Roy silently went through every single piece of paper that Hawkeye had left on his desk until he came to a binder with several pages stuffed inside. The name on the outside of the binder was "Maes Hughes."
Roy inhaled sharply.
In his new position as Brigadier General, they had given him more men to command (and a few women, including Hawkeye and Maria Ross, now working from Xing) and a couple of newly minted state alchemists. It was 1917, a full two years after the Promised Day, and while they had technically won and beaten the homunculi, Roy just hadn't gotten over the sudden death of his best friend.
One of the newly minted state alchemists knocked and entered Roy's office. His name was Devon and while he was a good alchemist, his skills were nowhere near what Fullmetal's were. Devon wasn't a child prodigy. Roy wondered if Fullmetal had reached Creta yet.
"Excuse me, sir, but I have..well, sort of a personal question." Devon seemed uneasy.
"What is it?"
"How do you deal with death? I mean, regularly." Devon looked at the ground, then up at Roy's questioning face. "I'm not a soldier, or at least I've never been one."
"To answer the question, just understand that you may not like it. You never get over some deaths." Roy replied.
Roy knew everyone meant well when they'd consoled him after Hughes's body was found. But he knew better: he would not get over it, and he was right. All it took was a certain look from someone, or (even worse) hearing Gracia's or Elycia's voices to bring him back to that horrible day.
"Do you believe in god?" Devon asked.
"I don't know." Roy half-smiled. "I've had people ask me why I don't accept God into my heart, as if that would help."
Roy had never been much of a religious man. In Ishval, he'd seen what religion could do to people, turning them from reason and logic and letting them die for their faith in someone that may or may not even exist. Roy had often wondered if prayer would work, if he could just have a brief talk with God about Hughes.
"Maybe prayer works." Devon offered.
"Maybe," Roy allowed. "But I'm sure of what I would say and it wouldn't be nice. I'd ask god or whomever runs things why a good man like Hughes had to die. Why his daughter cannot ever see or hug her father again." Roy shifted in his seat. Given the opportunity, he'd like to punch god in the face much the same way Fullmetal had punched the living daylights out of Father. Denial and superstition were akin to putting a small bandage on a bloody gunshot wound, in Roy's opinion.
"You can't argue with god, you'd get sent to hell." Devon objected. He was wondering what kind of superior officer they had saddled him with.
"Hell? Have you seen me work?" Roy asked, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. As if being sent to a place where fire was everywhere would even be a threat to Roy.
Eventually, the ache in Roy's heart where Hughes used to be was replaced with scar tissue. Roy developed a kind of infatuation with death in the days when he and Hughes were in Ishval and it lasted much longer than he would've liked. Roy felt that the closer he came to death, whether heat from the flames ignited by his alchemy or the ground rumbling underneath him every time he got too close to Kimblee's section, somehow he felt closer to Maes.
"So, um, back to my original question, General," Devon began.
"It's hard to say." Roy had comforted enough women and children post-Promised Day to spew prose. "If you fear dying, there's only one thing you can do, and that's face your fear head-on."
Devon sat back in his chair.
"Run towards it with everything you've got, and you'll come out stronger in the end."
"Run towards it?"
"Yes. Keep moving forward." Roy seemed to remember hearing someone say that, but he didn't remember who—Havoc, maybe? "You won't be afraid of death. You may end up being more excited to live."