NOTE: I'm failing science and math, so I decided to come on here and write something. Gosh, I hate algebra.
STARSHINE
And all the stars, why do they all shine as if they know who you are, as if they recognize you.
"If I could live forever, would you stay with me?" he asks. You are quiet for a minute, and the Ishbalan wind, more sand than wind, tugs insistently at your eyelashes. You smile, "I wouldn't want to live forever." His head flops over to catch your eyes, his black bangs falling across his diamond eyes, not diminishing their light even in the slightest. Another soldier is brought into the camp as you both lie on the hard floor.
He has received a bullet to his chest, and you, yourself, now bear a cut across your stomach. Distantly, you wonder whether you both will survive. You can run with him but not hide from Death, after all.
"Why not, Riza?"
You roll your eyes not quite tiredly to him, "Because," you say, and your voice is softer and more vulnerable that you would've liked, "I wouldn't want to watch the world become faded, and dull, and grey, and.. frail. I suppose." you say. His head turns back to a cold and distant heaven and unforgiving skies. His breaths differentiate, as his eyes flutter gently, returning his thoughts to the burden of the world. "And besides," you add, "When you can live forever, what's there to live for?"
You can hear you own breathing, wondering whether it'll hurt if you raised your arm to scratch the itch forming at the back of your ear.
His eyes are half-closed, "I don't know." he says simply, and you decide this is enough.
"After this," he says, "After Ishbal, after we bring just to the world, will you still follow me?" The pain throbbing at the back of your head goes unheeded by your thoughts, and faintly, you wonder whether it hurts because of your multiple wounds or the knowledge that all roads lead only to one destination.
"Do you believe in fate, Roy?" you ask suddenly, leaving his question unanswered. He rolls his head to the side again, and you can't decide whether it's been seconds or hours, minutes or days, that you have been lying there. You also can't decide whether it's been years or infinities that you've supressed the intrinsic feelings coursing throughout your life. Feelings that have always belonged to him.
"I don't know." he says again, "Theoretically, no, I don't believe in fate. I am an alchemist, after all. Though.. from my experiences, fate, destiny, you cannot defy it, no matter how hard we've tried." he smiles to the sky again, and is answered in Godless words.
You close your eyes. The darkness is unbearable as you listen to his heartbeat, maybe it was your own. You'd never be able to tell. Seconds, minutes, hours or days pass and you cannot tell which it is, but his breathing becomes deeper, and you can tell he has fallen asleep.
As a last thought before sleep takes you, you wonder when you started measuring time not by minutes or days, but by the moments you've shared with him.
But if the stars disappear from you sky and the darkness takes you, I will light your way.
..back to failing math, I go.