Skirmishes had been abundant lately as talks of Grand Cleric Logue Loweâs and Fuhrer Bradleyâs attempt at peace negotiations had turned sour. In the light of the downhill developments, rumors of Ishvalan warriors taking down officers on patrol had reached a tumultuous notoriety. Days ago, his battalion and another from their regiment were ordered to clear out identified Ishvalan hideouts, assisted by the young Flame Alchemist, as matter of haste.
In one unfortunate quandary, a few of Hughesâ men, himself included, had retreated belatedly and had been caught within the inferno of the alchemistâs ministrations. It was not damaging; the inconsequential burn on his right arm was already on its way to disappearing completely. The dread and anxiety, however, of his brush with the Flame Alchemistâs conflagration was still eating chunks at his remaining collectedness. Yet he did not hold grudges against Roy Mustang, the boy he shared days with from the academy.
Even after the efforts and the risk, however, two more patrolling officers were found days after, their lives allowed to leak from their bodies by clean bullet holes.
âYou find it odd, you say?â Hughes  prompted, regretfully a bit too hastily.
He caught a faint upward lift of the corners of the alchemistâs lips. Kimblee stood from where he made himself comfortable atop the stacked white rocks. âWe do not share camping stations, yet often I find your presence in mine.â He lent roving eyes to the Captain and added, âDo not misunderstand, Captain, I find it quite novel is all.â
âI assure you it is hardly my fault, Major.â His free hand gestured towards the central camp where faces from nearly every regiment converged into a mass of haggard blues and whites. He could not recall when the practice started. Infantrymen came in numbers into central camp and huddled together in moments of relative calm, sharing bland ration and morose retellings of each oneâs involvement in strife as though it nurtured them just the same.
He watched silently as Kimblee took an indulgent sip of water, letting out a satisfied âahhâ towards the end. Â
âAs it is mine.â he cast the tin can aside and watched as it toppled clumsily against the earth.
The motion was unsettling despite its normalcy. He found himself thanking the assembly of crates littering the space between him and the alchemist for conjuring an imagined fortress he could stay behind. Â
Kimblee continued, âLovely sight, isnât it? Camaraderie and fellowship burning bright against the backdrop of hell itself.â
Hughes swallowed but managed to choke out a response, âI quite enjoy the company. It truly is far better than crouching about in between chunks of stone. And the men are wealthy in anecdotes. ItâsâŠitâs good company, it is. Despite all.â
âHmm.â Kimblee breathed in pensive riposte. âTell me, Captain Hughes. Are you well-acquainted with the Flame and The Hawkâs Eye?â
Hughes did not fail to catch the sharp glint of allure in Kimbleeâs slithering voice as the titles rolled off his practiced tongue. He thought is was eerily akin to the stillness of fishhook beneath water as it lingered until an unfortunate creature finally succumbed to the piercing kiss. He paused and considered his answer.
âRoy Mustang was a colleague at the academy. As for Cadet Hawkeye, Roy knew her in childhood.â Brief. He decided it was the perfect extent of an answer he would allow Kimblee.
The alchemist nodded in acknowledgement, angling his face towards the direction of the central camp, particularly at two seated figures in the far left.
âRather unfortunate for them to continue growing up together in the stalwart arms of discord, here.â He clicked his tongue in what appeared to Hughes as genuine sympathy. Then again, he knew next to nothing about the alchemist aside from what has been made public of his work as well as his reputation.Kimblee slowly angled his head to the left, âMoreover, they took on a rather rigid demeanor in the past days, no?â
Yes, Hughes affirmed in his head, unspoken and remained so. âThe youth are impressionable, Major Kimblee, especially in this unforgiving arena.â
âCome now, letâs not deny the grownups the same affliction.â He extended a hand towards the camp as an invitation to make the trek back. In so doing, he allowed the the tattoo of an array glare boldly at Hughes.The aptitude for alchemy skirted around the multitude of intelligences Hughes had built for himself. Even so, he never denied himself the healthy interest in the science. His friendship with Roy Mustang allowed him more than a glimpse of the science of alchemy, but his involvement in the military allowed him an audience with the art of alchemy. It allowed him to see creation and destruction and the beauty that was born out of the energy that filigreed the alchemists. Still, he found that he was still kept behind the line that separates alchemists andâŠpeople like himself, he settled.âI believe I merely repeated what they already know, but were afraid to hear aloud. Life will teach and it will teach brutally. I had actually hoped the conversation tore them from their sanctimonious worldviews,â the alchemist offered in extension to his previous sentiment.
Kimblee started to walk. Hughes attempted to match the alchemistâs lazy stride but found himself either falling short or going past him. He wondered wearily of Kimbleeâs tempo against the worldâs; understood perhaps by the few that enabled him his unfettered alchemical prowess, and matched by even less, perhaps none at all. He appeared to exist between the convivial energy of a thousand newborn cosmos and the corporeal. For Hughes, it was more than is necessary to unnerve his very soul. In the end he settled a few steps in tangent with the shadow that bordered the alchemistâs left.
For the better part of the past week following the conclusion of the trioâs encounter at the square with the Crimson Alchemist, Hughes had been able to wrap Kimbleeâs lecture in a tight bandage that fit snugly at the very base of his recollection, easily forgotten and of the faintest significance.Sadly, he could not extend the same thoughts for Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye.
âThat may be, Major. It doesnât dull the impact, however. I observed theyâre mired in even greater guilt. It saps the vibrance out of the soul, you know.â
The sound that escaped Solf J. Kimblee was nothing like the myriad laughter Hughes had heard in his short life. It was a snide snicker coupled with unbridled amusement, the sound seeming to come from the depth of his chest only to be curiously vocalized in ribbons of lilting air. It was vexatious, he summarized.
âThe palpable truths and empiricisms of life tend to do so, Iâm afraid, Captain.â Kimblee turned to his direction slightly. âSap the vibrance out of the soul.â he repeated quietly in almost a husky whisper.
âWhat remains of the vibrance, if you may,â Hughes offered in correction.
âBut not from yours?â
Damn him.
âI want to get out of here alive. No matter what the cost.â
âAlive?â
âAlive.â
âAs does every single face on both lines, Captain. You are nothing special. One breathing soldier, or Ishvalanâwe like to keep things in equilibriumâdenotes a thousand cold, dead bodies in the rubble. This is our reality in this land: we take lives to keep ours.â Kimblee slowed his stroll. âBut why does your soul, allow me to borrow your tongue, keep the vibrance?â
A grimace slowly made home on Hughesâ face. He thought, then, of Gracia, of the park where he first tasted the delight in her lips after telling her his heartâs truth, of the way she responded in the exact way he hoped she would. He thought of the future he painted for her before departing to exterminateânoâfollow orders.
âI do not think it still has vibrance at all. But perhaps because I am a stubborn man, I believe I can regain it instead. I tend to hold light a little longer than most, Iâd like to think.â
They made their way in silence not long after the words left his chapped lips. Kimblee did not reply and settled for the idle treading he employed the rest of the way.
What few words he shared with the Crimson Alchemist settled in dull, broken pangs within his brain, burrowing just beneath stacks of familiar faces, empirical knowledge, and intelligences he acquired daily, like clockwork. He watched the alchemistâs back as he made for the crates that nestled the black haired Roy Mustang and the small back of Riza Hawkeye, stopping just a few strides before their sights.
Kimblee turned back to Hughes with eyes that carried wisdom, emotions, and motives more than Hughes could ever hold together at once. Kimblee nodded and casually sidestepped.
âLooking forward to our next chat, Captain.â
Hughes found his bladed hand slanted in front of his temple. âSir.â
He watched until Kimblee disappeared behind two soldiers beneath the shade of a great tent before making the rest of the way to the vacant crate in front of Roy Mustang.He looked down at whatâs left of the water in his cup. Despite prior ruminations, Maes concluded, with all finality, that water tasted like nothing. Metallic, if one took from the taps on the walls of the hastily constructed bunks. Potable, claimed the greenhorns and the cadets, all of them kids wrapped in the magnificent, despotic blue of the Amestrian military. Kids who all but shed their concept of convenience the moment they traded chewed-off, crumbling crayons for the hard alloys of rifles and pistols. The image of them made a beautiful couple with the grandiose promise of a vague, yet auspicious future. None the wiser, all of them.
All of us , he corrected in afterthought.
In the sweltering sands of Ishval, this was all they had. The grimy, properly calloused hands that held the thin metal can languidly lifted it to his mouth. He brought it down, and then, absently, took another sip, wetting the expanse of his mouth instead of drinking. He repeated the motion, this time siphoning the liquid into his mouth more than sipped. It was too forceful than he intended, and he stifled the choking in his throat.
âMajor,â
From his left came the voice, soft and weak and tired. He frowned.That was not his title. A title didnât, shouldnât, suit a man who everyday rinsed from his murderous hands a dire, ugly mix of blood and brown dirt, ignoring but not forgetting the thin coat of it that crusted under his cracked fingernails like an amalgam of demons making home within his very skin. An ugly guise of service to the country. Each fresh, hot batch of the fluid catapulted him in the throes of his nationâs fury, and terminally, its insanity.But a title he did hold and at the thought, he scowled.
âI wish to return to my post.â the voice continued, much too heavy and laced with the scathing desperation of a child clinging onto a departing parent.
Riza Hawkeye was barely a friend, just a concurrent acquaintance through another. Yet in saying so, he did not mean to deny her of his attention. For what does any situation in the hellfire they orchestrated beg from them other than attention, he considered bitterly.
Finally, he lifted his head from the glistening bottom of his tin cup and arched his head towards the source of the thick, pained voice. She was addressing Roy Mustang, Hughes realized.He found their group odd, sitting like a congregation of misfits in the very belly of fire and brimstone; a man seeming to vie for his lifeâs protraction, a state alchemist, and a girl much too young for all of this brutality.
âI thank that what short respite we are given is spent with good company. But Iâd like to spend the rest of the remaining time in my bunker.â she recited, her blank eyes travelling along the expanse of her trembling hands the way a victim might hold a murdererâs eyes in hopes of catching a glimmer of guilt from within.
Hughes bit the inside of his cheek, intending to draw blood. He had the foresight to understand that the cadet needed the time alone, to fester in the nightmare, he supposed. He could try his mightiest but even the particulate sands of Ishval knew that he could never fool a rat if he claimed to have never sat in the dim luminescence of the night sky, wondering why his hands and whatâs left of his heart felt heavier than the world itself did. Predicately, he spent many nights staring at the endless, scattered ripples of off-white rocks and dunes that folded within themselves, hard in thought about humans and their frivolous attempts at stewardship.
He glanced at the man seated in similar fashion across him, his backside making acquaintance with the splintery crate mounted atop the coarse desert sand. Roy Mustang looked in understanding at Riza Hawkeye, his short-cropped oily black hair plastered on his ashen face like tendrils of turbid shadows caressing whatâs left of the light.
âOf course. Iâd like for you to get some rest as well. Let me escort you.â Mustang made the motion to stand but Hawkeye held out a hand, cutting his progress short.
âPlease, do finish your meal. I can manage very well.â at the last word, marksman went off.
For all the whispers of consternation aimed at the deeds of a man who wielded fire like the tongues themselves were his limbs, the Flame Alchemist looked small at that moment, the fabled inferno of a presence doused like the weakest light. He looked like a scrawny child in the assaulting blue of the uniform, his body almost caging in beneath all the fabric. Ironic, Hughes mused, even farcical; being swallowed by the very symbol of his ideals while he toiled to feed Abaddon with the charred corpses of his prey.
He didnât himself fare better, he silently mused; a gangly man with glasses, fixtures too au courant for the demands of a battlefield. He was complimented on it once, however, by a young cadet having no more than two decades to decorate his forgettable name. Told him his friend thought he looked like a proper authority figure, like a dad. The boy ended it with a rich laughter. He chuckled bitterly at the memory. What a foolish, disgusting thing to do at war: have friends.
âYou look like shit.â
Roy Mustang forced a chuckle. âThank you for the compliment. You look only a few washes better.â
âJust a âthank youâ would suffice, Roy.â he chided.
In his periphery he caught a glimpse of long black hair tied into a sleek ponytail. Two forking clumps of hair scissored the manâs face like an incomplete fretwork. Losing to his own curiosity, he glanced indulgently at the Crimson Alchemist and frowned. Not a hair on his head was out of place, no wrinkle atop his brows. His uniform was crisp and untainted, the lower half of it, specifically, as the alchemist sported a sleeveless undershirt instead of the issued military jacket. Even the undershirt, Hughes noted, looked clean and spotless. A tinge of irritation welled up from within Hughesâ chest, punctuated by the audible strain of his lungs as they labored none too gently against the harshness of the desert heat.
For a madman, it is not exactly scandalous that Kimblee did not find the current trend of sombre desolation and gnawing guilt fashionable. Hughes thought in mindless discomfort, how dare he sport only the fleshy bulge of the bags under his eyes? What a disservice to the men that lay lifeless upon the grainy expanse of Ishval, waiting for the torrid kiss of the sun to rob them of lifeâs essence and leave them a desiccated mass.
He decided he did not know this manâs name; he figured it would not be of ample significance much later when their rotting fluids seeped from the orifices of their corpses onto the hungry Ishvalan soil. But roiling deep inside him was the gnawing apprehension he cultivated about Solf J. Kimbleeâs fate post-war.
The Crimson Alchemist will survive.
Hughes imagined the ocean; vast and bottomless. He imagined wading in the waves. He imagined drowning. But even as he did, the salty water didnât drown the memories of agonized screams of the people on the other side of the lines as they grappled for life on the mountains of carcasses their likewise dead countrymen percolated on. And his mind pulled from the recesses of his memories rich visions of the dozen skulls fractured and pierced by purposeful bulletsâhe hazarded a glance at the fading silhouette of the girl who carried her rifle like a crossâand wayward fragments of broken off limestone from collapsed buildings.
He tried to stop it, but his mind called forth even more memories previously stashed in the abyss of his subconscious. Then he was again drowning. Drowning in the vociferous noise of things detonating. The water turned to blood. The soft hissing of the beginnings of an alchemical reaction enveloped his ears, creating a hazy, auricular curtain of explosions and eruptions.
The remainder of water that rested like a placid lake on his tongue became too heavy in his mouth. He spat it onto the ground, watching pensively as it acted as a subdued likeness of his seconds past imaginings. He stared for as long as it took for the ground to greedily consume the tasteless, colorless substance.
âDo you mind me taking the recently abandoned box, gentlemen?â For the second time that day, Kimbleeâs voice pulled him from his mindâs asphyxiating wanderings. He snatched the box Riza Hawkeye sat on minutes prior without waiting for an answer.
Hughes glanced at the man in front of him and caught the tinge of horror beneath Mustangâs stark black eyes. It flashed momentarily before vanishing altogether as if it hadnât at all paid a visit. Mustangâs eyes spoke of a recollection, perhaps a vivid picture of a memory better forgotten. Perhaps, Hughes dared to think, the exact moment the Crimson Alchemistâs purposeful voice drove a wedge between Roy Mustangâs idealsâthe very core of his becoming an alchemistâ and the very real, very present role he plays in a violent warfare.The weight of his friendâs turmoil forced Hughes to let his head hang in helplessness. But although he longed to keep his heavy eyes fixed to the grains of sand beneath his feet for he found it easier, sand is just sand, coarse and scorching under the desert sun.
But the Crimson Alchemist was so much more.
He followed the alchemistâs back as it hunched slightly under the weight of the crate in his arms. Kimblee sauntered over to a tent, dropping the crate lazily on the sand to follow it afterwards in a gratifying sit. He watched them from his perch, unabashed, curious, and analytical, like a scientist observing the interactions between his variables. The way he was eager-eyed yet critical unnerved Hughes all the more.
âRoy.â Hughes started. âDonâtââ
Roy Mustang swallowed visibly. âIâm no better than him.â
Hughes clicked his tongue in obvious annoyance. He expelled a sardonic remark, âRight, of course. Neither am I. Weâre all just following orders. I just donât put my hands together and make sparks fly but pulling the trigger is the same goddamn shit, right?â
It came out even harsher than he intended, he thought, as Mustang flinched in response. Somehow, he could not deny that there was a semblance of truth in it and was clear as day; they were all complicit in violence.However, the Crimson Alchemist, as they both understood in disgust, did not only have blood on his hands. He sought it, revelled, and basked in it, if his lone figure emerging from the rubble of his devastation was enough visual.
As Hughes pondered, he saw Kimblee gingerly trace a pattern on his hand, the arrays.
âYouâre not like him, Roy.â
A mocking snort, and then a stifled coughing preceded the Flame Alchemistâs answer. âWe are all the same in the eyes of the dead.â
âIâm not dead.â
In the tent, Kimblee put his hands together in an audible clap, startling the men congregating behind him. Everybody knew what it meant, Hughes affirmed, as he watched  groups scamper away, breaking in visible sweat. Small bursts of light crackled in strands from within and around Kimbleeâs joined hands that dissipated into nothing as soon as they appeared. A flagrant simper decorated Kimbleeâs face at the exhibition, inducing a violent lurch within Hughesâ stomach.
âSick bastard.â he spat the words in contempt. In front of him, Roy Mustang was motionless. His eyes, void like a chasm within a chasm, were fixed in scorn on the demented being they labeled soldier, major, and state alchemist.
The trill of the bell signalling the expiry of their recess brought the tension to a stiff monotone. Mustang stood abruptly and Hughes followed suit.
âIâll see you.â
Hughes nodded.
He did not miss the cursory glance Mustang tossed in the direction of Kimblee. It was almost like a hunter making sure the game remained where he left it. For the greatest part, Hughes meant to cease his mindless observations but failed part way due to the stomping of Mustangâs boots on the impressible earth. Soon he found his tired eyes following the Flame Alchemistâs suit, mounting his eyes on the landscape that housed the still seated form of Solf J. Kimblee.
The sound of heavy boots on sand rang in erratic chorus in the cusp of the afternoon. He tried to estimate the number of pairs of lumbering footfalls sharing in the harmony, but no matter how many, they were nothing compared to the blare of the Crimson Alchemistâs presence. It was deafening, thunderous, and incessant, as was the alchemist himself.
He was no scientist, let alone an alchemist. But Maes Hughes was intelligent, Â knowledgeable in the ways of the worldâno matter how gritty, how vulgar, and how grislyâand he knew this of Solf J. Kimblee. In tangential circumstance, he knew that blood is distinguished from water by the mere presence of protein and trace elements, but mostly plasma, which in itself is practically water. Solf J. Kimblee was both, he concluded. Besides, both affected life. Water cultivated while blood nurtured. However in excess, water, as well as blood, killed and destroyed.
He knew then that Kimblee did both, in the deranged, twisted manner their stations and persons necessitated. His hands, calamitous apparati that they are, tore the earth layer by layer. The same hands molded the remnants into territories bustling with a flurry of vision, malleable as thinly sliced metal that begged to be pounded into shape. He did these and more. He culled. He destroyed. He paved, laying corpses instead of flagstones set in peculiar, abnormal patterns on the path of their patronsâ victory.
Moreover, in what Hughes found so riveting despite himself, Kimblee did so without letting the maw of remorse nip at his heels. So unlike Roy Mustang, whose guilt gnashed away at the gloves covering his shaking hands, most of all unlike young Riza Hawkeye, whose rifle was kept blanketed by dirtied cloth in times of respite as though doing so could likewise screen her conscience from the shame of her own doing.
Hughes beheld Kimbleeâs retreating silhouette. Proud and unbending he walked, letting the harsh rays of the desert sun land and soak through his exposed skin.
With a certain degree of consciousness, Hughes negated the alchemistâs steps with the cessation of his own. He watched him instead; an errant being in a similarly errant landscape, like the torque of a planet in collision with another, unrelenting in its course with the guarantee of unbridled impact. His existence was inevitable and crucialâin this chapter of their mad history at the very leastâ orchestrated even, by the hands that coddled and revelled in the violence necessitated by humanityâs nature itself.
Slowly, Hughes continued his march towards his station, retracing every single word he exchanged with the alchemist. For a brief moment in his life, he considered Solf J. Kimbleeâs words as veiled hymns of gospel truths.
In hindsight it was simple: the alchemist behaved and acted under the guidance of philosophies layered in with these concepts. No matter how horrid and bitter, they were truths and Hughes understood that. They were realities that, in the pitiless strife of war, even seemingly bereft of sense and reason, still remained concrete and definite. They remained morsels of unwavering axioms that nurtured and sustained, while on the flip side did ravage and obliterate all the same. They were strings of absolutes and aphorisms that flowed from Godâs mouth itself and manifested in corded cloth wrapped taut around the universe, around humanityâs anima itself.
Hughes was not a religious man; pragmatic, calculated, and always critical but rarely spiritual. In that moment, however, shadowed by the inflection of Kimbleeâs voice, Maes Hughes found himself mouthing words of urgency to the gods what few of his companions worshiped. One prayer, over and over until he made it to his station.
Angels divine, angels divine, flog this demon and cast him out; away from your servants, away from paradise.
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