Author's Notes: Wow, it's been a really long time since I have updated. Sorry about that. I've been real busy since winter ended. It's likely to be that way until we get close to winter again. This time of year is always busy with family activities and anime conventions (which I attend as a vendor, so it's actually part of my job).

I am afraid this chapter is nothing too exciting. Just some filler to flesh out the story a little more. It's mostly a look at past events that haven't already been covered in any of the other chapters. The next chapter will get us back to the present and hopefully closer to the end. If you have any ideas on how to make this better please let me know. I love getting constructive or inspiring reviews!

Left Behind

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Riza Hawkeye awoke to the cheerful sound of birds chirping and the soft glow of morning sun streaming across the foot of her bed. It was the same as it was every day when she awoke and got ready for work.

Each peaceful day had been the same since he had left her behind almost two years ago. Each day she would get ready for work and mindlessly go about her daily chores.

Life in the military without Roy Mustang had very little meaning for her. The man had been her life for almost fourteen years. Since the day she had met him, Riza knew that Roy would always be important to her.

In the beginning he was just her father's apprentice in alchemy. That was how it all started. After her father had passed away Roy had made sure she was taken care of and that she was kept safe. She was only fifteen at the time and her grandfather had been assigned far away from East City where they lived.

Upon his deathbed Riza's father had asked Roy to look after her. He would have done so without his asking. Riza was a sweet girl. She was quiet and a bit of a tomboy. She was good with a gun and her crack shot would make any sharpshooter in the Amestris army blush with embarrassment. She could out-gun them all.

She was a though little cookie and Roy was sure she didn't really need looking after. But her father was everything in her life. Her only other living relative that Roy even knew of was her grandfather. Life would be rough for a little while. Roy really wanted to help see her through it.

She was grateful to Roy and he made sure to keep in touch with her. Even after he became a State Alchemist he kept an eye on her from a distance when he could not do so in person. Maes was excellent at handling details and investigations. He had no trouble keeping tabs on the girl and she wasn't even aware of it.

Maes's updates on Riza's welfare as well as his ramblings about his new girlfriend were a welcome relief to Roy on the front lines. He looked forward to each letter he received as the war raged on. He was glad to see life from any other point of view.

When Riza found out that Roy had been sent to the front she was in a fit. Her father had taught Roy the secrets of his powerful and deadly alchemy so Roy could help people, not annihilate them.

Although she shared her father's discontent and lack of trust for the army she really saw no other recourse. Over the course of time she had realized that Roy would be used as a human weapon. He was really a kind soul with a kind heart. He just wanted to help people. That realization had become a cruel reality.

The military was always looking for people like him. People that could be used. Especially one like Roy, who wielded an awesome power. His alchemy had become quite powerful. He was sent to the front lines to fight for his country. To "protect" people. But who would protect him?

She was going to do it! No matter what it took she was going to be the one to protect him while he focused on protecting others. The army was in desperate need of sharpshooters. She would join up and no doubt be sent to the front because of her skill.

Now that she had decided on it. She would work hard and not rest until she was at her place by his side. And so it was. After six weeks of intense training and one more week of specialized training she was on her way to the front as a sniper. She prayed she wasn't too late. Roy Mustang was the type who would never think to watch his own back.

By the time she arrived the war was almost at an end. The fighting only dragged on for about two weeks more. But that time was two weeks she would never forget. The death and the stench of rotting flesh on the hot sandy battlefield left her sick and horrified.

The alchemists had not really come into play when she first arrived. Roy had been sent out only once to use his powerful fire. The ring he wore, given out by Colonel Basque Gran amplified his power even more. The first time he snapped his fingers had set an entire city block ablaze with a thunderous shock to the landscape.

After that time the alchemists were kept busy at the camp. They were given petty jobs to keep them busy until the time came when they would be sent in a mass to wipe what remained of Ishbal off the map.

At one point Gran had ordered Roy to execute the Rockbell doctors as traitors. It was an order he fought with protest. In the end he found himself too weak to fight the system and he gave in to the command.

Once the orders were carried out Roy trembled in disbelief. The kind husband and wife doctors lay in a thick pool of blood. The picture of a little blonde girl lay beside their bodies with a smear of crimson red across her precious little face.

Roy felt sick as he gasped for air. He felt like he was suffocating, on the stale air in the room. The room seemed to close in on him and the sounds of the gunshots wrung through the air.

Later he returned to the scene. The bodies were now gone and the evidence of that gruesome scene had been entirely removed. No blood. No picture of a little blonde girl. Just the small room of a clinic, devoid of everything but some sparse furniture. A small cot and the stool that stood upright by the desk against the wall.

Roy took in the scene before him. Despite his best efforts to drown reality in the bottom of a bottle he still felt the pain in his heart from the recent events. The bottle rolled away from him and across the floor. Leaving a thin trail of liquid as it went.

With trembling hands Roy grabbed his handgun from its holster and rammed it into the bottom of his chin. Before he could find the courage to pull the trigger Doctor Marcho stopped him and talked some sense into him.

He wallowed back to his tent and tried to shut out the world, burying himself under the dingy pillow and blanket. That was how Riza had found him, broken and abused by the military he had put so much faith in.

Riza had seen enough killing to last a lifetime in those few days she was there. But there was one death that would have brought her a sick satisfaction. Basque Gran. That man was a horrible monster, it was he who had sent Roy to exterminate the doctors like they were just insects.

Why? Why Roy? There were so many other men much more suited to the terrible task. He was ordered to shoot them. He wasn't even proficient with a gun! She was surprised he could even handle one well enough to kill someone. His forte lay in alchemy. Fire alchemy at that. It just didn't add up, something really stunk and Gran was at the root of it.

"Roy… Roy…. Roy please answer me." Riza's soft voice could be heard through the muffling of the thin blanket. "I came to protect you and that is what I am going to do!"

With that Riza yanked the blanket off of Roy leaving him nothing to hide behind. His face was sullen and his eyes were red and bloodshot. He smelled of alcohol and… was that death? Could such a thing emanate a smell from a person still living?

His face was haggard and looked an odd mix of young and old. The lines of worry and regret made him look thirty years older than he was. But still, you could see under that the unmistakable face of a very young man the age of twenty-one.

"Roy. You have to pull yourself together. Please! Remember you are here for the good of the people. There are those you must protect. While you focus on your mission I will be here to watch your back." Riza's voice pled with Roy to snap out of his self-destructive depression.

Roy finally looked Riza in the face. What she saw completely broke her heart. Seeing Roy this way was even harder than dealing with the battlefield.

"There was no one here to protect when I arrived. It was all just a lie. Like your father had warned me, I was only used as a human weapon. I was too stupid to listen. There is no way the Amestris army will ever allow me to help people. They just want me to destroy them." Roy's voice cracked a little as he spoke. His tone was that of a man who was utterly defeated. His face looked like it was inviting death to come for a visit.

"Roy, you must live. Live to become stronger so that next time you WILL protect the people. Maybe that isn't how it worked out this time. But there is always the future if you just live for it. PLEASE!" Riza sounded like a preacher preaching his convictions.

"Don't just take this laying down. Become stronger both in physical power and rank. Use everything you have to fight people like Gran and put and end to the suffering people like him needlessly cause."

Riza's powerful words and her devotion to him snapped Roy out of his guilt-ridden state. He wasn't quite the same happy young man she knew that had studied alchemy with her father. But he looked much more alive and no longer had the look of a broken man looking for a way to self-destruct.

That all changed when he went back to Central. All the soldiers were given a short leave to recuperate from the long battles of the war. Roy had holed himself up in his apartment studying alchemy theories about human transmutation.

When Maes found out he was livid. The punch in the face Roy received from his long-time best friend was kind in comparison to what he could have done. Maes was going to knock some sense into him, even if he had to do it literally.

In the end Roy admitted he was too much of a coward to take his own life. Something that no doubt would have been the end result of any such experiments of the alchemy taboo. Maes told him it was normal to be afraid of dying, everyone was like that.

Instead of dying he made a pledge with Maes that day. Maes told him to turn things around and make it his goal to change how things worked. He urged Roy to become a man that would prevent another Ishbal from ever happening again.

It was then that Roy told Maes he would do just that. "I am going to become Fuehrer and change all that is wrong with this world."

"And I will always be below you, pushing you up." Maes added to the pact.

Upon their return, those who survived the war were decorated as heroes. Especially Roy. As an alchemist he played a key role in the final battle. He was promoted from Major to Lieutenant Colonel and given an office at Central Headquarters. He requested Riza Hawkeye as his personal adjunct sighting her performance during the war as his motive.

Maes Hughes was the only one that knew Roy had studied alchemy under Riza's father. He planned to keep it that way too. Maes and Riza were the only two people he could trust his dream and new goal to. Once Riza was let in on Roy's new ambition she supported him wholeheartedly.

"I as well as Maes will always push you up from below. I will be here to serve under you and watch your back." Riza made this solemn vow to his face as well as her own vow to herself to protect the man she had grown to love.

This is something I decided on for myself. No one forced me to make this decision. I made it of my own free will and I vow to protect him no matter what, even at the cost of my own life.