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The still-growing border wars in the south against Creta and Aerugo remind him of his days in Ishval. The air is thick with gunpowder and adrenaline. The smell of death and burnt flesh and decay. The same dead eyes are reflected in every passing soldier. Still, it’s different enough that Roy Mustang can remember where he is most days. He isn’t as lost to the memories and trapped in his head as he expected to be.
Ishval was a genocide, a massacre, that had them razing towns and homes for the sake of causing as much death, destruction, and mayhem as they could. They razed Ishval down until it was less than the ruins of Xerxes.
At least this war was an actual war. Soldiers fighting soldiers. Not the cold-blooded killing of civilians at the behest of their Fuhrer. It’s not the slaughter of unsuspecting towns.
Here, in this border war that grew too big too fast, there are trenches. Great, ever growing trenches that mark their victories as Amestris takes back its land and then more. They still fight in passing towns, there are plenty of them around the border and neither side will pass up the chance for a genuine shelter. Roofs over their head and walls that don’t shake in the wind.
The battles over the border towns remind him of Ishval the most. The enemy soldiers grow bold in the occupied buildings, thinking the stone walls and tight corners of alleys and grouped buildings might give them an advantage. They’re wrong, of course, but the idea sticks with the enemy and it gives them a stronger drive to fight back.
The Cretan and Aerugonian forces used to win these battles more often than not. The towns on the border usually favor their non-Amestrian rulers. The cultures tend to be more similar, and it’s hard to manage an entire country. A handful of towns on the far edge weren’t nearly as important as keeping Central, and more recently the East, under tight scrutiny and control. The North can handle itself.
The enemy hasn’t won a single dispute over the towns since the State Alchemists were brought in.
Where the stone walls and tight corners used to be an advantage for matched soldiers wielding nothing more than guns and explosives, they’ve since become a death sentence in the face of Mustang’s flames and Kimblee’s explosions. The buildings they used for cover could be turned into a tomb before they would have even a chance to evacuate.
At least this war gives grace to civilians caught in the middle. They are given a warning before the armies reach their homes. It’s their choice to flee to the safety of Amestris or take their chances with the other side.
It is also their choice to stay and die in their homes. If they choose to stay, they choose to die; in the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s by his hand, another alchemist’s, or just a soldier with a gun. The Flame Alchemist is still responsible for the death of civilians, but at least the ones he kills now choose to stay in his line of fire. It’s not a comfort, but he made peace with being a monster a long time ago.
Civilians getting caught in the crossfire isn’t a worry when the fighting gets far enough away from the sparse towns. These battles are fought in mirrored trenches of the armies trying to push their border just that much further out.
The trenches present their own challenges and advantages for the soldiers and State Alchemists who’ve joined the fray. They were initially designed with normal soldiers in mind. Created to withstand the typical destruction one could expect when putting hundreds of men with deadly weapons in an in-ground labyrinth of destruction. It was designed to handle the explosions of weapons and to protect against bullets, not the physics-defying destruction of alchemy.
The reintroduction of the State Alchemists was, of course, to the benefit the Amestrian army. It was so much easier to blindly target attacking soldiers when you knew they would be huddled in the same type of eight-foot-wide tunnel as you, just 80 yards south. Kimblee’s explosions have never hit truer, and if you bother to ask him, he’ll say his work has never been duller. Mustang’s flames are inescapable in the pits they place themselves in for protection. The fire will get them or the heat or the lack of clean air. It’s efficient and they’ll all die in the end either way.
For the Amestrian soldiers dealing with the physics-defying and destruction-prone alchemists, it’s another story entirely.
There are always benefits, of course. Mustang’s flame alchemy is a boon on the dark nights when the temperature drops because the light and warmth of campfire is always just a snap away. Their forces never had to search far for clean water when they have the former apprentice of the Freezing Alchemist, Major Corin who is much more adept at boiling water than freezing it like his mentor and can always find some underground spring and coax it to the surface. They never have to stress over blackouts when the Thunder Alchemist can direct electricity; though this was a skill learned through much trial and error and hundreds of thousands of cenz worth of property damage until he mastered the delicate skill of feeding just enough electricity through the wires.
In the first few weeks, this brought back fond memories of tormenting the accountants with Edward’s expenditure and damage reports. Even Fullmetal proves himself a valuable asset in the trenches – he is one of the few alchemists present on the front lines with enough finesse, versatility, and speed to create genuinely safe ways to bring in new troops and send the injured or sick back to a camp with a real doctor and then erase all trace of it before it becomes a target for the enemy.
The State Alchemists are useful up until the point they become liabilities. It’s why they are considered dogs of the military – someone needs to keep them at heel.
Tired, hungry, and overworked alchemists in the midst of a warzone are not immune from accidents. A single soldier forgetting to turn on his safety and accidentally shooting the wall of the camp or the door to the sleeping quarters is one thing.
It’s an entirely different affair when the sleep-deprived Flame Alchemist snaps his fingers and misses the firepit, instead hitting the officer’s stash of liquor and setting an entire section of the trench on fire for six hours.
Or when the Crimson Lotus Alchemist gets drunk enough with the other majors that he forgets that he can’t clap along to the singing without having to blow something up – the something usually being a section of the wall, or in a few unfortunate cases, the bottle in his hands that sends shrapnel of glass at himself and fellow soldiers.
Fullmetal’s liability lies more with his age and immaturity than his alchemy, but he’s a liability all the same. There’s no shortage of soldier’s with stories of how they accidentally called him a kid or made a comment about his height and then ended up half buried or trapped in some alchemical earth contraption that he made before thinking about the repercussions (mainly that there is only so much earth around them that isn’t integral to the foundation and stability of their surroundings).
Before the State Alchemists arrived on scene, the trenches were dug by soldiers in unrelenting ever-changing shifts, always expanding their reach and control to out-pace the enemy. This was something that was happily handed over to the alchemists with some understanding of the earth. However, the excitement of having alchemy enhanced trench expansion was something that became just as dreaded as any other alchemists’ mistakes down in the trench.
Soldiers were soldiers were soldiers. Finesse and preciseness were only useful in espionage and assassinations. More than that, State Alchemists were not just soldiers, they also had to be useful in furthering the research and development in alchemy. That’s why so many of them have enough of a theme that they were named for it. Sure, they were all full-fledged alchemists and understood the basics, but when trying to gain a reputation and recognition of your feats, being a jack of all trades was hinderance. It wasn’t enough to be adept at a multitude of areas; it takes too long to draw arrays to be useful on the field. It’s easier to give the alchemists gloves or gauntlets or tattoos with the arrays premade. The military wanted power, perfection, speed, and something to brag about.
In full-fledged war like this, bigger is better. Out of the many alchemists skilled with manipulating the earth and its components, only the ones who can make a show of their potential in battle are granted the title of State Alchemist. Who cares about the small details? There is no need for an architect or designer on the front lines.
So, sure, they have several alchemists who can tear down the earth in front of them, but it was never that simple. As was the case many many times, it comes with the risk of causing a chain reaction further down the trench and causing a collapse of a different section. Or creates such a poorly shaped crater that it is functionally worse than just standing in the open of the no-mans land between the opposing armies. On the rare occasion when they really put their mind to do the job well, it takes longer than regular soldiers with shovels.
So the regular soldiers went back to the mind-numbing and back-breaking work of digging.
That particular job was never thrust onto Mustang. He was a Colonel, and his skills were of no use to expanding their trenches. He was much better suited to taking down the enemy. More than that, alchemists are useful enough to be moved from area to area as needed. He hardly has the time to watch the expansions and is never in the same place long-enough to build a rapport with the soldiers stuck on digging duty.
During the week-long overlap between his and Kimblee’s shifts in the trenches, Mustang notices a distinct up-tick in morale of the average foot-soldiers. It’s clearly taking a hit from having to host three State Alchemists, but it’s still higher than he’s seen in the two-weeks he’s been at this spot. He asks around and finds out that the privates have been temporarily relieved from digging duty. Mustang pushes for a better answer because someone has to keep digging, that’s the whole point of this horrid battle strategy.
Apparently, they’ve put some cocky-up, upstart, and arrogant kid up to the task alone. Mustang assumes it’s an attempt at hazing, but he gets the sinking feeling that he knows exactly who’s been set to the task of extending their homely little trench.
When Mustang reaches the current end of the trench, he sees none other than Major Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist standing on a crate in front of fifteen soldiers like he’s about to do a magic trick or maybe give a lecture, it could go either way with Edward. He knows that every one of these soldiers have somewhere much more important to be. In fairness, he also has somewhere more important to be, but he settles against a wall anyway. He wants to see this play out.
Edward is exuberant, almost manic with the attention he’s being given. “I get that you all think you’re hotter shit than me because you graduated from the military academy or whatever-”
One of the soldiers pipes up, “everyone has to go to the military academy.”
“Clearly not!” a soldier on the other side of the trench shouts.
Edward continues on, ignoring the heckler in the crowd, “but I have something so much more important than a silly degree.” Edward puts on his signature shit eating grin, and claps. “I have style.”
“It’s actually a certificate not a degree!” the first soldier yells again.
“Shut the fuck up Carmichael!” an entirely different soldier shouts before shoving poor Private Carmichael off the upturned bucket he was using as a chair and into a group of three soldiers who are too drunk to really be considered on duty. Those three proceed to fall like dominos onto two soldiers who were too busy fraternizing to notice the commotion until it’s almost on top of them. In their desperate bid to get away they crash into more of the standing soldiers until every single one of them is in a pitiful groaning heap on the floor.
All of this happens in the time it takes Edward to spin around, press his hands against a wall, and move the earth around to build the perfect specimen of a trench. Even Mustang is impressed. It looks like a showroom version of what the original strategist must have shown the generals when they proposed this wretched type of warfare.
Edward spins back around and bows. He freezes and his proud presenter’s persona breaks in the face of what must be a genuinely heartbreaking scene to any overly proud teen. Not a single one of the soldiers who came to watch him work saw what he did.
“Woah,” one soldier who managed to fall near enough to the front peeks up and finally looks over, “Major Elric, Sir, that’s really good!”
Edward just sags in defeat and sits down on the crate beneath him. “Thanks Carmichael.”
It takes a few minutes for the pile of bodies to disentangle themselves from the floor.
Mustang takes the moment to check in. It’s been more than a month since he saw Fullmetal for the first time on the front. He won’t say it out loud, but he worries.
“Can you believe this?” Edward says, turning to look up at Mustang, “They all gather around and have the nerve to say that people exaggerated my skills and when I try to be the bigger person and prove myself, they don’t even bother to watch!”
In Mustang’s opinion, Fullmetal looks worse than he did last time. His eyes are more sunken, and Mustang doesn’t have to ask to know he’s been kept where the fighting is. Still, he’s putting on a good show of pretending things are fine, and Mustang is perfectly capable of playing along. “That’s pretty harsh. I know it’s hard for you to be the bigger person.”
“Don’t you dare,” Fullmetal growls and hops back up on the crate.
“Ah, now I see. You were able to be the bigger person by using a stepstool.”
“It’s not a stool it was a make-shift stage to make sure everyone could see how cool I am!” Fullmetal jabs a metal finger into Mustang’s chest with each of the last words for emphasis.
“Of course, my mistake.” Mustang smiles at him, “You were putting on your own little flea circus. Very impressive.”
Mustang doesn’t regret it even as the wooden crate gets launched at him. He just steps out of the way and lets it nail one of the privates instead. He watches half of the crew slink after Edward to watch him build the next section, maybe this time they’ll get the chance to actually see it. The privates send apprehensive looks his way as they leave. As if he was going to tell them to get back to work and ruin Edward’s favorite past time of showing off.
Fullmetal is holding it together as well as can be expected. They’ll have time to catch up later.
In the end, they don’t. A new wave of Aerugonian soldiers arrive with more weapons and ammunition and the next week is spent trying to knock the opposing army back down to a manageable scale before they lose Mustang to the next station.
Fullmetal is tasked with handling repairs and extensions of the trench while everyone is occupied with the enemy. It was that or Kimblee threatened to send him into no man’s land to take out the handful of Aerugonians trying to make their to attack on foot. He doesn’t blame the kid for staying out of the way and resigns himself to wait and talk the next time they see each other.
Mustang doesn’t mind the change in scenery when he gets relocated to the next battle.
The trenches are awful. They are loud, dirty, and always have too-many people in too-small of a space. Something is constantly happening, and it feels as though there is never a moment of silence. Somewhere down the line there are always gunshots or explosions, and he rarely sleeps long enough to feel rested. When he’s stuck down there, he misses the breeze of fresh air and the space to move and find solitude, however briefly. But the trenches don’t remind him of Ishval, and that’s a blessing in its own right.
When he gets stationed at the temporary camps beyond the trenches but outside of towns, he comes to loathe the tents and the meagre protection they offer from surprise attacks and ambushes. He always misses the breeze but forgets that the wind means he is stuck smelling the burnt decay of his victims as the sun beats down on them like a curse. He misses the space to move freely about, but the lack of cover forces him to be hypervigilant for any distant attacks. He keeps his gloves on and his gun in reach because he can never be sure it’s safe. There’s only so much that can be done to protect the borders of a camp with no wall.
The camps remind him of the ones in Ishval. The tents remind of days and nights spent with Riza and Hughes and the countless others who survived long enough to regret, and so do the passing soldiers making light of the victories on the battlefield. Not that he blames them for the attempt at levity, a soldier can’t dwell on what they’ve done until they get home or else they’ll never make it back.
It’s the days he spends fighting just inside of the unlucky border towns caught in the crossfire that he can’t stand. It reminds him of every awful thing he did in Ishval. Every child and civilian he struck down for the crime of daring to be alive and in his range. It reminds him of standing alone in the wreckage of homes and shops and livelihoods that burn to ash around him. It’s the only place he has to wonder if he’s taking another innocent life that was just too slow or too stupid to escape. All non-combatants are supposed to be gone, but there’s always a risk. He’s seen Edward hurrying out one too many stragglers over the course of the past few months.
Mustang is proud of him. For all the horrors of war and the things he’s no doubt been forced to do, at least the kid kept his heart.
He could never tell Edward that. Mustang tried once, just before they parted ways in the beginning. All he got in return was an increasingly irate and distressed child ranting about how he’s done nothing to be proud of and all he was doing the bare minimum of what was right. Mustang is glad that Edward hasn’t forgotten who he is. He hopes it stays that way.
All that to say, Mustang prefers the moving between the various settings of the seemingly endless battles. The change in scenery is appreciated, but more than that, it gives him a chance to see the Fullmetal Alchemist and reassures him that he’s alive and that he hasn’t yet condemned this fourteen, now fifteen, year-old to die alone in this hell.
Though sometimes he wonders if that would be a kinder fate. Death would release him from having to bear the burden of taking lives – something that he knows the Elric brothers were so vehemently opposed to no matter the circumstance. But war doesn’t allow for that worldview to survive for long. It’s the nature of the battle and the orders they are given to kill or be killed. And for all Mustang has come to loathe Kimblee, he got one thing right. They all knew what they signed up for when they became State Alchemists. Even Edward. Even if he didn’t understand the depth of what that actually meant.
As the weeks bleed into months, he sees Fullmetal less. He hears stories from other soldiers and as an officer he knows the movements of the troops. He knows the sorts of situations Fullmetal has been in. He’s asked around and knows the injuries and the number of times Edward has to get his automail repaired by the resident engineers. It’s a stark but necessary reminder that Edward is in this hell with him, but at least he’s hasn’t given up. He’s still fighting.
It isn’t often that Mustang actually gets to see Fullmetal go against the enemy troops. He’s not all-together surprised that Edward tries to avoid hand-to-hand combat. Taking a life is much harder when you can feel them go still. He’s a bit thrown off the first time he sees Edward use a gun, but Mustang understands. It’s expected.
The thing that kills Mustang is how often he hears about Fullmetal taking out enemy soldiers with alchemy. Again, it’s expected; using alchemy is the whole reason State Alchemists were brought to the battlefield. They are the strongest weapon in Amestris’ arsenal. But Mustang remembers how passionately upset Edward would get when he came across an alchemist that misused and abused the abilities they had. He remembers the devastation in his eyes every time he came back from a mission that saw yet another person using alchemy to kill. It went against everything that Edward believed alchemy should be. Alchemist, be thou for the people, but how could you be for the people if you were using it to hurt them?
So, it isn’t often that Mustang gets the chance to observe. When the opportunity presents itself, he ventures just close enough to the battlefield to watch. Sometimes Fullmetal goes out alone, more often, he trails behind Kimblee like a proper military dog.
It’s one of these times that Mustang gets the sense that something has changed and taken a very, very wrong turn.
He’s technically off-duty until morning, but he hears Kimblee giving orders to his assigned men as they trek towards the enemy-occupied village off in the distance and steps away from his fireside reverie to see why Kimblee is giving orders with a distinctly different shade of manic anticipation. He isn’t surprised to see Fullmetal walking beside Kimblee as the two dozen other soldiers follow the alchemists out of the camp. He is surprised to see a third alchemist trailing behind the group and taking notes on a clipboard in her hands.
It takes Mustang longer than it should to figure out who she is. From what he can tell, the Lifeblood Alchemist, Major Jasmine Reid, is the military’s replacement of the Crystal Alchemist and her work is just as secretive. She’s a new addition to their current camp, bringing the total number alchemists present to a staggering seven. She’s not a combat alchemist, but she’s important and Mustang has rarely seen her away from the company of the generals. Though, it’s hard to tell if this is for her protection or her silence.
He doesn’t know what business she has to be going out into the battlefield but watching her walk away with them feels like a lead weight inside his chest. Against his better judgement, or rather the urging of his lieutenant to sit down and stay out of the way, he follows. He ends up a few hundred meters from the unit. Not close enough to be caught, but near enough that he can see what’s happening.
He watches as the three alchemists talk amongst themselves while the soldiers invade the town. It’s protocol for the soldiers to do a cursory sweep for civilians and take out the soldiers attempting a retreat. It’s an hour before their soldiers return and make their way back towards the camp. No-one wants to risk being too close to the alchemists’ waves of destruction. Soon, it’s just the three alchemists and the one soldiers who remained with them for protection.
Mustang isn’t close enough to see the details and they aren’t facing his direction so its not clear what’s happening, but Edward is the only one to approach the town. Kimblee, Reid, and the soldier retreat to a safe distance. It gives Mustang an unobstructed view of Fullmetal. He isn’t near any attacking soldiers, and frankly, too far to effectively target the buildings and infrastructure like he typically would.
Fullmetal claps his hands and the silence and stillness are palpable even from this distance. The distant sound of gunfire and shouting from the town seems to halt as well. Mustang holds his breath as Fullmetal drops to his knees and presses his palms against the rocky ground.
And the town crumbles.
Creta doesn’t get earthquakes. It never has. Not a single building in the country is reinforced to handle the earth shaking and trembling in the wake a natural disaster like this. Gashes in the earth open along the path of the roads and the soldiers and their guns and their hideouts all fall into the cool dark grave of the earth. Mustang is far enough away that he isn’t in danger, but he still stumbles from the force of the earth bending to the will of the fifteen-year-old kneeling on it’s surface and staring down at something clutched desperately in his hand.
Mustang gets his bearings and looks back to the camp he’s supposed to be in. Nothing looks broken but there are dozens of soldiers dashing to the front to look and see what the hell just happened. He isn’t alone in the realization that something awful has occurred; this isn’t typical of Fullmetal. Mustang knows how strong Edward is. He knows that Fullmetal is also no stranger to surprising him with the depths of what he can do. He also knows that Fullmetal is not capable of destroying a town in the same capacity as Kimblee, but that’s exactly what he sees. A town leveled to nothing but wreckage in ruins from a single attack. There were no explosions, just the earth forced to revolt against the foundations it had held safely for so long.
The Crimson Lotus Alchemist approaches his protégé, and Mustang isn’t sure if he means Kimblee or himself anymore. He can’t see Kimblee all that well, but he can picture the manic glee on his face as he takes in the still-rumbling sounds of falling buildings.
What Mustang wants to do is march up to the two of them and find out what just happened. He wants to make sure that Edward is all right. Edward is still hunched over on his knees and Mustang doesn’t know if its just the aftershocks in the ground, but it looks like he’s shaking. Mustang would like nothing more than to rush over and keep Kimblee and all his madness away from the young alchemist that Mustang recruited and nurtured and led for two years before the war came and stole him away.
He doesn’t do any of that. He’s frozen in place and lets the fading aftershocks in the ground pass through him as the three alchemists return to camp. Edward is the only one who spares him a glance.
His face is pale and blank, but his eyes are wild. His knuckles are going white around something in his hand. Mustang thinks he sees a flash of red as they pass behind him and out of sight.
For all the heart Mustang still sees on the battlefield, Edward has not escaped unscathed from the war. He’s grown up, in age if not height, and Mustang can see the weight of the death and destruction and guilt dragging him down. State Alchemists are a Major only in name, especially on the battlefield, but over the past eight months, Edward has earned the respect of his fellow soldiers and Mustang would not be surprised if he is promoted once the war ends. Still, no child should carry the burden of choosing to take a life, knowing the alternative is losing one of his own. And despite everything, Edward is still a child.
Fullmetal is still stationed under Kimblee, and Mustang might not have understood why in the beginning, but he’s starting to.
He understands, even if he hates it, why the Fuhrer would insist on bringing Edward to the war. The Fullmetal Alchemist is well-respected in hand-to-hand and alchemical combat. He performs alchemy without having to waste time or resources on drawing arrays. He’s a formidable opponent against anyone, let alone some basic foot soldiers trained in a non-military state.
He can understand why Edward agreed to come. He didn’t have much of a choice if the Fuhrer really did retrieve him directly. He had even less of a choice if he wanted to protect his brother, and he always would.
He can even understand the need for Edward to be under someone else’s command. Mustang was happy to give Edward a loose leash while at Eastern command, and no-one even cared that much. Who were they to judge how Mustang handled the twelve-year-old prodigy he recruited? Mustang tried, it might not have worked but he did try, to instill the military’s expectations and customs into the kid, but it’s not his fault that Edward is just as bullheaded and stubborn as every other preteen in Amestris.
Still, war called for strength in numbers and unity and obedience. Mustang hadn’t proven himself as someone who could give that to the Fullmetal Alchemist, so someone else would need to. Edward could have been placed under the purview of any of the hundreds of commanding officers with spotless track records that were currently deployed to the border. If the Fuhrer deemed it necessary for the Fullmetal Alchemist to be handled by a fellow alchemist, there were dozens of State Alchemist who were good soldiers, better men, and more importantly ranked higher than the insubordinate brat.
Solf J. Kimblee, the Crimson Lotus Alchemist, the Mad Bomber, should not have been that someone. Major Kimblee is not a good man, and not a single person who served with him in Ishval would ever call him one, but you do not have to be a good man to be a good soldier.
Kimblee was a very good soldier, and he reveled in what he could do. Up until he blew up his superior officers in Ishval, which has since been rebranded as an accidental detonation, the Crimson Lotus Alchemist was the perfect military dog. Apparently, he’d proven himself to be one again. He’s bloodthirsty and willing to jump and bark and bite in the direction the military points him in. He’s not subtle about his disdain for those who won’t.
Mustang believes that the Fullmetal Alchemist won’t lose his head or heart in this war, but even he can see that Kimblee is not a good influence on the kid. Not on his behavior, mouth, or ethics.
Kids were malleable. Edward was malleable. Just as quick to be swayed by his own rigid inner compass of morality as he was by someone who knows all the right words to say in the right order. Mustang knows that Edward has been driven by one singular thing since he was recruited. His brother. Time and time again, Mustang has seen him run himself ragged in the pursuit of protecting his brother and trying to fix the mistake they made. Mustang knows that if push came to shove, Edward would do anything to keep his brother safe.
Contrary to the way he behaves on the battlefield conducting an orchestra of destruction, Solf J. Kimblee knows how to spin his madness into a pretty package. He knows how to play the gentleman even as he blows an entire squadron to smithereens. He is a wannabe philosopher that’s driven by his own nihilistic desire to find meaning in a world that he takes great pleasure in destroying.
Before the State Alchemists were called to the front and forced back into the war, Mustang thought he knew the boy under his command. He hopes he still does, but the fact of the matter is that Edward Elric has changed since he last went home. The boy Mustang left behind was so vehemently against killing of any kind, and now he has to face Major Elric and know that it’s his fault this child has been forced to kill time and time again.
Everyday that Edward Elric served under Mustang’s command was another day that Mustang had to reckon with shoving a child’s worldview into something acceptable to the military. Now, serving under Kimblee, that idealism is being chipped away and pieces of it are getting replaced by the toxic acid of Kimblee’s nihilism. The war may be doing just as much harm as Kimblee, but Mustang sleeps better at night if he pins the blame on someone else.
Mustang doesn’t understand why Edward is happily, seemingly happily or willingly at least, working with Kimblee. Clearly the kid is uncomfortable with death, he doesn’t relish in the afterglow of destruction like Kimblee and still sneaks around to save the people he can get away with saving. It’s not like Ishval, civilians aren’t considered the enemy until they try to attack a member of the Amestrian army. Unlike Ishval, these civilians are allowed to flee.
But despite the death, the kid has taken up Kimblee’s penchant for the theatricality of destruction. He’s not using his alchemy to conduct a symphony out of chaos like Kimblee, but it seems like the kid is getting something out of it. From what Mustang has heard from other officers, getting the Fullmetal Alchemist to follow orders is no longer like pulling teeth.
He asks Edward about it one day, just over a year from his arrival. Mustang is so curious to know what’s changed that the rebellious preteen he knew has turned into a good little soldier boy who not only barks on command but doesn’t even run from his master’s side. He wants to know but dreads the answer.
“We all have things we want, yeah?” Edward says, sprawled on the ground and looking up at the sky with his automail held up above him, “and sometimes those things come at a cost. You want to be Fuhrer to make our country a better place, but to do that you have to be here and serve in another war. And if another war breaks out before you get the chance to reach the top, you’ll serve in that one too.”
Mustang isn’t lying on the ground; he’s sitting a few feet away from him against an outcropping of rock. They’re in a temporary camp far enough from the fighting that there isn’t really a need to keep an eye out for any straggling enemy soldiers, but he’s spent too many days and nights in this hell to relax. “I’d rather not serve in any wars, Fullmetal. I’ve seen enough for my lifetime.”
“Sure, I get that, but I’m not wrong. You would serve.” Edward doesn’t phrase it as a question, because it isn’t. “It’s all equivalent exchange. You do this now, and you get the chance to shape the future.” He drops his hand down and clutches at the dual chains through his shirt. “A life isn’t worth a life. I know that.”
Mustang hopes it’s just his dog tags, but the hidden chains remind him of the one’s hanging around Kimblee’s neck. “No, it’s not. You found that out the hard way.”
Fullmetal nods. “Me and Al tried to bring back our mom together, but he’s the one who paid the real price. I got out of it practically scot free. What’s one leg in exchange for a mother?” It’s a rhetorical question and he doesn’t wait for Mustang to respond. “Al lost everything, and all Truth took from me was my arm to get him back. All of this,” Edward brings both hands above him as if gesturing to the world around, “is me paying the rest of my dues to Truth. Once the war is over, once we’re back home, I’ll make everything right.” Edward sits up and looks at Mustang with a fire in his eyes.
It's not the determination he saw when Edward decided to take the exam. It’s not the determination he saw when the brothers went to chase down a new lead that they were so sure was the real thing this time. It’s not even the determination to survive that he saw the first few times he ran into Fullmetal on the battlefield.
What he sees in Edward’s eyes is the fire of someone who thinks they’ve figured out the world and they will be damned to hell if anyone gets in their way. He sees the fire of someone drunk on power and so sure that they won’t fall into the greedy trappings of history. He sees the fire he remembers in Kimblee’s eyes the first time he used the stone on the battlefield.
“I’m paying my dues, Colonel.” He says, quiet and contemplative. “To Truth. To the military. To Al.”
Mustang doesn’t respond. He watches Fullmetal drop back to the ground and close his eyes. Basking in the sun like he’s finally cracked the code. Like all this death and chaos has brought him one step closer to salvation.
“I think this place is killing me, but I’ve finally found it.” His arms rest like so much dead weight beside him.
Mustang wants to get up. To comfort Edward. To shake some sense into him. To do something. But he feels frozen. He knows what Edward’s talking about. What he’s found. It’s not what he wants to ask, but “Was it worth it?”
“Ask me that again when we go back home and you see Al.” Edward almost sounds like he’s smiling but Mustang won’t look to check. “Because the next time you see him, he’ll be back in his body, and you’ll know.”
Mustang knows. He knows better than anyone that the only thing pushing Edward through every hellish day here is his brother. He knows that Edward would have broken months ago if he didn’t have his brother to worry about.
He knows that the war won’t last much longer. The Cretans and Aerugonians might be an army supplied with working weapons and soldiers trained to fight and to kill, but Edward’s little brother is waiting for him back home. Little Alphonse is waiting for his brother to come home, and Edward has let his himself become steel to rescue his brother from the same fate.
The Fullmetal Alchemist would be going home soon, and god help the enemies standing in his way.