Where There's Smoke....

Where There’s Smoke....


Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is not mine; I don’t own it, I didn’t come up with it, I had no part in the publication of the manga or production of the series, and I am not profiting off of this bit of self-indulgence I call fanfiction. I only wrote the bloody fic, and I don’t expect any of the people who *do* own the series will ever read it. Basically, I’m only writing fanfiction because it tickles my “Artist Bone,” and because the occasional review I get for my work makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Author’s Note: Merry Christmas Lexi! This one’s for you, Love. n_~b

Warnings: War, blood, violence, mindf*ck, angst, contemplated suicide, and a touch of non-con. This is definitely not for little kids, and if anyone under eighteen stumbles across this little monstrosity, I encourage you to FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES AND YOUR MORAL FIBER! I claim absolutely no responsibility for underage readers getting caught by their parents, their teachers, or their prudish friends. I also claim no responsibility for people who should be working getting caught reading this by their bosses. You’ve been warned once; don’t make me repeat myself. And NO FLAMES. If you don’t like the fic, don’t complain to me, because *you* decided to read it. I have officially marked this fic as a “no critiquing zone.” That means no “constructive criticism” either, folks. Review if you liked it, don’t review if you didn’t. Simple and clean, ne?

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The room was dim and shadowed, all of its lamps dead and the light outside fading rapidly. It hadn’t been particularly well-lit to begin with, not the ideal place for a field hospital. Then again, nothing about the war had been ideal up to this point.

The soldier stood frozen like a stone statue, his eyes riveted to a spot on the floor that was darker than the rest. Dark with ashes. The ghosts of sounds rang in the young man’s ears: the cries of the dying, the sobbing of children, angry shouts, fearful screams. And above the din in his head two sounds clamored the loudest: a gun firing twice, and the roar of flames.

The scent of blood and burning flesh still clung in his nose. His eyes were wide as he stood there; he didn’t dare close them, because he knew if he did, he’d see their faces again. And the face in the small, framed photograph. They’d had a little girl.

A wretched sob escaped him, and he shuddered long and hard before taking a desperate pull from the bottle that hung loose in his grip. The liquid burned like fire, and it made him think if he drank enough of it, he’d die like all those he’d killed with his alchemy. Of course, he’d drunk half of the two-liter bottle already and he wasn’t dead. Maybe if he finished it....

“Tch. Look at you; that’s just pathetic.”

Roy Mustang flinched at the unexpected intrusion, but did not look up.

“One lousy war, and you’re cracking,” Zolf Kimblee sneered. “You’re such a loser, Flame.”

Midnight-blue eyes, black without light to strike them just *so*, stayed fixed on the blood-and-ash stained floor. Roy did not so much as glance at his unpredictable companion, but his shoulders trembled a bit.

The Crimson Alchemist frowned. Usually he could get at least a disgusted glare out of the other man (younger than him by a year, too young to be on the battlefield, too young to *drink* for chrissakes), but this time there was nothing. “Idiot,” he snapped, making a sharp gesture at the bottle. “What are you getting plastered over? So you killed a couple of bleeding hearts under orders. Big fucking deal.”

The Flame Alchemist remained silent and still, like he was a part of the drab scenery. Like he was goddamn furniture, and not a soldier, not a human being at all. It was starting to irritate Kimblee something awful. Where was the fire he enjoyed seeing flash in the other’s eyes when he pricked Mustang’s morals, when he mocked everything the dark-eyed alchemist said he stood for? Where was the righteous anger, the clear, steady gaze, the sorely misplaced youthful optimism? Had one war, a handful of battles, really broken all that potential? No, that didn’t irritate Kimblee. It made him furious.

It wasn’t that he cared. Good *Lord*, no. It was that he liked things the way he liked them, and if anything that he was used to came crashing down, it had better damn well have been him who had caused it to do so.

He strode forward and seized the younger alchemist by the collar, yanking Roy around to face him. Roy faced his shirt, unable—more likely unwilling—to raise his eyes.

“You whiny little bastard,” Kimblee jabbed, his tone like an exasperated switchblade. “You’re a State Alchemist, one of the military’s ‘enforcers.’ What did you think they were sending us to Ishbal to do, set up a fricking lemonade stand? You’re a killer, Mustang. Accept it and move on.”

“Like you?” The voice was quiet, strained as if its owner would cry any minute.

The pony-tailed man snorted. “Hell yes, ‘like me!’ I’ll bet I’ve killed hundreds more people than you, and you know what?” He grinned predatorily. “I enjoyed it.”

At this, those bottomless-blue eyes finally shot up to meet his own jackal-yellow gaze, a hint of the familiar spark in their depths. Kimblee laughed at it to stoke it hotter.

“It’s true!” he crowed. “For me, the killing’s the greatest rush there is! There’s no greater pleasure than feeling the ground rumbling under my feet, no sweeter music than the sound of exploding buildings or the screams of the morons who stand in my way! It’s that and little else that can make me feel alive!” He threw his head back and laughed for the whole blood-drenched world to hear, growing more raucous when he noted the way Roy cringed in horror and disbelief.

Kimblee quieted when Mustang started trying to escape the grip on his shirt, tightening it and giving the short-haired man a quick, violent shake. “Do I have to throttle your brains until you get it? You owned this the minute you took the pocket watch. You’re an agent of chaos and destruction, a tool in the government’s hands. You knew it, and you still let them send you to the front lines. So suck it up.”

“How can you say that!?” Roy exploded, suddenly animated. “Those people we’re killing are human like us! They bleed and make mistakes and feel emotions and die! And those doctors—” His breath hitched, he almost loosed another sob before he continued. “Those doctors weren’t even Ishbalan! They were just healing people, just healing the sick like they took a goddamned oath to do! And I shot—I shot—they had a daughter and I—”

The Crimson Alchemist slapped him, the action producing a loud ‘crack’ sound that might have made even the hardest man flinch. “Jeezus,” he exclaimed. “Are you gonna go into hysterics every time you’re sent into battle? You’re completely worthless like this. What the fuck did you kill all those people for if you were just going to bawl about it later?”

A choked noise was his only reply, and now the other man wasn’t looking at him anymore. Kimblee shook him again, more pissed than he’d thought he’d be. “Answer me, damnit! Why did you do it? Huh? Why did you take the watch; why did you become an alchemist; why did you raise your hand with the intent to kill? What was it all for!? You knew it would happen, so tell me why you let it if you were gonna crumble the second it was over!” He was seething now, not entirely certain there weren’t flecks of white foam flying with each enraged syllable. “TELL ME!” he screamed in the Flame Alchemist’s face.

“I DON’T KNOW!” Roy shrieked back at him, fisting a hand in Kimblee’s own shirt, maybe to shred it, just to let out some of what was wheeling crazily around inside his head. “I don’t know what it was for anymore! I had my reasons; I had plans to aid my country, to fight for the peace and freedom of my people! I never wanted this! I NEVER WANTED THIS!”

He wrenched himself free of the amber-eyed man’s grasp, and the gates trapping it all in burst open with a vengeance. He let out a wordless roar, fists clenched so hard that red began to seep through his ignition gloves where his nails dug in. The sound went on and on, a howl of sorrow, and defeat. When at last it ended, he collapsed to his knees and huddled there, shoulders heaving with stuttered weeping.

Zolf sat down on his heels in front of the broken boy (because war had made him a man, but his tears marked him still as an adolescent, a child balanced precariously on the edge of adulthood), his expression oddly sane(1), for him. “And that’s the truth, Mustang,” he said. “That’s what disillusionment is all about.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Roy managed wetly. “You were disillusioned?”

“It only takes an instant to recognize reality” the slightly older man replied with a shrug. “When you do, you can either roll over and die because Circumstance screwed you, or you can get on your feet, spit in the world’s eye, and move on. I decided to do the latter.”

“And you lost your sanity in exchange for your new peace of mind. Don’t lie; I know your track record; I was there for some of it.” Mustang laughed without a hint of mirth in it. “Maybe I should just go nuts like you, and then all of my problems will be solved!”

“I’m not crazy,” Kimblee retorted. “I just think on a different level from the rest of you feeble-minded, humanitarian-wannabes. What, so I don’t let guilt get in my way, and I’m automatically insane? That’s the herd-mentality talking, and it’s complete bullshit.”

He cocked his head to one side, a thought stirring within him. A grin spread slowly across his face. “You know what your problem is? You can’t see outside your own little box of principles. You’re only this upset over the things you’ve done because it’s never occurred to you to see things in shades of gray, instead of plain old black and white.”

He reached out and took a much gentler hold of the dark-eyed man’s collar, using the loose grip to pull Roy toward him. He smirked down into that dull, hopeless gaze. “I can teach you to see the gray. I think you need me to.”

“I don’t need anything of yours, least of all your mad views of life and death,” the other growled weakly, pushing at his chest. “I’m not you; I can’t laugh at destruction and revel in blood like you do. It’s not human, the way you act, the things you’ve done and will do!”

The Crimson Alchemist shrugged but did not relinquish his hold. “I never said you had to be me. Hell, that wouldn’t be any fun. I just said you need to see things from a different angle, and I can show you how.”

He surged forward suddenly, using his grip to hold a startled Roy Mustang in place—and kissed him hard. He ignored the instant of stiff shock, then the outraged struggling and muffled, incoherent curses. With his other hand he grasped the back of the younger soldier’s neck to better keep him where he was.

He pressed his advantage, shoving the other back and down, nipping at the resistant lips possessively. Roy gasped and pushed at the long-haired alchemist’s chest, but he had no leverage from his position, and couldn’t get a knee up between them to compensate. By the time Kimblee pulled his face away, the deep-blue-eyed man beneath him was red-cheeked and seething, panting for breath even as he tried not to. The fire in his eyes was as hot as it had ever been, and Zolf imagined he could hear it snapping and crackling. He smirked; that was definitely more like it.

“What the hell is wrong with you!?” Roy shouted at him. “You’re crazy *and* sick! Get off of me!”

Kimblee shook his head, not in denial, but rather in annoyance. “You’re still not thinking outside the box. Just shut up and let me, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Roy responded by punching him in the jaw. The Crimson Alchemist had been expecting something along those lines, and he turned his head with the blow to soften it, and then returned it with twice the strength (not being on one’s back on the floor helped; he didn’t really know if he’d be the stronger of the two if their situations were reversed). The younger soldier hit the floor with a grunt of pain, his head connecting with the hardwood under him with a regrettable ‘crack.’

“Christ, Flame,” Kimblee snarled, “Would you just relax? It’s not gonna fucking *kill* you, so stop being a girl about it.”

Without waiting for an answer, he forced another kiss on his reluctant comrade in arms. Mustang tasted like vodka, which might have partially accounted for his ineffective attempts to escape. The citrine-eyed alchemist had no mercy, not even letting Roy up for air until they were both light-headed and the younger man’s struggles were more like twitches, barely noticeable and not good for much of anything.

“N-no, goddamnit, no,” Roy wheezed when he could speak again, the words in response to the hand that was now working open his uniform jacket. His voice cracked humiliatingly, a testament to his lingering adolescence, and his face, pale from the alcohol and despair, flushed a feeble red. He bucked, trying to throw the other soldier off of him, gritting his teeth when it had absolutely no effect. Kimblee growled at him like an angry wolf for his opposition, almost—almost—making him flinch; he only truly shied when teeth bit non-too-gently at his neck just below the jaw line.

His eyes stung, but he blinked them furiously in an effort to hang onto at least a modicum of pride. Pride, hah! He hadn’t known he had any left! He shuddered; was this really happening to him? Was this what he had been reduced to, some quivering child unable to prevent his own rape? No, his mind scoffed. This wasn’t rape; it was punishment. Punishment for his hubris, punishment for believing he could make a difference in the world. It was a slap on the wrist directly from Fate herself, his penance for taking the lives of so many and actually trying to justify it with the label of “Duty.” Because hadn’t he done so? Hadn’t he lifted his gloved hand, that accursed stone on his finger, and destroyed things, people, again and again because he’d had *orders* to do it? Orders; what kind of excuse was that? He was a murderer of innocents, and even if he learned to live with that someday, he could never forget it. And he couldn’t protest what was happening to him now, because in the end, he deserved it.

Of course, even the most well-intended martyrs sometimes can’t help fighting. It’s human nature to despise pain, to contest that which causes shame or fear. Roy was no saint; he had far too much humanity in him to lie down and “take it.” To his credit, he tried. He honestly tried to yield to the deft fingers that stripped him, the mouth that bruised him, marked him like a stamp of ownership. He made a valiant effort not to twist about in an instinctual attempt to get those unwanted touches off of him, not to kick and thrash and strain against the hands that held him down. He did his best to stop the sounds of panic and distress from leaving his flushed and parted lips. He failed utterly, but he did at least try.

Kimblee snickered quietly at the desperate little noises Roy was trying not to make. “It’d be better if you just let everything out. You keep holding it all back like this, you’re gonna give yourself hiccups.” He nipped harshly at the other’s bared collarbone for emphasis, and Roy only managed to half-stifle a yelp.

The Crimson Alchemist wanted to hear more from him than that, wanted to make him *scream* before this was over. Screams were a beautiful thing to him; people were only ultimately themselves in a few scant instances, and when they were screaming in earnest was one of them. A person couldn’t hold up any sort of façade when his or her voice tore free and filled the space around them; it told anyone who listened exactly who they were, and what they were truly feeling, right at that moment. Screams were honest, and each one was different. Roy Mustang had a wonderfully rich voice when he wasn’t cracking like a little kid. Zolf was sure he’d have a very handsome scream.

He wrestled the last of the other’s uniform off, grimacing at the kick that glanced off his side. “Damn, hold still,” he admonished. He wondered if Mustang was coherent enough at this point to escape if Kimblee let him up long enough to shuck his own clothes. He didn’t like the idea of just unzipping and going at it; somehow that had always lacked class in his mind. And what was the point of having a naked beauty under you if you couldn’t feel all that gorgeous skin against your own? He decided to try stripping one-handed, and surprised himself with how dexterous he could be when he had to. In the end he had to leave the boots on, because no one, seriously, could get those damned things off with one hand whilst holding someone down with the other.

Wide, wild midnight eyes stared up at him, dilated from drink and fear both. Zolf smiled back at them and bent to lick a line down the younger soldier’s chest. Roy had a heady taste to him, like ash and blood, smoky and metallic-sweet. And beneath that was a distinctly male flavor, musky and aggressive. It made Kimblee want to hurt him, and it made him want to bury his nose against the pale, shivering skin and just inhale, wallow in that scent, that taste. He did neither, instead opting to take a nipple, peaked with cold, in his mouth and suck.

Roy whimpered and thrust shaking hands into the slightly older man’s long hair, clenching the dark strands and not knowing if he wanted to push him away or hold him there. It felt good, and he knew it shouldn’t, but his mind was clouded with numerous things, the alcohol perhaps least among them, and he couldn’t think straight. His fingers flexed uncertainly, and Kimblee made an encouraging sound in his throat. Roy closed his eyes tightly and just trembled. There was nothing else he could think of to do anymore; fighting had long since ceased to be helpful.

A mortified gasp escaped him when a hand cupped him between his legs, and he shuddered hard all over. Long fingers grasped and pulled him; Roy gulped and tried not to thrust, but no one had ever touched him that way (Oh, he’d touched himself a few times, when he was still in the Academy, but he’d never been *with* anyone. Not for him the “experimentation” of some of the other lonely, wound-up, soldiers-in-training. He’d made out his best friend, Maes Hughes, but only once. Sudden bashfulness had halted that research on hormones right in its tracks, and the two had agreed never to speak of it again), and he only succeeded in as far as squirming instead of actually bucking his hips.

He never noticed Kimblee shift lower, but all at once the dry stroking around his sex turned to wet heat, and he let out a strangled cry and lost his tentative control; his hips slammed upward of their own volition, causing the amber-eyed alchemist to choke and shove him back down against the floor with both hands. He panted and fought the pressure on his hipbones, but gradually settled down. At least, he calmed until the Crimson Alchemist took him in fully and swallowed around him, before beginning a steady suction. Roy moaned from his very soul, the sound very much like a sob. He writhed as much as he was able, unable to bear stillness when he was feeling such things as Kimblee was forcing him to feel.

He felt an insistent prodding at his anus and attempted to evade the foreign touch, but it would not be evaded. It pressed into him despite his sounds of protest, and he cried out at the slight sting of it.

His cry changed to one of wordless denial when the slick warmth left his erection. His only consolation was that the digit so rudely prying into him left him alone too.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” Kimblee’s voice murmured somewhere in his vicinity. “Guess I can’t take you dry, eh? Funny, I always thought your buddy with the specs would’ve had you already.”

The long-haired soldier spit in his hand and coated his fingers thoroughly with saliva. If Roy hadn’t been bewildered and drunk and scared and wanting, he might have wondered exactly how sanitary that method was; as it was, he couldn’t wonder much of anything on a sentient level right then.

A now-slick finger was reintroduced to his body whether he wanted it there or not, and he felt his eyes sting in an echo of his backside’s pain. Two fingers made him actively struggle, but his efforts were nullified by Kimblee’s weight over him, trapping his limbs when they wanted to flail.

“Ah, uhn, please!” he wailed, finding words at last when a third digit forced its way in along with the first two. It hurt, ah *god* it hurt, and he did sob then, uninhibited as he would never have been were he sober, and not drowning in grief and guilt. He turned his face into his shoulder, ashamed of himself, of his predicament, of the moonlight that now shined through the rickety window and lighted his pain.

The fingers working into him pushed deeper, thrusting in and out, curling, stroking, as though searching for something. “Come on, Mustang,” Kimblee muttered, almost as if to himself. “Come on, give it up—”

“HA-AAH!” Roy thrashed, pleasure momentarily overriding all else. It was too much, and with a spasm from lower-abdomen to thigh, he spilled the last of his pride in white pulses over Kimblee’s waiting hand.

The Crimson Alchemist chuckled, continuing to scissor his buried digits deep inside the younger man. “Good boy. Feels good outside the box, doesn’t it?”

He spread the dark-eyed alchemist’s seed over and around his hardness, by now deep red with blood and weeping with impatience. He exhaled loudly at the feel of his own slippery touch, but restrained himself from seeking release as quickly and efficiently as possible; there were much better ways to get there, and he currently had one under him.

He rolled Roy onto his side—“It’ll hurt less this way; relax”—lifted the other’s leg over his shoulder, and thrust in to the hilt. He shivered at the particularly harsh cry the action wrought; it was almost as good as a real scream, but not quite. And *fuck*, if Mustang had felt tight around his fingers, the younger soldier was even more so around his cock. It took all his control not to simply go wild, but he wanted the incredible feeling to last. He also wanted the uptight little bastard he was doing to enjoy it; otherwise, what was the point? Great sex was all well and good, but he was trying to teach Flame to lighten up in the process. He’d be less annoying if he’d quit emoing over every single sucker he killed, now wouldn’t he?

“You can’t—mnn—enjoy this if you keep being stubborn,” he purred. “Just like you can’t be a good soldier if you insist on standing your moral ground. We’re not humans on the battlefield; we’re weapons. You can get used to it or you can go nuts.” He thrust languidly as he spoke, thoroughly enjoying the way Roy panted and squirmed, his eyes squeezed shut once more in an effort to block Kimblee out. “And you can admit you like this, or you can deny it until the knowledge that I ‘raped’ you eats you alive.”

“It’s n-not the same,” Roy managed in a strained voice. “And I don’t like this!” The latter came out as a gasp, and Mustang’s cheeks blossomed with a humiliated red.

“Your mouth is telling me lies,” Zolf snickered. “But the rest of you is being nice and truthful.” He trailed a hand down the leg propped over his shoulder and lightly grasped the Flame Alchemist’s slowly reviving erection, fondling the shaft into reluctant stiffness. Roy moaned and twitched, his movements drawing an answering groan from the man he viewed as his tormentor.

It was enough talking, Kimblee decided. He had said his bit, and the hot piece of angst-machine he was fucking could mull it over all he liked later. Right now, it was time to make Roy forget everything else.

He adjusted his angle slightly, searching for that spot he’d exploited earlier to force pleasure from the other man. He grinned when after a few shallow thrusts, Roy let out a sound half cry, half moan, and clawed the wooden floor. Bingo. His fraying control (which had never been *that* good, to be honest) snapped altogether, and he gave in and let his body move as it liked, pounding into the year-younger soldier with no rhythm and no intent but ultimate satisfaction. Mustang positively *writhed* in his grip, incoherent cries and yelps torn out of him with each slippery strike of his prostate. His leg slipped off Kimblee’s shoulder, and the citrine-eyed alchemist readjusted their position, hooking the limb over the junction of his elbow joint instead and pressing forward so Roy’s knee was almost touching his chest. The new arrangement must have been uncomfortable even for someone who had not quite lost all the flexibility of his youth, but Kimblee was beyond caring. Roy was irresistible spread open like that, and Zolf had never been one to let temptation pass him by.

Roy registered the change and the new level of vulnerability it gave him, but there was nothing he could do about it. His mind was a muddle of hazy images, splattered with patches of bright, violent color, pleasure, pain; he hurt but he didn’t; he didn’t want this, but it was good in a terrible way, and it was happening whether he wanted it or not. In little pikes of clarity he realized it felt like he was burning. Yes, he was burning to death in the midst of horrible ecstasy, and the thought made him laugh in a wobbly, half-crazed sort of way. He never knew if Kimblee heard him and he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop shaking and twisting and making animal sounds of anguish and lust, and he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. He dug his nails into the floor with his free hand, the one not trapped under his side where he lay; he whimpered and marred the floor with his blunt nails until the nails began to bleed, and he couldn’t even care about that. What was that little pain against the burning, throbbing, churning pain and pleasure he was already suffering?

It couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t. Kimblee wrapped a roughly-tattooed hand around Roy’s cock and pumped it, and that sensation, dry and harsh at first and slick and hot with the spread of precum, was too much; it had all been too much, but there is always that one final straw that slaughters the proverbial camel, and this was Mustang’s. In those last world-crushing moments Roy’s eyes cleared a little, and focused on a dark, sooty patch on the floor, not far from where he lay. Blood and flame filled his mind as rapture lanced through his body, and he had been wrong; *this* was finally too much. He screamed.

The scream hit Kimblee like an explosion, and he gasped at the intensity of it as it washed over him. He was making sounds himself as neared the edge, clipped, throaty cries that would have surprised him if he’d been in any state to care. It was good, *god* it was better than he’d ever imagined; that scream, this heat, the way Roy clenched around him, so good and if it had ever been this good before, he didn’t know it in that moment. His thrusts went brutal and wild for a few short moments, and then those familiar shudders came and so did he. Beautiful sparks, like tiny bombs, went off behind his eyes, and he slumped forward, panting and moving in Flame a little still for movement’s sake. Gradually that ceased as well, and his heartbeat returned to its normal cadence. When he bothered to open his eyes again, even the echo of the scream ringing in his ears had faded, and now Mustang was just breathing in deep, sobbing gasps, interjected with the occasional hiccup.

Never one to snuggle, Zolf extricated himself from his “lover” and sat up to wipe sweat from his brow. “Damn,” he praised, vaguely embarrassed by how out of breath he sounded. “You are a seriously good fuck, Flamey.” He smirked lazily. “I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.”

Roy did not respond, only made a small, strangled noise and curled into a ball. The Crimson Alchemist frowned a bit at this, but then shrugged it off. Oh, well. You couldn’t win ‘em all, right? Let the straight-lined little bastard wallow in his rape; it was no concern of Kimblee’s.

“Geez,” he muttered. “I give you the ride of your life and now you’re gonna get all weepy? Fine, drown in denial, it’s no skin off *my* ass. But you know, there’s and old saying: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And from what I saw, you enjoyed that.”

He dressed unhurriedly, gave Mustang a farewell pat on the ass, and sauntered out the door. Maybe Roy would never come around; so what. There was still killing to do out there, and Zolf J. Kimblee wanted a piece of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was hours later, and the gray, leaking light of predawn had started to fill the room. It looked almost like twilight had the previous day, and Roy looked almost as he had then. His old companion the bottle had survived his clash with Kimblee, and he noted that the other half of the contents had somehow disappeared. He let the empty vessel drop to the ground, and it rolled away from him, into a patch of darkness marring the gray, wooden floor. The light grew marginally brighter as he stood there, but it was still muted and cold. He felt the cold in his bones, in his heart and soul, and it only continued to freeze him alive as he stared at that soot on the floor. Only now he wasn’t seeing just the doctors lying in a pool of their own blood, or the Ishbalan child with the rifle burning to death by his hand. Now he saw too his own, lesser shame at the hands of one of his own. It wasn’t that he had been raped. It was that he’d been weak enough to let it happen. Yes, he was weak, wasn’t he? Too weak to stop Kimblee, too weak to save the children, too weak to defy his orders and spare the doctors with the little blonde daughter. When the young girl learned of her parents’ deaths, how would that angelic face twist in agony?

Roy Mustang, you are a weakling. You are a fool.

Something inside him snapped, and his hand flashed to the holster at his side. The cold metal of the pistol dug in under his chin; both his hands held it with white-knuckled grips.

He began to squeeze the trigger.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


(1) I do not believe Kimblee started out a completely wacked-out fruitloop. I believe that before he went to prison, he had moments of clarity as many madmen do. It was in battle that he really lost it, because battle is his “high.” After his years in prison, he was definitely insane, 24-7. I do not dispute this. I just don’t think he was all crazy, all the time, before then.

Hah, sorry to stop right there, but any FMA fan knows what happens after this. Marco is all “Hey, don’t do that!” and Roy progresses gradually back to his self-confidence from there. Albeit somewhat more jaded than before he went off to war. Anyway, that’s it that’s the end, go away! XD But not before you review!

Love to all my readers, and Merry Christmas to Lexi, for whom this fic was written and for whom I made my first foray into Zolf Kimblee characterization.