By Kay
Disclaimer: Don't own FMA. Offered to buy it for half my soul and the more valuable worth of three pennies, but was denied. Greedy bastards.
Author's Notes: Roy-centric angst in Ishvar. Again. (Ishvar is the name I use; it's been called Ishbar, Ishbal, and several other names, but I've finally settled on Ishvar... 'cause I have no idea what's technically right.)
No Warnings-- mostly a pointless drabble.
Roy is just waiting for it to rain.
It's strange that he looks to the sky for it—they haven't seen a drop of water that hasn't been from their own wells or canteens for weeks. It isn't expected to rain. Not anytime soon, anyway. The dry, arid sands that surround him are irrefutable proof that there has been no downpour for much longer than he's been here. Yet there is a sharp lucidity, an unforgettable tension that hangs in the air before a thunderstorm, making everything taste crisp and clear before the chaos. When the soldiers stir, they look nervously towards the heavens as though it will fall upon them any moment.
Roy pretends he isn't watching, but he, too, waits for the rain. He doesn't wet handkerchiefs with lukewarm water from the wells, tying them around his neck to cool the sweat from the long day. The scent of moldy earth and age curls around the other men who do so—they've long grown accustomed to it. He has already sworn never to stoop so low. Instead, he is patient, waiting for the inevitable downfall.
There is nothing here but sand, and that is what he hates the most about this place. There are no buildings, save for what the Ishvarites build—and those are destroyed soon enough. No gentle plants, no cool, refreshing days when the gray clouds are reflected in the pools on the sidewalks at Central. This eastern land is an empty wasteland now that the military has arrived. Nothing but gritty earth, arid winds, and the hot pulse of a baking sun that presses through the shirt on his back. It is a place where a man's boots are always full of pebbles, wearing holes through his socks, and every step lets him sink down into the ground like a deadweight. It doesn't take long before he's learned the important things—never roll your pants up to your knees, else the rattlesnakes get you. Keep your face lowered, out of the sun, because some men suffer blisters on their eyelids if they look up too long.
Never pray for rain. Such begging is never answered.
No one is happy enough to believe it will rain, anyway. Not really. They can delude themselves that perhaps—just maybe—something will happen, and the strange feelings in the air really do mean a miraculous rainfall. Some of them even joke around about it, their voices heavy with ill-disguised hope. But no one truly believes it will ever happen, not really, not deep down inside.
Except maybe Roy.
Or perhaps he's only begging for it to rain because it would be a reprieve. Always before it has been a curse—rain makes him worthless, ineffective, his greatest gift nothing more than a broken toy. Now, however, that is what he waits in quiet longing for… because he's so sick, so utterly ill and clogged with blackness, that even if the rain couldn't wash his sins away, it would put an end to the killing. For one day, even, he could stop snapping his fingers and watching the people scream in agony. One day of rain. One day of peace.
He thinks it would feel wonderful on his face.
There is no end in sight, however; the black clouds in his mind grow stronger and stronger, suffocating every clear thought he's ever had. It's bright blue outside the tent, but as soon as his eyelids flutter shut for the night, the dreams won't leave him. Terrifying dreams, regretful dreams, ugly dreams—faces he's burned, and they in turn have burned into his mind. The mingled voices of people. The crash of hundreds of pounds of masonry in a building still occupying its tenants. The sick, squelching sound of blood stuck to the bottom of his boots.
It's so crusted on to them that he cannot wash it away. They have to save the water, after all. So whatever stains or messes they create, they all have to stay. His once-vibrant uniform is a collage of crimson and faded navy. If he thought he could escape the blood by snapping his fingers, he was wrong. No matter how far away you fight the war, it still comes to you. No matter the distance, the people he's killed always reach for him, whether to kill him or beg of him, or perhaps just in a desperate attempt to hold something, control their destiny—he doesn't know. But he feels their fingerprints on him even now.
The weeks pass. The world becomes uglier.
The days become hotter.
The people don't scream louder, but perhaps that's what makes it so hard to listen to. It's like a continuing crescendo in the delicate shells of his ears. Screams nestled in between the dusty, gritty black slips of hair. Faces carved into the dull, empty black of his eyes. Words burned—scorched, fried, ripped—in the blackest, most ashen parts of his body. Into his soul, if he still has one, the remnants of these charcoal pieces of a dry world and thousands of people who deserve wetter earth to be buried in, he thinks.
But he keeps on snapping. Until he snaps. Sometimes he wonders, wildly and clutching to a bottle of liquor procured quite illegally, if it won't be long now before that happens. The days grow shorter. Hotter. He wants to rip his uniform off sometimes. His gloves. His hands. His eyes out, out of his head. The men are so tanned, so brown, their eyes so rimmed with red from fear and exhaustion, that they look exactly like the enemy. And the days are dryer, without rain, without hope of downpour, without promise of cleansing, just the teetering edge of the storm waiting to come upon them.
Until one day, he finally realizes what he's waiting for.
'Sure could use some rain,' one of the men says.
What he really wants, Roy thinks to the clear sky, is to drown himself.