He was by no means healed, but after being under Dr. Knox's care for three more days, Roy Mustang decided that he was well enough to leave. Transporting him out of the makeshift hospital was difficult, as they had to be wary of the wrong set of eyes watching them. Roy ended up being escorted from the site where he had been treated back to his townhouse by Maria Ross. For the sake of appearances, he wore an oversized coat and walked with a hunched posture, his arm in Maria's. The whole time he fought off tears, wishing that it was Riza who was leading him home after the final battle.
When Maria dropped him off at his house, her expression was worried.
"Are you sure you'll be okay?" she asked.
Roy laughed humourlessly. What a question. There was no way he would recover, not completely. Even if his burns healed over to form scars, the imprint Riza had etched upon his psyche, his very soul, would never heal. At most it would be a black presence, devoid of the light that only she could bring to his life. And he would have to live with that. Or would he?
"Don't worry about me," he said quietly, avoiding her question.
"If you need anything at all, don't hesitate to contact me or Denny. We're here for you." Maria hesitated before saying: "Think of Grumman and the rest of our resistance group. We need you."
Roy didn't say anything. He retreated into his home and closed the door, locking Maria out on the street.
His home looked better than he remembered leaving it. Of course, there were still scorch marks on the walls but at least the furniture had been righted and an attempt had been made to clean up the place. Everything that he had broken, the picture frames and the plates, had been stacked along a wall for him to either throw out or attempt to repair at his discretion. He sighed and figured he had better start sifting through the wreckage in an attempt to piece together his current situation.
He had just begun sweeping shards of broken porcelain into his palms before he realized how pointless this all was. His queen was dead. The state of his apartment didn't matter. And Roy knew that he wouldn't be able to do anything, to reach any semblance of moving on, before he righted past wrongs. And the solution wasn't to continue harming himself. Riza wouldn't have wanted that. So he couldn't die. Not just yet. He had a country to save.
But first there was something he wanted to do. And that required going outside. Roy called for a taxi and then waited for its arrival in the foyer of his house. The thought did cross his mind that one of Hakuro's minions might be keeping tabs on his movements, but he didn't think he was in any serious danger. Hakuro had already taken away two people who were very dear to him and he was left crippled because of it.
Roy looked up from his floor when the doorbell rang. He sighed and walked purposefully towards the car and driver that would take him to the cemetery where Armstrong was buried.
Alex Louis Armstrong's gravesite was in a quiet corner of the lawn, under the shade of a large tree. His headstone was not nearly as ostentatious as the man had been during his lifetime, ripping off his shirt at all occasions to reveal sparkling abdominal muscles. A corner of Roy's mouth twitched up just thinking about it. He held his military cap in front of him and bowed his head. Despite his actions, Roy's thoughts were not serene. His hands quivered with his self-hatred for his inaction, for not being able to prevent this from happening.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled to the fresh dirt under which reposed the corpse of his comrade in Ishaval.
"I'm so, so, so sorry." A tear leaked onto his chin and as he went to wipe it with his sleeve, he turned his head to the left. Visible in the distance was the hill. And at the top, another gravesite. The final resting place of Maes Hughes.
A flag flew at half-mast near the site for the Brigadier General, promoted after his death. Roy got to thinking about his own status as First Lieutenant and realized how bogus these titles truly were. All they were intended to do was show seniority, but Mustang would not kneel. He would not let himself become subservient to the evil men who now led this country. Of that he was certain.
Roy clenched his hands and with a final nod to Armstrong, turned to leave. He felt numb. Just as he replaced his hat on his head and started walking though, he saw something in the corner of his eye.
An Amestrian military uniform? That couldn't be right. Who else would be here? Roy used the back of his hands to wipe the residual tears from his vision. When he blinked, the figure came into focus.
Roy couldn't believe his eyes.
"Hughes?" he whispered.
His friend appeared emaciated and there was a hollow haunting quality to his gaze. Hughes' clothes were covered in dirt and hung limply over his body. There were some holes in the chest of his uniform which continued through his back.
Bullet wounds, Roy realized with horror.
Hughes grinned.
Roy stepped back, horrified. As impossible as it seemed, could this be Envy once again taking on Hughes' likeness? It wouldn't have been the first time. But Envy was dead. And so was Hughes. What was happening?
"How..." Roy choked out. He heard the blood pounding in his ears and not much else. The ambient noises of birds circling overhead, of wind rustling long grass, and of insects singing were all gone. This was a waking nightmare.
The figure of Hughes continued to advance, seeming to give little regard for Roy's terror. In fact, the spectre seemed to live off of Roy's fear, enjoying the eyes widened in horror, the sweaty palms, and the gasping inhales.
Hughes smiled again. "How does it feel to know that everyone left you? Everyone always does that, don't they? Whether on a battlefield, along the career path, when they get married and have kids and don't call as often as they should—that's also abandonment, is it not?"
Roy didn't speak. His hand leapt to the holster of the gun he had taken to wearing on his hip now that he didn't have Riza's eyes looking out for him. But shooting Hughes wouldn't do any good. The man was already dead. This had to be some trick of Hakuro's. The higher-ups were trying to convince him that he was mad. Maybe he was.
Hughes stopped short. A conflicted expression crossed his face and then all life seemed to deflate from his punctured lungs. His shoulders slumped and he sighed. Holding a hand to his face, he seemed to have aged by six years rather than the few months he had spent in that coffin. Roy ceased being scared of this representation of his friend and immediately felt sorry for the wretched creature.
Hughes mumbled something into his hand.
"What?" Mustang asked in a clipped tone. His fear was making him anxious, but he still struggled to think clearly.
"You couldn't save them. You couldn't answer a simple phone call. You couldn't save me," Hughes whispered, looking up at Roy with sad agony in his eyes.
Roy's upper lip was sweating. He glanced around the graveyard to confirm that they were alone. He was alone. But Hughes wouldn't let it rest. He seemed to recover, and was now on the attack, calling attention to Roy's failures.
"You came here to visit Armstrong. A proper send-off, eh? He died for you to too, you know. If you hadn't been such a coward, those bullets wouldn't have torn through his body as they did mine. He wouldn't have had to pass alone into the void. I know what that's like. Trust me when I say it's not pleasant."
Roy swallowed. He renewed his grip on his gun and removed it from the holster to be on the safe side. He removed the safety and held it up, just to be cautious. This was not his friend. Envy had proven that such things were possible. And Roy's mind was definitely dark enough to conjure up the scene before him.
He is not Hughes.
This is not alchemy.
This is not witchcraft.
This is not real!
But it was. It was every bit as real to him as the wound in his side that still throbbed with poison from Lust's Ultimate Spear.
"And let's not forget about your beloved Riza..."
"Shut up!" Roy bellowed. His rage reached a red-hot point and he acted on instincts honed by many years of fighting in the military. He fired the gun, putting another couple of bullets into his friend. The gun's crack was deafening within the otherwise silent cemetery.
Hughes' legs gave out and he pitched backwards. Roy hurried to his side, shaking uncontrollably. In spite of the hallucinations, he couldn't believe that he had turned a gun on his best friend.
"God, I miss Elicia and Gracia. Send them my love won't you?"
He blinked and Hughes was gone. He looked up from where he knelt in the grass. And he was all alone.
Roy Mustang was the only one alive in a field full of his buried countrymen.