Summary: Amidst the backdrop of a World War, four people struggle to survive. An ex-officer in the army fleeing from those he once called friends; a mechanic stranded and alone in a place she is unfamiliar to; an alchemist running from monsters that threaten to reveal all he knows and a soldier declared to be dead and hiding in alleyways for her life. Not quite AU
NOTE: Not set in FMA world, but not in ours either. Some kind of combination of the two - a world with a World War II, but also a world with alchemy, where the Homunculi are not quite Homunculi. Main characters are Roy and Winry, but under Roy/Riza because she gets really important later. It's not a Roy/Winry anyways. It's Royai.
The whole story drips vagueness.
I wrote this ages ago, but I only just remembered it existed.
Arc I: beginnings
road to shangri-la
Their country had seen its glory days, and outlived them. Roy knows this better than anyone as a soldier and officer and god knows what else. He knows the reasons too. The glory days lived and died with the Alchemists, and when most of them left after the Ban, the glory days left too.
He is one of the few remaining. Sometimes he wishes he'd left, but it is too late to turn back now.
Roy does not dwell on this too long. He has a long road ahead of him, and he might never find his way back, so he keeps walking and shuts it out of his mind.
He will reach Shangri-La someday.
Someday does not come for a long time, and summer is receding into autumn by the time he has even made it to the halfway point. He wonders privately if he will ever reach the hidden refuge, and wonders if he is even going in the right direction.
Wonders if they will even accept, being from the military and all. But he leaves his past behind the dust, and keeps walking.
It is his sole hope of finding Riza.
Days pass, stretch into weeks, stretch into months. Three months since he started running, and his body is showing the toll of such a journey. He dares not venture into shops, for fear that he may be recognised, so he lives on stale bread and dirty water and scraps from rubbish bins when he can get them. The rest of the time he goes hungry. He forages newspapers from dumpsters, pores over them in the day and sleeps under them at night.
When he sees the article about Maes Hughes, his world drops out from under him and he finds it hard to breathe. His journey becomes not just a hunt for Riza, but for Maes too. Then Breda. Then Havoc. The list grows and grows with every passing week. The newspaper articles are short and gloss over the details. They are dead, the articles claim.
He knows the claims are because of the Fuhrer exerting his pressure on the editors. Hopes, really, because for all he knows, they might well be.
So he tucks his pictures and articles away and feels for the files and clutches at them all night.
He needs to get them somewhere safe, and he dearly hopes that his destination has escaped the taint of the army.
It is a Thursday when he meets her, a little fragile slip of a thing, though he can tell she wasn't always so fragile. She has blue eyes that look more than a little jaded and blonde hair that reminds him faintly of Riza.
She is not really fragile, but she certainly looks it. He asks for her name and she does not answer.
"Winry Rockbell," she says some time later.
Rockbell. A name that brings back memories of a past he left behind and reminds him of the sharp odour of smoke billowing in the crisp night air. He firmly pushes this out of his mind.
"I'm Roy. Roy Mustang."
He grows to think of her as his little sister, despite the fact she is almost young enough to be his daughter. And as they draw closer to their destination, she gradually begins to remind him even more of Riza.
It depresses him, and he has no earthly idea why she reminds him of her. They do not look alike, save for the same build and hair, and they do not act alike. It does not matter that much now, anyways. He imagines his old friends around him, and for the time being, it is enough.
At times he wonders about why Winry rarely ever speaks and exactly what in her life she is missing he does not know, though he has a feeling he knows the answer to that question. She is closed off behind doors that she locked sometime long ago, and he has a feeling she threw away the key.
But he does not ask and she offers nothing.
One day she finally says something about her past. She says nothing of family, instead choosing to talk about a boy with gold hair and gold eyes and an incurable shortness.
"Sounds like someone I knew." Roy does not mention the name Edward Elric, because it was taboo in the military and old habits die hard (and Ed was not his friend, just an acquaintance and don't think about that, don't, because he's one of the reasons Riza's gone). But Winry says nothing about a brother, so he assumes it is merely a coincidence.
"Is he there?"
She pauses. "I don't know."
"But you wish you did."
She just sighs and smiles.
"Yeah, I wish I did."
When they are mere days away from the end of their journey, though neither knows that, Winry makes Roy promise her something.
"Don't abandon me there."
He nods and promises, because he senses she has lost too many people, and it wouldn't be fair to make her lose someone else.
The road to Shangri-la is almost at an end and both of them sense it eventually.
Roy thinks he just might miss it.