Author's Note: Basically, this fic is just "thoughts on the character development, personality and motivations of Roy Mustang, the fictionalized version."
–
That Which Does Not Speak
–
It is 1891 and Roy is six years old. It's a hot, heavy day and he is overdressed for the weather but not the occasion. The officiant carries on and Roy can feel the way he's being watched. It's uncomfortable and distracting, like the way his shirt collar rubs the back of his neck and leaves him itchy. He doesn't fidget.
He's old enough to understand death, though perhaps not well enough to explain it. He knows enough that when people said there was an accident what they really meant was your parents are gone forever. He also understands that's why everyone present keeps glancing his way – subtly, of course, from the corners of their eyes, never openly. Roy doesn't know the word pity, but he comprehends the concept.
He misses them. Badly.
A hand falls to his shoulder, bracingly. Roy looks up; it's his Aunt Chris. She meets his gaze, but there is something straightforward about the way she looks at him. She misses them too.
"Come on Roy-boy, it's time to go."
–
It's getting late.
Roy sighs and slumps back a little in the rickety kitchen chair. It creaks ominously beneath the shift of his weight. He rubs his eyes tiredly and looks again at the papers spread over the table before him. There is a yellow cast to everything; the oil lamp flickers at the far corner of the room. There hasn't been electricity in the house for months. The thought depresses him.
This isn't exactly what Roy expected to come back to.
He grimaces at the thought and leans forward again, picking up his pen. He chews on the end of it, thinking hard. He thinks he's got most of the details taken care of now. The grave site itself had been purchased years ago, when Master Hawkeye's wife died; Roy had taken on the costs of embalming, the coffin, the gravestone, all of the other miscellaneous expenses. Riza had declined an actual funeral service as superfluous, claiming the internment itself was enough. It pained Roy to admit it, but she was probably right. Her father hadn't exactly been a social man, and as it was, Roy's meager savings had spectacularly diminished over the past few days. He was only a Second Lieutenant, freshly commissioned and on a modest salary, and now...
Now, Roy's best chances at gaining State Alchemist certification (and the promotion that came with it) had died with his master. His disappointment comes with a feeling of bitter selfishness. He shouldn't be mourning his dreams when his teacher is dead.
Roy closes his eyes tight for a moment, opens them again and focuses back on the page in front of him. If he can just get through this, he decides, he can stop for the night.
"You're still up?"
Roy starts, looks back over his shoulder. Riza stands in the doorway, dressed in her night clothes and one hand resting on the jamb. She raises an eyebrow and Roy clears his throat, willing himself not to flush.
"Yeah," he says around the pen still in his mouth. "Just finishing up."
"What are you working on?" She walks over before he can answer, coming to look over his shoulder and read the paper he'd been mulling over. Her proximity unexpectedly throws Roy. She smells clean, pretty. Riza's gotten prettier since he left. He looks up at her, a little dazed. Her expression is unfathomable as her eyes dart over the page. "An obituary."
"Uh," Roy begins with great articulacy, averting his eyes. He thinks he must be a lot more tired than he thought. "Yeah."
She frowns and then suddenly steals the pen from between his teeth and leans over to correct a misspelled word. "Your spelling hasn't improved much, Mr. Mustang."
"My spelling is fine," Roy grumbles, not defensively at all, and snatches it back from her.
"Well, maybe a little better than before," Riza amends slyly, before growing serious again. "It's very fitting."
"It's the least I can do. He was a good teacher."
"Yes," she agrees, but her tone is vague, maybe a little sad. There's something she isn't saying, and Roy isn't quite sure what to make of it. She steps back. "I was going to make some tea. Would you like some while you finish?"
"Sure."
Riza nods and goes to light the stove. Roy bends to his writing, but every so often he glances up as she slips around the kitchen, a dozen questions running through his mind that he can't put words to.
Tomorrow afternoon they will bury Berthold Hawkeye. He doesn't know it yet, but Roy will learn the answers soon enough.
–
There are bodies everywhere, decomposing in the sun.
Nobody notices the stench anymore. Perhaps that is the true atrocity of war, that which takes the horrific and renders it to a mere piece of the scenery: a rock to step over here, a cadaver there.
Amestrian soldiers are never left to rot. After an area is secured, their bodies are retrieved, covered, returned home, back to their families to be honored and mourned. Hundreds, thousands even, loaded onto and off the trains to be buried with all of the dignity the military has to offer, under a crisp green and white flag, a volley's report echoing over the tombstones.
The bodies of fallen Ishvallans are offered the same accord as the living, which is to say none at all.
It hits him, sometimes, as they pick their way through the ruins towards the section selected for annihilation today. Roy will look down, looking for a steady place to plant his feet, and he'll see something that is not something but someone and it all crashes back in. The dehumanized regains its identity and his stomach curls in on itself as his carefully constructed compartmentalization cracks; fractures.
How did it come to this?
These are the thoughts Mustang does not, cannot, permit himself out here.
"Are you alright, Major?"
Roy looks sharply to his left to the soldier who had spoken. A sergeant, to go by his epaulettes. Roy has never seen him before.
"What?"
"You looked odd for a minute there, sir."
Roy shakes his head and marches forward. "It's nothing. Let's go."
Later that night, back at camp, he stares at his hands but not into the fire. There is no need for pretending here, away from the battlefield. There is only the truth: he was young and foolish, and Master Hawkeye had been right. He's not sure how he's supposed to come to terms with that.
"Someone should bury them," he says.
Hughes and Riza trade a glance. Roy doesn't notice.
"There are too many," Hughes finally sighs. "Where would you begin?"
Riza looks away.
–
Roy is staring hard at the phone receiver in his hand when Hawkeye cracks open the door. He looks up sharply, the line of his mouth stretched thin.
"What's the matter?"
"Hughes called."
For a moment, she almost seems on the verge of exasperation, but then pauses, seems to reconsider. One thing about Hawkeye is that she never takes his concern lightly, especially not when he's being serious. "Did something happen?" she asks next, stepping fully into the room and pressing the door shut behind her. Almost no one else is here at this time of night, but caution is a habit not easily broken.
"That's just it," Roy says. "He wasn't there when the operator put through the call."
Hawkeye gives him a look. "Did you try calling him back?"
He breathes out, shakes his head, and very deliberately returns the phone to its cradle. It settles in with a soft click. "No, he was calling from an outside line."
The Lieutenant is quiet for a long moment, mulling it over.
"The connection might be bad," she suggests at last, "or he might have been in a hurry and set the receiver down wrong."
Roy can see she's unsettled too, but he's not sure if that's due to the situation or his own anxiety. Perhaps both. He feels like they are missing some important detail, some crucial piece of information that will set everything into focus, make it all make sense. Roy can't quite wrap his mind around it. Hughes is often eccentric, often to a purposeful end, but this is unusual.
"Did you hear anything on the other end?" Hawkeye asks when he doesn't respond, shifting the files she is holding from her right arm to her left.
"I don't know. Maybe not." Roy sighs, pulls a face. "Maybe all these long hours on this Scar case lately are doing me in. I haven't even had time for a proper date in weeks."
Hawkeye hums absently, almost pleasantly, rifling through a few papers as she starts towards her desk. "Well, you are getting on in years, Colonel. Maybe you should slow your pace."
Roy snorts, shooting her his drollest possible look even though she's not facing at him. "I'm not an old man yet, Lieutenant."
She looks at him as if to say, if you say so, Colonel, but then changes the subject again without missing a beat. If she's smiling, he can't tell. "There isn't that much left to do tonight. If we work quickly, we might be able to get out by a reasonable hour." He glances at the clock: nearly half past eight. They had started at seven that morning. Very reasonable, indeed. Sometimes Roy wished he knew what civilian jobs were like. Nevertheless, it was promising.
"Alright," he agrees, following her example and heading for his office. Before entering, he pauses, just momentarily, and casts the phone on the wall one last dubious glance and tells himself it's just a fluke.
In the morning, he'll receive another phone call.
–
The sky is beginning to gray, the black smearing like charcoal as morning draws near. Dawn is swift approaching.
The months have flown by since Roy was first here, when he watched his best friend's casket lowered into the earth, long before he ever knew the reasons why. There's a certain irony to returning now, in the predawn hours that linger like a breath held before the plunge.
Roy has prepared for this day for nearly six years now, creeping his way up through the ranks, inching forward at each chance and wrapping himself in intrigue at every turn. Every step up until now has been slow, deliberate, but the Promised Day is here and there is no more time for preparations: it is all or nothing, a full-on sprint for the finish line.
There is still too much to lose, should he fail now. People are harder to protect than they should be.
Hughes saw the flaw in his thinking from the beginning - geometric progression is good in theory, but people are more than straight lines and numerical values. There are too many unknown variables in Roy's math, factors he probably hasn't accounted for, and it's likely that this whole scheme was a bad call from the get go. There's a strong chance he'll never be able to protect everyone, or even just the people care cares for most, like he wants to.
But Roy has known this for years, and there's no turning back now. The day is coming whether they are ready for it or not.
Besides, his team is good at following orders.
Dawn approaches.
–
This is an ending.
It's as if all of Central City grinds to a halt for King Bradley's funeral procession.
They don't tell the world that the Fuhrer was a Homunculus. Central Headquarters is still more crater than building, and the populace is shaken by the strange events of the Promised Day. In a way, they are rewriting history, only telling the public what is deemed safe enough to be told and locking the truth away, state secrets of the highest confidentiality. It makes the ensuing transition easier, at least. Roy supposes Amestris will take to the forthcoming changes well enough.
He isn't disappointed, at all really, by the changes in their plans. From a purely strategical point of view, it makes sense. Grumman has the years and the rank to be a convincing choice for the Fuhrer's position, and is trustworthy to bring stability to Amestris. Roy knows there will be plenty of opportunity yet to bring about the change he has hoped so long to see.
As for now, there is Ishbal.
It is almost too much, the thought of returning. Roy isn't sure that he's the right person for this, is actually pretty sure he isn't, and there's no way to be prepared for it, but - still. It scares him half to death, but there's also a rightness to it, like a chemical equation coming into balance.
Roy sighs and breaks away from his inward thoughts. The day is bright and clear despite the solemn affair, all blue skies and strong sunlight. He looks to his side and Hawkeye is there, as she should be, steadier than a shadow. She stands half a step closer to him than she used to, as though to make up for all of the distance imposed between them over the past six months. Roy still wishes she were closer.
"General?" She caught him looking.
Her gaze is steady and patient and sure. Roy meets her eyes and takes a breath.
"It's time to go," he says. "Are you ready?"
Hawkeye doesn't miss a beat.
"Right behind you, sir."
This is also a beginning.