Angel With a Shotgun Ch. 3 *complete*
***Chapter dedicated to @starwritingbri for encouraging me to get the edit done so they'd have something to read during a potentially awkward family dinner LOL***
***Also, spoilers for the OMV "Yet Another Man's Battle". If you haven't watched it, you're sincerely missing out!***
Maes Hughes strides purposely towards the medical tent. His face is pinched, his pace even but quick.
Earlier that day, he killed an old friend to protect another friend’s life. His stomach is still sour at the thought of another death, but this one feels less like murder than some of the others. At least this time he had someone to protect right in front of him.
He tries to pretend that he’s doing all of this—fighting in this damn war—to protect the people he loves—to protect Gracia and the future he wants to build with her. Most of the time he can convince himself. The rest of the time he just tries to stay alive.
He’s just finished delivering a report to his commanding officer and spent an hour answering questions about why he let a valuable resource, a State Alchemist, go in alone after an attack before the building was cleared. Hughes had his ass handed to him by the CO. He didn’t tell Colonel Stabler that Mustang rushed in before being given the all-clear by the perimeter team. He didn’t tell him that he and Mustang knew the Ishbalan who fired at Roy and didn’t tell him that Mustang hesitated when his own life was under threat.
Hughes doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he needs Mustang to snap out of it. They won’t make it through the rest of this war if he has to keep guarding Roy’s back every minute of the day to keep him from making more stupid mistakes like this. He covered for Roy with the CO this time, but he won't be able to keep it up indefinitely.
They’ve both got to make it through if they’ve got any chance of putting Mustang’s foolish naive plans into effect.
Hughes takes a sharp breath, then lifts the flap, entering the tent.
“Alright, Major. It’s time to get to work.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
