People always talk about hospital smells as if they were a universal constant. Disinfectant, bleached floors, and maybe some more offensive things aggressively masked by a cleaning staff devoted to making the place look like a building where healing takes place rather than where infirmity is forcibly confined.

People lack perspective.

Not all hospitals smell the same. The ones in Central, while falling into the stereotype, are definitely far more palatable than the ones away from the rich capital, and there's little in the smell that reminds me of the campaign hospitals in Ishval.

Those… Those didn't smell like bleach.

They smelled like blood. Like bile. Like fear.

Like death.

In some ways, I prefer the straightforward honesty. After all, while I'm not dying, my career most certainly is.

"There's talk about promoting you," Riza says from where she's seated to the right of my hospital bed.

Or, at least, where my hearing tells me she is.

They say blindness sharpens your other senses. I imagine that, if that's true at all, the process must be far from instantaneous.

"A hero of the country maimed in the line of duty? I can only imagine how Armstrong and Grumman are salivating at the chance for a photo op," I say after too long a silence.

"Armstrong? [Olivia] Armstrong?" she says.

And I can see her.

Not with my eyes, of course, but… I've known her since we were both… Since before.

Since before the war, the homunculi, the [Fullmetal,] and all the chaos that underdeveloped bundle of pride and anger issues brought into our lives.

I'll never be able to see him grow up.

But, Riza?

I see her.

Sitting up too straight on a chair that favors neither form nor function, her head just slightly lower than the window sending warm rays of sun over my closed, meaninglessly closed, eyes, yet lending a glint of gold to hair that was both neat and wild, her sharply angled fringe casting an irregular shadow over brown eyes that I'll never meet again as she subtly raises her left eyebrow, always her left, to send me a wordless message about how outrageous my latest attempt at humor has been.

I can see her.

I think I'll always will.

"She'll have to play politics at some point if she really wants to follow her ambitions," I finally say, going back to the subject of the woman able to cow Alexander Armstrong, the bombastic mountain of muscle that…

I should have paid more attention. Alchemy trains you to be somewhat of an artist, to have an eye for detail. I could, I think, still draw Armstrong's face just out of muscle memory.

But I don't remember the shade of his eyes. The hue of his sparse hair.

Too many blonds in my life, I guess.

"The day Olivia Armstrong smiles for the camera is the day [I] accompany you to a gala in a frilly gown," she says with an eye roll that couldn't be any clearer if I held my fingers over her closed eyelids to feel the motion under thin, sensitive skin.

One time.

Just one time.

"Should I remind you, Lieutenant, that among my ambitions numbers the mandated use of miniskirts for all female officers?"

"I've had the resignation letter ready for years, sir."

I chuckle at that. Can't help it.

Both at the sharp retort and at the idea of Riza ever leaving the military.

"You didn't resign while being held hostage," I still answer, ruining the air of levity she's been working at for the past hour.

She doesn't answer, not immediately, and I can't help but fill the silence with all the possible ways she could be looking at me.

Exasperated. She's done that often enough when I've delved too deeply into the role of Roy Mustang, the charming rake raised by the owner of a thinly disguised bordello, reflexively flirting with anything wearing a non-mandatory skirt.

Impatient. When I… When I hesitated on things she knew we'd both decided years ago.

Angry. Legitimately angry. Angry enough to threaten me with the worst thing Riza Hawkeye could ever do to me: leaving.

Sad. Like… Like when we attended a private funeral held for her father. My master. For a man only mourned by two people out of the entire country that he had sought to change with his prodigious flame alchemy.

Hurt. Pained. Like when her bare back was offered to me so I could take away the burden tattooed on it.

And I did it.

People wonder how I managed to stand the stench of burned flesh in Ishval. How I could walk across a battlefield wrecked by a snap of my fingers without throwing up.

There's a very simple answer to that: none of that could compare to the scent of Riza Hawkeye's skin crackling under my touch. To the muffled, pained cries of the most important woman in my life as I hurt her how she wanted me to hurt her.

I threw up enough to last me a lifetime, that one time.

"Would you have wanted me to resign?" she finally says, her tone flat enough that I can't infer what's going through her eyes.

And I…

The sun's shining in through our shared hospital room. A noon sun.

But I'm still so very, very tired…

"I just wanted you to be safe," I mutter.

And drift off to sleep.

***

The brat will be fine. Everybody will be fine.

Miraculously, after a battle to the death with a being who claimed to have swallowed [God], we're… we're still here.

Alive.

Fine.

Just… lesser.

"Keep the tip of your finger inside of your glass when you pour water in. That way, you can feel the level of the water rising, and it won't spill," the nurse says.

Her voice sounds young, and she's been attentive enough to feel like she's starstruck at being tasked with teaching the maimed hero of the country how to work around his disability.

I would usually have to flirt with her if only to keep up appearances.

But this is hard enough. All the new ways of doing everyday things. The way my entire world is now something different. Something without light, or color, or a sharp gaze from my lieutenant.

So I struggle to concentrate. To absorb every new little nugget of what will be my routine from now on.

I have a good memory. A prodigious one. I am the Flame Alchemist for a reason.

But it used to be [visual] memory.

"I assume I'll need to be very careful when filling up a bathtub," I say, the thought just coming to mind.

The nurse giggles in a way that tells me that, while it is possible to take my comment as a joke, she's playing it up. Massaging my ego and possibly lidding her gaze as she imagines how it would be to assist me in taking a bath.

I…

"I've been raising a dog," Riza comments from her bed. "Could he be trained to assist him, or is it something that needs to be done from birth?" Riza asks from her bed.

She also was injured. Both of us were.

It's just that it's only her that will make a full recovery.

The nurse sitting by my bed on the chair Riza's been occupying when too restless to remain confined in her own bed shifts, her hand on mine indicating a slight movement. Maybe she's just facing Hawkeye.

The sudden spike of tension tells me that she has, indeed, met Hawkeye's eyes.

"It's not a good idea," the nurse says with an apologetic tone that could mean plenty of things but that I'm willing to bet has little to do with Black Hayate's suitability as a guide dog. "Pets and working animals need to be trained very differently; if your dog is used to responding to somebody trying to pet him or play with him, he could be distracted at the worst moment. It's not just a matter of inconvenience; it could be dangerous—it [would be] if, for instance, it happened while crossing a street."

There's a brief pause, and I can't help but smile at the look of offense that is sure to be on Riza's face.

"Black Hayate is a very disciplined animal," she stiffly answers.

"I am sure that—"

"No. You don't understand. He's very—"

"Lieutenant, I'm afraid that your prowess as a dog trainer is not something easily believed without some proof, and, regretfully, the unreasonable hospital ban on pets remains firmly in place."

None of the two women speak, but I'm sure at least one of them is looking at me reproachfully.

I placidly smile over my shoulder in her direction before I turn toward my bedside table to put my recent lessons to good use and serve myself a glass of water from the pitcher the nurse brought in.

But then I, the Flame Alchemist, scourge of Ishval, hero of Central, charming rake extraordinaire, misjudge the distance and knock the pitcher to the floor with my elbow, drenching my bed for added ridicule.

It takes me quite a bit of effort to look as if I'm laughing it off.

***

"Well, you look like shit," Madame Christmas, or Aunt Chris, says from the blasted chair everybody keeps using.

"Madame!" Riza all but yells, scandalized or offended on my behalf.

"I presume my grooming habits may have taken a hit due to my current circumstances," I say, being none of those things.

"Like you wouldn't believe. Oh, if only there was a sharp-eyed woman willing to stay by your side and make sure to properly comb your hair in place every morning," the exasperating, [sharp-tongued] woman says.

I smile.

At… At her not treating me with undue care. At the caustic wit, the infuriating insistence that I get married to a woman I've never even dated, the bombastic, grandiose gesture that I can't help but imagine at her words and tone, with Aunt Chris throwing the back of her hand over her forehead.

And at Riza's indignant sputter.

One that the strict, self-disciplined woman would never even [dare] show a hint of in front of somebody she didn't fully trust.

"It will have to be a very patient woman…" Riza mutters.

"Oh, most certainly. That's why I arranged for some exposure therapy when I bribed the hospital staff to put you two in the same room."

I… I look straight at her, or, at least, I face the direction that her voice comes from as I blink with my blind, useless eyes.

Then I narrow them.

"She's my bodyguard. And she was here before you were notified that I'd been injured," I say.

A warm hand with loose skin holds mine up, the other hand gently patting the scarred back where I carved an alchemy sigil on my flesh so that I could murder a homunculus.

"Keep telling yourself that, dearie," she says.

I groan, and, I think, Riza tries very hard not to.

***

Night is… A bizarre experience.

I feel the cool air over my face, the lack of warm spots that would hint at the sun or a lamp nearby.

And I guess the world's wrapped in darkness.

But it's only a guess. That everybody is just as blind as I am. The same misconception that I went through after I was forced through the Gate of Truth, only to emerge and meet Fullmetal waiting for me, his voice straining as I struggled against a darkness that took me too long to realize the meaning of.

And he, Fullmetal, Edward Elric, the… the closest thing I've had to what Hughes used to gush so obnoxiously about…

I know how he looked at me. How he looks when he encounters tragedies that he can't abide by, that he doesn't understand the world is full of. That he refuses to understand, over and over.

It's a look I've seen too many times in his young eyes. A look I stopped having a long time ago.

When I did my own share of horrors that the world shouldn't be full of.

"Are you asleep?" Riza gently whispers.

"No," I immediately answer before I can process that I could've easily lied by omission and fled from whatever it is that Hawkeye wants to talk about when we're alone in the middle of the night.

But she doesn't.

Doesn't talk.

There's a rustling of clothing being brushed aside, and two bare feet slowly set down on the cold tiled floor of the hospital room we share.

Then Riza, injured, weak, maddeningly unlike Riza, slowly pushes herself up to walk around my bed before sitting down on the chair next to mine.

There must be some light filtering from somewhere. An open window letting in streetlights, or moonlight, or maybe a pane of glass set in the door of our room that lets nurses discreetly check up on us.

So I am the only one blinded by darkness.

A thought that passes both bitterly and brightly.

"I could," she finally says.

"I am sure you could, Lieutenant, but I'm unclear on which of your many talents you would rely on to do so," I say, pure, unfiltered Roy.

Except I call her 'Lieutenant,' so there's that much of a filter still.

"Comb your hair," she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

And I clench my fingers over two fistfuls of rough yet thin cotton.

"You don't have to," I say rather than 'I don't need you' because not even I can lie so easily.

"It wouldn't change much, would it? I… I would be by your side. Like I have always been," she says.

And I'm angry.

At her, for so carelessly referring to what's between us in such a way. For banalizing the most vital part of my life. The only thing that has kept me going after my best friend was murdered while trying to call [me].

But that's a lie. Just one of many that Roy Mustang will tell everyone around him.

One that he, himself, can't believe.

Because I'm angry at myself.

At being useless, worse than on any rainy day. At being so much less than I needed to be to do what I promised her I would do. At dragging her down with me.

The woman who was supposed to watch my back and shoot me down if I ever stepped away from the right path, now gently guiding me away from it so that I can lick my wounds and lament the future that will forever be out of my reach.

"I miss reading," I say. Apparently a non sequitur.

"Reading?" she gently asks. Much too gentle, like she only shows herself to be in private and with so very select few.

Like the Fullmetal or his girlfriend in all but name.

I… I guess Ed and I may have more in common than either of us would like to admit.

"Reading. I used to enjoy it very much, but then life changed, and I had to swallow alchemy tomes, and then regulations, marching orders, and so, so [much] bureaucracy," I say with a slight, bitter smile at the thought of the dreaded paperwork the slavedriver to my right used to inflict on me.

"I could read for you now that you have more time," she offers, so wonderfully cruel in her kindness.

Which makes the rest of this so much easier.

"A generous offer. There was… There was a short book I used to like when I was a young teenager. I have it all but memorized, but it's still something I think I would enjoy," I say. Only half-lying.

Because I despise that book I used to love.

"How was it called?" she asks, just to keep the conversation going as the sheets by my side shift minutely, as if a young woman laid a hand on them, unsure of whether to reach for my hand beneath them.

"Rappaccini's Daughter," I answer, already regretting what I'm about to do.

"I haven't heard of it," she says, her hand unmoving even as the warmth of it seeps through, her presence by the side of my clenched fist making me shut my eyes tighter.

"It's about a man who encounters a tower surrounded by a blooming garden. There he sees a beautiful woman—"

"Of course he does," she mutters, and I can't help the smile she brings out of me.

"A [beautiful] woman tending to it. To flowers he's never seen before."

"And he falls in love with her at first sight," she says, once again letting me see her eyes rolling back in exasperation played across too many memories to count.

I want to tell her that, no, he didn't. Or, at least, not right away. That it took more than the glint of blonde hair and the hint of tenderness under a composed exterior to make the foolish young man fall for the daughter of the madman.

But this is still about the book.

And he did.

"Wouldn't be much of a story if he didn't, would it? A young man struck down by otherworldly beauty? Where's your sense of romance, Lieutenant?" I ask with a bit of Aunt Chris in my voice and mannerisms.

She doesn't answer.

Her hand doesn't move away.

And I hate myself just a bit more than I already do.

"The… The story continues when he tries to approach her, and the girl warns him away. The flowers she's caring for are poisonous. Lethal. And he could die just by breathing the pollen in," I say, my head resting on my pillow as I talk to the ceiling rather than to Riza.

"But she can tend to them without protective gear," she says, the phrasing as devoid of poetry as her words usually are, even if her movements, her expressions, her eyes never were.

Not when I could watch her.

"Yes. Because she's Rappaccini's daughter, and then Rappaccini comes into the story."

"An alchemist?"

"How did you guess?"

Another silence. Another eye-roll of Riza at me confronting her with the blatantly obvious or outrageous, even if in a joking manner.

Mildly embarrassed, I clear my throat before I continue:

"Rappaccini had once been deeply in love with his wife, but he left him for another man, not even taking her daughter with her. Maddened by his grief, he turned to alchemy. To making sure that his daughter would never be stolen by a passing fancy."

Riza remains quiet for another moment, the hospital eerily quiet when it should hold the hushed footsteps of nurses on the night shift going down the corridor or the ringing of bells alerting them to a patient's urgent need.

Not tonight.

No, this is just for the two of us.

Like so many other nights spent in an empty office, stealing a few hours of sleep on a green sofa with a folder of urgent paperwork inadequately blocking the light as the other kept working, the soothing sounds of pen on paper turning into the best lullaby I ever heard.

"The flowers," she says with that sharp intuition that would've made her a better alchemist than I'll ever be if she hadn't been so repulsed by what her father became. "She needs the poison to live. She was modified."

She's right.

But not entirely.

This may have happened one too many times for us to ever have a happy ending. Because she was right, but not entirely, when she trusted her life to me.

"She [is] the poison. The daughter and the garden are one and the same: beauty to be admired from afar."

Except that wasn't quite what happened, was it, Riza? Not when we slowly, tentatively, started having talks that didn't revolve around your father's latest demands. When you stopped being my master's daughter and became the girl I saw every day, talked to every day, looked forward to…

Looked.

"How does it end?" she asks, tenderly enough that we can both pretend she didn't see how my face twisted just now.

How does it end. Indeed.

It ends in a hospital room at night.

"The man convinces Rappaccini to take him as an apprentice. The alchemist refuses to cure his own daughter of the curse he inflicted on her, but, if her suitor would be devoted enough to learn how to do it himself, then that wouldn't be a casual dalliance like the one that took his wife away from him, would it? That would be something deeper. Love, or something close enough."

Her hand shifts beside mine, still not touching me even as my tight fists relax out of exhaustion more than anything else.

"And does he? Does he learn from her… her father?"

There's something in her voice. Something that shames me.

Something too near to hope.

Because I did. I learned from her father. I took the madman's secrets, the fruit of the research of one of the most brilliant men I've ever met.

And I scarred his daughter's back with it.

"He does. It takes him strenuous effort and devotion, but he manages to brew the cure."

I pause. Stupid, sentimental, and all too attached to somebody I should've let go of before she ever became a hostage against me.

"And then?" she asks. Hopeful, and brittle, and entirely unlike the Riza everyone but me has seen.

"Then he gives it to her. The cure that will allow them to finally be together. To touch, kiss, and love. And she drinks it. And dies.

"In his arms.

"And Rappaccini laughs."

She should slap me.

Punch me.

Shoot me.

Instead, the hand by the side of mine briefly trembles before she silently stands up and goes back to her bed without a single word.

And I can only wait in darkness for the remainder of her warmth on my sheets to fade away.

***

Physical therapy.

I still don't need to bother with that. Not when I'm so weakened without even taking into account my eyes.

I'll need to learn to walk again, using a cane to avoid tripping on the sidewalk or crashing against a streetlight.

Riza has to go, recovering her strength day by day, getting closer and closer to the Lieutenant Hawkeye she'll forever be in my memory.

Except physical therapy takes only an hour because she's still too weak to strain herself any longer, no matter how she protests otherwise.

And the nurse just came by to bring me lunch.

Which means that three hours have passed.

And Riza hasn't come back.

***

Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda is a thorough man.

We used to joke that it was this very enviable character trait that had him clean his plate so methodically, but… he isn't really obese. There's solid, thick muscle closer to the skin than most would guess, and it's a small mercy from whatever lies beyond the Gate of Truth that Armstrong has never tried to recruit him into his freakish muscle cult.

"Are you even listening?" he says with the kind of tone a second lieutenant never uses with a colonel as he [finally] interrupts his lecture on Ishvalian agriculture.

"Of course I am. Haven't you heard, Havoc? A blind man's hearing is keen enough to compensate for his missing sight."

I throw a smug, superior, infuriating grin his way, and the stoic man responds by throwing a balled piece of paper straight at the middle of my forehead.

"I could have you shot for insubordination," I say, quite sure that I couldn't even if I ever wanted to as I rub the injured area.

"Is that your plan? Getting rid of all your subordinates one by one?" he says with his usually morose tone.

"Careful," I say, dropping all pretense of levity.

"Or what? Are you going to snap your gloveless fingers at me?" he answers, still sounding as bored as he did even in the middle of plenty of firefights.

I narrow my eyes in his general direction, imagining I'm meeting the brown eyes of the one man I can trust to always be there to reign in the chaos my trusted cadre is so prone to.

And he punches me straight across the jaw.

I—[hands tightening around throat—no gloves, so—scar, can still—no sight, broad blast away from me, circle-less transmutation to—]

And he lets go of my throat.

"So. You still can fight," he says as if I hadn't been moments away from reflexively doing something I would've lived to regret.

"I could've killed you," I say, slowly lowering my hands from where they were just about to slam against one another to produce a gust of pure hydrogen that would've explosively flown along the channels of oxygen woven into a broad cone in front of me.

"Could you?" he asks with little more than idle curiosity.

"Yes," I answer after very little hesitation. A mere statement of fact that doesn't hint at a disquieting, vivid image of Breda's charred husk falling apart on top of me.

I guess that's one advantage of being blind. I'll no longer have to witness my own carnage.

But this brings to mind Hawkeye and that conversation we had in Ishval when she confessed that she preferred firearms over swords or knives because, that way, she didn't have to feel the enemy die.

And how I told her how hypocritical she was.

How she admitted it. Without shame. That she fought the way she did because it was easier on her.

How I both envied and despised that part of her, but only for a brief moment because how could I ever hold onto something that would make Riza suffer?

"Stop," Breda says, anger finally coming into his voice in a way it didn't right after he strangled me.

"Stop what?" I say, trying to go for one of my smirks and feeling it brittle on my lips.

"Stop punishing yourself. Let [her] do that for you if you really must."

I turn toward the raspy voice that, for once, won't come from somebody with perennially bored eyes, and—no, this is unfair.

He's… He's human. As much as any of us. He has moods, and times when he drops the façade, or when he doesn't need it. He can be cheerful and boastful when throwing back a pint of beer or devouring an entire platter of weisswurt. He can roughhouse with Fury, tease Falman, and snipe some understated cutting remarks at me when nobody who cares too much is listening in.

And it's precisely because he's human that I can show him my own anger.

"Somebody else already did their best to punish me, [Breda]," I say, pointing at my blind eyes, the fingertips near enough to the useless orbs that I feel the air shift over sensitive, transparent skin.

"Their best? Their [best?"] he says.

And then he laughs.

Rotund and obnoxious, a slap that could be on his belly or his meaty thigh to punctuate his hilarity.

"You really think this is your punishment? Being [blind]?" he finally says as I struggle to process whatever's going on.

"What would you call it?" I say, not even knowing what expression I use to spit out the words.

"The next [step]," he says.

And, before I can ask for clarification, there's a rustling of papers, and Breda stands up, his footsteps falling loudly on tiles that Hawkeye ghosted across.

I don't say goodbye.

And then, after too long has passed, I realize that the door to my room still hasn't opened.

"You can still fight, Colonel," he says. "So fight. For you. And for her."

That's when the door opens and closes.

I drop back on my bed, my head hitting the thin, uncomfortable pillow, and I stare more blankly than most up at the ceiling I can't see.

"Easier said than done," I finally say.

And then, having absolutely nothing else to do, I go over my mental notes on Ishval's current agricultural crisis.

***

I don't see people I don't know. I imagine them, yes, my overactive mind coming up with all sorts of inconsequential details. Maybe the nurse that comes to change my sheets at night has nicotine-stained fingers due to the nasty habit that colors her voice. Maybe she has her hair up in a utilitarian bun meant to protect it from a patient's mishaps. Maybe she used to be beautiful, and there are still traces of that under a severe expression that brooks no nonsense, not even from the likes of me.

It's… I don't know if others do the same, coming up with appearances to match a story made from tone, word choice, and the height that a voice comes from. I don't know if that's a coping mechanism or just something to humanize voices clad in shadow and nothing else, as distant as any phone call ever was.

But, with the people I know? The ones I worked alongside of for years on end?

I see them.

Maybe I'll mix how they looked one day that they were happy and uninhibited with celebration as they tell me one thing with how they looked on a rainy day when they tell me another. It's a collage of every single one of my memories of them, shifting with the cadence of their voice and the smiles or frowns that they call to mind.

I see them.

But, when Gracia comes, I see Hughes.

Maes. My best friend. Her late husband.

It's… I know it's her. I hear her voice, the same voice that has kindly greeted me whenever I've tried to act dutifully and visited her to make sure she and Elicia have everything they need. Everything they deserve.

Everything except for Maes.

Maes, sitting on the uncomfortable chair next to my bed, looking at me with that rueful smile he rarely let others see, the one that came out when we were alone, and he had to talk me down from something stupid and often self-destructive.

"He wouldn't have wanted to see you like this," she whispers, and the words cut deeper because it's Hughes saying them in my mind.

"Well, at least [I] am not seeing myself like this," I say with bitter humor that tries to come across as flippant.

But Gracia is not Riza.

And so she grabs my hand with both of hers.

"Don't hurt yourself. Please," she says, earnest enough that I can almost smile at the infuriating man about to reach for his wallet and the spread of family pictures within.

I hold it there, the ghost of a smile on my lips as I clasp her hand back. As I hold onto warmth and softness that mean to soothe me.

"He loved you. He loved you like few men ever manage to love a woman," I say, my voice almost breaking.

"I know," she says, the voice softening.

And…

"No, you don't," I say, about to betray the trust of my late best friend.

"What do you mean, Roy?" she says, still holding onto me.

So I…

I take a deep breath, and I'm back in Ishval, inside of a tent, sitting on the ground and contemplating everything gone wrong in my attempts to defend my country, to serve it with the alchemy inherited from my master and meant to elevate it.

Hughes was there with me, calling me to fulfill my duty. To get up and be a butcherer.

But he was Hughes, and so he was kind in his cruelty, letting me take a breath, trying to tell me about good, bright, happy things that would wait for us until the war was over and we were allowed to be human once more.

"He… He boasted. About you. As much as he used to do with Elicia, he would pridefully show off your pictures, the letters you sent him. He would brag about the small, pure happiness that would be to marry you after we left Ishval, how it was those small things that mean the world when the big ones are so… wretched."

Gracia waits for me to continue, her thumb slowly tracing my scarred alchemy circle.

And then I guess she tires of waiting.

"I know. He could be so mortifying to be around when he did that, just… just taking out pictures of our first date or our first kiss with the slightest excuse… I was so embarrassed and so often, and I… I still miss being embarrassed in the way only Maes could make me," she says, her voice only breaking at the end when she dives into a pain that is not recent but still fresh.

Raw.

A pain I'm stomping all over.

"I… I was a… I hated myself. I couldn't tolerate him trying to make me feel better, so I… I asked him if he would hold the woman he loved with those bloodstained hands of his," I say.

And her thumb stops over the tail of the salamander.

"Cruel words," she whispers.

I nod.

"Yes. Cruel, and spiteful, and stupid. And I regretted them as soon as they left my lips, but he… Hughes roared at me. He yelled that he would, that he would hold you and marry you, but that he would forever shut up about the blood on his hands. That he wouldn't stain you with it. That's… That's how much he loved you, Gracia. Enough to lie to you all of his life."

Her hands clench around mine, nails briefly digging into my flesh before she goes back to the idle, gentle caress.

"That's not what loving is supposed to be, Roy," she tells me, and Hughes' eyes are sad behind his square glasses as he looks at me with all the pity he ever did.

"I—"

"No. No, listen: Maes told me. Not right after coming back, but… But one night, he held me under sweaty sheets, and his arms tightened hard enough to scare me. Then… the tears came out. The tears, and the words. And every single horror story that you two went through. Everything that he did and that he hated himself for. Everything that made him feel like a monster who didn't deserve to be loved."

I don't answer.

But my eyes are wide open, my mouth slack, and I…

"I didn't push him away. I just… hugged him back and cried with him for as long as he needed me to, for as many nights as it took, for as many years. Because love isn't about lies, Roy. It can't be about that."

And now I see Gracia.

She's smiling tenderly down at me, gently caressing the hand of the broken man her late husband used to love like a brother.

And I also see Hughes, walking away, his back turned toward me as he throws me a last, parting smile over his shoulder, waving with two fingers at me before he steps into the darkness that surrounds me and fades away.

I don't cry.

But it rains tonight.

***

I don't need a wheelchair.

Or, more accurately, I wouldn't need one if I wasn't blind because I [do] need crutches, and I can't use those and a cane at the same time, so the nurses have to push me around whenever I need to leave my room for whatever reason.

It's… a disquieting kind of helplessness, being carried by another to somewhere you don't know, and it always plays merry havoc with my carefully cultivated paranoia. I didn't spend so many years avoiding being kidnapped, constantly surrounded by the very few people I knew I could trust, just to end up putting my life in the hands of people whose faces I can't see, whose voices I barely remember, who…

Who have no reason at all to capture a colonel who's headed for an early retirement due to disability.

I…

Breda.

He just… He kept droning on and on about barren fields left unattended after the war, traditional agricultural practices unable to keep up with the demand of what little population is left in a land whose main export is a steady stream of refugees. Kept telling me about what we had decided on, the plan to reform Ishval, to make it shine brighter than Central just as the next step in my career.

Not as redemption. I don't have that. Don't deserve it.

But… It would have…

I would have liked it. Rebuilding what I laid waste to. Giving to the world what flame alchemy was supposed to achieve.

And Breda, thorough, stubborn Breda, can't let go of that wistful dream. Still thinks I have a shot at it, as if the military would just accept a blind man furthering his earlier ambitions, trying to become president of Amestris, competing with the likes of Olivia Armstrong and General Grumman.

['You can still fight, Colonel. So fight for you. And for her.']

If only. If only…

"It's not so easy, is it?" the voice coming from the phone abruptly thrust by my ear says.

"I'll give you some privacy," the nurse respectfully whispers as I take hold of the piece of plastic before she silently steps away.

"Havoc?" I finally say.

"Hey, Colonel," the perennially single man says.

And something clenches in my chest.

"I wasn't expecting you to be the one who called," I say as I grasp for something else, anything else at all, to say.

He chuckles.

"You told me to wait for you. I got tired of waiting," he says, and my mind provides the easy smile that comes with that tone, usually distorted by a cigarette precariously dangling from his lips.

My hand clenches around the phone.

"I'm sorry. It looks like you were waiting in vain," I finally say.

"Not that easy, huh?" he says after a brief silence.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I admit, too tired to come up with a sarcastic remark that obfuscates just how lost I am.

Havoc, former Second Lieutenant Havoc, maimed in the line of duty, almost bled to death by my side, forced to help me kill the woman he thought was his girlfriend rather than the homunculus aptly called Lust… sighs.

"When… When the doctors told me that I would never walk again. You told me to wait for you. That you'd do [something], whatever it took, to get me back in Central," he says.

And I remember the impotent rage. The grief at having yet another friend taken from me by careless cruelty. How empty it felt to kill again and again the woman responsible until she stopped resurrecting, all the souls powering her philosopher's stone burned out by my desperate attempts at managing my alchemy while surrounded by water, without my gloves, just Havoc's lighter to provide the spark to ignite forcefully cleaved molecules of oxygen and hydrogen.

The same principle I would've used against Breda if his assassination attempt from yesterday was the least bit more enthusiastic.

I remember saving Havoc's life. Branding his flesh shut as I did my own. Stopping our bleeding with charred meat.

But I walked. And he didn't.

"No. It's not so easy," I say.

"People mean well," he says, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "[You] meant well."

I close my eyes, aware of the bitter quirk of my lips, taking refuge in a darkness that would've been self-inflicted just days ago.

Except it's not the same. Because it's early afternoon, and the light warming my face in the middle of this hospital's corridor would go through my eyelids, giving me irregular red and orange rather than uniform black.

"It's… Does it matter? Does it matter what I meant?" I say, asking too broad a question.

"[Yes]. That's the one thing that mattered. The only thing that mattered," he says.

And I can… [Now], after we're both on this side of injury, of being irremediably torn away from the way we used to live, from the little everyday things that everybody else takes for granted, I can…

I can put myself in Havoc's place, lying on his hospital bed, doing all his grip-strengthening exercises with a glint of determination shining in his eyes after I gave him that heartfelt speech about how much I relied on him, how I would do anything, [everything] in my power to get him back by my side. How I would move heaven and earth to get him back on his feet.

And I realize the cruel, smothered spark of hope that I gave him, slowly turning into something else as the days went by and he had to learn his own set of little things. How to get from a wheelchair to his bed rather than how to keep track of the water level of a glass slowly and carefully filled. How to get his parent's house fitted with ramps and broad doors that his chair can pass through rather than how to keep everything always in the same place, memorizing everything so that I won't grab salt instead of sugar, so that I won't trip on carelessly dropped dirty laundry, so that I won't have to throw out things I can no longer identify without the help of others.

"I'm sorry," I say, my voice strangled.

"Don't," he says. "You did what you thought was best, and you meant every word. I… I still believe in you, Roy. I still believe you'll manage a miracle. Whether it involves me or not, it's not what matters."

I drop my head forward until my chin reaches the thin hospital-issued pajamas covering my chest.

And try to take a deep breath that doesn't shudder.

"Hope can be cruel, can't it?" I say, thinking about Breda and his agricultural reports. About Aunt Chris and her nagging about marriage. About Gracia and what love is supposed to be.

"Yes. The bitch can't help but keep us going," Havoc answers. Not with his easy smile but with the bitter one he started to wear on a hospital bed.

And we keep talking. About easier things, lighter things, sometimes shared silences.

Shared pains and sorrows.

Until he has to hang up and go help at his parents' shop, still being reliable, devoted, and earnest.

Just…

Not in the same way he used to be.

***

I am alone.

It's night, with its comforting lack of warmth on my face, without the constant reminders of lights I can no longer see.

And so I see everything.

Comprehension. Deconstruction. Reconstruction. The three stages of alchemy. The things I can now do without a circle.

The things I can now do instinctively.

I shouldn't. Not as a blind man unaware of the world around him.

But that's not what I am, am I?

No, I am one of the very few who went through the Gates of Truth. One who grasped what Fullmetal and Alphonse did before me. And so, in a limited way, I feel the world better than I used to do.

I'm still surrounded by darkness, but… but it's filled with knowledge.

Knowledge about what, precisely, the cotton fibers of my sheets are made of. The intricacy of the organic chains of carbon. How easy it would be to turn them into more fuel for my flames.

How easily almost everything around me could burn.

Because I understand it. Matter. Its composition, the myriad ways to reshape it. All the little things I learned before I focused on my master's teachings, before I devoted all of my art to flame, now finally brought back so that I can raise up a wall of stone with a slam of my palms like I saw Ed do again and again, his go-to defensive maneuver now mine.

I could go by just with that. The Bulwark Alchemist.

I snort at the ridiculous moniker and how certain I am that it's already been used by an unfortunate soul subjected to the cruelty of Central's bureaucracy.

Because…

That last fight. Against the dwarf who would've become God.

I…

Riza.

Riza at my back, her voice guiding me, telling me how and where to aim, making the useless me [help]. Making me someone who could do something right. Something of worth.

Like she always did. Always has.

And…

And love isn't about lying. It isn't about keeping your pain away from those who love you. Not according to Gracia.

And things aren't easy. Your life changes, and sometimes there's no going back to the way things were, some things irremediably lost along the way. According to Havoc.

But I can still fight. For me. For her.

According to Breda.

So I don't throw my sheets off. No, I slowly pull them aside, keeping track of where they are before I lower my feet to the cold tiled floor, reaching for the slippers that I put in the spot I memorized earlier, and then I reach with the back of my hand toward my bedside table, feeling the contour of cheap wood and following it to where my crutches are stashed away between the table and my bed.

I've got practice walking on crutches. Those aren't the issue.

But I still have to stand up on them, my weak legs briefly trembling as I shift my weight, trying not to lean too hard on my arms.

And then I walk.

Along my bed, until it ends, and I slow my pace, waving each crutch in front of me before resting my weight on them to take another step forward and repeat the process all over again. Until, finally, after a moment that stretches for longer than it takes, I reach the wall.

Turn left, keep walking forward, the presence of something cool and large by my right shoulder likely imagined, but still there. Still a solid anchor that guides me to the door in the room as I adjust and have my crutches just minutely reach forward rather than broadly sweep in front of me.

A small clack of rubber on wood, and I—

And the door swings open, smacking my crutch back against me and making me stumble, making me panic as I lose my balance, jerking away from the unexpected impact rather than being pushed by it.

I almost fall.

But she catches me.

Like she always did.

"What do you think you're doing?" she says, her arms straining around my shoulders as she slowly maneuvers me back on my feet.

"Looking for you," I answer with a grin I missed on my lips.

A brief pause, her retreating hands fleetingly pausing on my arms before I'm once again deprived of Riza Hawkeye's touch.

"Why?" she asks.

"To apologize," I sway, unsteady on my crutches, wishing I could see her. Her, and not the thousand memories of her brown eyes filled with reproach, exasperation, and, at times, barely disguised fondness.

She doesn't answer.

Not until I force myself to look steadily at where I think her voice comes from, in front of me and slightly to my left, away from the cool, comforting presence of the wall by my side.

"Well?" she says.

"Well, what?" I answer with a guileless blink.

"[Your apology]," she says with either desperation, anger, or a back-and-forth rehearsed a thousand and one times. In her father's library, on the Ishvalian battlefield, and in any of my offices through the years.

The smile that comes to my lips is not rehearsed. Not part of the play.

But it still fits within it.

"I pretended to be a womanizer," I say.

"That better not be the extent of it," she immediately answers.

"I pretended to be a womanizer because people trust men with weaknesses. With leverage they can apply to them. So I made a [spectacle] of my weakness. I made everyone who ever worked with me, everyone who could conceivably be a threat, frustratingly aware of what that weakness of mine was supposed to be," I say.

"I know," she answers with something that is most definitely not enlightened fulfillment at finally understanding a mysterious part of my character.

Would it kill any of my subordinates to play along for once?

"And it was all for nothing," I say.

"I [know]," she says, the exasperation growing.

"Because… Because my real weakness… It was plain to see, wasn't it? The people I didn't let go of, that I spent favors on so that they would remain by my side. That was my weakness. You. All of you."

I wait for her curt answer.

It doesn't come.

And so, I'm cruelly forced to continue rather than hide away behind a sarcastic back and forth.

"All of you. But especially you. Just… Just you, Lieutenant, Hawkeye, [Riza]. Just…" I take a shuddering breath, and I straighten up, leaning more on my feet than on my crutches, trying to look my best even at my worst and likely failing as my face contorts in raw emotion no longer hidden by a smug smirk. "I have loved you for years. And there are plenty of reasons not to tell you. Plenty of reasons not to mess up the most important relationship in my life with something that is obvious to everyone around me but that I still manage to act oblivious to. But there's a single reason to tell you: that love isn't about lies. And that I'm tired of lying to you."

I wait in silence and darkness, only my ragged breath and her own steady one letting me know I'm not alone and talking to myself like a rambling madman obsessed with his flame alchemy, locked away in his library after coding the sum of his knowledge on his daughter's back.

And then she slaps me with… a book?

There's… There's a rustling of pages as if somebody was holding an open book with a trembling hand, and my right crutch clatters to the floor as I raise an incredulous hand to my stinging cheek.

"This," she says, pure venom in her voice. "This thing isn't about [us]."

And then what is most definitely a thrown, small book slams on the wall by my side before dropping to the floor.

"I presume that's a copy of Rappaccini's Daughter?" I ask, pretending not to be floored.

Which is when a small, slender hand grabs the front of my shirt, and, before I know it, the darkness whirls around me, and my back crashes against my bed.

"I [asked you]," she says, now straddling my waist, her hand still tightly grasping a pajama that is too thin for these rigors. "I [demanded] that you take away the tattoo on my back. You don't get to pretend I was a helpless victim of Father and [yourself], not when I… When it was my fault."

My eyes are wide open in a shock I'm ill-suited to express.

And now her hands are on my pillow, on either side of my head.

"You didn't hurt me, Colo—[Roy]. You did precisely what I wanted you to do. [I] hurt you. Don't you… don't you see? Don't you realize how you… Do you think I didn't know how you reacted? How you spent the whole night throwing up while I whimpered in my bed, too pained to comfort you like I should have? Don't you—it's [my] fault. [Mine]. Don't take that away from me."

"I… I never meant to—" I raise both hands, only mildly surprised to discover that I obviously let go of my second crutch somewhere during the flight toward my bed, and I follow the sides of her body in something unintentionally slow and sensual, because I only want to hold her face, to touch her and see with my fingers what it is that she's feeling, that her strangled voice so poorly conveys.

I go under her armpits and to her shoulders, barely grazing by her breasts, with none of us reacting to the mishap.

Then up her bare neck, her pulse racing and her throat moving with too rapid breathing.

And then…

Then she leans back and takes my wrists, gently guiding me to her face, helping me without me having to ask. Like she always has.

Like she still does.

Her skin is as smooth as I remember, the soft peach fuzz as enchanting as it was the only time we clumsily messed around in her father's library, two teenagers locked with one another for too long for something like that not to happen.

I… I don't even know why we stopped. Why there wasn't a second, third, or thousandth time.

But now…

Her forehead is crossed by deep, anxious furrows, and her eyelids tremble under my touch. Her lips are soft and yielding, but pursed into…

Riza Hawkeye is trying not to cry.

And that sends a stab of something through my chest that has both pain and elation.

"Shush," I say, clumsily and likely not reassuring in the slightest. "It's all right. Whatever you think you did, it's all right. It's always been."

She silently shakes her head, her hands now on the back of my own rather than my wrists.

"No. I… This is how it started. With you blaming yourself for everything that wasn't your fault, taking one sin after another on your shoulders so that your road to redemption would be just long enough that you wouldn't be able to reach the end of it before dying," she shakes her head, my palms on her cheeks, and it's like she's caressing me with her denial.

"Well, I [did] kill at least one sin, didn't I?"

"Don't you dare joke about that," she says as her hand clenches over the scarred array on the back of my right hand.

"Riza, if I didn't joke, I would cry," I say.

And then I pull her down to me until her breasts rest on my chest and gusts of warm air wash over my lips, wondering how she looks right now. If she's at all how I remember the blushing, blonde girl in a library's corner.

I don't think she is.

Much like I'm not the anxious boy too scared to hold onto her.

"Then cry. Cry for me," she whispers.

And slowly, inexorably, inevitably, Riza kisses me.

She's… She's…

Gunpowder no longer clings to her. Not after days locked in a hospital with its own set of overpowering smells, but there's still something uniquely hers. Something that I can't name but that spears through my muddled thoughts, erasing them as I get lost in the slow movements of the woman on top of me, the languid, deliberate motion of somebody too composed to lose herself even now, as I struggle to hold onto the strength I need to keep tracing her soft features rather than embrace her with all my strength and cry like Hughes did in Gracia's arms.

"I love you," I breathe out as soon as her lips pull back.

"I know," she murmurs as she lets go of my hands to cradle my own cheeks, holding me as if forcing me to make eye contact with the only woman whose eyes I ever wanted to lose myself in.

That… That is an impossible dream. Another thing I lost along the way.

But this is what's in front of me. Reality, rather than a dream.

And so, I'll take it.

Her.

She makes a muffled noise of surprise when I drag her back down, and I push my tongue past her lips, stupidly letting my need for her overpower all the other warring emotions of the moment until she softly moans against me, her breasts moving over my chest with a softness I couldn't have imagined.

I have dreamed about this, in guilty moments of solitude. About a day when I could tell the woman I trusted my life to what it is that I feel for her. I always imagined fiery passion overcoming the last of my restraint, a whirlwind of sweaty bodies entangled as we both gave in to those same urges we felt at least once, years ago, almost a decade ago.

I would push up her miniskirt, her toned thighs wrapped around my hips, my pants by my ankles, and we would stare into each other's eyes all through our lovemaking on top of a desk with paperwork victoriously fluttering down to the carpeted floor of my office. I would take her until we were both spent, lying in sweat and exhaustion on that very same carpet, still looking into her eyes as incredulous smiles overtook us.

I would… I would have done a lot of things when I finally gave in to the inevitable and confessed to Riza Hawkeye that she's the only one. That she'll always be.

But, rather than those things, I pull her away from me.

"I love you," I say once again.

She doesn't answer.

"Riza…"

Two fingers calloused by extensive gun practice rest on my lips.

"I know. Everyone knows. You never did a good job of hiding it," she says with that soft, tender, kind tone that's only for quiet places when nobody can overhear her.

The tone that's for family. For what she defines as family.

"I've… I tried. I tried not to let it show. To keep you safe. And then you ended up taken as a hostage, and—that's the last time I saw you, with your neck bleeding, with—" The fingers silence me yet again.

And I can't help but kiss them.

"Roy… I stayed, didn't I? It's… I believe in you. I believe that you'll make this country into one where another Ishval will never happen. I believe that you… I…"

She tells me many things. Things that would be enough to make my heart soar.

But she doesn't say what I want her to say.

"Don't force yourself," I finally tell her, as kindly as I can. "It's… I am not what… You don't [have] to stay by my side. To pity me—"

And she, yet again, slaps me.

Only, this time, she doesn't use a book.

There's a trembling arm buried into my pillow, the shaking of Riza's body on top of mine telling me of more frustration than I've ever seen in her.

"Don't. Don't you ever insult yourself," she says.

"Most people consider slaps to be quite insulting," I can't help but retort.

She doesn't answer.

She, instead, leans back and pulls my shirt up to my neck, her hands resting on my left side, where Lust stabbed me and left me to die, over the puckered, molten flesh I cauterized with horribly inadequate knowledge of proper medical procedure.

Over my scars.

At least some of them.

"We match," she whispers.

And then, slowly, cruelly, she moves over me, the sound of rustling clothing insinuating something incongruous that I can't believe until she takes my hands off her face so she can take her shirt off.

And then she guides those same hands to her scars.

"But yours are worse," she says as I can't help but run my hands over her back, feeling the taut, wonderfully trained muscle shifting under my touch, her breath hitching when I reach the lines of scarred skin that ruin the array that contained more about flame alchemy than anyone will ever know, her father's prodigious mind having condensed untold mysteries into the elaborate image, things that not even I could guess at and that I refused to think about after Riza asked me to erase it from the world.

"That book, Rappaccini's…" she starts to say, breathless, as I trace the sides of her spine, unable to stop myself from exploring what she offers me.

"Yes?" I answer with a distant faraway tone as my traitorous mind recreates the bare back I saw years ago, before all the training and discipline she subjected herself to, the memory of soft, slender curves now clashing with the power barely restrained in her frame.

"It's not about us," she insists. "And… And, even if it was, what mattered wasn't the father. That just… that was tragedy. Fate. But what mattered is that they loved one another."

I silently caress her, drawing another bare back in my mind with every stroke of my fingers, learning how the bubbling skin of so long ago turned into thin, barely raised lines now. Things that I may not have guessed at through touch alone in some places if I didn't have the vivid memory of how the scars came to be to guide my inner eye.

"They did," I finally say, remembering the two tragic lovers. And then… "Do we?"

My question is…

Sad. Hopeful. Lonely.

Fundamentally broken.

Because that question is Roy Mustang offering himself, and that's all that Roy Mustang is.

"Yes," she breathes out. "But…"

I wait for the words that follow with a strange calm. It's, in a way, the calm of a fight. Of knowing you've done all that you could. That there's nothing else but waiting for a result that is no longer in your hands.

She leans back down, her bare breasts on my chest, the two globes flattening as she puts more of her weight on me, her hips sliding down, reaching below my waist, and her lips hovering above mine.

And my calm breaks.

"But?" I finally ask, unable to stop the pleading syllable from coming out.

"But… I will spend my whole life with you. That has been the plan for years. We both know that," she says.

"Aunt Chris certainly thinks so," I say, the humor as much a reflex as the hug with which I receive her words.

She chuckles, her cheek brushing past mine as she breathes hot air into our now shared pillow.

"But what if we don't last? Roy, what if… if we can love one another and not be in love?"

My hug tightens.

"Is there another man—"

"I will punch you."

"Then—"

"It's not about that. I… This is… I've never… This is new. As much as I know you, I don't know this part of you. And… And you don't know this part of me."

My right hand trawls up her spine, slowly and languorously, like some of Aunt Chris' girls told me to do when I finally had a blonde woman in bed. Because let it never be said that growing up in a bordello didn't come with its own share of awkwardness.

And then, like some [other] girls said, I bury my hand in the long hair growing out of Riza's nape and tug her head back and away from our pillow.

Over me.

"Then I'll learn," I say, my voice no longer gentle, sad, or faraway. "I will make you my subject of [study], Riza Hawkeye. I'll know everything there's to know about you and won't stop until I know you better than you know yourself. Until I can make you—"

She giggles.

I, quite possibly, blush.

"Until you can make me squirm with a word and a touch? Is that how that speech was meant to go?" she says with an irksome tone that she usually employs to poke fun at people who may have some issues performing under variable weather conditions.

But two can play at this game.

I [hope].

"Oh? Did Auntie's girls tell you all about my plans?" I say with a suggestive eyebrow waggle that almost got me thrown out of the opera once.

I'm glad I practiced it because Riza's splutter may be the most melodious sound I've heard today.

"[Plans?"] she asks, more bewildered than scandalized.

I think.

"Years of chastity devoted to you while I regularly visited a bordello? What do you think I was doing, [Lieutenant], if not preparing for a long-term campaign of conquest?"

"What are you—how would you [even] prepare for—"

Her words are sadly interrupted by a throaty moan.

Her own.

Because, as it turns out, grabbing her nape is a very good way to know precisely where the side of her neck is, and thus how to quickly reach with my lips a spot that I've been told again and again makes a woman's toes curl nine times out of ten.

And, yes, every woman is different, but those are much better odds than some I've had to march under, so I'll take them.

I'll take the odds, and I'll take Riza.

"That's… You… You have [practiced]," she says with an accusing tone that I should find bewildering coming from a woman who's not my wife, fiancée, or even girlfriend.

But she's Riza.

And so I take my lips off the wet patch of skin to murmur into her ear:

"Never. Never with another. But I did imagine this more times than I can remember."

Then, because I know her, I kiss her lips before she can say something caustic about my masturbatory habits.

And this time, I don't stop at thrusting my tongue past her lips.

No, I… I coax hers into joining me, into spiraling around one another as I can no longer resist, and the hand still on her back drops lower, sliding into her pants and underwear to grab the ass that our bulky uniforms rarely allow me the chance to properly appreciate, and her tendency to wear long skirts when in civilian garb doesn't ameliorate that sad state of affairs in the slightest.

So, as I knead marvelously toned flesh, my fingers sinking into the thin layer of softness before reaching the firm muscle, I reaffirm my unshakeable belief that a world with mandatory miniskirts is a world worth fighting for.

"I can [hear] the gloating," she says, almost breathless, still over me.

"I am a man reaching for his dreams. A modicum of gloating is warranted."

"Your dreams? Your plans? You may have devoted too many mental resources to [this], Colonel."

"No," I say, interrupting myself to reach up with a peck that aimed for her lips and ended up on the side of her chin. "There's never 'too much' when it comes to you."

Riza is the one to aim the next kiss.

It lands.

And her tongue goes faster around mine, eager, exploring my mouth and tasting every toe-curling crevice as if [I] was the helpless maiden about to be forcefully taken by a brute too prone to literally sweep me off my feet at the slightest sign of rain.

"You planned this," she says with something in her tone that makes me reflexively clench my fingers around both her hair and behind. "You [discussed] what words to say with courtesans just to… just to…"

I tug her hair back and close my teeth around her throat, running my tongue up and down the trembling cartilage as she whimpers and slowly rubs her hips on top of the increasingly hard tent I can't help but offer her.

"I did. Of course I prepared for every eventuality. Because I wanted to make this [perfect] for you."

"And your plans included making me blindingly mad at you?" she says in a way that makes the blonde woman inside my head bite her lip in frustration and something else.

"No. But you're the one thing I could never plan around, Riza," I say in a way that makes the woman on top of me pull my head away from her neck and kiss me, rougher and harder than ever.

"Me. [You] couldn't plan around [me,"] she bites out between aggressive shows of what I dearly hope is affection.

"What's [that] supposed to mean?" I ask, adding a pinch to her behind for good measure.

Good measure of what, I'm unclear of. I'm playing this by ear, after all.

Heh. I guess learning sheet music is now out of the question.

"You… Stop [that]."

"Stop what?"

"Stop playing [me]."

I do my best to face her, to look straight at her, and she gets the message because her hands are once more on my cheeks, subtly angling me so that I at least feel the imagined connection.

"I'm not playing you. I'm making love to you," I say.

And then there's a tongue doing its very best to go down my throat.

A fact that I'm far from unappreciative of, to be sure, but I could've done with some warning to take in a bit of much-needed air beforehand.

Riza slithers up and down against me, her sex warm and wet enough that I can feel it through both our clothing until she, still kissing me, lets go of my head to pull my pants down, our hips erratically moving as we both try not to lose the contact between us and give us enough room for her to undress me, the conflicting goals doing nothing at all to make our horizontal movements anything but desperate and yearning.

And then, somehow, she manages to pull both my pants and boxers down to the middle of my thighs, past my hard shaft, and she roughly grasps me at my base, her grip just a bit too strong, her tugs along me more uncomfortable than pleasurable as we both keep moving until we end up on our sides, my left arm trapped under her body as I keep massaging her spectacular behind.

I don't stop kissing her, not even as our unoccupied hands do their best to free her of the scourge of clothing still impeding what's about to happen, the pants coming off easier than the elastic panties clinging to her flesh and the back of my wrist until I pull her flush to me, her bare breasts once more pressed against my chest as my hand slides lower, along wet, warm clothing, and I touch the damp lips of Lieutenant Hawkeye's pussy.

She pulls back from the kiss that was already making me lightheaded and bites back something that makes my chest clench, that makes me gasp at the idea of Riza being disheveled at my touch. At her losing control because of how good I'm making her feel.

And so I climb down her body.

I keep contact with my lips. Along her jawline, down her neck, following her clavicle until the sharp hollow over her breastbone that I trace circles over with my tongue before kissing down the slope of her left breast, the soft flesh pressing up against me with every sharp inhale caused by both my lips and the middle finger carefully tracing along the line between [her] damp lips.

I pause when, out of luck more than anything else, I reach her hard nipple waiting for me, and then her clawed hand is on the back of my head, pressing me against her as I kiss, suckle, and trace circles with my tongue that make the opening down below repeatedly clench against the pad of my finger.

"Roy…" she murmurs as she remembers to keep stroking me, her hand's motion along my shaft for once not the living exemplar of grace and determination she always is. "Roy…"

"[Riza]," I say with all the heat I tried not to show before I dive back down against her breast, and my finger finally slides inside of her.

She gasps, the fingers on the back of my head clutching me tighter, her palm pressing against my tip until she circles it, dragging every bit of lubrication along with her touch, bathing my whole cock with it as her caresses become smoother and my self-control dwindles.

I nip at her nipple before swallowing her whole areola when she lets out a whimper that makes me prouder than any of my achievements, and she lets go of both my head and shaft.

Then firm palms push back on my chest, laying me on my back yet again as the mattress shifts around me.

And, when she straddles me, it's her bare sex against the underside of my shaft that takes my words away.

"Are you… Are you sure? We could wait. Until you're better. Make it… Your plans…" she says, her composed tone turning into babbling halfway through as her hips minutely shift up and down along my erect shaft, broadening her swaying motion until I can feel a slight bump at the top of her lips press against my frenulum right before Riza shudders and her hands on my chest press down that much harder.

"My only plan was for this to make you feel good enough that you won't realize just how stupid it will be to keep making the same mistake with me until the day we die," I say.

Riza slows down, her hips angling forward until they press my cock right against my belly as she lowers herself so that thin strands of her golden hair brush along my own, sadly unkissed, clavicle.

"I want to make every single mistake I can with you, Roy," she says, her tone melodiously warbling.

And I…

"Except cheating," I quickly clarify.

"I will shoot you. On your knees. So that you won't be able to run away from what comes next."

"You're the one who wants to make mistakes; I was talking about [you] cheating."

"… I am very close to arguing that [not] cheating on you would be a mistake."

"Oh. Then, please, keep on being mistaken."

She tries to groan and ends up laughing.

Which is all the opening I need to—despite my weakness, despite the stitches, despite every reasonable reason to avoid any strain—push Riza out of balance and flip us over on this bed that should be much wider if we're going to keep moving this way on top of it.

"What—" she starts to say.

And then, I guess, she looks at me.

"It's our first time. And I always dreamed about taking you," I say as I lower myself between her open legs, fumbling for a moment before her hand grabs my shaft, much gentler than earlier, and she guides me toward her wet, warm opening.

"Are you… Roy, we [can] wait," she says, her fingers gliding up and down my shaft, her voice making me imagine wide-open brown eyes looking up at me, maybe a few strands from her wild, sharp fringe reaching down past eyebrows softened by care and tenderness.

And I push.

We both hiss at once as her lips part around me, my tip easily finding the opening I just teased with my middle finger and stretching her wider until almost my entire glans is inside of her.

She trembles. Under and around me.

And I wish, more than anything else, that I could see her face right now, that I could watch the shape of her lips, meet her eyes—

She takes my right hand and slowly, gently, pulls it to her face.

And Riza Hawkeye waits under me as I slowly trace her. As I feel a gentle smile interspersed by soft, brief kisses on my trailing fingers on her lips. As I follow her jawline and briefly detour down the left side of her neck and then up and around a round ear that I always meant to nibble on.

She isn't wearing her earrings.

I could ask why. If she always takes them off at night. If she wanted me to—

I don't.

I, instead, move along her smooth, relaxed forehead with no creases whatsoever before dipping down along the upright angle of her nose, making her giggle at my study of her.

Then… Then I go around her eyes, and she stops breathing as I caress her closed lids.

As I find moisture at their corners.

"Did… Does it hurt?" I ask, horrified at the thought of—

"Don't be stupid. That particular issue stopped being there years ago," she says, the tone gentler than the words.

"I thought you hadn't—"

"Roy… Masturbation exists."

"Ah," I say.

And then I just… wait, as if I was looking at her while I do the closest thing I now can do, my fingers on her face bringing up scattered memories that coalesce into Riza being as stunning as she's always been when it was the two of us alone at night.

"It's just… That I'm happy," she murmurs, as if ashamed.

So I lean down and kiss her tears.

She giggles once again as I taste the salt on my tongue, but then her arms wrap around my back, her hands going under my raised shirt, her fingers finding all the crevices between muscles that will never amount to anything in front of the likes of Amstrong but that are more than enough for me to go against literal monsters.

And, going by how attentively Riza caresses them, they [may] also be good enough for something else that I, at the moment, value quite a bit more.

So I push.

Her nails briefly dig into my skin, and her teeth close around my shoulder as her legs wrap around me, and she trembles a single time while I do my best to hold steady and not lose myself in the feelings of her yielding body and the sheer euphoria at making [her,] of all people, lose control.

"Tell me when you're used to it," I say with a calm I most definitely don't feel before I turn aside and kiss her hair softly and repeatedly, my arms refusing to hold myself up so that I have to adjust myself, my chest once more pressed against Riza's breasts, her damp, pointed nipple making me bite my lower lip with something dark and warm that slowly pulses up my spine.

She lets go of her soft bite and kisses my wet shirt before nodding against me, her fringe brushing over the cloth and making me angry at it for stealing this much of her from me.

So I slowly pull back until I'm almost entirely out of her body and try to lift my arms before Riza gets the message and she hurries to take off my pajama top.

Then her hands trace up the front of my body, each line of my abdominal muscles devotedly caressed by inquisitive fingers that only detour at the scar by my side, making me hold my breath before she goes back and caresses a chest that is straining at holding myself over her, seeing as days of bedrest and life-threatening blood loss mean I'm nowhere as strong as I look.

As I should be.

"The next time you start doing pushups in the office, I'll be remembering this," she mutters.

"I… rarely have time to go to the gym," I say as she caresses down my unsteady arms.

"Really? Showing off your tight, black shirt wasn't part of your elaborate masterplan?"

"I wish I was clever enough to realize that was an option."

"I [do] have a libido, Colonel."

"So, you aren't going to make fun of me for my many, [many] elaborate masturbatory fantasies about you?"

"I never said I wasn't a hypocrite."

I laugh. We laugh.

And then I push.

As far as I went the last time, and a bit farther, Riza's laughter abruptly cut off as she gasps right before her legs close around me, and she bites my shoulder yet again without the damn shirt doing anything to shield me from teeth that I don't want to be shielded from.

"I love you," I whisper in her ear, or as close as I can guess.

She answers something muffled, and I pull back just enough to trick her into relaxing before I push forward yet again.

"Ah!" Her surprised moan washes over my wet bite mark, and I turn my head around to clumsily kiss all over her cheek until she turns toward me, and our lips and tongues meet, the languid passion of the start quickly growing into something else. Something that flame alchemy could never compete with.

Her ankles hook behind my lower back, and she [pulls].

And then, suddenly, I'm fully inside Riza Hawkeye, her tongue and legs going limp around me until only my sucking on her keeps her tongue inside my mouth, and her legs slide down the side of my body to slowly fall down on the mattress below.

And, going by the sound of things, her right leg then decides that the bed is not wide enough to fully contain her exhaustion and flops down to the tiled floor.

"Riza?" I ask, doing my best to hold back the urge to just spend all the remaining strength in my body and race inside of her.

"Not… a… word…" she answers with worrying tiredness.

"Are you… all right?" I ask, just with worry.

"Shut. Up."

"If you want me to stop—"

"I just came," she says. Embarrassed.

I… blink at her. Or in her general direction.

"Excuse me, you what?" I say, about as composed as I am whenever I get one of the Fullmetal's reports.

"Your stupid plan. Worked. Be happy," she mumbles.

Sullenly.

And, really, it takes a titanic effort not to smugly smirk at her confession. Holding back the spread of mirth and sheer superiority over my fellow men is not something mere mortals can do.

Going by the sharp tug on my ear, I [may] still be a mere mortal.

"I've been waiting for this for years. Sue me," she says.

"I don't think that's how marriage works, but I'll consult a lawyer," I courteously reply.

She, for some reason known only to blonds who frequent my company, groans.

"You're going to be insufferable. I can see it, each and every time you get me naked, lording over me how easily you can make me… [you know]."

"Riza?"

"Yes?"

"Each and every time I get you naked? I'll be too busy doing [this]," I say.

And then I do proceed to expend all the remaining energy in my body.

I move as fast as I can, pulling out of her until only the head of my cock remains inside her snug folds before diving right back in, using just my hips to pound against her spread, accepting thighs as she buries her fingers on my hair and pushes me to her neck, my lips pulling at soft skin as she moans and calls my name in forcefully hushed volume.

It can't last. [I] can't last.

And then, as I feel my muscles burn, as I slow minutely in my pace, the hands on my hair go to my back, and, for the second time tonight, Riza Hawkeye bodily throws me on my bed.

The mattress protests her violence, but I don't. Mostly because of the tongue shoved yet again down my throat as she bounces on top of me, her hips as forceful as mine, taking from me what I was trying to give her as she presses her breasts against my chest harder, rubbing me up and down, her pointed nipples tracing lines of fire on me.

"Love you," she breathes out, sharp gasps of air punctuating the beginning and ending of the breathtaking line.

"Love you," I answer, my mind too full of her to come up with anything else as I finally remember that I [do] have hands and that one of them could go back to groping her fantastic behind, to maybe lend a bit of my meager strength to her enthusiastic movements as the other…

The other reaches up.

It takes some effort to push it between the two of us, to finally hold one of those marvelous breasts that distractingly jiggle whenever she takes her jacket off for target practice. Breasts that I only saw bare once in my life but that I'll never forget.

My fingers sink into them just as my thumb and forefinger find her nipple.

And Riza [moans].

Full-throated, with no way to muffle the sound at all, the echo of it reverberating across our empty hospital room at night.

And so I find my missing strength and thrust back against her falling hips, the meeting of our flesh growing louder and louder as she throws all discretion aside and her voice drowns my grunts of effort and overwhelming pleasure.

It can't last. [I] can't last.

So, when she throws her head back, when I have to reach up to follow her breast as she straightens up and bounces right over me, her movements both faster and shorter, when her sex clenches wildly around me until, suddenly, she drops on top of me and stops moving except for shivering discharges of sheer sensation…

I am relieved.

And then I fill my woman up.

I grab her ass even tighter as I hold her down against me, as I thrust and shoot stream after unending stream of pent-up lust, desire, and everything else that I've been saving for her for [years]. I come and keep coming until a distant part of my mind wonders if this is how I'll die and decides that, if that's the case, it'll be more than worth it.

And then she whispers a single, dreamy, "Roy," and my mind goes blank.

When I come back to my senses, I'm drenched with sweat that is both mine and hers, and she's lying half on top of me, a single, toned thigh crossing over both my legs, her head tucked beneath my chin, and her palm lying flat over my heart.

"Are you asleep?" I gently whisper like she did right before I did my very best to mess things up.

"No," she immediately answers.

So I hug her as hard as I can.

"I love you," I repeat.

"I know," she says yet again, without moving at all, the warmth of her palm anchoring me to this moment. To her.

"I have loved you for years," I clarify.

"I know," she tells me with a barely audible tone.

"I couldn't tell you. Not with… With everything I still had to do."

Another silence. One that I don't know how to fill.

"You've saved the world, Roy Mustang. You don't need to redeem yourself anymore," she tells me, gentle as only she can be with the likes of me.

"Is that how it works?"

"Isn't it?"

And I…

I don't even think about it. About the answer. Because if I think, I may lie.

To her, or to me.

And love shouldn't be about lies.

"It isn't. It can't be. It's not… It's not about numbers. Kill a man and save another? You're still a murderer, even if you're also a savior."

"Then… Then why? Why all this work, all these years—"

"Because if you're a murderer who refuses to be a savior, that's even worse."

She shifts on top of me, and I regret the loss of warmth and contact until she straddles me, one hand on each side of my head, her fringe brushing over my forehead.

"I won't allow anyone to hurt you," she says, finally saying out loud what she's been acting on for years. "Not even yourself."

"Riza…"

"No. No, I won't let you. I… I was [there]. I saw what that place did to you. I saw all the things you did, all the ways in which you burned yourself. I saw the man who made [our] soldiers feel safe."

"I won't accept that. They would've been safer if the damn war hadn't happened—"

"And that's what you are going to do. That's what all these years have been for. What you'll reach."

"I'm a blind man, Riza; I [can't] be Fuhrer."

She leans forward until it's her warm skin that presses against my forehead, and her breath washes over my lips.

"Let them try to stop us," she says.

And then she kisses me, as intensely and passionately as when she shoved her tongue down my throat, but slower. Methodical. Letting me know how much she owns me. How much she's tied herself to me and me to her.

"Riza…" I could tell her a lot of things. About her. About us.

About me.

But is there a single one she doesn't already know?

"I let you," she says. "I let you shoulder the guilt of my scars. I let you keep blaming yourself for Ishval because it felt [obscene] to take that away from you. So I won't. I won't take it, Roy… But I'll share it."

And so Hawkeye gently rests on top of me and tells me of what she did. Of the men she killed and the ones she saw dying. Of what a true sniper does, not taking the kill shot as soon as it presents itself, but maiming with a single bullet and lying in wait for whoever will come to help the wounded, trusting that people will care enough for their friends to risk their lives to save them.

She tells me of every little vile thing that still haunts her. Every order followed, and every petty moment of cruelty and revenge that she took on her own after she saw one of her own partners taken.

She tells me about how the moniker 'The Hawk's Eye' spread across the battlefield, a blessing to our side and a curse to our fellow countrymen who happened to be on the other side.

She tells me about going through bombed-out buildings and mercy-killing survivors with no hope of treatment.

She tells me of the horrors she saw and those she performed.

And then she cries.

In my arms, Riza, invincible, stoic Riza, cries and shakes until her throat goes hoarse.

And then…

Then it's my turn.

It's my turn to speak with a shuddering voice. To remember faces that I will never forget and all the ones that I did. All the shapeless ghosts that haunt me in the numbers of a report, the ones I murdered when I had already been too exhausted and drained to care to watch and remember.

Everything that went down after I criticized Riza for her hypocrisy in preferring guns. After I became… hollow. Too hollow to walk without an order to do so.

But they were there. Riza and Hughes. My best friend and the woman who would always be by my side.

They… They helped me feel again. Helped me build back up the persona I would wear as I planned to overthrow my government.

And with feelings came nightmares, and memories, and obsessively poring over yellowed reports in manila folders to try and find out a [number]. A damn number.

Just… Just how many? How many did I kill with a snap of my fingers?

All of it just so I can confess my most shameful sin. That I don't know. That I can't know.

That nobody knows.

And then, under sweaty sheets, in the arms of my lover, I cry.

And she keeps kissing the tears away.

***

It's almost morning.

The air is cool, and birds are chirping, but there are no sunrays coming through my window, so the night isn't quite over, though I imagine this is when the horizon starts shifting from black to gray in that uncomfortable light I never quite liked witnessing after a long night stuck in the office with the best, most demanding company I could ever dream of.

"Are you asleep?" I whisper.

"I haven't slept at all," she answers with a dry throat that makes me think about a carefully positioned pitcher of water by my bedside.

"That's a lie. I heard you snore a few times," I say after careful consideration tells me that I am too tired to unwrap my arms from around her and serve her a glass of water.

Yes. Too tired.

That's definitely the only reason.

"I do not snore," she weakly protests.

"You do. It's the cutest thing. You always furrow your nose as if surprised and displeased by the soft sound."

"I am not cute. I am a dignified woman of poise and culture. If I snored, it would be elegant."

"You can be cute [and] elegant… Though your snoring is only the former."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

And she kisses me.

It's… rough. Clumsy. We're both exhausted, emotionally and physically, and our lips are dry.

But she kisses me. Riza kisses me.

And… And that's enough. Not to forget about the horrors we just shared, but to remind me that we [shared] them, that…

That Hughes found something in Gracia's arms that I can finally understand.

So I hold her closer and keep our kiss going, our dancing tongues slowly softening our lips as we move on top of a too-narrow bed until suddenly, I'm on top of her, and her legs are around me, and I'm [hard].

"Are you…? [Really?"] she asks.

"You have only yourself to blame?"

"Oh, I most definitely can think of somebody else to blame for [this]," she says, slightly wiggling her hips against the 'this' in question and, I think unintendedly, letting me know that there's enough warm dampness between her legs that it's clear I'm not the only one affected by our morning kiss.

Still, I've got a reputation to maintain.

"My dearest Hawkeye, are you insinuating at all that the nurse that gives me such thorough sponge baths—"

"I'll train Black Hayate to bite your ankle every time you smell like another woman. You know I will."

"This is domestic violence, and I won't stand for such abuse."

"No. You won't stand. Because of your bitten ankles."

A snort of laughter catches me unaware.

She soon joins me.

And, as I find her open, joyous, and vulnerable below me…

I push my cock inside of her.

She gasps yet again, the laughter cut off before it returns with a few slaps against my chest to punctuate it even as her legs close around my hips and the Riza in my mind smiles up at me.

Then, as I pull out to slowly make love to her with what little strength remains in my body after a sleepless night…

Somebody kicks the door open.

"All right, you mopey bastard! You lost your eyes, so what?! My [brother] lost his whole body, and you don't see us complai… ning… Wha—oh. Oh God. Oh, no, please no, [why?!] Why would you?! This is—I'm going to throw up. I'm going to throw up, and then I'm going to gouge out my eyes! Is that what you wanted, to have another blind guy join the reading club?!"

For a brief moment, Riza and I freeze.

Then a sheet that definitely needs to be changed flies over me, a woman shrieks below me, and a boisterous boy with a height complex and daddy issues makes the kind of worrying noises that will have a janitor with a mop rush here in moments.

Then, because I'm a composed, dare I say brilliant, military officer with tempered nerves, I slap my hands together, go through a whole cycle of composition and decomposition inside my mind, and slam those hands by the side of my bed to raise a wall of stone that will adequately serve as a privacy screen around my side of the room.

Just to realize that I'm a blind man leaning too far down his bed while still inside a woman with her legs wrapped around me, and so we both tumble to the floor, the recently recovered sheet tangling around us.

Tangling quite tightly.

I… blink in Riza's general direction.

"I don't think I can get out of this without your help," I say.

"Just… Just move. Slowly," she says in a way that implies gritted teeth as her hips twist on top of me.

I try to do just that. To shift on our sides and hold her steady as I pull back.

She groans.

I don't, but only because I'm biting my lip hard enough that it's a wonder I don't bleed.

"You know…" I start to say as we both keep trying to get my cock at least more than halfway out of her body.

"I most certainly don't," she grunts as her sex clenches around me.

"It occurs to me that we're currently surrounded by an impenetrable wall that only I can bring down," I say.

And then, rather than keep trying to pull out, I grasp her behind and [push].

Riza shudders, her chest shaking against me.

"What are you doing?" she says with a tone that quite distinctly implies lidded eyes.

"Making love to you," I answer with much the same tone.

And that's precisely what I do until, moments later, with the distinct crackle of alchemic lightning, the wall around our bed crumbles, and Alphonse Elric joins his brother's anguished cries.

========================

This is one of the things that has been on my Patreon poll for ages, since the very start, I think.

It didn't win.

But, well, I owed quite a few words to Xalgeon, and she was generous enough to let me talk her into converting them into this, so, here it is, my love letter to Full Metal Alchemist and Roy and Riza in particular. I'm still baffled that they were canonically not fucking one another silly throughout the series, but, well, that just means I had to work on that myself.

As usual, this was seen two weeks ago by my subscribers. Join them, and you too can be constantly exposed to overly sappy romance with a dash of snark!

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!