[AN: An introspective piece I wrote back in March '09 and finally decided to upload.]
[Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or its characters, but I do own an actual, living houseplant.]
The soft expression of the girl he knew was lost forever, that much he realized when he first he saw her that day after she had saved his life in Ishval. Days later, he had seen the look on her face the first time she had seen him murder civilians before her war mask was again firmly in place. He never forgot it, though she pretended nothing had happened. It was an unguarded and pure expression of horror and betrayal that seemed to shake the very foundations of her world. Later that night he caught sight of her cleaning her rifle with methodical precision by the light of the campfire and knew even then that as much as the war had changed her, what she had witnessed him do had changed her the most.
He always thought there was a world of difference between them. She killed from a clean distance, so he imagined she never saw the faces and expressions of the men, women, and children she had been ordered to kill. There was no way he would know that she could see them very clearly through constant tunnel vision from the scope because he wouldn't ask and she wouldn't offer.
He imagined he was protecting her, and that he had the power to do so. That the sometimes infuriating woman would ignore a direct order and remain to protect him baffled the Colonel. Somehow he never realized she carried as many corpses as he did, or if he did, his mind blocked it out so he could still face her in the morning and smile as if he held no guilt.
His First Lieutenant was an enigma to him, whereas she read him like a book. There was no better candidate to make sure power didn't corrupt him than Riza Hawkeye. The gun she held to his head not only kept him on the right path, but motivated him to continue onward even if his friends and allies began to fall around him. But it was what motivated her that scared him the most. Mustang, the one she had entrusted Flame Alchemy to, was her only hope to make it all worth it. Even if he underestimated the path she walked to push him to Fuhrer, the burden he knew she carried was crushing. He couldn't fail; that just couldn't be a possibility.
If not for the sake of the next generation, than for the sake of the woman with the killers eyes.