A/N: *Insert deep philosophical quote here*

Ishval

1900 Hours

How many days had it been?

As far as the Ishvalan was concerned, too many. Too many days spent staring through the sights, crouched inside a tiny room, seeing nothing but sand and rubble. Too many days spent searching for the slightest hint of movement, in order that he might end it. Too many days spent trying to ignore the blood of his friends, covering his clothes at night. Too many days spent hating. Yes. Too damn many.

He reached behind him to pull out his canteen. He unscrewed with shaky fingers, then poured the warm water into his mouth. He wiped it off and replaced the bottle. One more hour, then he'd be able to head back to camp. Maybe nobody needed to die today.

A new hole appeared in his skull. His head snapped back, and he crumpled to the dusty floor. He left behind two kids and a wife, more fuel for the inferno that was Ishval. They would be forgotten, just three more casualties in a war where 1000 casualties was a rounding error.

Riza didn't know this, but she could guess. Robotically, she cycled the bolt, sending one more brass casing to join the small pile on the floor. A small trail of smoke curled up from it, dancing in front of her eyes. The air was flat and dead, with no breeze to push the smoke away.

Her shift would end in about an hour. Hopefully she could avoid killing anyone else before then. She wanted to sleep tonight.

The ground shook, and a few miles away several Ishvalans became so much ash and dust. Riza didn't give a fuck. Major Mustang could do whatever he wanted. Her world was limited to the room she crouched in and what she saw through her scope. It was all she could deal with without snapping.

"Hawkeye, we've got a problem over by the bell tower. Can you deal with it?" The lieutenant's voice crackled over the radio. Riza didn't reply, she just tiredly swung her rifle to point in the general direction of the bell tower. She took a peek through the scope.

What's the point of this? She asked herself as an Ishvalan sniper tumbled out of a window. Why are we here? A machine-gunner yelped as his assistant earned another hole in his head, then lost track of his own head in a burst of blood.

I enlisted to protect those I care about. An Ishvalan, frantically searching for the sniper, realized his chest was gone. All I'm doing is killing innocents. The last three, operating a mortar in the top floor of the building, took a permanent lunch break when a bullet touched off a pile of rounds nearby. The sympathetic explosion brought down the top three floors, solving the insurgent problem.

What am I doing?

"Nice work. Reposition and cover us while we move in on the temple, standby while we clear it out. After that, we can stand down. Shoot and scoot, soldier." Riza looked over to the temple. Around it she could see a platoon of soldiers getting ready to break in and kill all the worshippers. The Ishvalans probably wouldn't even resist.

She reloaded, stood up, stretched and looked for a new hiding place.

Ishval

Firebase "Liore"

2300 Hours

The firebase was quiet. No fire missions were being called in. The attacks had stopped for the day, so the machine guns and sentries weren't firing either. There was only the sound of soldiers making small talk and, if possible, getting extremely drunk.

"Hey, Hawkeye, have er drink wish ush, huh?" A fellow private slurred out from a group of completely hammered soldiers. He held up a bottle of cheap ration beer. She shook her head and went on her way. "Okay zhen, more for me!"

Riza continued to make her way through the camp, past the armory, past the CP, past the post office, past the hospital filled with the moans of the dying and the bodies of the dead. Her eyes stared ahead, flat and dead; the lines around her eyes hidden in shadow. She stopped to let two other soldiers carry a body bag out to the collection point, then continued on her way.

She stumbled into her tent and laid her rifle out on its rack. Riza then fell onto her cot, not bothering to take off the dusty camouflage cloak. She blew a strand of hair out of her face and covered her eyes with the back of her hand. No sleep would be coming for her tonight. She'd just have to grit her teeth and try to ignore the voices.

"Hey, Riza." Rebecca Catalina dropped onto her own cot. Her eyes looked just as tired, just as dead as her best friend's. She threw her cloak off to the side and collapsed face first onto the dusty blankets. Riza pushed off a bit of the cloak that fell on her and realized it was covered with blood.

"Exciting shift?" Rebecca laughed mirthlessly, not bothering to flip herself over.

"How'd you guess?" Before Riza could answer the rhetorical question, Rebecca continued. "We raided a command post today. Or, we tried to. Machine guns covering every approach. The lieutenant tried to fall back. StateSec arrested him and took over the entire operation. I got to be at the back." She paused and coughed as her dry and raw throat forced her to stop talking. Riza tossed her canteen over without looking. Rebecca flipped over and took a drink.

"Thanks. As I was saying, I go to be at the back. What you're seeing is the result of a competent machine gunner with a clear line of fire, excellent cover, plenty of ammo and massed targets." She groaned as the adrenaline still in her system finally went away and her muscle pains came back full force. "The guys behind me managed to shoot the Central goons and we all retreated. We got separated. I think I'm the only one who made it back."

"Mm." Riza mumbled in response. She was only half-listening to this. Her eyes were closing; against her will, she might add. She wanted sleep, but sleep wasn't worth the dreams. She forced them back open, but her body's needs overpowered her mind's. Riza considered slapping herself, but her arm lacked the strength.

Rebecca, ever the good friend, noticed. "Hey, don't worry, get some sleep. You look terrible. I'll wake you up if you start thrashing." She flashed a weary thumbs up. "I expect you to do the same tomorrow."

Riza murmured something like "thank you", but her body was already shutting down. Soon, she was gone, off into the land of dreams and nightmares.

Ishval

Logistics Pool 3

Firebase "Liore"

0300 Hours

Rebecca shivered in the predawn desert chill. Any reasonable human being would have been fast asleep in their bed at this time of morning, especially after going to sleep at 2300 hours and waking at 0230 hours, but this was war! And as the drill sergeant said, if you wanted sleep, you should've become an engineer. At least they didn't have people yelling their face at 0240 and dragging them off to the logistics pool.

The early morning cold and stillness let her pretend that there was nothing wrong with the world. She could relax, letting the silence fool her mind. It was almost as if there wasn't a war on.

"Back it up! Slowly! Slowly, goddammit! What the fuck did I just tell you! No! Fuck!" The sound of metal being crushed, wood splintering and soft things getting squished reached her ears. Rebecca snapped out of her semi-conscious state and looked around for the voice. She found it in the loading dock two docks behind her.

She jogged over along with two other soldiers. The sight that met them was rather amusing, but disturbingly so. The truck was smashed into a pile of crates that apparently contained some sort of canned… fruit… product. At least, Rebecca thought so, based on the semi-sweet, semi-artificial smell and the brilliant red coloring. The sight was rather macabre, but at this point she would let anything amuse her. Anything to distract her from reality.

The man in charge of the loading bay was currently occupied with yelling at the driver, who seemed to have dozed off at the wheel. The poor man, who probably drove all night to get to the firebase, was now spluttering and wringing his hands in an attempt to defend himself.

Rebecca and the others relaxed. Nothing was wrong, just one tired truck driver who'd squished some fruit and wrecked his vehicle. The higher ups would take care of it. He'd get chewed out, probably do hard duty, and sign for the vehicle, and nobody would remember this incident. She could go back to her fantasies of a nice vacation in Central with a handsome date, far from Ishval.

"Hey, you three! Help move the cargo out of this truck!" But of course, it was not to be. The truck was gone, so it wouldn't be able to move over to the crane that normally took care of unloading. That didn't mean they had to like it, though.

"Come on!"

"Seriously?! I woke up one hour ago! One! Maybe less! By now, I don't even know!"

"Can it, you three! I'll have your asses doing KP if you don't get down here!" Rebecca and her comrades did a quick cost-benefit analysis. They rapidly came to the conclusion that they'd rather move crates now than peel potatoes and wash dishes later. Especially because the potatoes were half rotten, the dishes were broken enough to cut skin, and the kitchen got shot at and shelled every other day.

One of the other soldiers groaned and jumped into the pit. "Alright, alright, keep your panties on, we're coming." Rebecca and the other guy followed, jogging over to the truck to move the crates.

"Hey! Careful with those! There's fragile shit in there!" The logistics overseer admonished them. One of the soldiers took the time to carefully take his hand out from under a crate, flip the bird at the overseer, then toss the crate onto the unloading pad. Rebecca and her other companions followed the suit, ignoring the spluttering of the red faced overseer. They honestly didn't care much about what anybody thought anymore. Any punishment their superiors could mete out would be better than their current situation.

"You're all going to get reported for this, you know?" Rebecca waved him off with a middle finger.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Go piss a rainbow, why don't you?"

Ishval

Firebase "Liore"

0500 Hours

Riza turned in her sleep. Her jacket, which she had forgotten to take off, wrapped and twisted itself around her.

"No… no… I didn't… no… please…" She raised a hand in front of her face, as if to ward off an attacker. A final, violent twist took her right off the edge of the bed.

"Wha-agh!" She remained with her face on the floor for a few minutes, stunned by both the impact and being shocked so suddenly out her dream.

"It's… oh five hundred?" She glanced at the dusty watch Rebecca left on her own cot. "Yeah." She stood up and dusted herself off, then glanced outside. Almost nobody was out and about at the moment. Only a few stray dogs, not yet scared off by the war raging around them.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. The tight, grimy feeling around her eyes told her that she needed more sleep. The bags under her eyes, the flat, dead look they held within them, and the exhausted way in which she held herself also attested to too long spent in the field. She didn't feel like sleeping anymore, though. Not having to deal with the Ishvalans she'd killed seemed like a good idea to her.

A quick peek at the assignment sheet hanging outside her tent. "District 4? Alright." She went back to the tent to retrieve her rifle, mentally kicking herself for forgetting it. Fatigue couldn't be allowed to affect her mental faculties. Riza pushed aside the tent flap, grabbed her rifle, slung it over her shoulder and headed for the armory.

At the armory, which was more of a collection of gun lockers inside a chain-link fence, she looked around for one of the soldiers normally in charge of admittance. Nowhere to be found, huh. Riza stood around for a few minutes, waiting for someone to show themselves. There was supposed to be someone here around the clock. No today, though.

"Waiting for someone?" Instincts kicked in, and before she knew it Riza had spun, dropped to one knee, pulled out her pistol and was aiming it at the person's heart. For the person's part, his hand was up and ready to snap.

"Colonel Mustang." Not a greeting, not even a nice to see you. Just an acknowledgement of the man's identity.

Roy rubbed his face tiredly. "Hey, Riza. Couldn't sleep?"

"No." A short answer. She still hadn't put away her pistol.

"Do you…" He took a moment to swallow and moisten his parched throat. "Do you know where the armory manager is?"

"No."

"Can you at least put away the pistol?" Riza finally became aware of the position she was in. She stood up and holstered the gun, but kept her hand on the butt. Roy pretended not to notice.

"Well, anyway… where are you today? Maybe we could, I don't know, work together on something…" He gave a small oof as she walked past him, shoulder bumping into his. "Hey, where're you going?"

She didn't look back. Her stride didn't break. She didn't even raise her voice. "Sorry sir. Fire and birds don't mix." She paused for a second. "You should know that."

And then she was gone.

A/N: Back to basics! So drop a follow, fave, or review! Consider telling me what I did wrong, what I should do, and why you bothered clicking on this story! And as always...

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