Living on Borrowed Time

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 7 – Love, Blood, and Eli

"I love you Roy." …they were words he'd heard his entire life from so many different women. When it got to the point when he was supposed to say it back…well, let's just say it was time to dump her. There wasn't a point in getting that close. Those women, as beautiful as they were, were always lacking. When one was beautiful, but lacked a brain, he dated a Beautiful Brain. When Beautiful Brain would get boring, he'd date someone Exciting and Enticing. When Ms. Exciting/Enticing became too exciting, he had to find someone a little more bland. It didn't matter who she was, but somehow she just didn't have what he was looking for. Every once in a while he'd find someone that was close to what he seemed to want and just as he'd really began to settle with her, she would mess it up and say "I love you Roy." And that was the end of that. He couldn't remember the last time he told someone he loved them…come to think of it, he couldn't remember a time that he was really in love. Maybe that was why he was so easily scared away by "I love you Roy." …how do you respond, when you're not sure what love is?

Roy snuggled closer to his pillow, trying to escape the oncoming daybreak. His hands and chest suddenly felt like ice and he snuggled himself into a little ball in hopes to keep warm. "Roy…" a voice said softly. "Wake up." Birds chirped in the background and Roy moaned softly. "Five more minutes Beautiful…" he replied sleepily. It was his standard line to whoever he was sleeping with. It was so much easier to call them 'beautiful' than trying to drunkenly remember their name. Suddenly his entire body seemed to ice over. He tried to huddle closer under the sheets but the freezing feeling wouldn't go away. His eyelids flew open as he uncontrollably shivered. What he saw was startling to say the least.

Hawkeye's face was centimeters from his own, and she had her icy hands on his shoulder. Well, actually her hands were through his shoulder, but he didn't quite notice that detail. Startled, he jumped backwards and rolled off the bed, landing in a funny lump on the floor. The events of the previous day had left him completely and several reasons why his Lieutenant was in his bedroom began to race through his mind. The first possibility and the most shocking was that he'd slept with her. He'd noticed that she was dressed in a white nightgown looking outfit…it was more than possible that something had happened…but he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so drunk that he'd slept with her. Not only that, but that she'd consented! He leaned up and peeked at her from the edge of the bed. Riza fought the instinct to giggle; he looked like a deer in the headlights. Roy could clearly see through Hawkeye's milky white form sitting on his bed…well more like floating. Suddenly the events of the night came rushing back to him. He tried to regain his composure as he stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. "Sorry." She said, not quite as apologetic as she should have. "Its fine." He sighed, giving her a small death glare. Strangely, he had grown accustom to her translucent appearance over the short amount of time that she'd been back and part of him felt almost like she'd never left. He looked around his room for the shirt he'd discarded the night before, but before he found it, his reflection caught his eye. Her blood still stained his hands, an involuntarily pain coursed through his chest beneath another of her blood stains.

She watched him as he studied his discolored hands and chest in the mirror. The blue aura that she'd noticed the night before seemed to radiate even stronger from him now. She couldn't help but feel a little guilty about the situation…after all; it was her fault the blood was there. "I'm sorry about the blood."

He didn't say anything, but simply walked to the bathroom. He grabbed a rough scrubbing brush from beneath his sink and began to scrub violently at his hands. "Stop!" Hawkeye screamed out. She sounded in pain. Her shout had been abrupt and it startled him into stopping. Hawkeye's form wavered slightly in the air as if it were a heat wave. "Please don't do that…it's the only thing holding me here." He looked at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

"The stains…they're all that's holding me here. The blood is what's connecting my soul to you. They're how I was able to get back."

He stared at his hands in horror. If he wanted to keep her here, he had to keep his hands stained with her blood. It was almost more than he could stand. He breathed deeply and stared at her translucent red eyes…he could stand it, for her. It was at the very least, what he owed her.

He tried to put the brush down gently, but his hands were shaking with horror and he ended up throwing the brush in the sink rather forcefully. Hawkeye's soul winced a little as the brush hit the porcelain and Roy stormed by her. He seemed angry, but she couldn't tell if it was at her, or himself. He made his way out of his room and started toward the kitchen. Hawkeye suddenly felt a pull in what used to be her chest. Her insubstantial soul began floating after him like a puppy on a string. She was a little surprised at this development, but she decided not to mention it to Roy just yet…no need to upset King of Crazy Emotions just yet by telling him that she was bound to him literally.

"Dammit." She heard him yell from about 10 feet in front of her. She floated into view to see her puppy ripping apart a box of cereal on Roy's kitchen floor. Today really didn't seem to be Roy's day…but just about anything was better than the emotional roller coaster he was thrown onto yesterday. He shooed Black Hayate away from the ruined cereal box and picked up the cardboard and plastic, leaving the cereal on the floor for Black Hayate to clean up in his own way. After throwing away the chewed box he rooted through the refrigerator for his own meal. Hawkeye floated over to the table and made herself appear as if she were sitting in one of the chairs. She found it made her feel better to pretend that she was still alive. Roy turned around after a few minutes of digging through the fridge and brought a beer and a slice of apple pie to the table. Hawkeye's eyes widened. "Please tell me you're not going to eat that."

Roy cocked an eyebrow at her as he sat down, "What's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong with it? For one, I can't believe you're going to eat pie for breakfast."

"Don't knock it until you tried it." He said smiling at her over his beer. "This is the best pie in the universe, and I think it's perfectly fine to eat anytime."

She rolled her eyes at him. "With the objections about the pie aside, you're drinking beer. What kind of start for a day is that?"

"A drunk one." He said. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself. Things had set themselves into some sort of bizarre normalcy and he rather liked it. He knew why she was objecting to his breakfast, but it was fun riling Hawkeye up.

She sneered at his smart ass remark. "Thank you Colonel Obvious. If I still had my body I'd make sure you ate something respectable…eggs, bacon and toast."

He let out a breathy laugh, "If you were back in your body I'd—" suddenly he stopped as if lost in thought. Hawkeye sat there for a moment waiting for him finish, but when he just continued to stare off into space she prompted him. "If I were back in my body you'd what?" She was almost afraid to ask.

He shook his head coming out of his thought, "I-I'd gladly eat whatever you fixed." He said. She looked at him suspiciously…he had a strange look about him, as if he was plotting something. She was broken out of her thoughts by him speaking, "So are you going to tell me who killed you?"

"Not until you pour out that beer." She said, she'd be damned if she told him anything while he was drunk.

He sighed at her and lazily got up and poured it out. "Will you tell me now?"

She lowered her eyes a bit. She felt stupid like she'd fallen into a hole and she couldn't get out without a big strong man to save her. "They call themselves Red." He cocked an eyebrow at her. 'That better not be all you know.' He thought. She continued, "There's about 10 of them that I know of, it's possible there are more. They were a few of the rebel soldiers that broke off from the military after Ishbal was over. They became mercenaries. I'd never even heard of them until a few weeks ago when one of my informants mentioned that he'd seen one of them following you."

"Your informant?" he asked, "Since when do you have informants?"

She averted her eyes, feeling like a child that was found with their hand in the cookie jar. "I've been having everyone in our unit tailed for the past year and a half."

"You've been having me followed!" he shouted. She winced a little at his raised voice. "What right do you have to tell someone to follow me!"

"I couldn't be around to protect you all the time Mustang." She said sternly, finally meeting him in the eye. They both noticed she'd dropped back to the safety of his surname. She was the old Hawkeye again…everything was just business. "You have no idea how many people are willing to get rid of you. Most of them are in the military. You're rise in the ranks over the years has the higher ups scared. They're not ready to relinquish their positions to you. They think that you're getting too powerful. I'm sorry if you think I over stepped my boundaries but if I didn't have my eyes on you, you would already be dead."

He sat back down, his nerves were raw and he was beginning to resent her. She was always mother-henning him…did she think he wasn't capable of taking care of himself? 'Go to bed', 'Don't eat that', 'I'm having you followed'…the phrases rebounded around in his head and he glared at her. She ignored him knowing that she needed to tell the story whether he wanted to hear it or not. "My informant said that one of the members of Red was following you and had been for a few days. Naturally I told him to follow you more closely. After about a week Reigns told me that he—"

"Reigns is the one that's been following me?" Roy said, even more annoyed. He could easily picture the investigator in his mind. His sand blond hair was neat and orderly, and his steel blue eyes had stared so hard at Mustang, he would have sworn there were holes in his skin. To say the least the man had treated him less than cordially during his interrogation.

"Yes, it was Reigns that's been following you—" she started again, but was once more interrupted.

"I wonder how you managed to get that jerk to do you a favor." He mumbled angrily under his breath.

"That 'jerk' was doing it because I asked him to, he happened to care about me Colonel, believe it or not, there are a few people out there that do care about my existence." She stated angrily, but then realizing what she said, corrected herself, "Did care about my existence."

"I care!" Mustang said, fuming.

"You could have fooled me." She replied in a steely sort of way. She crossed her arms, "Do you want me to tell the rest of the story or do you want to insult my friends some more?"

'I want to insult your friends some more.' He answered in a smart ass tone in his head. Instead he said, "Tell the story."

Slowly she uncrossed her arms and leaned forward on the table. "After about a week of following the Red follow you, Reigns sent me a message telling me that he'd found out where the Red's headquarters were. That was the note I got. When I got the note I knew that the best thing to do would to just go in and apprehend the one that had followed you, find out what exactly they were doing and why and then send him over to the prison. While we took in the rest of them…unfortunately, they were expecting me."

"He set you up!" Roy said stunned.

"He didn't." she replied, rather forcefully. "Eli wouldn't!"

The sudden use of Reigns' first name caught Roy off guard a bit, but refused to let it interfere with the fight. "He did, it's the only explanation."

"He didn't. It was Eli that didn't want me to go in alone." As she said it she felt herself remembering back to the last time she'd spoken with him.

"You can't go in alone Riza." Eli said, his gray/blue eyes softly staring at her. "You could be hurt."

"I'll be fine Eli…I'm the best gunman the military has. There isn't one person that can get within a hundred yards of me." She replied back to him. She tried to give him a reassuring smile.

"Please don't…at least let me go with you." He said, gently taking her hand. The hallway was empty; there wasn't a fear of being seen. She didn't pull her hands back from his…he was clinging to her and she didn't have the heart to pull away. "It's easier for one person to get in and out. I'll be fine. Don't worry."

He looked at her doubtfully. "I can't help but worry. I love you." He gently kissed her forehead and she pulled away a bit. "Please reconsider."

"No." she replied firmly, gently untangling herself from his advances. She gave him a smile of pity, turned on her heel and left.

"How do you know that he didn't set you up from the beginning? You said that the military couldn't be trusted. How do you know that he wasn't in on their plans for the beginning?" Mustang asked. His heart was hardening by the moment for the investigator. It appeared he was the one responsible for Hawkeye's death…it only made sense that he should pay.

"Because…he was my friend." She said…she had to stop herself from saying that he loved her. The word Love was the one she wanted the farthest away from her mouth…no sense in complicating things even more.