Author Notes:
Spoiler for manga chapter 52. I took hints from the Ishbalan flashbacks up to chapter 62 as well, so some of that might have crept in too. Implied RoyAi.
Elizabeth
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Someday they will find her lying dead on the street, but clenched tight in her right hand will be a handgun, its cartridge emptied, in a proof of fierce defense.
She never pictures her end any other way. Not since she joined the army.
Yes, she has confidence in her skills, and after Ishbalan, there hasn't been a battle she entered thinking she wouldn't survive.
But she also believes in karma, and knows that each life she took has a price, a price higher than the guilt she wears along with the military uniform.
Someday they will find her with bullets through the blood-soaked military jacket, and next to her will be the body of a higher officer, injured but safe under the human shield.
The Colonel may have suspected, because he once said to her, out of the blue, that in the army, a superior is one who leads, not one who expects protection.
So maybe she hasn't been looking at this particular superior the right way, but for that matter, neither is an army superior supposed to protect his subordinates in an incident she can recite, so he's not one to speak really.
At least, her current superior definitely doesn't share that view. But if the Fuhrer believes in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer, she has no problems with that. 'Closer' works both ways, after all.
Someday they may find Riza Hawkeye having perished on duty, but never in a dark alley, victim to a shady conspiracy.
When the time comes it will be in the line of fire, alongside the man she swears loyalty to, who will by then be already down too, because that reckless fellow just can't stand by quietly when his officers are in danger.
And it might as well, because she has been at his side in front of a good friend's grave, seen how much he is human, how much he is prone to wanting revenge.
But she never believes in revenge, and by that same grave she has also seen how much he can be strong, how far his dream can carry his feet, burdened as they are with the past, heading firmly towards the future.
Someday they will find her lying dead on some battlefield, and the first to find her will be her one acknowledged leader, whose back will have been the last vision she sees before it strikes.
She will be sorry for leaving all the grief-related tasks to him, but she thinks it may be fair anyway, seeing as she never knows of his making her the one person he chooses to die protecting, as it is the case the other way around.
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