Howdy, y'all!

So, I really need to just pick an obsession...MysteriousManiac was able to convince me to try anime, and I have since fallen in love with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood because of that recommendation. I've seen all but the last five episodes, and I absolutely adore it. Of course, while watching it, this story started writing itself in my head and...Well, you can see the result for yourself. And I have more ideas yet to write (eventually), if my muse chooses to participate.

And as for the story behind the story, here it is. A friend's birthday came up, so I started writing what was supposed to be a Royai fic, and instead wound up being Royai if you squint really hard in the last two paragraphs and the rest of it was just Mustang angst. Anyway, I wrote it once, and then went to print it and my jumpdrive decided it no longer wanted to work, so I wrote it again, and now, here it is. I've also had this story betaed by the ever-amazing Midorima Kazunari, who helped with grammar, phrasing, and some more structure-y things, so if you've got a chance, check out his stories. He's amazing, particularly if you enjoy Kuroko no Basuke.

Also, a couple fun facts for the story. Joshua is an OC. However, Heathcliff, for those who don't know, is from the Brotherhood OVA "Yet Another Man's Battlefield." It focuses on Hughes and Mustang's days in the military academy and some stuff from Ishval as well. If you haven't seen it, I'd strongly recommend watching it - it's absolutely amazing.

And with my horrendously long author's note out of the way, I think that's it for things to say. I hope you enjoy this story, and if you get a chance, any feedback is much appreciated as always. Until the next, Bookworm

He's too young to remember when he first loses something.

He's a boy then, and he can't be more than three, if he's even that old. Inky spikes of hair that match his eyes fall in his face, obscuring his vision in sections. He's wearing a pair of brown trousers and a white, buttoned up shirt that is messily put on. It looked nice that morning, but has since come undone and is partially untucked, hanging sideways off of his thin frame. He's barefoot, having long abandoned his shoes, and he runs towards where his mother is standing, looking up at her with a wide-open gaze.

"Mom," he beckons, tugging on her sleeve gently. "Mom, have you seen my toy anywhere?"

His mother, hair tied back into a bun at the back of her head like it always is, looks down at him, turning from the laundry she's been hanging up to talk to her son. "Which toy?" she asks. "Maybe I can help you find it."

The boy grins and nods. "It's my toy gun," he explains. "Me and Joshua were going to go play soldiers, but I can't find my gun."

He doesn't particularly notice the way that her smile twitches down for a moment, then back up, as if she's fighting the urge to stop playing pretend. Instead, he watches her smile return as if it had never begun to slip, grinning a bit himself as she squeezes his shoulder.

"No," she says, "I haven't seen that. Let me look with you." Taking the laundry back in so it won't be stolen by any wanderers, she searches the property and even a bit of the area past the property's edges with the boy, looking under beds and on shelves and in cabinets, without any success. They've been searching for nearly an hour when he accepts that his gun is gone. For a moment, he is swept by a temporary wave of sadness as he thanks her for trying and goes to tell Joshua the bad news.

When he arrives, the other boy, a blonde with hazel eyes who looks equally unkempt, is already there, holding his own weapon in hand. When he sees his friend approach, Joshua charges, but the black-haired boy holds him back, explaining what happened and why today, they cannot be soldiers playing games of war.

He's surprised at Joshua's response to the announcement, which is a stubborn refusal to let his playmate leave, and when the other boy finds a broken stick on the ground, the two have found their solution. The dark haired child uses imagination to make himself believe he is holding his beloved toy gun, and he and Joshua play their games, laughing and killing each other time and time again on the battlefield of their mind as the sun watches down over them.

The next time he loses something, it's not as easy to work around and adapt to. He's still young then, about five years old, and he remembers the dark blue of the soldier's uniforms as they stand in front of Joshua's house. They've been playing together again while the dark haired boys' parents go away to some other city he can't quite name – though he does hear the word 'Dublith' a few times and wonders if maybe that's where they've gone – and their game was interrupted by the approach of the Amestrian soldiers.

As the soldiers talk to Joshua's parents, the children are distracted by the sudden appearance of tears on the face of Joshua's mother. They catch words and bits of phrases, like "train accident," "derailed," "no survivors," and living relatives," but can't piece together what's happening just yet, not until his mother turns and looks at the two boys, still crying. She turns to the darker of them, a strange sympathy in her eyes.

"Your parents were killed," she says as gently as she can. "The train coming back from Dublith derailed, with them on it."

It takes a moment for him to understand, but then he grasps it and wishes he hadn't. "When are they coming back?" he asks, hoping she'll respond and say "some day," so that he can at least have hope, but he knows that isn't her way. Instead, she shakes her head, and it's all even more blurry from there. There are words about a woman named Chris who is related to him, and will take him in, something about tragedy, and a goodbye before he finds himself being packed up to go on to a new world.

As he walks out to the waiting military car, he gets the feeling that things will never be the same again and turns back for a moment, before he remembers that a moment won't make this stop and resumes walking again. Waving goodbye, he climbs into the car and it drives away, leaving Joshua and his home behind in a swirl of dust and memories as, in the same breath that took his parents, he loses all certainty and belonging he once had.

The time after, it's his temper that he loses. He's sixteen then, old enough to know what's happening, to know where he lives and who he lives with, and to know what is going on in the world around him. At the time, he's still young, but he can understand enough to know that the country has started to struggle, that a war has broken out over a single shot, and no one is quite sure of where to go from there.

Maybe it's the uncertainty, or maybe it's his fighting nature, or maybe it's the insult aimed at his foster mother that adds onto his growing feeling of uselessness in the mess that is the Civil War that makes him snap and act. Whatever it is, the only thing he's sure of is that they're out in the schoolyard when it happens. One of the other boys, a brown-haired and green-eyed muscular specimen who the others call West, decides to approach him as he kicks pebbles along.

West greets the younger boy with an insult that he ignores, as always, in favor of continuing in his shuffling circles without comment. Fighting is against the rules, after all, and he's trying to obey them as much as possible.

Annoyed at the unsatisfying lack of response, West decides to go for the more physical routes of taunting, grabbing the black-haired boy, and spinning him around, pinning him to the wall with an elbow to the throat. Spitting in his victim's face, West watches the anger that sparks up with a sort of sadistic glee. The answer he's been looking for found, he forgets to watch what he says and ignores the dangerous air he's just set up, continuing on his planned antagonism.

West's victim is able to control his rage through all of the insults, only responding to each cutting remark bitingly in his head. The urge to respond is overwhelming, but he keeps it to himself, knowing that whatever he says can only make things worse. Instead, he bears the taunts about his character, value, and intelligence with a calm demeanor, until the boy holding him makes a dangerous error.

He insults Chris.

"You can't do anything," he says, in his typical juvenile way. "Under all that bravado, you're just a worthless little coward who can't fight or think or do anything except what he gets told to do, aren't you? Then again, that's all anyone could expect out of someone who lives with a whore." He spits the words out like some sort of curse, and that is finally what makes his victim snap. He will take abuses to himself for as long as he needs to, but he refuses to let anyone insult Chris.

West realizes his mistake a second too late as he sees the anger flare up in his target's eyes. He seems to be trying to back away for a moment, but he doesn't have a moment. The dark haired boy, whose hands have been flattened against the wall since the start of the attack, raises a hand now, tightly gripping his opponent's wrist and shoving, freeing himself from his position easily.

Staggering backward, shocked by the other boy's force, West tries to right himself, but moves too slow and catches the rapid strike of his opponent hard on the shoulder. Angry that he's now fighting back, the brown-haired teen responds in kind, but his blow is easily dodged. He has just enough time for his eyes to widen in shock before the same tight grip grabs his wrist and yanks, and he feels a sharp pain on his shoulder as his arm is dislocated.

He yells out as he goes down, but the black-eyed young man isn't listening, instead falling gracelessly on top of West, then rising up to deliver punch after punch to the other boy's face. He's endured this torment since the school year began, and he's kept all his anger locked up inside up until this point, until this moment when he lets it out again and again.

By the time the teachers pull him off of West, his hands are cut and covered in the blood of both boys, and his opponent is on the ground, groaning – face crimson with a split lip, a broken nose, and what will surely be two black eyes, when his body gets around to noticing the beating it has just undergone.

The dark-eyed boy, sweating and still angry but unscathed from the short-lived battle, is sent home early that day, albeit unremorsefully. He doesn't regret what he's done, or the fact that now, West might have the sense to leave him alone.

When he gets home, Chris is beyond angered with his actions, however, and sentences him to some of the less desirable chores around the house as a means of atonement, though they both know it's more like therapy than an actual punishment.

As he finishes upstairs that night, he still holds no regrets, even as he puts the broom back into its proper home and goes to his own bed. He changes into nightclothes with bandaged hands and falls onto his mattress in exhaustion.

The last thought to cross his mind before he falls asleep is that today was the first time in a long while that he's lost his temper, and somehow, he feels relieved to have finally let it all out.

The next loss is among the worst. He's twenty then, no longer a child and expected to deal with loss in a manner befitting an adult. Maybe that's why it's so much more trying for him then, because he can no longer escape to anywhere his problems will not follow him.

He walks up to the door of the Hawkeye manor, through a field of weeds that seem to be the only vegetation capable of growing on this soiled plot of land, reaching the door of the somewhat ramshackle home and knocking in quiet, vague mixture of fear for what lies beyond the door and sorrow that it's come to this.

Riza welcomes him into the home and to her father's room, and then leaves the two men to their peace, or lack thereof.

In this moment, when he's on the brink of losing his master, he's also losing his approval. Seeing the bright blue of the military uniform, Berthold's eyes instantly narrow, his face twisting into a scowl. He speaks of his regrets in teaching his young charge anything, if this is where it will lead, causing a bout of shock and something not entirely unlike pain to flash across the young man's black eyes.

Where have I gone wrong? He wonders briefly. This is only me trying to be more ambitious than the average soldier. He doesn't want to be average, after all – he wants to be more like Hughes, who dreams of protecting someone he's not even met yet; like Heathcliff, who endures the taunts and struggles of the Academy for the sake of his own people. He wants to become bigger than himself.

He mentions, too, to Hawkeye, that he could also go further than this ramshackle little home, but is met with an instant response of negativity. His master does not agree, and his eyes, still piercing blue (which is the only color that seems to show up here – the blue of his eyes, of the young man's uniform, of the sky that looks in through a single window) say as much, narrowing and glaring with all the ferocity that they held when their owner was still healthy.

And then Master speaks of alchemy, of those who practice it, of the military and his thoughts of them. He speaks of danger, and destruction, and worthiness. And in the end, when he's talking of the most important matters – life and death, literally – the latter comes for him. Until this point, he's kept one hand raised to ward off any aid, determined to die with pride and as much dignity as he can muster. But with this final fit of coughing, he can no longer even manage that. Crimson spatters from his mouth onto his precious textbooks as he coughs so hard he falls from where he's seated to the floor.

His apprentice runs forward to try and save him, but is told it's too late for the man who, in his own words, has long since been dead. Coughing out one last breath, a final vow and order, he collapses, eyes wide open in death, meeting it unafraid.

Even though he knows it's pointless, he screams for help, for a doctor. But the dead man's daughter is the only one to respond, and she knows that nothing will save her father anymore. Together, they cry, breaking down by the body of the late Berthold Hawkeye, uncertain of where to go from here, having lost a father and a teacher both. They stay there, crying quietly into each other's shoulders, until long after the night has fallen and the last color he can still see is the bright blue of his own uniform and the red of his master's blood as the sky fades to black outside.

For as bad as losing Berthold is, the second time he faces this loss, it is somehow infinitely worse.

It's later again, by a year and a half or maybe even two. He's no longer entirely sure how much time has passed, or how long he's been away from home, or if there is even such a place. Time passes strangely here, and the days blur together in a smear of sun and sand and blood, the only three things which seem to be in the high abundance anymore.

Looking out from around the sandbags, he finds himself wondering if he's in the wrong place. They claim that he is fighting with the others in Ishval, but at times like this, he swears that this must be hell. There is no place but hell that could be like this – an unforgiving desert with a brutal heat that threatens to peel away their skin, people screaming and running and dying, the bodies of children scattered in droves and pieces over the reddened ground. The sand absorbs the life of those killed on it greedily, then incessantly blows it in his face, making every moment taste of ashes and blood.

It is only now that he understands his master's hesitancy in allowing him to learn this alchemy for the military. He has known since he joined the program that he would be used as a human weapon if the need arose, but it's only now that he's realizing exactly what that means as he tries again to rid himself of the death that pervades every corner of this place.

As he rises and runs and snaps his fingers to end the threat of the snipers on the roof though, going ahead to where he sees the scorch marks and scattered corpses that are becoming his unwilling signature, he finds himself being selfish enough to hope death has found him as well. He sees Heathcliff then, holding his own wounds and glaring as he limps up the stairs, a once friend who has since fallen victim to this tragedy.

In his guilt and thankfulness and horror, the man who has become a weapon steps forward to his friend, but Heathcliff is quick to react with a gun, earning him a bullet to the head at Maes' hands. The alchemist himself, however, barely even feels the impact of the bullet on his watch, though it sends him to the ground, because he's lost the ability to feel much of anything and because he's trying to make sense of Heathcliff's question.

"How could you?"

Perhaps the worst part is that lying there, still breathing, alive to take life from others against his own will and drowning in the realization of what it was Master Hawkeye was trying to say that last day, he realizes that he has no answer.

It's not long after Heathcliff's loss that he starts to lose more and more. He loses his conviction, but Hughes forcibly returns that to him. Fighting not to die, the man from the Academy refuses to let the hero of Ishval just give up. Maes knows that any time someone's willing to take on a group of humanity at its worst for the sake of protecting one individual, they have too much at stake to give up.

And so Hughes pushes the alchemist and helps him, and sometimes drags him along until he stands on his own two feet again. Together, they surge onward. Together, they lose their ability to wait for the world to change, and they support each other as best they can in this pit. When Riza finds herself in the effort, they support her as well, all three of them riding tandem through life in a hope of making it across the finish line.

They hold each other up, and they make damn sure that they will all survive.

If it is the last thing they do, they will fight, and they will live, and they will never let this happen again.

Years later, Ishval has ended for everyone except those involved, whose minds are permanently stained with sand, who can no longer function without flashing back and still tasting the blood. It's in a pleasant little room that he suffers his next loss, in a series of ongoing ones as Grumman declares checkmate and takes another piece.

Frowning, the dark eyed man considers that he should have seen that coming with a vague sense of annoyance. At the same time though, this is good practice. It teaches him how to defend and where, what moves to take and what moves to avoid. Here, lessons are learned efficiently and the only losses sustained are plastic pieces. They, at least, are easily replaced and regained.

Humans are not so easy to retrieve.

He remembers that later, when he's lost the most he has lost in ages in one terrible swoop and finds himself standing over a grave. Maes Hughes, 29 years old, Brigadier General and dead in the ground. The exact opposite of where he swore he'd be, and where everyone knew he deserved to be.

His friend tries hard to keep his jaw clenched as Elicia screams, tries hard to stay together as they throw on dirt, tries hard to keep his grip on himself intact until finally the last of the people move away. And then he finds that he's searching for something adequate to say, something that might be able to portray just how deeply the loss of his friend has torn at him and rubbed him raw. He draws a blank, feeling useless as he stands there, saying words he doesn't even hear himself.

In his mind, all he can see is blood, leaking from the telephone booth where Hughes was slumped. He can still smell the rusty scent of it that throws him back to Ishval, but above all else, he can hear the silence which answered him the night Hughes called.

He's never heard a silence which screams quite like that.

Standing here now, he looks down, fists clenched in the rain, and he makes a vow to himself on his life and Hughes', swearing on both a dead man and a living one, that he will hunt down and kill whatever bastard has done this. He will become a flame of vengeance, and he will burn the world down if that's what it takes to find his culprit. He will avenge Hughes, if it is the last thing he is allowed to do.

It's the least he can do, to repay the debts he owes to his now-dead conscience, who for so long has kept him tethered to sanity.

And maybe, he hopes, if he gets his revenge, he will become lucky, and Hughes will not join the cast of those who die in his dreams.

He doesn't even realize he's lost anything else until Riza's pointing a gun at his head.

Another year has come and gone, give or take, and they've finally found the Homunculus named Envy, the one who was foolhardy enough to admit to his crimes. And now that they've got him, he lets the rage out as he chases the creature through the tunnels, burning his eyes and his flesh and his tongue until he catches up with Envy, who is then trying to harm someone else.

That is what really makes him break. Before he can stop himself, his already overflowing rage doubles, and he's snapping his fingers time and time again. This time for Hughes. This time for Elicia. This time for what he's done to them all. This time for, this time for, this time for… He knows after a while that he will run out of times to kill Envy long before he will run out of reasons, and the thought enrages him once more. He can't even make the bastard pay for his crimes.

Instead, he crushes him under one boot, prepared to break him, when he feels the gun pointed at his head. In his anger, he can't remember why, but he gets the feeling that it's something important. It's not until he's been lectured by his enemy and a child that he realizes anything's even wrong, but it's the Lieutenant speaking that really fills him in.

She tells him to settle. She tells him that this hatred will not save him or bring Hughes back, and she tells him more without saying a word.

And then she does speak, and she tells him that she will keep her vow and then she will take her own life if he continues down this path, because even now, she retains her honor. She will not break the vows she's made. She refuses and has the right to do so.

It's not until that moment that he lets himself be really pulled back down to earth, sending an array of sparks into the side tunnel instead of into the Homunculus near him.

This time, when he has lost himself and his conviction and his dreams, it is not Hughes who reminds him of what he's dreaming of and can't forget. This time, it is her in his stead, who tethers him to the ground. And where once Hughes stood, now she does, taking his responsibilities as the black-haired man's keeper upon herself; taking his worries as her own worries.

This time, it is Riza who brings him back, because she is the one thing he has left that he can't afford to lose.