A/N: Hello! I'm alive! This chapter was originally planned to be a piece on Havoc and Riza. But then I started writing that, got a small case of writer's block, and stopped. I think a single sentence that popped into my head around two in the morning started this one. That sentence just kept growing...

TheQueenOfMediocrity — thank you, I want to make it so that people can not only see it, but also hear it and taste it and feel it, and to know I took a step towards that is a really good feeling! Thanks!

icarus enjoyed the view — woot! The uber-review! I think I responded to this before, but thanks again, since I could never ever thank you enough for all the help you gave me (I'm even using some of that info for drawing doujin) and everything! I'm kind of updating instead of responding to your email, so sorry (but I'll do that soon! I promise!)

winglessfairy25 — thanks for all the info! I really meant to PM you, but just when I thought life couldn't get more insane, it did. That chapter creeped you out...? oops, sorry! Why did it, though? I'll have to go back and re-read... (though, thinking about it, I'm using pretty angsty, creepy themes involving mental sanity and war etc. Ack...) Thank you so much for the wonderful review!

cailceadon flame — wow, thanks so much! I love the feeling I get when a character is in character. I hope you like this chapter!

And without further ado.

Maybe She Was/Arithmetic Dies

"Eight days, fourteen hours." he chanted to himself, mumbling over the desert wind that whipped his black hair into his eyes. "My name is Roy Mustang. I live in Amestris. My apartment is on the corner of Twelfth Street and Meridian. And I have been here for eight days and fourteen hours." the wind rose, and with it rose his feverish words. Drowning him out and pushing him down, trying to pull his soul into the sand. But what soul could he have left? The man blinked rapidly.

"A-and I have a soul." he probably wasn't alone, pacing the edge of the tent line. But no one here gave a damn. He could feel himself sinking towards that sort of existence. His finders thrummed where he knew blood had been; would be again.

Looking up, he could see there was someone near. A woman — no, hell that was a girl, she looked familiar to a hazy memory of a girl, and his vision kept skipping between the two, so he was unable to focus, to pick out a clear image.

But that human (Is she? Am I? Was she?) had to be a woman, because no mere girl looks like that. Her blond hair was cut short with long saffron bangs swept to the side. The dry wind pulled them down, and he watched them skitter across her face, flickering over hard cheekbones and brushing her lips. Maybe she was once beautiful.

But it was as if there was something beneath her skin that most people have — should have; can't survive without — that was missing.

Or was missing not accurate? Broken? His boots paused in the sand, and he could feel tiny, hot auric particles rubbing in his sox. That "something" was there, but it was only a shifting pile of shattered glass and porcelain. Like a broken ballerina statuette — fragments spilled out all over the floor. His image flickered to the whole ballerina, to the girl of whispering memory, to a ballerina spinning whole and perfect on the lid of a carved pine music box; a snapshot of the past as it grappled with the present.

Fainter and fainter those memories appeared. He'd never been anywhere but the desert, he supposed. The soldier with the long dark, eyes and inky hair and broken glass in his mouth whispered to the blinding sun, maybe hoping it would steal the sight from those eyes, since there was no longer any way to brighten them.

"Eight days, fourteen hours..."

She was polishing her gun, hand calloused and rhythmic. The metal shone in the hell-cursed sun. He followed that steady rhythm of her fingertips, winding it into his voice. "Eight days, fourteen hours."

"Useless." the voice was so dead it sounded like the desert itself speaking from the voids of dunes and the carved, shifting valleys where the wind whispers. Like the cold midnight wind that would scream despondently, spawning nightmares and memories for the children of red, red eyes pleading for mercy. No mercy. No mercy! Not for the children and not for themselves.

He realized that it was the woman with the shatter-glass mirage under her skin whose voice he'd heard. She said nothing more. It hardly mattered that it was her who spoke, and not the sands, because there was as much living woman inside her as there was in the sky; as much as the human in him, now. He didn't want to meet her eyes. And she didn't want to meet his.

So he stared at his hands and she at her gun, and he stopped counting.

Useless. Because there is only eternity and in eternity there is only Ishbal.

A/N: Hey, anyone have any scenes they know happened between Riza and Roy in Ishbal? Or any other character (nearly) for that matter. I'm watching the anime online, and trying to record it, and I'm reading the manga, but I can only get so far (since Ishbal, when it comes down to it, is really just an amazingly well done background story). So any suggestions would be awesome! Like, did Riza really have a transmutation circle or something on her back? Did Roy really study with her father? See, I know these from fanfics, so I'm not sure if they were made up or not... sorry for asking so many questions...! please review!

Ps. Hey, lettie, look! I updated! How the heck did that happen?