A/N - Hey! I honestly have no idea what was up with this one. I was just at a New Years party, and the idea come into my head. Yeah, I wasn't paying much attention to the actual party... call me antisocial. Please read and review. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this story, I'm merely borrowing them for a while.
Word count (before A/N): 784
Words can't hurt you.
That's what mothers told their crying children, what older children told their younger siblings, and what fathers told their upset sons.
But it wasn't true. Colonel Edward Elric knew that for a fact. Words could hurt. Words could kill.
The proof was straight in front of him, evident in the faces of the children crying out for their mothers, in the sounds of gunfire echoing throughout the streets of the decimated Cretan city. He knew of a word that could kill hundreds of people at a time, or just one poor soul that had done some wrong in his life. Edward had given out the word countless times in this war, staring straight into the faces of the people he had ordered to be murdered.
His enemies called him the Golden Demon, totally senseless and the perfect soldier, a man who killed without a second thought. The people that had managed to escape from him had spread these rumours, ensuring that everyone was warned of him, knew what has coming for them. None of them got very far, as he swept through Creta, systematically working his way through the country, utterly destroying anything that got in his way. His superiors said that at this rate, he'd become a General before the war was over. They thought they knew of his utter loyalty to the military, that he would do anything for them, even die to see this war won. But not one of them knew of the despair in his heart, the sorrow felt for all the people he had killed. And now, he would have to give the order again, slaughtering the children that stood before him.
"Fire."
His soldiers sat in their trenches looking at him, as if in disbelief that he was ordering them to kill these innocent beings, but they all knew better than to disobey his orders.
So they looked down the barrels of their rifles and aimed at the children. Their fingers pulled at their triggers, and they fired.
The result was absolute chaos.
Men and woman ran out of the ruined buildings, screaming for their offspring to get back inside and out of dangers way. But Edward knew that nowhere was safe in this bloody war.
The bullets ravanged the war-torn street, mowing down anyone that stood in their way. They shattered bones, blew apart limbs, and tore family away from family.
His men stopped firing as the last civilian dropped to the ground, dead. He walked over to survey the mess, his eyes scanning over the massacre and the countless dead bodies.
One of the many fallen raised their dying gaze up to Edward, and he was surprised that one of them was alive. The man looked bitterly at him and said, "The rumours were true. There really is a Golden Demon."
He coughed, sending blood spewing onto the dirty cobblestone street, flowing down the cracks between the stones. Edward sighed, and slipped out his gun from it's holster. He pointed it down towards the dying man, and shot him straight through the head.
Lieutenant Jean Havoc winced as he watched from the sidelines of the battlefield. When they had first come out here, Edward had still been an innocent kid in Havoc's eyes, but not anymore. Kids didn't murder thousands of people and not feel anything. Kids weren't in charge of dozens of troops of soldiers that were all older than him. Kids didn't go out to war at the age of 16. Lieutenant Heymans Breda was standing beside Havoc, shaking his head. Where had that fiery teenager gone, he wondered. Both of them missed the long gone days of procrastinating in the office, while Ed shouted at Mustang, while Mustang called him short. They where both saddened to see what Edward had become.
Edward himself had finished his inspection of the battlegrounds, and made his way over to them. They both saluted at him, and waited for him to acknowledge them. That he did, and with a brisk nod he said, "Order them to fall back to camp."
Havoc nodded, and relayed Edward's ordered down the line of soldiers. Everyone started to pack up their rifles and followed the Colonel back to camp.
The flames of the fire danced in the fire pit, sending sparks up into the night sky. Edward, Havoc and Breda sat around the flames, taking an occasional sip out of their hip flasks. As the alcohol sloshed its way down his throat, Edward thought back to what he had been pondering earlier, and concluded that he had very much been right.
Words could definitely kill.
