She giggled and blushed and her reddened cheeks highlighted that scar. This time Roy cursed the scar. He'd almost been able to let himself believe he was with a cute, innocent girl back in school in Central. The blemish dragged him back to reality.
They stared at each other again. Roy in the doorway and her on his bed. Finally, in unison something seemed to snap and they rushed into each other's arms.
They made passionate love that night. It seemed like their bodies turned all their anger, frustration, confusion and powerlessness into heat and sweat. When they were done, Roy opened the door out onto their balcony where two sand-blasted chairs sat on either side of it. She, wrapped in the sheet from the bed and he in his uniform trousers sat out there.
The warmth from the bricks Roy had felt earlier was starting to fade and up above the streets, they got a blast of wind from out in the desert, where it ran over the flat ground hundreds of miles. In the aftermath of their lovemaking it felt good.
Out beyond the city limits, lights flashed in the sky, while a couple seconds after each flash there would be a low rumble. "I love thunderstorms," Kalina finally said after letting the rumbling carry the conversation for several minutes.
"But we're in the desert, there's no thund—" Roy was about to explain it was actually the flashes and rumble of artillery but realized the silliness of explaining that to someone who'd lived in the desert her whole life. He looked over and a flash of light illuminated the tears in her eyes. She obviously didn't need to be told.
"Yeah, yeah I do too." He reached over to her and held her hand and they pretended they were someplace else.
Roy Mustang had regretted waking up next to plenty of women in his life. However, this time the regret was less a drunken miscalculation than a biting guilt that he knew he'd carry for a long while.
He rose early and went down to the Officer's mess, a converted Ishbalan restaurant that maintained some of its original elegance for the sake of the high brass that frequented the temp quarters.