Smile Like You Mean It

by Dailenna

Royai 100 Themes. Anything and everything from childhood, to alchemy, to Ishbal, to the coup, to parenthood. Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, and the faithful comrades with them will stick together through it all.

98. After the Rain

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu

Notes: So I sort of redefined rain - or the content of it, at least. Possibly Ishbal spoilers?

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Ninety-eight: After the Rain

It was carnage. Ishbal was no war. Amongst the soldiers – those who grew to hate what they witnessed, instead of glorying in it – it became known not as the Ishbal war or the Ishbal rebellion, but as the Ishbal massacre. Sometimes, when a State Alchemist became a little too exuberant with their task (some of Kimblee's larger explosions were a good example), a finger or a bone from his attack could fall almost a minute later, hundreds of metres away. It was a rain of blood.

After the battle, when everyone except the sentries and patrols had come back to camp for the night, the soldiers would gather around the campfire, trying to push aside the grim happenings of the day with stories from back at home, or training days, or letters from the people they were protecting. Roy never really seemed to hear what they were talking about. All he could think of, when the desert grew cold, were the faces of the people he had killed that day, as they came to the realisation that they wouldn't see the next day.