Betrayal

Disclaimer : I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.

A/N : Just a random little oneshot that centers around the scene in episode 36 with Winry and Hawkeye on the train. Yes, there is royai. I always find a way.

Roy Mustang is a murderer.

Viscerally, she has always known this. She has heard all about the massacre in Ishbal. She knows the stories about soldiers and civilians tearing into each other senselessly, and she knows that anyone who survived the carnage did so on brutality. The soldiers who emerged from the eastern dust are all accomplished killers, but the military has a history of glossing over slaughter and exalting those who perpetrate it in the name of just causes. Headquarters grooms its dogs well and spits them out in trained blue lines.

Off the battlefield the military has a deceiving habit of docility, laboring over menial tasks like paperwork and settling minor civil disputes. The proud and embattled war heroes of Ishbal are tame and engaging pets to the public eye, especially the handsome colonel of Central. She has never seen him kill anyone.

It's very easy to forget that all dogs have mouths full of teeth.

It's very hard to forget the mother and father that she longed—still longs—for. Dead. Gone. Over. What is a just cause anyway? Is it just that good men can be murderers, and is it just that she would only care for these moral ponderings when they became too personal? He could have gone on being as he was, and she would have made no value judgments of his character, or hers for that matter if she hadn't learned to truth. The truth is sandpaper sawing against her tear ducts.

The train burbles like an upset stomach and hums in the soles of her feet. She thinks on what she has learned, but her mind keeps hitting the same roadblocks. It tastes like she's trying to swallow bile, or perhaps she's trying to swallow the tears that refuse to come. It hurts in her temples and the places where her tongue brushes against the stinging roof of her mouth. Her skin fizzles, and she has a desperate impulse to unzip her body and shed it like an itchy coat.

He. Killed. Them.

So this is betrayal, cut-open and fresh.

She tears her gaze off the seat in front of her and regards his right-hand woman. She has heard it said before that Colonel Mustang loves the girls. Why wouldn't his most trusted subordinate be a beautiful woman? Lieutenant Hawkeye could be anywhere she wants with her steady aim and unflappable nerves. And yet, there is never any question.

She belongs to him.

A new interest bites into her like razor wire, and she is speaking before she recognizes her own voice. "Lieutenant?"

"You can call me Riza," the older woman murmurs amiably, but Winry knows she won't.

She is curious, and maybe—just a little—she wants to draw blood. Her misery is hunting for company. She licks her lips. Her next question is dry, paper-cutting her gums.

"I was just wondering, have you ever shot anyone?"

Lieutenant Hawkeye's mouth curls around a gasp. (She wonders absently if Colonel Mustang has ever kissed that mouth. Then she wonders why she would wonder something like that.) "When I had to. To keep the peace."

"Did you know a pair of married doctors?" She presses on before the Lieutenant's judicious silence quails her. "The Rockbells?"

"Yes. . ." Hawkeye's eyes flash warily. "I don't know what you've been told, but there are times when a soldier has to take a life, even when he doesn't understand why. The orders may not even make any sense at all. That's the way it is when you're a soldier, and it can be a stupid and terrible life."

She is feeling vindictive. "If you hate it, why don't you get out?"

The Lieutenant doesn't flinch as she had hoped. "Because there's someone I have to protect, and it's not a burden someone forced on me. It's a decision I made for myself, and I take full responsibility any time I fire a round. But he's the reason I squeeze the trigger, and I won't ever hesitate to do it until the day he accomplishes his goal."

She watches the older woman's face smooth out, and she thinks again about the Colonel pressing his smirking mouth against her. She loses herself to a young woman's curiosity about the mysteries of adult affections, the secrets of bodies pressing together in the dark. Do they pour their destructiveness into each other? Does he coil Hawkeye's unbound hair around his fingers and whisper words of remorse to her—his lover—his subordinate—which is she anyway? Surely, she can't be both. The words are contradictory, but it's a delicious fantasy, and she doesn't know why.

She wants this woman far away from her so she can dissect her thoughts in peace. Lieutenant Hawkeye is so fine and strong and capable, even now defending the reprehensible actions of her superior officer. How can she repress admiration? Envy even. Would she be so resolute if Edward had killed?—No, she reminds herself, not if. When. What would she do when the daughter of an innocent casualty came to her? What would she say when no retribution would suffice?

"But how can you be certain?" she says at last. "What if he isn't worth protecting?"

"That's another call I have to make for myself."

She hates Roy Mustang. She hates him because he has this woman who will bare her own throat to protect him from his sins. She hates him because she has never seen such loyalty, and for some reason she feels annoyingly drawn.

She thinks of Edward again.

"How does he feel about you protecting him? Does he even notice?"

The imprints of illicit kisses frame the corners of the lieutenant's mouth when she looks at her again.

"I don't care."

And then Winry knows that she has fallen in love with the love she can see in the Lieutenant's face. Love for the man who killed her parents.

So this is her betrayal, cut-open and fresh.