Disclaimer : I don't own in anyway anything related with the anime Full Metal Alchemist or with its characters.
Summary:
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives
The fire, deviously painfull, played in his mind. Everything was burning, he could see it, he could feel the heat in his haunted nightmares. Blood and darkness aggravated by the voices screaming inside his head, pleading voices from those who wanted the mercy he hadn't gave them. He had killed them without looking back and that memory had never left him. He was taking orders yes, but how could he blindy do what he had done? That was purely cruel, inhuman, not even monsters kill for pleasure. Sleepless nights were not enought to ease the pain or soften the weight he carried on his shoulders.
And yet, he needed to look strong. Although the urge to finish it all grew every day, he couldn't just kill himself, that was too good for someone like him. He deserved punishment. And as if the mental pain he carried wasn't enought, he did punish himself, the white scars covering his body could show that, but no one ever saw them. For the others he was a normal person, they didn't understand, they couldn't understand what he beared. That he spend every night blankly fearing the nightmares and the terrifying whispers.
He fell to his knees. He wasn't dreaming, he was in his office and everything was just too real to be part of a simple dream. His ebony eyes were staring at hell. It could only be hell, fire was everywhere. Fire, once his gift, now his doomed power. His shattered heart seemed to break even more at the glance of all the destruction he had caused. He was holding tears, something he had never done before, he never had cried. Never. For anything. There was no one to hold him up now. No one trully cared about him. He was alone.
Embers started engulfing him, cornering his sight, all he could see were vermilion blazes, it was like being lost in a tormented blood ocean, and he was too lost to ever return. If this was dead, it wasn't as he thought it would be. He felt, relief. No one was ever going to die and suffer again because of him. But he also felt overhwelming sorrow and something else he couldn't quite place. He wanted to die. He was going to die. Slowly his black eyes began to shut, maybe for the last time, the horrible voices calling him seemed to fade away. It was perfect, his pain was gone. His last thoughts...:
"I'm s-sorry"
The explosion could be heard everywhere, but only a few saw the blistering phoenix rising in the sky. Consuming itself to ashes and falling.