She finds him at the forward operating base, sitting in the shadow of an alchemically crafted barricade, nursing a bottle of cheap vodka.
"Command'll have your head if they find you drinking on duty."
Roy just shrugs.
He is trembling, she realizes then, little tremors move through his entire body. At one point, he shakes so violently that he actually smacks his head against the wall behind him. He doesn't even seem to notice.
A chill slides down Riza's spine. She puts her hands atop his gloved ones, and tries to look into his eyes, which are dazed and unfocused. She's not sure of how much of that is the alcohol - the bottle is at least half-empty already - but either way, it's not a good sign.
"Roy, listen to me," she pleads. "You can't do… this."
He slurs something unintelligible, but Riza's pretty sure she catches the words "sorry" and "won't."
She slaps him, as hard as she can, across the face. That he does notice. He looks up at her with dull eyes and rubs his cheek.
"If you go against orders, they will shoot you," she demands, and she is breathing hard, and she is so, so scared. "Do you hear me, Roy? They'll shoot you. I can't lose you."
"What're you talking about?" he manages to mumble.
"I can't lose you," Hawkeye repeats.
She has been forced to confront, after waking up from embarrassing dreams, the idea that she is attracted to Major Roy Mustang. Her solution to that problem was to avoid him, as much as she could. (Avoiding him did not make the dreams stop. If anything, they just became more vivid.)
But this is more than physical attraction. She hurts because he is hurting. And she is terrified of the image of him forced to his knees, to take a bullet in the back of the head. She can't chase it out of her mind. She can't let it happen.
And it will. If he breaks under the strain, he will be useless to the military. And they both know what happens to useless dogs.
"Roy," she ventures slowly. "Do you… wanna talk about it?"
He shrugs.
He looks so haunted.
Riza doesn't even know how many people she's killed today. Aim. Sight. Pull the trigger. She tries, so so hard, not to let it be anything more than that. (Sometimes when she closes her eyes, she can see the faces, before they explode into fountains of blood, the bodies collapsing. And some of them are so, so small.)
Riza reaches over to take the bottle out of Roy's hand. He doesn't loosen his grip, but he doesn't verbally protest either, and eventually she is able to work it free. She sets it down next to her, out of his reach.
"What are you going to do when you get back to Central?" she asks him.
"I… what?"
"This war can't last forever, right?" The way things are going, this war won't last long at all. Riza tries to let that be a good thing. Press the battle quickly, end the battle quickly. That's why they're here. (Aim. Sight. Pull.) "Tell me what you're going to do, when you go home."
He looks up into her eyes, and though his dark eyes are still cloudy with drink, it seems he's at least trying to focus. Riza takes that as a good sign. "I'm going to become Fuhrer," he says, and he bows his head as if it's too heavy to hold up.
"Be serious, Roy."
But she's glad that he's talking. His shivering has mostly subsided. She dares to move a little closer. She dares to wrap her arm around him. He rests his head on her shoulder. "What're you going to do?" he asks quietly.
"Drink good coffee. Read bad romance novels. Maybe get a dog."
Roy nods, and after a minute he picks up his head so he can look at her. "Riza, do you think we're selfish? To be talking about the future when… well…"
"I think you can't think like that. You'll fall apart."
Roy laughs, a quick, half-broken bubble of sound that skirts the edge of crying. "I think I'm already falling apart."
"I won't let you."
He just shakes his head. He thinks he's already too far gone. No matter how good it feels to have Riza Hawkeye's arm around him.
They'll send him out again tomorrow, or maybe even sooner, and he squints against the bright light of imaginary flames. He bites his tongue, almost hard enough to draw blood. He looks down at his ignition glove, eyes tracing the path of the transmutation circle embroidered on it. It almost looks pretty, if he ignores what he does with it.
Riza kisses him.
Roy's mouth opens in shock, and then she's got her tongue inside as her lips press against his, and Roy wraps his arms around her and it suddenly feels like he's drowning. And he loves it. Just for a minute, he's not thinking about the war.
Riza pulls back, just a little bit, still in his arms. "We will get through this together," she insists. "When you get back to base, or I do, we'll find each other, okay? And we'll…" What? Forgive each other? Forget? "We'll start the future," she finally says.
Roy nods. He holds Riza Hawkeye in his arms, and it gets a little easier to breathe. "Start the future," he repeats thoughtfully. "Yeah, I think I can do that. If you're here."
"Not going anywhere," she promises.
She keeps her promise.