A/N: This is a reflective Maes Hughes. Sorry if it's a bit OOC (I prefer to think of it as "seeing a different side" in this case, but I suppose I will let you be the judge of that). Anyway, here it is. I bit of a departure from my normal plotless-oneshots – a plotless oneshot with a different mood.
Life in Pictures
His fingertips traced over the glossy images on the table in front of him. He pushed his glasses up his nose with his other hand and sighed.
Gracia had long since gone to bed and Elysia was snoring softly, curled up in her kitty-cat pajamas on the couch beside him. He could occasionally feel her shift and the top of her head would rub against his leg. He smiled. Gracia had told him to put the small girl to bed hours ago, but after she retreated to their bedroom, Elysia had looked up at him with big eyes and asked if she could look at pictures with daddy a little longer. How could he say no?
It didn't take long before she drifted off and he had laid her down on the cushion beside him. Smiling softly, Hughes quietly grabbed the camera off the table and took a quick picture of the girl, her eyes clenched shut in slumber. He could never have too many pictures. Never too many.
He shuffled the photos in front of him. Random snapshots fell out of the pile. One of them as a family; him holding Elysia and Gracia smiling beside him. He loved that picture. He kept one just like it in his wallet.
One of him and Major Armstrong from long before Ishbal, long before things got complicated. Two silly youths, flexing their vastly differing muscles and smiling for the camera. Armstrong was one of the men that came back from Ishbal...different somehow.
Hughes himself had avoided the battlefield, knowing he didn't have the heart for the conflict or the stomach for the death and blood and screaming women. He shook his head and grimaced. Hell, he couldn't blame Armstrong for never discussing it. He'd heard stories.
He'd heard of the difficulty of differentiating innocent children catching a rare moment of play in the alleys from the children who had explosives tied to their chests. He'd heard of the blood, of the heat, of the lack of appropriate weapons, of that damn sand that worked itself into your hair, into your eyes, and into your flesh. He still saw the veterans itch at their arms nervously sometimes.
He set the photograph down on the pile. This is why he took pictures. He liked to look at the false captures of things that, in reality, could never be captured for long. He glanced at Elysia. How many other times would she fall asleep beside him like this, one arm tossed over a small throw pill, one pigtail drooping looser than the other. How many days before she was too old to spend time with her old man like this? Before she was more embarrassed by him than she was proud of him.
He rested his hand on her head before picking up the next photo.
Roy Mustang. His closest friend. The Colonel had always been humorless, even in their youth, but he hadn't walked with such damned heavy steps before Ishbal. That was one man who had changed entirely. Hughes frowned. It seemed like his friend had died on the battlefield and someone else had come back in his place. Some foreign stranger who looked like his friend but didn't act the same. He didn't know how he talked, speaking only in broken sentences for some time. He didn't know how his friend walked, dragging his feet behind him instead of strutting with an aura of arrogant confidence.
They remained friends, perhaps closer than before, but things were different. This photograph between his fingers was proof. That smirk spreading across the photographed face, his hand on some redhead's shoulder, his hair meticulously tousled before he'd left his house to give the appearance of not caring when, in reality, he cared far too much.
Hughes grinned. At least that hadn't changed.
Roy still smirked, and he had started to speak eloquently again, and could strut again, though some of the cockiness had slipped out of the walk with age and trials. But something inside was different. He had other priorities now, Hughes knew. After seeing what he had in Ishbal, how could his priorities be any different?
Elysia stirred and sat up, the loose pigtail surrendering and falling out completely. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the picture in her dad's hands.
"Who's that?"
Hughes grinned and slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her onto his lap. "A friend. Someone I used to know."
She randomly touched other photos, her fingers leaving small smudges on their glossy surfaces.
"Why do you take so many pictures?"
Hughes frowned. "So I never forget."
"Is it because you're old?"
His smile returned. "Maybe."
"Will you teach me?"
"Of course."
Before he could say anything else, she was holding his camera and had pressed the button, not bothering to look out the viewfinder. He grinned, thinking she probably got a nice shot of his shoulder. When he had it developed, he's have to put Elysia's first picture in a special place, he thought to himself. So he'd never forget this moment.