Just a bit too long for a drabble, and I've given this more thought than I've given most of my drabbles anyway, no matter how it started out. Many many many thanks to my buddy Rei Asakura for pointing out stuff that doesn't flow well and letting me help with her recent X/1999 'fic. (Also for pointing out that I need to write more. Which I do.))
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist, its characters and settings belong to Arakawa Hiromu and various television and publishing companies. I just like to have a bit of fun at their expense sometimes.
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They say that smoking dulls the senses of scent and taste. Never mind who 'they' are, or what proof 'they' have to back up this statement. Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc knows 'they' are wrong.
He started smoking the day he enlisted. He went through basic training wheezing and knows that, if he ever decided to quit (which he wouldn't), he would be able to run circles around his fellow soldiers. He had to cut down when he was sent east, but that was common sense. He couldn't count how many of his buddies were sniped in the dark of the night by the glow of a cigarette. And he knew that was the reason they died because he, too, was a sniper, and he could see a cigarette's ember and aim correctly from a hundred yards.
Mostly, though, when it comes to the Eastern Conflict, he remembers the scents, the smells, the odours. That's how he knows 'they' are full of shit. He remembers the salty scent of soldiers sweating in the midday heat, the metallic, tangy aroma of gunpowder, the nightmarish smell of bodies decaying before they could be properly disposed of. He remembers the rotten reek of sulphur and the choking one of black smoke when the alchemists arrived. Charred dirt. Charred hair. Charred flesh.
That's how he knows 'they' are full of shit. At least halfway.
What he can't remember is the way his mother's pumpkin pie tasted when he was a kid. The first bite of birthday cake; it's been forever since he celebrated. The taste of a really good steak, fuck, he could go for one of those right now, medium rare, maybe a baked potato on the side and damn, that sounds good. If only he could recall the taste.
Most troubling of all is his inability to recall Fuery. The most vital moment of his life, and he can't remember Fuery – Kain, the little Sergeant Major that had berated him about his smoking and defended his right to keep pets and smiled when he came home every night. The first taste of those lips, was it sweet like he imagines? And every one subsequent, he can't remember, only imagine. Did he taste like his soap smelled, sweet, clear and clean? I don't recall. The lingering flavour on his lips after kissing him goodnight, his forehead, hair, cheek, lips, it didn't matter, and he was sure it didn't vary. So why am I having so much trouble?
He can't remember the taste of the tears when they put – Fuery in the ground, or the taste of his blood days before, drying on his lips from a final kiss as he clutched a dying body. Can't even remember the flavour of his own blood, despite the numerous split lips sustained over the years. If he could lift his hand…
He can. And ever so slightly trace the newfound gunshot wound, careful, careful now…
Barely. And slowly, slowly bring it to his lips…
He does. Just to know what his blood tastes like. And nothing else. The final taste of his life, vitality waning on his tongue.
As his vision fades and everything else happens in slow motion, he wishes his last taste had been a cigarette – no, had been Fuery, who's been dead two years and twenty-eight days. Because although Havoc can smell him in his mind, as though he's standing right there, he just can't…quite…taste…