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On October 24th, 1921, Roy Mustang becomes the Führer of Amestris.
On March 2nd, 1923, he becomes the most short-lived Führer in its history—and also the last. Many wait expectantly for his name to appear in the election that follows. It doesn't. His endorsement wins the seat for a candidate who is publicly respectful, and who calls him a war criminal behind closed doors. He reaches out to a lawyer and makes a few final adjustments to his last will and testament.
On May 19th, 1929, the nation of Amestris officially declares the Ishvalan Civil War a genocide. There is a mass purge of soldiers who took direct part in it—Captain Riza Hawkeye is dishonorably discharged, and empties her office in less than half an hour. All but the essentials have been packed for weeks. She sends her dog, Black Hayate, to live with Kain Fuery. She tells Fuery that she wants Hayate to have a more stable home while she decides where she's going to move. Fuery asks her when she'll want him back, and she doesn't answer.
On January 7th, 1931, the trials begin. They are controversial, and for a long time it looks as though Amestris' first democratically elected president will be ousted before his second term is over. He is saved by an enormous leak of confidential military documents dating from before, during, and directly after the genocide. Several former state alchemists call their authenticity into question. The Flame Alchemist looks at one, nods once, and says, "Yes. This is the order they gave me." His former adjunct closes an account at a bank in Xing, because she no longer needs the safety deposit box.
On October 24th, 1931, Roy Mustang is found guilty on all counts. His part, and that of the Hawk's Eye, are logistically simple compared to the rest of the trial—they plead innocent, but explain that they have only done so because they want to give their testimony before the public. Their attorneys watch with thousand-yard stares as their clients lay out the evidence against themselves, describing atrocity after atrocity with the kind of calm usually only reachable by the dead.
There is little room for doubt. An open and shut case, if it were any other defendant. But Roy Mustang is beloved by the public. He is known as the hero who saved the nation from a coup, and defended Führer Bradley's wife, and reinstated democracy. And even now—as the Hero of Ishval. Public sentiments sour quickly. A small but vocal group of Amestrian citizens denounces the trials altogether, and many others argue that a soldier should not be punished for following his orders. But still more are angry. The man they respected and admired, the man who saved the country, the man many of them wanted to vote for in the first free election of their lifetimes... that man stared them dead in the eyes and told them he'd burned children alive.
There are two Roy Mustangs. One of them has to be a lie, and the evidence is clear: he is not lying about the burned children.
In the end, of the hundreds of officers and commanders and state alchemists implicated in the genocide, only a handful are found innocent—including Alex Louis Armstrong, against his strong protests. The trials come to their verdicts smoothly and efficiently. With so much evidence available to everyone in the country, the question of guilt is definitively settled. The real crisis is the matter of sentencing.
There is no legal precedent for a soldier being punished for carrying out the Führer's orders. Surely, surely, the penalty should be higher than that faced by a soldier who refused? Armstrong's case is an outlier. He obeyed his order, and then crumpled to the ground and wept and could not stand back up—so they sent him home to his powerful family. If an ordinary soldier had done the right thing? The real right thing, as Armstrong himself told the nation, the thing he should have done... and fought to protect those people? That soldier would have gone before a firing squad.
Plenty such cases are found. Deserters, and outright traitors, superior officers murdered by their subordinates and orders ignored. All who were caught were killed. Others so-inclined simply skipped the middle man, and shot themselves. (There's no way of knowing how many. At some point, during the worst of it, the old government opted to stop counting the suicides.)
It's this logic that the judge uses, when he gives his initial opinion on what a just sentence would look like. Those who disobeyed the order were executed. The order was wrong, and so it was wrong to follow it. Therefore, the punishment for obeying the order should be worse than the punishment for rejecting it—and short of abject barbarism, the worst punishment available is an equivalent one. Those soldiers who carried out the Ishvalan genocide should be put to death.
But Amestris is still new to democracy. These trials will set a staggering precedent, especially for a country with such a war-torn history. It's only right to discuss the matter thoroughly, inviting multiple perspectives to speak, and come to a united conclusion.
(It's only necessary, to put some work into convincing the public before the executions begin.)
The president speaks about rebirth. About a nation in metamorphosis—painful but necessary change. They are no longer the Amestris that committed these vile acts. The new Amestris has no place for monsters like these, and must be decisive in its quest to purge the old regime for good.
Edward Elric is not allowed to speak at the trials. He speaks on the radio instead, and pleads for mercy. "We wouldn't be able to have this trial in the first place, if it wasn't for everything they've worked for since Ishval! Are we really going to repay that by killing them?!"
Roy Mustang is granted five minutes to speak in his defense, and spends none of them for that purpose. "I will submit to whatever justice the court deems fit. I know I'm guilty—I knew it back then, and in a fair world I wouldn't have lived this long." His eyes, which have been cutting relentlessly into the crowd of observers and journalists, drop to his hands, bare and scarred and folded across the podium in front of him. "All I ask is that the court consider during sentencing, the rank and position of each soldier at the time of the war—"
"Don't you dare!" spits a voice, from the mass of convicted soldiers huddled on one side of the room. The speaker is near the front, held back by a member of the military police, tears in the eyes that earned her so much infamy. "You and I both know I'm just as guilty as you, you—"
"And reserve the lion's share of the blame for those of us who had the most power," Mustang finishes, his mouth now pressed into a tight grimace. "Not every monster in this room is me. I served as a threat to keep them in line, just as much as I served as a human weapon."
The judge acknowledges his plea, and reminds him that the trials have always been targeted towards those in positions of power—Majors and Colonels and Generals directly involved in the genocide, and the state alchemists that enabled it. Of course, some exceptions had been made for what Führer Bradley would have called exemplary service. Such as, for instance, a sniper who earned a silver medal protecting one of the State's human weapons.
Since Mustang won't, it's left to a parade of once-honorable soldiers to argue the case for their survival. Some appeal to the importance of obedience and loyalty within the military. Others claim ignorance or helplessness in the face of the order. Many beg for the sake of their families, their children, weeping openly all the while. A few even insist that their actions were for the good of Amestrian citizens. They fold themselves into perfect paper targets, easily speared by a few pointed questions. Casting themselves as mindless or incompetent, as weak or callously cruel. As deserving.
With the public's desire for balance assuaged and the sacrifices prepared, all that's left are a few final remarks by the judge, and the prosecutor, and the president. The last lines sketched in chalk on the foundations of the new Amestris.
The scarred man arrives on the final day of sentencing. He was not invited—it was Alphonse Elric who sent him a letter telling him about the trials. The boy hadn't been able to hide his grief, but he said that he deserved to know, and that he hoped it would give him some closure.
It took weeks and several long talks with his master, to understand why it hadn't.
There are military police outside the courthouse. The scarred man watches them tense up as they spot him, contracting like a muscle around the entrance, hands drifting towards holstered pistols. He was never exactly pardoned by the nation of Amestris—but it would look bad for the new government to have him killed without further provocation. They don't shoot him as he approaches the front door.
They don't let him in, either.
"I'm here to speak at the trials," he says. They stare at him as if he was a dog that had just stood up on two legs.
He tries to move forward. They close ranks to get in his way, and the nearest soldier pulls his gun. "You need to leave."
"I'm here to speak," he repeats. His hands stay inside the pockets of his coat. "The state alchemists that slaughtered my people have the right to speak on their own behalf. That same right was never extended to us."
"You don't have to worry about that," one of the soldiers assures him. "They're guilty and everyone knows it. Letting them talk is just letting them tie their own nooses."
Another soldier, near the back, is talking urgently into a radio. Good.
"I will not leave until I am allowed to speak."
They look at each other some more. Weighing, no doubt, the risk of arresting a prominent Ishvalan right outside the ongoing trials—or possibly their odds of surviving the attempt. Before they can come to a decision, more military police pour out of the courthouse. They are escorting a man in a three-piece suit.
"Scar," says the President of Amestris. His hand twitches, torn between a politician's instinct to shake, and an Amestrian's instinctive reluctance to touch the scarred man's right arm. It stays by his side. "This is... certainly a surprise."
"I want to speak."
"So I'm told." The president adjusts his tie—his fingers are nervous, but his eyes gleam with opportunity. "Of course, that seems only fitting. I'm glad to have you here to represent your people."
"If you wanted a representative for my people," says the scarred man, "then you should have asked for one. I am one man, and a poor choice to speak for anyone else."
At that, the president finally falters. He clears his throat, his eyes darting everywhere but the scarred man's red ones, and then nods to himself. "Well, you were personally affected by the genocide."
The scarred man can't bring himself to agree with such an inane statement. My family was slaughtered, my home was destroyed, I was hunted like an animal. This is true for all of us, from our grandmothers to our infant sons. That is what that word means—pain on the scale of an entire people.
The silence stretches. The president clears his throat again, and readjusts his tie. "I think your story would be a valuable contribution to the discussion."
The scarred man nods once, and strides through the door. The president and his entourage scatter in his wake, unbalanced now that he hasn't waited for them to lead the way, and scuttle after him like a swarm of insects.
He throws open the doors to the courtroom, and the babble of voices cuts off in an instant. He steps up to the podium, empty now that the parade of murderers has finished making its excuses, and sweeps his eyes across the room. The accused look at the floor—guilty or resentful or despairing. The innocents meet his gaze with a fawning sort of excitement. Here he is, the Ishvalan avenger, come to vindicate their bloodlust.
"My people are owed a debt," he says. "We are owed a home that these soldiers helped to bomb and burn. We are owed the stories, the traditions, the history that was lost to us when our temples were razed and our holy men killed. We are owed the countless lives that were stolen from us. Our mothers and our fathers, our sons and our daughters, our sisters and our brothers." His voice cracks slightly, and he grips the podium tighter. He can hear them tittering, cooing as though at a wounded animal, these people so righteously pointing their fingers.
"Am I to believe," he grits out, "that this is an attempt at payment?"
The room gets very quiet. Nobody seems to know if they're supposed to answer his question, and as he casts his eyes around the crowd of onlookers and bystanders, not one of them meets his gaze.
He scoffs. "There are less than a hundred soldiers here. Tens of thousands of my people were killed—do you mean to tell me that one Amestrian life is worth hundreds of Ishvalans?"
At that, an outcry rises up from the stands. The judge finally recovers enough to reach for his own microphone. "Scar, you were invited to speak as a courtesy. Inciting violence against innocent Amestrian civilians—"
"I was not invited to speak as a courtesy. I was not invited to speak at all. No Ishvalan was. Our elders were not consulted, and these criminals have not been given to us, to face our justice." He flexes his right arm, and watches the judge's face pale. "I am not inciting violence of any kind. During the war I killed two Amestrian doctors, who had never once wronged me—if I were killed in turn, here and now, would they spring back to life from my blood? Should Ishvala not strike me down for my arrogance, if I were to claim my one stained life could be worth both of theirs?"
"Of course punishing those who participated in the genocide can't undo it," the president says smoothly, with a placating smile. "It's about the future of our nation. We need to declare once and for all that we are not the sort of country that celebrates or tolerates such heinous crimes, whether they are committed by soldiers or not."
"You are not the sort of country that celebrates genocide?" The scarred man glares at the crowd again. "Every Amestrian who never sent letters to those brave soldiers slaughtering my people, stand up."
The silence is profound. Edward or Alphonse might be able to tell him if there really wouldn't be a single soul, even in a room this size, who hadn't known any soldiers well enough to send letters—or if those few simply don't dare move. He won't ask, though, because it doesn't really matter.
He runs his fingers over his scar. "None of you—not you watching this trial, nor you military dogs waiting to die—none of you did this. None of you is as guilty as the state alchemist who murdered my family with his own hands. But not a single one of you is innocent. You all turned a blind eye, you all paid for his crimes with your taxes, and now you all owe my people a debt. Kill these soldiers if you like. They mean nothing to me. But do not presume to kill them in the name of my people when we had nothing to do with it, when you chose their punishment without us. Killing them does nothing to help Ishvala's children who are still starving in your slums, and it does nothing to wash your hands of our blood. Your debt remains unpaid."
The president says something, after that, about the propaganda and lies and how little most Amestrian citizens really knew of the war. The scarred man doesn't listen. He steps away from the podium and sweeps out of the room without another word, because he's said everything he needs to. Because everything else in this farce of a trial was about those people, and their feelings, and appeasing their guilt. Why should he let the judge or the president or any Amestrian drag him into a debate about their culpability? He spoke the truth as he saw it. They will listen, or they won't. Ishvala has heard him, and that's all that truly matters.
He is allowed to await the verdict in a small office. It must belong to someone—there are photographs scattered across the desk. Twice, someone knocks on the door, and twice he is sure the room's usual occupant has come to protest him being here.
The first time, it's a timid clerk sent to inform him that most of the soldiers have been sentenced to death, save those who entered the holy land either low ranking or very young. He asks how old an Amestrian soldier ought to be, before being ordered to kill children. The clerk turns a sickly shade of white and leaves the room.
The second knock is not a clerk. It's not the owner of the office. It is, of all things, a familiar face. Lieutenant Hawkeye, who is no longer a Lieutenant or a Captain or anything at all. She is paler than he's seen her since the Promised Day, as she exsanguinated on a cold stone floor. Two soldiers escort her, and they exchange a meaningful glance before shutting the door, leaving the two of them alone. If they're hoping he'll kill her and give them an excuse to shoot him, they'll be sorely disappointed.
She does not bother with small talk. "They can't do this."
"I spoke against this decision," he reminds her. It's curt, which is as close as he can come to polite, here in this courthouse and surrounded by these people. The Lieutenant looks uncomfortably like the Rockbell girl, standing here trembling with tears in her eyes. Except that girl was grieving for two kind doctors who tried to help whoever they could, who he had killed despite their innocence—the Lieutenant is grieving for the pyre that burned his people.
"Not that. I wouldn't ask anyone to reverse that sentence, least of all you. The... the Colonel and I, we knew how it would end. We committed ourselves to facing justice, and accepting whatever punishment the people chose. We agreed we wouldn't fight it."
"And now they've chosen." He doesn't fight the bitter edge to his voice, and can't for the life of him guess whether this is because of the judge's mercy or his lack of it. "Yet here you are, fighting."
She shakes her head stubbornly. "No. We agreed to face justice for what we had done, together. He broke that promise. He... he made it sound like I had no choice. He manipulated their decision."
Scowling, the man rises to his feet. He approaches her, half-expecting her to flinch, but she doesn't. Only watches him steadily, her mouth set into a firm line.
"There is a reason," he says at length, "why I hunted State Alchemists, and not soldiers."
"You hunted Edward Elric. Anyone could tell you that I am more responsible for the genocide than he is."
He grimaces. "Attacking the boy was a mistake. But even in the grip of vengeance, I understood that Ishvala's wrath should seek out the Crimson Alchemist before falling upon his men—that it was Bradley who gave the order, and Bradley who should be damned above all others.
"Every soldier is responsible for his own part, but what about the ones who never set foot in the holy land? What about the old soldiers who trained the young to kill our children? What about the workers who built the guns and bombs, and the train conductors who brought them to our home? What about the food that nourished them as they slaughtered us, the radios that glorified it, the books that lied and called it a justified war against terrorists? This is what your president and his judge refuse to understand! The whole country is responsible—should I raze it to the ground, down to every last woman and child?!"
His voice rises with every word, until it rings out against the cold, uncaring walls of the courthouse. The Lieutenant only stares at him, her mouth slightly open. He subsides with a weary sigh.
"Once, I might have carried on down the chain of command until there was nothing left. But who would that serve? What would my people do with a mountain of ash? If your country wishes to spare you the same fate as your Führer, then so be it. Your life means nothing to me."
"I know." She takes a half-step back, face caught between resolve and shame. "I wouldn't expect it to. I'm not—I didn't come here to argue about the value of my life, I came here because this is a mistake. If Mustang deserves to die for his part in the genocide, then so do I. We share that responsibility. He knows this, or he ought to, even if the judge doesn't. He lied to spare me."
"So be it," the man says again.
At this dismissal, her eyes turn to stone—hardening like amber around any hint of sorrow or fear, leaving only a feverish sense of purpose. She turns around. He expects her to march out of the room, and perhaps to find some Amestrian authority more willing to entertain her guilt.
He does not expect her to remove her military jacket. He does not expect her to fold it neatly and set it aside, fastidiously tidy even as she pulls her shirt up and over her head. For an instant he is angry at the presumption, because if her life means nothing to him then her body means less—but she isn't trying to show him her body.
"This was mine before it was his," she says. Her shoulders shift as she speaks, a familiar array undulating across her skin like some foul serpent. "I was tasked with keeping it safe, and I chose to trust him, and then I went to Ishval and killed to protect him. I am responsible. To say otherwise doesn't just break the promise we made, to be held to honest account for our sins. It implies that I am nothing more than a canvas. I don't expect you to care that I find that unforgivably selfish of him, but I do think you deserve to know that it isn't true."
The man looks down at his own hands. It is horribly reminiscent of the way those marks on his right arm looked, in that blurry half-consciousness, as he first realized they were attached to him. Then he glances up again, and takes in a detail that initially escaped him.
"It's burned."
"Yes. I asked him to destroy it, after..."
He nods once, slowly, as he takes it in. Then he says, "Put your shirt back on."
She does, and turns to face him once more. There's a plea written across her face—written in some foreign language, clear as day but impossible to decipher. He wants to reach out and shake her. Instead, he steps forward and says, "What is it that you expect me to do?"
Her lips part, perhaps in shock. "I... they would listen to you, if you told them. If you said my part in the war was the same as his."
Rage swells up, cresting and crashing over him like a wave. His hand is around her throat before he can think—forcing her up onto her toes, his thumb digging into the rough seam of scar tissue. He's fought both with and against this woman enough times by now to know that she's perfectly capable of struggling, perhaps even twisting free of his grip. She doesn't. She sags into it, relaxing in just the same way that Marcoh had. As though he is finally here to take her burden away.
"Am I to be your absolution, then?" he asks. "Do you want my permission to shoot yourself? Should I hold the gun for you, to make it easier?"
"N—" she chokes.
He drops her. She hits the ground wrong-footed, and before she can fall he grabs her by the front of her shirt. "If you'd been able to hear anything over your own guilt, in that courtroom, you would know they didn't listen to a thing I said." He gives in and shakes her just once, and finds her limp as a rag doll. "This is not justice. This is a blood sacrifice—whether it's Mustang who plays the lamb, or both of you, it makes no difference. Amestris will slaughter whoever it needs to slaughter, to buy itself whatever it wants. It's what this country does. Yesterday, philosopher's stones. Today, forgiveness for the unforgivable."
The man lets go. This time, she keeps her feet.
"Your people want to forget what they did to mine. If you would rather silence yourself, then do it—you don't need a judge's permission, and you certainly don't need mine. Your life means nothing to me. But if you don't want to be a canvas, a circle this country will use to transmute its sordid past into something more palatable, then do something about it."
He shoulders past her before she can gather herself, and strides out of the room. In the instant before the door closes, she says something to his back—maybe, "Thank you," and maybe, "I'm sorry." He doesn't know, because he doesn't listen.
On November 17th, 1931, the morning after sentencing is handed down, Riza Hawkeye is sent to Ishval. She is ordered to work in the blinding desert sun for hours every day, transporting stone for new buildings and digging fresh wells and irrigation channels. And every day, she wears a white cloak to protect her skin, and drinks all the water they give her.
When it's over, a decade later, and the state has officially forgiven her for the unforgivable, she returns home. She gives every gun in her apartment to Jean Havoc and Rebecca Catalina. She collects her dog from Kain Fuery, and wakes up every morning to feed and walk him. She visits graves, and she visits old friends, and she visits the Elric brothers.
And when the time comes... When she hears that Edward's children learned about the true horror of that war from their father, not their history teachers... When the new government claims that the suspicious overabundance of Ishvalans in its prisons is evidence, not that it has betrayed its promise, but that perhaps it ought to scale back its spending on social programs in that region... Then Riza Hawkeye gets in contact with every major broadcast station in the country, and begins to speak.
The man they call Scar is asked about her often, when he addresses rooms full of blond hair and blue eyes. He ignores those questions. They don't really want his opinion on her methods—they want his approval, or his condemnation. As if he owes her his forgiveness, or else his hatred. As if he doesn't have his own burden to bear, the souls of the Doctors Rockbell and every one of his people they might have saved after him, and all those who died in Amestrian slums while he was drowning his grief in rage.
He was not there to stand for them then. So he will stand for their families now, and make use of the life he still has, because to do otherwise would be a grave insult to a young girl who chose not to pull the trigger. It would be an insult to his Master, who taught him better. Worst of all, it would be an insult to his brother—who gave him this life, even knowing the cost, and who loved him too much for him to let it go to waste.