Mustang leaned on the sink and stared in the mirror. His eyes were glazed over and his eyes sagged from various overindulgences. Alcohol and loose women did little to calm the storm that silently raged on inside of his heart. Burning ambition, self-loathing, guilt, and arrogance boiled over in a confusing emotional cacophony.

How many had he killed? Thousands? The scale of his crime was so great that sometimes he couldn't even grasp the concept that he lent his skills to genocide. It was ugly and sinful, but he took part in it. He knew it was wrong, and he still did it.

There was one memory that stuck with him, and for some reason, he found it at the bottom of every empty bottle of liquor.

One day in Ishval, he received an intelligence report and an order to destroy an enemy stronghold. He held the paper in his hand and read every line with the passion of someone who felt that what he was doing was best for his country. He performed his duty as a human weapon, and from the charred remains of the building, a person emerged. Burning and screaming, Mustang could make out the details of the girl's burning dress as she ran aimlessly, and knew from her height that he was not looking at an adult.

She collapsed not far from him, and Mustang watched her burn. When the screaming finally stopped, he felt relieved. As that girl died, she saw something very few people ever saw on Roy Mustang—fear. Complete, soul-shattering fright seized him as he stared down at the charred corpse of that child and realized that he had played a part in something truly and undeniably evil.

Mustang didn't believe in any god. That was something he gave up when his parents died. In his mind, whether or not god existed was irrelevant. If there was a god, he didn't care about what happened to humankind. If there wasn't, it didn't matter what he felt about it. Ishval really reinforced his belief, but there were dark times he wished someone would step in with some great power and end what was happening there.

He thought about his teacher, Master Hawkeye, and wondered why the man who taught him how to murder never told him what it felt like to be damned. During his training, Mustang thought frequently about his master's relationship to his daughter, Riza. It was as if Riza's father was unable to love her, turning instead to rot and die. The older Hawkeye told Mustang that an alchemist died when they stopped thinking and studying their craft.

Looking back, Mustang understood.

Master Hawkeye had a killer's eyes, which softened at times to the eyes of someone sentenced to death. He divorced himself from life, preferring to focus his attention away from the one person he should have loved—Riza.

Mustang followed in his master's footsteps, distancing himself from Riza, even though she stayed at his side just as she had stayed with her father. Some part of him hoped she'd leave the military someday and find happiness, but Roy knew that when he died, she would probably be there. Mustang understood his ambitions would probably cost him his life, and that once that was gone, Riza would take her own. He would never declare his love for her, and she would never lay with him like a lover, but they would die together.

In the darkest corner of his mind, he hoped she would at least be buried beside him.

Mustang turned on the water and splashed his face with cold water. Pushing the dark thoughts out of his mind, he spoke to the blonde tangled up in the bed sheets in the next room. "I have to go. I have work tomorrow."

"You could sleep here."

"I have things to work on at home," he answered.

Riza was the only woman he would ever allow himself to rest with.

Mustang walked home, mind reeling from random memories of Ishval, his master, Riza, and Hughes. He was thirty years old and his life was nothing like the one he dreamt up when he first chose to study alchemy. He became an alchemist to help people, yet the largest use it had seen was something indescribably horrible that brought agony to the very people he wanted to help.

At some point after Ishval, his own life became something he no longer wished to suffer. One night, he put a gun in his mouth and tried to pull the trigger, telling himself he deserved it. And, as the taste of gunmetal filled his mouth, Mustang knew he couldn't do it.

It wasn't an equivalent exchange.

His life wasn't equal to those he had taken. The dark path he walked started when he took the one thing for which there was no equivalent exchange—a human life. The scale would never balance, no matter how many lives he saved or what good he did in the world. Even taking his life would be a sad joke compared to the bodies stacked on the other side of the scale.

Then, Mustang wanted to walk away from the war, but he knew that if he did, someone else would simply be called in to do his job. The Ishvalans he was assigned to kill were going to die no matter what he said or did. He couldn't save anyone, not even himself.

Mustang found his fire in that helplessness. He wanted power, so that his decisions carried weight. He wanted to never have to take another order from someone who would abuse the deadly art he mastered. He wanted to be the top dog.

He wanted to become Fuhrer.

Since his decision made no difference, Mustang decided he could use the Ishvalan war to push himself up politically. Every time Mustang snapped his fingers, his resolve hardened as more damned lives propped him up. He was decorated, promoted, and declared the 'Hero of Ishval.'

Because of those lives he took to climb the ladder of the military, he refused to look back or give up. He knew he would either achieve his goal, or die.

Ambition burned in his chest so hotly that other people felt. His subordinates were willing to follow him into hell and with each day that passed, it became clear that might be required of them. Because of his ambition, they met homunculi, allied with souls bound into armor, stumbled upon horrible experiments, and found even more evidence that pointed to the fact that there was something incredibly evil in their country, pushing it toward destruction.

The homunculus and the one they referred to as 'Father' touted some superiority, as if they were more evolved than humans. He intended to do some serious attitude adjustment by reducing them to unidentifiable piles of ash. They could 'evolve' all they wanted to, but as long as they were alive, he could incinerate them. That was all that really mattered.

Mustang pulled on his gloves and stared at his hands, knowing the power to kill thousands or save his country was right there at his fingertips, daring him to snap his fingers and burn away the impurities that tainted his country.

His master's words echoed in his mind.

'Everything that lives can burn.'

Mustang put his hands in his pockets, looked toward Central, and whispered, "And burn you will."

Author's note: I can't believe I posted this. Anyway, I usually stay in another fandom but I've been fangirling over Mustang for awhile and had to get it out of my system