FMA: Just Once
A long time ago (okay, two months), prompt 114 at fma_fic_contest was "Yoki". I won 3rd place! bay115 made the banner that still makes me laugh to look at. :)
Title: Just Once
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist (manga/Brotherhood)
Word Count: 561
Rating: PG (brief language, very mild violence)
Summary: Bravery gets you killed. Yoki knows this.
Warnings: SPOILERS through to chapter 93/episode 52.
Author's Notes/Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist and all associated characters, settings, etc., belong to Hiromu Arakawa-san. The only profit I make from this work of fiction is my own satisfaction and, possibly, the enjoyment of others.
Yoki was a miserable wretch of a coward, and he knew it.
He didn’t much care, either. He’d known many a fellow soldier who walked into Ishval and rode back on a train, in a body bag.
Bravery got you killed.
So he jumped at Captain Manson’s offer to train him up to be his replacement as the officer-in-command at Youswell. The mining community was not very prosperous - not very big - not very important, but Yoki didn’t care about any of that if it kept him off the front lines. Besides, he had ideas for how to improve Youswell, and after Manson’s heart attack and Yoki’s subsequent promotion to lieutenant, he had the authority to implement them. Not that it lasted long.
Afterwards, he wondered what exactly had possessed him to follow the man called Scar. He’d just seen the mad Ishvalan explode the head of one man and tear apart another’s arm, after all - but was staying in the tiny Ishvalan slum after he’d betrayed their trust any better? Yoki could see the anger in their eyes, and he didn’t shy away from admitting that he was frightened of what they’d to him. The Ishvalan terrorist had shown no indication that he, at least, was out for Yoki’s blood, and surely he’d appreciate a servant. Yoki had never minded being a kiss up if it got him somewhere, and right then living in the slum had gotten him nowhere.
Of course, he hadn’t bargained on getting caught up in a ridiculously far-fetched scheme to save the country from an apparently immortal, inhuman… thing. Some days he woke up and hoped it was all a fever dream, that he was really safe in his mansion at Youswell - only to see the sunrise glinting off Alphonse Elric’s armored body (and he’d never really received an understandable explanation for that, either) or find the little Xingese girl’s carnivorous cat gnawing at his toes. Some nights he couldn’t even sleep for fear he’d wake to yet more storybook terrors coming to life and trying to eat them all. The knowledge that someone from this odd group kept a watch every night to prevent that very thing didn’t help.
And when he and Marcoh eavesdropped on those soldiers in Kanama, he certainly didn’t plan on risking his own life, no matter what crazy ideas Marcoh was hatching.
But when he saw the people who had, despite everything, become his friends, in deadly peril from a maniac and a monster, Yoki somehow found himself sliding into the driver’s seat of the solders’ car. He didn’t want to die - but he knew that if Kimblee and Pride killed Alphonse and Marcoh and, hell, probably even Heinkel, there’d be no hope for the entire country.
So he slammed his foot onto the gas, howling - not a brave war cry, but a shriek of disbelief and terror - as he yanked the wheel to the right, slamming the car into the creepy, shadow-wielding freak of nature.
Unstoppable tears prevented him from seeing the homunculus fly into the air, but later he would remember the glorious thunk as the car hit it, and the disbelief in Marcoh’s voice as he exclaimed, “I never thought you would come!”
“I couldn’t let you guys have all the glory!” Yoki blustered around his tears. “I deserve to look cool once in a while, too!”
END