Spoilers for the end of the series, kiddies, so no reading if you havn't seen those last couple of episodes! Also, apologies to accuracy Nazis, I can't remember if I added the eye patch in there anywhere. If I didn't, sorry! .
The summer sun shone hotly through the office window, warming the back of the officer that lay sprawled over his desk, piled high with documents waiting to be looked over and signed. He could be heard snoring, the pages of a particularly important report rustling with the man's dozy breathe upon its surface.
The office door opened, the blonde Riza Hawkeye stepping into the room. Her eyes gaze fell upon the sleeping officer, and she sighed. Marching to the middle of the room, she took a deep breath.
"Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye reporting, Brigadier General Sir!" she bellowed, startling the napping man into action. He bolted upright, grabbing his pen and a random sheet of paper in a frenzy, looking up to Hawkeye as if he had just finished concentrating.
"Ah, Riza," he said, voice slightly slurred from the effects of a quick awakening, "What do you have for me?"
"Sir," she began, advancing to the front of the desk, "Earlier you said you wanted to see me at the end of the day. Work is over."
The Brigadier General Roy Mustang furrowed his brow in thought for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes, I did. I was wondering if…" Damn, he thought, I hadn't gotten this far!
"If what, Sir?" Hawkeye asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"I…'ve grown out of one of my good shirts and wanted to know if you'd help me pick out a new one." Damnit Mustang, that's the worst line you've ever come up with! Stupid, stupid-
"Naturally, Sir," the woman replied, a faint smile curving her lips, "I'd just need to go home and get changed."
"Of course. I will pick you up at six o' clock sharp!" Roy said, almost shocked that his ploy actually worked.
"Yes Sir!" Hawkeye announced, and she about-faced and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her with a dull clunk.
"Mustang, you still haven't lost it," Roy mused to himself as he reclined in his chair.
"Like a little kid," Riza smiled as she walked down the hallway and out the front door.
The car rumbled outside the modest house, headlights on, as the sun had already hidden itself behind a blanket of foreboding clouds and horizon. Mustang, behind the wheel of the automobile, thought for a moment of honking the horn before his "date" came into view.
She had left her hair down, as usual when not at work, and wore a simple long sleeve turtleneck and a long skirt. Before Roy got the chance to act the gentleman, Hawkeye had already entered the vehicle, sat down in the back, and closed the door. Roy sighed to himself and cleared his throat quietly before sliding his foot on the gas pedal.
"You look nice," he said awkwardly. His companion said nothing, but with a look in the rear-view mirror he could see her slightly rose tinted cheeks and the smile she wore as she watched the world out the window. Score one for me, Mustang thought happily, adjusting the strap of his eye patch confidently.
Most of the car ride was spent this way, with breaks here and there consisting of conversation about recent cases assigned to them at work. It wasn't uncomfortable talk, but it was much less than what Mustang was hoping for. He figured things would warm up a bit once they made it to the clothing shop.
Unfortunately, he was wrong. In his opinion, the whole trip had been a total failure. The most he was able to get out of Hawkeye was, "This would look nice on you, sir," when they were browsing the racks, and the occasional, "Here, let me find you a different size of that one." He ended up buying a shirt, another white collared dress shirt like so many others he had. The only difference was that this one had the memories of the evening's failure. Great.
They had hardly left the store when Roy thought up an idea. "We're going to take the scenic route back. I used to go down there all the time when I was younger."
"Alright, I'm in no rush," replied the backseat rider. Mustang prayed to any god that was out there to make SOMETHING decent happen.
And happen it did.
The sea of clouds that had threatened rain since before they left finally did so, and with a bang at that. The raindrops drummed angrily on the car roof as if they were trying to pierce through the thin metal, while the thunder that rolled ominously close shook the vehicle by it's wheels with every enraged rumble. The sky was almost pitch black, the rain coming down so hard that the windshield wipers were having a hard time keeping up. Roy had a hard enough time making out the road with one good eye, and the rain wasn't helping.
Something scampered across the way, a raccoon or a fox most likely, that took Mustang's attention away from driving for only a moment. He squinted to try and tell what it was, and only when Hawkeye yelled, "Mustang Sir!" did his mind wander back to where it should have been.
The car was about to run off the road. The officer cranked the steering wheel, only for one of the tires to slide through a slippery patch of mud. The car spun out of control despite Roy's attempts to correct its course and ran itself sidelong into a large oak tree a few metres from the roadside.
Roy, hands still on the steering wheel, turned around to assess what had just happened. He found Riza relatively unharmed, sitting on the opposite side as the doors crushed in by the tree. She seemed cut here and there from shattered glass and a bit bruised from being knocked around, but seemed in better condition than Roy, who had taken quite the shock. Judging from the look in her eyes, she must have been thinking the same things he was.
Thunder crackled above them. "Lieutenant?" She nodded, knowing what he had in mind. Face set with their military determination, they opened their doors and stepped out of the wreck.
They stood together on the road, staring at the automobile that had been almost twisted around the tree trunk. Roy held the paper package of his shirt in his hand, hanging it over his head to keep himself drier. "It won't be driving anywhere in it's current condition, sir," Hawkeye stated, "You're an alchemist, can't you fix it?"
Roy took a walk around the tree, surveying the twist of car, and shook his head. "We'd need to get it away from the tree first as to not include it in the circle, otherwise the car will be half wood. We'll need to walk back from here and get someone to tow it." Hawkeye nodded, and with a last look to the metal mess they headed off down the road.
It wasn't long before they realized that they weren't going to be able to walk the whole way back. They had begun to sneeze and shiver, and Mustang could feel his own eyelid drooping and giving in to drowsiness. "I remember," Roy began before being interrupted by a boom of thunder, "I remember a small loggers cabin just off the road, here. It should be mostly dry there." Stepping into the brush, he knocked branches aside and led Hawkeye to what looked like your typical small shack-on-the-rocks.
"Is it safe?" Hawkeye asked in disbelief.
"It better be," replied Mustang.
The door creaked open with little resistance. As Roy had said, it was dry enough, but there were many spots where the wood had rotted in both the ceiling and floor, leaving wet, muddy spots in the planks. Roy got onto his hands and knees and crawled along in the dark until he found one such spot, then sitting down and dipping a finger in the mysterious muck. He began drawing a circle on the back of his bare hand, only able to see by the frequent lightning strikes.
"Used this trying to kill a certain ex-Feurer," Mustang remarked grimly, making minor touches to his hand. "Hawkeye, I want you to take this gun and shoot it up out of the roof." He fumbled at a small gun on his belt, tapping it against what he assumed to be Hawkeye's leg.
"Excuse me sir?"
"Shoot the gun!"
She did as she was told. Aiming high, she shot through one of the crumbling holes in the roof. The moment the trigger was pulled she felt something strange inside the gun, and noticed a blue light from the corner of her eye. The bullet shot out of the muzzle, followed very closely by a jet of flame. It arced over the human's heads and landed, for the most part, in an old stone fireplace, setting old remnants of kindling and fagots ablaze.
"Excellent aim Si-"
"Sit down," Roy interrupted awkwardly. Hawkeye smiled and did so, sitting in front of the fresh fire beside him.
They were silent for a while, the combined sounds of the rain and thunder outside and the fire crackling away seeming to leave them in a pleasant trance, only broken by Roy's periodic trips to the fireplace to feed the flames that kept them partially warm.
Hawkeye decided to break the quickly developing awkwardness in the silence. "Whatever happened to Ed, do you think?" She whispered, staring blankly into the dancing ribbons of flame.
Roy hadn't really thought about that. Last time they had seen each other, they had both decided to walk into their possible deaths, one way or another that they kept to themselves. With his recovering and subsequent court dates and paper work with the Fuhrer incident, his mind had decided that they had been out on another trip to find the Philosopher's Stone, but his heart seemed to scream that he was…
"He's probably gone off somewhere without telling us and being his usual pain-in-the-ass self," he scoffed, really not believing a single word that just came out of his mouth.
"I hope you're right, Sir," Riza said quietly, suddenly leaning over and resting her head in Roy's lap. Roy froze, watching the firelight soak her slightly dirtied face and hair, whole head still soaking wet. She was all this and still… beautiful. That's what she was, Roy decided.
Unable to find any words to say, Roy simply rested a hand on Riza's head, stroking it gently.
"Roy?" She asked sleepily, eyes closed and no longer watching the fire.
"Mmm?" He draped his other arm about her partially exposed waist, feeling her skin's warmth with her hand.
"Your hands are freezing. What kind of flame alchemist are you if you can't even keep your hands warm…" she mumbled, her last words lost as she drifted off into sleep.
Roy smiled. Maybe his first true smile in a long time. At that moment, he couldn't have wanted anything more in the entire world.
Maybe that shirt wasn't so bad, after all.