[roy/riza; pg-13] Burnt Snow Theme: 7 - snow falling on corpses (52_Flavours) Characters: Roy Mustang x Riza Hawkeye Series: Fullmetal Alchemist Rating: PG-13; for imagery Notes: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is copyrighted by Hiromu Arakawa/Square Enix. This is a work of fanfiction for personal entertainment only. Both concrit and comments welcome and desired. Based off the manga!verse. I don't recall seeing any mention of Hughes' rank during Ishbal, so I'm going off the assumption he's a captain, or at least held that rank at some point during the war. If anyone can correct or verify this with canon, I'd appreciate it. Jossed. Title: Burnt Snow Author:emilie_burns Word Count: 1222 Summary:She could almost make herself believe that the soft haze of white, illuminiated under the moon and stirring up in the air at the cold wind creeping over the desert dunes, was snow. Original LJ Post Date: September 12, 2005 @ 52_Flavours
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Burnt Snow
If she held her breath and didn't look to the right where the destruction was close enough to be recognizable, she could almost make herself believe that she stood on the threshold of a peaceful, if surreal, land. Riza could almost make herself forget the fires that towered toward the sky by day, reaching toward the sun, blacking out the sky with plumes of acrid smoke. She could almost forget the roaring that deafened the night before, overpowering the moon with a red-orange glow.
She could almost ignore the residual heat still radiating out of the ground and off the rocks, contrasting the dropping chill of the desert night. She could almost make herself believe that the soft haze of white, illuminated under the moon and stirring up in the air at the cold wind creeping over the desert dunes, was snow. Snow, white and pure, clean and fresh. Not ash, from buildings, from wood, from paper, from cloth. From bodies burnt and charred beyond recognition.
She could almost make herself ignore what was settling over her coat, her uniform, in her hair, filtered away from her mouth by a handkerchief tied around her face. Ignore, and forget the knowledge that the gray dusting on her body may have once been a body.
As her boots crunched over the rubble, she tried not to recognize the shape of a blackened, skeletal forearm jutting out from under the ashes. Her grip on her rifle tightened, and she continued moving with the rest of the company deeper into the ruined city. The chilly night breeze kicked up again, blowing a breath both frozen and hot on her face, sifting dunes of ash over the streets, covering some things and exposing others. It fluttered up in the air and beneath the moonlight, the surrealism of it all made her imagine she was trapped inside a macabre snow globe.
The major stood apart from the rest of them, looking off to the distance, his dark eyes hard and unreadable over the kerchief tied around the lower part of his face to filter out the ash. The captain approached him, daring to venture where no one else risked treading, and spoke. Their exchange was too low for her to hear, and the moonlight glinted off the captain's glasses as he looked to the company. A few more words were exchanged, then Captain Hughes approached.
"Lieutenant Hawkeye, take your men and go with Major Mustang and secure the north half of the city. Second platoon, you're with me. Lieutenant Charbis, I want your men on perimeter. Don't let anyone past you!"
"Yes, sir!" Riza replied, saluting him, and looked behind to her subordinates. "Fall in, single file by squad," she ordered, and as the enlisted personnel took position behind her, the platoon sergeant fell into step at her side. Without a word or glance back, the major began walking toward the north, and she could hear the indistinct orders from Captain Hughes and Lieutenant Ryson as the second platoon began breaking up to search and secure the south half of the city.
As they advanced deeper into the heated, ashen-white world, sound fell away behind them, save for the muffled tread of boots and the occasional clank of equipment strapped to marching bodies. As near as she could tell from behind, the major kept his eyes straight ahead, his footsteps so precise and measured that they seemed to her almost automatic. From somewhere in the distance behind them, the relative silence was broken by several gunshots.
Had she not been watching him at that moment, she would have missed it; the clenching of his hands into fists, the tightening of his shoulders under the uniform. As she glanced around, keeping watch for any threats, she once again registered the devastation of their surroundings. She had watched through her scope that day, and in each district before that as Major Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, sent blaze after powerful blaze thundering through Ishbalite villages and cities. She watched the flames as she took careful steady aim from her vantage position, operating as a sniper by day, taking down whoever passed by her gun as they tried to escape.
There was nothing left intact in district twenty-one. Seeing the charred remains of what once had been a thriving city, full of people, citizens of Amestris though of a different color and philosophy, people like them who lived, who laughed, who fought, who loved, in contrast with the subtle flinch and stony silence of the man assigned to Company D, it sank in. While they all took part in it, their jobs were to the stragglers, escapers, the ones who clung desperately to either hope or a refusal to cry defeat. One man was responsible for the majority, for the destruction, for the blackened skeletal forms visible under the snow-white ash. The man they followed, led by a pillar of smoke by day, a tower of flame by night. An old legend sleepily stirred in the depths of her mind then, but the man who could command fire by sheer force of will was not a god. He was only human, and far more than she had realized until now.
If someone like her, a killer of strays and the weak, had to remove her mind from the reality of what was on the other end of her scope, she could not begin to fathom how much more destructive it was to be the one capable of everything she saw. Too many soldiers, too many officers were savoring the thrill of the war, taking far too much joy in the genocide of an entire people. Thinking back to the hard, unreadable look of silence which was always present with the major, a look that made most of the company fear him, the look made far more sense.
She was snapped out of her musings by the barked orders from the sergeant, deploying the platoon in fireteams of four in their search for survivors. No, not survivors. Victims. For a survivor would make it through until morning, until they moved on. No one would. It was contrary to their orders. She was silent as she stepped forward to take her place beside the major; although she was the ranking officer assigned to the platoon, the sergeant was the one with the experience, the direct command over the corporals and privates. She let him deploy his men as he knew best, while she did what she knew best: how to draw a bead on a moving target at two hundred meters while under fire.
It was silent now, but should anything happen, should there be a survivor or a rebel attack squad who came gunning for the State Alchemist, they would have to get past her first. When he glanced at her as she moved around, watching the shadows of moonlight for any threat, their eyes met. She saw in them then what she had always seen, and what she had never noticed before.
She could not protect him from the war, from their superiors, from their orders, so she would protect him where she could. No, nothing would get past her, not as long as she still drew breath. She checked her weapons, and watched the shadows, and never moved from his side.