Some PTSD presented here, so read with caution chaps. Xxx

Sorry for the wait. :(

Havoc stood at the flap of the medical tent, teasing his lighter open with his thumb before snapping it to again. Inside, he could hear Hawkeye at her quiet ministrations. He shook his head and spat. It sizzled where it hit the bleached sand.

Havoc had been close to the General since the beginning. Not as close as Hughes had been of course, but sometimes he wondered if his distance afforded him a better perspective. He was a trained sniper after all.

He knew how Mustang and Hawkeye - caught in each other's gravity - circled one another, careened toward each other through space and time. He knew that what they had could barely be called love at all, that it was closer to some other emotion for which there was no word. Not in Amestrian at least.

Never, never in his life though had he considered just how vicious their devotion was. He once considered their love heroic, but now he felt as though some rose coloured vale had fallen from his eyes. That – like that awful pit – some light had been thrown into that dark, dark place. Love really did conquer all; for Hawkeye and Mustang were completely taken by it, crushed, swallowed and mastered by it. It was a living thing, a disease, a rot, that gripped them both from the inside and from which neither one could hope to escape. Havoc always wondered what a man such as Hughes (intelligent, exciting, miscreant) had seen in a woman as plain and without ambition as Gracia, but now he knew. Mustang always said that Hughes was the smarter of the two.

Mustang. He was so dangerous, and she so willing. So repentant. It was as if they had lived a thousand lives before this one, and were suitably interned together for their crimes. There was, Havoc supposed, a mythology here.

Four days had passed since the incident at the mass grave, and for two of those, Hawkeye had been stationed in the bed next to Mustang with a concussion, fractured jaw and trauma to the neck. Havoc closed his eyes against the sun and the memory of it.

They were sure he was dying.

When the General came to again on the team's hard, hot walk back to base camp, they thought: this is the sound of a man dying. Truly dying. The death of the soul.

It started as a murmur; a mere trickle of sounds from his cracked lips, still crusted with his own blood. Breda and Havoc could do nothing but watch as purple eyelids pulled back and depths of glassy black revealed themselves to the sky. Hawkeye, there always, skitted a still shaking hand across his cheek but she may as well have done nothing at all. He was once again absent – the Mustang they knew – and so when his eyes sprang to white, they had no chance to ready themselves before he bucked and threw himself from their grasp. He hit the ground hard and was on his feet again in a second. He made a bare few steps before his left ankle failed him and he fell to the ground once more with a yelp. That's when they noted, with a collective intake of breath, how his ankle bent at the joint. It was horridly clear, even inside the sturdy confines of his desert boots.

So, with love, they fell on him – a pack of devotees. He wailed, digging his blackened fingers into the sand to keep from being shifted. Fuery, groping for a flailing arm, whispered to someone or nobody at all, "He's gone mad. He's gone mad. It's happened."

Breda had both legs in the loop of his right arm, throwing up his chin every time a boot tip came a little too close. He grunted through his efforts.

"Happens to the best of us, Sergeant."

"Sir," Hawkeye's voice gripped for some calm. "Sir! Roy... sir! Sir!" She leant over him, pressing her strong, warm hands to the coolness of his cheeks. He turned his head this way and that, screaming all the while so that they could see the silver filling in his back, right molar.

"Please!" he wailed, again and again and again.

'Too fast,' thought Havoc. 'Too fast': the thudding in the chest pressed against his. He could feel it as if it were his own, beating a wild rhythm in that always too-thin body. As he placed a hand below Mustang's armpit to steady himself, the man shrieked and Havoc felt something sink and grind there. Broken ribs then. He had fallen so hard.

The general's eyes lost focus and fluttered for a second. His whole body fell limp against the sand. Havoc, mind flooded with heart-attack, punctured lung, stroke, shot wide eyes to Hawkeye. Her mouth opened. There was a beat.

A bare hand shot free of Fuery's hold. There was a slap and a shocked scream. Everything was suddenly moving so quickly.

Mustang had Hawkeye by the ear and hair, one long finger curled against her closed eye. Then with an impossible strength for a man his size, he hoisted her up, and up, and up again against the pressure and hold of his men. He kicked with his bad leg and caught Breda on the temple, and in the next moment his fingers were poised to snap inches away from Fuery's face. His gloveless fingers.

But there again, he didn't need gloves any longer. Did he? A circle between the thumb and forefinger... it would take less than a heartbeat.

He rocked where he stood, swinging a suddenly still Hawkeye with him as he went. Her eyes were terrified discs and her pupils tiny. She licked her lips.

"Sir..."

"You," he seethed.

"Sir..."

"Shut up!" he screamed, tugging her downward and thrusting her back. Her earring had come loose and blood dripped merrily from Mustang's hand.

"Godamnit Mustang! Snap out of it!" Havoc shouted, horrified.

"Please..." Fuery murmured. Mustang's fingers were so close, and so, so steady despite the man's distress. "Please... don't... please..."

Breda regained his footing. He steadied himself with a hand on Havoc's shoulder. "Stop talking..."

Mustang had one arm locked around Hawkeye's chest now, pinning her arms, while the other continued to brutalise her hair and face.

"I need to put it out now," he whispered against her damp eye. His lips brushed her eyelashes, just so. A hot globe of spit hit her cheek as he sobbed once.

Havoc started as Breda's hand drifted down his back and unclipped his revolver.

The red haired man kept his eyes down cast as he spoke.

"Don't speak. Everything we say, our pleas... He's heard it all before. He's not here any more. He's not now any more."

"Hold still," Mustang whispered, though everyone heard it. The barren desert could hear it for miles. "Just hold still. Isn't that what he told you?"

"Mr Mustang..."

Mustang groaned and rested his mouth against her neck, sucking the flesh there before speaking. "'This is hurting me a lot more than you, Lizzie.' That's what he told you, right? Huh?"

"Mustang!" Havoc's muscles leapt. They needed to act.

"Don't," said Breda. He tugged Havoc back by the hem of his trousers.

"Roy..."

"God – fuck..."

"Please, sir!"

"Shut up," said Breda.

"Shut up!" screamed Roy, and in one movement had stripped Riza of her military jacket and flung it to the ground. "Look! Look! Look at this filth!"

Hawkeye, almost as far gone as he was now, yelled and flailed in protest as he tore, tore the shirt from her back and spun her to face him, her breasts pushed against his chest.

The red lines and startling, smooth white shone back at her peers, and as one they understood the horror of their closeness. How these two souls had been bound together, as permanent as the ink in her flesh and the scar on her shoulder. Fuery's eyes widened and welled up, before he hung his head. He wanted to unsee, he wanted to unhear. They all knew he schooled with her father, but that was nothing. This was... so many questions, and one huge answer.

Again she struggled: shame, horror, terror... crowding, crowding, beating down on them all. She broke loose, and was struck hard once.

His hand closed again, powerful fingers bent into her throat. She sobbed and choked, and so did he.

"I saw... a terrible future today, Riza. I – we can... stop it... we have to put it out now, okay? The – the universe... showed it to me. In a vision... there were so many... but we... so we have to put it out now? O-okay? My dream for us, for Amestris... it was a lie... okay? Okay?"

She nodded.

'She nodded', thought Havoc, aghast. Both of them... How awful. How awful.

The ungloved hand drifted from Fuery to her, like a bird – so smooth, so pale and so graceful.

His other hand moved up her neck, as she hung there like a piece of meat in a butcher's shop. Thumb and fingers pressed into the hollow of her cheeks, forcing her mouth open. She'd lost a tooth somewhere in back. Breda saw her swallow thickly past the iron grip.

His poised hand forced its way into her mouth, skin scraping against teeth that shook in her aching jaw. He was utterly focussed.

And that's what Breda was waiting for.

Like a python he was one step forward, arm outstretched. He dealt a blow to Mustang's head before the man's eyes had even moved in their sockets. The revolver fell to the sand. Mustang fell to the sand. Hawkeye fell, was caught and lay weeping. And they stayed there, together, until the world let them breathe again.

Havoc coughed and wiped the errant wetness from his eyes with his dusty sleeve.

What were they to do? When their foundation had cracked; when their sun had exploded?

"Sir?"

Havoc's heart leapt and he cursed, eyes darting down to spy a dirty little thing in cloak and hood. The girl couldn't have been older than twelve.

"What is it, kid? You shouldn't be here."

The child's face crumpled, a picture of new uncertainty. 'Had there been some mistake?'is what that averted gaze said. Remembering. Remembering.

"But... my Nana said I was to come straight here and no dallying."

Red eyes met Havoc's stark blue. He shrugged and tugged out a fresh smoke. He spoke as he lit it behind cupped hands.

"Who's your Nana?"

The kid hummed and squinted into the sun, considering this tall, pale ghost.

"Is General Mustang here?"

"Might be," Havoc grunted, blowing blue smoke over and away from the girl's head.

"Well, Nana says she's gonna save his life today."

Just an epilogue to go... maybe... No beta – so feel free to point out errors – NICELY! :D

Thanks for reading.