Title: Puppeteer Author/Artist: jameva Fandom: FMA/FFVII Pairing/characters: Roy/Zack Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Character death. Prompt/challenge you're answering: Roy and Zack: the memory cannot keep me warm/but it never leaves me cold Word Count: 300
When Roy slept after one long, exhausting day, he always dreamt of the same thing. The sun was scorching in the sky, the earth baked to dust, and the dry wind bore the overwhelming scents of blood and smoke and unbridled warfare on its back. At Roy’s feet lay one of the broken puppets of the battle, ruthlessly used up and discarded as soon as it became useless, like some children’s toy. Expendable, replaceable and forgotten soon thereafter. Roy stared at the body while the ground was blasted around his feet, showering him in red-tinted dust, and he could not make himself move for cover.
All he could think of was the body, Zack’s body, sprawled lifeless in the filth of battle, oozing blood from his bullet-riddled chest. His hand was stretched out to the side, palm up, begging to the smoke-choked sky. Roy remembered them warm and strong and callused as they skimmed over his skin. Now they would be cold and stiff. Just another casualty in the Fuhrer’s great tally book. Inconsequential.
The dream always ended up the same way. Roy would reach down for Zack, his vision blurred and a knot wound too tight in his guts screaming injustice and pain, when a shell would explode close, too close, throwing him back and away into darkness. Roy would wake up before he remembered the pain of the explosion, but the dream was impossible to dispel. He would rise with a sour taste on his tongue, but however daunting the day might look to be, he would rise.
Anger and revenge heating his blood, Roy would go back to work so that he could labor in the shadows to bring the Fuhrer, that childish war-puppeteer, off his throne.
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