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you can only touch him when he’s dying
Sweat drips from her pale forehead down the slope of her nose, the room sweltering in the aftermath. Her breaths come in short, panicked heaves. Tears linger in the corners of her eyes and she really should wipe them away before he sees but she can’t bring herself to care when he looks at her for a long, slow moment and he’s alive.
His features twist in agony. Heat pours from his body but especially from the sprawling burn on his right side; a gory mix of blood and singed flesh, curling in on itself in a job carelessly and quickly done.
“Alphonse,” he says, his eyes leaving hers ( no, come back) and the rasp of his voice grating on her ears. Tears glide slowly down her cheek and caress the curve of her chin, “I need you to go check on Havoc, he is gravely wounded. The doctors will need to see to him first-“
“Colonel,”
He scolds her with a glance as searing as his flames, lingering on the teardrop that drips from her chin to the cold, concrete floor.
“Oh, of course, Colonel! I’ll make sure he’s alright!” the boy says, practically tripping over his own massive feet in his haste to help, to do something to save just one more life.
The thick heat of the room feels lodged down her throat and it takes her a second to realize it’s just the choking feeling of smothered tears. He’s looking at her again. She can feel it the same way she feels sunshine on her skin or anticipation in her gut, not a physical feeling but a knowing that’s become second nature to her at this point, but she can’t meet his eyes, locked as they are on the blood smeared upon his stomach.
Her hands flutter and float aimlessly, anxiously, above him. Needing to do something to alleviate the pain she can see in the rigidity of his jaw and the pulling tendons in his neck, but not knowing what or how. She is supposed to protect him . And you failed, a voice says in the back of her head, a familiar one that sounds too much like her Father’s and too much like her own. The adrenaline from the last twenty minutes has long since crested its peak, and the absence of it leaves her bereft, every part of her sagging in exhaustion. Her hands are shaking, now, down to the wrists, and her breaths beginning to match their rattling.
Until a larger hand reaches up, catches them, and guides her unsteady fingers down to rest on his exposed chest, right in the middle and a little bit to the left. His hand is somehow both strong and soft and she thinks of how they are the same ones that burnt Lust to ashes just moments ago, and they are the same ones that she used to stare at as he helped her bake bread when they were young; covered in flour and swiping across her cheek to leave a white mark with a satisfied smirk. She remembers the first time he took her hand in the busy marketplace to guide her through the crowds and she blushed so hard she thought she’d melt. It used to be so instinctual, so innocent, so natural. She mourns it.
His heartbeat thumps softly against her fingertips in time to her own, an ode to the life still within him no matter the paleness of his cheeks or the dullness of his eyes. One of his hands moves to cover hers, pressing her palm more firmly into his skin, anchoring her. The bloody scrapes of the transmutation circle carved into the other side stare up at her as his blood drips from its edges, each droplet a testament to another heartbeat.
She marvels, not for the first time, at how he seems to always know exactly what she needs before she discovers it herself, and she looks at him, finally.
“I’m okay.” And the soft, sad smile on his face makes something inside of her ache so fiercely she thinks she may break into little pieces right there, and then what good would she be to him?
Instead, and because she can think of nothing to say that won’t come out in an incoherent rush of tears and inappropriate desperation, she leans over and rests her forehead upon his knuckles where their hands meet over his chest. All the better to hide the sobs of relief that shake her shoulders.
The hand that settles softly on the back of her head and begins to stroke her hair only makes her cry harder.
you can only touch him when he’s dying
The hospital is quiet, in the mornings, before the nurses come in to check up on them. She finds herself cherishing the hour or two of peace before the welcome but draining visits from her grandfather, the team, and even the occasional rowdy Elric brother coming to “keep the bastard on his toes”.
The sunlight filters lazily through the window and creeps across her skin. The air-conditioned room is cool and breezes gently against her face and the soft sound of running water escapes from the bathroom. Riza feels, for the first time in a long time, relaxed.
It is abruptly shattered with a loud, “Fuck!”, the sound of something clattering, a loud bang of a fist against a hard surface, and a grunt of pain. The water switches off, and the silence that follows leaves her with no other option than to get up and investigate whether this is another tantrum (frequent lately but she cannot blame him) or if he’s actually slipped and fallen this time (and not just stubbed his toe like last time).
She knocks, once, more as a courtesy than a request. They both know she’ll come in regardless of if he protests her help or not.
He doesn’t say a word, but stands before the small, square mirror, white-knuckled fists gripping the edges of the little porcelain sink and the muscles of his arms taught in frustration. It only takes a moment to deduce the problem, with his clenched jaw, empty gaze, and blood dripping from a small cut on the left side of his jaw. A small razor blade sits in the sink bowl, drowning in soapy water.
Her bare feet are quiet on the cold tile, but she attempts to make them louder, for his sake. As she reaches him, her fingers graze his forearm, a touch to let him know where she is.
Her fingers wrap around his wrist and tug. He allows her to lead him to the little toilet as she puts the lid down while guiding him to stand in front of it.
“Sit.”
He listens, and the lack of grumbling or backtalk or teasing that should be a welcome respite instead feels wrong. Like a stranger. Like defeat.
It’s a bad day then, she knows. The purple under his eyes tells her it must have been a bad night too, and she feels guilt bubble in her gut for not being awake to help.
They are both quiet as she fills the sink with water, the soft patter of its stream filling the small room with comfortable background noise while she lathers her hands with the bar of shaving soap that had been resting on the corner of the sink.
She stands just to the side of where he sits, leaning over him as her hands tremble, just slightly, before she touches them gingerly and carefully to his jaw, his chin, his neck. It feels at once both sickeningly wrong and terrifyingly right for the intimacy that spreads like warmth through her fingertips and down to her toes. The way he swallows (hard), and how she feels the movement of his throat, and how his eyes flutter closed, all tell her he’s equally affected by the strange gravity of the moment.
The stubble of his jaw, something she hasn’t seen since Ishval, scrapes against her fingers in a way that threatens to raise goosebumps on her skin. She finds herself thankful, not for the first time recently, that he couldn’t see them if they did.
The scrape of the razor over his skin is feather light and endlessly careful, the first few strokes so soft that she has to go over them a second time with a little more pressure, and she is so focused on her task that she doesn’t notice the fond little smile that pulls at the corner of his mouth at her gentleness.
She works in silence for a few minutes on the left side of his jaw before he breaks the heavy but comforting stillness.
“This is only slightly humiliating.” His voice is light, but she can easily detect the undercurrent of loathing that wavers within it at the loss of such independence.
She scoffs in dismissal, “I think we’re far past the point of being embarrassed in front of each other, sir.”
Her hand steadies his chin, two fingers on one side and her thumb resting in the middle, as she tilts his head back to expose the column of his throat to her. It’s almost painfully intimate, the way his eyes are closed and his shoulders relaxed, as she holds a blade to his throat and he trusts her wholly. It’s also startlingly domestic , and she thinks that if she had to do this every morning for the rest of their lives, she wouldn’t mind it one bit.
As she runs the blade up his throat, right to the side of his Adam’s apple, he snakes an arm around the backs of her thighs, his hand coming to rest on the outer side of her bare thigh just below the hem of her hospital gown. The contact sends such a spark through her she almost, almost, knicks him. She’s about to reprimand him, to try and smother the blush on her cheeks, when he speaks.
“I can’t run a country if I can’t even shave.” His voice is quiet and shattered, scraping against her ears like shards of broken glass. His hand on her leg is tight, less of a caress and more of an attempt to steady himself against his own words.
The slump of his shoulders is enough to make her feel heavy too, the darkness under his eyes has been growing darker each day, and the lack of passion in his voice lately as he barks commands to his subordinates makes her feel ice-cold. In the near two decades they’ve known each other, he’s never once made her feel cold.
She thinks that to see him defeated and hopeless, to see him give up, would be little different than seeing him bleeding out before her. To see him succumb to the nightmares and the despair, drowned by his guilt with no path to absolution, would be to lay her eyes upon a dead man. There is no future for them except one that ends upon the sands of the desert and in the office of the Fuhrer.
Fuck Truth, she cannot lose him. She would not survive such a thing either.
“It’s no different than this,” she begins. Her voice shakes and a dull, grey eye opens to peek at her instinctively before it realizes it can’t see, “or how we fought the Homunculus,” She pauses, letting out a breath and rinsing the razor in the sink before returning to his jaw, right next to his ear, her next breath soft against the newly exposed skin, “You provide the handsome face. I do the shaving.”
This time, she does see the smirk that pulls at the corners of his mouth and sparks butterflies in her chest. The hand on her thigh tightens its grip, and she knows he feels the goosebumps that erupt underneath his fingertips this time.
“You think I’m handsome?”
“I’m rolling my eyes, just so you know.” But it’s the closest she’s heard him sound to the man she loves knows in days, whose belief in her showed her how to believe in herself. It sounds like him, who once put himself between her and her father’s belt, who visits his goddaughter every weekend in an attempt to somehow make up for what they’ve both lost. Who brought down the regime of a would-be God not to replace him, but because it was the right thing to do. It breathes a little bit of hope back into her tired lungs.
But then there’s the harsh sound of the door hitting the wall and a loud, “Colonel Mustang? Lieutenant Hawkeye?” from one of the nurses, and whatever they had just dug up is buried deep once again.
His hand releases her thigh as if it burns.
the one thing you want is something you can’t have
“Uncle Roy!” A small voice shrieks with glee, the sound accompanied by the creak of a large wooden door and a six-year-old with messy, braided pigtails barreling at them with alarming speed.
Riza can’t help but smile as Roy leans down to catch Elicia as she throws herself at him, lifting her up with practiced ease as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and plopping her atop his shoulders. The girl giggles mischievously as he has to bend down to make it through the doorframe with her added height, pretending to stumble and trip only to earn another high-pitched squeal of joy.
She follows them inside to find Gracia in the kitchen, smiling in greeting at them over one shoulder while another arm stirs a pot of something that smells hearty and delicious and immediately chases away the chill from outside.
Roy begins arranging the flower bouquet in his hands into a simple, glass vase on the dining room table. Blue hydrangeas. He had been dragged along on stops to the florist enough times to know her favorite without needing to ask. At first, he told Riza he was afraid the reminder would be too much, but Gracia’s teary yet grateful smile the first time he’d handed her a bouquet, just a few weeks after the funeral, was answer enough. It’s been an unspoken ritual ever since.
Little hands pull mercilessly at his hair, as if they could somehow direct him the way she wants him to go. “Royyyy!” she whines, “I have to show you what Edward got me for my birthday!”
“Alright, alright, but watch the hair, missy, you’ll ruin all my hard work. You want me to look like a crazy man?” He jokes with a pat to the foot hanging over his shoulder.
Riza can hear a muffled, “You already look like a crazy man!” followed by an indignant gasp and more laughter as their voices fade along with their footsteps down the hallway.
Riza hovers in the kitchen, setting down the bottle of wine she’d been carrying on the counter before moving to join Gracia at the stove.
“Need any help?”
“You’re too kind, Riza.” She says, sprinkling salt in a saucepan filled with all sorts of simmering vegetables. She inclines her head to the cabinet to her right, “I’m almost done, but you can set the table if you’d like.”
Riza nods, happy to have her hands busy and begins taking the dinnerware out of the cabinet carefully, admiring the little swirls of gold details surrounding the edges of each porcelain plate.
Gracia glides across the kitchen, grabbing some more oil as well as a fresh bunch of parsley, and her voice drifts softly through the room, carried alongside the gentle simmering of the pot and the clank of dishes on the wooden table.
“I appreciate you visiting, one last time. I know your train leaves early tomorrow.” Her voice is a little sad, and Riza feels guilt stir in her gut.
“The General wouldn’t miss this for the world.” She says, because it’s true, and she knows that the guilt of leaving them behind for Ishval weighs far heavier on him than it does on her.
Gracia appears to her left, placing a large plate full of golden rolls down next to the flower vase before heading back to the stove.
“Elicia loves him so dearly, I don’t know what we would have done without him.” She says, absentmindedly, as she begins spooning ladles of stew into little white bowls and handing them to Riza to be put upon the table.
Riza struggles for something to say, something that belies the depth of her understanding. That she too has felt the pain of losing a parent young and that she understands how easily Roy can come into someone’s life and bring hope with him. The way he came into hers, as a lanky boy with a crooked smile and a crooked tie and made her cold home feel not quite so broken. The way he refused to allow her to grow up too fast or alone. The way he filled a void for something her childhood had been missing. The same way, albeit a little taller and a little wiser, he tries to do the same for Elicia.
She doesn’t get the chance to say anything, as Gracia beats her to it, her voice half muffled by the refrigerator door between them, but the words hitting Riza like a car anyway.
“Think you two’ll ever have kids?”
It’s so unbelievably casual, flippant even, as she shuts the fridge door with her elbow and balances a carton of milk in her hand, that she doesn’t even look to Riza for her response, too busy tasting the stew one last time with one hand and pouring a glass of milk with the other.
The assumption isn’t new, or even something Riza is unused to, considering the years of playful innuendo she’s endured from Havoc and Rebecca or the whispers that follow her in the hallways of Central Command. There’s something that feels different, though, between an Oh, they’re totally screwing from one of the new girls in Communications, and the mention of kids from one of Roy’s closest friends, mentioned as casually as a slight change in the weather.
Gracia says it like she knows something Riza doesn’t, like there’s some secret Riza’s been left out of.
She says it like it is inevitable.
Riza clears her throat and the sound scrapes like sandpaper. “Well- I... There are rules. Anti-fraternization rules. That forbid such a thing.”
Gracia literally, physically waves it off, flicking a hand behind her shoulder as if Riza’s excuse is nothing more than a bothersome fly, and scoffs.
“Oh, whatever. With all of your service you two have more than earned a little bit of happiness, anti-fraternization be damned!”
The way she says it is so sure, so unwavering, as if there are not a hundred unspoken confessions and thousands of dead bodies between them, keeping them apart.
She does not know how to tell Gracia, who has never seen the hideous face of war or felt the kickback of a gun against her palms, that it is more than a few flimsy laws. That she has forgotten what it was like to have a mother. That she has watched Roy’s hands burn and raze and kill more times than she can count and that each time it burnt a little part of her, too. That her hands are for pulling triggers. That she has not earned any happiness until she has restored what she destroyed. That all she knows is death, not birth.
She does not say any of this, her eyes fixed on the tile floor beneath her feet and her hand clutching the edge of the kitchen counter so tight she feels the pressure reach her bones.
Gracia is unperturbed by her silence, turning towards her with a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other. Her smile is warm and sincere, holding none of the scorn Riza feels for herself, under the soft lights of this little kitchen and feeling utterly out of place among the domesticity that seems to envelope Gracia like she was born for it.
She begins to pour a glass, the dark liquid splashing slightly onto her apron.
“I just think you’d be good at it, that’s all,” she takes a long sip, looking at Riza curiously over the rim of the glass, “Dinner’s ready. How about you go grab those two and I’ll pour the wine?”
Riza nods, unable to do much else.
She can hear Elicia’s excited voice after only a few steps down the hallway, floating through the air like the chime of a bell.
“And her name is Gracie!”
“Very nice to meet you, Gracie.”
Her breath catches in her throat as she steps into the doorway, her heart stuttering in her chest at the onset of something she can’t put a name to but which tugs at her from somewhere deep.
Roy lays on his back on the floor, a light pink shawl wrapped around his shoulders and a plastic, golden tiara balancing atop his head, threatening to slide off any moment. Meanwhile, Elicia sits on her knees beside a big, pink bin stuffed to the brim with dolls, very seriously pulling out each and introducing them to Roy, one by one.
“And this one is named Winry. I named her after Ms. Winry. And this is Liza, she’s really pretty.”
The whole scene makes her feel inexplicably rooted to the spot in which she stands, at once both heavy and weightless. Gracia’s words echo within her skull without mercy, I just think you’d be good at it.
It seems a cruel joke when Roy tilts his head towards her, catches her eye, and smiles. A huge, genuine smile that crinkles his eyes at the corners and reminds her of the way he used to look at her when he was seventeen and thought the whole world was his to conquer. He looks not just natural, but content in a way she hasn’t seen him in a long time, as if there is nowhere he’d rather be right now than laying on a pink floral rug, while his goddaughter adjusts the tiara in his hair.
Words feel glued to the sides of her throat, but she manages to force them out.
“Dinner is ready.”
If she felt out of place next to Gracia, with her soft hands and dirty apron, she feels even more so here. It’s like she’s broken a sacred, special moment with her presence; shattered the little world they’d created. Her voice is too deep and too strained against the pink walls of Elicia’s bedroom. The eyes of the dolls and stuffed toys littered around the small room seem to look at her accusingly and say, you do not belong here.
But their voice is her own.
Roy notices the tension in her, in the sides of her neck and the corner of her jaw, because he notices everything about her whether she likes it (usually) or not (right now).
But he’s smooth as ever as he shrugs off the pink shawl and places his tiara upon Elicia’s head instead and says, “Last one to the table is a rotten egg!”
Not needing to be told twice, Elicia pushes past her and sprints out the door and down the hallway.
A frantic, “Elicia! No running in the kitchen!” can be heard from down the hall, followed by childish laughter, but Riza notices nothing but Roy as he approaches her, his brows drawn in concern. She misses the smile that had been on his face just moments ago. The same voice in her head from earlier tells her she’s the reason it’s gone.
“What’s wrong?” His voice is urgent and commanding, though they both know it will make no difference.
She smiles softly and knowingly, an apology for her lie in the corners of her lips, and says, “Nothing.”
It’s a game they’ve played a thousand times, and one she always wins.
His eyes search hers with such intent she almost shies away from it, but she finds at this point, with Ishval only a day’s journey away and a long scar that wraps around her neck, she doesn’t really care if he finds the truth in her gaze, not anymore.
He glances at the room around them, briefly, before looking back to her, and her face must break because she can see the realization register on his features. A little frown pulls at his lips, but it is less defeated and more determined. His hand comes up for a moment as if he was going to touch her face. She wishes he would, but it only hovers next to her shoulder before it falls to his side again, limp.
He gazes at her again and she feels laid bare before him, exposed in a way she normally does not allow. It should worry her, or at least make her nervous, but it doesn’t, and that might be even scarier.
“C’mon,” he says, and his smirk is shallow and forced as he places a hand on her waist to lead her out of the room, “we don’t want to be rotten eggs.”
you can nearly kill him
Her hands have never once shook under the weight of a gun. Not her mothers’ old hunting rifle, when she dragged it to the woods behind her house in the first winter after her mother died, when their kitchen cabinets sat empty and her father could not even look at her. Not on her first day in the Academy, when it was her turn at the shooting range and all heads turned as every single shot from the little pistol in her hand hit the bullseye. Not even upon the rooftops of Ishval, the sun burning the pale skin on her back and a suffocating weight in her stomach as she took her first human life, reloaded the rifle, and did it again.
They shake now, the barrel only inches away from the back of Roy’s skull.
They shake hard , and she gives everything she has to keep them still, to keep herself together, because one of them needs to right now and it’s not going to be him.
You took an oath . Her own voice rattles in her skull.
If there is anything worse than killing him, it would be betraying him.
She will not miss. She will line up her shot, give him a merciful death, and then give herself the same.
He turns to her and the wrath in his eyes is that of someone she does not recognize, and it makes her freeze, ice running through her veins to her heart and she swears she feels something crack under the merciless cold. The fury marring the face she has spent so many years memorizing looks wrong. It’s unnatural, a corruption.
He raises his hand towards her, poised to snap. Her finger moves to the trigger.
“You couldn’t.” He says it so confidently, but it is not his voice, deep and warm. It is cracked, splintering, leaking poison. He is many things, but he is not arrogant. Not truly. Not with her. She is furious.
“Then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”
He snarls, feral and fierce and looking far more like a creature of wrath than the man she loves.
“You won’t. ”
“I will.”
His fingers move.
She shoots.
She wanted it to be clean.
It is quick, but it’s not clean.
It was at such close range. The bullet clears his skull, easily. It enters between his eyebrows and exits out the crown of his head.
She watches in what feels like slow motion as blood and brains smears the wall behind him, the floor, his blue jacket.
The Hawk’s Eye. She’s (in)famous for her headshots. She’s seen brains splattered across stone before, over and over and over. She’s seen every single way a bullet can tear through flesh, the way it slices and grazes and gets stuck. She has wondered, in the darkest hours of the night under the desert moon, how everything that makes a person could be held inside of something so fragile. She has wondered what was within the skulls she’s shattered, the lives she’s stolen. What memories, what desires, what dreams? She never knew what she’d stolen from the world each time she took a life in Ishval, strangers as they were, just that she’d taken it. As Roy’s body hits the ground, she knows. The memories, the desires, the now impossible dream.
Blood drips from the hole where the little crease in his brow should be, the one that always showed up when he was thinking too hard, conjuring up something brilliant. How many times has she wished to reach out and smooth it over with her thumb? She will never see it again.
She screams and the tunnels shake, echoing her grief, joining her in mourning.
Her knees hit the concrete with a painful smack but it’s barely a prick compared to whatever she is feeling claw its way through her chest.
She does not take her eyes off of his, lifeless and unseeing but still open. Still angry.
She’s distantly aware of Edward’s frantic voice, but it’s far away and all she can register is Roy’s body, limp and drained of life in front of her.
There is little else to consider other than I cannot live with this.
She presses her gun to the underside of her chin. Her hands do not shake.
-
It’s a testament to her self-control that her screams do not follow her into waking.
Thin, scratchy blankets are twisted between her legs. Her back aches from the hard cot, her chest tight from her frantic, hurried breaths. Sweat drips along her hairline, spurned by the Ishvalan heat. Tears threaten to spill from her eyes, but even more demanding is the scream lodged in her throat and the churning in her gut.
She barely spares a glance for the several cots that lie next to hers, absently hoping she hasn’t woken anyone but knowing that she surely will if she doesn’t get out of there now.
A half-awake, mumbled, “Hawkeye?” comes from somewhere next to her but she can’t spare it a thought. She stumbles off of the cot, the blankets following her and falling to the floor after several steps, one hand clutched to her aching stomach and the other furiously rubbing at her eyes.
The flaps of the tent make way for her easily and the barely cooler air of the open desert allows her to breathe a little bit easier but does nothing to relieve the aching inside of her that is desperate for a way out.
She doesn’t make it very far, only around the back of the large, shared tent, and a few yards into the desert sands past the small, adobe buildings. The sand is mercifully cool and soft on her hands and knees as pure panic claws its way out of her stomach, up her throat, and empties itself into the dunes.
Everything is blurry, whether from the earlier tears or the ones that inevitably rise up from the pressure in her throat as she dry heaves, barely enough in her stomach to even constitute a proper hurl.
Suddenly, hands wrap around her hair and lift it away from her mouth and blessedly, off her neck. The cool breeze that hits her skin sobers her up enough to realize, first, there is a hand rubbing her back, and second, how horribly unprofessional (and embarrassing) it is for her to be here, at some odd hour of the morning, plagued by useless nightmares and puking into the sand.
She doesn’t have to look over her shoulder to know who it is. It’s a touch she’d know anywhere.
“I’m fine. Go back to sleep.” She says pathetically, an obvious lie, and his indignant laugh somehow manages to settle her stomach slightly, like a sip of something bubbly.
“I think we’re far past the point of being embarrassed in front of each other, Captain.” He’s teasing but kind as he echoes her own words back to her. She knows he was looking for a laugh, or at least a familiar eye-roll, but instead, the memory of him, so nearly lost to her in that hospital room, makes her stomach heave once again. She remembers the muddy, grey film over his unseeing eyes and how smothered they were by despair. She can’t help but see them again, from her dream, looking much the same but with a bullet hole between them.
His hand pauses on her back, just for a moment, as if it was pondering its next move as she heaves, nothing left inside but bile but stomach still turning. Then, it quickly (impulsively) slips under the hem of her shirt to trail up and down over her bare spine, his fingers reaching just to where the scar tissue begins, never quite touching it, and descending back down in firm, steadying strokes.
She wants to be annoyed, or frustrated, or to feel something other than the radiating calm that seems to seep from his fingertips into her vertebrae, soothing every sore muscle in her body and smothering the rolling in her stomach. To scold him for this breach of propriety, (to scold herself for how well it worked) of the unspoken accord they’ve so carefully cultivated through years and years of suffocating self-control. To even, at least , roll her eyes at his boldness if only to pretend that some part of her even cares anymore that it’s wrong.
But as she turns to look at him over one shoulder, kneeling next to her as she clutches the sand beneath them for some semblance of stability that it can’t give, and under the same Ishvalan stars that have haunted her for years, she can’t find it within herself to feel anything but some twisted mix of relief and longing.
She knows it was just a dream. It’s one she’s had before a thousand times and it won’t be the last. It must be something about being back here that makes seeing him alive, and in front of her, and touching her that makes her resolve so easily crumble.
She’s suddenly struck by how far they’ve come from another moment in this same position in this same desert, when he found her on her hands and knees, burying an Ishvalan child instead of the contents of her own stomach. The depth of her anger at how he so grievously betrayed her trust, at herself for coming to this place, at both of them for the blood on their hands and how quickly everything changed, was suffocating. The distance between them, then, had felt insurmountable.
She crosses it now, easily and freely, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck and tucking herself close, head resting in the crook of his neck.
He freezes for a moment, in surprise and not hesitation, before wrapping his arms around her so tight it almost hurts, because of course he does. He always would and always will, she knows this, and so it’s her that keeps them focused (apart) and on track (separate). It’s a rare lapse of this unspoken pact between them, so tenuously maintained through careful distance. A distance that has been slowly and steadily collapsing, and neither of them seems as eager as they should be to put it back together. The wind whistles between the stars and stirs up sand beneath their knees, and the Fuhrer’s office seems so very far away.
“Bad dream?” His voice is quiet but seems loud with so little else around them.
“I killed you.” Hers is quieter, barely audible.
He doesn’t respond, because there is nothing to be said.
His fingers still rest upon her bare back, tracing up and down the long line of her spine. It reaches the harsh beginnings of her scars once again, but this time does not shy away.
His palm spreads over the smooth ridges of the blistered skin, an endless apology in the pressure of his skin against hers. His hands do not shake.
you can heal him
It takes only a few moments for her to realize that something is wrong.
She hands him his usual cup of coffee, complete with a generous (bordering on ridiculous) helping of milk and sugar, just the way he likes it. He accepts it silently, absent his usual sly smile and good morning, captain that somehow always manages to sound flirtatious.
He sips the coffee like he has to, not like he wants to, and listens to her report regarding the construction of the elementary school in the northern part of the neighborhood without meeting her eyes (when he usually revels in holding her gaze until she blushes, lately).
When Havoc and Breda strut through the entrance of the command tent, mid-conversation, breakfast sandwiches in hand, and recounting the lewd events of the previous Friday night with unashamed detail, she hears Roy’s voice for the first time that morning.
“You’re late.”
His voice is deep and cold and brittle, liable to crack at any moment and scolding in a way that is unlike him. He does not even look up from the report she’s just handed him, but she knows he is not truly reading it by the way his fingertips dig so roughly into the paper that it crinkles beneath his grip.
The room goes silent, the mocking tick of the clock above his desk the only sound. Seven hundred and six hours. A measly margin of lateness he usually surpasses himself, most mornings, by an extra ten.
It only takes a glance at the paper calendar hung on the wall behind his desk to understand the cause.
Havoc and Breda, frozen in place, red-cheeked and mouths full but unchewing, follow her gaze. They seem to understand, quickly scrambling to their own desks in tense silence.
She rounds the edge of his desk just as he’s about to open his mouth again, blocking their poor subordinates from his wrath. Depositing the stack of paperwork in her hands that she had been planning to carry to her own desk onto his with a reprimanding look and a loud slap of paper on wood. He flinches at the sound.
“I think I’m going to need your help with this paperwork regarding the reversal of the Ishvalan annexation, sir. Much of it is incredibly complicated. I’m afraid I’ll misrepresent your intentions.”
A laughably transparent lie, and the glare he levels up at her tells her so. She can practically feel Havoc’s eye roll at the back of her head. But it get’s Roy’s attention, and it’s the first time he’s actually looked at her all morning. She has to force herself to keep her eyes on his, and not the purple shadows underneath them or the incriminating puffiness of his eyelids.
“I believe it would be more efficient for you to handle the appeal language yourself, and I can attend the council meeting this afternoon in your stead,”
The scowl still on his face takes on a tinge of interest. It’s clear what the offer truly is, a firm reprimand and a day of paperwork, yes, but it is also one that does not require him to put on a false smile for the rest of the day. One that allows him to remain in the solitude of the office, bury himself in boring official documents, spare the Ishvalan elders his foul mood, and go home early.
He raises an indignant eyebrow at her, as if to say you’re really putting me in time-out right now?
She raises an eyebrow in return, as if to challenge him to protest.
“Very well, Captain.”
-
The council meeting keeps her until past sundown, the stars taking turns blinking into the night sky as dusk fades during her short walk home.
She doesn’t linger on her automatic decision to stop into Roy’s favorite café, buy his favorite dish (to-go, no onions, extra sauce) along with something for herself (same thing, yes onions, sauce on the side) and head directly to his apartment instead of her own. It’s what any devoted adjutant would do, of course, regardless of the hour or the breach of propriety of being in his home.
She also does not think too much about how she doesn’t even stop at her own place to feed Hayate, or change clothes, or shower, because all she can think about is that he’s probably been alone since the workday ended and that thought alone makes worry flit around in her stomach, turning her hands cold.
Havoc and Breda will have asked him out to the pub, of course, with forced, innocent smiles but worry clear within their eyes. A flimsy attempt to provide a distraction, or at least a drink with supervision. He would have sensed their poorly disguised concern and immediately shunned it, insisting that they go on without him. He would have told them that he’s just tired, that he’ll be fine, and they will have shared a hopeless look, but ultimately had little choice in letting him go.
The military housing building was built with speed and efficiency in mind, not comfort, and the dingy hallway creaks under her frantic steps, the shine of the fluorescent lights a tangible pressure on her tired eyelids. The only thought running through her mind, on repeat, is the way he shattered in front of her the night of the funeral, the way his sobs seemed to shake the walls of his apartment, the way the very first thing he did was reach for a bottle.
His apartment is the last, at the very end of the hallway (next to hers), and she does not bother with knocking. She has her own key, anyway.
She finds him seated at his sparse kitchen table, gaze cloudy and unfocused, the bottle of whiskey in front of him only a few sips away from empty. Something twists in her stomach painfully, a combination of anger and disappointment and understanding, but the edges between them blur into a surge of nausea.
He doesn’t look at her, still. It’s like she’s been locked out, left in the cold, hung up on. She hates it. She’s clever, though. Not the type to crumble so easily under his apathy and no stranger to this side of him, and so her voice remains light and casual despite the seeping dread that pushes on her ribcage.
“I stopped at Amira’s on my way,” she says, setting the bag of food in front of him on the table. As soon as her hand leaves the paper handle, it moves immediately to the neck of the bottle just beside it, her fingers wrapping around the cool glass and lifting it away from him in one swift movement of her arm.
Or at least, that’s what she attempts.
His reflexes aren’t as dulled as she had hoped and he grabs the bottle before she can snatch it out of his reach. His hand wraps around the glass, just beneath where her own hand rests, and he pulls it back down to the table, hard. Too hard. His grip is vice-tight, knuckles white, and the neck of the bottle slides like liquid out of her grasp.
He’s too inebriated to recognize his own strength. When the bottle slams back against the table it shatters, shards of whiskey-soaked glass slipping into the skin of his palm with a sickening crunch.
His eyes are still unfocused and uncaring as he unclenches his hand, his face betraying no pain, glassy eyes watching the blood drip in small streams from his palm onto his wrists as if he’s reading a particularly boring report.
“Sir!” The sound of her voice bouncing off the kitchen cabinets is so shrill she barely recognizes it.
He does not even react to her, instead standing unsteadily from his chair with a slurred, “It’s fine.”
She doesn’t even have the time to call him out on the blatant lie, as he stumbles with his very first step, foot catching on the leg of the table and forcing him to put his bleeding hand down on the corner of the table to catch himself. It finally draws a small hiss of pain out of him, the glass pushing further into his skin.
She’s in front of him in a second, face blooming red with anger but silent, her hand wrapping around his wrist and dragging him towards the kitchen sink. He follows, defeated, and leans against the counter, depending heavily on it’s support as she raises his hand between them and examines the damage.
The pieces are all large and easily plucked away with her own careful fingers. Each slip of glass from skin results in a sharp exhale of breath through his clenched teeth, but the rest of the room is silent enough to be felt like a pressure upon their shoulders.
“Sorry.” He says, eventually, weak and quiet. Her anger is visceral in the space between them and he is desperate for something to help dissipate it.
It’s not enough, clearly, as her jaw only tightens and she refuses to look at him, too focused on her task. His eyes track the movement of the little muscles beneath her ear as they tense, a wave of guilt following. She can feel the change in him in the warmth of his gaze on her face and the way his hip relaxes into the counter, his entire upper body shifting, just slightly, more towards her. She’s been let back in from the cold, but can’t shake the sting that lingers like frostbite.
Another long silence stretches out around them, feeling a little bit lighter with each passing moment of her hands on his. They are feather-light and gentle, and sometimes his knuckles will twitch if she glides her fingertips across his skin in between shards. The sight of the large scars left by Wrath’s swords make the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, the memory of him screaming her name fresh and ringing in her ears.
She finally looks up at him, but the useless guilt in his searching eyes is the last thing she has the energy to deal with right now, so she drops his hand and looks away. She turns on the sink and washes her hands of his blood, and almost laughs at the irony of it as it flows down the drain.
“Do you have bandages?” Her voice betrays nothing.
“In the bathroom,” is his quiet response.
“Eat. I’ll be right back,” she says, looking meaningfully towards the cooling food on the table and back at him as she dries her hands with a dirty dish-towel. And thankfully, he listens, grabbing a fork from a drawer and taking a seat, the slight scowl on his face reminiscent of a scolded child.
The gauze bandages are easy to find, and she returns to the kitchen and to his side.
He glances up at her, looking more like a scorned puppy than a Brigadier General, and she raises an eyebrow, glancing at the food in front of him expectantly.
He acquiesces as she begins to wrap the gauze securely around his palm, his skin clammy against hers.
One, slow bite. Then another. Each movement is somehow absent and disconnected from the rest of him, the rest of the room, from her. She sets his hand back down gently on the table once she’s finished, and her eyes move to his other hand.
It’s shaking as it tries to lift the fork to his mouth, bits of rice falling off the edges and onto the table with the unsteady movement. It never actually makes it there, for the shaking becomes too much and it slips from his grasp, clattering onto the table and then the floor with a clank that rings out like a gunshot in the dingy little kitchen.
“General,” she says softly, still standing next to his chair and placing a light hand on his shoulder.
His voice is dry and scraped raw when he speaks, muffled by the alcohol and the grief, “He was supposed to be here.”
“I know,” Her hand on his shoulder becomes stronger, more steadying.
“He’ll never get the chance…” he practically whispers, as if the words are a horrible secret, burning his tongue as they leave his mouth, “It’s not fair. Why do I get the chance to come back here? I don’t deserve it,”
His voice is shaking in time to his hands, now, his glassy eyes becoming more and more frantic, “It should have been me. If anyone deserves to burn in hell for what they’ve done, it’s me. It should have been me!”
His hands form into fists and slam down on the table, strong enough to move it slightly, legs creaking with the force and scraping against the tile floor with a screech. He curls in on himself, as if the piercing sound broke something within him that had been holding him up, and his features crumble in its absence. His hands, one bandaged but both scarred, come up to cover his face, his shoulders slumping as if becoming small enough would allow him to disappear entirely.
It hurts, and she knows there's little she can do to alleviate the pain that grips him. But she’s known grief, and as long as she’s known Roy he’s made sure she’s never had to suffer it alone.
She wraps a hand gently around his wrist and pulls it towards her, guiding it around her back and pulling the rest of him with it, turning him sideways on the kitchen chair until he faces her, his forehead resting right in the hollow below her ribcage.
It takes him a moment to respond, too absorbed in his own crushing thoughts. But a horrible, heartbreaking sob breaks free from his mouth, smothered but not fully contained in his effort to stay together. As she runs a comforting hand through his hair, he releases it.
His tears soak her shirt, and his little gasps in between sobs echo off the walls of the kitchen, misplaced among the room’s sterility. His hands grip into the back of her shirt as if he could anchor himself to her and pull himself out of the depths of his grief. He can’t. Not yet, so she joins him in the water instead.
There is only a moment of hesitation on her part. A brief thought for their tenuous boundaries that have been further eroded by the desert sands with each passing day. She finds any argument in favor of distance unconvincing, in the face of his mourning.
She is struck by the memory of being thirteen and discovering a dog in the road on the way to her home, injured and bleeding from the force of a careless driver. She remembers the way she begged for Roy’s help, and the way he abandoned his book immediately without question when he saw the tears in her eyes. How he carried it back to their house as she trailed behind him, petting the poor thing’s head in some desperate attempt at comfort. How it died before they could make it through the front door, and he buried it at her request in the backyard. The way he looked at her with such fondness as she began to cry for some stray mutt she never knew, and pulled her to his chest with a soft hand on the back of her head so that her father would not overhear her tears.
She remembers how he made her a cup of tea after the coroner left and took her father’s cold body with him. How he remembered just how she liked it, even after two years apart, and how he sat with her in heavy silence as she watched the fire crackle in the hearth and could not put her mixture of grief and relief to words. How he stayed, snoring loudly on the couch in the living room, not just that night but the whole week after, so that she did not have to waste away in that empty house alone with no one but her ghosts. How he attempted to cook them dinner, each night, and it was so terrible each time that it actually made her laugh. For the first time in a long time. Because he tried. He always tried, for her.
It is an easy decision, then. The pressure of his hands on her back makes it easy for her to lower herself to his level, sliding into his lap, legs thrown over one side. Here, it is much easier for him to cling to her like a lifeline, and it is much easier for her to place a hand on the back of his head and guide it to the crook of her shoulder so that her skin may catch his tears.
She says nothing, for the way his breaths come a little bit easier with the weight of her against him, solid and alive and real, tell her that this is enough.
but you will never find yourself on the highway with his hand resting on your thigh
Maybe it’s the glow of the nearly full moon, its soft light seeming to offer a blessing to the scene beneath it. Or maybe it’s the warm buzz of the several glasses of champagne coursing through her bloodstream, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone shine in the way Winry does right now, putting the moon to shame.
Her smile is massive and infectious and unbridled as Edward’s grip on her waist tightens, fingers eager at the waist of her flowing, massive dress, and pulling her closer. The music swells, an elderly violinist and pianist couple (old friends of Pinako, apparently) stand upon the small stage situated in the corner of the large backyard, framed by the rolling hills behind them.
There is a striking sense of peace in the air between them all, hard-fought and harder won, and it makes Winry’s blush and Pinako’s (poorly hidden) tears and Ed’s genuine smile all the sweeter, to know what it took to put them there.
He’s taller than her now, by a whole head, and Winry actually has to rise up onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He responds in true, dramatic Elric fashion, dipping her low with one arm and kissing her back as the song comes to an end. Winry laughs again and it sounds so at home among the stars and the twinkling lights strung up in the air. Several cheers and a few lewd comments ring out from the crowd before the dance floor is suddenly overrun. The guests practically jump out of their seats, grabbing partners by the arm and dragging them towards the little wood platform in the center of the yard.
The movement is infectious, the music ringing out over the hills and mixing with the alcohol to bring smiles to the faces of the crowd. It’s mostly the younger guests, friends of Edward and Winry, who laugh and dance and fight over who gets to partner with Winry next. But it isn’t long before some of the others join, inhibitions low among friends. Captain Armstrong stands out, towering over the rest of the crowd and his adoring smile at his husband as they sway to the music together is like a beacon. Izumi and Sig are sharing some sort of aggressive dance that gives off the distinct impression of being an inside joke that only the two of them understand. Breda even stands up from his chair, holding his hand out to his new girlfriend in an uncharacteristically chivalrous gesture, cheeks pink, and when she accepts it his face lights up in a way Riza has rarely seen. Fuery follows, content to dance alone until he is unsubtly shoved in the direction of a shy-looking girl in a pink dress and whose chinks grow even pinker as Fuery apologizes for bumping into her.
A few more moments and she realizes their table is nearly empty. Rebecca, to her left, stands on wobbly legs but with a lazy smile, Havoc’s arm around her waist for support. They look at her expectantly, when neither she nor the General move to follow.
“C’mon, you guys aren’t allowed to do this shit. Not tonight,” Havoc says, words slightly slurred and raising an accusatory eyebrow at her and her General seated together at a vacant table, surrounded by nothing but empty champagne flutes and dirty napkins and discarded high-heels.
Riza is tipsy, without a doubt. She can feel the pleasant thrum of the champagne in her system in the way her cheeks feel warm and her limbs heavy. But her stomach bottoms out at Havoc’s words and it sobers her, the pleasant warmth in her gut turning instantly to lead.
Rebecca recognizes the change in her immediately.
“There’s no one here...” she trails off, trying to smooth out the lingering sting of Havoc’s bluntness. The suggestion hangs in the air between them, and it feels like a betrayal.
Their intentions are good, she knows. But Rebecca and Havoc were not in Ishval and they have never woken up in a cold sweat to the memory of the way burning flesh smells. They have never pressed shaking hands to a warm cup of coffee in the middle of the night and spilled droplets over the edges as they brought it up to their nose to mask the scent that she just cannot seem to shake. They cannot know how effortlessly guilt will smother anything near it, like flames leeching off any available oxygen, or understand the cold resignation of a future of your own choosing, one that ends on the wrong side of a firing squad. They cannot know how much it aches, at every single moment but especially this one, to have the one thing you’ve always wanted always close enough to touch but forever just out of your reach. To have it all be your own fault.
The engagement ring on Rebecca’s left hand glitters under the moonlight as she reaches for Riza’s arm, catching Riza’s eye as if its trying to torture her. She thinks it would laugh at her, if it could. She moves her hand out of Rebecca’s reach, and watches as her face drops.
They want nothing more than for the two of them to be happy, she knows. But Havoc is drunk, and when neither she nor the General respond or even react, their faces carefully and intentionally cold, his expression changes. It sours into a bitter, disapproving scowl that he would never let slip under normal circumstances, without the five shots of whiskey to pave its way onto his face. She feels the General tense up next to her, in something a lot like hurt but that he’d never define as such. He doesn’t reprimand Havoc’s insubordination, though he could. Instead, he says simply, a callous sip of his wine, “You’d better go now if you want to catch the rest of the song,” A clear dismissal.
The way Havoc looks at his General (his friend) is hard and unforgiving. Riza gets the sense that this is not the first time they’ve had a conversation like this one.
“Fine, you two can be miserable on your own, but don’t drag the rest of us down with you. I’m sick of the self-sacrificial bullshit,” He says, spitting the words out with enough vitriol that Riza actually flinches, just slightly, a twitch of her left eye. He leaves without waiting for a response, pulling Rebecca with him. She stumbles, gives Riza a sad look, but ultimately follows, and leaves them alone.
The music is suddenly too loud, the upbeat melody of the violin feels wrong in her ears when there's such emptiness in her chest. It’s like it all hits her at once, the suffocating truth of I will never have this. It’s something that is always with her, something that has followed her for a decade now, but something she’s been able to smother and ignore. But sometimes there are moments like this one, where her future seems to mock her more mercilessly than others. There are no distractions available to her here, no shooting range or paperwork or good book to drown herself in until she forgets just how much she’s given up. Instead there is just the steady and constant presence of Roy at her side, as much of a balm for her pain as he is the burn that put it there, and the way Rebecca looks at her fiance as he spins her around the dance floor, like he’s the sun and she can’t help but stare.
She scolds herself for her selfishness, for her jealousy, and downs the rest of her champagne in one gulp.
There seems to be a new unspoken agreement between them, one of hundreds, silently negotiated and signed in preparation for tonight, because neither of them moves or speaks. It is unlike him, to be so restrained. Usually, anywhere else, he’d have asked her to dance and held his hand out to her and teased her until she took it. He’d have brought her drinks with a wink and bumped his shoulder against hers and stolen the potatoes from her plate during dinner because they are his favorite and he’d have known she wouldn’t mind. He’d have led her to the dance floor and they would have pretended not to notice the way their friends nudged elbows and shared satisfied smiles as he put his hands on her hips. He would have leaned close to her ear, relishing in the way she would shiver at his breath on her neck, and made a joke about when he taught her to dance so many years ago and she stepped on his toes on purpose. She’d step on them again, now, in response. And he’d laugh. And she’d pretend the sound wasn’t far sweeter than any music she’d ever heard.
She’s endlessly thankful that he understands that this is different. He understands the way the sight of Winry’s hand-sewn dress feels like bile in her throat no matter how happy she tells herself she is for them. The same way she knows that his fists always clench, just slightly, when Rebecca stops by the office and Havoc pulls her close and kisses her freely, in front of everyone. He also knows that the mix of the alcohol, and the good company, and the privacy of the countryside, and the past five years in Ishval have made things different. And that this would be the final straw, for Rebecca was right.
They could be different, here. There is no one in this little yard who they do not trust with their lives. Roy could take her to the dance floor, and put his hand on her back and she could rest her head on his chest. And later, she could creep down the hallway and into his room, and even if someone overheard what happened there, it would not matter.
But it would. And so they won’t.
She is so consumed by her own runaway thoughts that she does not realize the way the hand holding her champagne glass is shaking until Roy takes it from her grasp and sets it down on the table, where it is not as liable to crack as she is right now.
They still do not look at each other. She keeps her eyes fixed firmly on the dance floor and watches the flashes of smiles and shouts and spilled drinks. She catches Edward’s eye from across the yard, for just a moment, and the look he gives when he sees the two of them, sitting alone at their empty table, makes her feel sick.
It’s pity, and understanding, and sorrow, and her cheeks immediately heat because this is his wedding and she cannot be stealing even the smallest sliver of happiness from him tonight. Havoc’s words echo in her head and shame washes over her so sharply she feels as though she might collapse. She’s about to get up, to excuse herself and flee to the bathroom where she could lock the door and splash cold water on her face and maybe even scream, but something stops her.
Roy’s hand slides from his lap to her thigh, a little bit on the inside and a little bit below the hem of her dress, underneath the careful cover of the white tablecloth and invisible to anyone but her.
It is solid and comforting and scathing hot, all at once. The warmth of his hand spreads through her like the buzz of the earlier champagne and dissipates the anxiety inside of her just as effectively, and she lets out a long, slow exhale.
She looks at him then, finally, and his face is carefully blank. He watches the crowd, eyes following Havoc as he stumbles over someone else’s feet only to be caught by Breda, and they laugh. He’s leaning back in his chair, seemingly casual, head tipped back slightly and eyes heavy from the booze. But she knows him too well, and she knows he only fiddles when he’s upset, whether that's the fingers drumming on the side of his wine glass or the thumb stroking back and forth on her thigh. Finally, he looks at her. Just a small movement of his eyes from the crowd over to hers, but it feels like coming home.
His fingers tap upon her thigh once, twice, and he gives her sad smile that says both a million things and nothing at all.
She smiles back, a quirk of her lips that tells him she understands. When she looks back to the dance floor, Edward is still watching her. His eyes travel between the two of them, and he must notice the difference in the set of their shoulders or the lines of their tired faces because this time, he smiles.
Roy’s fingers tap on her thigh again, in time to the beat of the music.
She tells herself, this is enough.
It’s not.