Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Gomorrah ❯ A Death Of Children ( Chapter 1 )

Central, Amestris. Year: 1933

“Lieutenant?”

A long pause, then Roy calls again, to the same response. He runs a hand through matted hair, the material of his spark gloves filthy and torn from overuse, and he himself dangerously close to the same state. He had never thought such a casual visit could have turned out like this…

She’d just come for a cup of coffee damn it!

Just a cup of coffee, then they’d been attacked, out of nowhere, out of the blue with no possible rational motive. They’d separated, and now…

“Lieutenant Hawkeye!”

His voice is growing more desperate as he leans against a wall, the shadows and raven-black hair hiding his expression. Behind that veil, his eyes are glassed with desperation, his skin dotted with sweat, dotted with worry. He’d heard from a few locals of a woman running through the streets, pursued by two men nobody had ever seen before. There had been five, but three corpses now lay in the streets, their remains charred and barely recognizable.

His hands clench tight, then he pushes himself from the wall and walks on, his white dress shirt soaked with rain and speckles of ash.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant -”

Air suddenly slips from between his lips in a hushed gasp, eyes alighting on the splatters of red he’s nearly stepping on. His head jerks up, wide eyes scanning the alley he is walking through for life, but there is nothing. Only more blood. There are footsteps in places, red smears on the cobblestone walk, and his eyes take in everything, envisioning Riza in his mind’s eye, clutching a wound and walking as best she can, gasping, bloody, smeared with red.

And then he sees her. In a crumpled heap against the side of the building, she sits with her head down in a pool of red. There is so much blood… So much blood…

“Lieutenant!”

She doesn’t respond, and he breaks into a flat out sprint, crouching beside her when he reached her huddled form. Her hair is still done up, though a few strands have fallen out and frame her face in limp strands- a sight he is unaccustomed to seeing. Not wasting time to even check if she is conscious, he carefully peels away her shirt, stained with blood at the chest. Her entire front is stained with it, dyed a crimson red that is shocking against the white. The shot just missed her heart. She is cold though, deathly cold, and her face is pale even against her shirt.

“Sir?”

Her head comes up slightly, eyes surprisingly focused, though filled with pain. The sweat on her face is mingled with blood, but she manages a rattling gasp before she speaks, her voice soft and brittle like glass.

“They caught me by surprise sir….” She winces, manages a smile, and for an instant a thought of hope flits through his mind. Maybe, he thinks desperately, maybe she’ll be alright, maybe she won’t die.

His fingers are smeared crimson as he brings them up to smooth her hair back, already gathering reassurances in his mind. “It’ll be alright Lieutenant,” he tells her, surprised at just how level his voice sounds, how calm, how collected. “Help’s coming, hold on.”

But her eyes meet his, level and calm, just like his own voice, and she conveys with a glance she knows he’s lying. A smile twitches her lips, weakly, and she brings a hand up to brush his face. Her skin is so clammy and cold, as if she’s dead already, but he stubbornly forces the thought from his mind, concentrating instead on how lovely she looks, catastrophically beautiful, her face smeared with the blood on his hands.

“Sir…”

“Don’t talk Lieutenant, you’ll only make it worse,” he tells her, voice clipped and harsh. With an effort he forces himself to look back down the alley, as if he is searching for the ambulance he knows is coming. Don’t die…

“Sir… you’re-” Abruptly, with a suddenness that scares him, blood pushes itself up from within her, flowing in a thick red river down her chin as her body pushes itself up reflexively, coughing. It splatters onto the street, mixed with tears he could have sworn he’d been holding in.

“You’re crying Sir…”

Strange how, even now, they adhere to military titles, Roy thinks vaguely, shifting his grip around her. Strange how, even as she lies dying, she manages to remain so calm, while he himself is crying - as she’d pointed out.

“Riza,” he breathes, clutching her tighter, bowing his head over her. She’d just come for a cup of coffee damn it! A few hours ago she’d been talking with him of the weather, telling him that it would probably rain later this afternoon - though not then, the clouds weren’t quite heavy enough for it just yet - and now she was lying in blood, dying. She’d just come for coffee! A god damned cup of coffee!

Just as tears begin to force their way out, he notices that Riza’s eyes have gone blank. Her skin white, body limp, strength gone. Her hair still sways in the wind, giving the illusion of life, and for a moment he thinks it may have been a dream. Nothing more than a horrible, horrible dream…

He looks up through the rain, through his tears, and all he sees is sky.   o  

Resembool, Amestris.

Winry, sweeping a stray lock of hair behind her ear, sighs as she twisted a final bolt into place. She loves her job, loves it to death, but sometimes…

The arm she just finished is for a man of about twenty-eight, and he lost his up to the shoulder. Sliced clean off, and they had to extend the attachments into his torso so his body could support the weight, so they could connect the right nerves, for the right neurons to fly, so quickly, directing a blade, a fist, a gentle brush of the knuckles, smooth and…

It’s just like his.

And, with a small smile, she notices that she’s forgotten a screw, the one right at the wrist, the one he always kept losing, the only screw he ever really noticed, even though, to him, they all looked the same. She palms a screwdriver and (carefully, as if she’s doing it for him) she places the screw in it’s niche, and with a few deft turns it is in its place, complete.

She sighs, setting the arm aside and picking up the beginnings of another arm to begin, but somehow, she cannot bring herself to start on it. Her eyes keep drifting to the finished arm, and she keeps seeing him… And looking up and past it, a faded backdrop against the automail arm, she sees one of the pictures she has tacked up on a bulletin board above her workspace, the one of him kneeling beside Den, grinning with one hand on the dog’s head. She misses moments like that, everyday things that no one else cares about but mean the world to her. It’s those things she remembers most about him - shopping trips, repairing his automail, talks they had, a time they went swimming, things like that - things she treasures and hopes never to forget.

But it’s those things that cause her the most pain too.

It’s just that… thinking about it always makes her miss him. Whenever she’s swamped with memories like this, it’s oftentimes too painful to think about. She’ll never see him again, and it hurts so badly… The picture is blurring through her tears, and, in a sudden release of emotion, she buries her head in her arms and cries. She sobs, her body shaking.

She loved him, and it hurts so much sometimes. They say time heals all, but that’s not always true… Sometimes, wounds are too deep, bonds too strong, and when things like that happen, and they’re just gone… And she wants to remember sometimes, all of it, and pore over memories one by, one, filling in forgotten details and restoring them, so that she will never forget.

Sometimes.

Other times, reliving the memories is too painful. Just a recollection of his face is too much for her too handle, and this is one of those times. Just as she is allowing herself to break down however, allowing the walls to crumble and the memories to swamp her, the phone rings, loud and discordant against her suppressed sobs. Hastily wiping tear tracks from her face, she rises and walks to the kitchen, lifting the phone from its cradle and collecting herself.

“Hello?”

“Miss Winry Rockbell?” The voice that speaks is middle-aged, male; one she doesn’t recognize.

“This is her.” The memories fade as she concentrates on the phone, bottled up and stored away in layers of cotton balls and Styrofoam packaging.

“I’m calling on behalf of Roy Mustang,” the man tells her, and immediately a sense of dread fills her. It’s not the mention of Roy’s name - they made their peace long ago - but something else. Something is telling her this man bears bad news; the tone of his voice, the clipped, controlled quality… She waits, cradling the phone with both hands, and the man continues.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Riza Hawkeye died yesterday.” There are no gentle words, no softening of the phrase with words like ‘passed away’; only the truth.

“How?” Winry asks softly, sinking into a nearby chair, the phone gently held to her ear as if she were afraid it would break and be gone, just like Riza.

“She was attacked and shot,” the man replies, his tone clipped and calm, completely detached. He doesn’t care; he didn’t know her. “Her funeral will take place this Sunday; you’re invited. Again, I’m very sorry.”

There is silence for a moment, then a muffled click.

Dial tone. o  

Central, Amestris

He sees Winry Rockbell at the funeral, seated two rows back and four chair to the right. She’s dressed nicely, a semi-formal winter dress in a lovely maroon color that suits her nicely, but he doesn’t give her much further thought. He’s too fixated on the coffin in front of him. Riza’s money was used to pay for it, but he picked it out. It’s nice, a dark wood that he knows will stand against the elements for years to come, but what it looks like isn’t at all important. He doesn’t love the coffin.

It’s closed and he can’t see her, but he wishes he could, just one last time. And after the ceremony is finished, he doesn’t move. He just sits quietly, watching the people file by her coffin to bid her farewell.

The pallbearers come forward after everyone has paid their respects, smoothly lifting the coffin from it’s stand. He was asked to be one, and he accepted, but at the last minute he backed down. When he saw that coffin, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it, to pick her up and lay her in the ground, because when he did, everything was final. When they place her in the ground, it will tell him once and for all that she was gone, and he knew he couldn’t handle that. And to be the one to do it…

They take her out, and he follows at the back of the small crowd, hands shoved in his pockets and eyes empty. It’s a bad time for a burial, he thinks, a long-dead leaf crunching beneath his dress shoes; the ground is hard and it’s cold out - no one wants to stand for long in weather like this - but he wants it done today.

The grave was dug yesterday, set on the edge of the yard, and all the pallbearers have to do when they reach it is lower the coffin in. They do so slowly, with great respect, ignoring the icy earth they kneel on that Roy can somehow feel, as if it’s seeping through his shoes to invade him. And yes, he can feel it in his chest too, gripping and cold in a way that hurts.

“Mustang?”

He brings his head around slowly, eyes yearning to remain on Riza’s coffin, no matter how it pains him to watch it lowered into the earth, but he turns toward Winry. She is standing beside him on his blind side, eyes wet with tears and hands clasped, her small frame drawn in upon itself, and he says nothing, simply waiting.

“I’m sorry for… for this,” she whispers, apologizing with downcast eyes. She speaks to the ground, unable to face him. He knows this because when she looks up, he sees that her bright blue eyes are filled with tears, and her hands wring themselves in silence.

It’s these words more than anything that suddenly make it impossible to bear. For as he stares at her, her silent sorrow, people standing behind her with heads bowed, something within him breaks.

And he shakes his head, turning, and walks away. o

The key is icy in his fingers, numbing them as he stands fumbling with it as his door. Eventually getting it into the lock the right way he gives it a small twist, swinging open the door to darkness and silence. It seems empty, even when he flicks on the light and walks into the kitchen. Everything is silent and cold, as if it’s frozen too.

He heads for the cupboard above the refrigerator, pulling from its recesses a bottle of wine. It’s good wine, warm and strong, and it’s just what he needs. Something to drown himself in, lose himself in, forget himself in. A small glass wine cup receives the liquid, and he raises it to his lips, sipping it slowly, then setting it on the counter.

And there, on the refrigerator door he sees it, and it’s like a knife to the heart in its callous cruelty. A picture of Riza and himself, sitting at a café table. It was Hovac he thinks, who had taken it, over a year ago. He nearly lit the man on fire, the camera too. But he’s kept it, because he likes looking at the tilt of her head, the way her hair is caught in the wind when he is so accustomed to seeing it pinned back and up.

And looking at that picture, at the pink of her lips and the sparkle in her eyes, he makes his decision. He reaches for it, sliding the corner from beneath the magnet and simply holding it in his hands, staring. He doesn’t even notice when the glass he’d set down teeters on the edge of the counter, falls just a little too far, and shatters on the ground below, the wine flowing across the floor. It is quick like water, red like blood…

He’s going to bring her back.

End Chapter 1