A/N: Sorry, sorry, sorry for the long wait. I had a long stretch of writer's block coupled with a total lack of idea on how to transition from the...er...events of last chapter. In addition to that, I'm kind of stunned at how quickly this story has grown and a little daunted by the task of writing for an audience large than about twelve. But I do hope I can live up to your expectations and give you the story I love so much. I've begun the bad habit of writing in class, so you can thank my oblivious teachers for this. You can also thank Amy for her spectacular one-word edit, Alex for screaming and crying and being a plot genius, and all the encouragement from my followers here and on tumblr.


Chapter 8: Cataclysm

cataclysm (n): violent upheaval that brings about a fundamental change.


After a blissful minute spent lying with her in his arms, Riza disentangled her warm limbs from his and set about collecting her clothes.

"But, Riza, what-"

"Sir, we're in the middle of a crisis. As much as I would like to lie around naked with you, that's just not an option at this point."

"But-"

His protestation was cut short as she tossed his shirt, hitting him in the face. He resigned himself to this, and began to pull his uniform back on, sighing loudly.

"You know I can hear you."

"That's the point."

Half-dressed, Roy pulled her to his chest and placed a kiss on her forehead, making sure she was real and not just some sort of daydream. He'd wanted this for longer than he could remember, as far back as time went, as far back as her fierce eyes glaring at him through the door opened just a crack, and his smile at their determination. Just her, the girl who gave her oxygen to let his flames begin.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing."

Just for a moment they stood, indomitable, before his pocketwatch ticked audibly in the silence and reminded them of their responsibilities.

He watched her as she moved, steady and graceful. He watched her check her handguns and her rifle, noticed an expression of comfort on her face with her weapons in hand. But there was something else, wariness in the turn of her head.

He felt it too.

The fear of losing her, after everything, after the epic of two wars, too many funerals, and more paperwork than he could ever bring himself to finish without her help, was inconceivable. The hardest part to understand was that it could happen; it had before. It was circumstance that saved her life, and he powerless to intervene. Riza was bound to him and he to her, by threads of history, loyalty, and whatever sort of convoluted love they had.

"Riza?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You really don't have to call me sir." She bowed her head.

"What did you need?"

"It's just been a long time since I've called you anything but lieutenant."

She glanced up at him, a small smile on her lips, "Roy."

He grinned. Despite the grim layout of the chess piece army, his first name said like that, from Riza herself, was enough to brighten the dark.

Still standing, half undressed, he realised he'd been watching her for about five minutes. It was an old habit. Washing the dishes in her father's house, signing his signature for him in blue ink script – only rarely, when he was so behind it would be impossible to finish alone - on the paperwork mountains, playing with Hayate, walking down hallways. Even when she fought, though that was dangerous to watch, lest he find himself absorbed in the movements of her limbs, the swish of her hair, the ringing shots and brilliant blasts that were so integrally her, and forget to fight himself.

He shook his head to clear it. Fully clothed, he arranged the bedrolls, side by side.

"I'll take first watch," Riza volunteered, replacing her guns in their holsters and laying her rifle down next to her.

"That's alright, I can do it."

She opened her mouth to protest, but Roy shot her a stern look and she abruptly closed it.

"Just let me do it, okay?"

"Okay."

She lay down, curled underneath the thin blanket that clung to the outline of her body. Roy thanked god she wasn't wearing her military jacket. Leaning back against the wall where he sat, he watched as her eyelids slowly lost the battle and closed, a millimetre at a time. Almost sure she'd fallen asleep, he undid the clip she'd replaced in her hair and let it spill over her shoulders like sunlight. The strands slipped through his fingers as he gently combed through.

Riza let out a sigh, turned over, and nestled closer. He simply stared down at her, still stunned.

The main reason he'd been so keen to keep watch was this. He just wanted to look at her. To look at her eyes, with short brown lashes resting on her check. To look at her lips, and remember how he'd kissed them and they'd kissed back. To look at her body, curves and hips and strong shoulders, a body for fighting. To look at her, and see through her skin to the Riza other people forgot. She was an unhappy warrior; all she desired was a collective happiness they might never achieve. As long as they soldiered on, futile though it may seem, every step was a protest against worthless battles and meaningless death.

And Riza, she was the storm that brewed in silence before descending on her prey, the lighting strike that set the earth aflame. Called by necessity to the battlefield, it became her home. It became his too. But watching her as she slept, there was nearly peace in the slow movement of her eyes beneath her eyelids, nearly innocence in the tiny curve of a smile.

Goddammit, he really fucking loved her.

An hour passed, and then another, as Roy stroked her hair. He familiarised himself with her face, a changed terrain now he could run his fingers across her cheek and down the line of her jaw. He knew her well.

He didn't know himself, though. Bullets and flames defined the slow dance between the embers of war. Extinguished, and the scale tipped, with Riza falling when his weight couldn't steady the balance.

He couldn't keep the woman he loved safe without letting all she'd fought for go to waste.

A gunshot shattered the calm veneer of the night.

"Riza! Riza, wake up!" Roy nearly yelled, shaking her shoulder roughly.

Clouded with sleep, her eyes eased slowly then snapped open wide.

"That was the warning shot," he told Riza, pulling her to her to her feet. They each snatched up their rifles and ran for the ladder. The first floor had the door. Unfortunately, that door led out directly to the street, where presumably a vicious enemy stalked their pray, the hawk and the flame.

"Sir, your gloves," Riza said, pulling them from her pocket like an offering.

"Riza, I can't!"

But her steely eyes begged him furiously. They said please, I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't need to. And he knew the hard stare masked fear, so great and tender like a briar crown around her heart. It was his eyes and his heart, too.

Without hesitation, he slipped his hands through the sulphurous wrists and pulled the fingers tight. A banging on the door, and Riza shot three bullets through the wood before it splintered at the hinges and crashed down.

"Sir, get behind me!" she called as three figures clad in black entered the room. With menace in his eyes, the tallest man opened his fist to reveal three lead bullets resting on his automail palm. A titanium limb, mythical but not unheard of. Matted hair obscured his eyes, but a shining red scar disfigured the skin across his face. Ammunition tumbled lazily through his fingers and broke the sluggish moment with a crash.

The men charged Riza and Roy, cornered against the wall. Roy gauged the thrust of the flame, the height and the heat this tiny room could withstand. His mind was crystal, refracting points with acute clarity to the axis of his calculations. Controlled anger stunted the fear.

They would not take her.

The assailants stood too close for a flame attack now, and Roy knew that Riza knew the same. Their tactic, unspoken and understood, was to drive the enemies to the outer reaches of the room, and from the centre, incinerate. Riza aimed and Roy struck bone and sinew with his fists. He knew hand-to-hand combat, as all soldiers were taught, but knew the movement of flames, too. He knew the weaving breadth and flickering limbs landing blows on unprotected skin. And what was he if not fire; that was how he fought.

But as Riza pulled the trigger, Roy noticed uncertainty in the sweep of her arms, and in that faltering residue of sleep their scarred leader snatched her wrist with a sickening crunch. She gasped. Swinging her other arm around, she fired at his chest, but metal on metal clanged again. The realisation struck that their opponents had been employing a strategy of their own: divide and conquer. Subtly they had wrenched apart the General and his Lieutenant. And before she could raise her weapon to his head, he took hold of the gun and crushed it, shaping the metal to the imprint of his closed fist.

Dragged by her wrists to the door as she yelled, "Sir, now might be a good time to use your alchemy!"

Roy, anger to rage and fear to terror, prepared himself for the blaze of ignition as he snapped his fingers for the spark. He reached for the secrets of the array seared across each inch of his brain, but met with blank pages. Rummaging through every thought he'd ever had he searched for the key to the fire. All he could see were the children of the East Tower, blackened and bone. The ruins of the city, scorchmark scars running cavernous rifts through the old glory. Every man and women who had died in the blaze, and the ghosts who haunted Ishval's holy ruins under moonlight.

The savage torment he pretended not to notice and the first night he succumbed to it – the first night of their honoured return, when he gazed out over the city and saw a layered image from the first time he'd walked the streets. And every corpse, every orphan and every widow, every soldier and every priest, came to him that night and screamed. They stole their deathright, their executioner's axe.

His guilt had robbed him of his only armament.

"Sir!" a muffled scream in Riza's voice. Roy saw with horror an arm around her neck, rag held against her nose and mouth, and a sweet smell he recognised vaguely from medical training at the academy.

"Riza!" He snapped furiously, desperately praying for the spark to catch, frantically searching for the formula he'd lived and breathed for more than a decade. "Riza, I can't!"

He watched as her body went limp and her eyes sunk closed.

"RIZA!" he shouted. Again, like some sick nightmare. "No, NO!"

He violently fell upon the enemies blocking his way, fighting with every ounce of strength he had but breaking, screaming, and in his anguish falling to his knees in surrender.