Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.
006. Death
"How could I forget?" he says, and in his mind's eye, sees a little girl with dawn-bright eyes and a smile as wide as the sky.
How sad, he thinks that even she has the eyes of a killer, and mourns the death of the little girl he had once known.
The gun is whisper quiet in her hands, and Cadet Hawkeye has never wondered what it would be to kill a man before now.
Her hands hold steady from ease of long practice and the crosshair is perfectly aligned, but her eyes are wide and her lips are trembling.
Raging infernos of flame break out in the distance and she shoots.
There is heat in the air and fat on his lips and he thinks he could almost puke as he looks out upon the ruined landscape.
A wounded woman crawls out of the debris and charges him, footsteps loud over the lifeless sand.
And then she is no more, ash upon the wind, and he can only look away.
The sky is painted in brilliant orange, and Riza Hawkeye will never get over death.
She takes the hand of the Ishvalan child and crushes it bone white between her fingers.
It is cold. Too cold, she thinks, as she feels the last vestiges of sunlight wash over her, both comfortable and burning through her cloak.
The child's mouth is open in horror and his eyes stare sightlessly out of his head and she can only tighten her grip.
She takes a single, drawn out breath, and begins to dig, streaking the white, white sand with blood.
Can you do me a favor, Major Mustang?
His eyes are dark.
Can you really hold the woman you love with these blood-stained hands?
Because they have all killed too much and sinned too much and holding something as pure as an innocent is akin to sacrilege.
Gracia has never seen the battlefield, and her smile is blinding white like the summer sun.
Roy shuts his eyes, pained.
Riza is the battlefield, and her eyes are the crimson red of drying blood.
"Thirty more seconds," he whispers, and stares sightlessly before him.
He imagines blood-stained hands holding a blood-stained woman, and doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
AN: An experiment in chronology and disconnected pieces of a whole.
etione