Black Hayate lay his body placidly across the floor and began to sniff around for scraps of cereal that might be on the ground. Today, to his utter delight, some oats had fallen on the floor for his enjoyment. After lapping at the floor, he stood to his full (yet short) height once again, and yipped.
Riza rubbed her head, feeling the tangled bead-head that had formed in her hair during the dead of night. "How mysterious," she said to Hayate sarcastically as she bent down to calm him down.
Black smiled in a "manly" sort of way, as she so often put it and yipped once again. He then walked off to do whatever he pleased to her house.
"Black, fetch the paper for once, will you?"
No, he did not fetch the paper, so Riza groaned and slowly walked towards the glass door in an lumbering fashion. The paper was lying right next to the mail slot as always, so she picked it up and sat down on the stairs in the next room and started reading.
"There was... a fire..."
Riza read the first line on the newspaper lazily and slouched down.
"in central city..."
Now she opened her eyes wide and stared at Hayate with wild eyes, tears were already dropping from hers.
"Headquarters is gone... there are ten dead including Cain Fury and Vato Farman..."
"...Roy Mustang is in the hospital with second degree burns, and a cracked skull from a severe blow to the head. The building collapsed after the fuhrer tried to save his loyalties... but he failed."
Riza closed her eyes, her breath but a rattling and robotic necessity. She pulled Black Hayate to her and sobbed. "He told me I didn't have to stay overtime, I could have saved him... he told me that he'd be alright without me but he was wrong!"
Roy shuddered continuously, still feeling the cold and empty hole in his heart that was filled with icy fire. Riza had just told him just what she had told Hayate, as if he hadn't suffered enough. Even with this ridicule, his eyes smiled with a secret joy.
"Riza, I'm sorry, I really am," he said softly, letting his wounds sting him burningly.
The woman jumped at hearing her superior call her by just her name at a time of this crisis. Never had she thought that Mustang would say that so casually, so trustingly.
"I know that you hurt right in your heart, you know you could have done something if you had saw it coming. Let me tell you this, you couldn't have known it, there was no way of knowing it without a crystal ball or something. Trust me on this one, trust me on all matters... you said that I was where your loyalties lie.
Hawkeye looked at the ground as if mourning the death of the man before her but instead laughed in a very "unmanly" way. "Your remember I said that, and don't ever question that or I'll have you killed bastard."
The flame alchemist laughed uproariously but quickly cried out as his arm felt like it was being sprayed with acid (which had actually happened to him back in some war or another... but that's another story). "You're right Riza! I can't live without you with one second without getting some kind of injury, will you marry me?"
