So, on to the next chapter! Reviewing my chapter plans, there may be a separate chapter for the epilogue, giving this story sixteen instead of fifteen. But happy reading!
Sorry for being dead – I'll probably be dead for another month and a half. My coach decided that I was going to have practice 4:15 to 9 twice a week until Worlds, but hey, I love jump rope! It's all good! But if there are any of you salivating and torturing yourselves over the fact that I never update, (yea right) that's why.
"Miss Tael, are you sure you heard correctly? For Colonel Mustang to go on trial like this has no meaning. What use is it, other than political gain for those who do not deserve it?"
Kamar's mother nodded. "I truly hate to say that it is Roy Mustang, but I speak nothing but the truth. The trial is sometime next month. They have decided that he needs at least thirty days, though I see no point in dragging this out."
Scar dipped his head. "That is not your true intent on coming, is it? You are here about Kamar and Ahava."
Tael sighed. "I will reveal my selfish intents, Akhoya."
"Then do so, and have the blessings of Ishvala upon your soul."
"Do not tell Kamar and Ahava of their family, I beg of you. When they come – they shall come, there is no doubt – do not tell them who killed their father. They have found out about their grandfather, but they do not know our story and why all of their family is dead. They are too young, still." Tael looked up at the leader of Ishval with pleading crimson eyes. "They will misunderstand. When Kamar and Ahava come, tell them you know nothing. Say you did not watch them die as I know you did."
"That would be lying, Tael. Ishvala frowns upon those who lie."
Miles watched the conversation with mild interest, bending down to pick up the king and queen and rolling them around in his palms before replacing them side by side on the chess board.
"Ishvala frowns on those who speak nothing but lies, Akhoya. Surely He sees no harm in protecting two children from a neverending hatred?" Her delicate fingers curled into tight fists, a warning to the stubborn priest.
"I will not lie, Tael. If they do not ask, I will not tell. If they do, I will not lie. You cannot protect themforever."
Her fists only grew tighter as the plea in her voice vanished. "I am not protecting them so much as protecting Roy Mustang. This world is built of lies, Ishvala have mercy on it, and this one is to protect my own children, a guilty man, and you. If they ask and you tell him the truth, they would be two more people to know your former identity, Scar."
The man with two names did not react as she finished her statements, keeping his tanned face unreadable and stone cold. "You figured it out, Tael, though I doubted you of all the souls in Ishval would be dumb to it. Do not worry. Did I ever say I was going to tell him the whole truth?"
Tael's eyes softened. "Then I must thank you, Akhoya. May the path be light again."
"The path will always be light to those who seek its way. May Roy Mustang see its glow as he has seen it before."
The world was dark to him.
Lost in hopeless memories of long forgotten times, Roy sat in the dingy cell with his back hunched against the wall. He was twenty-three again in the deserts of Ishval, and the coarseness of the sand on his skin wasmixed yet again with the slick sweat on his brow. His throat was dry as sandpaper, and the stench of death was heavy in the air. As he lifted his hand, trembling, devouring yet another city in flames, a young blonde sniper picked off the few survivors with a tired but precise pull of the trigger.
"I'm sorry, Hawkeye."
She looked up at him from her post, her voice soft as she replied. "What did you ever do? I don't recall you asking me to join the military or requesting that I be by your side for this massacre."
Roy did not respond for a long second, staring down at the transmutation circle sewn into his gloves with red thread. "I betrayed your trust. You heard my naïve dreams and believed them, and they were as good as lies. I mislead you, and I regret that more than I can say."
"Did you believe your own words, Mr. Mustang?"
He looked at her in shock, not expecting the response she gave him. "What?"
"I believed in them, and I still believe in them. Did you believe in them?"
"Yes," he answered, his voice shaky.
Riza stood up, setting down her rifle on the ruins of the formerly ornate and beautiful main square of the Morek district. It had once been a pride of Ishval, the square that they had ruined forever and tainted with the blood of the innocent. "We will get through this, and those ideals will be used again, to change this country for the better. You and Father talked so much about equivalent exchange, and this is when we have to try to mute our sins with our good deeds. We can't erase them, but we can try."
Roy brushed his fingers over her cheek for nothing more than an instant, too cowardly to try to show how he truly felt. When his voice returned to him, it was smooth enough that he could fake bravado as he so often did. "You're right, Cadet. You're always right."
A terrible scream pierced the heavy air, the scream of a human in grief beyond their wildest imagination. A young Ishvalan woman, clothes torn and legs badly burned, sobbed over the charred remains of one man and another with blood leaking out of his head. A tiny child, seemingly unscathed, held the younger corpse's hand as if he would suddenly wake up again and embrace the little girl that waited so patiently by his side. Roy and Riza did not react, watching the scene with hearts of lead instead of broken ones.
The woman looked up from the remains of her husband and father, her eyes locking with the soldiers. "Why did you kill them? They were as human as anyone else in this hell! Why didn't you kill me? You murdered the rest of my people, why am I so different than them? Why am I not dead?" she screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Is it only because of this child I carry?"
Roy lifted his hand, readying to end her life and bracing himself for the dreaded silence that always followed death. Under the teary stare of the woman, however, he could not bring himself to do it. Riza fell to her knees and hid her face, the impact of the hysterical woman's words sinking in.
"Are you going to do it, Flame Alchemist, or are you going to leave me here to die by some other hand of that damned army of yours?" The woman stood up and attempted unsuccessfully to stop the shaking in her disfigured legs.
"I…I can't."
The look of shock on Riza's face startled Roy. Was it too much for her to believe he wasn't a murderer?
"Are you human, Flame Alchemist? Against all I have heard, is this mercy from a dog of the military?"
She took a step towards him, holding her swollen abdomen protectively. "What more guilt is two more lives after the hundreds you took just two minutes ago? Don't think about the one you will take that hasn't even seen the world, Mustang. Don't think about the children, or the women, or the ones too old and frail to protect themselves. Don't think about them, lost souls innocent of wrong."
He couldn't move.
"Just please, as my dying wish, Flame Alchemist, grant me one reprieve," she said icily, her eyes drilling into his. "Don't kill my daughter."
The effort too much to bear, she collapsed onto the ground. There was a flicker of movement from a ruin in the background – a trick on his tired eyes, most likely.
Riza watched as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and she barely managed to catch him before he hit the ground.
That woman and her daughter were probably long dead by now.
No. Roy corrected himself. The woman, the daughter, and the unborn child were probably long dead now. Three more lives to add to his guilt. Three more in the thousands.
Looking on it now, as he did, hopeless and alone, it was enough to make him think of death. For all those he killed, for all the dead…
He deserved to die. A person was killed if they murdered anywhere but the battlefield. He had not murdered, but massacred. Why had he not been put to death long ago? A war is a war – casualties are inevitable – but a massacre like Ishval was hardly a war at all.
But he was a coward. Too many times after Ishval, he had raised the gun to his temple and prepared to shoot, but he could not blindly pull the trigger and end his life. Nothing but a coward, too scared to end his own life when he had ended so many others.
"Why are you fighting?"
"It's simple. I don't want to die. That's all. The reason is always simple, Roy."
"Even when you were suffering, you didn't run and leave us behind. With those powerful flames, you always cut across the battlefield and into the enemy, and didn't let us underlings die in vain."
"Inside me, the war isn't over yet. No...it will never end as long as I live."
"Mustang."
Roy's head jerked up, the sea of voices in his head fading as a crisp, live voice cut through them like a knife. "Jennings?" he asked in disbelief, reality still an illusion from the dreams that were all too real.
"Yes, it's me, Mustang," answered the gruff voice. "Don't ask me how they managed it, but you've got thirty-five days, and your subordinates managed to get you released until then. Released on your own recognizance. Sign this."
A huge document was forced into Roy's arms by a worn out looking Jennings. "You've got some first-class people there, Mustang. They went right to the Fuhrer and managed to get through."
"Thank you."
"Thanking your jailer? What a gentleman."
Roy managed to crack a tiny smile. "Glad someone thinks so."
"What do you want, Lieutenant?" Fuery asked after exchanging an abrupt greeting with Riza.
"Is he out yet?" he heard, her voice either unsteady or the static from the phone messing enough with his head to hear Riza Hawkeye as unconfident as she had looked for the past two weeks.
"Yes, he's out. We got through to Fuhrer Grumman. The trial is in thirty-five days, giving us time to prepare."
"Good." Fuery could hear the relief in her voice. "Fuery, check the bottom right drawer of my desk."
"Yessir. What should I be looking for?"
"Journals. You've seen them before."
"Yes, of course, Lieutenant Hawkeye." Fuery set down the phone and hurried across the room to Riza's desk, opening the drawer and peering into it hopefully. In it was one battered tome, its brown cover blending in so well with the desk that Fuery almost glazed his eyes right over it. Picking it up and checking the date inside the cover – Riza Hawkeye, March 1908, where he had seen it many times before – Fuery hurried back to the phone.
"There's one here, Lieutenant. March 1908."
Her tiny sigh sounded like a rush of static through the receiver. "That's the only one, Master Sergeant?"
"Yes. It's the only one."
"Thank you. We'll be back soon. Keep an eye out for the Colonel – if you see him, do not let him out of your sight. He's going to get drunk if he can, and we need to keep him alert. The last thing we need is a newspaper twisting the drinking habit. That would be the death of him."
"Will do, Lieutenant."
The line went dead and Fuery replaced the phone to its hook.
He blindly walked down the streets, not caring where he was going or how long it would take to get there. He supposed that his mind meant to carry his feet home for a nice drink and a way to forget about the world for a few hours. Instead of his own apartment, however, he ended up in front of a small house.
Riza's house.
Roy sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. Somewhere in his subconscious, he had realized that drinking until he threw up his stomach was not the right option. Something in his mind had told him that all he needed right now was Riza. Riza would be able to help. She always did, no matter if she shot at him or if she hugged him tightly and didn't let go. It was odd to consider the fact that she was the real reason he was alive. After all those times he held the gun to his temple, she had finally caught him.
"What are you doing, Major Mustang? Guns are dangerous. One should never point them at themselves," she had said, her face void of any emotion.
"I'm a monster, Riza. I deserve death."
She sighed and pried his finger off the trigger. "We are murderers. That much is clear, and it is unavoidable. We are murderers," she murmured, glancing up into his eyes. "But if you do not face your sins, there is no way to atone for them. Suicide is the coward's way out, not the hero's. Think about it, sir. If you die now, by suicide, the history books will say you were nothing but a murderer that couldn't handle his guilt," She paused again, wrapping her calloused fingers around his and squeezing gently. "But if we live, there is a chance that we can at least try to erase our guilt. It is not a guarantee, but it's better than death."
His eyes glancedup towards the pink and orange sky from the setting sun. The brightest stars were just beginning to show, their bright light piercing through the thin, wispy autumn clouds.
"What are you doing here, Colonel? We've been looking for hours."
He hardly dared to turn around. Roy chuckled dryly. "I apologize, Hawkeye. I wandered and ended up here."
She sighed and examined him quickly, her amber eyes darting from his head to his boots. "You're still sober. That's good. Get inside, sir. I need to call the rest of the team and fill you in on the trial."
"Thank you," he said quietly, following her indoors. "You always know what to do with me."
There was a no hint of a smile in her voice as she responded. "Well, Roy, that's my job."
Roy felt the corners of his mouth twitch up into a tiny smile despite the businesslike tone in her voice and the seriousness of the situation. He was going on trial, he was a criminal, and half of Amestris was against him, that was all true. But she had called him Roy. That was rare.
"Sir, get inside."
His small grin erased itself as he snapped back to attention. "Yes, of course, sorry."
She stepped in after him and closed the door before flicking on the light. "Would you like some tea, sir?"
"If you're making it, thank you."
The stiff atmosphere did not escape him, but he sat down anyway and shrugged off his filthy coat. Something was bothering Riza, and Roy had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with him. His eyes passed over her bookshelf absentmindedly, scanning the titles of each volume before passing on to the next. They were all the type of book that he expected Riza to read: something different, an escape from her life, but not so abstract that she couldn't lose herself in the story. The trend was obvious until he paused on one particularly battered spine.
The Complete Collection of Fairy Tales.
He had once given her a book of fairy tales for her birthday, her tenth birthday. She had hugged it tight to her chest on that day, and then he had never seen it again. He had spent five more years in the Hawkeye house after giving her that book, and he had never seen it once. It couldn't be the copy he had given her all those years ago. Riza wasn't the type of person to keep something like that.
Or maybe, he mused as he glanced through the doorway to the kitchen where he could hear her talking on the phone, she was exactly the type of person to do that.
Roy stood up and reached out to slide the book off the shelf. Once it was safely in his hands, he flipped open the front cover and his mouth quirked up into a smile yet again.
To Riza:
You never smile, or you don't do it nearly often enough. I like it better when you smile. I hope these will make you smile, even if I'm not around to see it.
Happy birthday,
Roy
He wondered where she had hidden it all those years. He had looked for it several times, when they had been talking and a vague tale from the book had been brought up. She had never offered help, and he had always failed, leaving them in an awkward state of two unsure, shy people with nothing to talk about. He had only ever been shy with her, his teacher's daughter.
Footsteps echoed louder in his ears until they stopped abruptly. Roy looked up like a guilty child and closed the book immediately. Riza set the two mugs of tea on the side table before making her way over to see which book he had been looking in. "My fairy tales? Why are you looking at that one?" she asked, glancing between him and the book.
"You kept it," he said simply, opening the front cover and pointing to his short birthday note from so long ago. "I never saw it again. I thought you had thrown it away."
She took it out of his hands and put it back onto the shelf. "That's because it was under my pillow," she confessed, a red tint covering her cheeks. "One tale every night lasted me a year, then I started over again."
"But you kept it. Why did you keep it?" he asked quietly.
She glanced up at him, then back at the gift from so long ago. "It was the first present I ever received."
Went on to upload this and discovered that only five of my fourteen documents uploaded onto ff hadn't timed out. There's a great example of life getting in the way of things! XP
So anyway, review please! I really want to hear your opinions on this chapter: really really REALLY want to hear your opinions. So please take three seconds and review!
Sunarose and Songfire15 were my wonderful beta fairies :D This was a lot more rough before they yelled at me, so go give them cookieS!