It's my first FMA fic I should say first off. This follows the manga arch rather then the anime arch… There are quotes from Chapter 61; therefore, I guess there are spoilers- So heads up.
Disclaimer: No Roy nor Riza nor any of the alchemists belong to me… and the stuff in italics is ALL Hiromu Arakawa (flashback quotes yupyup)
Watching His Back
It was raining.
A single gunshot was all it took.
The weapon cold as iron in her shaking hand as she fell to her knees. Not a single drop of blood on her.
That was the point of a gun wasn't it? Cold and merciless, kept you from dirtying your hands.
She looked over at the body... another corpse whose blood was washing away in the gutter with the rain water.
What did they say? Human's were trash... she'd never believed that.
She'd still never believe it.
Feeling the wetness on her cheeks she shook her head looking at the sky-
It was raining after all.
Six months later it was Fuhrer Bradley who faced her.
"Riza Hawkeye you are charged with the murder of one Colonel Roy Mustang. What is your plea?"
She calmly looked death in the eye and matched it.
"To entrust my back to you means that you can shoot me from behind anytime.
If I step off of the path, shoot and kill me with those hands."
"Guilty"
It was raining again, she could hear it from the courtroom as they led her away. As they led her through the downpour she looked up and murmured an apology.
"I'm sorry sir, I couldn't do it in the end."
"And you will protect only whom you can...even if it's only a few, protect those below you.
And those below you would also protect those below them.
No matter what happens, live and continue to survive greedily."
"But then sir... you didn't keep your promise either-"
Live, and let's change this country together.
In concerns to death they say there are two types of people, those who fear it and those who face it. This is not necessarily true.
For the average man he fears the unknown, fears what comes after and what he sees as atonement for his sins. He sees death as something that is yet to come, something that he will have to face and something that will swallow him whole.
There are those like the alchemists. Like the Elric brothers who try to go beyond death and do the impossible... to seek past the doors and set them ajar doing what they say is possible of no man.
There are those who wish to live forever and prove to never have to see the gates or what's beyond... forever out of reach but always wondering what's there lurking for the one time they mess up- what's hiding in wait for them when its over.
And then there were those like Riza Hawkeye, who had seen it first hand and felt the agony of those left behind. Those like she who embraced it when it came and felt herself given over to what she had set on so many people.
And though it meant betraying the one man who could quite possibly be called her only family-
It also meant that she might get the chance to see him again.
And that gave her hope.
In the end she thought it the far better choice.
A/N: kinda forgot to put this in here since the fic was one of those 2 in the morning blurbs heh... To explain why she shot him (with out er... too many spoilers for the manga) Basically the idea behind it was originally a "what if" Roy told Hawkeye to shoot him... under some condition in which he thinks he will be more of a danger to everyone before allowing himself to live. Whether he's being changed into an homunculus or a drug, or somehting gone wrong- Originally I was going to do one where she didn't... but 2 am fics don't really listen very well, so it turned into this.