Fic: Mahabharata (Battlefield 2/3) (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[keep_counting]

Title: Mahabharata (Battlefield part 2/3)
Category: Drama, heavy Angst, h/c, eventual Romance
Rating: R for the angst and mentions of death and violence.
Warnings: Death, violence, war. This chapter is the most Angst-filled, so beware!
Characters/Pairings: Winry, Edward, Al, eventual Winry/Ed
A/N: A short-fic in three pieces, centering around Winry and Ed and the hardships that turns their lives around. AU from part two.
Summary: Their lives are battlefields. Part two: Death is not shy, but war is even less so. It takes and takes and gives nothing back, nothing but blood instead of water, sand instead of stone, horror instead of laughter.

Part one

 

Mahabharata (Battlefield Part 2/3)

 

In any person’s life there is a certain amount of bad times and good times. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad (Ed tries to remember anyone he knows whose life has had more golden moments than bleak, and he comes up with nothing) and sometimes….

Sometimes the bad is a long, winding road, paved with good intensions and people reaching out their hands to him, only to scratch at him when he takes hold, bite and curse and scream and steal his limbs, leaving him helpless, unable to walk and move and aid.

Sometimes, Edward isn’t sure if it’s the road ahead of him or another nightmare.

It makes the good moments that much more precious. And when the good moments almost completely disappear, it is like losing his mother all over again.

In war, there are no good times. In war, the road may be paved with good intensions, but it is going to lead him nowhere.

All of this will end in nothing but chaos.

As an alchemist and a human being, Edward is not particularly fond of chaos.

Especially not when the chaos is wreaking inside his brother – am I real, am I anything? – and in him and in Winry.

‘He killed my parents.’

Yes, the thought is dark and hurtful. I should let you do this. He won’t stop killing innocent people until he’s dead.

Because Scar was – is – wrong. There is no justice. No happy light at the end of the tunnel. And if there are, it’s sure to be a train, hurling towards him at top-speed, the sound of his mother’s screams in his ear.

But, in a way, it is also right. In war, there are no winners. In war, the old send the young in to slaughter (children, civilians, innocent people), and your skills doesn’t need to matter, your position, your pretty face, your wealth or your sweet smile.

He used to see it, in the Colonel’s posture, in Hawkeye’s smile. The haunted look, only held back by discipline and a sheer strength that he thinks he will never possess. How could a boy survive a war?

Most of the time – and this is the times of supposed ‘peace’ – Ed feels like a ball being thrown between people whose faces he doesn’t know, a puppet on a string dancing a silly dance for whoever is spinning the web. He never lets it show, doesn’t mention it to Al, thought his brother knows and doesn’t say anything either. To say would be to acknowledge it, to realize exactly how powerless they are.

Realizing their true standing. Dog of the Military.

*

The peaceful times where bad. The nightmares would haunt him and he’d wake up alone and wonder where Al was, and what it must feel like, not being able to cry. What it must feel like to be abandoned by your own brother.

Because it is a kind of abandonment, that Ed lets him stay awake when he sleeps. That he doesn’t keep awake himself, even though he knows it will get them nowhere.

No, the peaceful times were bad, but he could handle it. He had a road in front of him, had a meaning, a goal.

Now he has nothing.

Death is not shy, but war is even less so. It takes and takes and gives nothing back, nothing but blood instead of water, sand instead of stone, horror instead of laughter.

The war is horrible.

It’s like being trapped in that place over and over again, screaming for mum, for Al, for anyone. Begging that thing to let him go, to give him back his arm, his leg, please, please, just give me back my little brother…

He’s surprised to find that he has that posture now and that look in his eyes. But he’s even more surprised to see that he can handle it. That, like Roy and Riza, he is not helpless and will endure. As long as Al is there and Winry still smiles despite the blood coating his hands, he can endure.

It’s not easy. He looks at his hands in the sharp sun and sees crimson blood instead of white gloves. His face is grim and Al’s laughter is hollow and there is nothing but death, every way he turns. When he closes the eyes, he sees the face of the people he’s killed, long distance, short distance, shot, stabbed, beheaded, died, suffered, died. When it’s dark and he’s lying in a cot or on a bed of rocks, he can hear them screaming.

Edward wakes after the nightmares and wishes he could go back to sleep. There is no relief in waking and at least the dreams are familiar. At least, that’s just a child’s mistake. When he’d pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, there had been no mistake. Only fault.

He wonders how Winry and Grandma and Al can stand to look at him. And he remembers a day in Central and a man with a scar, and a frightened and broken girl holding a gun. And he thinks that she’s braver than he is, that she never pulled the trigger. That all she did was give him life and hope.

It’s a cold day in March, when they declare that the war is over. That Amestris has won, conquered, defeated, shined. That it’s over. That he can go back, go home and have his old life back. Go home, soldier.

 In war, everyone dies. Even the survivors.

 

Mahabharata: a lengthy narrative poem about the great war supposed to have taken place in India about 1400 B.C. [Sanskrit Lit.: Haydn & Fuller, 451]

  

Part three

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Oooooo. I really love the words you're using in this story.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Thank-you :D

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

They're very poetic, for such a darkish story.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like it :) the next and final installment won't be so darkish!

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I don't mind darkish if there's a light at the end of the tunnel. XD

[ishte.livejournal.com]

Nice. Poor tormented Ed. I like that he has something to hold onto in his mind though. Knows he's got something to go back to, and knows he's gained some of the strength he grudgingly admired in others.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Thank-you. I am glad that you can see the good in his otherwise dark situation!