Word Count: 250 (Please, one extra zero?)
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: If I were Hiromu, Seiji Mitzushima would have been assasinated.
Setting:Anime-verse, Ishval war. Spoilers for death of the Rockbells.

A/N: My attempt at writing succinctly. Damn word limits. Written for the lj community fma_fic_contest prompt: "Giving Orders," in which it won 3rd place. It's more about not being able to give orders, if that makes sense. Sigh.

As per usual, I don't know what this is.

Sink Sank Sunk

It was a bitter recognition of his inabilities, of all the poor choices he'd ever made. The regret stuck under the gunpowder residue on his shaking hands, now sticky from his sweat… Sticky like the blood pooling on the floor. He would sink in it. He would drown.

What. The fuck.

The beloved doctors lay lifeless on the floor, a broken picture of one of their many gifts to the world between them. The little girl was beautiful. Now she would cry for the rest of her life.

What had he done?

He dropped the pistol, barely able to breathe. He didn't give commands; he just did what he was told! This was the army, damn it.

He was not to blame.

No, not him. He did what was asked. It was his leader's fault, the fault of whoever thought this appropriate in the first place. They gave him a job. He was only following orders.

Good God.

The master of excuses somehow managed to keep standing on the ground beneath him as the world collapsed. He put his head in his hands. There was no denial, now… Nowhere to run, because he couldn't run from himself. He sank into a sea of self-loathing and sorrow and shame and let it swallow him whole... He was supposed to be a saviour, a hero, but he couldn't stop this war. He couldn't make peace with the shattered pieces of the lives he had just taken.

…You Monster.

Into the dark, he sunk.

/end

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