X "Afterglow"

"It's certainly been a while, hasn't it?" Roy mumbled into the top of her head.

She could hear his heart pounding clean through his breastbone, could feel his body trembling slightly against hers in the afterglow. She brushed her fingers along the scar on his chest. If this one had been two inches to the right, he wouldn't have been lying next to her…He'd have been lying next to Maes instead.

"Does it still hurt?" she asked. His doctor had been concerned that his lung might never function correctly again. He'd never taken an invitation to go running with her in the mornings—was he body not up to it anymore?

"Only when I think about it," he replied, pulling away and rolling onto his back. "It healed much slower after you stopped coming to feed me things."

"A punishment for being rude to me, that was."

Riza propped herself up on an elbow. In the dim room she could just make out the details of his face, the marred flesh and empty socket of his left eye. It wasn't disgusting or ugly, particularly—the doctors had done a good job in that respect. The skin flap around it twitched as he blinked.

"If I stop thinking about them and recall everything I've gained in return, I forget I've lost anything at all," he said softly. "I still believe the world is beautiful."

"With one less eye to judge."

He smiled, lazily, raised a hand lovingly to her face. "It doesn't take more than one. Sometimes I think having two makes one overconfident, blind in a way. I'm grateful for every day I have—I carry reminders that these days are precious.

"I don't see how. I've never managed to believe that everything is special in its own way. Some things are, like this…but..."

"Oh, come now."

"There's a certain allowance given to all of us. I was never allowed the time to develop a sense for beauty," she said. "I see what I see. I don't usually take things for much other than face value. You know that."

"What the hell did you see in me that was so special, then?" he demanded incredulously.

"I'm still trying to figure that one out."

"Apparently so am I."

She shook her head as he made faces, out of things to say. What she would have given to be a good conversationalist, sometimes!

He caught her hand, tracing circles into the mattress, and smiled. "You're not thinking of rushing off on me this time? If anyone comes barging in on us I will have a civil suit to file."

"Threats, threats," she said. "Whatever happened to that evidence you were going to present to that committee that just wrapped up their investigation because they ran out of things to go on?"

"I didn't like the looks of them. I think that committee was fluff, something to tell me what I have is unimportant. I'll hold my silence as long as it suits me."

She thought briefly about making some stupid joke about his lack of clothing, but decided it wasn't very good and just sighed.

Roy reached up and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. The room had grown chilly in the spring weather, but he was warm. "You're still beautiful, you know."

What an odd thing to say, to hear said. "Am I?"

He laughed again, and his slick, long hair fell back into his face. It was so long that these days he had to pull about half of it back through a rubber band. It framed his face well, though, so she'd never bothered him about how sloppy it looked. "If you can't judge it, why question it?"

"Because I want to."

"Stubborn to the last," he said, lazy smile still fixed to his face. "Sometimes I think you push yourself so hard for meaning that you pass it by, because you're so convinced you can't see it…and as a result those amazing eyes are too focused to see the big picture."

"What big picture am I supposedly missing?"

He said nothing for a moment, hesitating as he rarely did, twisting smooth strands of her own hair between his fingers. She let him play, wondering…

"It's so hard to know your thoughts," he whispered. "But I want to be sure of what you would think…if I said it was about time we got married."

She shouldn't have been shocked, she thought. It was such an obvious thing, only a formality to their relationship. There was an unspoken assumption that someday…

But "someday" isn't tangible, she thought. "Someday" isn't a promise…but it's all I've ever given him. He deserves more than that from me.

"You deliberately waited until I'd slept with you, didn't you?" she heard herself say. Her self-preservation instinct had unwittingly been triggered.

"Hey now, I wasn't even planning this," he argued back, too playing, but obviously disappointed at her need to joke. He settled back in carefully, innocently. "A day, a week, a month; I'd wait. I've waited. I just… want to move on from here. And I don't want to do it without you."

Riza put forth a massive effort to stop herself from doing further damage. It wasn't the time for petty accusations. Why, for that matter, did she always bother trying to keep life from happening? "Of course I'll marry you," she said, and fell back into his arms. Roy pulled the sheets over her bare shoulders and squeezed her waist, as if he'd never let go. This, here, was the one place she was best kept—and she welcomed the prospect.