These wounds were as old as the scars on her back; no, they were older. Wounds that were bandaged but not fully healed over. Wounds that still left their mark, even as she leaned against her husband. His arms steady despite sleep, and she can easily remember his old wounds, ones that for the moment were silent as if asleep.
Riza tries to relax past the shudder that slowly eases into her shoulders as her mind thinks back to desert sand hot on her skin, the way blood melts into it, turning it a dusty red color. The way the distance was a practice in playing pretend; she knew what she did, just as she knew of the way the sand hit her back then.
She still feels the crust of the sand on her skin, still feels the sweltering heat that nearly makes her body cave in. She remembers the force of will that kept her body afloat, the way she forced her mind to shut down and forget. She remembers the number of people she kills. She was too far away to remember the faces, hadn't looked up to meet red eyes that would have pleaded with her not to shoot, if she'd been closer, close enough to hear voices that sometimes haunt her dreams.
She doesn't know any of their names. It makes every Ishvalan name stand out like a murder counter in her head. Every time Scar or Major Miles or anyone mentioned someone who died in that war, she tacks the name on an uncertain list detailing each and every kill she'd made. It's habit now, to turn it into a list.
Riza can't say whether she killed anyone belonging to those names, yet it's hard not to feel as if she's the one to blame with every pull of the trigger, every carefully placed shot, every number that added up. Numbers are hard to break people with; she'd went temporarily numb during the war when it took too much effort to hold herself together with the guilt, the devastation. She'd silenced her pain in order to be the perfect soldier, if she didn't, she would have died years ago.
When she looks at her husband, she sees the pain that mars him, the pain that rests within him. In a way, she couldn't have married anyone who didn't see and feel that devastation, wasn't broken down by it. She eases her shoulders into stillness and leans down to rest against his shoulders. It's only then that she sees the twitch of his eyelids, the only hint that his dreams like hers were full of destructive memories.
She leans a hand on his shoulder, and even her voice is soft, "Roy."
He stills wakes from it, as if trained to only respond in kind to her. "Riza?"
The informality feels like it's taken years to arrive, and she wraps her arms around his waist and holds him close, stitching him together from all of the moments when her father's alchemy, something she taught Roy, by her husband's hand killed so many people. He can still smell the burning bodies, can still hear the screams that haunt him in everyone's final moments, still see bodies crumble before him.
She doesn't have to speak to know that those images are stuck in his head, so she holds him close silently, letting the war and those old wounds slowly disappear before their memory, knowing that they'll be back.
"Thank you." His voice is soft in her ear, and she relaxes, curls closer, lets herself sink gently against his side. Sleep hopefully will come easily and lightly now, hopefully won't haunt them in the way that only scars bring about. In some ways the war hurt more than the broken home she grew up in. The guilt poured in, where the shame and the loneliness were the most vivid scars from her childhood.
Hating herself made it harder to hold herself together when everything that she did back then was something she never should have done, rather than hating herself for the coldness of growing up lonely, feeling like less than enough.
Instead she burrowed against her husband's side like taking shelter from the rain; right now, they needed each other more than any other moment. She needed him to slowly stitch her back together, and he needed her to return the favor. So, quietly, that's what they do.