A/N: If you didn't see the edited A/N on the last chap, I accidentally posted chap 1 without it's final paragraph :P so (I don't usually do this) I'm reproducing it here at the beginning of chap 2 in case you missed it. sorry about that. Also sorry the interval was so long. I keep trying to delay posting in the hope that I'll write chapter 5, but it hasn't happened yet. Also here's a HUGE thanks to my wonderful Beta, lolliethegeek! Thank you!
"Roy." She only stopped him when he had reached the door. "There's one more thing… My father's research notes." The word seemed almost to frighten her. They were the last vestiges of her father's control. Roy thought she was free of him, but she feared she might never be.
"We don't need to talk about those now if you don't want to, Riza." Roy turned in the door way.
"I want to." Riza stood, and all trace of tears were banished as he saw her silhouette now against the bright window.
"Alright." He was back beside her in two strides, the tea tray still between them. Riza swallowed nervously.
"What would you do if you had them?" She tried to keep herself from playing with the collar of her shirt.
Roy's response was fully expected and nearly automatic. "I would study them as best I could, to continue the study that first brought me here. If I could master flame alchemy I would apply for the State Alchemist test just like I said I would." Roy was in what Riza called 'mission mode'; a confidence that came over him when talking about the big picture he kept in his head. The tone brought her an unexplained calm, his confidence contagious, but it faltered as he ended. "I know your father said-"
"It's alright." She cut him off. "But…" her own confidence waivered now, her own words, though unfulfilled, tasting like betrayal. "What would you do without them?"
Roy took much longer to answer this time. His gaze seemed stuck for a time on the tea try before him and the uneaten biscuits there. "I suppose…" he began at length, shifting his weight uncomfortably, but his confidence returned as quickly as he could manage "If you'd let me, I'd still stay here until my orders came. Then I would follow my duties as a soldier, just like anyone else. Alchemist or not, I told you when I left, I want to make a difference."
He had told her, she remembered, in the days and weeks before he left for the academy. And again as they stood before her father's freshly covered grave. He wanted to make a difference, a real difference, in the lives of others. He wanted to protect people, help people. And he thought the military was the best way. The military of Amestris was far more than border patrol. The country had been under Martial Law for as long as anyone could remember, and these days the military were also the peace keepers, the policemen and women, the civil servants and public ministers. She knew they were the people that made the difference Roy needed to be. But they were also the military, and all that that entailed. His words rang in her head now, 'Alchemy should be used for the people'.
Riza sighed. He was determined. She supposed that was good, but it was even more frustrating. "You've told me all about the military, Roy" She walked past him now, sitting on the edge of her bed with her eyes still trained on the man before her as he turned to face her. "But there's something I've been meaning to ask you for a long time."
"Yes?" It was a wonder he did not slip 'ma'am' into the end. Although he was the officer in the room as well as her elder she almost felt as if he were addressing a higher-up.
Riza looked him over for a long while, trying to determine the answer before she asked. "Why did you ever want to learn flame alchemy in the first place?" She tilted her head, as if in silent protest to his rigid demeanor. It seemed to do the trick, as Roy abandon his academy-ingrained passive face.
"May I?" he gestured with the tray in his hands to the spot next to her on the edge of the bed and came to sit down as she nodded him over, placing the empty teapot to the side. He took a moment longer to consider, took a deep breath, and then looked Riza in the eye. "Because" he said seriously "Your father could have been a great man." It was far too soon to be speaking this way of the dead and Roy knew it. He knew that Riza would not cry again, she was not that kind of girl, but he knew he was bringing up the sorest subject he could at the worst possible time. "His alchemy was groundbreaking, unbelievable." It seemed odd to speak of him in the past-tense. "If he had done anything, military or not, to help others, he could have done so much."
Riza was biting her lip now, and Roy was fast reassessing whether or not he thought she might cry. He tried to change the subject. "I never really knew my parents, I barely remember them." he looked down at his hands and Riza looked up from hers "But they were alchemists, and I don't know, I've always been interested. I know you're probably tired of hearing it, from me and from him," Roy did not have to say who he was. "But the laws of alchemy are more than science, they are… truths about the world. Anyway, I wanted to learn, and I wanted to do something with it. I thought with flame alchemy I could…"
"Change the world." Riza supplied quietly. He could do everything her father never did.
He gave her a grim smile. "Yes. That's the idea."
"But fire… it's destruction. It's..." Riza could not find the words. She had spent her whole life watching what fire could do, and what it did was consume. It burned and ate away and turned all it touched to ash. "Death" she whispered, and shivered as if her father's ghost had physically passed by.
"But it doesn't have to be." Roy replied, and she could hear the spark of real passion in his voice. "Besides, that's the way your father saw the military – death and destruction. But it's not just that, it's protection, too. It's defending homes and chasing justice." Roy was as excited as the day he left for the academy "There are some real monsters in this world. And sometimes it takes an army to fight them. But a fire, if it could be controlled, might do just the trick. And sending in a fire doesn't have to cost good men their lives."
Riza nodded, but he could tell that none of his imagined stratagems or applications would convince her. "But perhaps I'm wrong." He stood to his feet, and Riza's eyes followed him up. "Perhaps your father's right, and the military is no place for such power. If that's the case, I'll do without. If the academy taught me anything it's that I'm just one human being, and no matter how much I study, no matter how much I train and learn, there's only so much one person can do. But I'll do it – even if your father is right, even if I'm left to die like trash. I have to try." Roy seemed now more like a trained military officer than she had yet seen him, and yet looked for all the world like the little boy who had come to live with them so long ago.
Riza had heard quite enough. When they spoke before at her father's grave he had said much the same. Even then the very suggestion of his death, and such a death, made her reel. She did not know if she could believe Roy's dreams of making the world a better place, or of happy endings. But she saw now that no matter what choice she made Roy was set on his course, and she knew it was a dangerous one.
Riza stood next to him, looking only slightly up to meet his eyes. His gaze met hers steadily, withholding neither secrets nor expectations, yet she looked at him like he was a puzzle she was just beginning to understand. He stood there and watched her, as if awaiting her command. As if there was more to be said, but he knew no more what it was than she.
Riza glanced around the room, noting that behind her the sun had surely slipped below the horizon while they spoke, although she had only just noticed the golden light that now cast long shadows before her. The dying rays lit the room like an unwavering flame, she could not escape the image even now.
"It's been a long day." Riza said.
"I understand." Roy nodded in response.
"I think I'm going to take a shower now, Mr. Mustang." It was the first time she had called him thus since her father's death.
"Of course," Roy at once took the hint to remove himself from the area. He distinctly hoped that she would continue calling him by his first name and not his last, but he made no comment on the matter as he left her alone with her thoughts.