What's missing... 02

Chapter Two: ... is the friend by my side!

For one whole hour Roy Mustang hadn't been able to work properly. His thoughts were somewhere else, anywhere but in the here and now. He was staring on the clock fronting his desk, as if under a spell, and tipped with two fingers in the pulse of the sweep hand. Riza Hawkeye was only in the same room with him for about half an hour, so she had not witnessed him for the whole midmorning. Lieutenant Havoc had. “Colonel, please”, escaped his mouth a bit crispy. Mustang did not seem to care. And he did not think about staying calm, instead he had enough. He stood up, grabbed his coat, threw it around his shoulders unwary and left the room with a “Have a nice evening!”. Hawkeye and Havoc gave each other a short glimpse, before they jumped up and followed him.
“Colonel!”, Hawkeye screamed after him very unladylike, but he didn't think of stopping. “You can abandon me for the last half hour, for sure.” “But, Colonel!” “Hawkeye!” He looked at her very strictly, whereupon she silenced immediately. “I do”, he started and had to swallow. “I have to go now. It's about my promise.” When she recognized his shaking look, Riza took a breath and nodded. She understood. She had almost forgotten about this. “Well, see you tomorrow then, Sir.” “Yes.” Mustang turned around and left the building through the main entrance.  Havoc's eyes followed him confused. “His promise?” “Yes.” Hawkeye was still looking at the heavy doors of the entry, when she told Havoc what was going on with their superior. “It's the anniversary of his death.” Havoc gulped quickly. So that was it...

It was late summer, which is why the sun hadn't set yet at this early evening and why Mustang lightened himself of some jackets, before he was in danger to choke. “I'm so free”, he smiled, when he laid down his coat and the jacket of his uniform next to the tombstone of Hughes. After that he stretched extensively and set down in front of the grave of his old friend. “Here I am”, he mumbled and thought for a second. “I don't even know what you want to hear.” But directly after this, he scored out this sentence in his mind and smiled weakly. “Sorry.” As if it was clear now, what his friend would like to hear about, he started from the beginning, while he braced himself on one arm and gestured with the other one. “Probably this is nothing to wonder about for you. But Elysia is getting more beautiful each day. Which means, of course, she takes after her mother.”  For a moment he imagined the face of Hughes, until he corrected his imagination and saw him smiling. As always. In the end, he had loved his daughter and his wife, so he would obviously agree with Mustang. “And Gracia is fine as well, as far as I know. I'm sorry, I know I promised to look out for her, but to be honest... If I go to her too often, people will talk about us.” He had to laugh a bit for a moment when he thought about how people would gossip viciously about them, just because he cared for the wife of his dead friend on a very platonic level. But his laughter left him when he thought about the fact that he actually didn't mind of the things they said about him.
He needed a moment. He felt this awkward pressure in his throat, that made him believe, when he started to say something the next time, he would not be able to give any sound. To clear it out somehow, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, the first thing they saw was Hughes' name on the headstone. “Damn it”, Mustang sighed and laid his hand in front of his eyes, and looked back to the stone afterwards, so stressed out, as if the marble had hurt him. “Am I to tell you, what you are doing to me, you idiot?” He took a look from left to right, then starred back to Hughes' name and became strikingly louder. “A sweet little girl that asks me, if I have seen you anywhere, every time I stop by! Do you know what a terrible feeling that is? Gracia already doesn't know how to explain it to her anymore, that you...” His breath had stalled and the words, he was about to say, disappeared as if they had never existed. Not before a moment, in which he had calmed himself down, he could and wanted to say them, to make them clear once again. “That you won't come back...” His eyes became unsteady and he had to look away from Hughes' name for a moment, to bear with keep sitting here.
“I don't know why this is still so hard for me.” He quickly wiped his eyes dry with his thumb and his finger and saw back to the headstone. “It's just that I really could need you by my side right now.” Mustang's look became a bit more calm again, almost relaxed, as if the dash of sorrow had gone. In his place, there was a mixture of anger and disappointment. “Why didn't you tell me? Didn't you trust me enough?” He corrected himself directly after these thoughts. “No.” It was ridiculous. Hughes and he had been best friends, of course he had trusted him. “You wanted to protect me? Maes, you damn idiot.” A bit stressed he kicked the headstone with his right foot, but less violently, more teasingly, as if he wanted to make him answer. “There, that's what you deserve. And you know what? Maybe I'm gonna visit your wife more often, as a punishment. What do you think?” Imagining Hughes' laughter again, he couldn't help but to smile. Until something came into his mind. “Oh yeah!” He crawled to his coat, that he laid next to the tombstone, and took something out of the pocket. “Elysia asked me to take this with me and give it to you. She must've forgotten about it the last time she was here.” He enfolded a piece of paper and it was presented this cute picture again that Hughes' daughter had drawn with so much love. Mustang laid it down on the grave and put a little stone at its bottom, so it wouldn't be gone with the wind so quickly. “See? That's Elysia, Gracia, Hawkeye and me... and this thing up there is supposed to be you.” He smiled kindly. “She did draw you wings.” He smirked and scratched his head. “You know, she still thinks you will come back, but Gracia's talks of Daddy being in heaven and an angel now has totally confused the poor girl.” He thought of something. “Oh!” He pointed on the little people that were meant to be him and the others. “And she said, we're waving to you.  If you can't tell.”
While he was still holding his finger onto the paper, he sighed and hoped his friend could see it for real. Confidently, a smile darted over his lips when a good idea came to him. Again, he lent back on one arm and looked up to the bright sky. After that he didn't do anything more than raising his other arm and waving with it. Just that. “See, Maes? Your daughter is a very foresighted kid.” After a few seconds he stood up, threw a last look on the grave and  decided to go home now. “I'm going to come back next week. I would say All the best,  but this is not that kind of anniversary, I guess.” But what of it! It was a day on which he always would come back here, to his best friend. So, something good. That's why he should think about is as something positive. “Fine”, he said quietly. “All the best, my friend.”