AN- wow! reviews already! and they were all nice ones, too! i wasnt expecting that...lol, anyway, thanks to everyone who reviewed- you all rock! and anyone else who read but didnt review, thats cool too. i'm just glad people r reading this at all! next chapter's not that long, concidering, but i happen to like it, so...XD thanks again for reviewing!

Rain

Just when he thought nothing else could go wrong, it rained.

It rained with the intensity of a raging fire, causing in its wake results just as damaging, if not as visible. All around the colonel, people ran for cover. Ahead of him, a few children splashed about in rapidly-forming puddles. For a second, as he passed them, he envied their innocence.

He knew he should probably stop somewhere and wait out the storm, or at least try and find an umbrella, but he couldn't bring himself to. One, because the only places to stop at right now were bars, and considering his mood, he didn't trust himself in that setting at the moment. Besides….he figured that he deserved this. He deserved the rain hitting him. Equivalent Exchange was the law of the land, and this was his punishment. He would not have complained if he'd been struck by lighting.

How the hell had all this happened? He'd been picturing this day for a while now, and this wasn't at all how he'd planned it. Damn. But, planned or not, it had happened. The hardest part had been walking down the hallway, grinning at people as he passed as if nothing was wrong, when everything was. He'd left the building knowing that he'd just destroyed what chance he'd ever had of finding some peace in his chaotic life. Stepping out of the building, ignoring the salutes of the lower-ranked men that he passed, he scowled fiercely at nothing as he stepped into the street. Almost instantly, he felt little pin-pricks hit him. Turning his face to the sky, which had gone from light blue to charcoal grey, his scowl grew even deeper as he realized it was raining. Wonderful. Just wonderful. On top of everything else, it was raining. Roy hated the rain.

It made his alchemy useless, of course, but besides that, he felt it made him useless too, in a sense. On rainy days, it was if the whole world had given up, and was just letting itself be swept off into the abyss.

Some people actually liked rainy days…she liked it when it rained, for one. She said she liked the way the world smelled after a good, hard rain, said that it gave her a feeling like the city's sins were being washed away along with its filth and dirt. He'd tried to see it that way, he really had, but it just didn't seem to work for him. He couldn't help but see it the opposite way- instead of washing away sins, rain brought them back, gave them fuel to keep growing and swelling. Rain was the enemy of fire, he believed, and as such, was the enemy of the Flame Alchemist. Not that he hated it because it challenged him; his ego wasn't as large as that. No, he hated the rain and its power to extinguish his flames because it left him powerless, vulnerable, both inside and out. It seeped in through his defenses, leaked passed the barriers he'd put up to protect himself from memories he didn't want and couldn't lose. It left subtle reminders- sure, your life is great now, but don't forget about then. It made his outlook on the world considerably gloomier. But the worst part of it was not merely that he felt the rain was his opponent…but that he felt his opponent was right.

Roy sincerely believed in the message each droplet brought him. Each with a message that was worded differently- one might say 'murderer', for instance, while another would simply smell of smoke- but that meant the same thing. The rain reminded him that he could not simply forget, that he could not simply bury his sins under the guise of following orders. No, it never failed to remind him of what he really was. They all think you're a hero, it whispered, but you're just a coward. That was the message the rain brought him each time. And he listened, and he agreed.

No matter how great the challenge, it is considerably easier to face it knowing that you are right. Winning a battle when you agree with the opposing side is hard. Winning when you believe that you deserve to be defeated is harder. Winning when you want to be fighting against yourself, on the side you're fighting opposite, is almost impossible.

Usually, when it rained, he would try in advance to prepare himself, knowing as he did what would be coming his way later. His usual method was to skip out on work early, head straight to a bar and get rip-roaring, flat-on-his-ass drunk, pick up a woman- preferably the slutty blond type- and head straight for bed, so that, by making sure he would not be spending the night alone, he might be able to escape the fate he knew waited for him otherwise. Sometimes it worked….usually, it didn't.

It usually made him feel worse, as he laid next to a snoring woman he barely knew; on top of everything, his actions and the alcohol coursing through his system made it just that much harder to get through the night. And always, always, were the nightmares, the painful, blinding nightmares, bad on average nights, worse, far worse, when it rained. They were bad enough on rainy nights to cause him to jerk awake, gasping, instinctively reaching beside him for the one person that would never be there. He knew, deep down, that was why he always picked a blond on stormy nights. He knew exactly why…

Because when he was first wrenching himself awake after another visit to hell, it would look to his befuddled eyes like the person lying next to him was the person he wanted it to be- for a split second, anyway.

Roy never slept well on rainy nights.

As he slogged his way home, his mind kept jumping back to the cause of all this, the reason why, instead of laughing up at the rain, relishing in his new-found strength to fight the gloom, he was trudging home knowing only that his dreams tonight would be worse then ever. Especially since, tonight, he was not going to try and damper the effects at all. Oh, he'd most likely find a woman to sleep with, but she wouldn't be blond- he would rob himself of even that minor, split-second comfort. And he wouldn't get drunk, either, though he desperately wanted to; alcohol, while not having any effect on the nightmares, helped dull the jolt of pain he'd feel upon waking up and realizing it wasn't Riza sleeping beside him….helped numb this fresh pain that was, in some ways, worse that which it proceeded. But there'd be no drinking tonight.

Roy was determined to make himself suffer even more then he already was, to add insult to injury, fuel for the fire.

The rain seemed to smugly salute him as he passed.

AN- thats all for this time around. i'll probably post again tomoro cause the next chapter's already finished. i wont always be that quick, but i always hated it when people whose stories i really liked just randomly stopped writing, so i promise not to do that. whee, ok, i'm done. r+r, of course!

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EDIT 4/16/06-- chapter has been redone. Not too many major changes, since it was shorter then most, but I'm really anal when it comes to having every tiny detail down.