A/N: Hey! I'm usually a comedy writer but I'm experimenting with other styles. Don't own anything!
Riza Hawkeye crossed her left arm across her body, her right one occupied with bringing the glass down from her lips. It felt strange drinking in the gym. If this had been ten years ago, she would have been expelled. That is, if anyone caught her; she doubted anyone would notice the inconspicuous little blonde girl.
She stood in a poorly lit corner, separated from the reunion event by the long table with a dark blue tablecloth that held the drinks and light refreshments. The room had been half-heartedly decorated (there was only so much you could do with a high-school gym she supposed) and even the scattered decorations couldn't cover up the permanent gym aura of sweat and misery.
She supposed she was glad for her current solitude from her former classmates. It wasn't like she had anything to say to them anyways. Most of them were married now, and were talking about their children or reminiscing about "the good ol' days". Many of them were varying degrees of drunk, dancing and twirling through the gymnasium as if it were a school dance. It had only been ten years since they graduated, but a lot had changed in that time. People changed. She had changed.
"You have the eyes of a killer" Mustang had said. She wondered what would happen if she did try and talk to them. Would they see it? She ignored the brief tingle on her back.
"...Sergeant Major. It's a pretty big deal." At these words, Riza's head snapped sharply around, her eyes piercing the crowd for their origin. It wasn't hard to find; he was standing with a large group of people, both men and women alike, his fingers running along the shoulder of his blue uniform. Even from the distance, her eyes were excellent enough to detect the two stars and one stripe. She almost smirked. It would take a promotion before he became a Sergeant Major. Maybe he was expecting one?
The crowd around him "ahhed". Riza found him intriguing. Under the pretext of refilling her drink, she walked over to the table, only a few meters from the group. They didn't notice her.
"Yeah, I'm rising up the ranks pretty fast. Wouldn't be surprised if I made General in a year or two" he grinned. Riza resisted the urge to snort. His suggestion was impossible. Even Mustang couldn't pull off twelve promotions in a year, yet alone in ten years, and that was with State- Alchemist leg-up. Again, the crowd was in awe, eating up the bullshit he was spewing. The guy gave a half-smile and it clicked in Riza's mind; this was Lance Coleman, captain of some sports team while he had been here (Riza had never paid enough attention to sports to know which) and had been somewhat of a heartthrob for many during their days at the school. She had a brief memory of him slamming a locker door in her face, but she had written that off as an accident. She was pretty easy to not notice, after all. It was no wonder they were eating this up.
Still, despite him being full of shit, she had to admit that it was an awfully low rank for someone her own age. She looked at him again, taking him in. He was in uniform, even though the glass in his hand showed that he was off duty. He was wearing it for the attention most likely. She herself was dressed simply enough. She had opted to wear her regular civilian clothes rather than the conspicuous uniform. She wore her own type of uniform; the same she wore on all of her days off: a collared shirt that completely covered her entire back and neck, and a long skirt with a slit so that she could easily conceal and reach the M1910 holstered to her leg. Next she began studying his face. There was somewhat of a youthful jovialness there that she had seen in the rest of Mustangs squad, especially in Fuery. At least, it used to be in Fuery; he had lost it after his time in the Southern trenches. As if answering her unspoken question, Coleman continued:
"Yeah, joined up right after University. Military practically begged me to join". That confirmed what she had known all along; he had gone to University. And of course the military would have begged him to join. With the lack of personnel at the time, they would have accepted anyone. Hell, they accepted twelve-year-old Edward.
He had gone to Uni, not Ishval. While she was on the battlefield, he was studying and probably playing whatever sport he was so popular for. He had been to Uni. He had never been to Ishval. He had never been to hell. Her back began to tingle again.
The woman closest to him laughed and Riza recognized another former classmate, though she couldn't for the life of her remember her name. What was the point of even coming to this if she didn't even know who anyone was?
"So have you ever like, you know? Killed anyone?" the woman asked. The crowd fell silent, as if something heavy had fallen over them. The tingle in Riza's back was intensifying, the upper left quarter stung. She clenched her glass and gritted her teeth. Somewhere, she thought she could faintly smell the sweet scent of burning meat.
It's in your head she thought to herself. Its all in your head. There's a word for this but I can't remember it right now. It's in your head and you're probably drunk and you shouldn't be listening to this. Just turn around and get on a train to centra- scratch that anywhere. Anywhere but here really. But she didn't move.
Coleman smirked again. He shifted his weight onto one leg, placing one hand on his hip, where his gun was holstered. He paused for a second, perhaps for dramatic effect, perhaps to revel in his captive audience.
"Not yet. I've shot this old bad boy a couple of times, nothing major. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't. Soon as I get the order there's no holdin' back and we'll see what this baby can do!" The girl swooned. The rest of the group began to laugh and joke again. Riza felt faint too, but for a different reason.
Her back was killing her now, as if someone was stabbing her with a blade but it wasn't a blade it was a needle and then his hands and she put one hand on the table to steady herself she buried the children in unmarked graves and carried them to their final resting places and guns were so great because they didn't leave the feeling of dying in your hands so why was she carrying the dead? The sweet scent was strong now and she recognized it immediately as the scent of charred flesh as she buried the child burnt to a crisp in their own home, innocent except to be the race that their country despised and it was her her glass slid from her hands and shattered against the floor and his hands were on her back and the scent of burning flesh engulfed her as the pain she had requested was administered
At the sound of the breaking glass, all heads in the group turned towards her. Coleman squinted at her in disbelief, then grinned happily.
"Hey! Lieutenant Hawkeye!" he exclaimed. Riza balled her hands into fists, squeezing them together. The room was swimming before her. She couldn't breath, the scent was too much.
"This, Ladies and Gentleman, is Riza Hawkeye. A true hero of Ishval!" She could hear Coleman continuing. She wished he wouldn't. "Best sniper the military has, if I recall. How are-?"
"I have to go!" She began to rush off in what she hopped was the direction of the door. Behind her she could hear the woman:
"Wasn't she that girl with the creepy father?"
Outside the school, she placed her hands on her knees and gasped, breathing as if she had just run across the Xingese desert. She turned to the side and vomited into a nearby bush. Slowly with her head between her knees, she began to steady herself. The night was cool from the earlier rain, and the dampness in the air was refreshing. Out here, the smell wasn't so bad. Her back didn't hurt as much, though the faint tingle still lingered. She remembered the word she couldn't earlier. Psychosomatic. She grinned to herself. Perhaps she was psycho.
She stood up straight as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She turned and looked towards the school, deciding she didn't care for it much. It never helped her much anyways.
Without realizing it, she had begun to walk. Despite not being back for ten years, her feet seemed to have an excellent memory and guided her through the streets of her old town as if she had still been living there. Not much had changed, a few houses had been renovated and a few shops were different. She saw with sadness that the old grocery store where she had gone shopping every week had closed, an automobile repair shop in its place.
She passed the graveyard where her father was buried, where she had made up her mind to join the military. "I don't think it's silly to dream" she had said when Mustang confided in her. How naive she had been back then. She felt another pang of discomfort on her back as she remembered the other decision she made that day. But she shook her head and passed the graveyard without even looking at her father's grave from the outside.
Finally she reached her subconscious destination; the house that had been her prison for the first eighteen years of her life. She put her hands on the front gate, not to open them, just because it felt right. Again she thought she could smell the flesh and feel the pain, but they didn't threaten to overpower her this time. Her thoughts went back to the Elric's, how they'd burnt down their own home.
"It's a symbol. We can't turn back now" Ed had explained when she asked, and now she thought she understood. But she wasn't twelve and she wasn't about to commit arson, so after looking her fill, she turned on her heel and walked away from the house, knowing that her fate was sealed and that she could never, never go back.