Riza Hawkeye
Roy had cleared the staff room before she came in for her appointment. There were only the two of them when she walked up to his desk and saluted.
"Riza Hawkeye, sir."
He frowned at her, sitting behind his desk with hands clasped loosely on top of it, and did not invite her to sit down.
"Despite what you went through in Ishval, you still chose this path?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Riza answered. "I made the decision to wear this uniform of my own free will."
He held her letter with the request for transfer in his left hand, the envelope it had come in still in his right.
"What is your area of expertise?" he asked, looking at one of the pages, as if he didn't already know.
"Guns," she answered. "I like guns. Because they're not like swords and knives. The sense of death doesn't linger on the hands."
Roy's eyes widened and his frown deepened at her words.
"That's just self-deception," he told her. "Are you lying to yourself so that you may continue to soil your hands?"
"Yes, sir," she answered, with the same brutal honesty. "We soldiers should be the only ones with blood on our hands. No one else should have to go through what we did in Ishval. If the world can be expressed through equivalent exchange, as the alchemists claim, then for future generations to be happy, as payment, we must carry corpses on our backs across a river of blood."
As she spoke, Roy clenched his hands together and rested his chin on them. His eyes narrowed, looking not at her, but somewhere else. When she spoke of the river of blood, though, he closed his eyes completely.
She hadn't changed. She was still the same idealistic teenager she had been at her father's grave, when she had asked him, "Can I truly believe that there will be a future in which everyone can live happily?" She still hoped for the happiness of others. But she no longer counted herself among those who could hope for it themselves.
Roy stood up, leaning for a moment on the pages of her letter, spread out on the desk. Then he straightened up and faced her.
"I plan to make you my assistant," he said, standing with his arms behind his back as if he were on the parade grounds, standing at parade rest.
Riza showed some surprise. That would make her second only to him in this office.
"I would like you to watch my back," he continued. "Do you understand? Being entrusted with my back means that you may also shoot me in the back at any time."
The stern look returned to Riza's face, made sterner by the slant of her brows and the grim set of her mouth. Oh, yes. This she understood completely.
"If I ever stray from the correct path, shoot me with your own hands," he went on. "You have that right. Do you accept?"
She looked down for a moment.
Unspoken between them were the words: If I stray again, as I have already, and To whom else should I trust my back, than to the one who trusted me, in vain, with hers?
He was still the same naive cadet she had trusted at her father's grave. Fallen, yes, fallen more horribly than either of them could have imagined on that day. But still, somehow, hopeful that he could make things better than they were now. Not for himself, perhaps, but for those he would protect. And he wanted to protect everyone.
But in one thing, he had lost all naivete and all idealism. He no longer trusted himself.
"Do you accept?" he had asked her.
She closed her eyes and her answer was like a wedding vow. "I do, sir."
"I will follow you into hell if you ask me," she added, knowing full well that he probably would.
Author's Note:
This is just my description of pages 170 to 173 of volume 15 of the manga. All the dialog, except for what I have put in italics, are the words of Arakawa Hiromu sensei.
