Author's Note: I hate to admit it, but On the Back of a Hurricane might be considered my attempt at a songfic, since there was something about The Killers' When You Were Young that really made me think Roy and Riza. Still, while it was inspired by a song, there are no actual lyrics sprinkled into the fic, so I don't know. I'd love to know your thoughts on whether this is considered songfic or not.
On the Back of a Hurricane
Lover. Wife. Teacher. Partner. Secretary. Bodyguard. Aide. Would-be assassin.
The list of things I have been to Roy Mustang is as long as it is varied, and sometimes even I am surprised by how far we have come. The last few months have been a blur of activity: guarding trains, frenzied running through the media gauntlet, speaking engagements under blinding lights, guarding sterile hotel rooms, fresh newsprint rubbing off on fingers checking the day's polling numbers, and repeat. I'm starting to think the election campaign is taking more out of Roy than Ishbal ever did.
Still, there are moments of laughter along the endless trail. There was the day Roy kissed a baby only to be rewarded with a lapel so stained that the jacket had to be left behind in that night's hotel. There was the time the debate moderator repeatedly referred to Roy's opponent as "Oliver Armstrong," challenging the woman's face to produce darker and darker shades of purple with each repetition. They are small moments, tiny opportunities for levity in a whirlwind of ideology, rhetoric, and politics, but they are enough to keep us sane. At least for now.
There is one point of deep amusement that I haven't shared with Roy, though I doubt he would see it as such. His detractors and supporters alike have swarmed over our relationship, examining it with a dedication and precision I'd only thought possessed by particularly friendless doctors. Roy tries, in his misguided chivalry, to shield me from the pundits, but it isn't hard to hear what the world has to say about us.
His critics' favorite tactic paints our marriage as a lurid affair between a commanding officer and his subordinate, the seduction of a naïve aide and subsequent coercion to become his bodyguard through fear of losing him; more imaginative souls have concocted the story that Roy is a bumbling idiot and I am his ambitious wife, trying to save the tatters of his military career by forcing him to the new presidency. They particularly enjoy the mental image of me holding a gun to Roy's back as he nervously attempts to give a speech.
His most ardent supporters see us as a faerie tale, the ability for love to triumph over adversity. For them, Roy is the noble-minded optimist, his dream of a better world melting the ice around the heart of a cold-blooded killer who then devotes herself to his dream. Most of them seem to find a deep sense of romance in our lives, at the fact that I have (and will) gladly lay down my life for him.
As with all good propaganda, there are kernels of truth in every one of those stories. What amuses me is not what they say, or what they see, but it is what they have all missed. Everyone paints me as Roy's savior, from obscurity, despair, violence. What they have all failed to see is that Roy is the one who saved me.
My father loved me, of that I have no doubt, yet his love and trust trapped me as surely as any iron cage. Before Roy, I carried the heart of my father's research on my body, every line bled into my flesh by his own hand, knowing with every breath that it was something that should never be seen. For a teenage girl, whose hormones raged, begged, and pleaded for physical exploration, stimulation, and release, the knowledge that my skin carried a secret no one could know was torture.
And one day he came, my knight in shining armour, inflated to bursting with the sense of his own ability and importance. My father took an almost malicious glee in grinding Roy's ego into the ground, and I didn't expect him to last a month, much less the years my father would demand. Still, Roy surprised both of us with his tenacity, and the sharp mind that he concealed beneath laziness, both genuine and affected, gave us hope: for my father, hope of a worthy heir who would use dangerous knowledge for good; for me, the hope of being released from the burden of his secret.
When Roy argued with my father about alchemy's role in the military, I listened and was seduced by his dream. And when my father's dying words allowed me to show Roy his secret, I thought I would finally be free, free to choose my own life without the burden of family obligations. It's ironic that of my own free will I chose the military, but Roy's optimism was infectious, and I wanted to see his vision through to the end, even then. Still, it was my own choice, and I relished that freedom, youthful blindness that it was.
It wasn't until Ishbal that I saw my father's fear made real. It was then that I saw the soulless cruelty that humans were capable of. It was painful to see Roy again in that setting, to see his optimism seemingly burned away. Only then did I realize the enormity of what I carried; it wasn't just a family secret on my back, it was the weight of the world. And it was then that I felt the chains entangle me again, this time with links of fear and social responsibility, and they were heavier than those forged by my father from love and familial obligation.
So, when Roy found me, knee deep in battlefield debris, bodies, and anguish, I asked him to destroy my father's work. I think some part of me hoped that he would destroy me as well, letting the fire burn away everything. I thought I'd been remade in Ishbal, flesh, bone and emotion slowly replaced by despair, that the fire would just burn until there was nothing left of Riza Hawkeye.
But, it turned out that while my despair ran deep, it was still only flesh deep. Roy destroyed my father's work, and in that moment freed me from fear. There are scars, of course; very little worth having is gained without pain and scars. Still, Roy's willingness to destroy the terrible knowledge that turned him into an efficient killer showed me that, in the fires of the battlefield, his optimism had not died, but merely blossomed into true conviction. And so I once again followed him, no longer bound but truly free, intent on seeing his dream to its conclusion and, if necessary, kill him if he ever strayed from that path.
What amuses me the most about all the media, all the pundits, is that they don't realize that Roy saved me in Ishbal. He gave me hope for a better future, and took away the darkness and despair that I carried. Now, as his bodyguard, his aide, his secretary, his wife, his lover, I am repaying that act of love.