Chapter Text
They still patrol into the desert, even though most days, and most by a large margin, they find nothing. Around half of the people in their village have some Xingese blood, a grandfather, a parent, an uncle. The descendants of vagabonds. Of refugees. They’re Colmar. The last village before the eastern border. The home of the runaways.
They find the couple a mile out, half covered by a dune. The man’s dead, the woman’s barely alive, and it’s only when they tug her twig-light body up on a horse when they realise that she’s clutching an infant to her milkless breast. An infant that, miraculously, still manages to suckle, curling his fingers around Harker’s pinky. They trod along the dunes, and he gives the woman water in tiny sips. It revives her enough that she can say mushu-tei, mushu-tei, mushu-tei, softly, over and over again.
She doesn’t make the night. They light incense and bury her in the local graveyard beside the church, marked only with plank, just another in a sea of anonymous wood for lonely bodies far from home .
—
“What’s his name?”
“His mother kept saying mushu-tei,” Harker says, “But that just means.. Help. Or save us.”
“Well, we can’t call you that, can we?” Christmas says, cooing at the little babe. It’s been a week, the baby’s already fat and strong and cries like the demons of hell, “he’s so red.” The sunburn hasn’t healed, and his skin’s peeling in uneven patches, “I’ll call him Roy.”
“Will you keep him?” Harker rode an entire day, and spent the other in a train, to go see her at Central. Colmar is tiny, always in a drought, always food scarce. And Christmas is kind to orphans, especially ones from her hometown. Especially ones brought to her by her younger brother.
“I have enough mouths to feed,” She says, still holding onto him, “but I suppose I’ve already named him.”
Harker beams. The boy will be safe.
—
Roy’s six and does not know any other boys. He knows men, and knows how to deal with them: with a smile and a nod and great care, like they’re vipers ready to strike at an instant, even the friendly ones, especially the friendly ones, who try to pull him close and show him the glint of gold. But he doesn’t know any boys. He sees them sometimes, when he goes to the market, and they’re always loud and always clumsy and always rushing. Roy doesn’t understand them. He’s quiet and likes to sew with Claire, who teaches him how to mend rips on the side with the seams so a dress looks new, and how to glide scissors along the length of fabric without snagging or snipping it once.
It’s a sultry summer day with fluffy clouds, and he has a plan. That plan is to convince Claire to let him hang around on his own while she shops. Which is actually easy, because she’s dying to talk to that lanky boy in the bakery called Meyer’s who always has some flour on his apron, though he can’t quite figure out why.
She bites her lip.
“Promise you won’t move.”
“I promise.”
“And you won’t touch the lake.”
“I just wanna see the duckies!”
“Fine,” she huffs, “Fine! Ten minutes, okay?”
“Okay!”
“And don’t tell Madam!”
“I won’t!”
They’re there, like they always are, until the sun goes down. They’re all bigger than him, though he knows a few of them are his age.
“Can I play?”
They stop. Stare.
“I wanna kick the ball too.”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m Roy."
The tallest one, with the shaggy blond hair, picks up the ball and walks towards him. “I know you,” he sneers, “I’ve seen you. You live in that whorehouse, dont’cha?”
Roy says he doesn’t know what a whorehouse is. They laugh. It’s ugly.
“Probably the son of some Xingi whore.”
“I’m not!” he says, eyes getting hot. He doesn't know what the words mean but he knows that they're sharp, “shut up!”
“Aw, are you gonna cry, slanty-eyes?”
He runs away, and although he stumbles when they throw the ball at his head, he doesn’t fall. He runs straight into the bakery where Claire’s talking to flour-boy, tackles her legs, and hides behind her skirts.
That night, he asks Madam what’s a whore. She puts down her pen, and kneels. “That’s a dirty word, Roy boy. It’s what they call people like me. Like your sisters.”
“Why?”
“Because we dare to thrive when they want us dead.”
“Why?”
“Oh, boy,” she says. She looks tired. “I don’t know.”
“What’s Xingi?”
“Xingese. It’s the people from Xing.”
“But I’m not.”
“No, but your parents were.”
“I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be like them.”
“Roy.."
“I don’t!”
“Roy, come back!”
His eyes do slant, in the mirror. He tugs them down, into circles, like Claire’s. They don’t stay. He wishes they did.
—
He’s not that Xingese boy when he’s at the top of his class, so that’s where he stays. He’s also not that Xingese boy when he mouths off at the teachers, shooting whip smart replies with his shoes on the desk, so that’s what he becomes. Roy Mustang. The rebellious prodigy. He’s eleven, and all his friends are at least fourteen, which means that none of his classmates can call him names without being beaten up after school.
He sneaks them bottles of alcohol and cigarettes every week, into their shady corner of the park, and they’re always grateful, and it’s not quite friendship, but it’s close enough. He also has the unique ability of being able to talk to girls which is admired by every pimply pubescent of the male species.
“How d’you do it, Mustang?” Gabriel asks him one wintery Wednesday, after he says he has a date with Genevieve Sycamore, the prettiest fourteen year old in school, with cascading blonde ringlets, “This is what, your fifth one this month?”
Roy exhales a puff of smoke and shrugs, “I’ve always been good with the ladies, you know? You just gotta talk to them. Let them know you’re the real deal.”
“Gabriel here couldn’t convince a toad he’s the real deal,” Michael says, which earns him a punch to the shoulder.
He doesn’t know how to tell them to just talk to them like they’re human beings, and he’s not going to admit that they’re really just going to the tailoring district to look at fabric samples because he’s got a good eye for quality and knows how to haggle but oh, well.
The house doesn’t loom as it once did. Roy sees the crackling paint, the dirty counters, the smell of smoke. But it’s home now. He’s no longer afraid of the men that go in and out of his sisters’ rooms. Only repulsed, down to his bones.
“Roy boy,” Claire says, hugging him close. He groans but hugs back, “You’ve gotten so tall!” She married her baker. Ben Meyer. He probably doesn’t know she still visits. She’s a little more rounded, a little better dressed, a little easier to smile.
“Thanks,” he says, grinning.
“Claire!” It’s Madam, hands on her hips, heartily laughing, “It’s been too long, girl!”
“I know, I’m sorry!” She says, and then hefts bags over, “I got presents!” And she’s swarmed. Pastries, for everyone. Fabric. Sewing kits. Brooches.
“And this,” She says to Roy, handing him something wrapped in brown paper, "is for you."
He tears it open.
The Beginner’s Guide to Alchemy.
“I know you like books, so. Thought you’d like something about alchemy!”
“Thank you,” he says, hands tight around it, “It’s perfect.”
Within two months, he’s done all the exercises in the book. He’s fixed most of the cracks in the home. He’s created toy figurines of soldiers in the school yard with the entire student body swarmed around him. Roy Mustang is now firmly the local Alchemist, and he’s not called that Xingese boy to anyone.
In a year, he’s gone through the entire section on Alchemy in their local library. The principal recommends that he find himself a mentor, and gives him a list of names. But he already has his eyes set on Berthold Hawkeye.
The Fire Tamer.
—
Sopron is a small, sleepy town where he can feel the stares on his back but cannot trace them when he turns. Roy tightens the strap on his back and walks on outside the station. He’s fourteen and he’s away from home for the first time, and he’s never felt more.. Other.
“Mr. Mustang?”
He startles. Looks down. The girl’s calm, short, blond, her hair tied in a neat braid down her back.
“Yes?”
“I’m Elizabeth Hawkeye. My father sent me to pick you up.”
Ah. He smiles and deftly shifts his bags to offer her his hand. “You can call me Roy.”
Her handshake is firm.
“Mister Mustang.”
“...as you wish. What should I call you?”
She looks struck, for a second. It’s the first obvious emotion she’s shown. She thinks for a second before murmuring, "Miss Hawkeye.”
“Alright, Miss Hawkeye. Lead on.”
She dresses and looks like a little girl, but Miss Hawkeye has a tired, purposeful walk he’s only seen in impoverished mothers. Not the swinging strut of his sisters, not the confident prowl of Madam, not the light skip of his classmates. A steady, measured plod of someone with an immense weight on her shoulders, and the care to mind her skirts.
It’s unsettling.
And she doesn’t stare at him. Not even once.
—
Berthold Hawkeye is a tall, broad-shouldered man with sunken cheeks and uncut hair. He takes one look at Roy and gruffs. That is the entirety of their first meeting. Next morning, he wakes at six, to a splash of water in his face.
“Father wants you,” Miss Hawkeye says, “he doesn’t like tardiness.”
Berthold asks him to do a simple exercise. Alright. He stops him before he’s finished the circle and says, “erase it and try again.” And he does it again. And again. And again. Roy performs one transmutation after six hours of work, but by the end of the first day he can draw transmutation circles in his sleep.
By the end of the first month, he’s learnt far more than the tiny library in his neighbourhood could ever offer, and he’s learnt enough to realise that he knows nothing.
—
“That colour suits you.”
Hawkeye startles and turns, clutching the bolt of royal blue satin to her chest.
“What are you doing here?”
“Came to call you. Lunch’s ready.”
“You made lunch?”
“Yes,” he says, “you were out shopping, so.”
“Oh,” She looks unsure, “...thank you. That’s very kind.”
“That’s a very pretty fabric. Got any designs in mind?” He’s a bit surprised, honestly, having only seen her in drab dull cotton and wool cut into practical, roomy dresses, or trousers now and then.
“Father thinks fussing over dresses is silly.”
“Ah,” he says, “so you don’t have.. Dress patterns?”
“A couple.”
“Hm,” he says, “I’m rather good at sewing dresses, you know. I have a lot of sisters. And they can probably send me the latest patterns from Central. If you’d like.”
Hawkeye teases her lower lip for a second, as she often does while thinking, and then offers him the fabric, “okay.”
“Any requests?”
And there’s that again, that startled look.
She thinks for a moment.
“A long skirt. That goes round when I spin.”
Elizabeth Hawkeye. The girl with the hard eyes who wants to twirl.
—
Training starts at dawn and stretches past sunset, with breaks for meals. He’s exhausted. He eats with books open: A Treatise on Modern Alchemy, Equivalent Exchange: A Methodology, and even the dreaded Organic and Metallurgical Alchemy, fourth edition.
But after a week, a thick envelope comes from Claire, containing dress patterns, sewing needles in six sizes, a dozen spools of thread, and a letter gushing and demanding details about the lucky girl, Roy, oh my god.
Two days in, he thinks he’s bitten off more than he can chew. He’s tired after training, and this dress pattern is way more complex than the basic ones he did for his sisters, and also the weave is too tight to twirl, so he's going to have to fix that.
Three days in, he’s doing it out of spite. He learns to transmute fabric, just enough to adjust the weave as he wishes. It’s more difficult than the bigger structures he makes, because the target is so small, and being a single degree off gives him just a spool of blue silk. It takes a month of pricked fingers and frustrated cries and straining in the dark of the attic but, finally, it’s done.
The dress has a wide neckline with off-shoulder lacy straps that gather at the upper arms. The bodice is fitted, but there’s no corset, because Elizabeth doesn’t wear one. Right in the centre of the neckline he sewed on a filigree brooch he found in the market. And the skirt. The skirt is long, and light, the fabric flowing and pleated like a waterfall.
Roy’s knees ache, and his fingers are numb, and he has a mild headache. But he’s proud.
He’s never been proud of any of his creations, before. He thought he was, but he now realises he only wanted the reaction of the audience. Pride is another feeling.
“Miss Hawkeye!” She’s stirring stew in the kitchen.
“I’m busy.”
“Come on.”
“I’m busy.”
“Your dress is ready.”
A pause. The click of a lid.
“Okay," she says, undoing her apron, "let’s go.”
“So!” He can’t see her. He has to raise it over his head to show it fully, “do you like it!”
Elizabeth makes a noise. He lowers it. She’s crying, it’s barely noticeable.
“Miss Hawkeye?”
“I’m sorry, it’s,” She clears her throat, “it’s perfect. Can I wear it?”
“That’s what it’s for.”
He waits outside until she knocks on the door.
You’re so beautiful, he thinks.
“Mister Mustang!” She says, embarrassed.
He didn’t mean to say it out loud. Roy clears his throat.
“Will you… spin for me?”
And she does. And her skirt goes flying. And she’s smiling, and then laughing. He’s never seen her like that before. And that’s when Roy Mustang knows, deep in his bones, that’s all he wants. To see Elizabeth Hawkeye happy.
—
He’s seventeen, and he’s kicked out.
“I will not have the dogs of the military in my house,” Berthold says, crushing his letter of acceptance to the military academy in his hands, “I want you out by dawn.”
“But, master, please,” Roy protests, “I will be dif—”
“You will be a killer,” He says, tone final. “I will not harbour murderers. I am sorry I ever taught you. It is my greatest regret.”
“You’ll change your mind.”
Berthold gives him a look he knows all too well. It’s pure disgust.
“Leave, Mustang. Now.”
Elizabeth meets him in the station half an hour later, messily balancing large bags that contain the various knick-knacks he’s accumulated over the years.
“You’re very kind, Miss Hawkeye.”
“You left all your money behind in your dramatic fit.”
“Yes, well,” he says, “I knew you’d end up pitying me.”
She punches him in the shoulder.
“Hey! What’s that for?”
“I could’ve left you here, you know! Then you’d have had to swallow your ego and come back home. To get your things.”
He laughs, and then looks at her. “Yes. You could have. I’m very grateful.”
“He’s never going to teach you flame alchemy.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to become a state alchemist.”
“I know,” he sighs, “Oh, well. I’ll have to crawl up the ranks like a normal officer.”
She doesn’t say a word. Roy offers her a slip of paper.
“It’s the address of the academy, and the address of my home in Central,” He says, “Will you… write to me?” He says, “please?”
She considers the scrap for a few moments, and finally accepts it. “Okay.”
—
The six months between being kicked out and the fall semester of the military academy, Roy has something he hasn’t had since he was a child: free time. Or rather, the free hours, in between the chores Madam has him do. There’s the usual ones, shopping, haggling, budgeting. And there’s the expected but new ones: he accompanies his sisters to the jobs, making sure to perform alchemy offhandedly, just so the “customers” know who they’re dealing with. He stands quiet and smokes as menacingly as he can, and, honestly, other than the one time he’d had to throw a punch, it’s quiet dull.
And then there’s the ones he can no longer make sense of. Madam sends him off to embassies with small packages, makes him memorise cryptic cheesy poetry which when he puts down to paper, he can decode into dates and times and locations.
“Madam,” he asks her finally, “What exactly do you do?”
She laughs heartily and exhales a puff, waving around her long cigarette holder, “Roy boy,” she says, “You’ll get to know in all good time. Now, be a good boy and recite McCain’s confession again, make sure you don’t get anything wrong.” They’ve moved to a property in a more respectable neighbourhood, which means they’re now avoided by people in slightly better clothes and the police leaves them alone.
Claire’s pregnant. He knits yellow booties for the baby and she pulls him into a hug and ruffles his hair. Roy’s decided, finally, that Ben isn’t a jackass, only shy, because he sends him off with a bag of cookies and says “for the girls.”
There’s a man waiting when he comes back, hands full and shutting the backdoor with his feet and Roy knows he isn’t a customer, because he has a cup of coffee and is talking to Madam like they’re old friends.
“Roy! Just the man we’ve been waiting fo—”
The man gasps. “You’re so tall!”
“He’s going to the military academy in the fall. And he’s a trained alchemist.”
“No way,” the man says, beaming at him, “I knew he’d be better off at Central. Look at him. An officer.”
“I won’t be an officer until I graduate,” he says, embarrassed. “Who are you?”
“Harker. Jonathan Harker.”
“He’s my brother, from Colmar,” Madam says, “He’s the man who brought you to me.”
Harker, along with his family, moved to Central a month ago after Madam managed to get his wife a job as a lady’s maid, and him as a chauffeur. He has Sundays off, and Madam says he can take him to see his mother. If Roy wishes.
“I don’t. I never saw her.”
“I think you should go.”
“Madam. My family is here.”
That night he does something he hasn’t in years. He looks at his eyes in the mirror and pushes and pulls at the skin.
Roy keeps saying no, until the military academy is only a week away, and he can’t sleep. He stares off into the darkness of his room, until blue sunlight filters in through the window.
“I want to see her.”
“Your ticket’s on the desk.”
The train ride’s nine hours long, and in that time they travel through decades. Houses space out and become smaller, until they’re just unending fields dotted with hutments, then fields space out, until it’s just barren land dotted with green. Theirs is the last stop. The station’s tiny.
“This isn’t Colmar.”
“No,” Harker says, “It’s an hour by horse.”
Colmar’s basically deserted. A hot, dry village of shuttered shops and curtainless houses. They trot up the gentle slope until they reach the peak, where there’s a church that’s still maintained, all things considered, and a graveyard.
“Father McCullen!”
“Harker!” the old man smiles, and stops watering the flowers, “You missed service!”
“Yeah, yeah, the boy was stubborn,” he says, slapping Roy’s back, “Remember him?” The priest walks up to his horse and peers up, and then his eyes widen.
“...Roy, isn’t it?” He says, “Christmas’ lad.”
“You remember me?”
“Memory like a trap,” he says, tapping his temple, “And I keep in touch with her.”
Roy’s never been recognised before. It’s an odd feeling.
“He’s here to see his mother.”
“Ah, of course,” the priest says, “I’ve been waiting.” They follow the priest on foot, weaving past gravestones, into the plots of clearing where there is an abrupt switch frome names to posts. Just anonymous white posts, evenly spaced. One of them, Roy thinks, is his mother.
“I remember her,” he says, “We buried her just beside the willow tree.”
The grave looks like any other. Roy stands there, unmoving.
“We’ll leave you to it,” The priest says. He and Harker leave.
Roy sighs. He touches the side of the wooden post.
“Hello, mummy,” He says, “It’s—it’s Roy. I’m going to the military academy soon. I,” He breathes, again, exhales hard, “I’ll make you proud.”
The ride back is silent. Harker falls asleep against the window. Roy watches the countryside pass.
—
He’s eighteen, and he’s an outsider, and he can no longer steal convenient cigarettes and alcohol from Madam to become popular. Nor can he easily sail to the top, or talk back to the professors. A month at the Military Academy and he’s still sitting alone in the cafeteria, book open as he eats so he doesn’t have to confront that fact.
Well.
Maybe it’s time he tries the technique of ‘keeping your head down’.
“Ha ha, it’s a fucking Ishvalan,” another cruel laugh. The sound of toppled books. “Don’t apologise!”
Or not.
A fist fight later, on the track as they do the rounds they’re punished for, Roy learns his name is Heathcliff. They sit together.
A semester of petty competition, a viciously fought for spot at the top of the class, and another fist fight later, their little table gains another member. Maes Hughes. Elizabeth sends him letters, infrequently and unexpectedly, and keeps them short and unsentimental.
.
Mister Mustang,
I learnt how to use the dress patterns you left. Father’s health is worsening. He is still angry at you. My goat, Pauline, foaled and now we can get fresh milk. The strawberries this season are sweet.
Yours,
Elizabeth Hawkeye.
.
Mister Mustang,
I passed my matriculation exams. I had to take a train to Odette because they don’t hold them in Sopron for so few students. My goat, Pauline, fell into a ravine and had to be put down. I made stew from her. We still have two of her foals left. Father says he doesn’t want to say hello. I think he’s lying.
Yours,
Elizabeth Hawkeye.
.
Mister Mustang,
We went to Central last week. It was crowded and loud. I wanted to go to the address you left but father paled the moment I mentioned it so I did not. I have gathered it is a brothel. I tried alcohol. It was bitter. I do not think I will again.
Yours,
Elizabeth Hawkeye.
He keeps them all pressed into a journal, careful not to crumple the paper. His replies are at least three pages long, describing the academy and Heathcliff and Hughes and his trips in the city and all the trouble he gets to, in excruciating detail, and take him at least two days to compose. One time, Maes plucks one of her letters, shouting, Roy! how dare you not tell me you have a girlfriend, after all we have been through, after all the times I’ve asked, after all the times I’ve discussed my own future girlfriend and wife to you, she’s the one you keep writing to, isn’t she, I can recognise feminine handwriting from a mile away, and Heathcliff takes it from him. Roy expects he will return it, but he just gives him a wicked smile, and reads the thing.
Heathcliff’s expression slowly morphs from giddiness to confusion.
“...here you go, Mustang,” He snatches it from his fingers, and sticks out his tongue, “Uh, your girl isn’t a chatty one, is she?”
“Christ, what did it say?”
“That her potatoes died because of a pest and one of her goats is pregnant.”
“Oh, no,” Roy says, genuinely struck, “after she worked so hard on planting them.”
Maes and Heathcliff burst out laughing.
A letter comes in the dead of winter. The envelope is crushed. The handwriting is uneven and shaky. There’s no salutation. It simply reads:
My name is Riza.
Yours,
Riza H.
Roy tears off the first piece of paper he says and hastily scrawls that he’s worried, that he will take the first train to Sopron if she asks, that she can stay with Claire if she wishes, that she has a nice house in Central, that her children are friendly, and that she please, please, tell him what is wrong.
She never replies.
Roy doesn’t sleep easy for a long time.
—
A week after they enter the final semester, all Ishvalan students are expelled. Internal security. The situation in Ishval is getting too tense.
He, Maes, and Heathcliff decide to have one last dinner at the little coffee shop in the village. The patron keeps giving him and Heathcliff nervous glances. Roy wonders when it got so bad.
—
Roy Mustang’s twenty-one and he graduates into war.
—
He’s at the top of his class, he’s offered the rank of captain, but he accepts a post of a third lieutenant in the consignments office at Central.
“Roy” Maes says, “Three years of competition, just to become a paper pusher in an office?”
Roy smiles.
“Ah, you still don’t trust me!” He says, “I have a plan.”
Maes scoffs, “You and your plans.”
—
The first leave he gets, he takes a train to Sopron. The village is mostly unchanged. Deep in the hinterland, lacking any tactical value, or young men, even war itself doesn’t seem to touch its sleepy porches.
“No.”
“There’s a war—”
“I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOUR WAR—” Berthold breaks off into a coughing fit. Riza pats his back, and stares at him helplessly.
It’s the first time he’s seen her, in three years. She’s taller. She’s filled out, without the awkward unfinished planes of childhood. It’s so strange, that a woman returns his gaze, when he’s still the boy who wanted to make a little girl smile.
“I can save lives!”
“You want to be a dog of the military!” He cries out, “You’re a murderer! You will never, ever—not my research—it’s too dangerous—” Cough. Sputter. Gasp.
“Mister Mustang,” Riza says, “I think it’s best if you leave.”
“But, I—”
“Please,” She says, “I’ll drop you off at the station.”
“Okay.”
—
It’s hard not to be reminded of the last time they were here.
“Can I ask you something, Miss Hawkeye?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you stop writing me?”
She walks on. “Things change,” She says. Stops. Checks her watch. “Your train will be here in ten minutes.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shrugs, “I’ll figure out a way. I think I’ll pass the state alchemist exam even without flame alchemy.”
“You’re arrogant.”
Roy grins. “You know me.”
“Give me your address.”
“What?”
“Your address at central.”
He’s already taking out a notebook. He’s been assigned a small flat on Bay Street. “Will you write?”
“No, I,” The loud whistle of steam. The train’s early. “Wait for me. Roy! Please. Wait for me!”
He hurriedly scratches on his address as they’re inundated with exiting passengers. “Of course!” he says, “Always!”
—
There’s a knock at the door a week later, just as he’s about to leave for work.
It’s Riza.
“I suspected you’d be late,” She says, “Good thing too, I would’ve been stranded for eight hours.”
“Miss Hawkey—”
“I need to nap for six hours.”
“Bedroom’s right over there,” he says, “It’s messy. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, I suspected that too.”
“Did you come all the way here just to insult me?!”
“No!” She says, from the bedroom, “to make you a state alchemist!”
—
For a long moment, Roy’s silent.
“Are you cold?” he says, “Here, you can-you can use my jacket,” and offers her his dark blazer, which she winds around her front. On her back, from her nape to her hip, is an extensive transmutation array, with detailed coded marginalia, probably explaining the intricacies of flame alchemy, of deconstruction of air and water into its components, and the science of turning that into flame.
“Can I touch you?”
“Yeah.”
He traces the twin entwining serpents first, and then the first set of notes. Roy draws a breath, sharp. God, it must’ve hurt. It must’ve taken hours. This isn’t an alchemic scroll he’s reading, he has to remind itself. This is Riza. This is his friend.
“I think it’ll be easiest if I trace it as is,” He says, “I can separate the diagram and the notes later.”
She shrugs.
“Talk to me.”
“Fine.”
“Miss Hawkeye,” He says, “Tell me when you want to stop, okay? For whatever reason.”
Riza laughs.
“I don’t want to stop until you can turn Central to ash,” She says, “This is the last thing my father wants. So it’s yours. In totality.”
Roy adds a couple more logs to the flame, and gets to work. It takes two hours to trace every bend and letter, but as the clock ticks to one am, he has a spread.
“All done.”
“Okay,” Riza says, yawning.
“You should go to bed,” He says, “I’m gonna stay up a little bit longer and try to decode some of this. I’ll take the couch.”
He’s still at his desk when the sun comes up. He’s not any closer to an answer.
—
Riza’s dressed and walking out. Where… where is she going?
“I didn’t lie to my father about the secretarial course, Mister Mustang.”
Oh. Right. She mentioned something about a course, and paying someone to look after Berthold.
God, his head hurts.
“You’re going to be late, you know. Again.”
“I know, I know,” He smiles, “Make me a coffee too?”
She’s in the building a few blocks away from the consignments office, where he’s increasingly arranging this meeting and that meeting and that request not only for Christmas, but for himself. Her web makes sense to him now, and he can predict where its latest silk thread will land, and where it will find secure footing.
Increasingly, he’s looking into creating one of his own.
In the off time, he’s still scrabbling into the notebook, mechanically trying out the most common of cypher codes, expecting not an answer but the satisfaction of crossing it out.
She’s supposed to be done at four. He decides to pick her up, worried she’ll be lost.
“Are you Mustang?” says the receptionist.
“Yes.”
“Miss Hawkeye left a note for you.”
It says: at Claire’s.
—
“Roy!” She hugs her, and he stumbles back. Claire’s twenty seven, a mother, and gives hard hugs. She and Ben, her husband, live in a small flat above Meyer’s that smells perpetually of oven-fresh bread and yeast.
“I can’t believe she’s finally here,” She says, in an excited whisper, “And you better marry that girl, Mustang.”
Roy winces. “Please don’t tell me you’ve mentioned that to her.”
“Now, why in the world would I—”
“Uncle Roy!” Michaela says, already three, shooting herself at Roy, who picks her up and twirls her around. “Gift! Gift!”
Girl knows her priorities.
Roy makes a great show of looking in his pockets, like he’s lost it, or forgot, until she gets impatient, at which point he drags out a little stuffed cat he’d bought on the way. And transmuted bat wings on.
“It’s so cute!!” She says, holding it in both hands and tugging at the wings, “M’ gonna name it Batty-Catty.”
Roy smiles, and puts her down. “It’s a great name.”
Riza’s sitting on the couch, bouncing little baby Chrissy on her lap, gently moving her tiny arm. The baby giggles. Riza smiles. Something aches inside Roy, something very deep.
Claire comes in with a tray of tea and biscuits, and sidles up beside Roy. “He’s told me so much about you.”
“Oh?” She bounces the baby, “All good things?”
Ensnared, would be the right word. A mouse in the coils of a snake.
“I always did wonder, how the dress turned out, he told me it was perfect, but we all know he has a tendency to—”
“Chrissy’s growing up so fast!” Roy says, “Look, she can already… sit! That’s very advanced for her age!”
They both look at him, for a moment. And then back at each other.
“It was beautiful,” Riza says, “But I never really got to wear it much because I was saving it for something special and then I outgrew it.”
“Pity,” Claire says, taking Chrissy into her lap, who’s reaching out to her, “We should enjoy beautiful things while we can, however often we can. Because they make things special, not the other way around.”
They leave with two armfuls of bread and pastries and hugs from Claire and Michaela and Chrissy and Ben, with verbal promises to visit soon.
“She’s nice.”
“She really is.”
“How long were you there before I arrived?”
“About half an hour.”
“I see.”
“She cares about you a lot.”
“I know.”
They move in comfortable silence.
“Did you really tell her that you’d marry me when you were fourteen—”
“Riza, I will walk into traffic.”
—
The first thing he does when they return home is to transmute her a set of keys. “Now you’ll never be stranded.”
—
He stirs awake around noon the next day, Saturday, and is greeted by Madam.
“Finally decided to wake up?”
Roy narrows his eyes. They say I know what you’re doing. Sure enough, Madam’s drinking tea with Riza. He had heard laughter in the hallway. It’s noon. Madam has brought his baby photos, and it is all he can do not shut himself in. Instead, he brews some more tea, and scrambles some eggs, glad to have an excuse to be in earshot but far enough to pretend he doesn’t hear them. They talk about his childhood, and Riza tells him bits about his training, and then ask some questions about the ‘job’ which Christmas handles candidly. He can imagine her passive face, masking embarrassment.
“She’s a good woman,” Madam says, as he helps her shrug on her coat, “Beautiful, too.”
“Claire’s already given me the get married talk.”
“Roy,” She holds his arm, “It is a myth, that we can have it all. It is a lie we tell children,” She says, “Think hard where your path leads you, before you embark.”
Roy looks out the window. “Let me walk you to the station.”
—
The weekend is spent mostly pouring over notes and endless cups of coffee. Eventually, he ends up creating two copies of everything on loose paper, so Riza too can help. It’s useless, he can feel it, he’s just looking at words, not taking anything in. His attention is focused across the pages, anyway. She’s cut her hair, and it sticks out at all angles. It looks soft. He wants to run his hands across it.
Roy clears his throat.
“Lunch? I know a nice restaurant.”
“God, please,” She says, “If I have to read the word roftewu again, I will lose my mind.”
—
It’s been a week. Nearly all the walls in the living room are taped over with paper, red thread connecting pages across panels and the room, the furniture’s been pushed aside.
They’re still nowhere.
But Roy’s fixed up a broken record player he found on the flea market, and Riza’s bought a few records from a second-hand store, and in the evenings they play the same five jaunty tunes full of flutes and pianos, and her hip’s firm in his hand, and their steps are in synch, and maybe nowhere is an alright place to be.
—
It gets hot, and it gets hot fast. At least that’s the excuse Roy offers as to his constant state of undress in the flat, to which Riza simply rolls her eyes, but he can feel her gaze, warm as the summer sun, on his back when he turns.
—
They’re dancing. They’ve cut the strings that connect a set of runes with a set of code, because they got in the way.
“You’ve gotten so much better.”
She laughs, “You were the one stepping on my toes.”
“Hey!” He protests, “That was one time!” And he lifts her by the waist, just to prove how good he is, and she squeals, and he plants her close, and doesn’t let go.
Riza kisses him. Or maybe Roy kisses her. Either way, their mouths are pressed together, and their bodies are too, hungry. Starved. Seeking each other like moths to flames, and almost as close to combustion.
“I love you,” Roy says, head between her thighs and his mouth and chin glistening, “God, how I love you.”
“I know,” Riza says, panting, dragging her nails across his back , the blood beading like jewels.
“I love you too,” She says, when he thrusts in and kisses her she can taste herself on his lips.
—
It’s late.
Her skin’s golden in the parallel bars of sunlight on her back. Roy touches her, his fingers light as a moth. Riza looks soft, but her flesh has very little give, all hard muscle underneath tanned skin. He sighs, and presses his palm against the dip of her spine, flat against the central transmutation circle.
Riza stirs.
“Wh’tme.”
“Ah, late. Very late.” She tenses, for a second, and then relaxes. Uncaring. Roy kisses her nape and squeezes her breast, just ‘cause he can.
“You’re gonna get fired.”
“Uh-huh,” he snuggles closer, and presses more kisses where she’s ticklish, only to be swatted.
“I’m serious! And then we’ll be homeless.”
“We can stay with Claire. I can scrub floors.”
“You know, all problems in the world,” She gasps. His fingers have wandered down where she’s still wet, “Cannot be solved by just ‘going to Claire’s’”
“Ys they cn,” It’s muffled against her back. Roy rubs and squeezes until Riza cannot think, cannot speak, only shudder in his arms.
“Make a noise for me” Roy says, when she’s on edge, and bites her shoulder, “C’mon.”
She comes with a breathy Roy.
At three pm, they’re still in bed, still naked, eating two day old croissants from Claire’s. Riza brushes crumbs from herself and lays belly down to read, her ankles crossed in the air, just above her hips. Roy looks at her body, unabashed, and strokes her side.
Pauses.
“What?” She says, “I can feel you staring.”
“Your tattoo,” Her muscles tense.
“It’s a mirrored.”
—
It unravels quickly after that.
—
“Are you sure this is safe?” Says Riza, armed with a fire extinguisher.
Roy stands, legs shoulder width apart, a flint lighter in hand, “Yeah. I’ll just transmute the smallest amount of air possible.”
She nods.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
A tiny click, a tiny flash. A pillar of flame that singes off Roy’s eyebrows in the three seconds it takes Riza to extinguish it.
“Uh—”
“Oh my god,” Roy says, “Oh my god!” He tackles her in a hug and twirls her around, laughing. She looks at the scorch marks on the ceilings and sighs.
—
“You look like an idiot.”
“I’ll fill them in with charcoal, c’mon.”
“Well,” She says, “No kisses until you do.”
“Your eyes are closed!”
“Nope!”
—
There’s an empty lot on their block. That’s where they practice, in the evenings. First with just raw flames, then with the spoiled produce they get at cut rates from the local grocers as targets. The flames just get bigger and bigger at first, and then smaller, and then precise. Surgical strikes.
Precision has always been his strong suit, after all.
The lighter is too unwieldy. So is the transmutation circle, with its delicate flame runes. Roy transmutes flint and cotton into a fabric, and they spend nights stitching it into gloves.
Almost a month after they first decode the tattoo, Roy feels ready.
—
He passes the exam. The written test was basic, the practical portion left rows of singed eyebrows and scorched ceilings and even (which he’s assured is quite rare), a very faint applause. Madame Christmas throws him a party. For one evening, the house is closed. Claire’s there, with Ben and the kids. There’s cake. There’s food. There’s music. He kisses Riza in nearly every convenient shadow. It’s her last night in Central.
Afterwards, Madame calls him into his office, and, finally, lays out her whole web, the information streaming in from all corners of Amestris, all the hubs in central, in the east, in the west, and the surprising amount of connections that fall at the heart of Meyer's bakery.
"What?" Madam puffs out smoke, "You thought our Claire just minds the shop and the kids?"
—
The very first thing Major Roy Mustang buys with his state alchemist salary is a gold ring with the largest ruby he’s ever seen.
The second is a ticket to Sopron, a week later, after a letter from Riza telling him that Berthold had died.
—
“You’re going to Ishval?”
“Yes,” He says, “I haven’t received my orders yet. But it is certain I am.” They’re at her father’s grave. The funeral was sparsely attended. The culmination of a lifetime of burnt bridges.
“Why?”
“Because there’s a—”
“No,” She looks at him, “Why this? Why join the army? Why this desperation to be a state alchemist?”
“Because..” He trails off, and takes as second to collect his thoughts. “Because there’s something broken,” he thinks of the soldiers, bullying their way into Madam’s house, daylight robbery under the guise of ‘protection’, of Heathcliff, “in our country, and I intend to fix it.” He thinks about the half-abandoned village close to the eastern border, about the rows and rows of buildings with shaky foundations, about all the times he’s been asked to show ‘his papers’, even in uniform, even with his colleagues. “And I can only do that if I’m powerful. Becoming a state alchemist seemed the quickest way.”
“Okay.”
He laughs, a little nervous, trying to diffuse the situation. “You probably think it’s too naïve.”
“No. Not at all,” She says. He's surprised. “I believe you.”
Roy makes her tea and some sandwiches while she bathes and changes. When she returns, there’s a tray waiting for her, with food, and a red velvet box.
“Roy?” He’s watching birds through the window, “Roy, what is this?”
“I won’t ask. Not yet. Not until I can give you some certainty,” He says, finally turning, “But I want you to keep it. I want… I want you to wait for me, if you can.”
She’s holding the box in her palm, unopened.
“Perhaps it should be me asking you to wait,” She says, “With your history.”
Roy sits beside her. “Riza,” he says, and takes her hand, “Riza, I’ve never—it’s been you. Only you. My first, my last, my everything.
Riza pauses, for a long time, and then.
“Wait.”
She rushes inside and returns a minute later with her hair out of place.
“I want you to have this,” It’s a delicate silver chain, with an oval pendant.
“What is it?”
“It was my mother’s,” She says, “Keep it. As a promise.”
Roy slips the chain in his breast pocket, right above his heart, “I will.”
—
She doesn’t wait.
—
Ishval isn’t what he imagined, and it isn’t what it said on his orders: de-escalation, containment.
It’s slaughter, at every stage.
At first, it’s because they’re shooting, so he sends his squadron inside and whips out his gloves and sets the world on fire. Then it’s because they’re resisting. Then it’s because they exist. At night, he barely sleeps, a hand tight over Riza’s pendant, his own lofty words mocking him.
Heathcliff.
Heathcliff is.
He buries his half-charred body with his own hands, shoulder still bleeding, in the courtyard of the ashes that was once his family home. He’d shown him photos, once, a lifetime ago. Of the happy toddler on the swings. Of his sister with her rows of carrots.
Heathcliff Erbe is someone Roy Mustang will never manage to atone.
—
And then she’s here.
Riza.
Third-lieutenant Hawkeye.
The Hawk’s Eye.
The deadliest sniper in military history.
—
She looks taller, and she wears a black tunic because the shirt sleeves strain over her shoulders. Gone is the gentle swish of her hips he once knew so well, and the easy smiles, and the kind eyes. This Riza Hawkeye is a stranger with the face of a killer.
And so, Roy supposes, is he.
He’s twenty four, and he can no longer love.
He’s twenty four, and he can no longer be loved.
—
Riza saves him by shooting a man from half a mile away. Roy saves her by turning enemy forces to ash. They’re a team that works without words, that kill like it’s a dance. They’re moved up the ranks and around Ishval, quickly and together.
They sleep at the most five feet apart and never reach for each other at night.
—
It’s raining.
“He’s useless in this weather,” Hawkeye says, cocking her gun, “It’ll be best if we simply hold the tower and wait for further orders.” She knows he can perform hydrolysis and rain hellfire down on the village in the valley that’s housing fighters in their basements. She doesn’t tell. She doesn’t need to be told not to tell.
“Aw, lieutenant, you wound me,” He says, “I can roast us whatever game you kill.”
His soldiers whoop. They sit for two days as the water pours and eat roasted pheasant and rabbit and trade stories and he tells them about Central but not about Hawkeye, and Hughes chimes in about all the pranks they pulled in the Academy, and quietly erases Heathcliff.
Riza only silently cleans her rifle, unresponsive to prompts, until she drops, “Major-Colonel Armstrong had me transferred because we slept together,” during an innocent pause in conversation, leaving them all stunned.
It’s night. Maes is gently snoring. “Did you really—”
“Have sex with Armstrong?” She whispers. “Yes. Why would I lie?”
“Just confirming.”
“Are you jealous?”
“No! Of course not.” A pause. “A little bit, maybe.”
“Good.”
“Did you tell her about me?”
“Yeah,” She says, finally turning. Her features are soft in the moonlight. “She really doesn’t like you, you know.”
“Oh, I’m well aware,” he says, “But I just assumed it was why the rest of the brass doesn’t like me, either. I never considered it would be because of you.”
“Well, now you know.”
“It’s unfair that everyone thinks that I’m the playboy,” Roy says, “When you’re the one leaving a trail of broken hearts.”
She laughs, and squeezes his hand.
The sky is a brilliant blue in the morning. He razes the village to the ground, and she shoots from the tower all who manage to escape his fire.
—
They kill and transfer. He works with fellow state alchemists he’s never seen before, always the youngest, always ignored in a way that has nothing to do with his age, until he earns their respect in charred corpses.
“Oh, I thought they kicked them off with the Isvhalans,” Kimblee says.
Riza acts like she’s checking the freshly cleaned scope of her rifle, but her muzzle’s pointed at Kimblee’s heart. “You got something to say?”
He blinks, smiles, deferentially raises his hands and takes a few steps back.
—
Roy finally sees Olivier Armstrong in person.
All he gets is a sneer and barked orders and a small speech about respecting and cultivating one’s subordinates.
He realises that he’s got allies.
—
They receive orders to travel to the central city. They go.
It’s different, this time. Usually they travel in packs of ten or twenty, two state alchemists at the max, but now… he sees Armstrong, he sees Kimblee, he sees the Freezing Alchemist, Iron Blood, Basque Grande. They’re all here.
So is the Führer.
He stands tall in the front, arms resting on the hilt of his sword.
“Soldiers!” His voice rings out into the open air. He raises his blade. “This is the final push!”
—
Picture.
Swathes and swathes of crumbling villages, long abandoned. Picture their basements, filled with those who escaped the destruction of their homes, their families. Picture the wounded. The mothers, the children.
Picture it no more.
—
He can’t find Hawkeye.
Roy does a rough headcount of his unit, at the end of each day, ever since the slaughter began. They know to gather in a pre-decided spot, or be in the medical tent. Today, the last day, he can’t find Riza. He waited for an hour, but now the sun is set, the camp fires are lit, and she’s nowhere.
He asks around, panic clawing up his gut with each minute, half his mind already in the battle field with a search party combing through the limbs, when he sees it. The church turret, with the three-sixty-degree view.
He sees her outline in the stained glass. She’s sitting quietly on her knees, back hunched, a pistol held loosely in her hand.
“Hawkeye.”
“I never wanted this.” Barely a murmur.
“Hawkeye.”
“I thought—I thought I’d help people. I thought I’d follow you and change our country.”
He takes a step.
“No, stay back,” Her head jerks up, dull hair falling into dead eyes. Presses the muzzle to her temple. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Riza, please,” His knees tremble, “put the gun down.”
“I’d hoped you wouldn’t see th-is,” Her voice cracks, “They wouldn’t have shown you the body, I wrote it down, I didn’t want you to see—”
He’s crying. He hasn’t cried since he was a little boy, not since they called him Xingi and flung a ball at his head.
“Riza, please, I—”
“I said STAND BACK!” The gun shakes in her hand. “Major. Turn around.”
“I can’t.”
“Turn around, Major!” She screams, “Please.”
“I will not!” He spreads out his arms, makes himself the biggest target possible, “You want to shoot someone, Hawkeye, shoot me, I brought you here, I turned you into who you are. Kill me, and consider your sins atoned.”
“You did not bring me here.”
“I might as wel—”
“You arrogant prick!” she says, limbs vibrating with anger, “My life does not fucking revolve around you! I came here, I killed all those people, and now I-I—”
“You will kill yourself.”
She stills, and then deflates.
“It’s what I deserve.”
“It’s what we all deserve,” he takes a step, “But they’re not going to shoot themselves,” another step, “Kimblee,” another, “Basque Grand,” another. Their chests almost touch. “Führer Bradley. They won’t conveniently commit suicide.”
That’s when Riza breaks, but he’s quicker, grabs her wrist and twists it up and the bullet goes straight into the ceiling. She weeps in his grasp, begging him to let her go.
“I’ll bring them to justice, Riza,” He says, “I promise you. They’ll be held accountable for their war crimes. And so will we.”
“You can’t—you can’t promise me that.”
“I am,” He squeezes her wrist tighter, forces her to look at him, “I am. And the moment you think I will falter, that I will fail, that I am shirking my duty, it is your job to put a bullet through my skull and then no one will stop you from doing the same.”
She’s silent for a few moments, and falls into a heap. The gun clatters to the floor, he kicks it aside, and holds her. She asks that he burn the ink off her back. He agrees. At night, he sneaks into her tent and if anyone notices they look away, and he pulls her to his chest and says that one day, when all this is over, he’ll buy them that tiny flat on Bay Street and they’ll put on the records and dance in the evenings again, and he takes off the necklace and links it around her neck and says, see, I promise.
She doesn’t correct him.
—
“Maes,” he says, looking right at Bradley who’s just finished his victory speech, “I have a plan."