Dismantle the Sun

by That-Hoopy-Frood

A reconstruction, a resurrection, a mystery, a moment, a memory... the Promised Day is long over, but there is still a lot of work to do. As General Roy Mustang and his team fight dissidents and dissenters in an effort to restore Ishval, Edward Elric is summoned back to Central City to pay down one last account, to put one last demon to rest. Before it destroys them all.

25. Interlude VII

Interlude VII

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"Truth be told, I'm scared. Really, really scared.

"I'm scared of what's gonna come next. I'm scared of dying. I'm scared I'm running out of things to say in this Will. There's a part of me who believes that if I keep talking, I can somehow prolong it. That I can live my life a little longer. A persistence of my memory through the duration of this recording.

"I've always wondered whether people's memories are the fuel their bodies burn to stay alive, a sort of caloric intake by means of nostalgia. Did you know... the Xerxian word for "return" is nostos, while algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. How poetic.

Maybe talking to you like this is my way of prolonging the inevitable. To keep my fire burning a little longer. And I'm beginning to realise, by doing this recitation of regret, that it doesn't really matter whether any of those memories have any actual importance or not. It doesn't matter so far as the endurance of my life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Breaking stories in the newspaper, philosophy books, playing cards, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of thousand-cenz notes... death doesn't distinguish between them, and in a way, neither does life. When you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just kindling. Just firelighter. And that fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Socrates,' or 'Oh, this is a winning hand,' or 'This is a shit-ton of money,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire of life, memories are nothing but scraps of paper.

"But I'm running out of things to say. I'm scared that, once this recording ends, I'll be gone for good. Done and dusted. Really, truly... dead.

"The fear of death has never left me... never left anyone, I suppose. But no matter how many dead soldiers I see, no matter how many funerals I attend or bereaved families I write condolence letters to on the Boss's behalf, I can't seem to get used to the thought. I could record a hundred Last Will and Testaments and my own goddamn mortality would still scare the shit out of me. It gets to the point where I shake myself awake weeping with terror.

"Because I don't...

"I don't want to die."