III "Where We Last Left Off"
"You've lost some weight, right?" Why did things like this always come out sounding as though he was some kind of stalker? He couldn't help but notice her body—it kind of came with the description "male." Walking slightly behind her, he could tell she was still a big fan of running. She had the legs for it.
Riza raised a thin blonde eyebrow. "I've dropped some muscle. I don't have time to work out anymore since the facilities aren't provided and I have to pay my own bills and my employer seems to think it's unbecoming of a woman to be tough. That's something you have to worry about on the outside."
"What, like I don't have to worry about my job?"
"You don't have to worry about your boss thinking you're too masculine and shouldn't be paraded about in an assistant's position."
"Whereas before you had to worry about your boss thinking you were too feminine?" "I seriously never believed you gave it a second thought." That was a lie. She had sometimes deliberately provoked him. So she wanted to play that game? Fine.
"It's the first thought that counts."
"You always were a pervert!"
Oops. He tabulated an approximate win score in his head: Riza two hundred twenty-seven, Roy four and a half. Riza always, always won these, even if he was trying. It was probably something that came with the definition of "female."
The conversation itself was just one of the aimless, meaningless, verbally abusive flirting marathons they tended to have these days. In this instance they were headed over to the Hughes' place for dinner, after insistence from Gracia that she finally get to talk to the both of them at the same time.
It was finally starting to get easier to visit, now that Roy had his willing personal shield back. He'd always felt strange coming to see the Hughes, as though he was trying to thwart the old wives' tales about former best friends and unorthodox "charity." His reputation as a stud might well have made him more sensitive, he knew, and it was stupid to dwell on that what way when before Maes' death he'd been invited to dinner regularly. Gracia herself was a kind and responsible woman, as much a sister to Roy as Maes had been a brother.
Alicia, now 5 years old and growing like the weeds she was tumbling around in, spotted the two of them coming up the street and darted inside the house. She returned with her mother, still tow-headed and fragile-looking, in hand.
"We're early," Roy apologized, seeing that she looked a bit harried. "I hope that's not a problem."
"Of course not. I wasn't planning to have dinner ready until later anyway. Come in. Alicia, could you get the phone please?"
Somewhat reluctantly, her daughter went ahead to cut off the ringing noise.
"I wish sometimes Maes could see how much she's grown, but we can't even visit his grave since it's in Central. I don't think she understands much about why we left…but I still find it amazing how well children adapt. Better than I have, anyway." Gracia sighed.
"I think it's probably better to have your family close by," Riza said.
"That's why we moved again, after all. This is our third house in Eastern."
"Mama, it's some guy that says he wants to talk to you about papa's money." Alicia appeared in the sitting room and pointed back to the phone in the hallway. "I told him there were people over and he said I had to get you anyway."
Gracia muttered something probably unkind and excused herself.
"What's going on with the pension?" Roy asked, turning to Riza.
She shook her head. "I remember she said a few weeks ago that there was some kind of stipulationthat she'd never taken care of. The army was threatening under new rules to remove it or some of it…I can't remember which. I told her she should talk to Armstrong about it. He'd know what to do."
"Armstrong? Is he still—oof!" Roy grunted as a forgotten Alicia clambered up into his lap. The girl had a certain lack of knowledge of anatomy that at the moment was a bit frustrating. Riza quickly hid a smile behind her hand, probably thinking it was yet another illustration of that all-encompassing women's revenge.
"Uncle Roy, they're not going to kick us out of our house again, are they?" The girl stuck her face in the older man's, as if challenging him to give an answer she wouldn't like. She was, in fact, a lot like her father in that respect.
"If they tried I'd have a lot to say about it," he told her, maneuvering into a more comfortable position as subtly as possible. He began to rummage around in his pocket for something. "Girls like you need to have money and a house to grow up and go to school and be good people like their parents."
"And eat good too?"
"That, too." Roy pulled three or four sweets from his slacks and stuck them into Alicia's expectant fist. He gave Riza a wink, the effect of which was largely negated because of his patch. "Better go hide those before your mom finds them. And promise not to have any until after dinner?"
"No candy 'til after dinner," she repeated, threw him an amazingly precise salute and dashed off.
"What a way to win the heart of a child," Riza said, tone smacking with irony.
He shrugged, the new scar tissue in the left side of his chest pulling just a little. "I do a lot of things to keep myself in good favor here. The candy's just pocket change."
From the hall Gracia's voice was becoming higher in pitch, and louder too. Riza paused in the middle of a thought and looked to her companion. Roy nodded and got up.
Gracia was trying hard, she really was. Her husband had been the army man, though, and she just as plainly couldn't handle military tactics. She was stammering and unable to make a coherent argument. Roy put a hand on her shoulder and took the earpiece.
"Who is this?"
"Who am I?" the man at the other end said incredulously. "Who are you?"
He settled for the title of Ms. Hughes' Legal Representation.
"I can't be handing policy-sensitive information out to non-military-affiliated parties," the man said, probably reading it from a script. "You'll have to file with the public relations office."
"You are the public relations office you bastard! I want to know why this woman is being denied her dead husband's pension and why I, as a guest in her house, must be denied her company for it!"
"I'm sorry—"
"Who's your superior?"
"I can't—"
The trick was to baffle kids like this into stupidity by not letting their nice little thoughts connect how they had been molded to. He knew exactly who liked to craft his underlings like this, too. "It's Harris, isn't it? He's the only one with the nerve to pull this kind of trick, using scare tactics on this poor woman. Get yourself out of your comfy desk chair and tell the General he's got a phone call from Roy Mustang and if he doesn't accept it he's going to have more trouble than he ever dreamed I could cause."
There was the noise of this very urgently happening. General Harris's scratchy voice came through on the line, sounding skeptical. "Is it really?"
"Nice to know I've still got a voice in the military after all," Roy said, putting as much smugness into his tone as he could possibly afford. He was going to give back whatever he got to these people. He was capable enough. Alicia's face appeared around the corner and he realized that this conversation was rapidly becoming theater.
"Did I mean to imply that, Mister Mustang?"
Oh no, he wasn't going to let that get to him this time. "I'll make this brief, because you know I'm quite capable of turning this into a satisfyingly huge issue: You and I know that the military's had financial troubles. We understand that budget cuts are necessary for survival. But you and I are both aware that a brigadier general's pension is never, ever discontinued when his direct heirs are still alive. There are witnesses that can verify that Hughes died on duty, physical evidence that it was a wrongful death. There's even evidence that a homunculus was responsible, though I know nobody wants to hear that. The investigation is closed…but I'd be incredibly happy to argue legalities with you."
There was a moment of silence as Harris, slightly befuddled, gathered his thoughts. He responded exactly how Roy hoped he would. "I'm sure."
Now they were getting somewhere.