Summary – The Ishbal Rebellion wrought many horrors, for some a mission to Medes was pure hell. Years later, while based at Eastern Headquarters, Mustang and Co. discover that the ghosts of the past rest uneasily.
Author's Note – I am trying to stick close to canon and fit it into the timeline when Mustang and company were stationed at Eastern Headquarters. Replies would be greatly appreciated.
Matters of Loyalty
When you're part of a team, you stand up for your teammates. Your loyalty is to them. You protect them through good and bad, because they'd do the same for you. –Yogi Berra
Demons in the Firelight
The Past
Surely it was a dream, a nightmare wrought of stress and instability, but a fantasy that would vanish the moment Sergeant Riza Hawkeye opened her eyes. It was a rationalization like so many she clung to those ten long months she had spent on the front lines of the Ishbal Rebellion, part of a larger war that seemed to know no end.
So far, she had been lucky, some scrapes and bruises, a ricochet and a few shots that came a little too close for comfort. Yes, she had been lucky compared to the constant flow of wounded who were missing limbs, their sight or their hearing, casualties of this war that she still did not completely understand why they were fighting. Though, she admitted, it could be worse, she had seen too many body bags filled with the fallen. All just like her, struggling in this sandy hell in the name of the Motherland.
Still, she counted herself lucky. She was not the average soldier, she admitted. A woman on the frontlines, or in any posting outside of the medical arts was almost unheard of in the military. Though their numbers were growing, women were still outnumbered more than a hundred to one. She may never have seen any fighting were it not for one simple fact: she was a damn good shot.
Though the life of a sharpshooter was known to be extremely short, Hawkeye figured it had saved her so far. Something told her she would have been dead if she were regular infantry. The war gods safe in their protected command centers far from the fighting ordered men into the meat grinder with no more care than cattle to the slaughter.
Pinpoints of light danced behind her closed eyelids, exploding into brilliant bursts with even the slightest movement.
Her body ached all over and she was almost certain that every bone had been shattered when she was thrown to the ground by the concussive force of the blast—series of blasts. The very earth had shuddered and the surrounding buildings that pinned her squad in crumbled.
Maybe she was dead and this was hell.
Crushed stone that covered her prone body fell away as she pushed herself into a sitting position, her arms trembling as they struggled to bear her weight. The air was so thick with dust and smoke that it made her eyes burn and scratch with every painful blink as she tried to survey her surroundings.
A cry tore from her, but at the moment she could not tell the source, whether it be physical pain or mental. A thousand emotions ranging from grief to sheer terror flooded through her veins.
Forcing her eyes open, Hawkeye stared into the thickness that surrounded her—choked her. She coughed violently, desperate to expel the smoke and dust that was filling her lungs but it was no use. Burning embers flew about, dancing like devils, mocking her struggle for breath.
She was going to die here.
This was far from what she imagined as her fate. Often seeing herself as an old woman surrounded by children and grandchildren, not choking to death in some abandoned village so far from home.
Hawkeye's body rebelled against attempts at movement, but she could not just sit there and wait calmly for death. It was not in her nature to give up so easily. As long as she could, she would continue to fight. Brushing her hands through the rubble on the ground, she sought out her rifle. It had fallen from her grip when the explosions and the bell tower came crashing down.
The snap and crackle of flames made her look uneasily around but could see little in the clouded air. The sunlight tried to filter through, allowing her with some difficulty to see if there was movement. All seemed still save the distant flicker of orange.
Comfort flooded through her as she wrapped her fingers around the familiar shape of a rifle stock. She tugged at it, pulling it from under a large stone that had landed dangerously close to her. A trembling hand examined the piece of wall and she realized just how lucky she was. It would have killed her had it landed on her.
As soon as she freed her weapon, her heart sank. She easily spied the bent barrel. Tears welled in her eyes as she gripped the useless weapon.
Sounds of movement drew her attention and she turned, instinctively aiming the broken weapon toward the source. "Who is there?" she demanded but the foul air only made her cough. Dropping the rifle, she sank forward, clutching a dirty sleeve to her face as she violently hacked. Her rich blue uniform was grey with soot and dust.
Panic settled in when the pain in her chest did not subside and she kept coughing. Hawkeye knew she had to get a hold of herself and control the noise. She was giving her position away to the enemy.
They could still be out there.
If she could survive the explosion, then likely some of the Hareti had too.
Medes was a village of the damned, according to the Ishbalan people where the exiled, those who had defied God's law often found refuge. They had come to be called the Hareti, easily identified by their facial tattoos that identified them as sinners. In the early days of fighting, they had been thought so dangerous by the Fuhrer, he ordered the city cleared, for fear they would inspire wide scale revolt among the Ishbalans.
Only later did military come to understand that the Ishbal people did not need the Hareti to be driven to fight.
Medes was supposed to be abandoned. Officially, after the fighting, the survivors were shipped off to refuge camps, but unofficially, the State took no prisoners.
All that should have been was the renegade State Alchemist, Odessa Rhodes, and her lover the Hareti leader, Hirada, as well as a few of his remaining followers.
It was supposed to be an easy apprehension, so easy in fact that Colonel Grand only allocated the bare minimum of soldiers to the job, a squad apiece, one under the command of Soham and the other to support the one alchemist amongst them as they tried to take down Rhodes and Hirada.
Somewhere along the line, a few remaining followers had swelled into several hundred. Each possessed the single-minded desire to destroy the invaders with such fervor that they would forsake their teachings and god to accomplish this goal.
The uneasy feeling Hawkeye had when they entered Medes was confirmed when they had been ambushed.
Fear gripped her as her lungs continued to force the smoke and dust out. They could not all be dead, whispered in her mind like a poisonous mantra. With a thought as clear as the air had been only a short time before, she knew that if they were not, she would not get out of this alive.
She coughed, gasping and gagging, unable to control herself as she lurched forward, barely possessing the strength to keep from falling back to the rubble-strewn ground. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she felt the wet stickiness of blood.
"Take it easy," a softened voice whispered. "No point getting stressed out now."
She strained to see the source of the voice and a thin smile traced across her lips as she discarded her rifle and crawled over the debris strewn ground to where Jean Havoc was slumped against the wall.
"Keep you head low," he said.
Obeying she ducked down, into the shade of a broken wall where Havoc sat. Gray powder covered him so completely that she could not tell where his short blond hair ended and his skin began. At his side, he still gripped his gun, but it was the dark stain across his chest that drew Hawkeye's immediate attention.
"You've been shot," she said as she tried to unbutton the blue jacket. "We've got to stop the bleeding."
He laughed weakly. "Trying to hook up with every pretty girl I saw ever since arriving here and only now is one trying to get me out of uniform."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"I'm going to have a story or two to tell."
"Mention this and you'll wish you had died here."
He laughed again and then shifted, wincing in pain. He shoved his gun at her. "There are still a few bullets."
"You hang on—"
"I can't shoot, not like this."
She sighed and reluctantly took the weapon. A distant sound drew her startled attention. Her nerves felt raw as she gripped the gun, feeling the grit of sand and rock between her fingers and the metal. "Anyone else out there?" she called but her voice felt so small compared to the crackle of the fires and the crush of falling walls in the distance.
Around her she could hear voices, soft grunts and groans of other soldiers. After a moment, they called out their names, identifying themselves. A mental count revealed ten of the twelve members of the squad were still alive, even if Havoc and two others were wounded.
Of the two that did not answer, Sergeant Merton had died in the first minutes of the attack and Walberton had been next to her when he took a bullet to the head. The only person unaccounted for was their leader, Major Mustang, as well as the entire other squad and their commander, Major Soham.
Another fit of coughs struck her as she tried to filter the air through her dirty sleeve. Her voice was muffled as she spoke, "We need to get out of here."
"Where's the Major?" Havoc asked.
Head toward the outskirts.
Sir?
Do as I say!
She looked toward the center of the village but a wall of debris blocked it where the bell tower had come down cutting them off from the target. Beyond it, black smoke billowed up. "He went that way."
"He blew them all up," came another voice through the haze. She recognized it but could not place it to a face at the moment.
Yes, that was what happened. Hawkeye remembered now. Their ammo was running out. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of armed Hareti. They had been cut off from Major Soham and his men. She did not even know if they were dead or alive.
The Ishbal attacked with explosives, and blankets of weapon fire. Though all their weapons were crude, they were effective in large numbers. She swore she even spied State issue rifles in some of their hands and wondered if they had been picked up off the corpses of soldiers or if they were obtained another way.
A supply train had been attacked near Gyali two weeks ago.
Soham's men, who had been ahead, driven there by the arrogant officer who was determined not to be shown up by the upstart alchemist, took the brunt of the attack. She remembered falling back, maneuvering into a safer position as her own superior, Mustang, barked orders, directing them and sparing them from a quick death.
Cover me!
Possessing the firepower of a battalion with just a snap, the Major had dove into the fray, bringing down the insurgents with explosive ease.
Buildings exploded, the air became like an oven and men burst into flames.
snap
Somewhere along the line, she had lost sight of the Major as the armed Hareti besieged the squad. The firefight seemed to last forever but judging from the glow of sunlight trying to filter through the thick smoke, maybe an hour had passed if that.
There had been an explosion.
Several.
The next thing she knew, she was in hell.
Hawkeye gripped the gun in her shaking hand. Her hands had never shook before, not like this. Moving away from Havoc, she felt around like a blind person, reaching desperately through the gloom, her fingers brushing the broken stone wall that had come down so close to them, blocking the way into the heart of the village. Perhaps saving them from the brunt of the explosion.
"Where are you going?" Havoc asked, his voice sounding more distant.
"We can't stay here. There has to be a way out. Fresh air." She climbed up the rock, stumbling and struggling.
"The Major said go the other way."
"The Major is gone," she replied, realizing that he was likely buried under the tons of debris with hopefully all the Ishbalan rebels. "I have to know if there is anyone alive." She was not going to get shot in the back as they fled Medes. Everything shifted under her weight making the climb difficult. The air seemed to grow thicker and she thought she would pass out, her lungs aching so terribly as she pushed her way to the top of the rubble.
A blast of heat hit her face as she reached the zenith. She squinted through scratchy, watery eyes and saw the shattered husks of what had been buildings that lined the street. Flames licked the sky, devouring anything in their path. The bell tower could have fallen anywhere during the series of explosions that had destroyed everything but something told her that it was likely brought down in a very controlled manner.
Nothing but devastation remained.
The smoke burned her eyes and her vision blurred as she struggled against another coughing fit. The smell of burned flesh hit her and she nearly tumbled to her knees sick. Her body shook violently as she gagged on the smell.
A sound to her side sparked an immediate, barely conscious reaction. She twisted, leveling the gun in a two handed grip and squeezed the trigger.
click
click
A figure took shape in the murky haze.
click
The empty chamber gave up nothing even as she kept trying to fire. Her heart—her breath—everything ceased save the movement of that one finger as she pulled the trigger again and again.
A slight nudge against the muzzle snapped her out of it as a body pressed against the weapon. She remained frozen, holding her aim steady at the man's heart.
Firelight reflected in empty black eyes.
"Major?" she whispered, her voice almost non-existent.
Flames danced, lighting the dust filtered world but gave no color to his emotions as he stared at her and it frightened her. She could read nothing in the gaze, not anger, regret, desire or remorse.
He was the one of all the State Alchemists—the human artillery—that she feared the most.
The formerly crisp blue uniform the Major had worn was now black, even singed and burned away in places. The side of his face was black from blood and soot. He looked down at the gun still pointed at him and gripped the muzzle in a gloved hand that had Hawkeye not seen before, would never have guess it had once been white. He pulled the weapon roughly from her grip and stared at if for a moment. "You are out of bullets," he said flatly, almost regrettably. As if it took more strength than he possibly possessed, he weakly tossed the weapon off to the side. "You're going the wrong way."
"Sir—"
"There is no one alive back there," he said as he started to climb down the rubble of the crushed building toward the remaining soldiers. "They are all dead."