Maria looked up from the piece of toilet paper she had been shredding into little squares for the past ten minutes to see a very flushed Denny bundle through the door, followed by Riza, her icy stare for which she was so well known boring into him.
"Maria!" he panted, his blonde hair falling unceremoniously across his brow. "What the hell is going on?"
Maria took a deep breath, and told him. To her surprise, his face lit up, aglow with what seemed to be pride.
"That's great news!" he exclaimed, grabbing her arms and pulling her into a bear hug. Riza coughed from the doorway. "Um, I mean, that's…terrible." He looked to Riza, his face beaming with joy, looking for approval for his sudden turn of phrase.
Maria had to suppress a laugh; Riza's eyebrows had shot up into her fringe, and the corners of her mouth had twitched into a smile. She was sure she had imagined it, however, as the colonel quickly shut the door behind her, her eyes glinting with a plan.
"This is what you are going to do. Denny, you will leave this bathroom right now. Act like nothing has happened; if people ask why you were in here, tell them Colonel Hawkeye sent you in to check on Ross, who is violently ill and must not be approached."
Denny nodded, and left the bathroom quickly, furtively checking both ways before shutting the door.
Once he had gone, Riza turned to Maria, and Maria fully appreciated how powerful a woman Riza could be. Her amber eyes had a steely shine to them, and her hands gripped Maria's shoulders tightly.
"You have to quit the military."
"What?" Maria was shocked. Riza, Riza Hawkeye, was telling her to run away, run from everything she worked for. "I can't, Riza, I just can't – "
Riza slammed her fist into the sink.
"God damn it, Maria, do you think I like telling you this? You have no other choice! If you leave now, you stand a chance of fooling the tribunal into thinking you fell pregnant outside of the military! They can't prove it, and they couldn't touch you or your baby! I'm telling you this for your own damn good!"
Maria shook. She only saw the fierce protective side of Riza when she was defending the major general from his attackers and his personal demons.
"Look," Riza said, and some softness had returned to her voice, "if you leave now, I can help you and support you far more easily than if you stay and get discovered. You're going to start showing soon," and her eyes drifted to Maria's stomach, which Maria placed her hands on instinctively, "and then you will be in far, far more trouble than you can even fathom."
Maria understood Riza perfectly, yet she wasn't sure she could do it. Leave her beloved job, what she had worked so hard for, all her achievements, all her dreams. Everything she did seemed to centre around the military; she worked so much harder than her peers (and definitely, she thought wryly, harder than her slacker husband.)
And yet…as her hands rested on her stomach, she thought back to her childhood, when her sister placed a dishcloth on her head, and they played weddings and families, and that was all the future held for them. But her sister's future ended with the cough that had claimed her, a few months after Maria had left to train. Her letters had simply stopped, just after Maria had written for the millionth time about the young blonde boy that sat next to her during class and slipped her love notes; she even sent her one to read. Back then, Maria still dreamed of someone to sweep her off her feet, and they wrote back and forth about the possibilities she would find in Central.
When the letters stopped, Maria assumed that the postal service, notoriously bad, had lost them. Her sister never once mentioned that she was slowly dying, struggling to write as the cough stopped her hands staying steady and blood stained her paper. Her last letter, kept in an ornate box with a number of childhood keepsakes, had a tiny postscript telling Maria that her throat was troubling her slightly but it was nothing to worry about.
Maria only found out when her parents came to take her home and her sister didn't rush from the train to greet her. It had been a month since her last letter. Her parents had arrived in Central a week after her death; they were coming to take her to the funeral.
She lost herself in her work, ignoring Denny for almost a year. Her co-workers told her constantly that Denny adored her, doted on her, but she couldn't allow herself to fall for him. That was their dream.
Finally, after she had returned from Xing, and he had greeted her so enthusiastically, so grateful to have her back, she had relented, slowly returning his love until it was completely irrevocable.
Yet the idea of leaving what she had built up, on her own terms, and fulfilling the dreams they were meant to have shared terrified her. Her baby was meant to have an aunt, a co-conspirator against her, someone to confide secrets too painful for her own ears, and she wasn't able to give them that. All she had to give was herself, and that was in no way enough.
"Riza," she mumbled, momentarily surprised at how small her voice sounded.
Riza's tough gaze met her own, and her eyes crinkled slightly around the edges. With a gentleness that Maria never thought possible from the Hawk, she pulled her subordinate close to her, and embraced her, a hand stroking through her short hair.
"Whatever you're thinking, Maria," Riza whispered in Maria's ear, "don't. You are going to be a great mother."
Not to Riza's surprise, Maria burst into hot tears, collapsing onto her shoulders and pulling her closer. Riza held her as tight as she could, her hand unconsciously mimicking what her father did when she used to cry.
Or at least, when he noticed that she was crying.
"So long as you're there for your baby," Riza told the wall in front of her, "there is nothing they will blame you for."
Riza's eyes began to tear, and she fought them back with the inner strength she had cultivated over years of hardship. Only Roy knew about her turbulent relationship with her father, and it was staying that way.
She still remembered the last time she cried in front of her father. At 17 years old, he had called her into his study, and told her to lie face down on the table. Once there, he proceeded to ink his research onto her back, with the quill she had always coveted. A second later, she had screamed, as her father placed two hands on her and burned the marks into her skin. It took him an hour to be happy with his work. Once finished, he had looked straight into her scared eyes, told her she was too old for such nonsense, and left the room, saying over his shoulder how he needed to discuss his progress with Mustang. His death came two weeks afterwards.
Riza had visited that house only once since she had left it. Roy had insisted on coming with her. He had been so angry that he had reduced the desk to cinders.
Riza pushed Maria back, holding her out at arms length.
"Maria, look at me – look at me."
Maria looked up, her eyes and nose running.
"Will you be there for your child?"
"Of course."
Riza smiled, sadly.
"Then I promise you, you have nothing to worry about. You are a vibrant, strong, amazing woman, and that child has got so much to learn from you. Certainly more so than Denny."
Maria snorted through her tears, before reaching into a stall to tear off some tissue paper.
"He is useless sometimes," she conceded through blows, "but I think that's why I love him so much."
She drew herself up to full height.
"I am going to hand in my notice now."
Riza started.
"Now?"
"Yes, now."
Riza was a little taken aback by Maria's sudden change of heart. Still, she reasoned, she must know what she needs to do.
