I killed him."
As he pulled the handcuffs from his belt, he realized what the fabric was—a torn, bloodstained glove bearing a very familiar alchemical array.