Riza Hawkeye, the fuhrer's misty-eyed wife, currently attended to her expected duty of hosting one of the many provincial governors of Amestris. He was a tall, quiet man, much younger than the other governors who stayed at the mansion, but Mrs. Hawkeye did not bat any lashes. She was well-acquainted with young, handsome dignitaries, with the prodigal, with the overachieving; her own husband had trod the same path.

She poured him a cup of tea, delicately, the bright light of midday streaming through the lacy parlor curtains and refracting off of fine china. The governor was polite, for the most part, and patient. Most governors would have demanded the fuhrer's presence by now, spoiled by their previous careers as generals. Amestris' democratic, parliamentary form of government was an improvement, yes, but there were still side effects of militarism.

"You must be quite proud," the governor said, sipping his tea, looking quietly off at Central's skyline, which bloomed from the renewed commercial sector. "Your husband has done wonders."

She flinched involuntarily; she thought of Roy Mustang as sir, as colonel, as Roy, not 'husband.' That title was too intimate, spoke of a relationship that they simply didn't have. They loved each other, but it was a love born from necessity and grief and circumstance. They hardly chose one another, after all. She knew she certainly hadn't.

It was the better decision, diplomatically.

"I wouldn't say I'm proud," she said cautiously, neglecting her own black, unsweetened tea. She glanced at a decadent painting on the wall, admiring the brushwork—anything to distract herself from the personal slant of this conversation. "Any decent man would do what he has. The difference is that he has the intelligence and the capability with which to do it."

"Are you not grateful?" The question was not phrased interrogatively, but to Hawkeye it felt like a slap in the face.

"I am grateful that change has been made," she said. "To commend him or honor him for it is despicable, and not something he would want. Nor would I want it. You see, governor, we are merely tools of the people, and we are paying a grievous debt. If we stop, even once, to congratulate our efforts, it would be an insult to those whose lives we have destroyed in the process."

She took a hesitant ship of her tea, looking off to the side; she wasn't sure where that had come from.

"You've redeemed yourselves," the governor said, ignorance a twinkle in his eye. "Anyone can see that. You've been through hell and back—you deserve a break, you deserve this peace."

To be perfectly honest, she hated it—the attention, the glory, the fame, the nature of the public's fascination with them. The people rallied around them, spoke of their past with admiration and love and forgiveness, as if the death toll numbers were inconsequential compared to the star-crossed affection she and Roy Mustang had found in each other's arms.

Did they not see, or not understand? Behind every statistic, there was a face and a name and a heartbeat. She could remember telling herself that she was not a murderer, not really, because the victims she claimed were often too far to see properly. She could not smell their fear, hear their thoughts as life drained out of them into desert sand; but that had been a lie, because she sought them out.

Stalked them like a bird of prey.

She had carefully monitored the activity during night, knowing that Ishballan children liked to play in the safety of darkness—what better way to pick off a few easy targets? She had looked for areas of high in-and-out traffic, often exposing dens of refugees that Roy could exterminate in oily, smelly bonfires. She remembered those screams, for certain; remembered ripping toys, rings, personal effects from civilian bodies before her colonel burned them alive in tight, dark cement rooms.

Those effects, she kept and sold; some soldiers gave them as gifts to their wives, or girls back home.

She remembered that over time, the revelation of taking a life (a life, a person, a consciousness—someone who loved and were loved just as strongly as she) numbed and cooled into a statistician's awareness. She counted—made a game of it. Laughed. Let's see if I can hit this one in the knee—fifty cenz. Head shot, one hundred cenz.

So, no. She wasn't grateful. She wasn't proud.

And she wasn't going to be looked up to or admired—she could not, would not, tolerate that.

When her husba—colonel finally made his presence known, dressed in a fine suit and spritzed with cologne, she alone took notice of the dark circles beneath his eyes, of the steady back-and-forth of thumb and forefinger. A twitch, a nervous habit.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," Fuhrer Mustang said, taking a seat in front of the governor after the proprieties of handshakes and introductions were over. He didn't make small talk, did not give any excuse for his absence. He was business-like, entirely proper, serious in demeanor. Private.

"It's fine," the governor said. "Your wife makes a fine pot of tea."

Mustang flinched, probably due to the words 'your wife,' but Riza alone (too used to observing fine details from afar) could discern this. They were more alike than was probably healthy, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.