Royai Week 2022 Fruits and Roots, Day 4: Rainy Day
Word Count: 1446
Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl
Rating: T
Characters: Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye
Warning:
Summary: Roy isn't always useless on rainy days, and Riza Hawkeye knows this.
Notes:

Rainy Day

Riza hated when it rained like this. A drenching, pouring, soaking rain that went on for days. It made everything more difficult. Going to school and coming home, getting supplies, gathering from the garden and, most especially, checking her traps and hunting. It was all so much harder with the pouring rain making the ground soft and squishy, turning it into mud that pulled at her boots.

So far, she'd had no luck with her traps or with hunting. All of the animals were apparently smarter than her and decided to stay under cover. If it wasn't for the fact that the traps needed checking, Riza might have just stayed inside too. She just hoped that she found something at this next one. She needed something to make all of this worth it.

This was her last trap, and then she could go home. She'd get a bath, scrub all of this mud off of her. Maybe she could even get the boiler to stay lit and she could have a warm bath. A warm bath, with that little bit of lavender oil that she had been saving. Wouldn't that be nice? She'd come out all clean and sweet smelling. Of course, there was still supper to make and homework to do, but for a moment, Riza let herself dream.

And then she heard a crack.

She was startled out of her daydream by it and looked on in horror as a tree started falling over—right towards her. She didn't waste any breath on screaming. She scrambled, instead, to get out of its way. But it was a big tree, with lots of branches, and as it fell, it took bits and pieces of other trees with it. It was simply too wide to avoid, and with the ground as soft and wet as it was, Riza didn't have great purchase for her feet.

She did scream with the tree branches came crashing down on her, shoving her into the muddy ground and pinning her there. She closed her eyes and curled as best as she could as the tree finished its decent, only daring to open them again when the only sounds she heard were that of the falling rain. She took stock of herself then. She could see, she could hear, and—

-and she was stuck.

She was pinned down by the branches of the tree. She had a little wiggle room, enough that she could get an arm free, but the branch was too heavy to move. The tree was too heavy to move too. Riza was trapped until someone decided to come looking for her, and who knew how long that would be. All she had was her gun, and her voice.

Actually, she could still reach her ammo packet, and hadn't the school taught them that a signal for help was three of something in a row? It would be a little tricky to load the extra ammo trapped as she was, but she could manage if needed.

That made up her mind. She'd yell for help three times, pause, shoot three times, and repeat as needed. She just had to hope that someone was listening.

Riza wasn't sure how long she was trapped there, yelling, shooting, and trying to dig herself out one handed. She was soaked with rain and mud, shivering from the cold of it all. Still, though, when she heard the voice calling her name, hope bloomed in her chest, and she yelled back as loudly as she could. It was only a few minutes later that Roy came bursting through the underbrush, a lantern in one hand.

"Miss Hawkeye!" he said when he spotted her and rushed towards her.

Riza hadn't realized just how scared she had been until that moment. Her eyes welled up with tears. "M-Mr. Mustang!" she cried out to him. "Please help me! I'm trapped!"

Roy swept his lantern up and down the tree, taking a good look at it. "Don't worry, Miss Hawkeye, I'll get you out there."

"How?" she asked through the tears. "It's too big! And it might shift and fall more!"

Roy just grinned at her. "Don't worry, I've got this!" he said, reaching into his pocket and producing what looked like it used to be a piece of chalk. Roy frowned at it. "I guess the water got to it."

Riza felt her fear well up, and she started crying harder. She was just eleven! She was scared! She didn't want to die here, like this!

"Okay, okay, new plan," Roy said. "Give me a minute." He circled the tree, clearly trying to figure what to do. "The tree is too big to make a circle all the way around," he said with a frown, "and I can't write below the tree anyway. And my chalk is wet."

Riza sniffed. "How… how did the tree fall, anyway?" she asked, trying to distract herself.

Roy shook his head. "I think the ground was just too wet and it toppled. Hopefully none of the others do the same with all this mud around here…" Roy trailed off, as if he had gotten an idea. "Be right back!" he said and dashed around to the other side of the tree.

Riza couldn't see where he had gone and, for a moment, she was afraid that he had left her behind. But instead, he returned with a big glob of mud. He grinned at her. "Chalk isn't the only thing you can write with," he said.

Riza watched as he started using the mud to draw circles in what was left of the grass under some limbs and draw some directly on the limbs themselves. Slowly but surely, he made his way over to her, stopping sometimes to make something that would keep the tree from falling further and pinning her more or injuring her.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, he reached her, turning the branch that was pinning her into firewood, and pulling her out from the tree. Riza let him help her out from it, glancing at the circles as they passed them. Finally, they were far enough away from the tree that Riza felt safe enough and her knees wobbled until she just sat down. Roy didn't complain.

"…that was the circle father has for the firewood," she said.

"Yeah," Roy said. "It was the quickest thing I could think of in a pinch. Sorry."

Riza shook her head. "It worked," she said. "I… I was afraid that I was gonna—that I was gonna—"

She burst into tears again, and felt Roy's arms drawing her close, hugging her. "It's okay," he said. "I'd be scared too." He rubbed her back for a moment. "Hey, come on, lets get you on back to the house. You can clean up, and I'll take care of dinner tonight."

Riza looked at him, horrified.

"I'll just reheat leftovers!" he defended himself.

"Hm," Riza said, not quite believing him. Still, she nodded. She just wanted to be home and out of this driving rain, even if it meant having to make sure that Roy didn't burn the leftovers again.

It was well over ten years later, and Riza still hated the driving rain like that. It had been raining like that here in her hometown, and a tree had fallen, just narrowly missing the house, but taking down the gazebo. She sighed as she looked at it. Something would have to be done about it, even in this rain. If it shifted, it could hit the house and that would be a problem. As many bad memories as she had here, it was nice to have some little-known place that they could hide away in.

"What do you think?"

Riza glanced over at Roy, who stood beside her. "It's going to have to come down, sooner rather than later." She sighed. "It's going to be a problem."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Roy said, a confident smirk on his face.

She watched as he waded through the mud to the trunk of the tree, clapped, and put his hands on the tree. Almost instantly it turned into well chopped firewood, courtesy of alchemy.

"What do you think about that?" Roy said, turning to grin at her.

"I think it's nice to know you're not completely useless on rainy days."

"Hey!"

Riza laughed and walked closer to pick up some of the wood that was lying around. Although she'd never tell him, the truth was that Riza had always known that he wasn't completely useless on rainy days. He'd proven that to her when they were young.