A/N: This is my present for mebh, for beta-ing all of Moonrise. She wanted something with Mustang, and suggested that I "explore the idea of power not being something he controls, but something that inhabits his body with him."

This was a totally disturbing mindset to write, by the way.

Roy gestured, and fire boiled out of him, like blood, like ants, like water. He enveloped the land around him, burning and being burned in an orgiastic bacchanal of flame. The other participants were all unwilling, but they were there with him still the same. Joy was too weak a word to describe what it felt like. He felt like a god, like the devil. He held life and death in his hands, burning and burning with a flame that would never die.

Somehow, eventually, he summoned the strength to end it. The fire dissipated. Whether it vanished into the air or retreated into his soul to be banked until it was needed again, he did not know. He stumbled, his own body too small to be comfortable.

"Sir?" Lieutenant Hawkeye said, catching him by the elbow. "Do you need a moment before we return?"

Roy looked out on the city of Temala. Its spires were blackened and smoking, and everywhere there was the smell of charred flesh. He remembered fire and exultation, and wanted to vomit.

Then he was vomiting, kneeling on the blackened ground with his palms in the soot, trying to empty his body of the poison that had invaded it. No luck there, he thought, bitterly. The poison that afflicted him was not physical, and he had taken it on willingly. It was the demon's joy, he told himself desperately. The demon's joy for those deaths, and never mine.

But was there a difference between the two of them? He could feel the demon inside him- powerful and elemental. How much had it usurped of him? Roy could never be free of it. When two souls were joined, they could not be unchained. I will never marry, Roy thought. I have already taken Xaphan for my bride.

Hawkeye waited until he pulled himself up from the ground again. This was not the first time she had seen him like this. It was not even the first time she had seen Xaphan at work. She had known Xaphan longer than she had known him, Roy thought, darkly. Xaphan had been her father's demon. Now Xaphan and Roy both were her father's murderers; Master Hawkeye left dead in the ritual that had made Roy a sorcerer. The man had been willing, had already been dying, but the deathstroke had still come from Roy's hand. He wondered that she had never blamed him for it.

He was being morbid, he knew. And dramatic, and self-pitying, and the other things that Hawkeye occasionally accused him of, with those quiet, acid looks of hers. She handed him a canteen and a clean neckcloth, and waited while he cleaned himself up. "We're to rendezvous with Red Lotus outside Raayune by tomorrow," he told her.

"Yes, sir," she commented, because of course, she already knew that.

They walked silently together back to the encampment where the other soldiers had taken cover in the face of Roy's attack. His Guardian's mask was back on, hiding his face. The soldiers were stiff and cautious as they arrived, excessive in their deference to him. Roy had never given any of them direct cause to fear him, but they all knew to be afraid of the Emperor's Dogs. And they were all the more afraid because they'd just watched him annihilate a city, probably. Roy tried not to remember that act. He didn't want to remember how good it had felt to kill with his magic. But shouldn't he remember? Shouldn't he try to face his crimes?

Sometimes, Roy thought about defecting. Sometimes he thought about walking into the desert and ending it. But he was twice-bound- once to his demon, and once to his Emperor. The Emperor's binding spells were like steel around his heart, and they never let him think very hard about such things. He might be able to resist the spells if he were very determined, but he was already fractured. Xaphan liked what the Emperor was asking him to do. If Roy did not, well, then he was outvoted.

"Dinner," Hawkeye told him, once he was back in the tent that served as his quarters. She brought him his meal, and set it down on the table in front of him in the way that meant she expected him to actually eat it. She spent too much of her time playing nursemaid to him, Roy thought. She deserved better. He ate, though he wasn't hungry.

"Will you need me again tonight, sir?" she asked.

He wanted to weep, to beg her to stay, to kiss her and tell her that he'd always loved her. But he refused to treat her the way that Guardians usually treated their aides- like a disposable woman; like trash. Besides, how could he kiss her with Xaphan on his lips? "No," he managed to say. "You can resume duty in the morning; I should be fine."

She gave him a withering look. "I'll be right outside, sir," she told him, because she never left his protection only up to the soldiers on guard. There were too many dissidents, too many people who might be willing to die if it meant destroying Daliha's Murderer. Part of Roy thought that it might be better if he were destroyed, but the steel bands of OBEY-SERVE-OBEY tightened around him and he could no longer think such things.

Roy was left alone then- except he was never alone. Fire burned under his skin. His anger fed the demon, but so did his fear and his guilt and his self-loathing. Xaphan never went hungry. "Leave me be," he whispered to the demon, lying alone in his cot.

It twisted warm around his soul. Xaphan had no words; it could not speak. Nonetheless, Roy felt it trying to comfort him, as if to say I am here, don't worry, I will never leave you. The beast loved him, in its own way. The beast was happy, as long as it was allowed to run free now and then.

I will master you, Roy thought, in the private recesses of his mind. I will bend you to my will and not the will of my Master. I will bind you and chain you and then- then-

PROTECT-SERVE-OBEY, the Emperor's binding spell screamed, squeezing tight enough to make him gasp.

Then-

OBEY-PROTECT, and Roy wanted to weep.

Then I will destroy him, Roy thought.

OBEY-OBEY-OBEY the spell cried, and Roy wept with the pain of it.

But he could endure, if he had to. For that end, he could endure.