AN: An AU I started on Tumblr that I told myself would not become a WIP because I could finish it in one weekend. Well I made a gross underestimation of how much fun I would have with this fic and it has shot past the 20k mark I allowed for it and into a "This is just the pilot episode of a AU universe I would like to play in more often". So the time has come to officially start editing and posting chapters. This has purely been a 'make-it-up-as-I go' story, which is honestly most of what I write. Hello and welcome to another installment of "I don't need another WIP, but here we are."

Eureka was an amazing show on SyFy that ended back in 2012. This story just borrows that premise and runs off with it. Like I usually do.

Summary: Royai Eureka AU. Eureka is a small, closely-guarded secret town of scientific geniuses working for an advanced research organization funded by the government. The company is run by Roy Mustang, genius and scientist, and the town protected by decorated soldier and Sheriff Riza Hawkeye. Together they save the town from threats from outside and within; as some scientific breakthroughs do not always go as planned in the test stages and the government eagerly awaits the incredible discoveries created there with their funding.

Eureka

Chapter 1

A Town Called Eureka

Riza Hawkeye watched with guarded interest as a handful senators and military higher-ups tried to interact with the scientists at this impromptu party Roy Mustang had thrown together in the lobby of Alkahest Industries. Eyes were glazed over as geniuses with tablets displayed incredible scientific breakthroughs but the visitors were enthusiastic none-the-less. To offset, or perhaps compliment, the scene there were small incredibly advanced research robots roaming the foyer with trays glued to them so they could deliver drinks and snacks. She understood why this was necessary, funding was in jeopardy as always, but she didn't understand why an unfathomable genius couldn't used his goddamned phone to give them more than three hours notice this was going to happen.

Roy, said unfathomable genius, smiled and lead his group of important government officials around the room. He purposely directed them away from scientists like Edward Elric who would instantly seize the chance to declare science was for the people, not the military. Roy had been in the capital for budget meetings, trying to prove to that this little town few of them had heard of was the epicenter of technology and needed to remain funded. Weapons, medicine, electronics, space technology...all was on display here by the country's best minds to prove to these individuals that Eureka was a vital asset to the country. Every technological breakthrough the country had in the last fifty years, happened in this building.

Eureka, a town that was on nobody's map and nobody's radar by design. A town founded decades ago by geniuses who wanted to remove the pressures of the outside world from interfering with research while also providing it's occupants with safety and resources. Any products created here were distributed through a corporation known as Alkahest Industries and that was the name on the building right above the company logo-an ouroboros. It was also proudly displayed in the lobby on a background of brick facade that used to be the original research facility. It was something a few senators couldn't help but stop and stare at, being this was being sold to them as a massive scientific authority in the world that they never heard of.

Roy, of course, was quick to explain with his charming smile and smooth confident voice.

"Alkahest Industries and it's logo are homage to alchemy of the old days" Roy looked up at the gold letters and logo adorning the walls of the lobby. "Alkahest, a term alchemists used to use to denote a universal solvent, is a not so subtle way of saying this facility is capable of solving any problem. The Ouroboros a symbol of the duality of existence; symbolizing how science tries to balance between moral and immoral. It's also a reminder of the cycle of birth and death and reminder of the infinite possibilities we have at our fingertips."

The party of officials seemed impressed, it hit on a lot of corporate buzz words that typically reassured investors. Riza watched them as they moved en masse to the next exhibit he wanted to wow them with. Roy wasn't lying. It was a genuine mission statement of AI, as the employees liked to refer to it. Eureka was a company town in that respect; occupied by the scientist who worked here and their families and a handful of people, like herself, who were unaffiliated with the facility to keep a balance of power. Overall they all reported to the Department of Defense, but Eureka remained mostly a secret to keep everything and everyone safe. Isolation also meant that these important people touring the facility had no idea the routine mishaps that occurred because experiments often went horribly, horribly wrong.

The truth was: scientists could be complete fucking idiots.

That was where she came in. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye was on assignment here to be the military's presence and protection. She wore the uniform of the town's Sheriff, something that did nothing to encompass the massive scale of her job description. With only her and her Deputy, Jean Havoc, the small town's law enforcement office duties covered everything from petty arguments to defending Eureka from attack if enemies ever discovered it for the treasure trove of knowledge it was. That was what their job description was on paper, what it actually entailed was the two of them trying to figure out what project was the cause of whatever mayhem was the flavor of the day.

Today's danger, however, was the head of the program itself. Dr. Roy Mustang, with a slew of doctorates that he would gladly brag about when given the chance, had just come back from a month away from Eureka and failed to send a single text or communication to tell anyone he was planning to do so. A man with incredible resources at his fingertips, a phone on his hip at all times, and enough brainpower to juggle a dozen tasks at once, yet not one single brain cell dedicated to thinking about how she would react to being surprised by his announcement three hours ago.

Worse yet, she knew he did it for dramatic effect. She knew he did it to surprise his people because she would have definitely let them know and prepare for this visit. He wanted them scurrying around, tripping over themselves in excitement and fear when these important people arrived. Chaos made things seem busy instead of the boring calm that was research being done; testing the research was when it could have unpredictable outcomes. It was now evident why he required all tests to be 'approval only' for the last week; otherwise he had a very real possibility of driving this group into Eureka to find the town in flames, chimera running the streets and clocks running backwards.

It's not that these geniuses were incompetent, it was that they had the resources and freedom to do what they wanted and every damned one of them took advantage of it. Putting pressure on them to have something to present to Senators and Generals would have been a disaster. It also kept some secrets, secret. It gave tastes of things to come, if the budget was approved, versus delivering results they could shutdown the place and use now. Roy knew what he was doing, but she hated it none-the-less.

And he knew it.

Riza decided to take a walk, help herself to some coffee that wasn't made by gourmet contraption that required way too many levels of input. She knew she had to be emanating levels of anger from the way people were avoiding her and that wasn't helping anyone. She walked down the hall to the break room, avoiding a cleaning robot who was spinning in circles trying to clean popcorn it was dropping from an overloaded popping machine epoxied to it lid. Then she ducked as a drone flew overhead with a cookie tray.

Did nobody remember the Christmas Party disaster from last year? Why the hell was all this stuff out of storage?

No. No. NO! This was Roy's mess and if the tray gave someone a concussion that it was on him. He'd spectacularly dance around the blame and find some positive to it, he always did. This was her five minutes to brew coffee in a 'primitive' 'cheap' coffee pot she had to smuggle in to town on her own in order to have simple, perfect coffee. Five minutes to cool off.

She heard someone at the break room door as she pressed the 'On' button after loading the offending machine. She didn't turn around knowing who it was and her phone went off. She pulled it out and saw a simple text message from Roy, 'sorry'. Damn him. "No, you're not."

Roy watched her turn around and cross her arms. "You're right. I'm not and I won't insult your intelligence by explaining why I did it. You already know. I'm sorry that I had to employ that tactic and upset you though."

"Well, we are right back to where we left off before you ran out of here last month without so much as a phone call until you were in the car full of government officials driving back to Eureka."

"Our conversation..." He paused and took a step towards her and then another. Enough to close the gap and keep things quieter but not invade her space. "Needed to be had in person not over the phone."

"Don't patronize me! I'm not mad because you 'upset' me by doing your job. I'm downright pissed you have no respect for me what-so-ever to include me in whatever scheme it is you think necessary to keep your job." She said and remained in place, eyes on him, the coffee pot gurgling as it brewed it's batch of bean water like these people thought the early settlers did.

Roy reacted even though he was trying not to. "Well, sorry if 'I think' it a priority to keep Eureka from becoming a ghost town so we don't descend into the dark ages scientifically or worse have the personnel here go to the private sector and sell their ideas to the highest bidder. It's my job to protect our interests here and your job to protect this place physically."

It was a misstep and he knew it. She watched him close his eyes and put up his hand, asking to pause and take back what he said. Unfortunately the project allowing the rewind of time for a few seconds had already imploded on itself last week. A mess he wasn't here to clean up, so 'no' her job was more than to just protect this place from invasion. "Go back to doing your job Roy. When you can fit me in on your schedule you let me know. I need to be read in on what exactly our partnership is here because I'm tired of being the ally when you agree with me and your enemy when I dare question you. This is my town too."

"Riza." He said and opened his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to take himself out of the mindset of dealing with politicians. "You're not my enemy, you're my wife."

"Am I?" She asked. "Because neither one of us is capable of not being who we are professionally in order to make those fleeting moments of personal neutral ground happen for longer than a few days. My job is to protect you and everyone in this town. Your job is to protect all of us from the world. Why the hell can't you stop being such a dick and throwing around your rank when you don't get your way? To me. We should be partners professionally, but you can't give an inch and I do not answer to you. I still am active military and this Sheriff's uniform is just to put everyone at ease. So when General Raven comes to me for my situational report, what do I say? Am I a member of this town or not, because I have a list of really concerning things I should be reading to him that we just put in the shredder and forget about once your people resolve them."

Roy knew he should get back to the party but he saw his marriage slipping away as Riza turned her back to him to make her military grade garbage coffee. She was right. Of course she was. She always made him focus back on reality. He loved her and he took her for granted. "Can we talk now? In my office?"

"We have a lot to talk about." She said and turned back to him, coffee cup in hand. "And, if I recall, you ran away when it didn't go your way last time."

"OK, I deserve that. I didn't run away from us, I ran towards an inferno that was our annual budget going up in flames in Congress." He replied. "Riza, it was an emergency. I'm not used to...sharing. I'm not used to burdening someone else with everything I deal with. "

"Roy, this isn't about you running out the door and saying 'duty calls'. This is about the fact that we got married and you thought you could soften me up about not turning over your technology to the military." She replied and walked up to him and looked him in the eye. She could see him struggling with what to say because there was no compromising for them on a lot of issues. He wrongly thought he could count on her to stop being a soldier, for her to stop seeing their successes here as something that could save lives; Lives of men she served with, lives of men who were still serving while she was on special assignment.

"Sometimes, what we make here is too powerful to be in someone's hands. Sometimes it's too much to be released into this world and we need time to modify it for use." He said softly. "I know I said the wrong things, but I don't know how to argue without being an asshole."

"You should learn." She said.

"Teach me." He said in a whisper, begging. "Don't give up on me yet."

"Go back to your party before Edward launches into a speech about the evils of having science married to the military." Riza said. She was beginning to see that that marriage didn't work on a personal level either. Their ideology was too different, even though they both defended common ground.

"Let him." Roy waved that threat off. "It will make them want it all the more. It will make them see the very real threat of a genius like him going and working on his own. Don't tell him I said that."

"If you want to talk, you know where my office is." She said and walked around him only to have him reach out and take her hand. "It will do you some good to find out what it's like to not have everything happen on your terms."

"Are you still sleeping in your office?" He asked.

"You know I am. You have your house's security system reporting to your phone." She replied and tried to take her hand back. He was rubbing his fingers over her wedding ring.

"Its our house." He said and could feel months of bad decisions all coming down on him and wishing he had that damned time machine to go back and fix them. It really wasn't their house. He just had her move in with him when they got married, assuming it was just a house, a place to live instead of a home. Another decision he didn't consult her on. She felt more at home on a surplus cot in her office, in a jail cell, than in his home. He felt a flutter of panic now. "Please, give me ten minutes."

"You really think that ten minutes will finish the conversation we were having last month?" She asked. "You really are too arrogant to reason with then."

"It's a start." He said. "It will give you time to drink your coffee."

"Fine."