The door creaks slightly as it swings shut behind her, and Mustang startles like a rabbit from a gunshot. Dark purple shadows sit under his eyes, worse than she's seen in months; the ghosts may be his, but, God, they scare her, too, and she fears for her country all the more each time she's witness to its aspiring ruler losing resolve.

She's brought him tea in hopes to calm his nerves, not much differently than she does every afternoon. But today, she's waited until the rest of the team has trickled out for the evening. They don't need to share the darker things that trip their fearless leader and remind him how very small a man he really is.

She bends to set the saucer on his desk, but before she can straighten again he grabs her wrist and holds it to his face, and his breath is warm and steady but his tired eyes are closed. Her pulse quickens beneath his lips.

"My hell doesn't have to be yours."

He leaves the words against her skin like a brand, even though he already knows her answer. To anyone else it would be cautionary, a scare tactic meant to protect. But with Riza, it's less a warning than it is a way of marking her as his.

All his. Only his. Invisibly.

"Forgive me," she says; it's a fight to keep her fingertips from skimming his cheek, "but by now I don't think we were ever meant to be separate, in hell or otherwise."

His fingers tighten on her wrist and then release her.

"It might be your funeral, Lieutenant."

"Then so be it."