The young man was limp and as heavy as lead as he lay on the bed.
"This needs to be discussed further sir."
"Colonel Mustang has an honorable contribution to coup and the reconstruction."
"But you very well know that he's too incapacitated for further service."
"Must we do this now?"
irritable.
The voices slip in and out in the limbo between dreams and waking. they seem to jabber for hours. Hushed whispers, too loud, all sentences argumentative. "He may recover." they guess.
"They operated on his severed hands, reconnected the nerve endings"
"successful but gruesome"
"the nurse said he's only recovered the sense on his fingertips"
"that's miraculous"
"his eyes could-"
"We'll hinge on a mere possibility?" they ponder and the words melt and return to this lowered murmur.
"I''m blind, not deaf." abrupt interruption.
The senior officers snap straight and drain their face as if they've heard a ghost. The dead man clears his throat, and straightens up from the bed with the fold of his elbow. His motions are amplified by the hospice room silence. "not dumb...sir." His headache has rendered him rude, so he at least tilts his face to where he assumed his stunned visitors were. He guesses they were the high command but his brain is drugged, lethargic. But his speech reeks of finality.
"I'd like to submit my resignation to the board. if the board allows it. sirs."
"but-" a squealing voice stammers, he racks his mind and indetifies it as Falman his old deputy.
"I have no eyes to read paperwork, no hands to sign them. It's against the current code and more importantly I'll slow down the bureaucracy of installing the new regime. I'm too much of a liability. Correct Gen. Grakho?" He didn't allow himself to breathe lest the words escape him. He stated them thoroughly with no pity or remorse, the way he's always pictured it. Now that wasn't too hard to say out loud, correct? It's better when we say these things out loud. Dignified. Colonel Roy mustang extends his free hand to the group.
"I understand you brought my discharge papers" his arm hangs in air. the hand is bandaged, destroyed, we didn't need to do this now.
Gen. Grakho replies "It will be a grand honorable discharge, with war service promotion and hefty pension." he trails. (do pensions include women? he jokes with his old mentor, Fuhrer Grunman, 'Sorry, Mustang, not even a flowery ceremony. we ran out of those celebrating the dead').
right. he's not dead, yet. And there are more important agendas in the high command than ending one man's career there's all those other dead people. and reconstructing the military. he won't be military after this. How odd, that part would be dead. And this thin scraps of paper Falman's guiding his hand in is it's death sentence. Affix signature here. Apply gun to roof of mouth. No. No, don't you be fucking funny with me. This is act of conscious glory. This is agony against his failing nerves to still his face and focus his mind to write a name like a tread and a shout in sightless earthly void. It was nearly physically impossible and he bites hard as he attempts to scrawl on the page. This will not defeat me, he thinks. But by God, he curses. 'I hate paperwork.'
He was discharged from hospital confinement one day and found himself being guided by a different number of persons. They would describe the world differently each time, (Falman, Breda, Hawkeye even Havoc) holding the crook of his arm like a cradle or a cart commenting on the color of cement or people's faces. Hmm. One said congratulations for his retirement and another nurse murmured that he looked awful. He couldn't think of the stub on his chin, when cars are simply terrifying. When crossing roads smelled like stagnant water and smoke (from the rubble), when the world feels so new and violent sightless and black.
He counted the steps to his apartment, and felt the buttons recede on his tabletop telephone when he rung for madame christmas. For exactly forty-two minutes, he talked on the phone. And for forty-two minutes, he was a great pretender, as if without affliction. And one could never tell, his voice offered and poured warm and golden, lies through the line are sweet comfort. You can't tell a man is blind over the phone.
Shit.. . This is inhuman agony, how can you teach my digits to distinguish between coarse or fine? A clap of his hands could spew alchemy but his digits couldn't wrap around- agh. okay. That's enough for today. She visits today. He motions pathetically with his arm, to have a catch at it.
"ha. Your sweater, it's soft."
"sir?"
"I could feel your sweater general Hawkeye."
He lets out an empty laugh. Desperate. He thinks: I could feel the warmth, how intoxicating. How do I allow myself to be this happy?
"I'm retired, you could call me Roy"
"I'm aware sir, I would rather not." a rare smile, he grips her arm. This was the good news he guesses. As constant aide of former colonel Mustang, she couldn't possibly advance in the ranks. Now promoted as chair in Ishval policy she was busy as ever, untethered, magnificent as always. He was happy for her, in this nonsensical sentimental way, calling her general tasted on his lips like fantasy.
"General, I would like to introduce to you my roommate, Resham. Resham meet General Hawkeye. Now general, would you tell me if Resham is handsome?" Roy nods his head to the adjacent bed.
"well sir, he is stocky, white haired with an amiable face." (red eyes and set jaw, coffee skin middle aged Ishvalan). Riza smiles at Resham.
"Hmm, that sounds like a no." Roy quips.
"I've never thought of it" Resham laughs. "But you have no idea what I look like Roy?" (bandaged head, broken legs, heavy eyes, stout frame that reaches to only five feet)
"Yeah. I only see all my new friends as this white embodied mass of your actions, and the kindness of your voice." roy mimics a mystic, deliberately closing his eyes and assuming a yogic position. Resham chuckles. "Wether you snored was more important than being ishvalan". They share a sympathetic heir.
"hey, How tall do you think I am Mustang?"
"Height issues?"
"How tall do I sound like to you?"
"You're a giant, Resham."
The physical therapy facilities have been heavily mixed and though Roy cannot possibly recognize anyone.. Everybody recognizes him, silly moniker of hero if Ishval. It's kind of a cruel joke now, employed by the most miserable of patients in therapy.
"What kind of hero can't save himself."
"We lost so much."
"I never wanted to hit a disabled man so bad."
Roy couldn't see them, but they tasted bitter and smelled like tinder. He would like to see if only he could see the look on their faces as they watched them burn. He knew they were Ishvalan. The nurses were too busy for petit fights of injured men looming around a wheelchair. An unidentified man seizes him, Roy swings blindly around and lifts himself to stand.
"Hit me then! right ? that would solve everything right." the room grows quiet cold harsh.
"I regret it okay. okay?! I wish I could die rather than feel my nerves burn every time I try to sign the papers of my honorable leave, or see the lives of my men continue without me" karma. shaking hands. It's painful, he doesn't want to, but he loses himself to a streak of water runs on his cheek.
"I don't want to forgive you." a voice answers, and punches him right at the face. spack. metallic taste of blood. It's painful right? (odd but) it makes him feel more human.
He receives this other bodied hug, he realizes the other man is shaking.
God, he thinks to himself: I don't want to define myself with the things I regret.
He can grasp things now, even a walking stick and he easily navigates around the state hospital with ease, with general Hawkeye trotting behind him. The span of time in which his nerve endings was serviceable was the span of time that he's earned some points from the injured Ishvalan populace. He was doing alchemy again, listening, and that meant a lot. General Hawkeye was thinking to herself what she's accomplished in that span of time and decided it was insignificant by comparison.
Roy kept on talking as he removed his shirt a replaced it with a light corduroy. Not much inhibition as a patient. Riza couldn't help herself from looking, and she doesn't see him as often as she did back then, so that each instance she had of him was her drinking each inch of him in, white fingers clasping each button, covering naked skin. This man, she could swear was gaining back the mass on his atrophied body. He wouldn't mind her staring, he couldn't tell.
"I've been trying to fix the ventilation here, but it's been to dark lately."
She snaps out of her daze, It's a joke general!
"N-ow what are they?" he holds up sheets of metal to where he presumed she was.
"It's aluminum sir."
"You sure? I needed someone with more precise eyes. Approximate the height of the building, distance. for the alchemy so and so."
"of course sir, it's kind of you, what you're doing"
He drills her with more questions, until he decided he knew enough to clap and exercise some alchemy. He asks her about the apparent results but interrupts her answer.
"You're staring." he says matter-a-factly.
"Do I look that bad general?"
"No!" quick answer.
"I just can't see your eyes. First time you have shades on."
(well, someone said I can't seem to look at other people in the eye, and it makes me look mistrustful.)
"Your eyes are expressive though they don't look straight at you." She gently removes the tinted glasses. He is still, drinking in each inch of her proximity.
"sir (roy). no. umm, thanks for requesting me. you seem to be doing really well."
"not really." he answers too honestly. He shrinks having touched her hand, apologizes.
"sorry. SOrry." he feels like a teenager. Then he cumbersomely leaves.
He is at the office of fuhrer Grunman himself, these days he returns to his apartment on his own and madame Christmas can sit comfortably about his stubbornness.
"Yeah they're terrified with your Ishval policy, only thing they talk about when I visit. Thanks for gracing me with your presence, retirement has been the grandest gift." he could like to bite his tongue off: this headache is making him a dick.
"well a dr. Marcoh who will relieve you of this gift. Simply put, we need you on the Ishval policy. it's -they're turning tides. They like you, seems like you earned respect being injured along with them. Gain you eyesight, the elders-"
"I'm not drafted."
"You'll be on a special civil military force. Regain your rank, I'm the Fuhrer, Roy."
"It's a stone isn't it ?" (I don't want to be responsible for more deaths)."
"I'm sorry I'll never accept this sir."
Roy is made aware of another man in the room with a shuffling of body and clothes.
"You may not have forgiven yourself Roy Mustang, but we've forgiven you." that voice, he recognizes it from the hospital, this time without never really knew people by the position they held, but as a mass of their embodied actions and kindness. (take it, Roy).
Dr. Marcoh pleads with Roy to put the stone to good use.
Roy answered by spending it on Havoc and other injured men. He felt something breaking inside him, having a taste of Light or hope.
They bargained the Lt. Havoc would be plenty and that he was technically an injured man. His headache worsened and Roy Mustang passed out. In his bout of wakefulness he felt himself on a bed again, with that trailing scent of hospital. On his bedside he felt a pin with two stars.
A rare solid thought: I guess I'm promoted. The world returns to being dark and he is unconscious.
He has nightmares ,though this one he'd call a hallucination.
He gets a phone call and he immediately recognizes it Hughes, Maes Hughes. He can't stop from smiling.
"How have you been!?" he can't curb his enthusiasm, smilegrowing on his face.
"I'm doing great!"
"Hah! Wow." they talk incessantly like birds, and after his dream, Roy would not recall a single detail but just this glowing warmth growing on his chest. They would talk about the most needless of this, damn I missed you. I could die right now. Because right now, at least for him:
"The war ended Maes". You won't see it, but Roy felt like he was flying.
Voices Roy does not recognize:
"The infection was bad."
"You think.'
"The fevers"
"We could have lost him"
"Shit!"
Roy blinks aghast at his palms, it's wrecked, and violently scarred.
"Oh, I know it's terrible." a nurse tries to say soothingly. Armed with swabs and bandages.
"Shit! I can see! I can, goodness lord is that Resham?"
His eyes are still adjusting to the overabundance of light, it's painful to open but there was this squat coffee colored form, old folded over in a tin chair. "damn you're handsome." roy acknowledges the injured ishvalab, laugh at each other, this was insane.
Roy visited Havoc in rehab,introduced him to his favorite nurses, before he became very busy.
There is a lot of pressure in trying to fix the past. And when his eyes settled once again on the infinite dessert, at red eyes, and dark skin, a defense mechanism would jump on his heart and he would be reminded to be petrified.
Oh but the dessert was beautiful, you appreciate these kind of things when you lose your sight. After some time, Roy would notice that the dessert, the culture, everything is lovelier. One look at the expanse and an overwhelming gratitude would jump on his heart , this second chance. The same terrifying scene now strikes him so differently: the miracle of the human condition.
"colonel! G-general Mustang sir."
"I'm so happy to see you're fine." (my imaginations been stupid lately. and you're not bleeding and this blazing sun does glow on you.)
They were working together on restoration efforts, and Roy was telling her about how the images jumped at him differently now and wondered if she felt the same. He felt raindrops on his skin. He used to detest the rain, it glistened in the sun right now, the great oval blue of the sky felt more liberated compared to the city.
"Sir, I know what you mean. In Ishval rain celebrates life or paradise."
"Yeah, Best damn thing I've seen for the longest time."
He was looking right at her and we are all unsure wether he meant the rain, or her, or the sky.
"You know that anti-fraternization laws don't apply between divisions?
note: don't own the characters. Kind of not canon, but I do want more closure for their sins and their romance. This is me fulfilling my need, on my first oneshot :)) comment!