FMA flashfic - "For King or Country"

[aquabean]

Title: For King or Country
Author: Rune
Words: 151
Notes: The result of a conversation and then silence. I am quite positive that one line in particular is the fault, entirely, of karotsamused. So I made her beta. For both of these things she receives much love. (Spoilers for the end of the anime and possibly for severe hybridization of manga and anime canon.)
Summary: Perhaps he had had a plan in the beginning. That didn't matter now.


It happened in the weeks after, in the middle of the subsequent paperwork and meetings. Forms that had never been needed before were dug from the depths of file rooms and examined and found to be incomplete. Or lies. Or blank all together.

He had been brilliant. No one thought to question him.
He had been surrounded by friends. No one thought to doubt him.
He had been young, and loyal, and idealistic to a fault. Those that sought to use him would never have guessed the depth of his duplicity.

It happened in the weeks after, in the middle of trials and executions and accusations of treason. A man, the slayer of a monster, hung for a traitor, saving a country that wasn't his.

It happened in the weeks after, in the middle of a country where his fire had been born. The word spread. The second son was dead.

Comments

[chinchilla82.livejournal.com]

*WIBBLE*

I shouldn't be allowed to read these things at work.

Gorgeous writing, as usual. ^_^

[runefallstar.livejournal.com]

Eee. Thanks.

Really, really, I've never killed Roy off before but somehow... somehow this just worked in my brain. I'm glad it works in the writing out as well.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

And now you've removed him from the matrix of the canon, so when you take him up again, he's yours.

You see why I do it. *G*

[runefallstar.livejournal.com]

Gah. It was random inspiration that hit in the car this morning and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. But really. Ling has ten older brothers. And Roy has no family at all.


My obsession with his racial make-up is going to take me into strange territory...

[trensaddiction.livejournal.com]

Took me a second reading to figure it out, but when I did it was fascinating. A very unique take on it, and on him for that matter, for all that part of me finds myself abrubtly wanting to bathe in manga to make the "sad" go away (a patently ridiculous impulse when the canon in question is FMA, but I'm sure you can still understand what I mean). Beautifully penned.

[runefallstar.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thank you.

But I know exactly what you mean about the manga. For all that it's a greek tragedy in the making it's still better than the anime because the manga hasn't ended yet. And as long as "end" hasn't come, then hope remains.

Though Rana and Karot and were discussing the fact that No Matter What Ed is going to come back and find Al, and if here were to make it back through the gate only to find out that Roy had been hung...

We take for granted that the political relationships between Xing and Amestris are sound. That there's no possibility of animosity, if only because they're so far apart. But what happens when a prince, a second son, is killed so unjustly? Rana said there would be war. I said if Ed made it back through the gate Xing would have a very powerful, very angry, ally.