The usual disclaimers:

- FullMetal Alchemist is not mine. Roy Mustang is not mine, but I like to borrow him a lot. Arakawa-sensei is my hero. Squeenix already has a lot of my money.

- This little one-shot thing contains a spoiler for episode 25 and chapters 15/16. If you haven't seen/read it, don't read this because I'd hate to be responsible for having spoiled you, even though I never mention a certain someone by name.

- This started out as a songfic, then decided not to be one, then I put the lyrics in and when I re-read it, it sounded like Mustang narrating some kind of film noir, so they're gone again. Suffice it to say, this started out based on Smoke by Ben Folds. Sort of. Anyway, this is just a short little introspection piece on how Roy moved on, and as a way to explain to myself his behaviour in later episodes. I'm like that, okay?

- And thanks for reading this. You make me happy.

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Last time I stood here, I couldn't say a word. It was probably appropriate, but the wheels turning in my head betrayed me. I've taken the time to think since then. It's amazing how what we've gone through since then has changed me. It's amazing how the past few days have changed me, or maybe just solidified the way I've changed. It was different then, when I didn't know I had someone behind me. I'd thought, now that your support was gone, I'd just fall backwards and end up where I was before. It felt like it too, as I stood here silently letting my mind betray me, flying back to all the theories I'd lost sleep over after the war. But in the end it wasn't that I couldn't bring myself to do it this time. I don't think it's because I was, or am, a coward. I like to think there's a different reason.

It felt unnatural for me to be back in Central without you. I found myself back at home, in my stack of books and papers. It's been my old comfort for what seems like forever, now. You'd always know to find me there, whenever something was bothering me. Somehow you always knew. I think it might have bothered me at one point, but after a while I came to expect you to be there. Maybe, after the war, you didn't trust me not to try anything stupid, and felt like it was your duty to make sure I didn't. I know, until I ended up back in my study again, that maybe some part of me thought I couldn't be trusted either, and that was the reason I went back to it. Testing myself. But as I stood there on the stained floor, looking back over my research papers and the stacks of books, I realized that wasn't it. The papers, the books, they didn't represent what I ran to in my desperation anymore. The words and pages didn't mean what they used to. As I stood there thinking about what I could do, I realized that it wasn't – couldn't be – what you would have wanted. You'd always turned me away from it. Actually, always is a strange word for it. It was only that once.

But after that for some reason the thought never seriously crossed my mind for more than a fleeting moment. At least not until I stood there, at the foot of your grave. Yours. How is a friend supposed to deal with that? I don't know why it came to mind, but it just resurfaced and sat there, until I found myself in my study. It was the last echo of that past we shared together. I'm an alchemist, but there is nothing I can do now but move on. Your memory will live best inside of me, where it belongs. Not thrown away with myself as a mad sacrifice to selfishly bring you back to me.

Instead, I'm going to do the only thing I can really do. You left me a lot of work, but I don't mind. I'm going on. Not moving on, because you're still coming with me. Everything you've done, everything you were – it's coming with me. I've spent all this time taking all the evil of the military, of the world, into myself, thinking it would help me rise up and fix things. It's about time I took some of the good with me as well. There's so much I've learned from you, I'm not going to let it go to waste. I'll never be able to show that hyperactive smile of yours, or wave pictures of my daughter in everyone's faces, but your ethic, your persistence, your resistance to ever dwelling on the past – that I can take. Or at least borrow. I know you won't mind, if I promise to put it to good use. I'll finish what we started together. Differently. Better. And I never really thanked you for stopping me from going down the wrong path. Thank you. Even now you're steering me in the right direction.

In case you were wondering, yes. I think I can finally put the past behind me now. Ironic, isn't it? Those books, I see now that they no longer represented my desperate self-sacrifice. They represented your support instead. And I guess I still don't entirely trust myself not to go astray, but I can keep going now. You're not here, and to keep them from ever going back to what they were – a way out, in a blaze of glory that was nothing more than the flash and short burn of a match. I took them outside, piled them in the back yard. And I burned them. Not with alchemy – that would be cheating. I lit a match and threw it on the pile. I watched as all those old ideas I'd had about undoing the past burned away. You can't undo what's already happened, but you can try to keep it from happening again. The past can't be fixed, but the future can. That's what you taught me.

I won't write it again, either. I can't replace what the world has lost by your passing. I can only try harder for you. I hope you could see the smoke from where you are now – at the very top. Hopefully someday I'll find you there, too. This smoke rises. I'm following it.

I'll be staying here in Central. Closer to you in all ways but one. It's raining again, but I won't let it keep me down. Smoke rises, and I'm going to the top with it.