He woke late in the night, cold and sweaty and grasping for someone he knew wasn't there. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and the familiar and yet unfamiliar room became more visible in the dark and the tears came again. They came again in big wracking coughs that hurt his chest and throat until he again exhausted himself and fell back into a restless sleep filled with nightmares.
He woke again in the early morning to the soft sounds of little feet and a tug at his elbow. Both girls crawled into bed next to him when he pulled the covers up to invite them in.
But this time he lay awake, unable to go back to sleep. He tucked his girls in, wrapping his arms around them to fend off their nightmares.
He stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing patterns on the ceiling that he vaguely remembered from his teenage years. He remembered other endless nights spend staring at this ceiling, though his heart then was never filled with the sadness he felt now. His sleepless nights in this bed had always been due to excitement or because his mind wouldn't stop racing with equations and circles.
But he wasn't thirteen years old anymore, and his teacher's daughter wasn't sleeping soundly in the next room over, and his teacher wasn't creeping quietly down the stairs to hole up in his study with a pot of coffee and his notes.
Instead, he was lying in this bed, holding his two daughters close to him while he listened to their muffled, sleepy cries as they dreamed of gunshots and men in blue taking their mother away in a body bag. His wife's dog lay at his feet, curled in a tight ball and sleeping soundly. His friends downstairs slept in their own beds, beds that had lain empty for decades, sleeping with one ear and eye open as they had learned to do long ago.
He lay awake for hours, watching as the light of the sunrise started to filter through the dusty blinds in the window.
He gave up on sleeping as the pink light of the sunrise fell across his face. Quietly he untangled himself from the blankets and his sleeping daughters, shushing their whimpers of protest and tucking them back into his bed securely before padding to the door. Hayate huffed at the disturbance, but then crawled up the bed to settle himself beside Christina, the youngest of the girls. Roy glanced once more at his girls and smiled at Hayate as he quietly closed the bedroom door behind him.
Roy crept down the hallway as quietly as he could, expertly avoiding the seventh, fifth, and second stair that had always creaked horribly when he was younger. Unfortunately, he was unable to miss the ninth and third stair, which had developed a creak in the years of disuse. He paused at the bottom of the staircase, listening hard to ensure he hadn't woken anyone who was still sleeping. When he hadn't heard anything in several seconds he decided it was safe to continue.
Once in the kitchen, Roy looked through the cupboards until he found the tea kettle and a mug. His mug. The mug that Riza had always given him when he was her father's apprentice. A sandy colored mug with a herd of wild Ishvalan horses running together around it. After a quick cleaning he filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove to boil.
While he waited for the water to boil, he stared out the kitchen window. The pink sunrise was starting to fade into an orange glow that promised that the day would be a hot one. The yard was overgrown with weeds, and the grass was dry and brown from the summer's heat. At the edge of the yard, the forest that had always edged the property was still there, but he couldn't see the entrance to the path that lead to the clearing where he and Riza had spent countless hours.
Roy was pulled from his thoughts by the whispering start of the tea kettle's whistle. He jumped, pulling the kettle off the stove before it began to scream. He poured the hot water into his mug and found a tea bag from the groceries Jean and Kain had bought the night before so he could have a nice cup of tea.
He sat at the table in the dining room and sipped hot tea from his mug while he stared into the kitchen. He had intended to compile list of all the things that needed to be done during the day, but instead found his mind wandering.
"Mr. Mustang!" She squeaked when she saw him at the bottom of the stairs, "I'm sorry, I thought you were still asleep. Would you like some tea? Or toast?"
He blinked sleepily while she jumped out of her chair, hurrying to put the kettle on the stove and bread into the toaster.
"Go ahead and sit down, it'll be ready in a moment."
He nodded dumbly and sat at the seat opposite the one she had just left. He noticed that she had a half eaten piece of toast with strawberry jam and a cup of tea sitting beside a tattered textbook.
"I could have waited you know," He said as she handed him a steaming mug of tea, "Now your toast will be cold."
She shook her head at him, "Strawberry jam or marmalade?"
He sighed, "Strawberry jam."
She nodded and pulled the jam jar out of the fridge.
While she spread jam on his toast, he glanced at her textbook. Amestrian history. It was open to a page that listed all the important battles at the border they shared with Drachma.
Riza placed his toast and jam in front of him and slid back into her seat at the table, burying her nose in the textbook as she took a bite of her own toast.
"History, huh?" He asked conversationally.
"Yes," She murmured, not taking her eyes off of the text.
He opened his mouth to ask another question when her eyes snapped up to meet his.
"Don't you have an alchemy report to be writing?" She asked, eyes boring into him like daggers, "You won't last long here if you slack off. Father doesn't like lazy apprentices."
He shut his mouth and nodded.
Jean Havoc stood in the hallway watching his superior and friend sipping tea from a mug. He could tell from here that Roy's mind wasn't in the present. His heart ached. It was cruel, and yet somehow fitting that they had ended up in the old Hawkeye Manor as a safe house. Like the walls of Riza's childhood home could somehow protect them even when she herself could no longer do so.
Jean smirked ruefully at the thought.