A/N: Contains major spoilers for chapter 100. Yes, this is my obligatory 100-ficlet. Yes, I am still not over the end of that chapter, and am trying to work through my grief/suspense/anxiety like many other authors. *&%$#%$*^%$#^$^% is it November yet?
Disclaimer: If I owned Fullmetal, Doctor Creepy McGoldtooth and his little Wannabe-Bradley-Bradley-Empty-Heads would have been flamed by Roy before they even had a chance to look at Hawkeye funny.
095. Now
The symmetry was gut wrenching and in the few impossibly long seconds as the sword flashed behind her head, all but forgotten now that its work was done, and her pupils shrank to terrified points of darkness in the center of her mahogany eyes, he felt almost as if he was back in her father's study. She pitched forward, her eyes already becoming as empty as her father's had been, blond hair streaming out behind her. And he was too far, too far away to catch her and there was no old wooden desk strewn with papers to save her from hitting the floor as the blood poured out – no, not from her mouth but from her throat.
He screamed for her, as then – though her name was different now, a careful title much too careful for the scene before him, but he screamed it anyway, in blind denial breathless with almost-hope too fragile not to be destroyed by the name he had yelled then.
But now there was no answer to his call, none but the steadily pooling blood on the floor around her. There was no frightened young girl pressed against the door, horror on her round, innocent face. Now there was only silence and the ghost of memory pale against her figure crumpled on the floor like a discarded instrument never used for its true purpose. Now his mind hurtled out of the past and into the inconceivably horrific present. Strong arms held him still even as he raged mindless as an animal, furious to cross the distance between them and do something, anything to change the impossible, unacceptable, undeniable present, this manifestation of phantoms of the past come to destroy everything he loved now.
