Well here I am for the first time. I'm not really confident in my writing abilities and I was hoping that by working on fanfiction I would be able to improve some what. I am dyslexic so I apologize in advance for any mistakes or errors that I have not found in this one-shot. I would really appreciate some helpful criticism to.
This has no pairings unless you read it that way. Roy may seem a bit OC but that will be explained in the story of how the war is effecting him. I really hope you enjoy and thanks for reading.
Pale sand swirled around the war zone of Ishval. The wind tugged and grabbed at the clothes of the dead like starving wolves. Night had long since fallen and the fighting had come to a transitory standstill. The moon was hidden behind grey clouds, a rare sight to the desert's inhabitants.
Roy Mustang trudged to the metal baths of water, placed around the encampment for the parched and wary soldiers of Amestris. The dark-haired male came to a stumbling halt in front of the bath. He breathed heavily as he considered the person staring at him in the shadowy waters of the basin.
Six hours had passed since he had shot two doctors in a make-shift hospital. Roy Mustang had already killed hundreds of people in this bloody war but this was utterly different. He had seen his victims hold each other in their last moments. He had seen their eyes widen as the bullets penetrated their skulls. He had seen their warm blood obscure the picture of their joyful daughter.
He had seen them smile.
Roy lurched away from his watery reflection. He dropped to his knees and vomited violently on the ground as the image of the kill replayed in his head like a mantra in a mad-man's mind. Soon Mustang's stomach ran out of substances to expel and settled down leaving its host to watch in disgust as the foul-smelling liquid seeped into the ground. Like blood, he thought to himself.
Roy did not know how long he'd spent kneeling on the ground staring at nothing until a hand gently touched his shoulder. The onyx-eyed male froze under the contact before spinning around with practiced reflexes and lifted his hand to his eye level, his fingers poised to snap and incinerate whatever enemy was attacking him.
"Easy, buddy." Maes Hughes said gently raising his hands in to show he was not armed, "I didn't mean to startle you, promise."
Roy watched at his friend then lowered his hand and let out a shuddering breath before scrubbing his face with his hand, groaning softly.
"You don't look good, Roy." Maes stated bluntly looking at his still-kneeling friend.
Roy snorted humorously and leaned his back against the water bath, "How am I supposed to look," he studied his gloved hands, "This is war."
Maes regarded his friend for several seconds then took his place next to Roy, his long legs outstretched in front of him.
"That's not what I mean and you know it." He muttered looking up and the studded sky obscured by clouds.
"I'm fine." Roy defended himself.
"If you were fine I wouldn't have seen you throwing up your guts a few minutes ago." Maes pointed out not shifting his gaze.
Roy drew one of his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around it, "Food poisoning. I'm fine."
"Come on, Roy." Hughes tried again, "We all ate the same food and I'm fine, so is Kimberly, Church and Grosseto, and you know how weak her stomach is, in which case food poisoning is out of the question. What's wrong?"
Roy shook his head, "I'm fine."
Maes Hughes sighed loudly, "Roy talk to me. Something's wrong and I deserve to know why my friend looks like one of the corpses sitting Gary's mass grave."
Roy stiffened and gagged slightly, "Don't...mention the graves. Please."
Maes stared, slack-jawed, at his friend. Roy had never reacted this badly to the mention of war victims but he nodded despite the alchemists eyes still being closed.
"Maes?" Roy breathed.
"Yeah, buddy?"
"Is it wrong of me to not...remember the faces of the people I killed?"
Maes gaped as he tried to formulate a response but could only make a choking sound at the back of his throat. For someone who was 'fine' that was not a normal question to ask.
"Is it OK if I remember some people better than others or is the discrimination on my part?" Roy was slightly horrified to hear his voice cracked near the end of his sentence but his body refused to stop formulating more questions.
"Is it normal that I have gotten used to the smell of charred remains? Am I wrong for wanting to turn my back on my country for making me do all of this?"
"Roy...please stop." Maes choked his hands starting to shake but Roy continued is macabre monologue, his voice quickly rising with hysteria.
"Is it...can I...enjoy the power of my flames? Am I allowed...Am I allowed...?" Roy's voice suddenly dropped into a rasping whisper as he buried his head in his arms and drawing the other knee up to his chest like a child hiding from a nightmare, but that was all Roy Mustang was; a human, barely past the age of 21, who was thrown into the devil's nightmare.
"Am I allowed... to take the life of the people who were trying to save lives?" Roy's voice was barely above a murmur and further muffled by his blood-speckled uniform.
Maes gaped at the distraught male. He thought Roy was just tired of fearing for his life, of fearing for his friend's lives but this? This was far darker then Hughes wanted to believe.
After sitting rigidly for ten beats Maes finally found his voice to ask Mustang a question, "You disappeared earlier today. What happened?"
Mustang's exhausted body shook, "I'm fine."
"Bull!" Hughes shouted losing his temper at those ambiguous words, "You do not ask me all those questions then say your fine! What happened?"
Roy lifted his head and let his eyes slide to the be-speckled man's face as if searching for a reason to tell his worried companion his inner problems. Maes guessed he found his reason because Roy took in a quivering breath before launching brokenly into his story.
"I was ordered to...to kill a pair of doctors this morning. I couldn't exactly torch the whole tent; it would be waste of resources, so I went in to shoot them." Maes nodded and encouraged Roy to continue, "They accepted their death. They hugged each other and smiled, oh god Maes they smiled while a murderer stood less than a meter away from them, they smiled at each other and held...held a picture of their...daughter. Blonde, she was blonde, young, shit, she was so young. I...I've orphaned a child. I've done that so often, why is this one hurting so much, Maes?"
Roy dropped his head into his hands again and his shoulders lurched. For a while Maes thought that Roy was going to be sick again but instead a high keening sound told him of a much more troubling action.
The Flame alchemist, Roy Mustang, was crying, sobbing in fact. Maes sat dumbfounded, at a loss of what to do. After some evaluating of the situation, Hughes gently coaxed his friend into his arms as his mother had done when he was an infant. Roy resisted the action at first but gave in quickly, he was too tired to fight and his mind yearned for the physical comfort that was being offered to him.
"Sshh, Roy it's alright you can't blame yourself, you were ordered to kill them." Hughes tried to comfort his friend while rubbing Roy's shuddering back. In all the lessons and assessments the cadets were put through the Academy, none of them covered physiological breakdowns very well and Maes was beginning to curse his lack of knowledge he needed to console his comrade.
"That doesn't make it right." Roy whispered burying his head deeper into the front of the dark-haired soldier's uniform.
Maes stiffened and berated himself inwardly. Roy was right. It wasn't right to kill someone no matter what the circumstances were. Yes, perhaps the world would be better if the bad people were wiped out but it was a matter of opinion if the person was good or bad. Perspective changed everything. A military executor was a murder in the eyes of the convicts but to his family he was a protector and guardian of peace. A thief that stole gems and gold from merchants was a scoundrel in the eyes of the upper-class society but to his starving family he was the bread-winner.
Roy took the doctors' lives and that was wrong but he stopped the medical facility from being a hideout for Ishvalans.
Roy's chest heaved and he let out another sob and Maes' thoughts returned to his friend's plight. "Roy, listen to me. Listen to me carefully." Hughes said stroking the major's vaguely burnt hair.
Roy's sobs tampered off a bit, indicating he was indeed listening to his last link to sanity. Hughes Breathed out and in to calm his racing heart.
"You killed those doctors," Maes began, "and you can't change that. Instead you must move forward. Don't let those doctors die at the hands of someone to weak to continue his mission. Don't let the last person they saw be someone that is not worth more than a sack of dirt." Maes finished. His voice rang clear in the frigid night.
Roy's breath hitched and raised his head to look at his comrade's moss-green eyes that peered back at him through glass. They remained in that position for several beats before Roy spoke up quietly, "Thank you. I needed that."
Roy withdrew from the strong protecting arms reluctantly and heaved himself into a standing position. Roy stared into the waters depths and felt foolish at his own meltdown. He breathed deeply and removed his gloves, pocketing them with great care, then plunged his hands into the icy water and splashed his face repeatedly until water started creeping up his nose.
Roy gripped the metal sides and glared at his reflection again, "I'm going to move forward. I have made up my mind." Strength started to return to his voice.
Maes cocked his head and also rose to his feet and stood next to his hunched-over friend, "Oh yeah, what have you now decided?"
Roy straitened his back and let his eyes truly see the bloody war ground of pale sand and crumbling buildings, "I'm going to become the fuehrer and prevent this from happening again. I will make sure that Amerstris will not have to kill her own people. I will do my best to stop another little girl from losing her parents because they were doing their job above and beyond their job description."
Maes smiled broadly at his friend, "And I will push you up through the ranks and force you to achieve your goal so don't think about going against your word."
The two males stood there, frozen. The desert sand swirling at their feet and the bath's water lapping contently at its metal confinements. The Ishvalan village, now broken and destroyed, groaned as the last of the heat left its stone walls.
"Let's go back it's getting late and I'm exhausted." Roy said, his breath making white clouds that vanished like ghosts.
Maes nodded and walked alongside his friend, listening to the sand crunch beneath their combat boots. About a few meters from the entrance of the barracks Roy came to an abrupt halt. Maes turned and looked at his friend with mild concern.
"Damn Maes," Roy closed his eyes and ran a hand through his ebony hair making it stand up in certain places, "Did you really call me 'a sack of dirt', earlier?"
Maes grinned his eyes shining as he slung his arm over Roy's neck, "Yep, one of those smelly bags that no one can lift."
Roy halfheartedly punched his friend as he smiled at the playful jab before they continued to walk into the tented camp, looking forward to a goods night rest.
That was years ago and as Maes stood, bleeding, in the phone booth he hoped that Roy Mustang would continue to ascend through the military ranks and fullfil his promises and bring true peace to the corrupt military and show a new way of working to the people of this war-torn country.