Chapter 14: Aftermath

Roy woke to the strange sensation of something stirring in his arms. Opening one eye, he looked down to see Riza snuggled against him. It took a few moments to reconcile the scene with his memories and he realized she must have rolled over at some point during the night. He tried to move away but she only pressed her face closer to his chest, smacking her lips sleepily. "Riza," he whispered, trying to sit up. "Riza, wake up."

"Roy?" she murmured, shifting slightly. "What're you doing in my bed?" Her eyes snapped open and she pulled away, frantically snatching at the covers until she realized that her nightgown covered everything.

"This is my bed, actually," he said. "You were cold and upset and you wanted comfort."

Her eyes narrowed. "What kind of comfort?"

"Do you honestly not remember? You walked in, said you were cold, asked if you could stay, and when I said yes, you curled up and fell asleep."

"That's right," she said, looking confused, as though she had just woken from a dream. She tried to sit up and winced. "I hurt worse than I did yesterday."

"Then I'll bring breakfast to you," he offered.

"But I have to go to school."

He fixed her with a stern look. "Not after what happened yesterday. If anyone's going to school, I am. Someone needs to teach those bullies a lesson."

She laughed lightly and he could tell the motion caused her a great deal of pain. "You don't have to do that for me."

"And you didn't have to stand up for me to them either," he said.

"How did you know I was standing up for you? I only told you they were saying rude things about alchemy."

"Lucky guess." He leaned back against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling. "Will you promise me something?"

"What?" she asked.

"That you'll worry about yourself instead of me," he said. "I don't want you getting hurt again, especially not for my sake."

With some effort, she reached up to pat his shoulder. "I promise to be more careful. Thank you for worrying about me and for letting me sleep with you."

Roy's face reddened. "Er, Riza, you might not want to put it that way," he said, certain that if she said it again, it would be a one-way ticket to a particularly painful transmutation at his master's hands no matter how much he tried to explain that she had meant something entirely different.

"Sorry, I'm still a bit tired," she said, blushing as well. "I just meant that it was nice to share a bed with you. I haven't slept that well in ages."

"Neither have I," he admitted, but he supposed it was normal to feel more at ease beside someone he trusted and cared for. After all, he remembered climbing into his aunt's bed during thunderstorms or after waking from a nightmare when he had been small. We're both much older than that, though, he thought, his stomach twisting; for the first time, he felt uncomfortable with the situation and he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood.

With a groan, Riza forced herself to sit up. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"I'm just afraid that we made a mistake," he explained, moving to look out the window at the snow-covered yard. "Are things going to be different between us now?"

"You're an idiot, you know." She got to her feet, wobbling slightly. "It was an issue of practicality, and on top of that, I wasn't myself yesterday." Taking her pillow and blanket, she went to the door. "I needed someone last night and you were there for me, just like you always are. Thank you." She changed her mind about leaving and went to him, standing on her toes to put an arm around his shoulders.

He smiled at her. "Let's go make breakfast."

They went downstairs together, and even though Riza turned down the arm he held out to her, he watched her carefully to make sure she didn't fall. In the kitchen, she sat at the table, wrapped in her blanket, watching as Roy cooked. "If you keep looking at me, you're going to burn the food," she said, a note of amusement in her voice.

"I was just wondering if you'll really be able to take this up to your father," he explained.

"I'm bruised, not dying," she said pointedly, using the table to push herself to her feet. She walked over to the counter and took the tray from Roy. "I can do this; he'll just wonder why I'm not dressed yet."

Once she had left the room, he took their food to the table and started eating. He felt a little guilty about not waiting for her, but he hadn't eaten dinner and the smell only served to remind him how hungry he was. She returned and sank into her chair, bangs falling in front of her eye as she stared down at her plate, picking at the food. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"He was upset with me." She forced herself to scoop a bite of egg into her mouth. "Said it was my own fault and I should learn to keep my mouth shut."

"Then he's an ass," Roy grumbled, though he wasn't surprised, "and you shouldn't listen to him."

"I know. It's just that, if I hadn't said anything, this wouldn't have happened," she said, half-picking, half-stabbing at her eggs.

"And if they hadn't provoked you, you wouldn't have said anything. You may have spoken up, but that didn't give those bullies the right to hurt you. No one has that right," Roy said.

Riza looked up for the first time, and though her lips were still curved downward, there was a hint of a smile in her eyes. "I'm starting to come around to the idea of you as a soldier. This country could use a man like you in its military. Hell, it could use a lot of them, but even if you're the only one, it's still better than nothing." He could still sense a lingering disapproval in her tone, but to his relief, he realized that it was no longer directed at him.

He took his dishes to the sink and began to wash them while Riza finished her meal. "I've never seen this much snow before," he said, looking out the window as he worked.

"You're lucky, then," Riza said, carrying her own plate over. "It's a pain in the ass to walk through, and I have a feeling it's going to get a lot worse before the end of winter."

"So I'm guessing that's a 'no' for sledding and snowball fights and making snowmen."

She elbowed him, the motion gentler than usual due to her injured arm. "Hey, just because I don't want to walk to school in it doesn't mean I can't make the most of it. Although, we should probably wait on those things until I'm feeling better."

"Of course," he said. "I wouldn't want you to get hurt worse."

She grinned. "I can't wait. I've never had a real snowball fight before."

"You'll probably win," he said.

"Probably?"

"Definitely. I meant definitely."

She laughed and put the dishes away. "I'm pleased that you know your place."

They went to the living room where Riza started a fire while Roy went to fill the bucket with water. When he returned, he saw she had spread her schoolwork out beside his alchemy notes as she sat with her chin resting on one knee and flipped the pages of a book. He stretched out on his stomach beside her, looking at his notes to remind himself where he had left off the day before. As he found the passage he had tried to memorize, he felt Riza shifting behind him. "You okay?" he asked.

"Just trying to get comfortable," she said, pulling herself up onto the couch with her right arm and lying on her back.

"Do you want an icepack or something?" he offered.

She stared at him. "As if I want to be colder than I already am."

After a few seconds, they both started laughing, very lightly in Riza's case. "Maybe you should take a hot bath. That always makes me feel better."

She shifted and looked over at him, marking her place on the page with a finger. "I think I'll take your advice once I finish this chapter."

"What are you studying?" he asked.

"Physics."

"If you need any help, let me know. I'm good at physics."

"No need to brag, Mr. Know-It-All-Alchemist. I understand it well enough myself." She continued reading, absentmindedly flipping through the edges of the remaining pages with her thumb.

He turned away, shaking his head to clear it. Focus, Mustang. The words on the page before him were plain instructions but he had grown so accustomed to deciphering and inspecting each bit of text that the task of simply reading felt completely foreign to him now. He glanced up at Riza again but she was completely engrossed in her textbook and didn't seem to notice him. With a heavy sigh, he returned to his own studies.

"If you're bored, I have a whole list of chores I could give you," she said without looking up.

"Who do you think you are, my aunt?" he grumbled, shifting on his elbows and scowling at his book.

She ignored him and began counting on her fingers as she rattled off her suggestions of what he should do, "We need more firewood, the floors should be mopped, there's laundry to be done, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, and—"

Roy threw another paper at her. "Shut up. I'll do your chores later."

Giggling, Riza threw it back. "You might want to be more careful. I think that had notes written on it."

"You're right," he muttered, smoothing out as best he could. "At least it's still readable."

"I'm glad you didn't ruin it. Even if you are being annoying." She closed her book and sat up, stretching.

"Oh, so I'm annoying now, am I?" he teased.

"Very." She nudged his shoulder with her toes, moving him just enough off center to knock him onto his face. "I'll be back soon."

As he watched her leave, Roy thought about the chores she had mentioned and looked at the dwindling fire. With a sigh, he pushed himself up and extinguished the flames before heading upstairs to put on warmer clothes than pajamas. It was snowing again and he paused at the window to watch the flakes drift down to the large, untouched drifts in the backyard. It was beautiful and completely unlike the light snow he had seen the past few years in Central. It melted as soon as it touched the roads there, and even the parks received little more than a light dusting of white. It had coated the city once in his lifetime, but he had been so young he hardly remembered that. He turned away and went downstairs to put on his coat and boots before heading out into the cold.

The falling flakes clung to his hair and he tilted his head back, feeling childish as he stuck his tongue out to catch a few. It didn't matter; no one was watching him and he suspected Riza would do the same anyhow. After a few moments, he fetched the axe from the shed and went to the gate. The metal was cold against his fingers and he wished he had thought to bring gloves. I won't be out for long, he assured himself. The fallen tree he intended to hack up was at the edge of the woods and he kicked the snow off of it before he began his task. When he had finished, he carried the logs to the yard quickly, shutting the gate after the last load. His hands were almost numb by the time he opened the door and stepped into the kitchen.

He was about to put a kettle on when he noticed that Riza was sitting at the table, the teapot already in front of her. "Thank you," she said. "I watched you from the window while I waited for the kettle to boil."

"You're wonderful, Riza," he said as she poured a cup for him. He removed his coat and hung it on the back of his chair before he sat, reaching for the hot tea eagerly.

Riza set it aside and grabbed at his hands. "You'll hurt yourself if you touch something that warm. Your fingers feel like icicles." She rubbed them gently, trying to share her own heat with him. "You should have worn gloves," she chided as she let go of his hands and passed the tea across the table.

"Yeah, I know," he said sheepishly. The steam rising from the cup warmed his face and he took a cautious sip. The liquid burned his tongue but the warmth that spread through his body was worth the pain so he gulped the rest down eagerly. When he finished drinking, Riza took his cup and filled it again.

When the tea was gone, they began to gather the dishes only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, both wondering who it could be. No one came out this way; they both knew that. Carefully, Roy set the cups on the table and went to the door with Riza trailing behind him, still clutching the teapot as though she had forgotten she was holding it. He stopped and took it from her trembling arms and set it on the shelf beside the door as she went to open it. As she undid the locks, she looked at him, her brown eyes so full of worry that he reached out to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly. She opened the door and the snow blew inside as they stared out into the bleak white afternoon.

"It must have been the wind. There's no one there," Roy said, feeling uneasy. Surely they both couldn't have imagined the sound. He looked over at Riza and he was certain it wasn't just the cold making her shiver.

"You don't think," she began, eyes wide, "that someone might have come to find me after the fight?"

"Fight?" he said, confused. "It sounded more like bullying."

"I might have thrown a punch or two," she admitted, looking down sheepishly as though she had meant to keep this from him.

He shut the door quickly, suddenly afraid that Riza might be right. "You should have told me that you hit someone," he chided.

"I didn't think it was important." She let out a nervous, wheezy sort of laugh. "I did give one of the boys a black eye when they let go of me. And I kicked another so hard he cried. That's when I ran."

He reached out and pulled her into a hug which she returned, pressing herself against him as though she wanted to disappear. "I'm proud of you," he said. "That may have been a stupid and reckless thing to do, but it was brave."

"I thought you'd tell me off."

"Don't be an idiot," he said. "If I had been there, I'd have beaten those assholes up too. I'm glad you fought back."

When she pulled away, she was smiling. "Maybe you should come with me next time," she said. "The two of us would be more than a match for them."

He knew she was joking, but nothing sounded more satisfying. For a moment, he imagined the two of them as vigilantes: her with her gun and him with his alchemy, one of his aunt's cigarettes between his teeth. It sounded like something from a film and the idea made him grin. "I look young enough that I could pass for a student if you want to try it sometime."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said. They returned to the kitchen to wash their dishes while the storm raged outside, occasionally rattling the front door and leaving no doubts as to what had caused the disturbance earlier.

"At least we already stocked up on groceries," Roy said once they had finished. "We'll be eating like royalty for a while."

Riza shook her head. "Maybe for a week, but after that we'd be scraping again. We need to make them last."

"Yeah, I know," he said glumly, staring down into the empty sink.

She reached over and patted his shoulder. "But I suppose we can afford to celebrate for one night. What would you like for dinner?"

"I don't know," he said. "It wouldn't be fair to make you bake a cake in your honor."

She grinned. "How about I make dinner and you take care of dessert," she suggested, hopping slightly as she pulled herself up to sit on the counter beside him. She twisted her body and leaned back to press her cheek against the cold glass of the window. Roy looked past her, staring out at the snow; it was falling harder now and had nearly obscured his footprints. By the time they went to bed, there would be no sign that he had been out there, and he was afraid that, by morning, they might not be able to leave at all. He turned his gaze to Riza and smiled slightly; even if the snow completely covered the doors and windows, he couldn't think of anyone he would rather be trapped with.