Thanks for the reviews! I've fixed chapter 3 so it should be readable now.
Chapter Four: Of Fates Entwined
The twenty-third of September passed for Roy with a sense of restless anxiety that had him on his feet for most of the day. The sun had returned at last, bringing with it vivid colors in the leaves along the riverbank. Between each report, he wandered aimlessly back to his staff room. He told himself it was just to see if they had any new leads, but he knew that was far from the full truth. It was Hawkeye's birthday, and in spite of everything, he wanted to be close to her. Something had shifted in their relationship last night, he was almost certain of it. It was the first time they had talked—really talked—since that first day she had arrived in his office. Even if they never spoke like that again, he would treasure that memory, would cling to the hope that something of her faith in him still remained.
Sometime past three, his phone rang at last, and he answered with his heart in his throat. It seemed too good to be true that someone had found Jason Koch already, and it was. On the other end of the line, Hughes didn't bother waiting for Roy to say hello to begin gushing about his upcoming wedding. "Gracia picked out a dress today. She won't even describe it to me, Roy—she says I have to wait. The wedding isn't until November. How am I supposed to wait that long? You are coming, right? You do know when the wedding is, don't you? We're sending out invitations next week. You have to be there, you're my best man."
"Hughes," Roy said in as polite a tone as he could muster after having been bombarded with all of that. "I'll be there. I promise."
The mostly one-sided conversation killed the better part of an hour, and though it was painful in more ways than one to listen to Hughes go over his wedding plans in complete detail and express what should have been his private feelings for the incomparable Gracia Jones, Roy was grateful that it was now late enough to call it a day. He stuffed the completed reports into an envelope and left it in a box for one of the staff sergeants to collect.
Whistling a tune he had heard on some summer evening by the riverside, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and went to fetch his team. With the notable exceptions of Hawkeye and Falman, they looked as bored as he felt.
"I think we've all worked hard enough for today," Roy said, looking over his team with a feeling he could not place. It was something like pride; it was something like affection, though it seemed almost too soon for either. They were still mostly strangers to him, all except for Hawkeye, and she was something worse than a stranger these days. Perhaps after tonight that would start to change. At least, he hoped it would. He had pulled his team together as spring turned to a summer that carried too much of the desert for comfort, and in that time, they had fallen into a routine of working together that told him he had chosen well. For all the time they had spent together, however, they were still far from the team he had hoped they would be when he had set out. A handful of minor cases and a mountain of paperwork weren't enough to bring people together, and what better way to loosen tongues and open hearts than to share a round or three of birthday drinks for one of their own? He certainly couldn't think of any.
They set off, still in their uniforms, for a lively bar on a back street. Somewhere along the way, he noticed they had picked up another soldier: a woman with dark, curly hair who had her arm around Hawkeye's shoulders. So this was the Academy friend she had mentioned a time or two. Hawkeye's Hughes, so to speak. Judging from the woman's demeanor, he didn't think the comparison was far off the mark. She was loud and cheerful and as distinctly un-Hawkeye-ish as Roy could imagine, and as he looked back at Hawkeye once more, he saw a smile in her eyes that did not quite reach her lips.
Shame burned through him as he held open the door to the bar. If Hawkeye, quiet and sensible, took comfort in the company of someone so loud and outgoing, then what right did he have to be so irritated with Hughes? Even if it were just some petty, misplaced jealousy and a determination to martyr himself on the high road, it was unfair of him to give his best friend the cold shoulder for choosing a different path. As the team and its unexpected plus one settled into the establishment's large corner booth, he made a resolution to apologize to Hughes as soon as he got the chance.
Hawkeye settled into the booth, sandwiched between Academy friends, and it left a disquieting feeling in Roy's stomach not to be sitting beside her. While she was tucked into the very middle, where the booth curved around, he was stuck out on the edge next to Fuery.
"A round the best thing you've got on tap and three orders of wings for the table. Put everything on my tab tonight, Meg," Roy said to the waitress with his most charming smile. She was a recent transplant from Central, and he had taken her out for a riverside stroll on a dry July evening. Back in her apartment, she had told him a most fascinating tale about Basque Grand, who, if Meg were to be believed, failed to live up to the name. That had been more than Roy wished to know, and he was relieved that their date was no more than a front, because he had no desire for his own measurements becoming fodder for gossip among the girls of the Eastern Region. There was already enough speculation as it was, and the jokes playing off of his name left high expectations he had no intention of dispelling.
All that aside, he thought, risking a glance at Hawkeye as Meg scurried off, I have no intention of getting into bed with women who call me a hero. Or any women at all. Havoc was chatting animatedly with Hawkeye and the woman whose name Roy didn't know, and he could not help but feel a twinge of jealousy. So far as he knew, Hawkeye had made no such lofty promises. She was free to bed any man she liked, including Havoc, whose rank matched her own. Two golden-haired Amestrian soldiers from the Eastern countryside who met at the Academy and fell in love when he healed her broken heart after Roy had betrayed her. It was the kind of story they put into novels, and just the thought of it made him wish he had ordered a stronger drink to start.
Meg came back with a tray full of mugs and handed them out before dashing back to the kitchen. Roy held his beer up toward the center of the table. "To Riza Hawkeye," he said, a toast that everyone echoed except the birthday girl herself. Roy could not help but notice that she had a slightly reddish tinge to her cheeks as she sipped the foam from above the rim of her mug.
Drinking deeply, Roy attempted to keep his thoughts from straying toward her again. Oh, it was one thing to think about her as his bodyguard or even as a friend, but instead he found himself wondering how many of his team's birthdays he had missed over the summer, and if he would have done something like this for any of the others had he known. He liked to believe that he would have. Havoc and Breda were laughing fit to burst over some private joke and Roy realized they had been at the Academy together too. Of his team, Falman, Fuery, and he himself were all outsiders, and it was past time for him to start filling in the gaps that divided his team.
"I don't believe we've met," he said, turning to the woman on Hawkeye's right.
"The name's Catalina," she said, looking him up and down with eyes that were almost calculating. "I bunked with Riza at the Academy."
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I've heard good things about you, Catalina," Roy said, holding out a hand. When she took it, he thought she was going to crush his bones together. The sensation was unsettling, and it made him wonder how much Hawkeye had told this woman of their shared past.
"Lieutenant Colonel," Fuery piped up from between them, "did you go to the Academy with everyone else?"
Pulling his hand back from Catalina's, Roy shook his head. "No, I went to the Academy in Central, and I dropped out halfway through to become a State Alchemist." He could feel Riza's eyes on him, burning with fully-deserved resentment. He knew it was wrong to stray so close to painful topics on her birthday of all days, and so he excused himself from the conversation by burying his face in his mug.
Breda picked up the gap in the conversation, though thankfully he steered the topic away from alchemy. "It's a shame you weren't there with us. You'd have been in good company."
"He's here now," Havoc chimed in. "And he kept most of us together. Sorry you were left out, Catalina."
"It wasn't just me," Catalina said. "Ross got transferred to Central last month. Isn't that just like men, though? A woman has to be a war hero to keep up in this country." She shook her head in disgust, apparently unaware of Hawkeye's discomfort. Roy was starting to regret suggesting the night out.
To his relief, Meg appeared with the wings and accepted orders for another round of drinks, and the conversation shifted once again, this time to lighter topics.
"Are you going to celebrate with your friends to this weekend, Hawkeye?" Fuery asked.
She shook her head. "Most of my friends are already here," she said. "This is enough for me."
It hurt Roy's heart to think of her spending the weekend by herself, but at least she was here tonight. At least she wasn't spending her birthday alone in some apartment with only the memories of all the birthdays she had spent alone with only her father for company. For a moment, as he caught her eye, he thought she looked as sad as he had ever seen her, but then the moment was gone, and she turned her head toward Havoc to avoid looking at Roy. He gnawed the meat from a chicken wing and the same sauce that coated his fingers seemed to clot in his throat, making it difficult to swallow. He refused to allow himself to consider the other reasons that might have caused him to choke. He washed it down with a swallow of beer and a concentrated effort to put all thoughts of Hawkeye as anything other than a colleague out of his mind. It was easier said than done.
With the second round of drinks sitting empty and a third in hand, Roy was feeling much more comfortable with the whole situation. As he sat back, elbow on the table, rocks rattling around in his glass, he told his team the story of how he had met—and eventually befriended—Maes Hughes. Even though it was a story Hawkeye already knew, she seemed to be listening as intently as the rest of the table. Her cheeks were still flushed, though this time he supposed it was from the alcohol rather than embarrassment. She nudged her lime wedge away from her nose as she tipped her gin and tonic back.
When he had finished, Havoc drained his glass and cleared his throat. "You know how I fell in with these fine people?" he said, throwing one arm around Breda and attempting to put the other around both Hawkeye and Catalina at once. "There it was, first test at the Academy, and I failed. Breda here overheard the lecture I got, and he offered to help me study for the next one. Said he had a good group, and he sure delivered. They carried me through the Academy, especially Breda. We bunked together, so he'd stay up late helping me with homework. Smartest guy you'll ever meet." Havoc gave his three old friends a fond smile before withdrawing his arms to pick up his drink.
Not for the first time, Roy found himself wishing he could have been part of this. Not only to have spent more time with Hawkeye, but to have gotten to know the others as equals rather than as subordinates. It was that barrier, he realized, that made it so much easier for him to think of celebrating Hawkeye's birthday than any of the others. No matter who she was to him now, there would always be a shared history between them where they were not soldiers—not officer and adjunct—but two kids with stars in their eyes lying in the overgrown grass. It was this part of Roy that reminded him with a jolt of the scars and ink that marred Hawkeye's back. Havoc's flirting—if it was flirting—was futile, he realized then. Whether or not Hawkeye returned his feelings, she would never, ever be able to act on them. It would raise too many questions, would place too many suspicions on both of their heads. Whether she still truly believed in his dream or sought only her own redemption, it was not a risk she would be willing to take.
Roy buried his face in his hands for a moment before realizing he was in full view of his entire team. It was not the best moment to reveal weakness, and so he took a steadying gulp of his whiskey instead. Just how much had he cost her without realizing? The thread of their connected lives was too fine to tease apart on a night like this, with laughing companions and a head full of liquor. Their lives had been entwined since the day she had met him on the platform, playing out the story of the crowned serpents that were now embedded in her back.
All the while, the conversation continued around him. Here, Falman made an observation. There, Havoc told a joke. Occasionally, Falman laughed. Whenever she realized someone's eyes were on her, Hawkeye made an effort to look happy. She spoke only when addressed directly, Roy noticed. Even Catalina had to coax her into talking. At least she isn't sitting by herself in an empty apartment, Roy told himself. Riza Hawkeye may have been a quiet and solitary woman, but he knew just how lonely she had been as a child; he knew how much lonelier she must be in this city with all of her friends kept at arm's length. Even if it did not always reach her eyes, at least she was smiling again. It had been so long since he had seen that smile. However many lifetimes of sorrow had stretched between the day he had left her hometown for the last time and the slight upturn of her lips over coffee that morning, he could not say. All he knew was that, as she downed the last of her tonic, he could see the ghost of the young woman he had left behind so very long ago.