His hands are heavy and hot at his sides, fingers twitching with every pulse in his temples, scrabbling over dirty pants, probing desperately for something to hold onto. There's nothing, not a fucking thing, and those hands clasp each other so tightly its painful, nail against nail, white-knuckle to white-knuckle, a red-eyed child clutching a worn toy and standing in a dusty doorway and whimpering and grabbing and dropping and running and falling and smoldering and . . .
Roy listens to the wind blow, all smoke and sand, an out-of-tune calliope playing in a deserted carnival ground where the only attractions are black-charred bodies curled in pugilist position (all his doings and kindling to an ever-growing fire of brown skin and dark hair). It robs him of tears and saliva, blows everything human about him to the horizon, leaves him with a dry mouth that tastes acrid and of blood and sweat and gunpowder and ashes, and arid black worry-stone eyes.
He shifts, restlessly. His team-colors-blue-and-gold uniform tears and wrinkles; his gloves, dry and unfeeling as his eyes, chip, potential fire falling to the ground and losing itself amidst the grains of sand and human-ash. Roy's hair falls in his face as he tilts his head back, and it's greasy, sweat-soaked, spattered with blood that may or may not be his own.
The sun is sinking in the bruised sky, and he could've made it with a snap of his blistered fingers, it's that orange, burning bright like a phoenix immolating itself in funeral pyre. He stares at it until the tears return to his eyes and the half-circle image is super-imposed on the back of his eyelids, stays there so long that he's scared it's blinded his mind's eye, it's all he can think about, and he doesn't care if he never sees again, he just wants to think.
And not only think, forget, forget the red-eyed child clutching the worn toy and standing in a dusty doorway and whimpering and grabbing and dropping and running and falling and smoldering, smoking and curling in on itself like a boxer after one-too-many punches. Forget the wrinkled woman who could hardly move, lying in the street and covered with running sores, who he looked at with nothing but sympathy before snapping his fingers and leaving her burning, she didn't even scream, just knew what was coming and didn't care and he did it and that was that.
That was that.
He smiles when he returns to the base, but it's sickly and pale and so fake, his teeth are the color of blood and bad nicotine, he's been smoking the cheap military-issued cigarettes even though they make him gag; he just wants to calm down, stop his claw-hands from shaking and his dull-knife-mind from thinking, but it doesn't work, though he tries, God, does he try.
Gran gives him a stony look of approval, face not changing, all stoic and taciturn and unsatisfied, unsympathetic. He has killed so many and he doesn't care and he just wants to kill more, those Ishbalans don't mean anything, and Roy should know that. But he's nothing but a cock-of-the-walk kid, and if he wasn't so goddamn talented, Basque says, he would've left him to die in the desert long ago.
And Roy believes him.
He smiles again, crawls into his tent and lies down, doesn't even bother to undress. His mouth is still dry and eyes are too wet, his nostrils are full on sweet burning flesh, but all senses are stuck on the sick scent of the dead, and he falls into a restless sleep dreaming of the red-eyed child clutching the worn toy and standing in a dusty doorway and whimpering and grabbing and dropping and running and falling and smoldering, smoking and curling in on itself like a boxer after one-too-many punches . . .