Its presence sets her spine alight with dread, terror creeping along every nerve, sinking into flesh and making a nest inside corded muscles wound tight with anxiety. She chews on the bloodlust and spits out fear like teeth. Moonlight guards the shadows pooling at her feet, their fingers snaring her ankles as she moves in the night (to him, to him to him to him to him). They recoil as she passes below the watchful gaze of a streetlamp, flow down the cracks in the cobblestone like midnight ink, wait patiently for the dark to swallow her once more.
(He is not there, he is not there, I am alone alone alone)
Her pulse stretches and catches everywhere, and she swallows the bitter guilt. Her fingers brush algid metal below her hip (testing, testing) and the shadows writhe like angry snakes and she suppresses the shiver that's been threatening her shoulders for three blocks now.
Knuckles graze rain-beaten wood and pause, retract, rest against the door. She tests the knob and it rattles alarmingly in the silence and her resolve gives but the handle does not.
(Exhale, breathe)
Footfalls break the newfound quiet and her stomach sinks to somewhere around her tailbone, and then he is there and she is choking on every promise her bones couldn't keep (and he is there he is there he is there) and his eyes are burning holes in her fragile skin.
"Lieutenant," he says in surprise and she bites her lip lest it all come bursting out like a dam overflowing. She is begging him for absolution and he is not understanding.
(how could he?)
The holster around her thigh is suddenly too tight, pinching muscle and constricting her veins. She thought the gun should have warmed to her feverish skin but it is frigid against her shaking fingers. That familiar crease between his eyebrows appears, the one he gets when he's looking for a specific page in the stack of paperwork but can't seem to find it, and her heart is stumbling as filthy apologies slough off her tongue.
He reaches for her and stops, wary, as though she would shatter if touched. The crease deepens and he's scared now, his breath halting when the gun levels between his eyes. She is crying, her big eyes a well of molten copper as she stumbles incoherently over words that mean nothing now in the empty space between them.
"Riza," he tries, but her expression turns fierce, so like her namesake and her jaw is working itself into a knot as she fights the sordid tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Please, Colonel. Please," she is gasping. (Please make this easy.) But she doesn't say that. "Tell me a lie, Colonel. Please."
He is cornered, and her eyes are pleading with him and he knows. He closes his eyes as if being blind will shield him from his own vileness.
"I don't love you," the words come out like acid and he gags on the acrid flavor. "I never did." Her eyes cloud and he bites down on everything else.
A single gunshot shatters the night and Roy Mustang crumples to the ground, the hole in his forehead painting the doorstep crimson, and Riza Hawkeye sinks and sinks and sinks. The shadows at her back curl around her limbs contentedly as she pushes the barrel to her own temple, not bothering to waste her time with hesitation.
He leads, and she follows.