Triumvirate
A Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction by Lady Norbert
Chapter Ten: Hammer and Anvil
Hammer and Anvil: A relatively simple maneuver in which a cavalry force captures a unit of infantry. While two infantry forces are fixed in an engagement of frontal assault, the cavalry maneuvers around the enemy and attacks from behind, sandwiching it into the friendly infantry.
One thing Riza definitely has to do, and preferably soon, is figure out how she feels about Roy.
She still loves him, but she somewhat hates him too. Maybe the two things are not that far removed from one another. Various things tip the scales more clearly in one direction or the other. She's very resentful, unfortunately.
One morning, very early, she wakes and needs air. She unties her tent flap and makes the astonishing discovery of the Flame Alchemist, sitting there, fast asleep against her tent pole. His hair shines darkly in the pre-dawn light; his mouth hangs open slightly, his breathing deep and measured. She wakes him, gently, and he blinks up at her with his inscrutable black eyes, drowsy and unguarded. She realizes instantly what he's been doing, and the fact that he wants to both defend her safety and respect her privacy eases her mind a great deal.
"Have you been doing this every night?" she asks him softly. No, he says. Not every night. But often. Her next question seems natural enough to her: "Why?"
"Because I need you to be okay," he admits. "I wouldn't know what to do...I'd be lost without you."
She swallows a lump in her throat, and gestures for him to come inside the tent. Nothing happens between them - at least, nothing like what happened the last time he saw her as a civilian - but it's enough of something to give her a piece of hope.
Once, and only once, she discusses the subject with Maes.
Riza has grown very fond of Maes, during their weeks together. Sometimes, just for fun, they sit together and trade stories about Roy; she tells him anecdotes from their shared adolescence and he tells her about their antics in the academy. Other times they talk about unrelated topics - Gracia, his wedding plans, Gracia, their educational backgrounds, his family (never hers), Gracia, her time in the academy, and Gracia are frequent subjects of conversation.
But the whatever-it-is that she has with Roy, they discuss just one time.
"So were you two dating?" Maes wants to know.
"Not exactly. We had a date. Once. A few years ago." Of course, that's more than Riza's ever had with any other man, so it's pretty important to her. "I guess we're...something, but I'm not sure what."
"Yeah, you're something, all right," he agrees. "He never told me much about you."
"You said something to that effect when we first met." She'd been hard pressed to hide how much that hurt her feelings.
"No, no, let me explain." Maes shook his head. "Roy told me once that a soldier shouldn't talk too much about the people he loves most, because it's dangerous. I can't seem to help it, with Gracia, but still. Every time I think about him telling me that, I think about you and how he wouldn't talk about you. And I think, you must be the most important thing in the world for him, because he wants so much to keep you safe."
She really is very fond of Maes.
Riza doesn't know what exactly prompts the Fuhrer to decide that the war in Ishval has been won.
As exterminations go, it hasn't been a complete success. She knows there are Ishvalans out there; she's seen them, from time to time, through her scope. It's her own quiet rebellion that she allows them to live, as long as they don't come near the camp - which, as far as that goes, is pretty much the last place they want to be anyway. She won't take lives if she doesn't have to do it, and technically, her orders are to shoot anything that poses an immediate threat. Since they don't, she quietly pretends that they aren't there.
It's not much, but it's the best she can do.
But in spite of her own private evidence to the contrary, Fuhrer Bradley announces that they have achieved their objectives and that the war is over. She barely knows how to react to this information, and she realizes that part of her shock stems from the fact that in a way, she didn't expect to be going home. She didn't really think she was ever going to survive long enough. And now that she has, she doesn't know quite what she's going to do with the rest of her life.
She finds an Ishvalan child's body by the side of the road.
Most of the casualties, from both sides, have been taken away. Where they go, to whom, she neither knows nor wants to know. So to find this random child, this unknown boy, is strange. How he died is a mystery; he doesn't seem especially injured, and if she didn't know better she might have thought he was merely asleep. He looks peaceful, which is perhaps the strangest part of all.
No one else is likely to want to do anything about the body, and Riza realizes it's up to her to extend to him some kind of respect, some dignity. She has no shovel, so she hollows out a grave in the dirt with her bare hands, and uses a scrap of lumber for a headstone. She wraps the boy in a blanket and lowers him carefully.
It's as she is patting dirt into place on the grave that a shadow falls on her, and she hears Roy's voice asking, gently, if it's a comrade she's burying. She answers him in a quiet voice, her body shaking.
"Let's go back," he says as she finishes. "You'll be left behind; the war is over."
"It's not over inside me." It's as close as she can let herself get to raging at him. "It will never be over. I trusted you... I gave you my father's research..."
My father's research.
The secrets of flame alchemy remain encoded on her skin. If it ever becomes known what she carries, her life may well be forfeit. More than that, she just wants it gone. She wants to be free.
"I have a favor to ask of you, Mustang." She hears him utter the tiniest gasp; she has never, in the whole of their acquaintance, addressed him in that way. She never will again, either. But right now she's too emotional for niceties. "I want you to burn the array off of my back. Obliterate it."
"How could I ever do such a thing?"
"You're the only one who can do it!" She's angry, but also pleading. "I need to be released from this burden... I need to be set free from flame alchemy and from my father. Let me be just Riza Hawkeye. Please," she says, and now she looks at him. "Please."
His hands, ungloved, clench into fists. "All right," he says at last, his voice full of pain. "I'll...I'll leave as little trace as I can."
"Thank you."
They do it that night, before either of them can be sent anywhere. Alone, in her tent, she disrobes before him once again. She stuffs her cloak into her mouth to muffle the screams that she knows will come. He partially disrobes as well, perhaps partly in some kind of gesture of solidarity, but she thinks it's probably more to do with the heat he will generate in such a small and enclosed space.
He tries to be merciful. He has a numbing agent, some helpful cream or other that was given to him by a coroner. But she doesn't want to be numb. She wants to feel this, because if she feels the pain it will prove that she really is still alive; she's had plenty of cause to doubt that in the course of the war. Reluctantly, he lets her have her own way.
He can't bring himself to burn it all, so she consents to allow him to just burn the most significant portions of the array, the parts that would be hardest to replicate and which hold the most vital pieces of information. She lies on her stomach, cloak clenched between her teeth, her body seizing up again and again in pain and terror.
"No more," he says finally. "I've - I've burnt off the worst of it. No more, please."
She looks over, eyes streaming, to where he has sunk down to sit on the floor of her tent. One hand is pressed to his face, and his shoulders are trembling. He is weeping, though silently. They have known each other for years, and she has never seen him cry. Not until now. Now, when he has inflicted suffering - again - on her.
And now she knows it for sure. Even if he didn't say it, even if he never says it, Roy loves her.
Their lives, she quickly understands, are never going to be quite right. They will forever lean back to back, too weak to stand alone but strong enough to be each other's strength. There will never be another man, for Riza; there will never be another woman, for Roy. Not one who means what they mean to one another. She will follow him to the ends of the earth if she must, but make no mistake, they have to be together. It's the only way either one of them is going to survive.
The resentment is gone. It falls to the ground with Roy's tears and disappears into the dirt as quickly as they do. She clutches the cloak to her chest, keeping her back exposed to let her fresh injuries breathe, and leaves the cot to sit beside him. After a moment, she takes his hand, and he pulls her close and buries his face into her shoulder. He mumbles an apology, and she touches his hair. She thinks he might understand... and if he doesn't, he will. She will make sure he understands. He is forgiven.