Chapter Two

Tonight, it rained. Torrents attacked me as I sloshed through the mud, shoulders hunched against the violent gale. We had been burning the dead tonight. Us and them: piled together in a grisly union of discarded flesh. Bloody rivets snaked and swirled through the puddles.

The tents were miserable. No longer for the living, but the half-dead. I wondered where my soul was, and what it had been doing when I raised my hand to the sky and snapped my fingers. I had snapped my fingers, and they had died. They had all died.

The smell was repulsive, and the great fire flickered lower, lower, and then expired. The half-burned pyre's fumes clung wickedly to my nose, bringing back the few seconds that I could remember over and over again. Red eyes melted down the wax face of a screaming child. The pregnant woman with blood crawling down her chin: I saw her, almost before me. Her cheeks were paled in death. I didn't know why I was here anymore, and I didn't know what they had done so wrong. I felt disgusting. My gloves felt tainted, the pattern I had so carefully knit upon them a spiral of death.

The stone pulsed on my ring. To throw it into the dirt, smash it beneath my feet, would feel like the ultimate defiance. I wanted to stand up on top of the scattered and looted medical kits, rip it off, and scream. I didn't know what I wanted to scream, but I knew I wanted to scream something. Maybe a wordless scream, that meant something just for me.

They told me I was meant to be here. Told me I should be proud.

The desire grew stronger. I suppressed it, and stomped my feet harder into the muddy mess. Rainwater caught my hair and tangled it. I was soaked, and the military raincoat no longer assisted me.

Someone clapped a hand onto my shoulder and I started, automatic reflexes wiring for survival. Havoc grinned at me, but it was a strange, twisted smile. "They got some food in," he said. "Go over there, and get some."

For a moment my throat didn't work. The military had drilled into me that I was right, doing what I did. But I didn't feel right. Did Havoc feel right? His face looked gaunt, but his eyes twinkled. They weren't as bright as before.

"Right," I said.

"Good." Before clomping off, he slipped three cigarettes into my palm.

I didn't normally smoke, but I was going to tonight.

The gun felt worn and familiar in my fingers, its cool surface bringing me a minimal, strange comfort. I cocked it. They stared at me. I looked at his shoes, her hips. I did not want to look at their eyes. They were proud and tall, standing there. So sure of themselves. They knew they were right.

Terror froze the blood in my veins. Every nerve shuddered, every muscle went tight. Somehow, this was worse. This was much worse than the pregnant woman.

I was wrong. I knew I was wrong.

"Just shoot, soldier." He said gently. And his lips turned upwards.

Just shoot.

Just shoot.

I just shot.

But I couldn't just shoot that next week, when I should have. I deserved it. I deserved it.

I had been wrong.

I quivered. The stain on the floor haunted my senses. I could almost see them standing there. They were so proud.

Mr. Rockbell. Who were you, Mr. Rockbell? What did you want to do with the life I stole from you? Did you want to see the girl in the picture?

The girl in the picture was just one more life. I've ruined so many.

But she was a face. A face among the red-eyed masses.

I was soiled and wrong. I just did it. I always just did it. I should have thought more. I should have done everything right. I make so many stupid mistakes. I was stupid. I was stupid.

The gun felt even more familiar than before. I shoved it harshly under my chin; the cool metal bit my flesh painfully. Panic exploded in my brain. Shivery hysteria crawled like a thousand ants inside my chest.

It's time to die. Mr. Rockbell, it's time for me to die.

"Just shoot, soldier."

The only time I couldn't just shoot. I was a coward. Not a lieutenant.

I'm not Roy Mustang, the war hero.

Don't let them say I was a hero.

I'm no hero. I'm nothing. A man in a military uniform, drenched in oozing blood and a foot deep in the ashes of the fallen.

On the twenty-first of August, Maes sent me a letter. It shuddered in my fingers as I clutched it, weak paper fluttering in the wind. I ripped it open hastily, losing one of the two photographs enclosed to the mess of mud below. The picture that survived was Maes and his new girlfriend, smiling merrily from the steps of Central.

The world they lived in was alien to me now. Strange and surreal. It was from some other world: a picture from a geography book. Surely people didn't live like that, so happy and carefree. I couldn't remember this world, this world where nobody died. This was a world where everybody was youthful and happy and lighthearted. I stared at the girl, noting her friendly gaze and beautiful, rosy cheeks. Clean. Pretty. Not scarred, dirty, and disgusting. Not standing in mud, drenched in rain water and sweat.

He looked so happy. They both did. My chest heaved, overpowering desire filling chest with a terrible ache. I wanted to cry. His lips had met mine. I remembered his touch. I remembered.

On the back, he had written "When you get home, get yourself a girl like this one!" Did he remember too, or was my brain shuddering into disjointed madness?

The letter detailed his date with the girl, annoying people at Central, and the problems of not enough free coffee. I wanted to be with him, complaining about that coffee. That obnoxious coffee shortage. How troublesome.

I stuck the picture in my chest pocket, carefully. It was an artifact from some ancient time period, and I needed to preserve it, forever.

I shared a tent with Kimberly, and after awhile his frenzied giggling and eerie remarks did not bother me anymore. They became part of the routine, the disgusting food, the pale, bloody bodies of my friends, the ruined villages.

I ignored him that night, until he took the letter from me. It was impossible to ignore him as he read it to me in a keening, fake voice. "Dear Roy," He cackled, "I'm sure you're having a great time out there, fighting the enemy."

"Give it back," I whispered.

"Dear Roy," he repeated, a fake croon in his voice. "Roy…baby…"

"Shut up," I snapped, attempting to snatch the paper from his hand. Embarrassment flooded my chest.

Kimberly stood up on his bed, giggling. "I miss you, Roy! Oh…lover…"

"He's not my lover!" I growled, the words coming out halfheartedly and painfully. For a brief moment my thoughts lingered on the gun in my belt.

"Then you won't mind if I do this!"

The letter exploded in mid-air.

The blonde girl's face haunted me, the one from the Rockbell's picture. I wandered the crumbling Ishbalian village. Scarred children, their stomachs enlarged and painful, peaked from behind buildings with half walls and no ceilings.

I took one of their boys into my arms that night. I paid him. I paid him for his house, his family and now his body. He cried half the time, brave face struggling to hold up a pointless facade. I shut my eyes and in sinful pleasure moaned Maes' name into his ear, knowing Maes' body did not feel like this, knowing it did not quiver, thin and wasted, in my arms. Knowing Maes would take control. Knowing Maes would wrap me in his strong arms and hold me. I wanted him to hold me. Not tremble and whimper.

I came back to the camp, disgust and guilt invading my soul. Havoc asked me where I had been. I didn't answer. He let me go.

Two months later, I came home. Home wasn't home anymore, though. Home was a memory. A pointless dream. I wondered how I had ever fit in.