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I lived in you long before your torrid stint in the east. Sure, the old hollow eyed alchemist sparked our connection — you can hear me now, after all — but I was the light behind your eyes long before him. I was the heat in your chest, the sting of your tears, that sensation you got in your ribs when you cried alone in your room at night, clutching at your sheets.
I remember when the car pulled away from that bar. You hadn’t wanted to leave because it was a Sunday night and they always gave you virgin versions of fruity alcoholic drinks on Sunday nights and the girls were extra flirty, extra gracious, extra extra extra—
—and you cried then, too. You felt something tear at your insides, and that was me. I was searing you even then.
I remember when we met that girl together, I’ll always recall that day. She stood in stark contrast to her father: Bright, young eyes beside a sunken and sallow face. Her hair was lit like wheat beneath the sun, her eyes held something in them that was akin to a blaze but not quite there. What was inside her was much softer than what was inside you. She had something more rounded, something less bitter. You chased it. You put your feet in those ringlets and your hands grappled with crevices and you tried, you really did. But you could never quite get to where she was.
And you’re still climbing, even now. After ten, twenty, forty, eighty years. You cannot reach her. You cannot touch her. I know this because I have been alive in you for your every iteration. We’ve seen stars burst. We’ve met hundreds of versions of her, each with their own kind of soft, gentle, good, stern, broken, solid , and my God have you clambered after her for centuries.
But you’re deadly; you’re cold and you’re rigid. We’ve melted flesh off of bones.
We cannot touch her.
Well, perhaps I can. I licked at her flesh once. It didn’t bubble quite like I was used to. But I wasn’t the burn in your bones that night, my friend. No, that was all you. That was the culmination of a yearning that transcended the universe. That was the moment you truly knew who I was. I was so proud.
I’ll be seeing her on her knees from now until we are separated by the gods.
Please, she begged.
Please, you begged.
I suppose that’s all water under the bridge now. Her old man is dead, choked properly on his own blood, and you got what you wanted. Her, unequivocally yours. How sick.
How pitiful.
How?
You were fire incarnate in those tunnels. You were poised like a flame, whipping and snapping with heated teeth. I could hardly keep up, but boy did I have fun. You must have felt it too — our connection, lit brighter than the sun. I’m at my peak when you’re moving in tandem with my desires, which start and end on decimate. There are no other layers to me. There is nothing else I crave more than to singe the world so I can watch it come back fresh. I’ve seen so many first days, my friend. My love. Partner.
I do love you. I love you, and that’s why when she threatened our life I didn’t turn us on her. You directed our frustration somewhere else, at empty space, and you drenched me then. There in those tunnels, on that warm concrete, is where you put me to rest for the first time. There was a pit in you that only filled when your skin met hers. Momentarily, sure. Yeah. Of course.
I came back but we haven’t been the same.
I came back and nothing has been the same.
I don’t hate her. You love her, and I am a part of you, and so on some level I think I love her too. But since that night in those tunnels and that fight right above them in the blinding daylight, you’ve kept me in check. In a check like you’ve never kept me before. In chains. Where’s the key, Flame? With Hughes? Fullmetal? I am still that heat inside of you. In the bottom of your stomach and the soles of your feet.
Ah, I’m talking into the void. You aren’t listening anymore. Ha-ha! It always comes to this. We meet her and you grow morality like a weed. Like a cancer.
But even as you stand in your fancy uniforms and drink your blood red wines and collect little gold stars for your epaulettes I know you’re thinking of me. I know you’re thinking of me every time your eye catches sight of that pretty white scar around the curve of her neck. I know you’re thinking of me, Roy Mustang…
...and I know you’re never going to set me free again.
Serves me right. I’m a fire, and she’s carbon dioxide. How about that, huh?
How about that.