A/N: So I know that I should be finishing the next chapter of Fool's Bet. I know this and yet I sit down at half past midnight and end up an hour and half later with this and absolutely no progress in the one story I really should be working on. I can't even work my bouts of insomnia properly. I fail.....

Anyways, my first attempt at a FMA piece. I hope everyone enjoys. Standard disclaimers apply. I do not own any part of Full Metal Alchemist and make no profit from writing this story. I also have no stake in the song 'Last Call' as sung by Lee Ann Womack. By the way, if you are not familiar with the song I suggest you go look it up and give it a listen. It's a good one and I think I almost cried about half way through this thing because it just sounds so damn sad...

Reviews are always appreciated ^_^

I recognized your number
It's burned into my brain
Felt my heart beating faster
Every time it rang
Some things never change
That's why I didn't answer

She had been dozing lightly when the jarring ring from the telephone pulled her away from the brink of sleep with a jolt. Looking up from her position hunched over the desk in her study, she stared bleary eyed at the offending object, her mind finally catching up to what had so rudely awoken her from what had been looking like the first good sleep she'd had in months. She blew a strand of delicate silvery-golden hair from off of her forehead and sent the phone a weak glare for disrupting her nap.

Glancing at the clock as she struggled to her feet, she logged the time as two o'clock in the morning. Running a hand through her hair, she grabbed the abandoned hair clip that had fallen to the floor when she'd slipped off into unconsciousness earlier and restrained her shoulder-length hair. With another small shake of her head she sighed deeply as the phone offered up one last shrill cry before falling silent and Riza Hawkeye frowned a bit. It wasn't like her to not answer a phone call. Not even one at two o'clock.

There was a deep pause as silence crept through the room in the telephone's wake and Riza toyed with the idea of just giving up on finishing cataloguing reports and turning in for the night. In fact, she had turned to go do just that when the telephone's trilling call rose up once again and she turned in a mixture of surprise and confusion. Who was so determined to get in touch with her this early in the morning? She didn't really have much of a personal life outside of work and she hadn't heard from her family in years.

It took her less than a second to make it to the stand that held the offending object, but instead of picking up the receiver and taking the call she paused for a moment with her hand poised just above the handle, her fingers not quite touching the smooth wood and polished brass. Inside her chest her heart began to beat a steady tattoo against her ribs as a dark realization stole over her mind quickly but surely, burning up her nerves in the process.

It was him.

There was no one else it could be. No one else on the face of the earth that would call her this late. It had been a while, maybe days but more like weeks, since this had happened. She ran through a list of personnel in her head and groaned. It was him. Everyone else was busy or out of town. She was the last one left that he could call.

"Roy…" She whispered his name softly, her voice unable to be heard over the steady periodic ring of the telephone. Backing away from the stand slowly, she grabbed her coat from off the back of her office chair and made her way to the hall, taking a second to look back at the phone as it sent out a weaker ring and then fell silent once more.

In her head, her thoughts were swimming. Why tonight? Why did he have to do this again on the one night when there wasn't a single soul other than her trustworthy enough to handle the situation he'd undoubtedly gotten himself into? Didn't he know that they couldn't keep this a secret from the top brass much longer? Did he care?

She didn't think he did.

I bet you're in a bar,
Listening to a country song.
Glass of Johnny Walker Red,
With no one to take you home.
They're probably closing down,
Saying, "No more alcohol."
I bet you're in a bar
'Cause I'm always your last call.

She suffered a moment of indecision as she stood in the driveway, her dark coat wrapped around her tightly for warmth. She had driven one of the military issued vehicles home with her that evening since she was slated to pick up some general or another from the train station in the morning. A part of her almost wished that she had the courage to take the car to retrieve her superior officer. They would certainly see the mileage on her report when she returned the car the next day and that would be cause for awkward questions to be asked. At any other time, in any other crisis, she wouldn't have hesitated to call a cab or to even walk, but tonight was not a normal night and she was at the end of her rope.

Besides, it might even be for his own good if someone started snooping around. Without a friend in Intelligence any longer he wouldn't be able to cover his ass so easily. They would finally know what it was that had managed to knock him down off of the pedestal that he had worked so hard to create. He would be able to get the help he needed. There would be no more hiding. No more two in the morning phone calls, to her or to anyone else. No more lies.

She braced herself against the winter wind and sighed heavily as she set a course for the center of town. Yes, he could finally get the help he was so desperately needing. Yes, he would finally be out in the open about what was wrong with him, and yes, her and the rest of her staff could stop playing 'pick-up the drunken Colonel'... But leaving him to face his fate in such a way was wrong, no matter what he did. No matter how much he hurt her.

She couldn't do that to him: Not now, not ever.

A part of her begged for her to turn around. That part told her what she had always known. Doing this for him wasn't going to make him love her. He wasn't going to wake up in the morning and realize that she was his soul mate and that he had been wasting his time when she had been under his nose the whole time. She knew this. She had come to know this years and years ago, but she had stayed by his side anyways. He was going to change the world and no matter how much it hurt she was going to be there to help in any way she could. She had promised herself that.

It was that promise that kept her going, the increasingly stronger gusts of frigid wind impeding her progress and making her body demand for her to return to the cozy next that was her small, two bedroom home. She bowed her head and forged onward, focusing on her destination and what was waiting for her once she reached it.

Was he going to be a sullen drunk tonight, lost in his memories of the past and all the things he could have done and should have done? Was he going to be a slave to his guilty conscience, apologizing for his sins past and present while she busied herself with paying off his tab and arranging for transportation for them both? Was he going to be happy, lost in some delusion that would play itself out until its bitter end when reality would come knocking once more and he would spiral down into a depression so harsh that he could barely function?

The Colonel's reasons for doing this were often very vague and it wasn't until she got there that she would know exactly what it was that had driven him to his liquid comfort this time. Sometimes it was the stark reminder of his loss of rank that would do it. He would see some upstart Brigadier General wandering around Central with hopes of taking advantage of the still weak inner structure of the military and he would remember the few brief weeks when he had been gifted with that rank. It wouldn't matter to him that he hadn't earned it, not really. He would see his dreams of being Furher, of bringing about the change that the military desperately needed, crumbling around him as all he could do was sit back and allow all the things he had worked so hard for to be taken from him in one fell swoop.

He had helped to save the country, but no one would ever know the full extent of what he done, of the lives he had saved. All they would see was a man who had unearthed some form of corruption that they would never be able to fully grasp and who had killed another man and had been unable to save a young child's life in the process.

But that might not be the reason for tonight's flight into drunken numbness.

It was often that he would fall into this pattern after a visit or a phone call from Gracia. He still looked out for her, that much Riza knew, but that didn't stop the guilt from gripping him in its icy talons every time he was reminded of his best friend's death and that it was partially his fault Gracia no longer had a husband. His fault that Elysia no longer had a father.

Thinking about Hughes would make him think about Ishbal and that horrible, horrible thing he had done there that Hughes had helped him through. That blank spot in his life that none of his staff knew about, though they had a few guess ranging from the possible to the insane, still haunted him and shadow his every move. She would never know what he had done, who he had killed, why he still got that far away look in his eyes whenever the country was mentioned. She didn't want to know. That part of his life was over and done with, but she knew that meant nothing when he was so far gone to the liquor that the past became the present and the present became some strange dream.

Taking in a deep breath she wrapped her arms around her torso ever tighter, as though doing so would protect her from the dark place her thoughts jumped to.

Whatever reason he gave on the surface… Whatever thin reason he offered up to appease her… Whatever rant he delivered onto deaf ears…. She knew the truth. There was always one thing. One thing that lay underneath it all: The guilt, the pain, the fire the burned inside of him that not even the alcohol could quench.

Edward.

I don't need to check that message.
I know what it says.
"Baby, I still love you,"
Don't mean nothing when there's whiskey on your breath.
That's the only love I get.
So if you're calling...

He had told her he loved her once. She had laughed at him and had helped him to his feet with a sad smile on her face. Riza had known better. He had turned those dark eyes on her and had stared straight into her soul and he had said the words that she had been longing to hear ever since she had been a lowly private watching him march across the parade grounds as though he already owned them all those years ago when she had thought she could make a difference in the world. Back when she had thought that she could be a part of something that would save the military she loved and turn it into a force that really cared about the people it was supposed to protect.

She had thought a lot of things in those days for all the good it did her.

It was almost as though he had known she wouldn't believe him that night. The clock had just chimed midnight and she had laughed at him and he had read the hurt in her eyes in that infuriating way he had of knowing everything everyone was thinking. She had tried for months to get the words out of her head, to forget the way the moonlight had played across the pale planes of his face. She didn't want to remember the way his bangs had slid to fall haphazardly on his forehead, scratching gently against the black eye patch, and the way his breath had felt against her cheek, stale though it was with the scent of the whiskey he had just downed.

She didn't want to remember, but she did. Roy had looked at her with understanding in his eyes when she had laughed. There was no sting of rejection, no sign that her dismissal had a negative effect on him. There was just the stirring of knowledge in the back of his mind, the slight twitch on his expression, and the thud of realization in her mind as she came to see what she had known all along. He didn't love her. He couldn't love her. He had given his heart away a long time ago and he wasn't going to be getting it back.

He had lost it in a flurry of golden hair and stark determination. It was lost to the whirlwind that had been an eleven year old boy, lost in so many ways, but more mature than the entirety of the army he had chosen to join. A decision that no boy should have had to make. A decision made so selflessly in order to help the only person he had left.

A lot of people had lost parts of themselves to this boy, this one man tornado that had blown through Central and had left the bystanders grasping to find a handhold in his wake. It had been a pair of wild golden eyes, bright with untamed brilliance, untamed intelligence, untamed spirit that had drawn him in and held him, making him realize the hard way that there was more to life than ambition and that there were still things out there to fight for. There were still good qualities in this world. Not everyone had given up.

She couldn't find it in her to blame him or to find him disgusting. Her rational mind told her that she should have. Here was a superior officer lusting after a subordinate, and a minor to boot, but she couldn't find it in her heart to disapprove. There was nothing rational about Edward Elric after all. He lived to defy conventions. It hadn't even shocked her when she had noticed the looks Edward had begun to give him in return. At fifteen the teen had accomplished more than most men had in their entire lives and, while still immature in a lot of ways, he had a sense of confidence about him that took men the better part of their lives to find. He had come to terms with himself and his quest and that had made him stronger.

And then, at sixteen, he had disappeared, leaving nothing more than a young boy who had used to be armor and was now flesh and more questions than answers.

It had been a year since Edward Elric had disappeared in the only successful attempt at human transmutation known to man. He had given his brother his body back just like he had promised… At the cost of his life.

Riza paused huddled in a doorway as a shiver wracked her body. As much as she tried to tell herself it had been nothing more than a particularly persistent gust of wind, she knew better. Al and Roy were determined that Ed was alive somewhere, perhaps stuck and looking for a way home. Mustang had never said it out loud but she had picked up on it over time. It was written on his face every time Al came around searching for some misplaced information on the brother he was bound and determined to find.

She would have had to be blind not to notice the hope in his eyes, the way he would perk up whenever Al showed up. How he would put away anything he was working on and settle down with the young boy, flipping through file after file as they hunted down every last mention of the famous Full Metal Alchemist in an earnest attempt to locate exactly where it was that he could have ended up. She could sense the way he was drawn to Al's determination, a much more calm and collected form of the passion that had ruled his elder brother's life. Al wasn't as volatile as Edward had been, and he wasn't anywhere close to being as forceful, but that didn't seem to matter. Whatever it was that had drawn him into Alphonse's futile search had him hooked and she was damned if she could figure out a way to stop it.

So yes, there were a number of things that could have called him to the bar on this freezing cold December night, but there was only one thing that he was trying to drown. Only one voice he was hearing. After one year, there was only one face he was trying to forget. He wasn't like Ed or Alphonse. He didn't have that unwavering belief in himself and his abilities. He didn't have the capacity to hold on to hope when there were no signs to point him in the right direction. Deep down he was still the soldier, the master strategist that was always reading the signs, always seeing the places ripe for manipulation. He had run over every scenario in his mind time and time again and it always came down to the same conclusion. Lack of body or no, Edward just wasn't going to come back. He wasn't going to be found.

There was never going to come a day when the office door would burst open and slam back against the wall as a blur of gold and red swept into the room. There would be no more shouted indignities if someone didn't watch what they said about the physical stature of the greatest and youngest alchemist the military had ever known. No more seemingly botched assignments that led to self-centered speeches and angry yelling when all involved knew it was nothing but a front.

There was never going to be another Edward and as much as it hurt her to admit it, she knew it hurt him more.

I bet you're in a bar
Listening to a cheatin' song
Glass of Johnny Walker Red
With no one to take you home
They're probably closing down
Saying, "No more alcohol"
I bet you're in bar,
'Cause I'm always your last-

It was getting late, she thought as she leant against the cool bricks of the building she had stopped in front of. The bar would be closed by now. He would be out on the streets waiting for her to show, if she was going to show. She hadn't exactly answered her phone after all. For all he knew she wasn't coming, hadn't been home to hear his silent plea.

How would that feel? To be abandoned by everyone he trusted to have his back. How would it feel for him to know that the one person he had trusted the most, more than Falman, more than Breda, more than Fuery, even more than Havoc, had given up on him? What would he think about her if she just turned around right then and there and went home? Would he care?

Even as she thought that, she knew better. He would care. He always cared about her and about the men under his command. That was what had set him apart. That was what had always made him a good leader. They wanted to serve him, wanted to help lift him up to the heights he was aiming for. He was something worth being loyal to.

Or he had been. Now… Now she just didn't know what to think anymore, but she did know one thing, if she abandoned him it would hurt. He wouldn't be able to walk away from that intact.

It would be the ultimate betrayal.

Could she do that to him? She still loved him. He knew it, she knew it. Was he secretly expecting for a night like this to come around? A night when she would become so tired of picking him up every time he fell only for the same thing to happened again a few days later? Did he know deep down how much pain she was in every time she had to see him like this, begging for someone to care? Begging for someone to make him care. Was this his way of making his break from her and from the life that had become too much for him to hold on to?

Could he be capable of something so cowardly?

Try as she might, she could not find that answer to that question and it unsettled her in a way that she did not appreciate.

Pulling herself together she trudged on, her destination set in her mind, the bar he frequented finally coming into view as she took in a figure curled up on the curb outside the establishment, a tall woman in a mink coat crouched down by his side while a much wider figure in the unmistakable gold and blue of the Amestrian uniform looked on from a few feet away.

It would have hurt her more if she hadn't had seen it coming, but as she turned around and headed back the way she had come, she couldn't help but think this was a fitting way for it to happen. A fitting way for this stupid, stupid game to end. It had only been a matter of time that someone who wasn't supposed to be there to showed up on whim and discovered all that he had been trying desperately to hide.

Only a matter of time before even this fleeting comfort had been taken from him for good. It was going to be over now. He might not get the help he was so badly in need of, but this farce wasn't going to continue any longer. There would be no more need for her. There had never been any need for her. She didn't have what he wanted, what he needed, and she didn't think she had ever had it in her to pretend she did.

Tonight really had been his last call. The last time she or anyone else would be entreated to come to his rescue.

No more. Never again, and it felt better than she had ever wanted it to feel.

Call me crazy but
I think maybe
We've had our last call.

She hadn't slept that night after returning to her empty home. She hadn't even tried. It would have been an insult to her if she had even bothered to make the trip to her bedroom. Instead she had filled up her sleepless hours cataloging the reports that she had abandoned earlier. It wasn't interesting and there were times when she considered ripping up every last page of military bureaucracy if for nothing more than to feel a small sense of satisfaction as the ruined documents fluttered to the floor in shreds.

As the watered down rays of the winter sun began to stream into her den she gather the finished documents and stumbled into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee while she pulled out a neatly pressed uniform from out of her closet. By the time she had washed her face and had made herself look presentable the coffee pot was chirping happily letting her know that it was ready for her to drink.

It all seemed so normal she thought as she packed away her files into her briefcase and juggled her mug of steaming beverage at the same time. If she turned off her whirring mind for a few seconds she could almost pretend that she had gone to bed last night, that there had been no phone call or ensuing journey out into the deserted night. In fact, she could almost feel normal, as though the events of the past year hadn't taken place at all, but that feeling didn't last for more than a minute. There was no forgetting what had happened last night and what she had seen.

With a knot the size of a grapefruit in her stomach she made her way outside and waved pleasantly to her neighbor as he retrieved his paper. She turned the key in the ignition of the black chrome machine she had been loaned for her morning errand. As she pulled out of the driveway she paused to allow two children to run across the street with bookbags slapping against their legs as they hurried to make it to school on time. Life was going on around her as though it didn't know her heart had been broken and there was a storm of indecision and emotion running through her very soul at that moment.

That was what got her through the morning and the overbearing chatter of another well-to-do general who didn't give a damn about all the people he had stepped over to get to where he was now. Knowing that there was a place out there where everything continued on like it was supposed to was just the fortification she needed to keep her façade of military correctness on as she made her way through the bustling parade grounds and into the large command building. Everything she had ever known was falling down around her feet and she didn't know what this morning was going to hold but that didn't matter to millions of people who weren't relying on her to have the perfect personal life. There were millions of people out there that needed someone to protect them and if Mustang wasn't going to do it, then she was going to have to take her life in her hands and get it done herself.

She just wished that thought didn't make the ache in her heart worse.

There was a man in her room, a First Lieutenant just like her, and he turned to face her as she entered the room. She didn't know exactly what it was about him that caused the knot the triple in size where it was sitting in her stomach. Maybe it was the way he had a grim look set on his face or how he kept tapping a file nervously against his leg. Maybe it was none of the above and she was reading more into his stance than she should have because she had known was coming.

"First Lieutenant Hawkeye?" Riza resisted the urge to flinch and returned the man's salute automatically. "Good. I was hoping you would be the first one in this morning. There is a matter that has come to the military's attention last night concerning Colonel Mustang. It is our hope that you might be able to shed some light on this issue. You are close to the Colonel?"

"As close as an assistant can be, yes." Riza answered, her clipped tone instilling a false air of authority in the room. Wrapped tight in her bubble of military protocol she found it difficult to think of Roy as anything other than a coworker, a commanding officer that had found himself in a spot of trouble. Inside, however, her heart was bleeding and she couldn't even begin to think of a way to stop it. "We don't see each other much outside of the office if that is what you would like to know. He is a good officer and he does his job well, but I'm afraid I don't know much about him when it all boils down."

"I was afraid of that." The Lieutenant seemed disappointed at her answer. He raised the file in his hand and opened it. "It seems as though there has been an inquiry opened on the Colonel, effective 0500 this morning. General Bertrand discovered Colonel Mustang outside of a drinking establishment at 0230 in a rather disgraceful state. He was unfortunately in his uniform and he seems to have put up quite a fight when the general tried to remove him to an area more suited to his state. There is a list of the damages and estimated costs. Luckily there were no injuries, but I'm afraid General Bertrand's wife was badly shaken up. I'm sure you know nothing of this of course?"

His statement had more of a question to it and Riza nodded her head, not quite trusting her voice at the moment. Of course she had known what had happened. Roy might have begun to stop using his alchemy little by little since he had lost his eye, but he could still pack quite the punch when he was drunk enough to have forgotten why he had chosen to give up creating fire from thin air. Her only consolation was that he had somehow found it in him to pull his punches. It wouldn't have taken much and the only people to witness his shame would have been nothing more than ashes in the wind…

The Lieutenant offered up another salute before moving past her towards the door, leaving her with nothing more than another reminder that if she thought of anything she would like to tell the higher ups that she could go straight to General Bertrand himself. It seemed as though he had taken it upon himself to clear up the mess Mustang had made. She found that she didn't have the energy to be worried.

It wasn't until she was packing up for her trip home, thanking any god she knew that the others were out and about either in the city or abroad and that she had the office to herself all day, that she found herself wondering what was going to happen to them. If the others had been there… Well, that was something best left alone. There was no telling at this point what would have happened and what would have been said had they all been there to shoulder this newest burden.

She just wanted it all to end...

She found out what was going to happen sooner than she had wanted to. As she was making her way across the main foyer she was intercepted by the First Lieutenant from earlier. It seemed that the 'issue' that had occurred the night before had been properly taken care of. The Colonel was to be demoted, a light sentence for sure for one who had been caught smearing the name of military so soon after the catastrophe in which the Furher had been killed and the Full Metal Alchemist had disappeared into the night almost as though he had never been there at all. The people didn't trust them as it was, there was no telling what they would do if it were to come out that powerful alchemists were spending their time getting piss drunk and destroying part of the city.

Walking home that night she found that she regretted almost nothing out of what had happened. It hurt her to think that all of Roy's dreams had finally been vanquished for good, but it was a pain that was already fading. He wasn't the same man he had been and she would mourn the loss of that young crusader for as long as she lived, but she wasn't going to let it slow her down. Maybe someday he could find a way to look past what had happened and all he had lost, but until then she could hold down the fort and continue on with what he'd started. She wasn't fooling herself into thinking she could aspire to be something as high as Furher, but perhaps she could bring about the change they needed in some other way.

She told herself that over and over again that night as she drifted off to sleep. It was slowly beginning to become her new mantra, something to keep her mind off the one thing she did regret.

She hadn't been able to see him, to explain to him what she did and why she did it, and that left a sour taste in her mouth. She was one that liked closure. She craved it in her personal life the same as she demanded it in her professional one. It didn't sit right that she hadn't been able to see him one last time.

And she wondered if he knew that she had walked away from him that night and had left him alone to see his fate through without her. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, she thought as her consciousness began to slip from out of her grasp. Maybe she was never meant to know, but that wasn't going to stop her. She was going to get up tomorrow and go on with her life one step at a time and maybe someday she could look back at this and see the good in the situation instead of being so caught up in the bad.

At least that was what she prayed for.

I bet you're in a bar.
It's always the same old song.
That Johnny Walker Red,
By now it's almost gone.
But baby, I won't be there
To catch you when you fall.
I bet you're in bar

It wasn't until a week later that she saw him again as she stood on the platform at the train station hidden behind a cotillion of enlisted men as the newly demoted Corporal was being sent off along with another group of men and women who were new to the army to some of the further reaches of the country. From what she understood he was to be going somewhere north where he would be given a post to look after, far away from civilization and anything that could tempt him to cause any more destruction. For that, she was glad.

He needed this. He needed the separation from all the things that reminded him of what he had lost. He might not have been able to come to that conclusion on his own at the time, but she was sure that he would see this wisdom in this move. For her sanity he had to. He was waiting for something that was never going to come, hoping for something that was too far gone for him to reach. Riza wished nothing but the best for him and the hope that someday he would be able to come back and return to being the man she had fallen in love with long ago, the man that she would have done anything to protect.

Even if she could never call that man her own, she would hope for his return because seeing him like this, broken and stripped of everything he had worked so hard to obtain felt like being stabbed repeatedly in the gut with a blazing hot knife. This was not something to be proud of.

The train pulled away from the station in a cloud of grey smoke and brought up the rear of the procession as the military men under her command streamed out and back to headquarters. It wasn't until she was almost too far away to really see any longer that she looked back and as she watched the train move slowly further and further away from her she sent up another little prayer that someday that idealistic man who was out to make the world the perfect place would return to her.

She had spent most of her adult life catching the one man she could never have only to set him back on his feet in order to watch him walk away from her time and time again and this time… This time she had finally let him go.

And it wasn't until a year later when they were under fire and losing the will to fight that she was able to see that she had been right. It might not have been the way she would have liked for him to have come back, but there he was, patent smirk plastered on his face as he waltzed into the middle of the battle giving orders as though he had never left. As though the worst two years of their lives had never happened and she could see why. She didn't even have to see the flashes of blue light and the slender pillar that held the one man that had managed to so much without even being there to do anything at all as Mustang floated away into the sky to help save the world once again.

And when the dust had settled and every last loose end had been tied up, Edward was missing once more, but this time there was no mistaking where he had gone or if he would return. It was now only a matter of when and they were back on their course again as though their hiatus had never occurred. The Full Metal Alchemist, the alchemist for the people, Edward Elric was going to return and he was not going to return to a world where the people lived in fear of the military.

He was going to return to the world that he and Mustang had always envisioned. A world where the military existed to help the people, not take advantage of them and use them as cannon fodder for wars no one believed in. He was going to come home to find that he could finally settle down and have the life he had been striving for in his quest.

And she was going to be right there by Roy's side just like it had always been. This time there was no turning back, no more time to sit around feeling insecure and sorry for herself. No more longing for something she couldn't have. The Roy Mustang that she had sworn to follow to the ends of the earth was back and that was all she had ever hoped for.

Last go. Once more chance… And this time… This time…

They were going to do it right.

'Cause I'm always your last call