(Gah, I promised myself I wouldn't start posting this until it was done... But I'll finish it! In a timely manner! I promise...!)
-Fission-
He couldn't take it any more.
That was the only explanation the Flame Alchemist had offered anyone for his sudden and unexpected self-imposed exile; the only reason he had been able to come up with. He'd be damned if he gave out any more details-- they'd all think he was crazy. And how could they not, when the very idea of what he was going through frightened even him?
Roy Mustang knew he wasn't crazy. He was not going insane. He was not losing his mind. He was just... under a lot of pressure. Yeah. That's right. The constant stress from the past few months had finally started to get to him-- that had to be it.
Still, he knew he could not simply take a short vacation and expect himself to come right back to work as if nothing had happened. Stopping... whatever was happening to him would not be easy, he knew, especially on his own, but he adamantly refused to go to any sort of shrink. He was not crazy, he was not.
And if he couldn't stop it... if he couldn't prevent himself from seeing things wherever he went... if he would always have horrible, disorienting moments when he forgot which of his loved ones were dead, which ones were not, and which ones he knew nothing about... if he could never look his subordinates in the eye again without nearly bursting into tears... If Roy Mustang couldn't fix himself, then he knew it would be a long while before he could even begin to function as he always had; before he even thought of going back to work.
So really, what could he have done? Whether he could heal himself or not, he couldn't be around his friends any longer without telling them anything-- and he certainly did not want them thinking what he knew they would. He had to get away. He had to get far away for a long time.
And although he'd known all along that he was making the best choice, he could not manage to convince himself that the look on Riza Hawkeye's face would not haunt him until he came back. Perhaps it was regret, he thought much later, that made him choose such a frozen, unpleasant place for his recovery.
Outside his window, the blizzard raged on.
(A/N: Short, I know. The other chapters will be much more reasonable.)