This would not be an easy job for him.
Roy Mustang was the best role model in any man's heart. He was only thirty; he had gone through the war with his gun as his most reliable comrade; he knew betrayal, and had witnessed the tyranny of the old regime. He stood straight facing the flames of war. However, this seasoned warrior now stood in front of a harmless village house, the wooden door stone-heavy that he was unable to push it open.
He steadied his hands, knocked on the door politely for three times. There was no response, but he pushed it open nevertheless. There came the dim hallway. Candles were lit along the narrow walls, all curtains and windows were closed, and the house was bleak, stuffy and haunted. A wheelchair emerged from the end of the long hallway, and a woman was placed in it.
He knew this woman – or to say he used to know that girl. He had seen her youthful smiling face countless times, and was always affected by her contagious laughing. He had seen her photo in Edward's hand every time before they went onto a battlefield. And this was exactly what he was afraid of – gone was the beautiful, young and sprightly girl, and here was the withered woman in the wheelchair, abandoned and alone.
"Who are you?" she lifted her head slightly, looking at Roy with a tired expression.
"Colonel Roy Mustang, coming to inform you that Major Edward Elric …" He answered instinctively, but stopped when he saw no response from the woman. "I'm a friend—I'm Roy, Winry."
She finally looked up, and this was the first time Roy truly saw her this day. Her eyes still sharp, but were tinted with pain and loss. "You said something about Edward – no, it's fine, I don't want to know it."
He hesitated. But her hand came up and stopped him, "Don't say it, I don't want to hear what you're going to say because it's not true."
"Winry, you have to learn to accept it," he said as he approached her slowly, "you have to know that Edward is –"
"He is not dead!" She suddenly growled. Her head shot up and her gaze bore into his. There were no tears in them, because she believed that – "Edward is alive and he will come back to me."
"Look," he said gently, "I am only a visiting friend. Let's just talk about this."
Winry still refused to look away from his eyes, she sat stubbornly, but her gestures softened a little. Roy signed to himself, wheeled Winry towards the dining room, but his hands were batted away, as she wheeled herself slowly away from him. Roy signed again, followed her into the dim-lit kitchen.
"How is Alphonse?" He asked.
"Dead." Her muffled sound travelled through. Roy's grip on the teapot slackened as it fell and clattered on the ground. For a second he just stood there, unsure about what to say or to do. "How...When?" was the only thing he managed.
"Not really," Her still muffled sound was the only thing Roy could hear, "but he is as good as dead, lying on the bed unconscious – the doctor says there is a chance that he might recover."
Roy let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. "It's…better…than I thought…I mean – he still might wake up." He said lamely.
"Is it?" She laughed bitterly, "I'm a doctor myself. I know what happened to him. I know how slim the chance is. You military just couldn't let go of the brothers, can you? First Edward, then Alphonse. How much must you do to us, how long till you can let go of my family?"
He didn't know what to say, so he just kept silent as he picked up the teapot and brought the tea to the dining room.
"Do I even have a family now?" Winry sat beside the long wooden table, her eyes blank, looking beyond the closed curtains. "You killed them all."
Roy Mustang did not kill them, the war did. But he knew better than saying that. Instead he reached for his pocket, there was a little parcel in it. He took it out and opened it on the table, there is only a photo in it. 'It is the photo Edward always took out before going into a battlefield.' He thought sadly. It was an old black-and-white photo, probably taken from more than ten, fifteen years ago. It was scorched a little on the edges, otherwise clean and well kept. A girl and two boys around six, seven years old standing together, holding hands and laughing. It was snowing in the photo, the snow covered the two storey house and there was a swing on the side. He passed the photo to Winry.
"It is the only thing left of him." He said, looking at the woman took the photo carefully, tracing the photo slowly with her finger, intending to touch the laughing children in it. But there was over ten years between them, and she finally placed it down on the table, pointing at it to Roy.
"You have seen them before." She said without looking at him, her eyes only fixed on the photo.
Roy watched her and nodded, but she was not paying any attention to him, and continued, "look at this child," she pointed at the six-year-old blond girl in the middle, then her finger traced to the boy on the left, "this one lost his memory, lying unconscious in the bed for years," her finger traced to the right, "in the wheelchair, and this one's whereabouts is unknown. If we are all alive and well, standing together, we'll all be twenty-two years old."
"And at that time we knew nothing – I knew nothing, until the civil war in Ishbal broke out. My parents were all doctors, and they volunteered to go for the battlefields. I cried in my mother's arms, begging for her and father not to leave. I cried till I was tired and finally asleep, not knowing the next time I open my eyes, I would never see them again." She looked at the little girl's innocent face in the picture and continued, "You know who killed them? It was the people on our side! They killed them simply because they were healing the kids for the other side. Ha! Our side, their side. What was this? Weren't we fighting on the same land, with our brothers and sisters? I could not help them because I was too young, too young!" She cried, but her eyes were dry and she was laughing with a sarcastic expression.
This touched a string in Roy's heart. He could see the hatred in her eyes. He remembered that emotion, he remembered that emotion so well that he could almost recall the last time when he saw the reflection of himself in a mirror. He knew how she could hate the feeling of being protected so much. He hated the feeling a hundred times more than to humiliate him – he hated the feeling of weakness, of not being able to do anything. He remembered how he looked through his mother's protective, shaking and bleeding arms, to see the drunken wild man, his so-called father deprive her of her life little by little.
He hated it because she was important.
He hated it because he was left alone.
And Winry hated him because she had no one left.
He still remembered the day before he went on the last battle, the last before the civil war ended, before the army of the revolution marched in the palace and overthrew the last bit of the old government. He still remembered it, because it was that time, his best comrade left him by a bullet and a wisp of smoke from the enemy's gun.
He remembered the night, when he sat alone, he tore a piece of paper, hold the pen in his hand, and put out the candle. He wrote in the darkness:
I put out the candle.
I sat in the darkness alone, unable to face the idiot and weakling of myself to be exposed in the light; I sat in the darkness alone, staring into the nothingness, refusing my weakness to trickle down my face.
I let the fire of remorse and hatred burn in my chest. The flame devoured all my bumptious pride, my naïve idealism, and also burned down the last youthful innocence from my memories.
The flame will also burn down all the thorn and barriers in my way, lead me through the darkest time of my life. The flame will become the fire torch on my road.
And I only have the last route of retreat – forward.
He put his pen down. He rolled up his will and placed it in the drawer. He sat in the darkness alone where no one can see his weakness, and let the tears cover his face.
This war has lasted for too long. The trees that were cut down can regrow, the cities that were destroyed can be rebuilt, the country that was broken can be reunited, but the lives of our beloved ones cannot be restored.
Roy shook his head and his mind cleared with the past memories. Winry was not in the room anymore, and Roy sat in the silence and darkness. He hated the feeling, it almost like that exact night two years ago. So he stood up, walked to the windows and opened the curtain.
It was beautiful outside. The Sun shone the warmest ray of light it could cast in the summer days, golden fields extended to the horizon, connected with the clear, blue sky. He could almost hear the birds sang despite the closed windows. He reached for the sky, only stopped by the window pane.
It was this time he noticed a photo frame placed face-down on the windowsill. Curiosity took him over in that instance, and he turned over the photo frame.
It was the ten-years-later version of the old photo he brought to Winry. The young woman sat on the wheelchair, the background was a ruin. Her eyes closed, leaned back in the chair and extended her arms. Roy looked closer, and he noticed her hands were holding something invisible in the air.
Realization suddenly struck him – She was standing on the ruin of the house. She was holding the hands of the brothers. She was holding Edward and Alphonse, from this living world to another.
This was the picture linking her and the past, the sweet memory.
She could not let go of the past.
"Put that down." Roy was startled by the voice, which was just next to his neck, he tried to step forward and turn around, but one silver glistening object against his neck stopped him – it was a knife.
"Easy, easy." He said slowly, placed the photo frame face down on the windowsill and raised both his hands up. "You don't want to do anything rush, so just put that down. It was never for the purpose in your hand."
She did not follow his words; instead she pressed the knife harder, digging deeper into his neck. Roy could feel the liquid trickle down from his wound, and in his subconscious he was wondering why Winry could reach his neck while sitting in the wheelchair. He searched for the right words carefully.
"You are not sure what you are doing." He said with a feigned calmness, his mind wheezing with a good solution to this situation.
"Close the curtains," she growled, Roy would say she was like an injured animal if it was that case, "I don't like the light, nor do you. The light does not belong to the beings like us."
Roy did as she told. He was desperate, but still trying to keep up a calm façade. Never in his life he was so careless to let anyone caught him like this. "You like him – you like Edward, don't you? You don't think he's – he's alive, right? Why don't you be calm and – just be calm and wait for him, aren't you going to do this?"
"I like him? No, no, I love him. I love him with my whole heart and now I am not going to wait anymore. I will go find him, go to another world and find him."
This girl has lost her mind.
"Die with me." She said sweetly. He can almost feel her warm breath next to his ear, the knife cut deeper into his flesh, like the God of Death calling for him. But yes, why not die and leave the world just like this? What have I left in the world now? Why not just—
His heart was pounding so fast that it was almost jumping out of his chest. It shouldn't be like this, a few experience near to death told him that it was a calm, dizzy feeling, that death would be a relief from the world, that death would be—
Suddenly a thought struck him. That's because I do not want to die.
I do not want to die!
His body suddenly acted according to his will. The experience and instincts from many years of war-life controlled over him. He grabbed Winry's arm, forcing it to leave his neck and leaned backwards knocking the girl's forehead viciously with his head. The girl was somehow standing from the wheelchair by her will. She fell backwards unsteadily and Roy grabbed the knife from her hand.
She fell on the ground, unconscious.
Roy stared. He didn't realize he was breathing like a drowned person, beads of sweat and blood rolled down his neck. He stepped backwards, and backwards, and rushed out of the haunted house. He ran away from the two storey house, away from the past, away from the weight of the dead. He ran into the sunlight, the breezes of wind, and into the golden fields of barley. He run like a madman, a free man towards the horizon he saw behind the closed windows in the haunted house.
'I did not fear for death when I had nothing.' He thought, 'but I do now. What do I have now?"