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It's impossible to pinpoint the exact moment it happens; it's flint striking stone: sharp, sudden, searing. The intensity of it is a fire ripping through her - giving her life even as it kills her.
(it's not the harsh fire that ravages her back. This is brighter, hotter - burning and beautiful: sorrow and ecstasy combined)
In childhood they're politely formal. Friendly, not friends. They meet again as adults, standing by a grave of a man she should love, but barely knew. When Roy tells her his dream he's earnest and sweet. Something starts there, a friendship - more than friendship? - they share a secret.
But it's nothing more. Flint strikes stone, sparks, and the flame doesn't catch.
Ishval. It could never be Ishval. She hates him almost as much as she hates herself. She sees him through her scope (and remembers - and it hurts to remember - the trust between them, the joy of learning in his voice, his gentle hands now caked in blood and ash) and her finger twitches -
(it would be so easy)
She thinks about retiring, after Ishval is over. She thinks about something more permanent than that. But she doesn't deserve the silence, the freedom from her memories.
"Will you follow me?"
(the flames sear her back. His punishment as much as hers)
We can make this better.
"If that is your wish, then even into hell."
It's nothing more than respect, a friendship reforming. They're not who they were, and the people they could've been are dead. There's a future to to be made, although they won't live to see it.
They're an excellent team, the Flame Colonel and The Hawk's Eye. She knows some people wonder what a State Alchemist needs a bodyguard for - she hears the whispers and rumours, too. They don't understand. They can't understand.
(her heart beats faster, sometimes, when she's with him. The rhymtic striking of flint on stone, a stubborn flame that refuses to burn)
Sometimes she dreams of what could've been. If the war never happened, if she never shared her secret. She wakes with a pillow damp with tears, and memories of a life outside reality.
It's here where she admits it, in the white-void room before the gate. She feels her heart burn and break, and she knows what it means, what it's always meant. The monster with the knife-edge smile tell her Roy is dead and she screams. She cries for their dream, for the past they shared, for the future that isn't theirs to have. For the life they could've lived.
No weapons. No hope.
And the burning, destroying, agonising realisation of love.