Something about the small crackling and popping noise made him wonder.

It was soothing; it posed warmth yet destruction at the same time.

It was a beautiful orange, but an outraged red.

It was the symbol of his entire career.

Yet he feared it.

It was fire.

Roy stared at the crackling flame that sat in the fireplace for a good, long while. Out in the north, it was all he had to do. Just stare at the wondrous yet terrifying line between life and death in front of him.

Half of the time, he wanted extinguish it, but he needed it to live. The other half, he wanted to make it large, but the fireplace wasn’t that large.

He sighed. He felt the heat of the fire on his hands and his face, though he could only see the flame with his left eye; the accursed black eye patch faulted the vision of his right.

He thought back; when he had said goodbye to him, he had still had both eyes. That was before his right eye had been blinded by Archer’s bullet.

What would he think now?

He had been gone for three years, of course he wouldn’t expect for him to have only one eye – or be a goddamn Corporal, for that matter.

It was all so embarrassing, and made him just want to quit.

He remembered several times in his life when he had felt like that.

But this time, that feeling was stronger than it had been before.

And it was all because of one person.

Edward.

He poked the fire with a metal rod, sighing. He sat on an abandoned fruit crate he had found, and another one sat beside him. On the southeast corner of the box laid two white gloves with red circles on the back of the palms. He had remembered using those gloves so long ago, but now he just couldn’t do it. He had found it fun before, having that sort of power, but . . .

It just wasn’t fun anymore.

It was scary.

In the northwest corner was a pistol. It had one bullet; that was all. One bullet and just enough powder to shoot once; it was all he needed if he made the decision.

It was a decision he was half willing to make.

He would give anything to reconcile with his friend.

He wondered what the boy looked like now. He would’ve been eighteen. He probably wasn’t as short, and he probably looked much sharper and was much more keen and wise.

He thought about how much Edward must have grown, and how he hadn’t changed at all.

It was terrifying.

There was a small spider creeping on the wall a bit above the fireplace. He considered it his only friend. It was there every night, and it would be until he dug himself out of the hole he had dug himself.

Something about three years told him that Edward would never understand.

It crushed him.

He sighed, tired of wallowing in his own grief – he had never really been one to do that. He got up from his fruit crate and brushed the white ashes off of it. He then moved into the opposite room to go to bed.

He had forgotten to put out the fire.

---

The next morning, Roy arrived back inside the tiny room with his fire, his spider and his crates. He had gotten dressed and had eaten a meager breakfast and expected to do what he did everyday – stand outside and wait until it got too cold.

He spotted the crate he had been sitting on the night before. It had ashes on it.

Roy quirked an eyebrow; how could that be?

He bent down and wiped the ashes off of it, and realized there were ashes all over the floor.

I was sure I swept up all the ashes last night . . . he thought, and then it hit him.

He turned around to a familiar crackling noise, and spotted a small flame that still thrived in the coals.

It was tiny, yet lively. It wasn’t as destructive as the large fire he had had the night before, but it held life. It was mostly a calm blue, with some orange lining the outside of it. It was completely different from the flames Roy was used to.

Roy narrowed his vision to the small flame.

He swiftly picked up the pistol and put his hands around the handle, ready to fire.

He aimed.

And he pulled the trigger.

The small spider he had called “friend” for so long fell off the wall and into the fire, now dead from being shot.

Roy put down the gun; it felt to him like some sort of atonement. That tiny flame had told him something.

That flame got energy from the coals.

Roy got energy from that flame.

If this tiny flame could survive on energy alone, so could he.