A/N: Starting a new job, thus the hiatus. Once I'm back riding ambulances again, I'll have more freetime than I know what to do with and I can start making normal length updates...but then...hurricane season...
Chapter 15
Roy could smell the smoke from the pyres before they even saw the camp. Though Edward had spoken little during the drive, he could feel the boy tense next to him.
Patiently, he drove into his personal idea of hell, into the mud, the trenches, the sickness that he carried with him as a weight in his chest. The jeep bucked and revved in the thick mud surrounding the camp and Roy cursed loudly as the wheel tried to rip itself from his grip.
"Drive much?" Ed taunted snidely, having long ago put down his book to grip the dash and door for some sense of security. Roy growled and tried to bite his tongue from losing his temper. Occasionally though the bucking and thick spatters of muck, the spoils of war could be glimpsed. Drachman tradition didn't put much emphasis on corpses, so instead of being collected during the cease fires like the Ishbalans did during the uprising, they left their dead wherever they had fallen.
Often, under cover of night, the braver soldiers would bribe whoever was on patrol and sneak to the trenches to roll the bodies. Sometimes it was just for useful things, socks, jackets, food, and ammunition. But others collected trophies. Roy had to resist roasting a sergeant alive when a necklace of yellowed Drachman teeth had been found in his footlocker.
"Home, Sweet Home," Ed murmured bitterly, his grip on the car not loosening.
Their roll into the camp was uneventful, with soldiers milling about in the smog. They both sat silent, Roy transfixed by the steering wheel, Edward by the books he collected into his lap. Looking up, the shapes of the other vehicles in the makeshift lot were distorted by the beads of condensation already gathering on the windows from the humidity.
It took all the will Roy had to not slam the car in reverse and drive it till the tank went empty. At least in Ishbal you were hollow and soulless, he felt like his soul had turned into a festering sick mess like his lungs. He wished he could say the day progressed as usual but Edward had exited the car and walked away without even a word, leaving Roy to solemnly return the jeep to the fleet and stumble sleepily back to his office. There, on his ridiculously ornate desk, sat a bafflingly pristine pile of paperwork that made him look around nervously for Riza if she somehow magicked herself to the frontlines.
Realizing he was finally alone, he deadbolted his paper thin door and yawned carelessly while cracking his back. The chair was calling to him and gladly obliged it with his heavy body.
"Fuck," he murmured at nothing in particular, and cursed again as he lets his face fall finally to the desk in exasperation. The stack is jarred and shuffles it's contents to the damp floor.
"Fuck."