It's New Year's Eve, and Riza is far from home and the quiet holiday mornings she used to spend alone by the fire. The change is stark before she even reaches Central. Closer and closer to the city, the air grows a little warmer and the sky fades into a duller shade of black, compensated by the brilliant lanterns and ornaments adorning every building. Everything else is a blur from there. A party with more guests than she personally knows, a glass of champagne in hand, a nicer dress than the ones she usually wears on a night out in town.

Riza would be perfectly happy to just sit back and let the night play out around her. She's here because Rebecca had convinced her to come along, insisting that they try something a little different from the usual year-end festivities in the East. But home is all that Riza looks for the whole night. Thankfully, no one is a happier reminder of it than Rebecca. With all her energy, they may as well be back home, dancing the night away at the town plaza.

Then, they find Lieutenant Havoc by himself at the party, and Riza finally begins to truly have a great time. It's almost as if she and her two dear friends have got their own little world in the corner of the room. Sometimes she jumps into the conversation, laughing along to inside jokes about their respective hometowns and from their days at the military academy. She's equally happy just to listen as Rebecca and Havoc get carried away with their thoughts—some oddly specific and similar, others wildly different and conflicting.

"… and what difference does it make if you do it tonight?"

Havoc leans back in his chair smugly, as though he's certain the argument is over. "Look, everyone gets emotional on New Year's Eve. It could be good or bad, but when you get carried away, it's not like it'll be the same the next morning."

"Bullshit, you'll be fine! You've been single for, what, a month?"

Riza sets her glass down on a side table. "I'm sorry, what are you two talking about?"

Rebecca rolls her eyes. "Mister Loverboy here thinks that he shouldn't try and find a girlfriend tonight because it's New Year's Eve, and nobody can commit."

Even Riza, who is far behind the other two in terms of dating experience, fails to grasp the idea. "What?"

Havoc makes a comically scandalized face. "You two are ganging up on me! Hear me out—Hawkeye, as our voice of reason and the most level-headed person in this room—"

"Hey! You don't get points for flattery, Havoc!"

"—do you think you could find a boyfriend or a girlfriend right here in this party, on New Year's Eve, while everyone is drunk and emotional and, well, they've all got too much on their mind right now, don't they?"

Rebecca and Havoc watch Riza expectantly as she picks up her glass again, considering the question as she sips the last of her drink. As if it will help her think clearly. "I've got good news for you, Havoc," Riza finally says after a while. "You can definitely find a girlfriend in this party, on New Year's Eve."

"See?" Rebecca places a hand on Riza's shoulder and grins at Havoc. "That's the voice of reason for you!"

Riza continues, "I think that sometimes, trusting someone enough to be vulnerable around them is a good start. And your relationship shouldn't just revolve around the first spark, anyway. It's your choice whether or not you're going to work on it. If you like someone enough, I don't see why you wouldn't want to do that."

They look at her like she has just read their fortunes.

"Well, well, those are some big words from you, Riza!" Rebecca says. "Do you actually have a boyfriend I don't know about?"

"You know I don't, Rebecca. But what point were you trying to make against Havoc, anyway?"

"That if there's someone he likes, but he won't do anything about it tonight just because it's New Year's Eve, then he's a coward."

Havoc grabs at his chest dramatically and hunches forward, exaggerating the look of pain on his face. "Ladies, you're breaking my heart! All I want is to have a lasting relationship with a good woman! I'm telling you, I'll treat her like a princess, and every day I'll tell her how much I love—"

"Her boobs," Riza and Rebecca say in unison, bored, but with a hint of knowing laughter.

Rebecca reaches forward as Havoc takes out a cigarette from the pack he has been keeping in his coat pocket. She pushes his hand aside and grabs the pack, then tucks it between the cushions of the couch that she and Riza are occupying. "Put that thing away, you'll never find a good woman smelling like smoke. Let's dance."

"What the—"

"Your girlfriend's not just gonna waltz in and find you here on your ass, Havoc. Dance floor, now. Riza, let's go!"

Riza waves off the invitation, chuckling. "I'll be fine here, thanks. You two have fun."

Rebecca drags Havoc out into the dancing crowd, and Riza sits back contentedly with a newly filled glass of bubbly. She doesn't know how much time she spends watching her friends under the sparkling lights, their laughter ringing so loudly that it seems to carry over the music and the chatter around the room, but she does notice how they change. The more they dance, the closer they seem to get to each other. They become locked in a gaze, eyes glinting with more than enjoyment. Even the way they move seems to say that they've got every part each other memorized.

Time goes by quickly from then on, and suddenly midnight is only a few minutes away. The music changes with Rebecca and Havoc still out on the dance floor; they exchange a look of understanding and recognition. And perhaps it's because they had grown up with the song as well—or maybe Rebecca and Havoc are so intoxicated now that they are both made entirely of warmth—but Riza senses feelings of comfort and home being communicated between them, all without words. They might have gone back in time to their childhoods, or they might have come up with a world with just the two of them there on the dance floor.

Riza smiles.

How could she have never seen it coming?

Then again, there are many things that Riza never saw coming, like those distant memories that come with the music now filling the room. It sometimes seems like it was only yesterday that she heard that old holiday song on a train platform, saying goodbye to a boy who once brightened a few lonely days, hoping for a dance that would never come.

On most days, Riza is able to bury that moment away like it happened in another life. She can look at the man the boy has become without imagining what might have been or thinking that she might still feel the way she did before. That other life ended in Ishval, and although she has kept the Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang in the life she lives now, it has been strictly out of duty. She swore to follow him and protect him; there is nothing more to it. Nothing about a dance, no vestiges of a precious shared past.

But sometimes, she is reminded of the past without warning, like now.

"Hello, Lieutenant."

Roy Mustang isn't supposed to be here.

He hadn't planned on going to any party tonight. It was supposed to be like all the other year-end holidays he has spent in this city. Unpeaceful, a blur of faces both familiar and unfamiliar at Madame Christmas' bar, the promise of a quieter morning with family once all the festivities were over. But then he ran into Havoc earlier this evening, the latter making his way to this fancy new lounge that had opened at the northeast side of town.

"Come on, Chief," Havoc had said, "you need to get out more often. It's New Year's Eve."

The invitation wasn't even an appealing one, at least to Roy. It's been many years since he last truly enjoyed New Year's Eve, because throughout these many years he has changed so much. He has been in the military for what feels like a lifetime now, gone to hell and back during the war in Ishval, and he no longer feels the holidays the way he did when he was a young boy. He does remember some things, though, like breakfast made from the leftovers of New Year's Eve dinner, the market filled with toys and books and rare delicacies, the music.

And her.

Riza hardly looks different from the young girl who saw him board a train for Central many New Year's Eves ago, but he knows better than anyone that that isn't true. She's about as distant from her younger self as he is from his. She's also easier to imagine back in that time than Roy finds himself to be. At most, he can point out how much longer her hair has grown since that day—it's not yet past her shoulders, but it frames her face differently. Beautifully.

"Hello, Lieutenant."

The music has changed to a familiar old tune, and perhaps it's why he calls her attention without thinking. Roy wishes he hadn't. She was watching the crowd's merrymaking just now, with a warm, lovely smile that he had been lucky to see once before. He didn't mean to make it go away. But when Riza hears his voice, her expression changes, and she rises to her feet so quickly that she almost loses her balance. There is a deep pink hue on her cheeks.

"Lieutenant Colonel."

He laughs a little. "I'm sorry, that was so formal. It's New Year's Eve. Just call me…"

Roy stops himself.

"… Mustang."

Riza nods slowly, then sits back down. Roy gingerly occupies the spot at the other end of the same couch. They're silent for a few moments, listening to the holiday song played by the live band from the other side of the room, sung by the crowd in varying degrees of drunkenness.

"You should be dancing too," Roy finally says. He isn't sure if he means it as a suggestion or an invitation.

She smiles in a resigned manner, reaching down slightly to rub her ankles. "My feet are aching from these shoes." Riza pauses. "How about you?"

Roy shakes his head. "I've had too much to drink."

How easily they lie to each other.

Riza resumes watching the crowd, so she doesn't see Roy watching her as the song plays on. Perhaps she pretends that she doesn't. He tries not to think of all the reasons they have to deny each other a dance, and of course, that's exactly why they all come to him at once. He could cite their differing ranks, the ethical and professional problems posed by fraternization, but above all else, there could be no dance over the unbridgeable distance carved by their shared trials.

Behind all that has passed, Roy does not deny himself a part of their old lives that he still keeps. He does not deny that it pains him to look back by himself, while Riza only looks ahead. Still, he takes comfort in the memory of her twirling on the platform of Cameron Station, of singing for her in the living room of her childhood home. And if he'd truly had as much to drink as he claimed he did, he would have abandoned all judgment to take her out to the dance floor, just to have those things again.

For old times' sake, Roy tells himself.

The spell breaks at the stroke of midnight, when the song ends and jubilant greetings ring out around the room. Roy and Riza return to the present and exchange cordial, if tentative smiles, once again becoming Lieutenant Hawkeye and Lieutenant Colonel Mustang. No complicated past, no uncertain future. Only the present in which they are able to welcome the new year together, if not in the way either of them had hoped.

"Happy New Year," they tell each other.

Riza hesitates to take Roy's hand when he offers it. When she finally does, her hand feels rougher than he remembers, her grip turned firm by the mastery of her self-control. He knows she is wary of the lines they cannot cross, even though they've been far past that point for much of her lives. But he won't do that to her. Roy would never offer her something he knows he cannot give. He cares for her far too deeply to do that.

For now, he puts his faith in better, kinder years to come.