Riza wasn't sure what compelled her to do it, what made her ask. But she woke up one day and felt the uncontrollable desire to do it.
And so she did.
"M-Major Armstrong? I... have a favor to ask. One that can never ever get to the Führer." Riza spoke sternly, closing the door as she entered Alex's office.
"Oh. Uh. Of course Riza. What is it?" Alex asked.
Riza gulped, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, before answering him.
"I'd like any and all files on female soldiers that were raped during the Ishval extermination. I don't care if there's two or a hundred. I want every single one of them."
Alex was genuinely surprised by her random request.
"Hmm... It's been over a decade since Ishval ended, but... all right. It might take me some time to gather them from archives. I can have them ready for you by the end of work hours tomorrow. I would have them sooner, but I'm assuming you don't want anyone else to know of this... odd request?"
"Yes sir. Tomorrow will be fine."
"May I ask why you want these files?" Alex asked.
"No. No you may not. Thank you very much for doing this for me. I'll be by tomorrow afternoon to get them." Riza gave him a curt nod, before turning to leave his office.
"Have a good day." He said kindly.
"Will do." Riza said over her shoulder.
She found herself later that day, sitting outside in the empty backyard, staring down at her empty womb.
When they had found out they were going to have a baby, they'd both been so happy. Nervous and scared over starting their family sooner into their marriage then they originally planned to, but they were thrilled either way.
That happiness went away a week later when the doctor informed them that he couldn't find a heartbeat. The only positive thing about the entire situation is that they hadn't had the chance to tell anyone that Riza was pregnant.
It had been nearly a year and a half since it had happened, and they'd been trying to conceive again for a year now, but so far they hadn't been successful in producing another child.
It was days like this where Riza found her thoughts wondering back to what Kimblee had done to her during Ishval, though she couldn't understand how thinking of her dead unborn child could also make her think of her rape.
Maybe she worried about the child's future had it lived.
If it had been a girl, would she be a rape victim one day like her Mother? Or worse, if it was a boy, would he end up becoming a rapist like Kimblee?
Riza shuddered at the thought. No. She'd make sure that no son of hers- if she was ever blessed with a boy- would ever become a monster.
He'd be as kind and sweet as Alphonse Elric, if not more so.
Every time she thought of Ishval, of him, she always wondered if there were others. Other soldiers he had forced himself onto. Obviously none of them had screamed "Major Kimblee raped me!" to the higher ranking officers since he was never punished for what he had done, but perhaps they'd at least reported the rapes.
The Military, even under Bradley's command, had taken crimes like sexual assault very seriously. Any male solider, regardless of rank, who was caught raping a female solider, was automatically dishonorably discharged, and faced jail time. Death was also a risk for them, depending on how severe the assault was or if there was more then one victim.
But the Military could only do so much if the women wouldn't name their attackers.
That's why Riza has asked Alex for the rape files. She wanted- needed- to see if any of the others had similarities to her own attack.
"What are you thinking about?"
Riza turned and saw Roy standing behind her, a smile on his face.
"Nothing really." She said, smiling as he bent down to kiss her.
"How was work?"
"Boring." He groaned, sitting down next to her. "All it is is paperwork. Remind me why I wanted to be Führer again so badly?"
Riza laughed, ruffling his hair.
"If I had known that ninety eight percent of it was paperwork, I would've spent nearly a decade pushing you to the top instead of the other way around." He said, earning a smack in the head from his wife.
"Ow! What was that for?" He whined.
"For acting like a whiny child." Riza scoffed.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a shower." She said, getting up. When Riza saw him smirk at her, she added the word "Alone."
At noon the day after Riza made her request to Alex, he called her on the phone.
"Riza?" He asked, confirming it was indeed her.
"Yes Alex."
"Good it's you. I've got all the files you asked for, but I've got a question." He spoke.
"What is it?" Riza sighed.
"Do you want all of them or just the unsolved ones?"
Riza thought for a moment. She wanted to see if Kimblee had any other victims, and since he was never punished for any rapes, which meant that the other rapes, assuming she was his only victim, wouldn't have been solved.
"Unsolved, please. Can you tell me how many that is?"
"Roughly sixty case files."
Riza swallowed, fighting back her bile.
Sixty unsolved rapes during the seven years the Military was slaughtering the Ishvallans. That was an average of eight and a half rapes a year.
"O-okay. If they're ready i can come get them now." Riza said, exhaling slowly to try and calm herself.
"They'll be in my office ready in an hour." Alex told her.
"Got it. See you then. Thank you." She said, quickly hanging up the phone before he could respond.
Riza felt sick as she read file after file.
He said if I screamed he'd kill me.
If I told anyone he'd kill my little brother... My mom... My niece... My best friend... my fiancé... My son...
He wanted to have some fun, and that I was the fun.
If I bit him, he'd send me back to my loved ones in pieces.
And then there were the pictures. Cuts to the face, black eyes, bloody lips, and large purple and yellow bruises on their inner thighs.
Out of the twenty case files she had gone through so far, Riza had found seven other women who had extremely similar attacks to her own. The only differences she had found were who Kimblee had threatened to hurt if his victims spoke up.
For the others, he mostly threatened a family member. For her, Kimblee had threatened Roy.
And so far, none of the women held a rank higher then Sergeant.
"Whatcha reading?"
Riza gasped loudly, slamming the file in her hands shut and tossing it into the pile of cases similar to her own.
"It's n-nothing, Roy." She stammered, avoiding his gaze.
Frowning, Roy sunk to his knees on the floor next to her, and picked up one of the discarded files by her. He opened it, and was surprised to see it was a rape case.
"Riza? Does... does this have anything to do with you being attacked in Ishval...?"
Riza felt her throat close up as she stiffened at his question.
"... What?" She asked quietly, turning to him, her eyes wide with shock and fear.
"I know what happened." He mumbled, frowning at her.
"H-how...?" She gasped.
"I accidentally walked into your tent when you were getting dressed one morning. You didn't see me, but I saw the bruises on your legs. You don't need to grow up in a part time brothel to know how a woman can get bruises like that there." He said quietly, looking down at the carpet.
"W-why... why didn't you ever say anything?"
"Figured if you wanted me to know about it, you would say something. And I wasn't about to make you talk about something if you didn't want to." Roy shrugged.
He was expecting Riza to get angry at him. To yell and scream at him. To tell him that she hated him. Instead, she threw her arms around him and sobbed loudly into his shoulder.
"He said if I told anyone he'd kill you." She wailed, feeling his arms wrap around her, pulling her in for a hug.
"Ssh... Riza, it's okay." He cooed, stroking her hair.
"So what exactly is it with all these files?" He asked, kissing the side of her head.
"I needed to know if there were others..." She mumbled quietly.
"And are there?" He asked.
"Seven so far, other then me. But I've only gotten through twenty out of sixty." She said solemnly.
"Do you wanna talk about what happened to you?" Roy asked her. Riza quickly shook her head no.
"Just read some of the files for his other victims. You'll get the gist of it." She sighed.
"Eight victims, most likely more. That many victims, the High Counsel will have no choice but to execute him. Just need a name, Riza." Roy reminded her.
"Won't matter. Can't execute a man who died on the Promised Day." She told him.
"It's ironic really. He's been dead over six years and I still have nightmares about it. I have more issues about that then any other event I experienced in Ishval combined. I'm still too scared to even talk about it with anyone. Rebecca doesn't even know what happened! Over a decade after it happened, and I still can't do any of the things with you that he made me do with him, even though I really want to do them." Riza sighed, pulling away from him, looking down at her lap.
Roy frowned, thinking about how their sex life had changed completely out of nowhere during Ishval.
In the beginning, after they'd been reunited and she had gotten over her initial disappointment over how he was using her Father's research, she'd pounce on him any chance she got.
Sneaking into his tent in the middle of the night, dragging him into an empty house when they were supposed to be working, it didn't matter to her.
There was a chance that one day one or both of them would die, and she wanted to make every moment of free time they got together count.
Once she even pushed him into the showers just to give him a blow job.
"R-Riza! What are you doing? We are gonna get caught!" He gasped quietly, eyes going wide.
"Roy. Stop talking." She cooed, kissing him on the mouth to shut him up before dropping to her knees. She smirked up at him, undoing his belt buckle and unzipping his zipper, before pulling his pants and boxers down to his ankles, grasping his semi hard cock in her hand.
"You're going to get us both discharged. This is way too risky. Anyone could- fuck!- walk in." He groaned when she pumped her hand up and down his length.
"They won't walk in if you stay quiet." She told him, engulfing him in her mouth, bobbing her head up and down, moaning as he ran his fingers through her hair.
A week later he saw the bruises on her thighs, and she never gave him head again. Not that he minded, he much preferred going down on her instead, that was much more enjoyable for both of them in his opinion.
And not only that, but she hadn't allowed him on top of her since the last time they had sex before he had discovered the bruises, and that had been a very intimate position for the two of them.
"I was so scared to say anything about it to you. Scared he'd keep his promise of killing you, or worse, you'd blame me for what happened, since I was so... adventurous before it happened. And this whole time you knew. You might not have known every single detail, but you saw enough to put two and two together." Riza sighed.
"I don't know whether or not I should be relieved or angry that you knew." She scoffed.
"Riza, I love you. Nothing that happened to you is going to change that. But what happened to you isn't your fault." He said, cupping her face in his hands, kissing her on the forehead.
"I know." She said quietly.
"Would... would you like my help going through these?" Roy asked, motioning to the large pile of files Riza hadn't gone through yet.
"If... if you want to. Might as well glance through the similar ones so you know what to look for." Riza informed him, pointing to the neatly stacked pile behind her. "Scary part is, my injuries weren't even that bad compared to theirs. Most of my injuries were psychological." She grimaced, handing him the pile before grabbing one from the untouched stack.
Roy frowned, as he began reading through the files from beginning to end. He was halfway through the third one when he finally spoke up again.
"So I take it he pulled out?" He asked. "Because none of them so far have mentioned him using a condom or requesting any medicine that prevents pregnancy."
"He might've have pulled out for them, but not me." Riza muttered.
"What was so different about you?" Roy asked, scared to know her answer.
"... I was on my period when it happened. While most normal men would be grossed out by that, for him it made him happy. Said he didn't have to worry about pulling out because of it." Riza said, shivering.
"Though to be honest, part of me thinks he wouldn't have pulled out either way." She muttered to herself
"That's sick on more levels then I care to count on." Roy groaned, deciding it best not to comment on the second part of her statement.
"So who knows you requested these files? Which, technically since you retired last year, you having these is illegal." He smirked.
"Call it a perk of being both retired military and the Führer's wife. All I have to do is bat my eyelashes and say pretty please to the right person and I can get any file I want." Riza cackled.
"That's evil." He pouted.
"Not my fault I enjoy watching how your sisters work on the nights we visit them and your Aunt." Riza shrugged.
"You're not going to tell me who gave these to you, are you?" Roy asked, shaking his head.
"Nope." She said, clicking her tongue.
It took three hours for them to go through the remaining forty files. Riza wasn't able to read them all the way through, only reading long enough to see if they were similar to her attack before tossing them into the yes or no pile.
But Roy read it all. Read every word of every file similar to Riza's rape. He wanted to know what she went through, but had no desire to make her talk about it if she didn't want to. So reading the files of her rapists other victims was the closest he'd get until she decided to talk about her own assault.
"Hey Riza? I wasn't... I wasn't friends with this sicko, was I? Because I did have other friends during the war besides you and Hughes." Roy asked.
Riza scoffed loudly. "No. You never gave me the impression that you and him were friends. And if you were friends with him, I want a divorce."
Roy's eyes widened. "You know, in order for me to know if I need to go through with your request of a divorce, I need to know his name." He said quietly, instantly regretting it.
Riza looked at him, and gave him a sad smile, before telling him the one piece of information regarding her rape that she never wanted to tell anyone.
"Kimblee."
His heart dropped to his stomach, as he struggled to suppress his anger. He felt like a failure. He'd tried so hard to keep Riza a safe distance from him during the war, and he had failed the one time it mattered.
"It was Kimb- oh shit. Riza? He didn't see your back did he?" Roy asked in a panic.
"No. He was more concerned with getting straight to the fun part then seeing me completely bare." She said, causing him to exhale in relief.
"I'm... I'm sorry Reez." He said.
"It's okay." Riza told him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she climbed into his lap.
Thirteen woman.
Zolf J Kimblee, also known as the Crimson Alchemist, had raped at least thirteen woman during his time in Ishval, including Riza.
And those were just the ones that reported that they were raped.
"He's responsible for a so many of these files, and we can't even punish the bastard!" Roy snarled angrily.
"Roy. It's late. Let's just go to bed." Riza suggested, stretching her arms as she yawned. "We'll deal with, this, again in the morning."
He nodded in agreement, as they straightened up the files before ascending the stairs to their bedroom for bed.
Only problem was, two hours later, Riza found herself wide awake and unable to sleep. There were too many thoughts racing through her head.
Roy... knew? He knew the whole time that I had been attacked. That I was... raped. He never said anything to me. I mean, he didn't know when I was attacked. It took over a month for the bruises on my thighs to completely go away. He could've seen them at any time.
Riza sat up in bed, looking down at her sleeping husband. He knew that she had been attacked, and yet he still loved her. He didn't think she was tainted by being with another man. He didn't think she was weak for being unable to fight Kimblee off better. It didn't change how he thought of her in the slightest.
The thought made a rush of warmth surge through her body.
"Roy? Psst. Roy? Wake up." Riza said, shaking his shoulder.
"Wha- what is it? What's wrong?" Roy grumbled, sitting up.
"I wanna have sex." Riza told him.
Roy blinked at her rapidly, processing the information. "You woke me up, to have sex? At... one in the morning? Who are you and what have you done with my wife? Because usually it's the other way around." He asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Roy." She groaned, arms crossed.
"Hey hey hey. I'm not complaining. Just stating a fact." He smirked, kissing her and pulling her into his lap.
He wasn't expecting her to flip them over, so that he was on top of her. He pulled away from the kiss, staring at her with wide eyes.
"Are you sure?" Riza bit down on her bottom lip before nodding.
"I mean, there's a chance I'll end up panicking and flipping us back over, but I miss how our sex life used to be before I got attacked. Hell, I'm pretty sure pre-assaulted me would've been more interested in office sex then you are. So since you know what happened for the most part, I don't really have any reason to be... scared. And I know I'm not ready to go completely back to the old days, but I wanna start slow." She said quietly.
"I love you, you know that, right?" He asked her with a smile.
"Yes. And I love you too."
"If I do or say anything that he did, please let me know." He begged, earning a nod from his wife.
Balancing on his knees, he used his hands to push up her nightgown. Riza sat up, helping him remove the article and tossing it to the floor. His head dropped down to her chest, relishing in the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra, his mouth encasing one of her nipples, his tongue swirling around the small pink bud.
Riza moaned loudly, her fingers gripping his hair. Her legs wrapped around him, desperate to get some relief for her throbbing center. But she found herself unable to create any satisfying friction.
Sensing her frustration, Roy took one of his hands and trailed it down to her underwear, slipping inside and stroking her folds.
"Oh fuck." She gasped, arching her back. Roy smirked, his mouth leaving her breast and trailing down her bare stomach, unwrapping her legs from his torso, disappearing under the comforter, before settling between her legs. Smirking, he held down her hips as he placed a kiss against her clothed center. Riza gasped, as he pushed her underwear to the side, stroking her slit with his tongue.
"M-more." She moaned.
Always one to submit to his wife's wishes, he slid her panties down her legs, bending her leg for easier removal, before going back to her pussy, his tongue lapping at her clit.
"Ohh yes!" Riza gasped, laying her legs over his shoulders, moaning as he sunk two of his fingers inside of her.
It had been so long since he'd gone down on her in this position. Over the last ten years, whenever Roy had wanted to have his head between her legs, he would either drop to his knees or she'd sit on his face. But this brought her back to those two weeks they spent in together in her childhood bed, before she enlisted and before he became a State Alchemist.
It was nice, but Riza wanted more. Gripping his hair, she tugged him back up towards her.
"Hey! I was enjoying being down there!" He whined, earning a kiss on the lips. He groaned loudly when her hand slipped into the front of his boxers, gripping his cock and pumping her hand up and down along his length.
"Take off your boxers. Now." Riza begged, her thumb stroking the head of his dick.
She didn't have to tell him twice.
Once his boxers were on the floor, he gripped her knees and spread her legs as wide as they would go, the tip of his member pressed against her folds.
As much as he wanted to enter her in one thrust like he normally did, he knew that if he did that in this position, it would only traumatize her more so.
It'd been nearly eleven years since she'd been in this position, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.
"Roy." Riza whined, arching her hips.
Hissing, Roy gripped his cock and sunk completely into her, moaning as he felt her legs wrap around his hips.
"You okay?" He asked, kissing her neck.
"Mmhmm." She cooed, nodding.
"How do you want it, slow and gentle?" He murmured, pulling out of her and sinking back in.
"No. Hard." She moaned, tightening her legs around him.
Roy slowly pulled out of her before roughly thrusting back into her, giving her no time to recover before repeating the process.
"Oh God!" Riza groaned, her nails scraping down his back. She felt his arms slid under her back, bringing her closer to him as he pounded into her.
"Fucking hell, Riza. You feel so good." Roy grunted, hoping he hadn't directly quoted Kimblee. Based on her moans, it was safe to assume he hadn't.
"Roy. More. P-please." She begged, gasping as she felt his sack hitting against her ass cheeks with each brutal thrust.
Moving one of his hands from behind her back, he trailed his hand down her stomach, before finding her clit, rubbing and pinching it with each trust. His head dropped back down to her chest, his mouth encasing the nipple he had neglected earlier.
"O-oh f-fuck!" Riza cried, her walls clenching around his cock as she came.
It didn't take long for Roy to finish, slamming into her a few more times, gasping and moaning as he released spurt after spurt of cum inside of her. He was still inside her as they recovered from their orgasms, both them panting as be trailed butterfly kisses from her chest up to her neck.
"You okay?" He asked her again, his breath against her neck.
"Yeah, I'm good." She cooed, running her fingers through his hair. Once his member had gone flaccid, he slowly slid out of her, both of them having the same thought as his seed slowly trickled out of her.
Please let it work this time.
Leaning over to grab his boxers, Roy pulled them on before going to their bathroom to grab a rag to clean up the mess. While he was in there, a thought occurred to Riza.
"We should tell the those other women Roy." She called out, leaning over the bed to grab her underwear off the floor.
"Do what?" He asked, not fully hearing what she said.
"We should tell the other women." Riza repeated. "I doubt they know he's been dead all these years. They deserve to know. It's not fair that I'm the only one who knows he's dead." She explained, as he reentered their bedroom.
He was silent as he cleaned her inner thighs with the warm rag, contemplating what she said.
"We might not be able to tell all of them. There's no guarantee that they're all still enlisted or even that they're alive. Once a solider gets discharged, they have no obligation to tell the Military their contact information." He reminded her, tossing the rag into the hamper.
"I know that. But still..." She trailed off.
"On Monday, we'll have whoever gave you those files figure out how to contact them and tell them." Roy yawned, climbing back into bed and wrapping his arm around her waist, pulling her back flush against his chest.
On Monday at eight am, Riza entered Major Alex Louis Armstrong's office with the twelve files containing the names of the the other victims of Kimblee's her and Roy had been able to find the previous Friday night.
The other forty eight files had been taken back to the Archives by the Warrant Officer that now served as Roy's adjacent following her retirement the year before, a decision Riza had made all on her own when she felt worried that the stress that came with her job had caused both the miscarriage and her and Roy's inability to conceive a second time.
It would probably do Riza good to learn the man's name, instead of mentally referring to him as her replacement- never to his face or when he was in earshot of course- but at the time it wasn't on her list of priorities.
She has more important things to be concerned with at the moment.
"Good morning Ms Riza. Where are the rest of the files I gave you?" Alex asked, noticing the much smaller stack in her hands.
"Roy had Warrant Officer, uh..."
"Henries."
"Right, Roy gave them to him to take him back to Archives. I told him over the weekend that you gave them to me, don't worry you're not in trouble. I actually need you to do me one more favor the first chance you get." Riza informed him.
"And that would be what exactly...?"
"I need you to find as many of these women as you possibly can and tell them, in private, that Major Kimblee has been dead since April of 1915." She instructed, placing the files on his desk.
"And what does Kimbl- oh. He was their...?"
"Yes." Riza nodded curtly.
"And how do you know this?" He asked quietly, having a feeling in his gut that he already knew what the answer was.
Her silence told him he was correct.
"I am sorry, for what happened." He said softly.
"It's okay. It's in the past. He's dead and Roy knows, that's all that matters to me. And I would greatly appreciate you keeping this to yourself."
"Of course! I won't tell a soul. Keeping such life altering secrets such as this has been a skill passed down in the Armstrong line for generations." Alex nodded, earning a smile from his former coworker as she turned to leave his office.
"Oh! And one more favor." She added, stopping at the door.
"Yes?"
"For the women you're able to find, see if they know of any others that were attacked by Kimblee that didn't report it. They deserve to know as well."
"Absolutely."
Waving goodbye to the Major, she shut his office door behind her, exhaling as she walked down the hallway towards Roy's office. Riza hoped and prayed that getting this closure would allow her to fully move on with her life.
She wanted the nightmares to be gone and stay gone.
There's a chance that how I portrayed Roy, specifically him knowing about Riza's attack and never mentioning it will anger and upset people. If this is the case, you have my utmost apologies. This isn't something I have ever gone through, whether it being the victim of sexual assault or the romantic partner of one. Because of that, it makes certain aspects of this story... difficult to write.