Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ I Skip the Little Ones ❯ Theme 2: Gunshot ( Chapter 2 )

Theme 2: Gunshot

Mercy

 

The little stray dog - well, I suppose it was my dog now - hiked his leg and began to pee against the wall. I reacted quickly, remembering how my maternal grandfather had trained dogs: “When they're bad, use a loud noise because they're ears are good and it will scare them. And something moving fast, because dogs see movement better than stillness, right sweetheart? I use my gun.”

 

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

 

The metal beneath my hand felt solid, reliable, for about a millisecond. Today was not a good day to be firing a gun. Already, the horrors of war felt as if they had been creeping up on me today, threatening to overpower me, something I simply couldn't have. But with the final ringing gunshot, I was back in that God-forsaken desert.

 

I was crouching in a dilapidated tower. A tank regiment had been through the area, so it was a miracle the tower was still standing. With each explosion the tower rocked. I found myself question the assessment of the tower given to me by that guy in Intelligence. What was his name? Huggs? Hughes? I hoped he gave me the right location.

 

A large number of Ishbalan rebels had holed themselves into a still-intact house on the other side of the new, rubble-filled square. My assignment was to take them out. Mine, and mine alone. I grimly put my eye to the scope.

 

A shadow moved, and I reacted without thought. Bang! Recoil, pull back, reload, wait. A figure dressed in tan fell into my view, but I refused to look at the corpse.

 

Another shadow moved, and I switched my focus to it. My finger twitched toward the trigger. Then I froze, unable to kill the person in my sight.

 

It was a mother. A mother and her drowsing infant. “How can I shoot them? They can't even fight! They're just civilians!” My orders were to shoot every Ishbalan I saw, but I had been led to believe we were fighting against rebels only, not innocent civilians. My CO had even told me that they had moved all the civilians out of the area, and that I was to shoot anything that wasn't in Military Blues.

 

As I knelt there, torn between my morality and my orders, my choice was taken from me. The building exploded, the nearby structures bursting into flame regardless of their stone construction. A man in white and blue stood in the clearing dust. I could barely see him and his long, black hair, but I could hear his laugh clearly over the screams and sounds of collapsing homes. It was a maniac's laugh. It seeped into my mind, making me irrationally afraid. (Later, I would learn that State Alchemists had joined the war, but at that point the explosion had confused me.)

 

I looked for the woman and her baby. The woman's clothing was aflame, and she screamed and tried to beat out the flames with her hand, but her desperate attempts only made the fire worse. Soon she was almost completely engulfed. The infant in her arms wailed as the heat climbed over his blankets.

 

Setting my eye to the scope, I fired.

 

Twice.

 

My palm sweats around the cool metal, and I could feel the overpowering disgust creep up on me, the hollow emptiness that threatened to take my mind, my soul, whispering, “You have no reason to shoot anyone but yourself, Riza Hawkeye. You are a murder. Murder. Murder. Murder.”

 

“No,” I remind myself. “I have a reason.” And, unbidden, a face rises in my mind and beats those feeling off singlehanded. I square my shoulders and force my face blank, hoping that no one noticed my moment of weakness. For him, I must be strong.

 

“Bad dog,” I tell the terrified puppy.