The Empath Alchemist {Edward Elric X Reader}

14

Watching officials zip Hughes' body into a bag was surreal.

(Y/n) sat stiffly on the other side of the curb, across from the now empty telephone booth with Riza at her side. Roy had wrapped her in his blazer, one that looked much too similar to the one that Maes had given her after the Fifth Laboratory incident.

She shivered. It was suddenly so cold outside, and no amount of warmth from the Flame Alchemist's coat would make her feel any less like stone. Tears had left a dry trail down her face leading past her chin and into her mouth and nose. Her eyes stung each time she blinked, and every once in a while the tears would come back when she allowed herself to remember everything that she had just seen.

When Roy checked Maes' pulse for the thirtieth time before any military came to the scene of the crime, when he finally let it sink in that his best friend was no longer with him, he slumped back onto his heels and stared down at him blankly. For just a few seconds, he sat there unsure of what to do. The Colonel felt numb, disbelieving of the sight before him and the cries of his daughter that couldn't seem to stop.

It took him a moment to pull her away, getting up and turning around, wrapping his arms around her trembling body and pulling her from the sight as best as he could. She struggled against him, reaching out for the man that was nothing but a memory now as she was pulled farther away. She cried out, clawing against Roy's back and desperately trying to climb over his shoulder as he ushered her back. He winced at the sheer despair, the heartbreak in her voice.

Lifting her off of the ground, he held onto her tightly until she was far away enough for him to block the sight from her with his body. He had to catch her from toppling over his shoulder, for she had almost made her way over him due to the way she was kicking and screaming, climbing upward. His ears rang from the sound, and he knew that this very moment would be engraved into his mind forever. His daughter's anguished cries, the very knowledge of Hughes' body laying behind him in the blood stained telephone booth. There was so much he needed to focus on, he didn't have time to let the loss of his friend settle in yet.

Roy managed to tug (Y/n) down by her waist, allowing him to lift her off of him and onto the ground. He went to his knees with her as she collapsed again, attempting to crawl around him to reach out to the man she once called an uncle.

The onyx eyed man gripped her shoulders tightly. He had never seen her lose control like this, eyes wide with panic and voice going hoarse. He could feel her screams rattle his bones, and the very sound of his daughter having experienced something so traumatizing would ruin him forever.

He had to remain calm, composed for her sake. Speaking as a superior officer outside of his relation to the young girl as a father, he would have told her that soldiers experience this every day. The dogs of the military put their lives on the line the moment they signed up and got accepted into the role. Hughes knew what he had gotten himself into, as the General he knew the risks and he understood that his life could end at any given second. The same thing went for Roy, Armstrong, and any other officer or State Alchemist of the military.

But he could never say that to her. Not to a child, not to his own daughter.

It may have been a distant memory, but (Y/n)'s parents had been killed. That was a loss she had experienced very early on, and though she barely remembered the details she understood the fact that one moment, she had biological parents and the next, they were taken from her. She had managed to fill that emptiness with the love of Roy and others who had grown close to her over the years. Losing Maes was much more than losing her adoptive father's friend. It was losing a family member, a huge piece of her that had formed over the time she spent with the dark haired man and his family. (Y/n) wasn't an idiot. She knew that Maes could have faced death any day, and the same went for Roy. The Ishvalan War had been one of the most stressful times for her due to that fact. But now that he was actually gone, she couldn't understand it.