Disclaimer: I don't own FMA

AN: Keeping it clean(ish) this time around but implied adult situations and alternative universe(or two) are your warnings. Edited 12/8/14 to fix some grammar, spelling and format issues.

In response to a writing challenge to explore an alternative universe scenario where a character can see how they live in two parallel universes and see how a distinct point in time altered the course of their life.

Characters: Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye

Alternative Us

Chapter 1

The Other Side of the Coin

Riza Hawkeyes's eyes opened and she blinked a few times in order to focus on the figure seated a few feet from her bed. When she finally saw him, she felt a smile touch her lips and focused on his handsome face. Roy however seemed worried and his expression didn't change at all as she sat up and looked at him. "What's wrong, what happened?"

"You've been missing for a month." Came the flat reply.

"Missing." She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. The emotionless statement made her close her eyes and evaluate her situation. She hoped that when she opened them again she would be able to keep her mind on what her eyes were seeing and not what her brain wanted to see. Her eyes opened again and she saw his expression was more curious now, then she scanned the dark room and drab walls of the outpost and looked at his dusty and worn uniform. "Oh. It's you."

"Who did you think I was?" Roy Mustang narrowed his eyes at her and watched her body deflate and her shoulders slump in disappointment.

"The other you." She answered and saw him look worried again.

"I think I should get the doctor." He stood and looked at her as her eyes seemed to get a little watery. "You're not making any sense."

She watched him walk out of the room and close the door behind him and then closed her eyes to fight off the tears. Of course he was going to think she was crazy or brain damaged, who the hell would believe any of this? Really it all just seemed like some elaborate fantasy that an injured brain would make up. A month ago she would have never believe that the two of them could be more than just co-workers and yet she knew in her heart that it had all been real. She put her head back down on the pillow and let her mind run back to where she had been happy, happy in the arms of a different Roy Mustang.

Roy looked at the medical file and back up to the doctor standing in front of his desk. "So you can't find anything wrong with Lieutenant Hawkeye?"

"Colonel Mustang," Doctor Melvin Yates paused as the Flame Alchemist's dark eyes tried to stare a hole in his head. "Asking me over and over again is not going to give you a different diagnosis. Lieutenant Hawkeye is in great health and other than being a little confused I can't find anything wrong with her."

"Look again." Roy snapped. "Are there any drugs in her system or perhaps a head injury you overlooked? We found her in the desert, was she dehydrated or delirious? Perhaps bitten by something poisonous?"

"Colonel, if you want to get a second opinion you are welcome to send her to East City however, I would appreciate if you would quit insulting me with these questions. Blood work is perfect, physical exam flawless. Sorry Colonel. Can I return to my actual patients or are you going to require me to stand here for a little while longer so you can berate me and make yourself feel better?"

Roy slapped the folder closed and threw it at him. "You're dismissed."

Yates bent down and picked up the paperwork before leaving. He shook his head. To think a few years earlier this man was the most promising young officer the army had. Oh well, clearly he had screwed up somewhere to be stuck at this outpost waiting for some Ishvalian to get lucky and finally shoot him. When that day came he wasn't going to be too upset to find the jackass's body in a body bag awaiting autopsy. He slammed the door behind him and went back to caring for people who wanted to live.

Roy reached over and picked up an envelope from Central. He knew what it contained but was going to go ahead and open it anyway. He was already pissed off and it would do some good to blow off some steam before visiting Hawkeye again. He grabbed a letter opener and opened the envelope, then placed the letter inside on his desk before reaching for his glove. The transfer request was stamped with a huge red 'Denied', as usual. He slipped his glove on and then proceeded to fold the official paperwork into a paper airplane. He swiveled his chair around and threw the plane out his office window, let it fly about five feet and then snapped his fingers and watched it ignite.

He eyes locked onto the embers as they floated to the ground; the wind toying with them and giving them a little oxygen to fuel the little glowing specks before they hit the wet grass below. It was symbolic of his career, his dreams and his miserable life. How quickly his climb to the top had ended with his career going up in flames the moment his smart ass mouth uttered the words, "Rumor has it the Fuhrer is a Homunculus."

The Fuhrer himself had confirmed it, then told him he was being shipped out to an outpost in Ishval with his most precious asset Lieutenant Hawkeye. Where better to send the Flame Alchemist than an abandoned supply depot in the pit of hell where he had earned his title "Hero of Ishval."? It was a death sentence. Eventually some bitter Ishvalian would finally step up and put a bullet in him, either taking Hawkeye down with him or leaving her to report that she failed to protect her charge. Something that she wouldn't ever forgive herself for. So just with a snap of his fingers, the Fuhrer had eliminated the threat. He could still hear the bastard's smug voice telling him that any attempts to weasel out of his new command would lead to charges of treason and a firing squad for his entire team and everyone who supported him. Thankfully he got the rest of his team transferred away from him before he took up residence out in the desert. Hawkeye however was condemned to stay by his side, watching his downward spiral into depression, alcoholism and probably suicide. The Fuhrer knew how to punish him for trying to push his way to power.

He hadn't given up trying, he knew that he still had some use or he would already be dead. Most days he wished he was dead for disappointing everyone who supported him. He could imagine meeting Hughes again, his best friend showing him the picture of his beloved daughter and asking him why she would never see her Daddy again. Why he gave his life for a cause that Roy threw away with a slip of the tongue. No, he'd keep trying to claw his way back to civilization even if it was just to ensure Hawkeye didn't wither away and die out here with him.

Then a month ago Hawkeye went missing on a routine patrol. It was the day after she had confronted him about his drinking, accusing him of trying to kill himself with alcohol and save the Ishvalians or Bradley the trouble. It was heated and they both said things they shouldn't have. Or maybe things that should have been said ages ago. Like how she regretted every letting him know the secret of flame alchemy and how disappointed she was in him. He figured she finally gave up and went AWOL, sick of looking at the failure he became and the embodiment of their shattered dreams. Granted at that point he was hungover and not thinking clearly. Two days later he was sober and panicked that maybe she had been taken hostage. Angry, he took it up with the nearest Ishvalian elder and threatened to burn him alive. Yes, just a shining example of how far he had fallen.

He took his glove off and threw it over his shoulder onto his desk. Instead of being elated that his friend and devoted subordinate was alive and returned to him, he had sat in her room wondering where the hell she had been. Scared that someone had taken her from him and left him with no answers, a final cruel act to drive him to meet his end. He wasn't expecting her reaction when she finally looked at him again and he was worried that the Riza that came back to him was not the one who left. Why the hell would she be happy to see him after he did nothing but fail her?

"I hate to see you cry." Roy watched her spin around and stare at him. She tried to wipe away her tears to hide them and he handed her a handkerchief to help. "In all these years fighting together I never wanted to see you driven to tears."

"Well now I have a very good reason. You think I'm crazy and I'm back to my own life that I never realized was so empty. I never realized what I was missing out on." Riza thought she could get some peace here in the secluded office with it's cozy fireplace and dusty furniture. Years ago this had been a command center during the war, now it was a place where the new Colonel commanding the run down fort stacked his books and hid his whiskey.

"I thought we had an understanding, that this was going to take time...possibly a lifetime to realize my goals. " He said it as if he still believed in his goals or himself. However it was part of his confident facade that he felt she needed and her tears made him want to be that man again. The Roy Mustang they counted on to lead them out of the darkness, instead of the man lost within his own darkness.

"We're no closer than we were ten years ago." She said. "Did you ever wonder if maybe we made a wrong turn somewhere? That maybe one single moment in our past might have made a difference as to where we are standing right now? That perhaps it would have put you where you so want to be instead of us always worrying about being executed for treason?"

"Where is all this coming from?" Roy asked. That was way too detailed to be a thought provoking start to a conversation.

Riza shook her head and finished wiping her eyes and handed him back his handkerchief. "Forget I said anything."

"I can't." He said recalling the earlier conversation. "Who is the "Other me?"

She sat down in a chair and closed her eyes. "You're going to either think I'm crazy or that I'm fantasizing about you...or both. I'm not going to make things any worse for myself right now. Forget I said anything."

"Why would I think you crazy for fantasizing about me?" He asked and sat down across from her. Somehow he managed to channel that old him, that long gone cocky playboy and smirked at her. "I'm irresistible."

She knew he was trying hard to act like things were normal. To determine the truth, he was going to have to put her at ease and reassure her that he was still the Roy who was her friend and not the self-loathing alcoholic who bit her head off every morning. Oh well, he was and always would be an alchemist and he yearned for truth. So she wasn't going to spare him what she knew was the truth. "There is a parallel time-line to our own, an alternate universe with different versions of us living different lives."

"And that's where you were for a month?" He asked skeptically.

"Yes."

"Visiting another universe?"

"Yup."

Roy sat back and saw it in her face that she believed this to be true, and it intrigued him. Hawkeye wasn't one to read science fiction, she was more the romance novel type so this was hardly a typical fantasy for her. He finally asked what had been bothering him, "So why were you so happy to see the 'other me'?"

She hesitated, telling him could ruin her already undesirable existence here. Then again, what the hell did she have to lose? "We were married, had four kids and you were the leader of our country. I took a bullet for you when someone tried to assassinate you and I died in your arms. That's why I was taken from here, to replace that version of me who sacrificed herself for you. Taken so I could have that life where somehow I did a better job of helping you attain your goals, while also making a happy life for both of us. "

"You're right." He said and sat back in the chair to watch her reaction. "It does sound like you fantasize about me a lot."

She covered her face with her hand and sunk into the chair further.

"How did that happen?" Roy asked seeing her response. Riza really was concerned that by telling him this she was going to make things worse. He wanted to hear more, fantasy or not, if she really believed it plausible than he wanted to know how this other him had managed to not screw up his life. It was something he thought about most nights, where the hell did I go wrong? "What moment put us together?"

She looked at him, his concern was still there but curiosity was starting to take over. "The academy. We went together after you convinced me that I deserved a better life than the one I had with my father. That if I was going to be treated as a family pet and a servant, than I might as well get paid for it and have the military issue me nicer clothes."

"Glad to hear your father was an ass in that world too." Roy said bitterly. He never approved of the way Master Hawkeye treated his daughter or left her to take care of the household and raise herself. Filial piety was a noble concept, but so was proper parenting. "So I got you to leave your father for the military. I'm sure he was thrilled with me."

Riza shrugged. "Other Roy told me that things got heated, but in the end my Father told me that if you were the man I would follow out of his home then it was my burden to determine if you deserved to follow him as the next Flame Alchemist."

"Sounds like him." Roy leaned forward curious as to how she knew all this. "So did you relive your past or read your journal? How did you find out all this about the 'alternative us'?"

"The other Roy is more inclined to share." She responded. "You...he was trying to convince me that the life he was showing me was ours. I asked all the same questions, I had to hear how we ended up with a happily ever after instead of...here."

He nodded. "Continue. I'd love to hear how we dodged the fraternization laws in the academy and didn't get expelled."

"I guess I drug you out of bed one night because your lazy whoring ass skipped out on our study date to go meet up with a girl. You were supposed to help me with Chemistry and you blew me off. We had an exam the next day, an exam I desperately needed to do well on. I went in your dorm room after lights out and woke you up and made you help me with my homework." She replied and trid to not think of the smile on 'other Roy's' face when he told her that memory. It was hard, his smile was something precious and it had been way too long since she saw it from the man in this room with her.

"Oh?" He raised his eyebrows. "So we..."

"No. We didn't." She said. Happy that his mind still had a gutter even if it was clogged with debris. "However you told me it was that night as we snuck out to go study for the next day's test that you suddenly noticed me. That somehow at that moment out in the conservatory that I showed I could be an assertive and surprising girl and that I apparently had a nice ass hiding under my tunic."

"Sounds like me." He smirked. "So I was a slacker who didn't have to try to excel at school or with woman? Not quite how I remember my youth."

"You never had to try, Mustang. You have that brilliance you never have to work for, you excelling at something you slept through was never in question."

"So which version of me are we talking about now?" Roy raised his eyebrows and watched her look away.

She closed her eyes. This was stupid, this was not helping anyone.

"Sorry, continue." He hesitated and then added, "What about us?"

"We started dating and got married after we graduated. " She replied. "Snuck around, met up on weekends at Madam Christmas's bar...you encoded notes to pass to me in class or had Maes deliver them to me. Notes I kept...and I got to read them. The other you was also a little dramatic but very sweet. Back before you lost your innocence in the war. "

He watched her blush a little thinking about it. He was enjoying the story but until he saw her blush he didn't really let it sink in that she was talking about the two of them and a life they lived somewhere else. This wasn't some bedtime story or a romance novel, it was a story about them. "So four kids huh?"

"We waited five years to get started on a family. You came out of the war a hero and with help from a few influential people you became a candidate for President. Still a government controlled by the military, but a few things just slightly different. Bradley was openly criticized for genocide, he wasn't a homunculus just a bigoted man who wanted to blame Ishavlians for the problems in Amestris. The country was reeling from the war they didn't support, they needed a young and impressive individual to restore faith in the government. There you were. You stepped into the role easily, it was like they handed you what you have always been fighting to have."

"We were happy?" He asked trying to picture this life she was telling him about. Something he never considered. They had kids?

"Yeah." She stared into the fireplace and watched the flames dance. "We made all the right moves and we were happy. Until I died saving you and you got lost in alchemy trying to open a hole in the universe."

"That sounds more like me. Defying God to reach across time and space to steal something that isn't mine." He looked at her face. "However...you want to be with him don't you? You want that life, that other me?"

"It was amazing. It was like heaven. All those pictures of us, newspaper clippings, stories from Maes..."

"He's alive?" Roy surprised himself when he heard the excitement in his voice.

Riza nodded. "Just had another baby. Little boy."

"Are you sure this isn't some near death experience? We found you in the desert passed out. Are you sure that this 'heaven' you saw wasn't just that? More plausible than another universe."

"I had a month of debating all this. I don't know. I know that I ended up there in the desert and I thought I was being hunted down. I thought I was in a nightmare, like the ones I usually have about the war. Only to end up in front of you...you with these tears of joy streaking down your face and a kiss..."

He raised his eyebrows as she got quiet. "A kiss?"

"That couldn't be faked. Granted I was flushed with adrenaline from a chase and shocked as hell that you were kissing me...but that kiss made the world stop. I've never felt something like that before, you meant it."

"Then I can do it again."

"What?" Riza looked at his face, his thoughtful expression and that look of confidence in what he was thinking. Something she hadn't seen from him in a while.

"If this is real between us than theoretically there should be the same connection here. Right? That just because we missed an opportunity doesn't mean we lost that forever. So, if nothing happens, maybe you really just have a vivid imagination and a head injury and you can stop moping around. " Finally the part of his brain that made alchemy calculations was running efficiently again and allowing him to process the data and submit a workable hypothesis.

"Why would I want to make myself so miserable by dreaming that up? Especially with you who I haven't thought about like that. You who I can't have that with?"

"We're both getting older. It's something I have to admit I think about too much; Alone, in the middle of nowhere going nowhere. Though, can't say I really thought you'd think of me..." Roy let that trail off and stood up. "So come on, let's see if there is something to this."

Riza tried to pull away as he pulled her to her feet and into him. "No. Not doing this. This is not us!"

"Why, don't want to give up the fantasy?" He whispered. "We've known each other a long time and you're going to tell me that we could have had an amazing life if I only would have taken you to the academy with me and helped you with your homework? Owe it to me to find out, don't you?"

"We don't have that history, another us does."

"Then what are you worried about?" He asked. "I kind of want to see what this earth shattering kiss is like."

"Then you need to lose the love of your life and pull her from another universe to have that again. We don't have that emotion to fuel that..."

"If we are fated to have this, then yes. I just lost you for a month and just got you back from another universe." He pulled her back and reached up to touch her face. Something he had never done before. They had never been this close except in moments of battle when they couldn't be further from this moment.

"Now you really are making me feel like I'm crazy." She tried to pull away from him and he pulled her back.

"Which is why we need to do this to get your head back in order. This is all crazy and quite honestly I need you to be sane to keep me sane while try to get out of here. So...relax and stop fighting me." He was determined now to prove his theory at any cost.

"I accept my insanity but you really don't have an excuse..."

He bent down and pulled her face to meet his, his lips touched hers and she refused to kiss him back. Without removing his lips from hers he said, "Kiss me like you kissed him."

She closed her eyes and put her hands on his cheeks. She wished it was harder to remember what it was like to kiss him, how easy it had been to let him convince her to show what she could have in his life. How she could just step in and take the spot of his dead wife...the better version of her. She opened her eyes and kissed him, just as she had done a few days earlier with a man who looked just like him. A man she really missed more than she wanted to admit.

He reacted to her so quickly and his heart began to race. He was surprised at how she seemed hesitant at first but how quickly she seemed to lose herself in it...and how quickly he countered with his own kiss. One that he didn't think he had in him. All these years of telling himself that it was never a possibility was clearly just a way to keep himself from exploring that possibility.

Riza felt his left arm wrap around her waist as his right hand went behind her head to prevent her from pulling away from him. She took in his scent and it was distinctly different from the Roy who was the father of her children. That Roy played with his kids, gave them alchemy lessons and made them pancakes. His kids burst into his office while he was working to show him their triumphs. He slept on clean sheets beside her and had a distinct smell associated with the aspects of his happy life. Other Roy didn't smell of whiskey, damp wool or a musty cot, he had never had to chase off the stench of despair until he lost her. However they were both incredible kissers and she ignored her olfactory senses and simply concentrated on what his tongue was doing in her mouth. Finally her thoughts slipped away and she concentrated on the present and the Roy Mustang who was currently kissing her for the first time and apparently enjoying it.

"So is it wrong that I kinda hate this version of me who had everything go right for him?" Mustang stared at the fire as they both sat in silence after discovering that a kiss between them wouldn't end the world. No, instead he found out that he clearly wasn't going to be able to write off her stories as delusions tomorrow and that he suddenly had something worth contemplating in his life.

"It was you...but it wasn't you. That version did have things go right for him which made him into a different person than you are." She knew that it wasn't a comforting thing to say, but he found comfort in truth so it really was all she could offer in response.

"A less bitter, more successful man with a great family and a living best friend who saved the world. Yeah, not me. That's for sure." He leaned back in the chair and watched the flames dance in the fireplace. Flames he watched consume his hopes of a transfer this morning, yet here he watched them mimic the torrent of emotions welling up inside of him now.

"He showed me the wedding album and at first I didn't believe any of it. They were just pictures, everything was still just a touch crazy but there were these pictures of you being happy. I wanted that for you, I wanted you to have that life where you could be there with a youthful smile on your face being happy about the life ahead of you. I wanted...to be there with you to be part of that happiness. Maes and his damned pictures, apparent that is something that transcends worlds."

"So how long did it take for you to accept that you wanted the life someone else lived correctly for you?" Wow that sounded bitter. It wasn't her fault she was here, it was his.

"It's something you never think you have to contemplate." She began to cry. "Sitting there in someone else's bed with their pictures and stories of their life, with someone else's husband and someone else's kids...however your mind only sees the people you know. Genetically those are my children. Legally that man was my husband. However...in reality...they weren't. They weren't and aren't mine because I am living the life that other side of the coin chose for me."

"Well I know myself pretty well and if I were the one who opened a hole in the universe to steal you, then I know I'd keep trying until I got to keep you." Roy stared at the fire again, finding comfort in something he could control. "I guess you better figure this all out before it happens."

"Figure out what?" Riza asked, shocked back to reality by his tone of voice. That monotone he used when delivering orders he didn't like or bad news to people he cared for. His way of masking his emotions.

"If you want to cheat and take some dead woman's life, or stay here and fix the shitty one you made." He sighed. Wow he really was a complete asshole these days. He quickly added, "Or rather that I made since I was the one responsible for changing your life. For better...or for worse."

"Do you actually believe me?" Riza asked incredulously.

"Yes. If I had that knowledge, I would have done the same thing. We've seen crazier things than the concept of another universe. " He looked over at her and handed her the handkerchief again. "I've also never seen you like this before and I can't say that I like it. Like you've lost something precious."

"I am questioning everything. Everything!" She felt more tears roll down her cheeks. "I think he's so stricken with grief that he doesn't see anything but a woman who looks like the love he lost. I'm not her, so no matter what pictures and stories...and testaments I hear about "us" it's never going to be that. I'm not that person either, even if I find myself loving that life. It's not mine. I'm questioning everything."

"That's an understatement." Roy mused. "So what yanked you back here? Why could he steal you from me but not keep you for more than a month?"

"God? I don't know." Riza blew her nose and got her crying back under control. "The same reason you can't perform human transmutation I would expect. You try to cheat death and he will make you pay the toll one way or another."

"Want to sleep with me tonight?" Roy turned his head to look at her, anticipating her reaction and knowing he was going to have to show her he was sincere and not being an ass.

She looked at him curious if that was some kind of test or question to evaluate her in some way. However his face told her it was a genuinely simple question. "What?"

"Simple question. I guess I'll rephrase it." He stood up and put his drink down. "Want to come to bed with me and we can see where this goes?"

"That's much worse." She watched him extinguish the fire with a wave of his hand.

"You're right, we've been at a dead end here for a while. Never really saw this as a option for us, but after that kiss...and what you've been telling me I saywhat the hell do we have to lose?" He walked over to stand in front of her as their eyes strained to see each other in the room only lit by a small lamp beside Riza's chair.

"Our jobs?"

"That's really all we have anymore. Is that what we're living for? The promise of a tomorrow that may never come? I'm a little more interested in the past I missed out on."

"It wasn't our past." She watched him stand there above her with an soft look she hadn't seen on his face since they were teenagers. Back when the burdens of their lives didn't weigh them down and haunt them, back when there was a zest for life and desire to test the boundaries. This was the face of a young Roy who wanted to test a theory and see where it took him, not the bitter man who she worked for these days who hated where his decisions had landed him.

"I don't have to compete with him in bed, do I?"

"No but..." She knew what he was asking and even though she had laid beside that Roy listening to him all night, she hadn't allowed it to go farther than a kiss. She laid in his arms and let him tell her how much he loved her and she let him. Now her Roy was here looking to find answers by having sex. They were different men with a different process at times, but she knew Roy was really just looking to find out if they were capable of making love tonight and not just an act of intercourse. He struggled with his emotions too much, in order to make sense of everything he had to eliminate the thought process and proceed with action.

"Stop thinking, you've been thinking too much." He pulled her up into his arms again. "Might not be a love letter but we're a little older now and I think we can figure out a different way of communicating our feelings."

"Yesterday, you would have never considered this."

"Yesterday you were thinking about this with him." Roy pulled her along behind him, noting she was becoming a lot less resistant the closer they got to the door. "So, lets see where this goes. If it's nowhere, at least you're not alone tonight. If it's somewhere...then maybe he's going to have a fight on his hands next time he opens a door to my world."

"This isn't us though..." Riza cautioned, afraid that morning would find them unable to look each other in the eye.

"It hasn't been, but clearly we've more than capable of making this work." He opened the door and let the light of the hall shine on her face. "Clearly the only thing I have to lose is you. So make this easier on me if you decide to leave, let me know there was no chance at a 'could have been'."