It starts with Roy, like most things do.
It starts with the ice alchemist, escaping, starts with Roy going out without any backup even though he's the flame alchemist, and he should know better, dammit, than to fight against ice, starts with Riza saying I've got your back and Hughes grinning, offering a sharp salute.
It starts with Roy's voice, cocky and light, cutting off from the comms, starts with Riza's panicked voice he's frozen and it starts with Hughes trying to tear his eyes away as he stares at Roy's warming corpse.
The Fuhrer kills the ice alchemist, sure, but what does it mean, when Roy's dead, when Riza holds her rifle as though she doesn't know why she holds it any longer, when their misfit crew is strained and broken because Roy had been what held them together, what kept them in the military, for his stupid dream of being Fuhrer and the world he would have created.
They are military, they are accustomed to death, and yet it's different, somehow, maybe because it was thanks to Roy that Hughes chose to stay, thanks to Roy and that stupid dream of his that'll never get accomplished, now.
It starts with the Elric brothers, quiet over Roy's grave, Ed's grieving bastard and Al's quiet condolences. With Armstrong's glance away, because he was on vacation and when he returned, he returned to the news that Roy was dead.
It starts with Roy, and it will end with Hughes.
He wakes up, the next morning, to a quiet house, which is odd, because it's a Saturday, isn't it? Gracia and Elicia ought to be home, ought to be moving about because Elicia doesn't know what sleep is, that girl, he wakes and it's odd because it hasn't been this quiet since days ago, since weeks ago, since before Roy—
He moves to the kitchen with a groggy, sleepy movement, feet shuffling and shoulders rolling back, and there's a little post-it note on the dining table sending Elicia to school, breakfast in oven! Which is odd because Gracia doesn't really do that anymore, they've gotten into the swing of things and—
It takes until he's dressed to figure it out, the little signs adding up, the calendar, the fact that the picture of Roy and Riza with Hughes is still up despite him having given it to Riza a while back, with a quiet he would have wanted you to have it.
It hits him like a brick, sharp and real and kind of terrifying, when he walks into his station and Riza's there, hair pinned up instead of chopped short, a crooked grin as she teases, "You're late, Hughes."
And it's all he can do to keep from screaming, because he's dreaming, right? He has to be. Except you can't read in dreams. And dreams aren't this vivid. And. And.
He tries to think of something witty, charming, but all that he can do is laugh, weak and small.
Riza offers him a worried glance, asks him if he's alright, and Hughes offers all the right reassurances, trying not to let his impatience show before finally, he's being sent off, and there's Roy, at his desk, hidden by piles of paper.
Hughes can feel his heart in his throat, tight and strong, and he shoves it down, offering Roy a cheerful, "Paperwork, huh? Looks fun."
"Kill me now," Roy groans, flopping back, and Hughes is fine, he is, honest, he's not panicking just because of one silly little sentence, haha, no, of course not.
"No can do," he laughs instead of pressing his face into Roy's shoulder, instead of crying, instead of the millions of things he wants to do but can't. "If you died, the paperwork wouldn't get filled."
"Ugh," Roy scrunches up his nose.
Hughes laughs and they banter and it's all good until the ice alchemist breaks out again, a few days later, and Hughes is sitting at the edge of Roy's desk while Riza outlines a plan.
"We can't go," he says, mind racing to find a good excuse, a good reason, but coming up with nothing but terror, lodged in the back of his throat.
Riza fix him with a sharp stare, asks why, and Hughes says that it's tactically unsound, says that Roy's fire won't stand a chance against Isaac's ice, gives all the reasons why Roy would loose in a fight, and there's Roy's fingers, light on his arm, a crooked grin, I can handle it.
"You can't," Hughes says, but he's talking to air.
"The Fuhrer commanded it," Roy raises an eyebrow, "Can't disobey a direct order, now can I?"
Just this once, Hughes wants to say.
Why not, Hughes wants to say.
Instead, he suggests, "Hang back. Let Riza try long distance. If that doesn't work, you can be plan B."
They shoot him amused, but trusting looks, and agree.
It ends with Riza, frozen, Roy desperately running forward, and both of them are dead, Roy and Riza, and it's terribly fitting because they were both always two halves of a whole, one could not survive without another.
Except it means that Hughes is left here, alone, and that hurts, that he just made it worse.
The Fuhrer gives his condolences, Hughes squeezes his eyes shut and looks away, Ed is silent and Armstrong, once again, returns from his vacation to bad news.
Could he have prevented this? How? Why Hughes? What was he meant to—
He tries joining the fray.
Hughes slams into the ice alchemist. They both tumble off the roof, the ice alchemist catches himself and Hughes is frozen.
Right before everything goes black, he sees Roy, running forward, desperately, jerkily, and he knows, in the pit of his chest, that he has once again failed, that he's only raised the body count.
He begs the Fuhrer, tells him that Roy isn't suited, can't do it.
The Fuhrer raises an eyebrow, amused, you don't think the Colonel can handle it?
He's just not suited, Hughes says, desperately trying to get it through.
Fuhrer just shakes his head, laughs, why don't we let him choose and Hughes tries not to blame the Fuhrer as he stands over the coffin that time.
"I wish that I could have done something," Armstrong says, frustrated, into Hughe's shoulder.
I could have done something, Hughes thinks, numbly, squeezing his eyes shut, and he can see Roy's body, every time, falling, broken, and he says quietly, "At least you had a good vacation."
"If I could go back in time," Armstrong says, "I wouldn't have gone on vacation."
He messes up the paperwork for Armstrong's vacation request. It never goes through.
Armstrong stays in Central, and is called in.
He's too late, the messenger hadn't gotten to him fast enough, and Roy is dead.
Armstrong gets there in time, Hughes called him personally this time, and the fight goes well but not well enough because half the city is encased in ice before Isaac is killed and half the city is dead before Isaac is, too, and Hughes is alone in the knowledge that it's his fault.
They win, this time. Everything is good.
The weeks before the event, the precious weeks he had after waking up again (again and again and again), he plans it perfectly.
Except, then, Ed dies, travelling, caught up in a fight of some sort that nobody knows because all that's left is a mangled body and broken pieces of armour, barely identifiable.
Could this have been prevented? Hughes wonders.
Was this his fault? Would it have happened anyways? What if, what if—
(He's never even properly met Ed. Seen him, in the past—the future—the non-existent worlds, seen him over Roy's grave, but that's it. And now the kid's dead.)
"You just let him run free?" Hughes asks Roy, leaned over the wooden desk.
"He mails his reports instead of giving them in person," Roy shrugs.
Hughes scrunches up his nose, "That's against protocol."
"He's got to write and print them out anyway," Roy taps his pen against the desk, "And every time that he comes to Central to report, he gets all grumbly."
Hughes hums, silent in thought, and then he says, "You should ask him to come over. I'd like to meet the infamous Fullmetal Alchemist."
Roy raises an eyebrow, "Why the sudden interest?"
"No reason," Hughes answers cheerfully.
He never gets to meet Ed, though, because he's found dead, once again, in Liore, shredded metal and crushed flesh all that's left.
"Stop letting Ed get away with not giving you reports in person," Hughes says, jumping onto Roy, "It's against protocol."
"How did you find out about that?" Roy grumbles, but he seems unsurprised that Hughes had somehow found out.
"Stop avoiding the point," Hughes pulls on Roy's cheeks. "Make him come give his reports in person."
Roy tips his chair back, grumbling, "Fine, fine."
Ed comes, surprisingly, in time to stop the ice alchemist.
Everyone (except one or two unfortunate soldiers) survives, and Isaac is properly taken care of.
Ed doesn't end up in a body bag, thankfully, the crisis of his death at Liore properly averted.
The kid, Nina, dies, and Hughes waits for the world to reset, but it doesn't.
Then Scar comes, and Ed is dead, Hughes silent as Roy looks away, undoubtedly blaming himself.
Don't blame yourself, Hughes thinks, staring at Ed's body, this is my fault.
It doesn't reset to the same time. It resets to later, after the incident with the ice alchemist, resets to a time making it so that Hughes doesn't have to worry about Roy dying after being frozen or Ed's body, crushed in Liore, but it resets so that he can make a battle plan against Scar, and he thanks whatever is sending him back for that.
He offers a few whispers to the wind, makes some rumours, sends a fast messenger, and Roy and backup come quick, saving Ed in time, sending Scar running.
He spends the next few days looking over his shoulders, ears to the wind, always cautious, terrified that something will mess up somehow, that the world will find another reason to reset.
"You look like you're waiting for the next war to happen," Roy tells him, having come over for a few documents, almost off handedly, a stack of papers held over his shoulders, eyebrows raised.
"I don't mean to," Hughes looks away, ignoring the pricking at the back of his neck screaming wrongpanicwrong.
A moment of silence, Roy saying nothing, and then the sound of the paper's being set down, Roy's cold fingers against the back of Hughes' neck. "It's okay, Hughes. I know that it was—freaky—seeing an Ishvalan. Brought up some bad memories about what we—what the military—did. But it's alright."
"And if—" Hughes squeezes his eyes shut, "I keep having this—this reoccurring nightmare. Where we're in peace times—where everything's okay. And everyone—everyone dies anyways."
God. He hasn't stuttered this bad since—since Ishval.
He knows it, and he can tell that Roy's thinking it, too, by the way that Roy's touch stutters against his skin, like he's flinching, in this twitch of his fingers, this jerk of his wrist.
"It won't happen, Hughes," Roy says, quietly, "It's peacetime. That's the whole—that's the whole point."
Roy's got it, too. The stutter.
"I can't even talk to Gracia about it," Hughes says quietly, "I don't want to scare her. And I—I know what she'll say. She'll think that it's temporary."
Roy knows, because he's seen the bodies, ash and charcoal, he's seen the women and children run out to press their faces against still smoking chests and he's burnt them, too, for the crime of existing. Roy knows, because he's seen a war, and he hasn't seen what Hughes has seen, but maybe it's close enough, this desperate attempt to do something good, for once.
"Can't it be temporary?" Roy asks.
Hughes stares at Roy. This is the furthest that Hughes has got. And—and the reset. It reset at a later date. Which meant that Hughes was doing something, something good, right?
"Maybe," Hughes says. Closes his eyes, repeats, "Maybe."
Maybe it won't reset again. Maybe— maybe he's done enough.
It doesn't reset again, after that.
It never resets.
Hughes dies in a phone booth, and he doesn't open his eyes again.
It had started with Roy, and it ends with Hughes.