Roy Mustang, mad scientist, did not believe in hell.
He did not believe in hell—not even when his best friend was shot to death in front of him. He did not believe hell existed, least of all for a person like Maes Hughes.
And, although Roy was a scientist (mad or otherwise), he hadn't really thought much about death—at least not in its prosaic, everyday reality. He had studied dead things before, but they had always arrived that way. He had never seen a living, speaking thing go from not-dead to dead.
And Maes Hughes was so very, very dead.
No, Roy Mustang did not believe in hell. Not until he tried to drag someone out.
: : :
"For the last time, I'm not going with you," Riza insisted to the supremely unconcerned Rebecca, who dangled from her wrists an array of frothy outfits that displayed a shocking lack of coverage.
"Have you even seen the men there?" Riza continued, swatting the garments aside. "They've got all the charisma of the inside of one of Havoc's shoes, and probably smell just as good."
Roy had found himself in the middle of this precise conversation eighty-eight times already. He knew Rebecca would then say:
"You're just stereotyping. Come on, Riz! You'd look like pure sex in this one!"
She scooted forward, holding the hangers under her chin. One of them slipped from her grasp, and Roy automatically shot a hand out to catch it. He was rewarded with a smirk from Rebecca that positively dripped allure, before she dropped a miniskirted, vaguely military-inspired confection into Riza's lap.
Eighty-seven leaps ago, that would have earned a reaction from Roy. Now, he knew Riza would just elbow him in the ribs.
Hard.
"Is this a convention or an orgy?" she asked instead, nose wrinkling.
"Yep!" Rebecca said blithely.
Roy got up.
"What's your rush, soldier?" Rebecca purred. He didn't answer, but wordlessly left the apartment. The door swung shut behind him. He didn't need to turn around to know Riza was already following.
Once outside, he headed straight for the railing to lean his elbows on top of it. He rested his sweating forehead against both sets of knuckles, and tried to remember how to breathe.
He felt Riza standing behind him, and when he stopped being dizzy, he turned around to look at her.
"What's going on?" she asked.
And he said the word he always said, ever since he learned it was the fastest way to make her understand.
"Riza."
Her eyebrow quirked.
"What, no 'Assistant' this time? No 'Elizabeth?'"
Roy coughed up a laugh, but it sounded more like a sob by the time it came out. He'd known it already, even before sending himself back. He'd known that his best friend would die again in this timeline, and he would either be there to watch, or he wouldn't.
This time, he was weak. This time, Hughes died alone.
Roy's body crumpled over the railing, his forehead meeting clenched fists. He was aware in whatever small, griefless part of himself still left that this was a posture of prayer. He did not believe in god.
Silently, Riza manifested at his side. She was close enough for him to smell her: a breath of mint-and-chamomile that was almost impossible to notice, until it was gone again.
"Help me," he said, because he knew she would.
Roy Mustang, mad scientist, did not believe in many things, but the girl at his side had already done more to earn his trust than any hell or any god ever could.
: : :
Riza Hawkeye, regular scientist, knew what happened to people when they died. She had studied the enzymes and acids of the human body; she had watched them dry up into dust and get swept into tidily labeled textbooks and between the pages of anatomy portfolios. The thought of it had given her a dark, glorious sensation of melancholy.
She imagined it happening to her own body, and she felt nothing at all.
"You won't be able to live with yourself if you don't save him," she said aloud.
"I can't," whispered Roy. She wasn't sure whether he said it in direct response to her statement, or in helpless ownership of his own ineffectiveness. It was raining outside, and Roy was always more unmanageable than usual when it rained. Either way, Riza decided it was nonsense.
She was about to tell him this when he spoke again, even more quietly:
"I don't want to lose the person I care about most."
A match sprang to life at the top of her spine, flickering with heat and hope.
"Wh-what?" she said.
"I'm in love with you," he said.
Flames dripped down every one of her vertebrae, searing their way across her ribs. From an analytical perspective, she shouldn't be able to breathe if her lungs were on fire.
"So…what is your response?" Roy asked.
The fire climbed up her throat, and into her mouth. It moved her lips, and she said:
"Will…you shut your eyes?"
—Then, as an afterthought—"Please."
Roy turned fully toward her, his half-lidded gaze jumping between her eyes and her mouth. Her chest burned fiercely, and she swallowed. At last, after three endless seconds, he shut his eyes.
Riza sucked her lower lip between her teeth, reaching up to pull him closer by the lapels of his dingy lab coat. He took one step forward. He exhaled softly through his nose, unsettling the hair on her forehead.
She kissed him.
The fire took her from the soles of her feet to her scalp. It wasn't until he was kissing her back…and then again…and then again…that she realized how badly she wanted to live.
Riza Hawkeye, regular scientist, knew what happened to people when they died. But she would not become dust without burning first.
: : :
The darkness of the supply closet was so absolute that it nearly bore physical weight. Roy crouched beneath it, waiting. Waiting.
"I thought we could publish the research together," came Riza's voice from much closer than he expected.
A cold, furious male voice retorted: "You foolish little girl."
The footsteps slowed. Riza came into view, followed by an older man. Roy ground his teeth together as he instantly recognized Riza's companion. He had her same deep-set, thoughtful eyes. His, however, glowed with the sick fury of humiliation. As Roy watched, the man's fingers twitched hungrily toward the thick folder Riza cradled in her arms.
"It's not enough that you've destroyed my career," he hissed, "but now you want to rub it in my face?"
"No," she said at once. "No, I—"
The strike was viciously fast, a whipping backhand that caught Riza on her cheekbone and sent her crashing into the boxes.
Roy saw nothing but red.
Outside the roaring in his ears, he heard the thin snick of a pocket knife being flicked open, and he lunged.
: : :
Riza would have almost preferred to be stabbed by her father. At least Berthold Hawkeye had been aiming for her. This stranger had no business holding the knife that was now lodged deep between her ribs.
Dimly, she was aware she had just been murdered, but that information seemed foggy, faraway, unimportant.
This was what she thought: I'm sorry.
"Riza."
"I'm sorry…"
"Riza, no—"
"—You don't even know me. I'm sorry you had to…"
She flapped a hand vaguely in indication of the argument that had just passed.
"I did it," said the man who had killed her, between shallow, broken gasps. "I did it. It was me."
Riza felt sorry for herself, because it hurt to breathe, and because she still wanted to be here a bit longer, and because she didn't want her father's last words to her to be words of hatred. She didn't want to have to die in this stranger's arms, leaving him with the empty weight of her body for company.
Amidst her internal apologies, Riza found she was on the floor, slumped against her distraught killer.
"Riza, Riza, no," he moaned. "It was me. It was me."
Strange. He shouldn't know her name. Maybe they had met before. He leaned away from her to try and put pressure on the pulsing wound, and the light from the hallway spilled over his face. Riza's punctured heart sputtered quietly before retreating into its final few gasps.
She had seen him before. Had that been today, or a month ago, or ten years ago…?
She had known him before.
"Roy," she said, and died.
: : :
Roy Mustang, mad scientist, did not believe in hell. He had seen things more strange and more awful than anything hell could devise for him.
Havoc, Rebecca, and Hughes stood waiting in a semicircle when he stumbled out of the time machine. All three of them looked more than slightly unnerved by the viscous ribbons of blood dripping from his fingers. He stared around at them like a man woken from a nightmare.
"So—?" Havoc began to ask, but stopped before completing the question. Something about Roy's gory hands and destroyed expression halted any attempts at interrogation.
"It was me," he finally said. "I did it. I killed her. It was me."
"What?!"
Rebecca took half a step forward, then seemed to forget what she was doing. Her eyebrows plunged together in concentration.
"No…what?!"
Roy discovered that he was walking away from them.
"Where are you going?" Hughes called after him.
"I need to wash my hands. I'm going back to save her."
"Hang on—Roy—"
He was walking quickly, but Hughes caught up with him. Havoc and Rebecca weren't far behind. Roy stopped, whirling on the three of them so fiercely that Havoc actually stumbled back.
"Whoa, dude, we're not here to block your way."
"We're here to help," Rebecca supplied instantly.
Although every one of his nerve endings had deadened after Riza's death, Roy felt a flicker of something in his chest. It stirred to life, the same as when he had met her, the same as every time they matched wits, the same as when she had ordered him to close his eyes—
: : :
Roy Mustang, mad scientist, had witnessed firsthand the impossibilities of time travel in the form of a green, radioactive banana. He had sucker punched several significant laws of temporal physics into oblivion. He had resurrected his best friend a hundred times, and watched it fail a hundred more. He had met Riza Hawkeye, and he had loved her, and he had killed her. He didn't need to believe in hell—not when this was his reality.
But Roy Mustang, mad scientist, had cracked his sanity open on the edge of a microwave, and it had made him fearless.
So there was really nothing for him to do but to claw his way back out, and bring her with him.