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Red lightning sparked so violently Ed was blinded, and so brilliantly he was stunned beyond even the agony of his legs.
Landslide howled, scream torn from agony screeching in a grating chorus with fire's roar, but all Ed could even see was the burst of smoke. He somehow managed to pull himself back a couple of feet, staring at the obscuring cloud in utter disbelief. Had Mustang and Al finally made it out of the train? It was the only explanation, but, somehow, Ed couldn't silence his sense of unease. Even before the smoke had cleared, he'd connected the last important nerve, transmuted another pair of crutches, then worked himself up to his feet, already prepared to continue the fight.
Landslide screeched again, and from within the smoke came the sound of him surely beating his jacket against his limbs, trying to put out the fire Mustang had started. The bastard had missed his target, then- probably because of the distance, and that Landslide had been standing so close to him.
If he'd been just a few seconds later...
Ed swallowed, trying not to think about just how close he'd cut it.
"Fucking MUSTANG! I'll kill you, god damn it! FUCK you!"
Landslide had lost all control, that was evident by his voice alone, and with a flash of light, the smoke was blasted away in a scorching shockwave, and Ed could see it all.
The enemy alchemist was on one knee, shoulder smoking and sleeve burned entirely away to reveal skin that was red and raw. Landslide was gasping and shaking with the pain of it, blood dripping to a pool under one hand that was already disturbingly large, but his other hand already gripped his necklace in a white-knuckled grip and his face was twisted in absolute fury. Ed tensed, preparing to launch himself forward again, and followed his enraged stare towards the third train car.
What he found was not what he had expected.
He had expected Al and Mustang to be standing outside of it. He had expected Al to be already running to his side, worried and panicking, and Mustang to just be standing there smirking, perhaps with a lofty comment about running in to save the day, and undoubtedly with some sort of jab about his height.
He'd been expecting his brother and Mustang.
And they weren't there.
The only people outside of the train were the other civilians, huddled together a few yards away from the train. But even at this distance, Ed would very easily have been able to find his brother, and Mustang wouldn't have been cowering with the other survivors. He'd have been on his feet, arm raised, hand clenched in a snap.
And they weren't there.
In a moment of heartstopping fear, his eyes landed on the third train car again.
The blaze roared even higher than before, flames licking against the mountain at what had to have been twenty feet in the air, conflagration crackling in the horrible silence, and then, Ed understood.
Mustang hadn't made it outside of the wreckage.
He'd set off the explosion while he was still trapped.
That idiot... that fucking IDIOT...
Ed may not have understood the specifics of Flame Alchemy, but if nothing else, he was a genius alchemist. He had figured out enough of how Mustang's gloves worked. The colonel didn't just create fire- he created explosions. That required more than just manipulation of oxygen and heat. Whatever that extra component was was the secret Mustang guarded so closely- what allowed him to transform a spark in the air into an explosion.
Whatever it was had to be highly volatile.
Volatile enough that just now, when Mustang had snapped, he hadn't only created one explosion.
He'd made two.
One on Landslide, and then... again in the train...
Whatever that volatile component of his transmutations was, it hadn't been stable enough to make it out of the train, not when the wreckage had been so close to collapsing and already on fire.
It would've blown up right in his face.
Mustang...
Alphonse...
"No..."
Landslide howled out again, and it took Ed a few moments to realize that this time, he was laughing.
He was laughing.
The enemy alchemist still shook with the pain but now the rage contorting his features morphing into absolute delight, and he screamed out in laughter again. "I don't even have to kill him! He did it for me!" He fell from a half crouch to kneel on the dirt, gasping still and blood leaking down his fingers, but his grin just continued to grow in macabre delight. "So much for the fucking Flame Alchemist! He just blew himself up! Oh, very nice work there, Mustang! Brilliantly done!"
No...
No...
God damn it, NO!
Al-
Mustang-
Ed gasped again, heart racing in denial and mind struggling to grasp the impossibility intensity of the flames before him. Al- no, no, Al wasn't- he wasn't-
His brother could survive fire. Fire was absolutely nothing to him. Metal melted at temperatures of thousands of degrees; that kind of fire couldn't exist in nature like this. It would cool far too quickly, and besides, those high energy flames would've been a wicked blue; Mustang's fires, this one included, were red and orange.
Far too low temperature to affect Al, but a human of flesh and blood...
It was impossible a human could survive a blaze of that intensity.
Nonononononono-
"MUSTANG!"
"Mustang's dead, boy!" Landslide shouted, the alchemist whirled back to face him against the background of a rising fire, grin widening across his disgustingly gleeful face. "Just killed himself trying to save you!"
No- No- No-
"Too bad for him that he missed."
Landslide, still on his knees, the pool of blood under his limp arm still growing, faced him fully now, fingers gripping his transmutation circle necklace even tighter than before, face twisted in absolute confidence.
Except, unlike before, he was kneeling just close enough for Ed's close combat specialty to come into play.
Also unlike before, Ed found himself standing there without any self control left.
Mustang was dead, and it was because of Landslide.
Before Landslide could even take aim, Ed had thrown himself off the ground and there wasn't even time for the enemy to blink in surprise before a metal fist had slammed across his face, and his new metal leg had locked around his torso in an iron grip that would not release.
Landslide went down, and Ed went with him.
"You killed him! You killed him! You killed Mustang!"
Ed punched him again- and again- and again-
"YOU KILLED HIM!"
With that, any restraint he had left dissolved into nothing, and Ed just kept punching him.
So mad he saw red, so furious there was just nothing that mattered besides Landslide, the roar in his mind against facing that he'd just seen Mustang die, the agony knowing that it had been for him...
That fucking bastard- had made him god damn care-
And then just-
No, no, no, nonononono, FUCK YOU Mustang, nooo no no-
NO!
Ed just kept hitting him until flesh knuckles were bruised raw and bleeding, red trails snaking down his arm in rivulets. His metal arm glinted as beautiful, impeccable steel in fire's murderous light, cold with perfection's cruelty, and it swung forward one more time to smash so hard against Landslide's jaw he heard the soft shattering of bone.
And then, he just sat there.
Mind, blank. Hand, bleeding. Heart, pounding.
Mustang, dead.
The heat of the blaze reached him even as he knelt now so far away, and it glowed in delicious insanity even behind closed eyelids.
Mustang, dead.
Underneath his locked knee, Landslide's torso shuddered slowly with the force of a ragged breath, and Ed just looked at his swollen, disfigured face, metallic fist trembling. Mustang, dead, Landslide, alive, and him, just, alone, and-
"AGHHHHHH!"
The scream burst from denial and brought his automail arm hurtling down one last time to smash into the earth. It shattered stone until he was buried up to his elbow, and with that, Ed was just done.
Utterly spent, he simply keeled over, the only thing he could focus on now his own breaths and his own despair.
His eyes burned again, this time not with smoke or heat but the wetness that welled in them, but simply without the strength to scream again, the grief came out as a sob instead.
He had no idea how long he knelt there, paralyzed in the horror of it all, until the voices came to drag him backwards out of this hell and straight into another one.
"Edward!"
"Ed! Ed! Are you okay?! ED!
Hawkeye...
Hughes...
"Edward, talk to us!"
"Ed, come on!"
This time even closer than before, and he jolted, blinking in the stillness. Hawkeye. Hughes. Here.
How?
When hands finally came, Hughes lifting him with a grunt back off of Landslide and Hawkeye still standing above him, gun ready and hand on the trigger, stare an unforgiving one of hate that said she was only one wrong move away from pulling it, and then Hughes sat him down in a panic and began to search all over him, looking for injury, something in Ed's mind just broke.
"Ed, what on earth happened?! Why are you here?! Are you okay?!"
Hughes and Hawkeye were here.
Backup had finally come after all.
Just minutes too late.
"Oh my god, Ed! This isn't your automail! Your leg- your leg- oh my god, what did you do?!"
"Edward, are you all right? And what about the colonel?! Where is Colonel Mustang?!"
Mustang...
The heat of fire glowed as dying embers in his mind, wavering hungrily and devouring bone, and with that, Ed no longer even had the strength to stand. He fell limply to his knees, shaking still, and any words remained out of reach.
He's dead...
He just died...
Mustang just died.
For me.
"Ed! Talk to us! Come on!"
"Edward!"
Bonelessly, like a puppet with its strings being pulled from above, Ed raised a limp hand to point once at the inferno that was the third train car. The blaze roared a little higher, flames soaring to at least thirty feet in the air, and his heart clenched.
"That's where he is," he whispered, and he watched as his hand curled into a fist in the smokey air. "That's where Mustang is."
All that followed was a dead silence.
At last, Hughes's hands left his shoulders, and the investigator sat shakily beside him, pale and drawn. Hughes dropped his head into his hands, breaths unsteady, gasped out a soft, "Roy, no," and Ed knew he had come to the same conclusion as he had.
Hawkeye did not even move.
She just stared at the fire, paralyzed entirely, her gun still held tightly and trained on Landslide's unconscious body but her stare was turned away to gaze into blinding fire, eyes wide in absolute disbelief.
No one would know the colonel's limitations better than her, Ed realized belatedly. She would know that even the Flame Alchemist would be unable to survive that fire. She knew, too, by looking alone, that Mustang was dead.
All the energy just left him, and Ed fell onto his back, staring up at the sky. The smoke made his eyes burn and sting, water welling to trail down his cheeks as tears, and he blinked once, feeling his body start to shake.
When he started screaming, he didn't stop until need for air left him lightheaded and breathless, and even then, the moment he had stolen in a greedy grasp, the trapped emotion growing in his throat begged for release again, and he had to bite into his already split lip to stop it from coming out.
That fucking colonel- was not going to make him fucking care- was NOT going to work his way to stand closer to Ed than anyone had since his mother had died- and then-
He could not-
"Edward, Hughes! Stop! Listen!"
Hawkeye's command barely even registered.
Because her voice had hope, and there was simply no hope left.
Hughes looked up from beside him, shaking his head at the lieutenant. "Hawkeye, stop. Come on. He's not... Roy couldn't have-"
"Can't you hear that, Hughes?!" Hawkeye lowered her gun at last and whirled to face the both of them, desperation coloring her tear streaked face, and she pointed wildly at the fire. "Listen! It's him!"
Hughes just stared back at her now, the sadness unchanging, and Ed had to look away. He wasn't about to try and convince Hawkeye that Mustang was-
-not dead.
Ed sat bolt upright, his ears straining.
It was faint, and the roar of the fire was impossibly loud. It difficult to sift through the crackle of fire and listen for something human- but...
There was something human there.
It took him a few more moments to realize just what exactly it was, but when he did, his heart soared.
It was the colonel's voice, and he was screaming.
It was Mustang.
Mustang was screaming.
Ed was on his feet before he even knew what he was doing, metal one creaking and human one screaming, and he joined Hawkeye, staring in disbelief at the conflagration. Somehow, some dammed impossible way- Mustang was still alive.
"Oh my god," Hughes gasped only a moment later, the grief in his voice vanishing into shock. "That's- that's Roy."
They all just stared for a moment, paralyzed in disbelief and shock.
Then Hughes burst into a sprint forward, the spell was broken, and Ed tossed his dignity aside without a second thought to jump onto Hawkeye's back and head for the third train car.
