It's almost become a right of passage for fans of Fullmetal Alchemist to tackle, arguably, one of the most famous offstage dramas: the burning of Riza's back.

This story features some allusions to an earlier story of mine called A Canticle for Things Forgotten, which is worth the read, I like to think.

I own nothing. Literally nothing, not even a vase for when a nice, handsome colonel wants to give me flowers.

- TOD

Even though it was the middle of the night, when Maes Hughes looked up at the sky, he couldn't see the stars. The lights of East City glittered in the mist; the clouds were swollen and purple, like old scars. It was going to rain.

Hughes hadn't thought to bring a jacket. It had taken every modicum of his concentration to make sure he put each shoe on the correct foot. Midnight phone calls never boded well for someone in his profession, especially phone calls with the voice of Roy Mustang crackling on the other end of the line. The message had been short, simple, urgent. And it had scared the piss out of him.

He startled Gracia when he leapt out of bed and threw on his civvies. She was worried. Worried for him, but worried for Roy, too. She cared for her fiancé's best friend far too much to think otherwise. Before Maes charged through his front door, he held Gracia, kissed her for longer than perhaps was necessary, and promised he would be back before the sun rose. She asked him why he had to leave, and Hughes said he couldn't tell her. The look in her eyes told him she understood, and forgave him for it, and the sight nearly broke Hughes' heart. It was so incredibly selfish of him to be so in love.

The first drops of rain ran down the rim of Hughes' glasses. He broke into a jog. The street lamps flashed by him like a reel of film in a kinetoscope. Taches of shadow and light dappled the buildings. The street was deserted, the cars parked against the curb. He hadn't been in East City long, and with a transfer to Central imminent, he hadn't found much reason to explore. The outlying districts were labyrinthine, a tangled muddle of alleyways and avenues. Anyone else would have been lost, late at night, alone in the dark. But when Maes Hughes looked at a map, he never needed to look at it again. The layout of the streets and the checkerboard of addresses was as clear as a lucid dream in his mind's eye. It wasn't difficult for him to find the correct building.

Hughes entered a shadowy foyer. It was a dim, box-like space that went straight up a dozen stories. The staircase hugged the walls like a girdle. He began to climb.

The walls were covered in alfalfa green wallpaper that was beginning to peel from the damp. The floorboards sagged under his shoes. Overhead, old pipes hissed and clanked. The building's furnace could be heard from the basement, rumbling up through the foundations. Hughes thought it was an unpleasant, claustrophobic place. Humanity stacked on top of itself, everyone crushing everyone else.

When he reached the fifth floor, he couldn't hear his breath beneath the sound of his heart thudding against his ribcage. He had been brave for Gracia. But Gracia wasn't there anymore, and Maes suddenly felt very afraid.

He found the apartment quickly. He didn't bother knocking; the lock was easy enough to pick. Hughes stepped inside.

The smell hit him first. He felt the bile rising in his throat. The odor was sweet, deceivingly savory: the smell of burning fat, roasted meat.

"Christ…"

Maes tore through the tiny apartment. He found them in the bathroom. Under the dim fluorescent light, he couldn't tell the blood apart from the rusty stains accumulating under the faucet heads. He heard faint whimpering from the figure in the bathtub. The smell hit Hughes again, and he swallowed down the vomit.

Roy Mustang looked up at his friend. Tears poured down his cheeks. He held a woman's broken body in his arms.

"Help me."

"You promised."

He had promised. He wished to god he hadn't.

The sky had been red that morning; the dawn whispered of coming rain. Their world was getting bigger as they slipped the shackles of war. There were forthcoming promotions to accept, transfer orders to sign, bloodstains to scour from the countryside. Lieutenant-Colonel Roy Mustang knew the ties to his old life had burned in Ishval; the only anchor left bobbing in the ocean of the world was the one tethering him to his future. The only direction he had left to go was forward. He had ambitions to fulfill, and if anything, the atrocities he had committed worked only to strengthen his resolve.

He had his future, and he had the architects to build that future with him: the shop keeper turned soldier, the radio engineer, the front man, the intelligence gatherer.

But, Roy reflected grimly, the one person he needed most by his side in the coming years was the one glaring at him from over her desk, her mouth pressed into a thin line. The one who branded accusation and shame onto his skin with her amber eyes.

He had waited too long; Roy was indebted to his promise, and Riza Hawkeye had come to collect.

So Roy decided to hide. Whenever he caught Hawkeye peering in his direction, he sent her to the mail room, or to run a requisition order to the quartermaster, or corroborate a report with Hughes in investigations. He sent her away, because he couldn't bare to look.

Her empty chair named him a coward, and Roy was not so arrogant and cocksure that he believed otherwise.

The gauntlet hit the floor at the end of the work day. Roy never stayed late. He usually sloughed out with the rest of the boys, muttering some half-assed promise to finish his paperwork in the morning. But he remained seated as Havoc and Breda left together, too absorbed in an argument over a nameless brunette to pay their commanding officer any notice. Fuery, cradling his radio equipment, followed close behind them. Falman had exchanged a questioning glance with Mustang; with an explanation non-forthcoming, the willowy, prematurely graying warrant officer shrugged and took his leave.

Roy knew he was waging a war of attrition. Hawkeye would stay in headquarters all damn night if he pressed his luck. She was a sniper: she was well accustomed to waiting. She had patience down to an art. It was not a battle the Flame Alchemist was going to win. They both knew that.

It had been at least an hour since Roy signed his last report. He stared at the paper, at his spiky penmanship, at the grooves meandering along the surface of his desk. At anything but the woman sitting less than ten feet to his right.

"You promised," she said quietly.

Roy knitted his hands, rested his chin on his knuckles. He stared at his fingers; the skin was smooth and pale, and stained with all the blood he could not see. He remembered, from the few, fleeting, agonizing moments when their hands brushed together –– at the passing of an envelope or a pistol –– that Hawkeye's were calloused. She had handled weapons for so long, her body had adapted around them, like tree roots pushing through the cracks in the sidewalk.

"I know," said Roy finally.

"It's been six months, sir."

His temper flared, fire surging in his blood. "This isn't a pile of blasted paperwork, Hawkeye!" he snapped. "This is… what you're asking of me…"

It would destroy me before it destroyed you, he wanted to say, but didn't. His words hung unspoken in the air, like smoke blown thin on the wind.

He thought he saw a hairline split in her composure. The hurt in her eyes made something tighten in his chest. "Are you…?" Hawkeye recovered herself quickly, smoothly. A person less familiar with the lieutenant would have missed the lapse. To Roy, it was as blatant as a scream. "Would you rather not, sir? I will respect your decision either way––"

"No," said Roy, firmly. "I made you a promise. It's just… the mutilation of my subordinate doesn't exactly fall within my job purview."

Hawkeye glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if the door was shut. It was almost comical; she was professional to a fault, as straight-laced as they came. She would no sooner have someone catch her speaking out of turn than force her commanding officer to scorch her flesh. She could only venture, and ask, and hope.

"At the risk of sounding overly candid, sir," she said carefully, "I'm not asking you to do this as Lieutenant-Colonel Mustang. I'm asking you to do this as the boy who shared my home, who I trusted with my father's research. Because I made you a promise, too, sir. You said that we would live to see a better future, and I swore to you that I would protect you until that future came to pass."

Sometimes the words were so simple. So translucent they cut his mouth like broken glass. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I know."

He was surprised by the tenderness in her voice. Her face softened. She lifted her hands from the piles of paperwork, not quite sure what to do with them. Raising them to him, perhaps in supplication, perhaps for forgiveness.

And Roy realized that she was the one reassuring him. Protecting him.

"I will not allow history to reduce your legacy to charred corpses and bloodstained sand, sir. You are more than your sins, and I will not rest until that sin is scoured from the world."

Like so many things in their lives, what was essential remained unspoken. The culmination of her father's research tethered her to memories of the dead and dying, the utter decimation left behind as they swept through Ishval. She was anchored to things long gone. And she believed Roy would never be able to attain his dream for the future with her weighing him down, dragging him back into the blood and smoke and madness of the past.

She didn't want to be free of her burden. She wanted him to be free of it.

Riza Hawkeye deserved so much better, Roy decided. She was owed so much more.

Roy Mustang didn't believe in much, but he believed in alchemy. If the world operated according to the principles of equivalent exchange, then nothing ever really died. It changed its form, changed its physical state, changed its essence, but never winked out of existence entirely, like candlelight gutted in a gust of wind. Roy understood that humanity traded back its borrowed time so that new life might take its place. They moved in circles. Destruction birthed creation, the Ouroboros swallowed its own tail, and the story never ended. But he had to break the cycle of Flame Alchemists. Roy knew that in order to truly move forward, he had to destroy the geometrics of fire, recursive and eternal like the lines of a transmutation circle.

"We'll do it properly," said Roy; the words tasted bitter, like vinegar burning his tongue. "Antiseptic, bandages, saline solution… third-degree burns cause fluid to be released from the body's blood vessels… we will need an intravenous feed."

"Very good, sir."

"I'll… I'll phone Dr. Knox, call ahead for skin grafts and a room at the hospital––"

"No."

Roy blinked. "What do you mean, No?"

"With all due respect sir, you know perfectly well what I mean."

He did.

Hawkeye had no intention of walking away unscathed. She wanted the scarring, the pain. She wanted the hurt. That way, she could never forget. And neither could he.

Perhaps she wasn't as tender as he thought. Perhaps she could no longer afford to be.

A certain state alchemist had said something to Roy in Ishval. The words returned unbidden, clawing their way to the forefront of his memories:

"I have returned her to you with nary a scratch; you are free to mar her and mark her at your own discretion."

The Crimson Man had known about the array. He had known that destroying it had never been a question of hypotheticals. It had long been a test of endurance between time and Roy's cowardice, and time had a habit of outlasting everything, in the end. Everything except those things tattooed into immortality across the flesh of his dear friend's back.

"My apartment is in a less traveled district of East City," Hawkeye broke the silence, "and it's rarely frequented by those liable to notice two officers in close proximity after hours. It's as good a place to do it as any, sir."

Roy just nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak. He was afraid his voice would break. And if she tried to reassure him again, as though he was the one bearing the brunt of their suffering, then he'd lose his nerve entirely.

He looked down at the ignition gloves sticking out of his pocket. He wanted nothing more than to tear them into little pieces and toss them into the street, let the rain wash the shreds down into the sewers. It would be so easy, and the second lieutenant would never fault him for it. She would continue to serve him without question, without hesitation. By his side, as she always had been, and always would be.

It would be so easy to simply walk away, until Roy stepped into the next room and realized he would rather continue stepping, straight off the balcony of Eastern Headquarters, than live with the magnitude of his betrayal.

He didn't know if Hawkeye would ever forgive him, but Roy certainly wouldn't forgive himself.

Papers shuffled. She proceeded to pack her desk, locking sensitive documents in their respective drawers. She turned to go, hugging her binders close to her chest. She did not wait for him to follow, and she did not look back.

"Why don't you beg me, Lieutenant?" he murmured. "Like you begged me in Ishval."

Why didn't she force him to act on his promise. Why was she so goddamn good.

He didn't realize he had spoken aloud until Hawkeye froze in the doorway.

"I'm a soldier, sir, and you are my commanding officer. It is not my place to demand this of you. I can only ask."

He almost laughed. "Not your place?" Roy looked at her earnestly, wanting her to turn around but afraid of what he would read in the minutia of her face. He settled for crossing the room, stopping a few feet behind her, close enough to reach out and touch her.

But he didn't.

"Lieutenant," he said softly, "do you think I care for you so little that something as irredeemably trivial as rank would make any difference? Your place is by my side. I tasked you with watching my back. Your duty is to hold me to my oaths. So order me to do what I promised to do."

"Sir––"

"Order me to burn your back."

Riza spun around, her eyes wide. "I can't do that, Lieutenant-Colonel."

"Do it. Beg of me. Order me. Threaten me. Do something to force my hand, Riza, because God knows I can't do this of my own volition."

"So… you want an order to obey, sir." It was not a question.

You were obeying orders in Ishval.

Roy sensed the unspoken hurt and bitterness in her voice. In that moment, he despised himself more than Bradley and the military and the terrible shame of his actions in the East.

"Yes." The word broke as Roy said it. Hawkeye noticed. She noticed everything.

"Lieutenant-Colonel," her voice was steady and measured, like a sniper's aim, "take my father's burden from me."

"Is that an order, Lieutenant?"

"Yes sir. If you won't," something steely flashed in her eyes, and Roy shivered, "then I will."

He shook his head numbly. He put his hands in his trouser pockets to stop them from shaking.

Pale hands, smooth hands. The hands of a killer.

"I will stay with you, after…"

It was all he managed to say.

She inclined her head. Something taught in her shoulders loosened, and she breathed a long sigh. "Thank you, sir."

Roy hadn't seen very many apartments in East City, but he had seen enough to know the good ones from bad ones.

Riza Hawkeye's place was a member of the latter.

"It's…" Roy's heart wasn't into false compliments, "quite small, Lieutenant."

"Army pension, sir."

"Ah."

It was a single room, sparsely furnished with an army-issued cot, a desk and chair, and a kitchen space. A tiny bathroom jutted from one corner. The only adornment on the wall was Hawkeye's certificate of graduation from the academy. It was peppered in bullet holes.

Hawkeye would never fire her weapon in a civilian setting while off duty, not without probable cause. She was far too disciplined. She must have brought the certificate to the shooting range with her.

An ignorant person would consider that childish, thought Roy. As it were, knowing what he knew, he couldn't fault Hawkeye for it. They both had their crosses to bear, and to each their own means of lightening the load.

She was standing in what served as her kitchen: a tiny countertop stove, a sink, and some cabinets. She placed an old kettle on one of the burners, taking a book of matches from underneath the countertop. Roy noted how she didn't ask for his help. He could hardly blame her.

"Make yourself comfortable, sir," said Hawkeye dutifully. "Most of my food is dry goods, I'm afraid, but I have the kettle on the boil."

It was so bizarre, he decided: her knowing what was coming next and making him tea regardless.

She grasped at some meager strands of normalcy in a place with few normal things left.

Roy sat in the chair near Hawkeye's desk. She remained in the kitchen, watching the kettle, as though staring at it would increase the kinetic energy and make it boil faster. Hawkeye clearly didn't feel like making conversation. And if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, neither did Roy.

He scanned her desk instead. There were no baubles or trinkets to leave any insight into her personal life. The desk's only contents were a rotary phone, a collection of ink pens, and reams of paperwork, finished and unfinished, meticulously organized and sorted into their respective cubby holes.

Something caught Roy's eye, a flash of sepia amidst the black and white. It was tucked away, almost hidden underneath inventory lists which Roy, truth be told, had opted to ignore when they sat on his desk yesterday afternoon. He picked up the object, careful not to disturb the pile. It was a photograph, crinkled and splotched from water damage, the edges frayed from the continual touch of fingertips.

It was a photograph of him. And Havoc and Falman, Breda and Fuery, and Hawkeye, standing beside them all. Roy remembered the occasion. It had been during an evacuation drill; they had been sitting on the Eastern Headquarters lawn when Hughes came crashing by and snapped their photo. Roy held it, and he remembered how annoyed Hawkeye had been, her fastidious work routine so rudely interrupted. Havoc had immediately lit up; everyone was grateful for being outside, sick as they were of Havoc's desk smelling like an ashtray. Falman had stood to attention during the entire drill, which amused everyone immensely.

It struck Roy that no one in the photo looked especially happy. Breda seemed bored. Fuery wasn't even looking at the camera, having been distracted by something over his shoulder. Havoc's face was partially obscured by his acrid cigarette smoke. Even Roy looked glum, not particularly pleased with Hughes' snapping a candid or the documents Hawkeye held close to her chest, knowing they would be on his desk as soon as the drill ended and they all drifted back inside.

But it made Roy smile. It was a wonderful photograph. It was them. He held it tightly, willing the image to diffuse into his memory, never wanting to forget the way things were supposed to be.

The kettle started to scream. It drowned out the sound of Hawkeye busying herself with cups and plates and cutlery. Roy glanced over his shoulder, took the rotary on her desk and made the fastest, most desperate phone call of his life.

Hawkeye didn't notice everything, it seemed.

She didn't ask him how he liked his tea; she already knew.

Roy pushed the chair from the desk, but Hawkeye called from the kitchen: "I'll bring it there, sir, hold on."

A pause. She stopped moving around the kitchen. The floorboards ceased creaking. Everything was still.

"Hold on," she said again.

He heard the clatter of the teacup against the dish, the faux china clinking together. The sound grated in his ears like the purr of a machine gun.

Roy got up from his chair and nearly ran into Hawkeye in the kitchen entryway. She pursed her lips, then held the tea cup out to him, practically thrusting it into his face. Her hand shook so violently that tea was sloshing over the edge.

"Lieutenant…"

"Sir," she swallowed; the porcelain clinked, "I have to… I have…"

He rested his hand on hers, lowering her arm and the tea towards the table. Riza almost dropped it, startled by the sudden contact.

"I'm sorry, sir," she whispered.

"Don't." He couldn't bear it. "You have nothing to apologize for, Lieutenant."

"Tell…" Roy thought he heard her hiccup. "Tell that to the men and women in Ishval, sir."

One tear fell. Roy fought the urge to thumb it away.

"I made you," she said shakily. "I surrendered that power. If it weren't for me, none of this… I deserve the pain, sir, but I know it's going to hurt and I'm so afraid…"

Roy Mustang put his other hand on the back of her head, curled his fingers in her hair. He pulled her to his chest. She stiffened at his touch, like a taut muscle, and Roy immediately went to let her go. Then something broke apart, like ice cracking, and Riza rested her head against the front of Roy's uniform. Her hands hung limply at her side. She didn't cry. She released a deep, shuddering sigh. Roy felt it like a heartbeat.

Her hair was scratchy, cut close to her scalp. Her breath was warm. He liked the weight of her against him; she filled an empty space as raw and jagged as an open wound.

"I'm sorry, sir." Her voice was slightly muffled in his jacket.

"Hawkeye?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't apologize again. Please."

They stayed there until the tea grew cold. Roy traced patterns in her hair. Riza breathed into his chest. Warmth diffused between their two tired, broken souls.

A few minutes, an hour, an eternity later, Riza shifted. Her voice was so quiet, it was almost lost in the folds of Roy's uniform:

"You have to let me go, sir."

He didn't want to. He would be so cold without her there.

She smelled like honey and cordite.

"You can't hide from this."

Reluctantly, Roy uncurled his fingers. Riza pulled away from him. They faced each other, and the Flame Alchemist suddenly wanted nothing more than to sleep, to rest. To curl up beside her and breath in the scent of her and sleep forever.

"Are you ready, sir?"

No. "Yes."

"The tub will catch any refuse. It will make clean-up easy."

"Alright."

She nodded, turning towards her tiny bathroom. Roy followed.

The clawed tub was cracked and rusty. Mildew stained the walls. A single naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. Riza removed her shoes and socks, left them at the foot of the toilet. She stepped into the tub, facing the wall, and began to undress.

She removed the silver-trimmed train from her trousers, unbuttoned her uniform jacket until she was in her burgundy turtleneck. She folded the clothes carefully and placed them on the top of the sink, where they wouldn't get dirty. Roy watched the muscles in her back knead together as she lifted her arms over her head, removing her shirt. She let it fall to the floor.

The array looked phosphorescent in the harsh light. It nestled between her shoulder blades, ran from the base of her neck to the small of her back. Moved when she moved. Writhed like fire.

Riza crouched in the tub, resting on her knees, her back to Roy. She asked, "Would you hand me my shirt please, sir?"

He bent to pick it up. It was slightly damp from her sweat.

Then she turned around, her arm extended. Bare from the waist up.

She let him look. He had seen her only once before, in Ishval, on accident, when he didn't dare think about such things. But the bathroom was tiny, and there was nowhere else to look. He thought Riza was beautiful.

He gave her the shirt.

"Thank you." She turned back around, closing the door on those thoughts once again. She stuffed the shirt into her mouth.

Roy pulled on his gloves. The cloth rasped. Scratchy, like her hair.

He knelt by the tub, placed one hand on her shoulder. She shivered. The transmutation array rippled on her back.

"Forgive me, Riza."

Roy Mustang snapped his fingers.

She reeled from him, nearly smacking her head. She pressed her palms hard against the tile to keep herself steady. Roy's grip on her shoulder tightened, and he felt the silent screams spasming through her body, as though she was forcing them down into her chest.

Her flesh popped and bubbled, burned black. Skin crisped around the alchemical symbols. The smell was almost nostalgic.

"Enough," Roy removed his hand, "I've destroyed the peripheries, we can wait to do it again––"

Riza spat out her shirt. She wheeled around in the tub, squeezing his arm until her fingernails bruised his skin.

"You're not finished," she hissed through gritted teeth.

"Riza—"

"Do it!"

Roy swallowed past the vomit burning his throat. He snapped and Riza arced her back, her screams dripping from the corners of her mouth as high, agonized whimpers.

The Flame Alchemist snapped again.

"Please…" she sobbed. Her hands closed to fists and her nails drew blood from her palms. "Roy, please…"

His name slipped out, between harsh gasps of pure, white-hot agony, and he never wanted to hear it again.

His other arm was around her stomach, under her breasts. She slumped forward, slipping into unconsciousness. He hugged her to him, trying to keep her body steady.

He snapped one last time. The sound she made was almost inhuman, something primordial, as old as the concept of suffering. Her flesh boiled under his hand. Blisters burst hot and steaming onto his gloves. The tub ran slick with blood and sweat snd discharge.

She wept, biting into the fabric of his sleeve, digging at her palms as though she could claw the pain away.

"Oh god… Riza…"

He sobbed into her hair. He cradled her in his arms and rocked her back and forth. He considered dashing his head against the tub, rending a hole in his skull and ending it then and there.

But he couldn't leave her.

The first thing Maes did was pull Roy away from her, practically tossing him by the scruff of his collar. She shivered violently, deprived of his heat. Hughes rested one hand on her bare shoulder…

And she flinched. She recoiled from him as if struck.

"Roy… what the hell have you done…"

When Hughes looked up at Roy, the former's face was nearly unrecognizable, twisted out of shape by rage and disbelief and sheer, bloody terror. "Get bandages and saline solution! Now!"

Roy obeyed. His movements were slow and jerky, save for his gloved hands, which trembled so much he dropped the bottle of antiseptic into the sink.

Gloved hands.

Maes Hughes was a genial man, a kind soul, a fierce friend. He was attached at the hip to pictures of his fiancé, and he could hold a conversation until all participants were six feet under the dirt. He hid his razor-sharp intellect beneath a veneer just silly enough for his enemies to mistake him for a fool. It was an error they soon learned to regret.

Despite the keenness lurking under the surface, Hughes rarely indulged his baser instincts, if ever. Even in Ishval, he had made an effort to separate himself from the hatred fueling the flames of war. As a man in intelligence, he knew well to play his cards and his emotions close to the vest, near the pocket where he kept a photograph of Gracia.

But as Maes Hughes looked between Riza Hawkeye's scorched, mutilated body, the clotted blood and hair and meat in the drain, and the Flame Alchemist's ignition gloves, an anger he had never felt before seared the lining of his stomach, burned his throat like battery acid.

It suddenly occurred to him that Riza was the same age as Gracia.

Hughes pulled Hawkeye close, and the smell stung his eyes. He wanted to vomit. He hadn't smelled charred flesh since Ishval, and it something he had never, ever wanted to experience again.

Her back still smoked in places. Her red, raw flesh was hot against his hands. Blisters burst and spit as Maes shifted her, trying to lift her from the tub. Suppuration and blood stained his shirt. Chunks of the second lieutenant's skin fell into the drain.

"Lieutenant… Riza," Maes tried not to think about the mess under his hands. He tried not to think about killing his best friend. "Riza, can you hear me… Riza!"

He heard her, whimpering, the sound lodging in her throat. She didn't have the strength to choke out a sob. Hughes lifted her in his arms. She clutched his shoulder. Her teeth chattered, and she tried to whisper something, but Hughes didn't hear it.

Maes became aware of Roy standing behind him, a roll of bandages, saline solution, and a bottle of isopropyl in hand.

"Bed," was all Hughes managed to say.

Hughes worked diligently, efficiently, channeling his rage into his work. He lay Riza on her side in her cot, her bare back facing him. The IV went into her arm; Hughes rested the saline solution on the windowsill above her head.

Her skin glistened with sweat and weeping blisters. The burns pulsed red and raw and angry. Hughes steeled himself, removed the pillow from its pillow case, dabbed the tip of the fabric in the antiseptic. He murmured an incoherent apology to Hawkeye. Then he pressed the rubbing alcohol to her burns.

Riza made a tortured keening sound, jerking under Hughes' ministrations. Maes kept one hand rested on her tuft of blond hair while he gently cleaned her skin, murmuring nonsense to her. He cleaned the wounds, but some of the red didn't wash away. It spiraled in concentric circles across her back, in pentagrams and recursion arrays…

Maes pressed dressing to the patches of burnt skin, wrapped Hawkeye's abdomen in bandages, lifting her at regular intervals to wind the cloth around her back.

Hughes wrapped her in a blanket. She still shivered, her eyes pressed shut, silent, tearless sobs wracking her whole body.

"Thank… you…" she whispered.

Hughes froze. It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming at them both.

She had not been thanking him.

"I… Riza…"

Hughes had never heard Roy Mustang sound so small and broken. His ignition gloves weren't white any more. They were yellow, and black, and very, very red.

Maes snapped. He grabbed Roy by the shoulders and pushed him against the wall. The Flame Alchemist hung there numbly, his strings cut.

"You piece of shit," hissed Maes.

Roy slumped in his grip. He didn't have anything to say.

"You gonna put this down to the war, huh Roy? Post-traumatic stress? You gonna hide behind your own godforsaken guilt? She's the only one who ever gave a damn about you! And look what you did to her."

Roy's eyes drifted towards her, but his gaze was far away. He was in shock. Hughes didn't care.

"You asked her to follow you… she would have walked over burning coals for you…" Hughes felt hot, angry tears running down his face. His glasses fogged. His voice cracked. "You were supposed to fall in love with her, Roy! You were supposed to marry her and have kids and be just be happy for once in your goddamned miserable life… now look what you've done. Look at what you've done."

Then Roy Mustang began to cry. They were ugly, gasping sobs that stole his breath and made him choke. The Flame Alchemist wept, his shoulders shaking, his body limp under Hughes' grip. His black eyes were awash with tears when he finally looked up at Maes.

Help me.

A chill settled on Hughes' shoulders. Nausea churned his stomach. Thank you, Riza had said. And Roy, looking like as though he had just been asked to do the impossible…

An understanding passed between the two men, a truth that rocked Maes to his core.

"She…" Hughes released his hold on his friend. He retracted his hand as though Roy's clothes had scorched it.

"I'm sorry," Roy sobbed, "I'm so, so sorry…"

Maes turned to the figure on the cot. She had grown stiller, exhaustion overcoming the urge to numb the pain.

Hughes' heart belonged to Gracia, but it was no sin to acknowledge that Riza Hawkeye was strong, intelligent, and exceptionally beautiful. He had long known that Roy was smitten with her, even though Roy didn't know it yet himself. Chalk it up to an investigator's insight, and a husband's instinct. The Flame Alchemist and the Hawk's Eye expressed the bond in the only language they shared: unerring, bloody-minded, stubborn, breathtakingly-fierce loyalty.

The figure on the cot was mutilated in the most horrific way imaginable, and the person who loved her beyond all bounds was the one responsible for it.

Because she had asked him to do it, Hughes realized. Because Roy was a man of his word, and Riza was the woman who held him to it, even when it broke their hearts and their bodies. They were paper people, thin and brittle, bound together by their pain.

What madness, thought Hughes, suddenly feeling very old and very tired. What a fucking mess.

"Roy," Maes managed, "listen to me."

Roy had gone quiet again, his tears spent. He slumped against the wall, dangerously pale. His ignition gloves were in a pile at his feet.

"Roy!"

"What is it, Maes?" His voice was little more than a croak.

"Did she scream?"

His answer didn't surprise Hughes. "No."

"Hospital?"

"No."

"No screaming means no attention, but her neighbors will soon smell the burning. Get out of your uniform blues; throw on one of Hawkeye's trench coats. Find some civvies. She was lighting the stove and a gas canister ruptured. Her shirt caught fire, burning her. We were passing on the street and heard her cry out. I am a doctor; she received the necessary medical attention. Do you understand me?"

He nodded.

"Does she know you phoned me?"

He shook his head. No.

Hughes felt another surge of anger, searing hot like burning magnesium. "I don't give a damn about whatever alchemical crap you potter around with, Roy. I don't pretend to know what the hell that thing is — was — on Riza's back, or why the symbols match those on your gloves, but if you need help, you damn well tell me. You don't call me in the middle of the night before you set a woman on fire. You tell me from the start. You let me help you. You trust me to look after you both, because if I'm not here to stop you, you'll both burn."

Roy had gotten slowly to his feet, teetering from shock and exhaustion. Like Hawkeye, Maes Hughes didn't miss much. He started forward, offering a steadying hand which Roy pointedly ignored.

"You need to rest. You'll keel over at this rate."

A familiar spark flashed in his black eyes, a fleeting glimpse of his old self. "I promised I would stay with her."

"Not if it means killing yourself."

Roy Mustang smiled a small, sad smile. "Maes, I've already died tonight."

He went to Riza, sat on the floor with his back against her cot. The sweep of her bangs brushed the top of his head. Hughes watched them, and he soon struck with the impression that he was intruding on something he wasn't supposed to see.

Her breathing was shallow, but growing steady as she drifted into sleep. Then she was wracked with fresh waves of pain. She curled into herself, and Roy murmured something to her that Maes couldn't hear. Riza shuddered. She wept; her body hurt so much. Every movement was like a fresh lash across her back. Her composure finally broke with the sound of tears hitting the shoulder of Roy Mustang's shirt.

They didn't touch each other. They didn't even hold hands. But Hughes knew he was bearing witness to a scene more intimate than any caress, any kiss: the bloody, raw vulnerability of the strongest people he knew. Helping each other to put the pieces of themselves back together. Helping each other heal.

The neighbors never came. Hughes waited for someone to discover them, three paper people in a house of blood and ashes, but they never did. Perhaps the mind couldn't –– or refused –– to acknowledge such primordial horrors anymore. Perhaps the ancient race memories of fire and burning things stayed submerged in subconscious thought, where they went to be forgotten.

Maes stayed until the predawn sky changed from black to blue, like an off-color bruise. He found another blanket for Roy, and he left the necessary instructions to change Riza's dressings when she stirred from her thin, fitful sleep the next morning.

Hughes made it home before the sun rose. Because he, too, had promises to keep. He would always return to Gracia. And he would always be there for Roy, for Riza, to pick up the pieces they'd left behind. Perhaps his friends were willing to lay down their lives at the drop of a hat, but Maes Hughes didn't allow himself the luxury of dying.

Not while the people he loved still needed him.

In those empty spaces behind the embers, he saw their recursions and tessellations, a chain of paper people, curling like firelighter, and dusting the world in ash.

Falling like rain in the dark.