She was more shaken than she had let on. Sure, it was the boy in the chair—Edward, the one the Lieutenant Colonel said had fire in his eyes. But with a little distance from Resembool, the horror of their transmutation, of his missing limbs, had faded. Lieutenant Hawkeye had seen men and children maimed in a way not much different. Mostly, it was the younger boy. Alphonse, she remembered. He had stood with his armored hand on Mustang's arm—we're sorry, we didn't mean it—
His voice echoed over again in her head.
Hawkeye could smell the dust and the gunpowder, could feel the soreness in her knees as she knelt hours at a window, the barrel of her rifle set against the sill. Lots of soldiers had this, she thought vaguely, the visceral feeling of being back in the field. She knew that Mustang had experienced it too, though he didn't talk about it. Hawkeye pulled the trigger of her rifle; it kicked back against her shoulder; the sound, the bang, only a thud through the cotton in her ears. Three hundred meters away, and still she could smell the metallic tang of the blood. She bit her lip until it, too, bled. She cocked the gun again. Two hundred and fifty meters. She didn't mean it. Oh God, she didn't mean it.
The boy was hollow inside.
Hawkeye thought of this as she returned quietly to the seat of the cab. He had no heart, no lungs, no pain. No sleep. No way to escape the mental anguish.
And the girl. How much of herself, of Riza, Hawkeye saw in that girl. There's someone I need to protect, she had told her. How could that be enough for the girl to understand why people kill, or why the officers had come, offering to take her friends away?
Mustang.
"Lieutenant." He was there, sitting across the seat from her. His uniform was wrinkled, hands raw from wringing them together. He was tired. It was there again his eyes, as it was so often since the last day at her father's house. The reluctance to really look at her, even when their eyes met.
"Yes, sir."
"Something wrong?"
She hesitated just a moment. "Nothing, sir."
He cast his eyes downward, nodding, somehow understanding, still. "There's no shame in telling me your trouble, Hawkeye. We used to tell each other things, didn't we?"
"I think you're hardly one to talk, sir."
He glanced up, not quite playfully, and chuckled solemnly through his nose. "Fair enough."
A few minutes passed in silence. They'd been back just over a year now. Some days were better than others. Some things were getting easier, like watching through to the end of a film or going out for a walk by herself. Things had changed between them, but not for worse. Her duty to him was now spelled out in a military assignment. She watched his back to keep him safe from assailants, and from himself. He kept her close to him, and she kept him close to himself.
"That was kind of you," she said.
Mustang glanced up. "Hm?"
"What you offered those boys. Instead of condemnation—hope."
Hawkeye knew more about alchemy than most people did. She was her father's confidante and sounding board. She knew the laws and the theories, and even the formula for flame alchemy, even though she lacked the skill to use it. She knew what was said against those who perform human transmutation.
"They're only kids. I have to believe this country can be repaired, so," he shrugged, "I guess that means I believe they can too."
Hawkeye felt a surge of pride for her superior. Her friend. Like her father, an alchemist.
We didn't mean it.
She heard the boy's voice again, reverberating through his empty metal body, and felt her mind tug her consciousness back towards Ishval. She wondered if the flashbacks would ever disappear, or even slow in their frequency. They were worse towards the beginning, more frightening. She was learning to let them pass without making too much of a fuss, but they still made her sick.
Mustang put a hand on her shoulder. "Lieutenant."
She blinked a few times, suddenly disoriented. "Sir?"
"Nothing, is it?" He looked at her expectantly, smiling a little.
"I apologize. It's been a difficult day for . . ." For what?
"Don't apologize, Hawkeye. I only want to make sure you're alright."
She lifted her hand to his, still on her shoulder, and gave it a little squeeze before lifting it off. "I'm alright."
"You'd tell me if you weren't?"
Hawkeye chuckled inwardly. Sometimes he was still precisely the Roy that she knew in her youth. That was comforting. "Yes, of course."
He leaned back into his seat, sufficiently satisfied. It was easy to forget how he was as a child, rambunctious and shy and far too smart for his age, but there he was, arms folded sloppily and the same crease in his brow that he had when puzzling out a new equation at her father's behest. How perfectly absurd.
