"You realize it's depressing as fuck, what you're doing?"

The rain is pouring down in sheets. He'd been watching the beads of water zig and zag down the glass. Even officer's quarters don't have windows like Hughes has in his quiet civilian neighborhood. Roy never usually minds. He likes the rain, though. He likes watching the rain.

Roy turns away from the large window. "I'm entitled, don't you think?"

Hughes rolls his eyes. "We're all entitled. You think I don't know what day it is?" His voice is softer now, and he puts his hand over Roy's. Roy instinctively pulls away. He doesn't need pity. He doesn't deserve comfort.

"Did you hear that bullshit this morning? 'Hero of Ishval.' There's nothing heroic about what we did."

"Roy… we had orders."

"I know. I know. You think no one's ever said that to me before? For fuck's sake, Maes." He puts his arm up on the window, rests his head against it. Stares out at the rain. "Have you got anything to drink?"

"Roy…"

"Well? Do you or don't you?"

Hughes disappears into another room and returns with a bottle of brandy and two tumblers. It's not Roy's preferred choice, but it'll have to do.

"Will you come sit down at least?" Hughes asks. Roy follows him to a well-worn but comfortable sofa. He sits down. He knocks back most of his glass in one go.

Hughes is looking at him like he might break. Roy pretends not to notice.

"I'm gonna become Fuhrer," he announces. He takes another, slower drink.

"I… you… what?" Now Hughes is looking at him like he's completely lost his mind. Maybe he has.

He rubs his chin, pressing his thumb to the spot where, a year ago, he had held a gun. "Stop that," Dr. Marcoh had snapped. And his voice had sounded so much like a command that Roy had instinctively obeyed. "You were just following orders." He'd lowered the gun.

He should have pulled the trigger.

"What do I do?" he'd asked the other alchemist, but Marcoh hadn't had any answers for him.

"What do I do?"

He takes the bottle of brandy from the coffee table in front of him and refills his small glass. He takes a sip and closes his eyes and tries to savor it, but it just tastes bitter on his tongue and settles sour in his stomach. Despite this, he takes another sip.

"When I'm Fuhrer, I can make things better," he insists.

"I… really don't think you can make this better, Roy." Hughes says softly.

Roy rubs his thumb across his middle finger, sparking the glove. Hughes hates it when he does this in his living room, but he's long since stopped protesting. Roy has never lost control of the fire. It catches on his fingers. It never leaves his hand. He listens to the crackle of the flame.

In his head, he hears screaming, coughing, desperate cries. He heard the Ishvalans wailing and praying to their god who saw all of alchemy as an unforgivable sin.

Roy thinks, under these circumstances, that he sides with the Ishvalan god.

Then, as now, he watched the flames. If he only saw the fire, he didn't have to think about what it was consuming.

He couldn't ever be unaware of what it was consuming.

"The Fuhrer gives the orders, right, Hughes? So if I become the Fuhrer, I make sure no one else is ever asked to do the things we did."

Hughes just stares at him. Roy puts out the fire in his hand. It's like it was never there at all, except for the lingering hint of smoke in the air.

He could smell the bodies burning, like charred meat, and there was nowhere he could go to get away from it. He vomited up what little bit of food he's been able to force down his throat in the first place, finding any sheltered place where he could fall to his hands and knees and empty his stomach.

Even in those sheltered places, he could still hear the screaming. The screaming never stopped, until it did. The quiet was worse.

He'd briefly considered a hunger strike. The war didn't last that long.

"It won't be easy, you know," Hughes says, sipping his brandy. "Becoming Fuhrer. It will be dangerous."

"But you think I can do it."

Hughes shrugs, watching Roy, watching the manic glint in his eye.

"I dunno, maybe. I can't think of anybody else that could."

"I'm gonna do it."

"Okay, Roy. I believe you."

Roy starts on his third glass of brandy.

"You'll help me, won't you, Hughes?"

"Sure. Of course."

Roy downs the third glass, starts on a fourth.

"Did I tell you Gracia and I are trying for a baby?"

There was a young Ishvalan boy, no older than ten or eleven. He held a gun in shaking hands and his finger curled around the trigger. And before he could fire, Roy snapped his fingers.

He knows how to make the flames hot enough to kill quickly, how to melt everything away until there's nothing left but bones and ashes.

He swallows hard. His stomach rebels against the alcohol he's filled it with. He's vomiting onto Hughes' sofa before he realizes what he's doing. "A baby?" he says weakly. "That's great."

Hughes cleans up the mess with a towel and takes both of Roy's hands in his. "Look at me," he says fiercely. It's an order. Roy obeys. "I am not going to let you drink yourself to death. Or anything else yourself to death either, is that understood? Tonight, you're entitled. But tomorrow, it's all new."

"Okay," Roy whispers.

He shot two unarmed civilians, doctors. He told himself that blood was not as bad as fire, as far as ways to die go.

"Roy?"

Not everyone sent to the front casually accepted Executive Order 3066. He watched with everyone else as a young State Alchemist, younger than him, was shot point blank by the General under charge of treason. "Should've been a firing squad, really. But we can't waste the bullets."

It was the first time Roy ever felt like a dog of the military.

"Roy, I'm serious," Hughes says. "You can't be Fuhrer if you're ass-deep in the bottle."

"I know."

There were others who revelled in the slaughter. Roy didn't know if they had started off crazy or snapped on the battlefield, but they laughed as they carried out their orders. One of them could make people explode. "Boom!" he cackled, as he wiped out dozens of men, women, and children with one gesture.

Besides the laughter, Roy's not at all sure there's a difference between himself and the Crimson Alchemist.

"Roy?"

"I know, Hughes. I'm promising you. Tomorrow, I'll be fine."

His best friend nods, uncertain.

Roy looks back toward the window. He holds the empty glass in his hand.

Outside, the rain is coming down in sheets.