Click, click, click...
He didn’t even have to think about it anymore. It was habit now, just another part of his day.
Click, click, click...
Roy used the razor delicately, chopping the rock of cocaine into a fine powder. He was actually getting rather good at it. He would have laughed at the irony, but he didn’t find it funny at all. What a loathsome vision he must be... a military officer—a State Alchemist, for fuck’s sake—sitting alone in a badly-lit room, cutting lines of blow to sustain his growing habit.
Yes, he knew that it was developing into a habit. He wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t need Hawkeye or Hughes to remind him of it every time they saw him. He didn’t need to be warned about the evils of cocaine, because, truthfully, he was already living them. And still, he also knew that of the possible evils laid out before him, this was the lesser of them. He needed it to focus. In fact, it had been long enough since his last dose that the creeping feeling of the Call was already beginning to wash over him again. He was well past due for another dose. He clenched his jaw and continued powdering the rock.
He had a job to do. He had lives to save. He had to stop this before it went any further, before any more people died.
The memory of Lieutenant Colonel Casey’s death that morning threw itself to the forefront of Roy’s brain again, a red smear across his mind. He shuddered and swallowed the sick burn at the back of his throat. No. No one else could die over this. It had to stop.
Roy’s suddenly trembling hand missed its mark and the razor bit into the tip of his left index finger. He hissed out an automatic curse, though the cut didn’t really hurt much. The slice was deep, but the powdered cocaine that had been on the edge of the razor numbed the wound pretty effectively and the pain was mild. Blood welled up from between the split folds of skin and he watched it dribble down his hand to land in thick drops on his desk, the scarlet hue vibrant against the dusty white residue of the powder.
We’re all going to die.
The thought came, unbidden, floating through his mind like a poisonous fog. He jumped a little at the abrupt fatalism of it and shook himself. Still shaking and his heart beginning to increase in tempo, he slowly put down the razor. Maybe he should let himself come down completely tonight. Last night had been rough, when he’d been forced to crash so hard due to a sudden lack of drug... he’d thought he was truly going insane by the time Hawkeye had come to pick him up this morning, as desperate and frantic as the Call had made him... But still... he didn’t like the fatalistic place where his thoughts had been heading lately. It was one of the many reasons he’d given Maes his gun. Perhaps it was a sign that he just needed to quit. Maybe he needed to give the pain treatment another try. Perhaps that would cleanse the shadows of futility from his thoughts.
But...
Maybe they were all going to die. Slowly. One by one, they’d all put a bullet to their own heads, because that was the only way out. Maybe no amount of research, or cocaine, or self-sacrifice, or just fucking trying to fix everyone was going to change one goddamned thing. Maybe he just needed to stop fighting. Maybe he just needed to back down and let it happen. Yes. Just let it happen. Just... let it...
Roy sat upright, blinking.
The sky beyond his window was darker than it had been mere seconds ago, casting his room in cool grays and blues. His finger had stopped bleeding and the cut was crusted with dried blood. It looked at least an hour old, and now it definitely hurt. Had he spaced out just then? He turned his bleary eyes down to the surface of his desk.
Well. Apparently he had spaced out.
The wooden surface of his desk was adorned in smears of red and white. Transmutation circles and equations spiraled across the desk, hewn from his blood and the powdered cocaine. He stared down at his unconscious handiwork, quelling the rush of self-horror that was becoming all too common. The symbols stared back up at him, taunting him, a visual storm of chaos to accompany the soundtrack of the Call in his head.
What do you want me to do?
Roy’s heart nearly started from his chest as the phone beside him rang. He grabbed for it, fumbling it clumsily before he was able to put it to his ear.
“M-Mustang here,” he stammered, his voice choked and weak-sounding in spite of himself.
“Hi... it’s Hughes. Are you... doing okay? Tell me truthfully.” There was a pause, and then, “You know you don’t have to play the hero with me, Roy. Please.”
For a moment, Roy couldn’t speak. His mind was still reeling and his eyes had wandered back to the drug-and-blood arrays in front of him. That heavy, fatalistic feeling found him again and stole his words. He closed his eyes to the mental vision of Casey’s head bursting like a raw egg and felt a stinging wetness beneath his lids. The Call tugged at every part of him and, suddenly, it was all he could do to keep from bursting into tears.
“Roy?”
“...It’s really good to hear your voice, Maes.” It was the first sentence that popped into his head and so he said it, so softly and sincerely that he knew he must sound frighteningly pathetic and just didn’t care. He just wanted someone to talk to. He needed something to distract him from the wordless whispering in his head. The two of them had been arguing bitterly over the past few days, to the point where Roy had nearly stopped picking up the phone entirely, not wanting to listen to Maes nag him about his behavior... but, god, now he wanted nothing more than to talk to him.
Maes was silent on the other end of the line, then:
“Do you want me to come over?” He sounded startled, even a little afraid. Roy almost laughed at him. Of course Maes was afraid... he’d already seen one alchemist take his own life today. Who was to say that such actions might not inspire an equal reaction in Roy? The tone of Maes’ voice certainly suggested that such thoughts had occurred to him.
Roy swallowed, took a deep breath, and forced his voice to strengthen itself. “No. I’m fine. Just very tired and starting to have space outs again.” He stopped and rubbed his eyes, dissipating the wet warmth that still remained there. “I’m crashing. I need to take another hit soon.”
He looked back down at his desk and the piles of red-tinged powder. He would have taken another hit now if he hadn’t ruined it all in a fit of unconscious madness. He hoped he had enough left to last him until tomorrow, at least...
“I really wish you wouldn’t,” Maes’ voice was hesitant. “You have to be blind to not see what it’s doing to you...”
“Not this again. Not now,” Roy sighed, wanting to be angry with him for bringing it up again, but unable to muster the strength. “I don’t have the energy for it, Maes. You know I can’t stop.”
“Ed seems to do okay without it...”
Roy sighed again, loudly and purposefully into the receiver, and Maes went quiet again. Silence passed between them on the phone lines.
“...How is Ed?” Roy asked finally, the silence making him nervous. “He looked pretty freaked after the meeting.”
It was more than that, though. It wasn’t just how Ed had looked. And of course, he was probably just imagining it... but, somehow, Roy could almost swear that he felt Ed. It was a distant but persistent worry at the back of his mind. It had been faint earlier, but now it was more apparent and...unpleasant. As if something was wrong. He tried to ignore it.
“Yeah...” Maes lamented, “I think I’m going to stay with him tonight. I took him back to his dorm afterward so that he could get the blood off of him. He was in the bathroom for nearly two hours. He was still in there when I left. I stayed in the other room with Al for a bit while he showered. He was pretty hysterical. I think he’s losing hope.”
“We all are.” He stopped and licked his lips, knowing how much the admission of encroaching hopelessness must devastate his friend, but it would be a lie to continue his charade of confidence. He wanted to fix this. He hadn’t given up, nor would he any time soon... but Roy could not deny that he could no longer see any light at the end of the tunnel.
“...Maybe I should come over. You don’t sound right.”
“Unless you want to sit and watch me snort a few lines, I wouldn’t come if I were you,” he quipped darkly. “Hawkeye didn’t seem to like it when I did it in front of her. Apparently it’s rude.”
Now it was Maes’ turn to sigh loudly into the phone. “We’re just worried about you. It’s getting out of hand. It’s affecting your judgment.”
“I haven’t slept in days and I have a presence in my head that I can’t get rid of.” Roy leaned on his desk and rested his head in one hand. “That’s affecting my judgment.”
“You’d be able to sleep better if you’d quit the damn blow.”
“No. I wouldn’t. You think I haven’t tried that? When I close my eyes, all I can hear is the Call. I feel like it’s focused on me. Me, more than anyone else.”
“I’m sure you all feel that way... Under this kind of pressure, it’s be hard not to feel singled out...”
“No, Maes. You don’t get it. It... it wants me to do something. I can’t stop thinking about it, but I don’t understand. And it’s getting stronger.” His heart started beating hard again and he tried to steady himself with a breath. “Even now, it’s so much stronger than it was this morning. Something is happening. It’s happening now, Maes, and I--”
Even as he was talking, he felt the pull increase on him, cutting off his words.
“Roy?”
And Roy heard him, distantly, but something within him did not allow him to answer. Maes was utterly unimportant in that moment. All that mattered was the Call and the ocean of symbols calculating themselves in Roy’s head.
There was an image in his mind. A place, an open, treeless expanse of wilderness. He could see it as clearly as if he were physically there, even though it was a place he had never been. He felt the balmy night air, and he heard screaming. It was waiting for them, for him, and he was beginning to understand.
He took the phone from his ear and laid the desk gently, amidst the coke and blood. His eyes wandered down to the symbols there again and, suddenly, he understood them.
Everything made sense.
Some far off part of him could still hear his best friend calling his name from the earpiece, but that gentle voice was lost among the other calls filling Roy’s senses.
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He was here, but now he was gone. Everyone was gone. They were leaving. All of them. He could see them in his head, all of them lurching forward, leaving, leaving...
Ed couldn’t breathe. He tore around the small dorm, looking, looking, looking, finding nothing in the dimness. The room still smelled of the soap he’d used, the warm dampness from the shower stall making the air heavy. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.
The pain still wasn’t enough to keep his head clear, it was never enough.
He was alone. It was just him and the Call, alone in the room together.
And it was getting stronger.
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My pieces are falling into place.
It won’t be long, now.
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Riza’s phone rang and she answered it quickly, yanking it from the hook.
“Lieutenant Hawkeye, here,” she greeted breathlessly.
For the past couple of weeks, Riza had gotten a sick jolt of worry in her stomach each and every time that the phone rang, because it was almost always bad news. Another alchemist dead. Another person missing. The child of alchemist parents suddenly abandoned...
The State was in shambles. Everything was falling apart. Even ever-powerful Bradley was frazzled and tired. And Mustang...
“Hawkeye, It’s Lieutenant Colonel Hughes.”
The tightness in Riza’s chest did not dissipate at the sound of his voice. In fact, it wound even tighter because, truthfully, all of the bad news that Riza had been receiving lately typically came from Hughes’ lips.
“Good evening, sir. How can I help you?”
“Forgive me if this is an imposition,” he began quietly, “But can you run over to Colonel Mustang’s barrack and make sure that he’s alright? I was just on the phone with him and he stopped talking, mid-sentence. I think he must have spaced out... He’d mentioned that he was due for a dose of his, ah, ‘medicine’. I guess he went too long without it and lost focus. I stayed on the line for a good ten minutes just trying to get him to snap out of it, but he never answered. I just want to be sure he’s ok. I know this morning was rough on him.”
“Oh, of course, sir.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it. I would go myself, but I offered earlier and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me there. Besides, I need to go check on Ed. He was still pretty out of it when I left his place a little while ago. He seemed like he wanted to be alone, but I don’t think I should leave him by himself for too long.”
“I agree... Poor kid.”
The two said their pleasantries, both of them trying hard not so sound as sick with worry as they were, and hung up.
Riza wasted no time in throwing on her boots and coat and rushing out the door. She had known before parting ways after the meeting that morning that Mustang was far more upset than he was letting on, but he had made it abundantly clear to everyone present that he wanted to be left alone and not pestered about it. So, of course, Riza had obeyed him.
But now, the way she saw it, she was under direct orders of Lieutenant Colonel Hughes to go and force her company upon him. He could yell at her all he liked, but at least now she had an excuse to be at his side.
The women’s barracks where Riza was staying was only about a block away from the men’s. She trotted down the sidewalk in the darkening evening, her head down and her hands in her pockets. There was a heavy feeling weighing on her, a deep sense of foreboding that she had been trying to shake off for the better part of the day. She felt as if there was a kind of pressure building within her, as if something around her was coming to an apex. Change was on the wind, and Riza did not like it. It hurt her head and turned her stomach, and she had a sinking feeling that this sensation was directly related to the alchemists. The alchemists had felt this sick uneasiness first and most strongly, then Fuhrer Bradley had become ill, and now Hawkeye herself... More than that, she saw distraction and illness in the eyes of her comrades, even Hughes... and this went beyond simple fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Something was happening now, to all of them...
Or perhaps she was being paranoid. It had been a long couple of weeks. Still... she made a mental note to bring it up the next time she spoke to Hughes.
She came to her commander’s door and knocked. He didn’t answer, but she supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised. She had dealt with enough afflicted alchemists in the past few days to know that once they were under that comatose daze that was claiming them all, it often took more than a few raps on a door to bring them back to reality.
She pounded on the door again for the sake of trying to be polite, then turned the knob and pushed it open.
The room beyond was badly lit, the only light sources coming from the tiny window on the opposite wall and the meager reading lamp on the desk in the corner. Riza could see bright splashes of red and white adorning the dark wood of the desk and, for a moment, wondered that it was. But then she saw him and her thoughts turned to more important wonderings.
“Colonel Mustang?”
He was facing away from her, leaning forward with one hand against the wall, his head bowed. His back heaved as he sucked air into his lungs, hyperventilating in the deceptive calm of the room. There was something clasped in one of his hands.
She went to his side and when he finally looked up at her, she was forcefully reminded of that day, two weeks ago, when he had turned from the symbol-marred wall of his office and had fixed her with those same strange, unfocused eyes. But there was something else in his gaze now that had not been there when this had all started.
“I was trying to... do something...”
His voice was hoarse and confused-sounding, and there was a distracted tightness to it that she could not ignore. He was afraid.
“What were you trying to do?”
“I don’t... I don’t remember.”
As dazed as he was, she could see the primal fear of the unknown still stirred within him, and that fear was the only thing that was allowing him the tentative control he still had over himself. It was clear from his demeanor and from the size of his pupils that he hadn’t hit in a while, and so now there was no other stimulus to keep his thoughts clear. She could see that he was actively fighting the Call now, giving everything he had to keep it from completely taking him over... and he was beginning to lose ground.
She put a hand on his arm, as she had before, and squeezed it hard. “It’s alright, sir,” she told him, wondering which of them she was trying to convince. She pulled him gently away from the wall. “Come on. That’s it...”
She led him over to the desk and eased him into it. His hand was still clutching the object that she had noticed him holding earlier but only now, by the light of the lamp, was she able to see it clearly.
It was a paperweight. One of the generic, mass-produced ones that were often found in the temporary quarters of officers. It was made of a heavy lead crystal, with the green flag of Amestris and its rampant white dragon cast into the center of it.
“Here, let me take that...” she offered, reaching for it.
He looked as if he wasn’t sure what she was talking about for a moment, but then he followed her gaze to the paperweight in his hand. He blinked at it and then, very calmly, said:
“Oh. Now I remember.”
He brought up the paperweight and, with surprising strength and determination, brought it down hard upon his left hand, crushing it against the desk with a stomach-twisting crack!
Mustang gasped and doubled over, his hazy eyes flying open wide and brightening with both alertness and pain. He swore and clutched his hand to his chest. The paperweight, having served its purpose, tumbled to the floor.
Riza cried out and went down on her knees beside him. Mustang turned his over-bright eyes onto her, staring into her with a manic kind of intensity that made her want to hold him.
“Hey... W-worked like a charm...” he smirked, half laughing, half gasping in agony. “...Think it’s broken?”
She swallowed. “Let me see.”
He allowed her to take his hand and look at it. It was already starting to swell, blossoming into unhealthy shades of red and purple. His middle and ring fingers looked gnarled and crooked, like an old man’s. They were definitely broken, and there was a deep cut on his index finger that looked like it had been there before the paperweight’s blow and had been reopened. It was oozing blood freely.
“I need to find something to splint this with... it looks bad.” She made to get to her feet, but Mustang grabbed her shoulder to keep her from getting up.
“Don’t let me leave,” he rasped, that faint touch of humor in him dissipating entirely and letting the fear take hold of him again. He was shaking, full to the brim with an anxious kind of energy.
“W-what?”
“Don’t let me leave this room. If I leave... If I follow the Call...” His fingers dug into her arm. “I don’t know what will happen. I can’t fight it much longer, Lieutenant...”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere, believe me.”
“You don’t understand...”
“No. I don’t.” Hesitantly, she put a hand to the side of his face. He was cold. “But I don’t have to. I won’t let you leave, even if you want—”
“No. You don’t understand,” he insisted, gripping her shoulder so hard that it hurt. “You have to keep me here. No matter what, Lieutenant. Don’t trust anything I say or do. Knock me out or tie me down if you have to, just keep me here.”
“Sir, it’s not going to come to that...!”
He shook his head, speaking over her, “Something is happening, Riza, and I think I...”
He trailed off, as if he just didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He was still shaking, and every part of him seemed to scream with exhaustion. He was every bit a battle-weary soldier, still at war with some kind of enemy that could not be comprehended. With a sad, wrenching kind of gentleness, he took her hand in his own and closed his eyes tightly.
Riza reeled for a moment, somehow struck by how lost and helpless and defeated her commander looked right now. He was beyond exhausted, beyond in pain, and so tired of fighting for control of his own mind that it was collapsing him from the inside. Never before, even during the assault on Ishbal, had he ever seemed so close to completely and irrevocably breaking down.
He swallowed hard, eyes still closed, and said, “Whatever happens... I’m sorry.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but it sent a cold shiver through her. Suddenly, Mustang’s terror was infectious. This wasn’t the drunken rambling of a depressed friend, or the ranting of a madman on the streets. This was Roy Mustang, and if he felt there was a reason to be afraid, then there most certainly was.
That pressure, that sense of something dark looming on the horizon returned to her. This was something beyond Mustang. Beyond all of the alchemists. Something had been building itself up, coming to a climax for the past two weeks. But now it was here, and there was no ignoring it. It pounded in her skull and made her wince. Beside her, Mustang exhaled softly and the tenseness in his shoulders relaxed a little bit. His eyes opened, but she could see the attentiveness he’d gained for himself by breaking his fingers was waning in the sudden upsurge of the Call. It was so intense that Riza was sure now that she was feeling it, too. It crawled at the back of her mind and made her head feel like it was about to burst.
“Hey!” she shouted at him, even though the sound of her own raised voice only added to the pain in her head. She took his jaw in her hand and forced him to face her. “Don’t you fade out on me! Stay focused, sir.”
He didn’t hear her. Or see her. It was as if she wasn’t there at all, or was so insignificant that he chose not to pay her any notice. His head was bowed forward, but his eyes were open and upraised behind the dark curtain of his hair, staring with that blank kind of intensity at the door to the room.
She took his shoulder again and gripped it hard, digging her fingers into him.
“Sir.”
Still, he ignored her.
She dug her fingers in harder, her nails embedding into the meat of his arm through his shirt as she tried to rouse him with pain. He did not look at her, his eyes remained on the door, but he did move this time... though after her initial twinge of dark relief, she realized that his action had absolutely nothing to do with her.
He straightened, then stood, carelessly pulling himself from her grasp. He lurched forward, stumbling toward the door that he had been staring at so intently. Riza stood from where she had been crouched beside his desk chair and hesitantly followed him as he took another unbalanced step.
“Colonel Mustang...” she called, her voice coming out in a breathless whisper. She reached out and took his arm, holding him back. “Come sit back down. Please.”
He was still for a moment, then he turned his head very slightly, just enough to look at her out of the corner of his bloodshot eye.
What made Riza stop, what made her hand twitch in longing for the solidity of her gun, was not the absence of Mustang in those dark eyes. No, she was pretty much used to that by now and the absence of his consciousness in his gaze was not surprising, especially now when he was so clearly being affected by his sickness. What made her stop and want to pull her gun was the presence of something else.
“You would dare to stop Me?”
The words came from Mustang, but Riza—in her distress and in her own headache-induced haze—could not be sure that she had even seen his lips move, or if she’d heard the words at all.
“Those were my orders,” she replied simply, hoping that she sounded more confident than she felt. “And I apologize for this, sir, but...”
Quickly, Riza took Mustang’s broken, bleeding hand in her own and squeezed it as hard as she could, until she felt his broken bones shift under the pressure.
His knees buckled immediately and a ragged, curse forced itself from between his clenched teeth. He wrenched his hand from her grasp and curled himself around it, panting.
“I’m sorry, sir...” she breathed, standing beside him and looking down upon him, “I didn’t know what else to do.”
He bowed his head, his shoulders trembling, and said nothing.
She bit her lip and slowly lowered herself onto the floor beside him. She put an arm around his shoulder.
“Come on, sir...” she coaxed quietly, helping him to his feet. He leaned on her, as he always did in those very rare moments when he needed to, and let her lead him back to the desk chair.
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