((Author's Note: Still working out the kinks in the formatting. Lo siento. Anyway, I'd like to thank all of the wonderful people who left reviews on my first fic, "A Simple Ring". This story is more than a oneshot, but exactly how many chapters there will be I haven't decided yet. Once again, lo siento. / I'll try to put up new chapters regularly. I hope you enjoy this.))

It had all gone up in flames.

He had never realized, during all his shameless flitting about with different women, what love had actually felt like. He had had an epiphany, some time ago, that his only love was the Lieutenant. When he thought about it, he realized that his heart had always been pledged to Hawkeye, but that pledge was only voiced in a whisper, and had been drowned in Ishbal by the blood of the battlefront. Later, it had been muffled by the gunshots about them, heralds of their profession.

But he had eventually heard that pledge, and had voiced it to her himself.

He recalled her reaction as if it had occurred only minutes before. She had stood completely still for a moment. Those eyes tried to read his own. He couldn't blame her for being skeptical. Perhaps she had counted the times he had feigned those three words towards the feminine population of Central. But she could see only sincerity. And then those eyes had changed, only slightly. It was common knowledge that the true Riza Hawkeye kept herself walled in by professionalism and duty. It was a common saying that the eyes were windows to the heart and to the soul.

Joy filled his own heart, and might have even spilled into his soul. There was love there, in those eyes, those eyes the hue of dusky roses. He knew before she even echoed the words he had said, before he truly heard the pledge from her own heart. From then till the present, six weeks later, his life had been nothing but absolute bliss.

At the workplace, she had remained the same, strict slave driver. He hadn't expected her to change, though. It was what made the fact that she was late to work that day so surprising.

At first, he had been a little worried. He called her apartment, but received no answer. From this, he gathered that she must be trapped in traffic, and still on her commute. He figured that this tardiness would undoubtedly put her in a bad mood, and decided he would do what he could to fix it.

The night before, the Lieutenant had set a pile of paperwork on the corner of his desk. This had been a habit. He knew they were in order from greatest to least significance. She knew that his slacking off was inevitable, whether at gunpoint or not, so she had fallen into the practice of addressing what was most important before her Colonel ran out of what little enthusiasm he was equipped with every morning.

The Colonel sat down at his desk, formulating a plan to brighten her day. He had decided to start his paperwork early, shockingly of his own free will, so that after work he might have time to take her to one of the renowned restaurants of Central. Nothing too glitzy, of course, he thought as he signed the first few forms. They'd still have to go out under the pretense of being nothing more than colleagues, due to the fraternization laws. Riza wouldn't like anything too glitzy anyway. He smiled inwardly, thinking perhaps for the thousandth time in that one morning, God, I love that woman.

That's what made it so hard to swallow, so hard to breathe, when he read the heading of the sixteenth form from the top. The cold, harsh, black lettering across the top of the form that made his heart stop beating. A resignation form.

Just like that, his happiness was burned to ash, and his joy was nothing but a shadowy column of smoke.

He flew from the office. Whatever happened between the office and the front stoop of Hawkeye's apartment building were a blur. All he knew, all he could remember, was that there was no answer when he knocked on her door. He had a spare key, she had given it to him a fortnight before. He swore, his hands shaking as he opened the door. He had thought that something had happened to her, that she was dying or perhaps dead beyond the door. What he found was, in a way, worse.

Her apartment was completely empty.