Summary: At the right angle, in a line of sight, one might wonder why he never stopped staring at her for so much as a second.

Theme: 064. The Scenery From A Car Seat

Dedication: ht4eva, thank you!

Disclaimer: If I owned Full Metal Alchemist, the new anime would not disappoint so much.

Angles

064. The Scenery From A Car Seat

This was not stagecraft.

Men went to war and children stayed in and played with toy soldiers, manipulating everything from behind the scenes with a few tugs on some loose strings. They needed to be careful not to sever them. Pockets full of empty dead land, fling a few grenades around and hope for the ugly best way out of it and that was not peace apparently. This was selling the other race masks of tears born from the paranoia of the one slaughtering them, laughing in their dead faces when they thought they were all gone and expecting the people who done it to just paste a smile on using paint to redecorate themselves afterwards so it could not be wiped away without a stinging pain like turpentine.

"Your only enemy is the man at home, behind the wooden desk." Maes muttered as quietly as he could managed, and though his words were nearly impossible to hear over the roaring sounds of the abattoir of mankind and what humanity had created, Roy had etched those words into his mind as soon as he said them because he supposed it was true. Bureaucrats and politicians were the same thing, winding the poppies around their heads as crowns as they sung a song of victory that was not yet written about their patch of earth that supposedly meant enough to kill.

"Enforcing conformity." Roy mumbled back, staring emptily out unto the great expanse of space. It seemed strange that there was enough of everything for all humans, and yet greed and their nature meant they had selfishly reached out for a handful of blood because they always wanted more than what was necessary to survive. For that amount of land was not empty, but rather diced up by shrapnel and smashed helmet pieces, held together by spilt crimson liquid from paralysing gunshot wounds. It was not built on a strong foundation. From the corner of his eye, however, something stood out. Then, he sees her.

The car came to a grinding halt, the wheels torn to pieces by debris from probably only a few days before. The woman looked around sharply, her deep red eyes focusing on the vehicle without much sign of letting up. His own onyx eyes found themselves fixated on her as she let her fingers slide down to touch the hilt of the gun she was carrying. Her grasp was delicate, even barely-there, but it she seemed strangely sure of herself.

"Hawkeye seems cheerful this morning." Maes said, patting him on the shoulder. Roy had not even noticed that he was on edge, his back muscles snapping up to hold him in a painfully eloquent position under her steady gaze. He did not even need to say more than that. The other man knew of those days. Back in halcyon childhoods streaked with cheer, eggs she prepared in the morning and when simple smiles actually meant something to him. When she made his pulse race just that little bit faster, made him flush and think about her as soon as she saw him in the morning. It hit him at thirteen, and right then he was wondering if fate really did exist seeing her in front of him. It was like waking up and tasting insomnia all over again, then waiting for it to evaporate, bitter as her on his tongue.

No, if this were stagecraft she would run to him and engulf him in the scent of vanilla and gunpowder and dried blood, and there would be some hope for her innocence. He thought right then that seeing her kill would be the thing to break him, and from the very start he could have been right if she had not smiled at him. The driver later commented that was the first time he had ever seen emotion from her when she was patrolling. Not even Maes knew why. To each other, they were the last remnant of forgotten things like hope. The war might not have been stagecraft, but right then he found himself caring less. Because she was there.

No amount of fiction could change that.

I suppose this is sort of light, but I think them being in a car together is overdone. Hence, poor readers, you ended up with this. Something akin to Roy and Riza, but only just bordering it. At least it is better than the other load of things I have been coming out with after chapter ninety four, I suppose in some ways.

Preview: What little wisdom Roy possesses goes into tearing her walls down before she even realises what is happening.

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