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sweet fire — HeLfIrE — driving me to sin
Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he'd see flashes of things that he knows should have never existed.
Sometimes, he'd see white hair and red eyes and dark, dark skin. He'd see torn clothing and protruding bones and crushed skulls, melted flesh burning with the acrid scent of rot and decay and ashes upon ashes being sprayed asunder.
He's see corpses riddled with .44 mm bullets and the earth destroyed beneath his feet. He'd find bodies splattered beyond recognition and orphaned children begging for comfort or aid, only to be slain as a result.
There'd be the desperate guerilla fighters, fighting for their country's survival; there'd be the lonesome innocents, unaware and frightened and ripped apart; there'd be the weakened survivors, weeded out by the Hawk's Eye.
And the worst of it, he thinks, is not that he sees it all, but that the ruination of the desert sovereign is by his hands. It may have been better, though, had he not known that these visions were not delusions of the future.
They are memories — nostalgic, ever-present reminders of the past and the part he has played in it.
And he hates himself for it.
Other times, he sees in his peripheral vision that never-ending alchemy he holds so dear.
He sees circles on the wall, drawn in blood and desperation. He sees archaic insignias and personal designs and philosophized art and meaning covering the walls, the floor, the ceiling, overlapping and interspersing and appearing as nothing more than the ramblings of a crazed senile.
But the anxiety and guilt are permeating the air, and the pain and hatred towards the one responsible drip from the thrice-damned circles, onto the hard wooden floor, and he can't help but feel that the final result will be less of revenge and of repentance, and more of self-fulfillment.
And then there is that fool from Ishval, normal and human and understanding and compassionate, and then he forces sanity into the insanity, and the circles soon fade away, overpowered by a return to that loving ambition.
At times, when he's tired beyond reason and everything becomes tedious, no longer reeking of havoc and chaos and fury and blood and pain and death and guiltguiltguilt, he has to wonder why he even bothers trying.
His reason for going seems insignificant, no longer a reminder against the onslaught of paperwork and loneliness and silence. There is no one left to rein him in and push him on — no one but his best friend, his sole companion, who now spends his days caring for his wife and decoding intel on the military's newest interests.
Far too busy for a past acquaintance, he assumes, ignoring the nagging voice of reason that proves that this is not true. Hughes has tried, continuously, ritually, to get him to open up, but by now it is mere courtesy to Roy than friendship and caring.
And then the Hawk's Eye returned, recruited beneath him as his second-in-command and still as innocent as the little girl he used to know.
He can't help but remember her father and his Ishvallan wife and the disease of alchemy that ran through that pretty, little family, straight through the core and out into the world.
That burning fire, sinuous and volatile and furious, raging through the man's veins and poured into the soul of his daughter and forced into the blood of his apprentice, seemed far more like a curse rather than a blessing, and he can't help but mourn the loss of those wide, crimson eyes, doe-like and beautiful and carefree.
Those eyes are hardened now, glaringly Ishvallan, but the blonde mop is still Amestrian, still free of blood, and he thinks he can hope.
He is proven right when, during her briefing, she responds to his doubts with determination, proclaiming that she will shoot him herself should he fall astray, and kill as much as necessary, taint herself further, so that his ambition will be realized.
Perhaps reaching the top isn't an impossible dream.
As the rain pitter-patters around him, he smiles in grudging agreement.
Maybe the true turning point occurred when he had first met the Elric brothers, those young Xerxian alchemists with astounding ability and sinful making and gold-encrusted hearts.
They wanted their mother, and so committed the taboo against all reason. But they were young, and that was to be expected.
He still recalls the human transmutation, decayed and rotten and nothuman, with an impossibly-complex array beneath it all and so much blood he felt he would puke.
His own Hawk's Eye had not fared much better.
The boy without his limbs and the soul trapped in armor had both given up, fragile and broken and unable to care. And yet, the startling repetition of history could not be allowed to change.
So he gave them hope, hinted at archives with well-kept secrets and life beyond the confines of their childhood and their loss. He told them that they could restore themselves, be who they once were, repent for their sins.
But he has yet to rid himself of those binding chains of guilt and misery, and he wonders if he is worth their chance.
He shouldn't be surprised that they take it.
Still smiling, he tilts his head up, staring at the gray, gray clouds and the old, old rain.
There is something nostalgic in the weather, something dark and quiet and contemplative and remorseful. Yet, he has no regrets any longer.
After the brothers entered the life of his squad, alchemy once more reared its ugly head. The truth behind the Ishval Massacre and those Philosopher's Stones and Human Transmutation was too much.
Eventually, the situation devolved to nothing more than anarchy, with the usurpation of the Homunculus King Bradley, the death of Von Hoenheim, and the reinstatement of a new Fuhrer.
He knows that, in another life, he would kill Bradley because it was the right thing to do, and that he would lose his eye and his mind, deported far, far away from Central for his conduct, yet invaluable due to his alchemy, awaiting the news of the older Elric's fate. He would never meet Envy, nor would he learn of Von Hoenheim's demise. He would never become Fuhrer.
Perhaps the best thing, he thinks, is that no one he had cared about had died. He knows that this isn't true, because Hughes is deaddeaddead, seemingly murdered by the hands of his own wife.
In reality it was the Homunculus Envy, whom he is unable to destroy in revenge because the older Elric knows, damnit, and Hughes would never want this to be the way he goes. In another reality, he will never know, and will only kill for peace, angered at the outright murder of Selim Bradley, Homunculus here and beloved son there.
The Elric brothers, goddammit, with their innocent smiles and determined focus and their single-minded purpose, aching and broken and nearly gonegonegone, came back from the dead, alive and well.
He knows that, in another life, he had only found the younger brother, and had lost both of them to the World Across The Gate when the older one had returned.
Falman survived with the soul-bound armor that was the serial killer Barry the Chopper for months, freeing Sergeant Ross after the Colonel had faked her murder — much to Sergeant Brosch's relief. In another world, he would do little but be deployed, once more, to Briggs, back to where that ferocious bear, the charming and vindictive Ice Queen of the North, the Olivier Mira Armstrong, resided.
Here, she had known and killed and manipulated and won. In another world, she would not exist, stripped of her harsh reality by the Homunculi she had not known of. Ross and Brosch would not survive as they had here, for the attack by the Germans on Central City would have crushed them alongside thousands of new recruits.
Feury had taken to communications and had lived alongside the Hawk's Eye as she had sniped, both aiding the military and proving his worth. He had been the voice of reason, of course.
In another world, he had been deployed to the front lines of another useless war, and had never returned. Whether this was because he had been stationed there or he had died, Mustang no longer knew.
Havoc had been burned by Lust, and paralyzed from the waist down. However, the surgery was a success, and Havoc had managed to bring in extra arms to aid the anarchists against the Homunculi and their zombie-like army.
In another life, he had survived long enough to die by cigarette, as he had wished. Mustang thinks that the stress had finally caught up with him, and the shot to his legs the night of Bradley's death was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. He thinks that the surgery failed, and that this was but the bullet that tore through the man's will.
Hawkeye had been so close to death, with bloodbloodblood staining the ground and forcing his hand. He had had to commit the ultimate taboo, forcibly commit human transmutation to save her life, despite her wishes to live on, to not activate the circle beneath her.
And then that girl had saved her, the Xingese girl with her Alkahestry and healing, whom had given up her hopes and dreams to save the life of his First Lieutenant.
In another world, she would not have existed, and Hawkeye would have lived long enough to force her once-superior to open up his eyes before she, too, would have fallen.
And he? He had been made blind, unable to view the world in color and forced to look to memories for what it meant to see.
In another world, he would become a decrepit old man, lost in memories as he is now, unfit to lead and never to be Fuhrer, despite his victory.
He can't help but laugh at the irony of it all.
"Hey, what're you doing up here, Colonel Bastard?"
Sometimes, he can't help but wonder why he has missed that insult so much. It is affection veiled in anger, a rebellious teenager worried about his father's silence. But where…?
"Ignore Brother, Colonel. He's just being rude. But … is there something wrong?"
He misses the metallic clang of that young kid, too, the brother of "the pipsqueak," as he so fondly recalls. So perceptive he was, but now he's gone.
"Sir, it's time."
And her voice, too, so familiar and yet so missing, empty, forgotten. He wonders where she is now, and if she is happy. He misses her, so, so much.
By now the rain is pouring harder, faster, stronger than ever, and it takes all his strength to keep the waves from shifting him and prevent the wind from pushing him.
There's blood all around him, he notes, and it is so cold and freezing and deaddeaddead, yet he can't even call forth a spark of warmth. He is blind in one eye, and his side has been cauterized to prevent too much blood loss.
Despite this, his hands are still shaking and he can't see straight with his remaining vision. His fingers are drenched in redredred and he is soaked in rain. His heart aches.
If he looks closely, he can see white bone in his peripheral vision. There are mutilated corpses littering the dampened earth and an angry fire refusing to be quenched by the water.
It is like Ishval all over again.
When they find him, he is drenched and bloody and surrounded by the corpses of his comrades, mumbling to himself of Falman's return to Central and Feury's missing status, of Havoc's death by shock and Hawkeye's supposed suicide or death in war.
He becomes ever more frantic when he reaches the Elric brothers, whom he cherishes as his sons and claims to have seen them leave him for the Other Side of the Gate.
But all of them lie at his feet, seemingly murdered by the unstable alchemist who could never let go of the past, and had had to repent for his sins by giving back what he had stolen.
"An eye for an eye" was the overpowering philosophy, they said, as they brought him out of his prison and prepared the firing squad.
Here, it had warped to beloved life for beloved life.
In another world, he allowed himself to listen to those voices, to follow them to the ends of the earth.
He had never known when he had reached the edge, nor when he had fallen off of the rooftop of the Amestrian Military's Headquarters.
His repentance had become, after all, his death.
In a separate reality, he had listened and turned to face his family, his comrades and sons and wife.
In the end, he had become Fuhrer, and had changed everything so that Ishval would never become another reality.
In the end, he had achieved his ambitions and succeeded, repented and lived, and had seen all life had had to offer before he quietly went to sleep and died of old age.