Interlude VI
"I regret not killing certain people.
"Sometimes, when I'm laying awake at night, I wonder if thoughts like that make me a bad person. You'd think, being a soldier, and knowing my what I know about Ishval, it would be the other way around. But as awful as war is, it's my duty as a soldier to shoot the enemy. I don't regret putting those Homunculi bastards and every snivelling coward who helped them into the ground. But the things a man regrets the most in life are those which he didn't do when he had the opportunity. And that includes, in my case, killing people. Exacting revenge.
"Revenge is a bad thing. It's destructive, it's exhausting, but for guys like me, it's also a way of life. War is all about diametrics and binaries. Us against them. Black versus white. Kill or be killed. And within the paradigm of opposites rests some tacit law of reciprocity, like we're constantly grappling with the need to get one up on the other guy. Revenge to a soldier is as natural, as instinctual, as breathing. When you're crawling through the mud, watching your buddies get blown to hell, helpless as you navigate the mire of death and destruction, you can't help but feel cheated in some way. We imagine how nice it would be to do something about it. I mean, ultimately it's not the kindest of sentiments, but I'd be terribly naive if I didn't admit that, despite our best intentions, a little mote of vengeance didn't burn bright in all of us.
"And I wish I could have been there to see that bitch Lust burn. I wish I had been able to deal the final blow to Führer Bradley myself. I wish I could have killed Solf J. Kimblee.
"I mean, my first knee-jerk reaction would be offing him simply because he was evil and manipulative, and he didn't give a shit about anyone. Not so unusual a trait in a guy like that, sure, but it's indescribably dangerous for an unhinged alchemist.
"But his malevolence wasn't the reason I wanted to kill him. I think I hated that man so much because he was so familiar to me.
"The worst flaw I have, I think, is self-deception. If I'm feeling good, I do good things, but if I'm feeling crap in any way, I tend to do bad things. And sometimes, I'm tempted to fool myself into believing my good deeds mean I'm a good person, an isomorphic relationship, but my bad deeds aren't necessarily evil, but tangentially justified in some way, only I'll try to reconcile my reasons after the fact. But, when I heard of the Crimson Alchemist in passing, and then when I finally fought him face to face, I came to understand that our similarities are one truth I can't escape.
"Both Kimblee and I are men who see the world, despite our own self-made deceits, in its simplest forms: ideas and formulas, voids and space. To us, everything is aligned on a grid like a shõgi board, our own prejudices and agendas hidden somewhere in the blacks and whites of the world. There is a certain aesthetic appeal to the simplicity of it all, reducing the layered complications of our lives down to a patchwork of decentralised guerrilla operations, where the important thing isn't winning, but rather making sure you don't lose.
"And in some way, even our aligned opposition worked to a certain degree. You gotta have an evil strategist to counteract the so-called good strategist, right? We complimented each other, balanced each other out. But I think, just as revenge and killing might seem simple on the outside, but terribly complicated underneath, so too was our situation far more complex than a binary opposition. Because it's simple, and it's deceptively easy, to produce events and people in pairs and lean them against each other, and if you're playing shõgi, then such a thing can even be helpful.
"But that's not how life works.
"If life was like shõgi, then the people who are dark reflections of each other ought to remain equals in their equilibrium, neither one upping the other. But my life isn't like shõgi, as much as I try to convince myself otherwise. And for that reason, I regret not killing Solf J. Kimblee when I had the chance."