Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be. Let the world be grateful.

AN1: The ending of FMA just blew me away. I am still reeling, and still very much in love with this series.

AN2: This and the other piece I'm posting were written shortly after my grandmother died and I went home for the funeral (writing being my coping tactic). My family has very strong military connections (every man of age is in or was in a branch of the service, which is probably why I've got a fascination with the military even in fantasy worlds), so some of the impressions of their grieving and coping that I saw and have seen in the past may resonate through these. Forgive me if they do. I attempted to separate reality from the FMA world (amusing, considering the lovely mind-twists at the end of the series). As always, true opinions welcomed.

In the Shadow of Death

Grief was a hideous thing, really, lurking just beyond conscious thought, a merciless, patient beast that would stalk its prey for days, weeks, before striking.

It was also a pack animal, rarely striking alone, dragging all the other beasts from the subconscious realm up to play in the light of day, protecting them from the burning, cleansing light of logic and reason.

Roy Mustang winced slightly as he attempted to rinse the sour aftertaste of bile from his mouth, the metallic flavor of Central's water harsh in his throat, the liquid cool on his face. A visible snarl flitted across his face as he attempted to silence the portion of his mind devoted entirely to alchemy, the portion that attempted to identify the metal ions and organics in the water on his tongue and face even as it continued to scrabble after the secrets of forbidden teachings without his conscious volition.

Alchemists truly were a sick breed, trained to automatically see the world in terms of how they could use it, manipulate it, gods denied merely the final power of life and death. State alchemists, though, they were an even more twisted strain, gods at the mercy of their petitioners, and he…

Hell, he was the worst of them all.

"A small group of us were planning on getting a few drinks later tonight. I was told you might be interested in joining us."

A casual enough invitation, but the eyes gave him away. You were supposed to have better control by the time you reached general.

A straight refusal was out of the question, but so was accepting the invitation. He might very well need these people later… he simply couldn't afford to be strongly associated with them yet.

"I was a friend of Brigadier General Hughes, and his wife asked that I stop by and see the child…"

The lie had slipped easily off his tongue, just the right amount of grief fed into voice and visage to send the general running. No one wanted to see another soldier's loss, or talk about the family the dead left behind. It was a coping tactic that was learned quickly on the front line.

He had first seen it in action in Ishbal.

Ishbal. Everything fed back to Ishbal for him, to the place where vague aspirations had become intransmutable goals. Even Hughes was being linked to Ishbal, when he had come long before…

Before, and after. Sanity with a crooked grin but a sharp eye and faster reflexes, whether he was brandishing a knife or a picture of Elysia.

Elysia.

Gracia.

He hadn't spoken to her, hadn't approached her at all, not since the last time he had been in Central with Hughes. His best friend's wife, a woman who had accepted him with open arms and a warm heart, no hint of jealousy in her eyes when he monopolized her husband, whether it was for the purpose of keeping his sanity or reaching his goals… and the only time he had spoken her name since her world collapsed, it had been to use her as a shield.

To use her, and to use Maes. He couldn't stop using him even when he was dead, when he had sacrificed everything…

Roy clenched his teeth, hands white-knuckled as he clutched the sink for support, riding out another wave of nausea. Now was not the time or place for this to happen. He couldn't afford for anyone to see him weak.

Weak. He used Maes' death and then called the loss a weakness, when the man died chasing a dream that wasn't his own, died trying to give a warning…

Closing his eyes only added to the feeling of nausea, but it halted the tears that were gathering again, a rainstorm he had prevented for what seemed like eternity.

"He would have understood." With seemingly no effort, calloused fingers pried his hands from the cool porcelain, enveloping them instead in a warmth that was nearly scalding.

Roy opened his eyes to find Riza Hawkeye standing in front of him, concern and sorrow written clearly across her face, the usual cool control completely absent. "I… used…"

"I know. I heard."

Of course she had heard. This was Hawkeye, always by his side, a shadow that would defend him to her last breath.

The thought sent a chill through his soul.

"He died…and I…"

"He would understand."

Hawkeye's hands tightened around him, the grip nearly painful but still oddly comforting.

"I… miss him." Was that truly his voice, breaking over the words like a child's would?

"I know."

Before he quite knew what was happening, Hawkeye had enveloped him in a tight embrace, his head held firmly against her blond hair, the warmth of her body seeping through both their uniforms and into his, easing the trembling he hadn't been aware of. She made no further move, simply holding him, providing a safe haven as she had once before to a young major who had become a mass murderer in the space of a few hours, the two of them once again alone in the shadow of death.

And just as it had before, the storm broke, raining from his eyes until exhaustion replaced all other emotions, the well of sorrow that he had worked so hard to cover emptying in the space of a few minutes.

There were no words spoken when finally he straightened, wiping the telltale marks of grieving from his face, taking a moment to steady his breathing. The trademark smirk was still missing, but it would return quickly, he knew, sneak back up from whatever dark corner of his psyche it had been shoved to by his grief.

Hawkeye rapped quickly on the door before preceding him into the hall, and a brief smile crossed his face at what someone would have thought if they found her comforting a superior officer in the men's restroom. The results would have been… amusing, to say the least.

A retreating head of blond hair and the lingering scent of tobacco was enough to confirm that Hawkeye had taken that factor into consideration and set a guard accordingly.

"There are several reports that you need to look at, Colonel, and General Hakuro wishes to speak with you about several of the policy changes implemented during our time in the East."

Roy nodded briefly, knowing that if he were to look at his lieutenant he would see nothing but a blank front, possibly even feigned boredom. Hawkeye was brilliant when it came to wearing masks, an aftereffect of being a woman in a man's world.

Once he might have broken the facades, thanked her for seeing his need and responding accordingly. That was before, though, when they barely knew each other, and she was just a young woman comforting a young man while crying herself over her first kills.

Now they would simply move forward, neither acknowledging the incident nor forgetting it, and when the time came he would hold her to him while she cried, weathering the storms of her life as she weathered his.