FMA BROTHERHOOD MY BELOVED WHATCHA GOT GIRL
I've got a couple of WIPs under that fandom! But my oldest and the one I am very fond of is called Kain Fuery's nightmares. I was rewatching the show (for the second? Third? time?) and happened to be paying close attention when we were checking up on Mustang's team, separated to the four corners of Amestris. Fuery ended up in the south, I think, caught in the middle of a skirmish. I didn't think he was involved in Ishval, which meant this was his first taste of war. I doubt such an experience left him, even after the Promised day. Thus, this WIP was born. For those of you who might be sensitive, this snippet is a liiiiitle bit dark? I'll warn you just in case.
In the weeks following the Promised Day, Kain Fuery doesn't dream. It isn't something he really notices--and even if he had, he would have chalked it up to stress and exhaustion; his body simply had no energy to dream with. He was pretty much running on survival mode, as it stood. Though the looming threat that was King Bradley and his Father had been eliminated, they weren't quite in the clear. Mustang wasn't Fhuerer, yet, and even before that, Mustang wasn't even out of the hospital. Neither were most of Fuery's friends.
Time passed, though, and with it, wounds healed. Six weeks after the promised day, both Roy and Riza had been released from the hospital. Even the Elric brothers actually managed to get discharged, though Al especially had a long way to go on the journey to recovery, they'd agreed he would make the most progress on the grassy, sunkissed knolls of Resembool. A further six weeks after Mustang had returned to work, Fuery's life had assumed an almost unnervingly normal tone. Mustang's entire team was back at work--Havoc included, though he was restricted to mostly desk work until he'd completed Physical Therapy. They'd all been promoted, too, and while there was still much work to be done, they could afford to take it at a more careful pace.
Six weeks after the Promised Day, Kain Fuery let his guard down. Just a little. He thought he could risk that much--his friends were all okay, they had a shot at the future. And six weeks after the Promised Day, Kain Fuery dreams. Not of the happenings on the Promised Day, strangely enough.
No, his dream goes further back. To the war.
Calling it a war was perhaps a little too generous--unlike the Ishvalan War, most of Amestris had no idea there was any violence happening at their souther border. Even those who did know, hardly called it a war. It was more like a skirmish. A brawl, if anything. Both sides of the argument weren't very big. It was unlikely much would even become of the battle, regardless of who won.
All of this meant almost nothing to Fuery. He'd been on the front lines, and that "skirmish" had looked a hell of a lot like war.
He wakes up drenched in sweat, wracked with cold shivers, sick to his stomach. He lurches out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom in just enough time to retch up a few pathetic streams of bile. Once his organs calm down, he slumps against the wall, sucking in deep breaths.
He hasn't forgotten the sour stench of burning, rotted flesh and choking smoke. The shriek of artillery and those afflicted by fire and broken bones and shredded skin and muscles. The ground shook with every burst of bomb and gunfire, and Fuery's whole body ached and burned from exertion. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept, and it never looked like he would ever get the chance to again. His hands shook around his weapon, but he could never afford to let it ruin his shot.
He had never been able to take the time to consider the men he'd killed. The men who had been killed. He knew some of their names, some of their faces. He'd talked to some of them, before.
There was the day they won. The day the fire had ceased, and there was this strange silence settling over what was left of the battlefield. Fuery hadn't stayed long. He'd been called home, to help during the Promised Day, and he had been oh so glad to escape that hell and fight for something he could understand and support. He'd felt guilty of considering it a distraction, but relieved because that was what it was. He'd never had time to remember or dream about the Southern Border Skirmish, so long as he had a battle to win at hand.
He hadn't even fully acknowledged that he couldn't avoid it forever.
***
I wanted it to continue and depict how Fuery holds all this in. They've got bigger things to worry about. But in the end, he can't escape it, and will seek (or unwillingly receive lol) Mustang's support. Hurt/comfort, angst sort of thing XD
