-31- [ dream ]
It’s all gone dark, deep blackness in every direction. You want to believe that it’s ash or smoke from the fires or dust from that last blast, but you know better. No matter how you squint or rub your eyes, no matter how many tears stream out this is not a blackness you will never be able to see through. Though in the end, it probably won’t matter. You haven’t got long to live. Maybe you can’t see it, but you can feel the blood spreading.
“Colonel!”
But that’s wrong. Isn’t it wrong? What is right, here? Shouldn’t he still be a major? Shouldn’t you be a cadet? Shouldn’t he still be your dreamy-headed Mr Mustang? Or no. No. That’s too far. His name is much too far, one way or the other. Roy has scars and marks and battlefields on his body. You know them all by heart, his skin a map of softened old scar tissue beneath your palms. But Mr Mustang has an untinted smile, unbroken skin, a mind not chained by circumstance. But you can’t see and he doesn’t answer. His voice would be enough to tell which one he was but the explosions. You can’t hear him, can’t even tell if he’s still there.
Your hands are sticky as you struggle to stand. It can’t be long now. You’ve seen fellow soldiers die from a bullet to the stomach before. You know it can’t be long. The blood turns you blue uniform dark, spreading from the hole just below your last rib, all attempts to staunch it failing. The pain is at once phenomenally unbearable and so far away that you can barely feel it.
But it’s all right. You’ve expected this from the very beginning of this journey. He had always said that dying in the gutter like trash was a possibility and you always knew it was the truth. It’s better, at least, than the last time. You’re blind again, the same as then, but there is less fear. Less malice. This is as peaceful a death as a soldier can expect.
“Dawn?”
The name slips out without a single thought. You hope she’s not here, in this mess. She shouldn’t be, she never was, but as the blood leaks out, feeling thick over your slowing fingers, already cooling towards death, your mind wanders. You think of her, of your family. You can almost see her, sitting with you in the hallway outside your father’s study, waiting to hear him snore to see if he’s fallen asleep at his desk again. She sits beside you as if she was always with you. As if they were all always with you and you were never alone and in shadow. Spencer in the library, reading with you and listening when you tell him everything. Sebastian in the kitchen, taking tea with you even though your feet don’t quite reach the floor from the height of the chair yet. Hughes and Priscilla in the back yard, watching the moon with you. Scar at the dinnertable when your father wouldn’t come down and eat with you. And Roy - Mr Mustang, then - sitting by your bed, just talking. For hours.
You were never lonely, not in this fictional past. You had friends, you weren’t isolated. You aren’t isolated. It’s not quite right and you know it, but it’s not quite wrong either. It is nicer to remember this than the truth and your head has little room for hard things.
It’s like this war. Who are you fighting? Ishbalans? No, you’d be just barely twenty-one if that were true, and you’d never had met all those people you filled your past with. It could be werewolves or zombies or elves. Homunculi. It could be everything you’ve ever fought in your whole life. Doesn’t matter much now.
You can feel the flames. A building on fire, or a village. Or a forest. You can’t recall what you saw before you lost your sight. But it’s all right. You stumble forward and the fire licks at you, hot against your face.
“Colonel!”
The sound of your desperation is swallowed by the roaring of the blaze. If only you could find him. Could know he was all right. Could apologize for failing him. But this will have to be enough. He’s here somewhere, he must be because of the flames. You reach forward and the fire welcomes you, catching your skin and your blood and your clothing and as it burns it feels like life. And it feels right. The fires that created you, that forged you from something raw into a tome, into a weapon. Now they are the same as those that destroy, as if they always were. You’ve been burning forever by the time the fire lights on you, at once unbearable and soothing. Just like it always has been.