It was Roy's job to sweep the sand out of the tent everyday.
It was a dumb task and he absolutely hated it. But then, he hated most of the things that surrounded him here—the desert, the heat, the war, the frightened faces of foes and allies alike, the heartlessness of his superiors.
And the sand, he hated the goddamn sand.
It was there waiting for him every morning, no matter how tightly he closed the tent flaps the night before. Little clouds of it rolled in whenever anybody went in or out, piling up slowly by the door to be tracked across the temporary floor. So it wasn't even a once a day chore, he was constantly having to sweep it out whenever he had the chance.
The worst part was watching half of it blow back in when he'd finally opened the flap to get rid of it.
And on those days when he was too sick with the war and himself to get out of bed, someone would kick him—actually physically kick him—until he got up and did it. He didn't know why it was his job, and his alone. The other men in his tent were all soldiers, about his same age. He was the only alchemist.
It was probably their way of exercising control over the mysterious and deadly power they didn't understand. It probably made them feel less helpless.
He didn't blame them for it. Not out here in this war.
It was the futility of the act he hated most. He knew, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, that there was sand in the tent, and he needed to sweep it out. In the middle of battle this thought would come to him—probably his mind trying to ignore the horrors before him—but he wouldn't laugh at the absurdity of it. His fires just got a little brighter, a little hotter.
There was absolutely nothing he could do to stop this war. Day in and day out, the battles raged on. Day in and day out, men, women, and children were killed in the name of something no one there really understood. Roy Mustang was there killing when he was called to kill, and out in the desert coughing up his innocence, his morality, his weakness when it was over.
But it was never really over. He woke every morning knowing that he'd kill again that day. How many? Women, too? Armed but helpless children, too?
The only time he felt comfortable in the sand was when he had released his sickened grief into it, and the desert didn't mind. It didn't judge him for what he was doing, or how he couldn't handle it. It simply and quickly covered up the evidence with sand, leaving a pure, untouched, lifeless surface.
He wished that the sand would blot out his memory, cover him and roll over him like it did everything else. He wanted the desert to swallow him whole.
But it never did, and he still had to sweep out the tent when he got back.