Disclaimer: I don't own!
This chapter is very dark. Please don't read if you feel you may be distressed.
Breda was the first to say it, though surely they all must have known before now.
"We have to get him out of there now, before..." he said quietly, then shook his head.
The dust still hovered about the hole, sooty and a little yellow. The sun glanced off each particle as it floated unharried in the heat.
"Sir?" Havoc inched his way towards the cavity, testing the ground with each nervous step.
Hawkeye had circled the hole, her manner leonine and her eyes darting this way and that, searching the shadows of the crater.
Each one looked at the other when a confused groan emanated from the pit. Then a cough. Then another, clearer, groan.
"General?" Hawkeye was on her hands and knees now. "General Mustang?" She slid onto her belly and pulled herself forward on her elbows.
"Careful, Hawkeye," said Breda. He was ignored.
"I'm okay!"
Havoc rolled his eyes, relieved. That voice. What was it about that damn voice? That voice had asked them once that if the team were ordered to do unspeakable things, would they follow the command. Havoc knew he was no genius, but that was just about the hardest question he'd ever been asked. A thought experiment, was it? He wondered at the time if he could refuse Mustang anything. He wasn't Hawkeye, after all.
"I can't s-" the general stopped dead. Then after a moment. "I can't see anything."
"We're here, sir!" Fuery called. He sounded inordinately shaken.
Breda came forward now, studying the slim angle of the sun – thankful, it seemed, that the sufficient overhang of remaining beams blocked some of the light.
He slipped round to Havoc's side.
"You really can't help it, sir, huh? Always got to be the centre of attention," he quipped lightly but the look he gave Havoc couldn't have been heavier.
Oh god.
Testing the ground with more and more confidence, they managed to make their way to the very lip of the pit.
"Huh... sir?" Havoc swallowed tightly. "Can't help yourself at all." He felt his jaw go slack and his mouth fill with spittle. He wondered if he was going to be sick then and there.
Because from where they were, the light was perfect. It highlighted every charred inch of unthinkable ruin, every gleaming bangle on every blackened and splintered arm. Every tiny body, curled and precious – looking nearly like a living thing, as though it might turn and look at them at any moment. Every body, every thing that had once been a he or a she.
They all knew the statistics. There were 2,300 bodies in Alpha Site, mostly from the Kappar region of Ishbal, but for whatever reason, they never thought to ask just what – or who – was responsible in the first place.
Perhaps they didn't want to know.
They knew now.
"Sir?"
Hawkeye wretched on the far side of the hole and snapped her head up to give her comrades a look they had never, ever seen before.
Breda's face was grey. "Mustang?"
There was a long, long silence when nobody spoke.
At the rear, Fuery cleared his throat. "It's – what?"
"Get me out."
Hawkeye wiped her forehead on her arm and leant over the edge of the grave.
"Sir...," she said, coaxing – as though speaking to a wild animal. Shuffling could be heard from deep inside the grave.
"Roy...," she met Havoc's eyes when she spoke the name, but he didn't know why. "Come forward, please. We can't see you."
There was the sound of scrabbling and crunching. A dry object rolling and hitting another dry object.
Their commander keened.
"Get me out," he said so quickly and quietly, they barely heard him at all.
"Sir..." Breda said, oddly sing-song.
"Get me out!" Mustang screamed. "Get me out! Get me out! Get me out of here!"
He gasped and barked something unintelligible then went utterly silent again.
Hawkeye pressed her lips together for a moment, closing her eyes. She spoke without opening them.
"Please, sir. We can't help you... where you are... please," she said. She opened her eyes. "Roy... please..."
The unit jumped as one when a hand shot out of the shadows to grasp at the mess of bones and ash. Mustang pulled himself forward, his efforts loosening a few fingers that tumbled over his hands and further down into the pit. He was trembling so fiercely, the matter rattled around him.
"Come on, sir," Havoc urged, though his voice was so small as to hardly be heard at all.
The general wavered for a moment, his hair – greyed by the ash – obscuring his face. With a bone-deep inhale he made his way towards the two men. Hawkeye shuffled back instantly, rushed to her feet and sprinted to them, ready to accept their leader.
Havoc spun back at the sound of someone approaching.
"Stay back, Fuery!" he shouted.
Fuery froze. He was dwarfed by the huge radio on his back and his wide eyed concern gave him an altogether pantomime cast, like a little boy playing soldier. The general too, froze in his pursuit of freedom, his bare hands buried wrist deep in the horrifying sins of his past.
Fuery edged forward a little. He looked at Breda. "Maybe I can help..."
Breda shook his head and returned to his efforts luring Mustang forward.
Havoc seethed. Fuery shouldn't see this. He could still be saved. Slicing an arm through the air, he spoke with a voice that didn't seem his own. "Stay back, sergeant! I am your lieutenant and that is an order – stay back!"
He may as well have struck the sergeant – he realised – for all the hurt he caused him. Fuery's startled look drifted off to the side and he nodded distantly three or four times.
"Sir," he said and stood where he was; not moving another inch. He dropped the radio receiver he had been holding and let it swing uselessly by his side.
Havoc regarded him, swallowing hard, then turned back and gasped.
Mustang was staring at him.
His commander was standing absolutely still, legs spread and booted feet sank into the human debris, jutting horrors framing him like a witch's pyre. From head to toe he was covered in a grime of sweat and ash with not a bare inch of clean flesh to be seen. His hair was wild, thrown in every direction and looking somehow longer than it did before. His black face was split in two by a gleaming trail of blood that ran around his nose, traced his lips and dripped off his chin quite freely. The wound, where forehead met hair, did not look pretty. His eyes though... those eyes. Where had he seen those eyes before?
Bradley?
Lust?
Kimbley...
"Order..." Mustang muttered and tilted his head as if he had to clear water from his ear. He was still staring.
"Sir...?" Havoc asked, wishing he could tear his eyes away to seek assurance from someone.
Hawkeye sat down on the solid lip of the hole, each movement painfully slow.
"General... Roy, it's me. Can you look at me please?" she asked.
Over-bright eyes lost focus and then he cocked his head towards her. His teeth had started chattering.
"Why are you laughing at me?" he asked, his tone wholly ambiguous; something between anger and hurt. He sucked in a breath and threw his head back to look at the sky. "It's so hot."
Hawkeye took a moment to gather herself before slipping off the edge and landing in the grave with an uncharacteristic lack of grace.
Black eyes shot to her. A pink bead of sweat and blood ran down Mustang's heaving throat.
Hawkeye, uniform largely unblemished and blonde hair burnished to gold by the sun, faced the dark being before her as only she could.
"Mr Mustang," she breathed. "Do you know me?"
The general turned his face away with the violent jerk of a madman, blood flying in a perfect arc. His fingers jumped and Havoc was certain no one missed that. Mustang dipped his head low and rolled his gaze toward her again: beast-like. Menacing.
"It's me," she said, and even with her back to the men, it was obvious she was crying. "Elizabeth."
A small, mirthless titter escaped the man and within seconds it had grown into a frenzied bout of laughter. He flung his hand at his lieutenant, and Havoc – frightened and confused and saddened as he was – had his gun trained on his commander in an instant.
It was uncalled for though, it seemed.
"No!" Mustang leered, his face a picture of indignation. "You're not Elizabeth!"
She sobbed and nodded. "I'm so sorry, sir..."
He stumbled towards her and now Breda's gun was drawn.
"What's happening?" Fuery cried, but went quiet again. He always was a smart kid, Havoc thought; knowing when to act and when not to.
With a drunken, sloppy gait, Mustang trudged his way towards Hawkeye, occasionally losing balance and sinking to one knee. She remained where she was, but was sobbing steadily, her back shaking with each painful cry.
He reached his lieutenant finally, awkwardly, on one knee. His left hand was balanced on a small boulder while his right grasped for her belt. He found purchase and toyed with it a moment before pulling her forward. He pressed his cheek to her belly, curling a shaking arm around her thighs. Strong fingers pinching, he pulled her to her knees.
He shook his head, his lips brushing her neck and collar, wild eyes glistening. "No," he bared his teeth and breathed heavily, spit bubbling between the gaps. "You're not."
Hawkeye bowed her head.
The general's weight shifted as something crunched in his grasp, then he collapsed backwards entirely.
The boulder had, in fact, been a skull. It only took him a second to realise it.
"Riza?" he gasped. Different eyes again flew to her – changed in an instant: wide, sharp, focussed – all too aware, all too knowing. "Riza-"
She scrambled for him as he shot up and groped for her. Arms found arms and in a split second she had him; all of him trembling in her sure, unflinching grasp.
He howled against her with greasy fingers dug into her back and skull. He pulled in a fractured, stuttering breath and shrieked again, filling the grave, the desert everything and everyone with vicious, poetic grief. He hiccuped then and pushed his face against her collarbone then neck, blood smeared like warpaint on her pale skin.
She wrung her fingers in his hair, kissing the crown of his head fiercely. He bucked violently once, then again with less force. Another mewling cry of distress followed. Havoc flinched when a hot tear hit his own hand. What a terrible, terrible thing; the type of thing that could convince a man to believe in god. This was too vile to be chance.
Within a minute, the pair were rocking together, Mustang crying silently while the occasional shudder racked his body. Hawkeye whispered to him all the while – words that couldn't be heard by anyone else. Though Havoc imagined he wouldn't understand them even if he could hear them.
A minute later the general was still and silent, totally unconscious in his lieutenant's arms.
Something, somewhere in the grave dislodged and skittered downwards into the shadows. She brushed her lips back and forwards through her general's hair. She kissed his forehead once, eyes so distant and so lost.
"Help me," she choked.
Breda and Havoc dropped into the hole either side of them. Fuery followed a moment later.
Maybe one more chapter to go folks...