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Scarred
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She sits in front of him, arms wrapped around her exposed chest and fingers digging into the thin skin of her clavicle area. Roy tries not to pay attention to how her shoulders are bobbing ever-so-slightly with barely-controlled tears, because both want this over as quickly as possible and so he cannot allow for distractions; he cannot help it though, when he raises and rests his hands on hers, trying to bring her comfort with the two things that will ultimately bring her pain that night.
He stands there, frozen in place and shaking, for longer than he knows he should but he cannot bring himself to move as he peers down at her. He doesn't want to do this to her, doesn't want to be the source of her pain all over again – but this is something she desperately wants, something she has claimed will bring her her long-sought freedom from the array engraved in her skin. And he can't deny her the one thing that she wants in life, even if it goes against what he desires – to never bring her pain again. Biting his lip until he's sure it bleeds, Mustang steps back forcefully and takes a seat on the chair set behind him. He stares at her tattooed back for a few more long moments before his hands drop down from her shoulders and he pulls on his gloves, an agonizing action for the Flame Alchemist.
When he lifts his hands again, he allows his fingers to glide over the transmutation circle for what he hopes is the last time after that night – he never wants to see the awful thing again. Lines that he once studied feverishly now make him sick and the respect that he used to feel for his Master has long since been replaced by disgust – how could a man do such a thing to his own flesh and his blood? How could he be so ignorant as to place such a burden on his daughter? With a pang in his heart, Roy realizes he is no better – that he, like Berthold Hawkeye, had hurt Riza by abusing her trust and using the secrets of Flame Alchemy for destruction. He is in no place to be looking down upon his Master – for he is just like him in his ways, the only difference being the crippling remorse and regret that has been festering within him since the day she requested, begged that he burn her back for her. He hates himself and he hates what he has done to her, what his influence has brought her to become.
With a shuddering breath, Roy's hands fall to her waist and he holds it – he remembers vividly the last time he had held her so closely, so tenderly, however for a completely different reason. Back then, they had been celebrating what they had felt for each other, their hands wanton and eager, but now they are being punished for their foolishness and their trust and closeness is being used against them to perform an act that will scar both emotionally, one physically. Inhaling again, Roy leans forward and presses his forehead to her cool skin, a light sweat having broken across it from the anticipation of what is to befall the flesh. He knows he has no right to be holding her and touching her as he is, especially because of what he is about to do, and so resisting leaving a kiss on her back or saying anything to quell the unease within both of them, he places his fingers to the lower right part of her spine, trembling uncontrollably all the while. He can hear the distress leave her in a long, strained sigh, unprepared for the pain she knows is going to overcome her in a few moments. Blinking his eyes to keep the stinging tears at bay, he applies a light pressure to the skin and then begins to feel the telltale heat beneath his fingers – and his own personal hell has started.
He takes care to keep as clear a mind as he can as he mars her skin, but when a strangled sob falls from her lips it is all he can do not to stop altogether and take her in his arms and apologize as profusely and uselessly as possible. But he swallows and presses on – this is something she wants so badly, needs so desperately, and he will not let his selfishness hurt her once again. Roy only burns the most vital parts of information of the array, moving from the small of her back up to her left shoulder where the most powerful secrets of Flame Alchemy are printed. He doesn't want to prolong her pain, but her shoulders are shaking too violently at that point for him to start immediately again, and he feels his heart break as he watches her. She is trying to be so strong, to hold in the cries that she wants to let loose all so that he won't be discouraged, scared to carry on, but even the seemingly-invincible Riza Hawkeye cannot keep the emotional wall up as she crumbles into tears before him.
And it is then that he can take it no longer – he reaches out and squeezes her hands, unable to hold her like he wants. His own dam breaks and he feels frustrated tears roll down his cheek and off his chin – this is too much for him, this is too much for her. "I'm sorry," he chokes out, his voice low and broken. "Riza, I am so sorry."
Through blurry vision he watches her shake her head, as if she won't allow him to take the blame. And he hates that – that still, after all she has been through, that she is still so much more than she needs to be, than he will ever be. That she will always be able to give more to him than he will to her and that it isn't fair – because he loves her and wants to give her everything she deserves in life but he can't. And the hopelessness that fills him in that moment is so consuming he doesn't know if he can go on with burning her, but he knows that he has to and so he rigidly pulls away from her and feels sparks beneath the pads of fabric again, blistering her marked skin into illegibility. She whimpers and squirms, but doesn't put up much of a fight for she is too tired emotionally and physically – from Ishval, from her childhood, from being around the man whom her life revolves around.
He's just about finished creating the largest scar on her back when Riza becomes too still, too quiet for his liking, almost as if she is dead. As his heart thumps painfully in his chest and a lump forms in his throat, he wants to check her but knows he shouldn't stop and so continues. But something is wrong – he can feel it in the thickening atmosphere of the dark room. Before he knows it, the heat beneath his fingers intensifies without his volition and her skin is searing, aflame before him and his eyes are wide because she's on fire and he has to help her and everything is his fault-! Roy jumps back and up, taking note of how oddly unmoving Riza is for a woman whose shoulder is surrounded in flames, but he can't pay attention for long as he is scrambling to her kitchen to get water to douse her with. When returns with an amount he hopes will put the flames out, he is alarmed, terrified, traumatized to find that she is encircled by a wild, intense blaze, licking her blistered skin and catching everything around her – all of her possessions – on fire. She is calm and frozen, though. Roy doesn't know what has happened and doesn't care to – all he knows is that he needs to get to her, needs to save her before she burns completely and he loses her once and for all. But as he tries to run towards her, the flames rage and lash out at him, effectively cutting her off from him but still he can see her, watch her as she slowly stands and turns to him. A disappointed frown is etched on her lips, but when he looks into her eyes he knows that this is not Riza – they are too soulless, too passionless to belong to the woman he loves. He is still stuck in his spot though, by the flames and the emptiness of her stare and the fact that she looks like her but isn't.
"How could you, Roy?" It's a simple question, with a million troublesome answers that leave him paralyzed mentally and physically, despite the fire threatening to end both of them around them. "How could you let me become this? How could you let me burn?" It is then that her face contorts into the Riza he knows and her gaze is so heartbroken and pain-filled that he falls to his knees, finally succumbing to the grief that has been consuming since that very fateful day.
"I'm so sorry," he cries, pounding a fist into the ground. His voice is raw with emotion and tears are dribbling from his eyes. "All I've ever wanted to do is protect you! I never wanted to see you like this, I never wanted to be the one that hurt you like I have! I'm so goddamned sorry, Riza!" He is sobbing by the time he is finished speaking, feeling as though his chest could burst in that moment. He looks up when he feels a pressure on his shoulder, and sees that it is Riza, her hand on his arm and her face closer to his than it has been in years. She says nothing as he sits up and moves to reach out to her, but just as he is about to envelop her in his arms, she is cast backwards, directly into the flames, and once again, she is burning in front of him.
The Flame Alchemist jumps to his feet and tries to get closer to her to pull her out of the fire, to finally protect her like he always should have, but each frantic step he takes only puts further distance between them until it becomes obvious to him that there is nothing he can do – that he is stuck watching her die without the ability to do a thing, something he has always feared might become a reality: and now it is, before his very eyes. "Riza!" he shouts as he futilely thrusts his hand out, but she cannot hear him as she continues to go up in flames, her face mimicking his as tears spill uncontrollably from her eyes. "Riza!" His voice is strangled as he cries out again, but receives the same answerless response as before. He watches helplessly for a few more agonizing moments, before her charred body finally disintegrates into nothingness, and Roy is left on his hands and knees, trying to catch his breath but utterly incapable.
His eyes are stinging and his chest is aching because she's gone and he, once again, couldn't do a thing and he was the one who caused it! He cries out for her one, twice, thrice but as expected, no one answers his desperate pleas. He does not protest as he feels the flame crawl up his legs then, consuming him as well, but before he can suffer the same fate as her, the burning room around him goes black and he is flung into a never ending darkness, never to escape the painful realizations of what he has done and what he couldn't prevent—
Roy nearly catapulted himself out of bed as he was shocked into reality and left the nightmarish world he was in just moments beforehand. He inhaled and exhaled heavily and felt a cold sweat across his brow as he tore the blanket off of himself and sat at the side of his bed, trying to calm down. His eyes were wide and heart racing as his face fell into his hands and tears threatened to well over his waterline and fall – it had happened again, the same awful dream had plagued and awoken him again.
Having finally evened out his breath, Roy stood from his bed shakily and trudged to the bathroom a few feet away. As he stumbled inside, he found the sink with a little difficulty and turned the faucet so that cold water was rushing out of the tap. Submerging his hands beneath the liquid, he flung it into his face, startling himself into clarity of the world around him. He grumbled as he searched for a towel and dried his face before peering exhaustedly into the mirror, greeted by the dark circles that sat beneath his eyes, reflective of the inner turmoil he had been suffering from for weeks. The same nightmare that he had been experiencing repeatedly hadn't allowed for the man to receive much sleep since the incident with Riza had happened, instead leaving him robbed of all emotional and physical energy to the point where it was affecting his work performance. Each day that he forced himself into the office, Riza would ask him if he was all right, and he would always lie blatantly to her and tell her he was just fine, because he couldn't burden her anymore than he already had, especially with something as pointless as his wellbeing.
Sighing heavily, he made his way back into his dark bedroom and flopped down on the bed, allowing his mind to become consumed with what usually followed after the nightmare – just thinking aimlessly about it until the sun rose and he would begin to prepare for work.
The Flame Alchemist knew that the dream was a manifestation of the intense guilt and grief he felt towards what he had done to Riza – something he felt as though he would never be able to overcome, something he felt he didn't deserve to. Even though she had thanked him through tears in her eyes after he had finished burning her, even though she had assured him that his actions were for the best, he couldn't get over the pain that covered her face and the faint smell of burning flesh escaping the apartment. He wasn't worth her broken smile that followed, wasn't worth being put with and he honestly didn't know how she could even look at him after everything he had done to her. And he hated how he still took relief in the way she silently asked for him to stay with her when she held his hand when he turned to leave.
He also knew the dream was happening out of deeply-rooted fear of the inability to protect her, like he had so many times before. He was so terrified of losing the only person in his life that mattered by his own hand and he couldn't get it out of his mind that he would eventually be the person to bring Riza's doom about, and this traumatized him because it was the absolute last thing he wanted. But still every night he was forced to watch her burn and he had to sit back uselessly and it killed him inside.
And though he could barely trust himself to be around her, she still wanted him in her life, still put her faith in him as a person even though he hadn't a clue why – why did she still look at him with those tender, amber eyes? Why did she still squeeze his hand gently as though he hadn't caused swelling blisters on the skin of her back? Why did she still act like he was capable of love and affection? As far as Roy was concerned, what people whispered about him in Ishval was true – he was nothing more than a monster that destroyed lives, especially of those he cherished. But still, Riza didn't put his faults first, but the fact that he was simply a broken human being like herself. Her undying selflessness made for him to love her that more and for his distrust of himself to grow.
Simply put, his emotional and physical scarring of Riza had in turn scarred him with the incapability to keep her safe – the one and only thing he desired.
And yet he still found himself trying, through all of his hatred for his past doings, trying to protect her, because he couldn't bring himself to let go so anyone else could. He wanted to be the only person who would look after her even though he knew he was incompetent at the job – this made his stomach twist uncomfortably. It was those same selfish thoughts in the first place that had gotten her hurt, so who was he to say that someone else shouldn't be allowed to protect her when he so clearly couldn't? But Roy knew the answer to this – he had tried time and time again to try and separate from her, so she might get a sense of general contentedness, but he just couldn't be away from her for long before he was right back where he had started by her side. It seemed as though it was an endless cycle doomed to be – that he would always strive to keep her happy and while it would last for a short while, ultimately he would just be the cause of her tears. And this was something Roy would never be able to get out of his head, out of his heart, always creeping up on him and seizing his emotions in a death grip until he was too worked up to calm down for days.
Grumbling, Roy threw a pillow over his head and stuffed his face into it, frustrated and upset – this was too much thinking for such an early time in the morning, especially for someone so emotionally exhausted to begin with. "I'm sorry," he murmured to himself, to her into the fabric, feeling his forehead crease and mouth frown. "I'm sorry that this idiot loves you but can't protect you like he should... I'm sorry that I try to give you the world but can barely begin to give you a safe life to get started with." Fisting his blanket, his mind continued to spin with information he couldn't effectively process while his eyes drifted shut into a restless slumber, once again leaving him without even the simplest explanation he so desperately needed.