Hello all. This was written for FMA fic contest on live journal, to the prompt 'sidekick'. I looked up synonyms for sidekick, and one of them was 'subordinate', so...well, I couldn't resist! :D Enjoy, and please review.
Betaed as always by the wonderful please-knock. Kudos to her.
Until I can find some way to successfully bribe my genie, FMA still belongs to Hiromu Arakawa.
Anti-hero
One of his earliest memories as a child is, like with most children, being told a story. He can't remember the details, nor can he see clearly the face which was telling it to him, but the idea was one that he would hear repeatedly as he grew up.
The world was in danger. One man rose above the conflict, and was able to save it.
A hero.
Just like all the other children, he loved those stories. Perhaps he loved them more than the others, for even then he was thirsty for knowledge, the way his mother's dying houseplant thirsted for water it could never seem to get enough of.
The tales were exciting, for sure. Full of adventure, and goodness, the kind of tales that are told to children to keep them out of trouble for a while.
His father put voices to the characters, making them more realistic. The voice of the hero was always grand, and comforting, banishing nightmares just as well as his mother's lullabies.
Later, when he was a bit older and his parents were no longer with him (or he was no longer with his parents, he was never quite sure which it was back then) he began to question those stories he'd heard as a child. Namely, to his foster-mother, otherwise known as Madame Christmas.
"What's a hero?" He asked one day, nine years old, his feet dangling off of the bar stool, one elbow propped up next to the alchemy book he'd been reading.
The Madame stopped what she was doing and looked at him. "Why do you ask that, Roy-boy?"
He shrugged. "In this alchemy book, everything is clearly defined. I've always heard about heroes, but no one's told me what a hero really is."
The older woman leaned back, arms crossed. "What do you think it means?"
He thought for a moment. "Someone that saves the day, and protects other people."
Madame Christmas nodded. "Anything else?"
He frowned, eyebrows coming together. "A hero... does what's right?"
She gave a small smile. "That's right. There's a little more to it than that, though."
He cocked his head to one side. "Like what?"
The Madame exhaled heavily, waving an almost airy hand. "Oh, lots of things. Most of which I can't properly explain. It's something you have to learn, really."
He nodded. He understood about learning. He thrived on it, kept his mind busy with it, searching for answers to anything and everything he could think of. Another question popped into his mind. "Do you know any heroes?"
She looked at him in startlement. She answered slowly. "No... I don't. The only heroes I've ever known were just from stories, Roy-boy."
He thought again for a few moments. "Do you think I could be a hero?"
She looked at him for a long time, before smiling and ruffling his hair. "You can be just about anything you want to be. But I don't know that a hero is something you really want to be."
He was genuinely confused. "Why not?"
Madame Christmas shook her head, and for a moment looked quite sad. "You'll find out, someday, Roy-boy. Come on, you can give me a hand with this."
Now, they called him 'hero.' They'd been calling him a hero for years, and he had never gotten used to it. 'Murderer' and 'failure' had not ever been in his description of a hero, so he didn't know why it was in others'.
After Ishbal, he'd struggled under the weight of the knowledge that he was the farthest thing from a hero. But somehow, he'd imagined that perhaps he could become one. Or close to one, anyway, because he was not so naive that he believed he could ever be a true hero.
He would protect those under him, and rise to the very top, so that he could try and protect them all, try and help the country and the people within it.
~of course, in the end, he couldn't even protect his best friend~
So he kept going. Some hated him, others feared him, few liked him in the least.
Still, they called him a hero.
Maybe it was because they didn't like him. They were trying to hurt him in the worst possible way, giving him a title that he in no way deserved.
Heroes don't murder ruthlessly. Heroes don't let their anger and loss consume them, seeking revenge.
He remembers the click. The click that shot through him more surely than the bullet that it was readying ever could.
The click of the gun in Riza's hands. Riza, of all people. The woman he trusted and valued above almost all else. The woman who had his back- and was prepared to shoot it, right then, in the final effort to get him back in line. Back on the right path.
The 'heroic' path.
Heroes do the right thing. Heroes know what is right. Heroes save the day.
People call him a hero, still. True, they don't know much of what happened under the ground, in the hellish tunnels where he was driven half-mad in his rage, in his haste to avenge someone who was one of the closest he'd seen to an actual, honest-to-goodness, hero.
Heroes do what is right. But it's his subordinate that always seems to know best.
Riza. Without her, he would be even farther from a hero. He often thinks that the world doesn't give her the credit she deserves, let alone realize how close to being a hero she is.
He remembers something else about those old stories.
The hero always had a sidekick. Many took it in a degrading way, but he didn't see it like that. The sidekick was someone that was always there.
The someone that could save the hero, and knew the hero better than anyone.
He may not be a hero, not really. But Riza is his sidekick, and she keeps him from going even farther astray.