AN: I do not own FMA. Enjoy!
To say that Roy regretted burning Riza's back was an understatement. He not only regretted it but just the thought of what he did, the screams of pain that he made rip from Riza's mouth, the skin that he had made bleed angry red blood, made him sick. The fact that he had done it in Ishval, a place that had already seen enough of his flames, did absolutely nothing to assuage his guilt; if anything, it only aggravated it.
When he really thought about it, Roy knew that what made him regret that night wasn't the fact that he had burned the array. That pattern, and the things that it held, was something that mankind would be better off without, even if its destruction had come one Flame Alchemist too late. No, what made him regret that night, one of his final ones in Ishval, was the fact that, in order for its undoing to happen, he'd have to burn the person that, as a teenager, he had fallen in love with and promised to protect.
Both of them knew it was going to hurt; to think otherwise would be naïve. Still, whenever the first flame hit Riza's skin and her agonized screams began, Roy was still startled by it. It wasn't so much the fact that she did scream as much as it was the fact that, suddenly, the idea was now a painful reality: Roy Mustang had hurt Riza Hawkeye.
His thoughts, wicked in that way one's own thoughts can be, suddenly reminded him of all that he'd just done as he tended to Riza's wounds, determined to uphold his promise somehow.
'You've really done it this time. She's going to have more scars eventually, Roy. All of these wounds you're trying to patch up are going to mark her again. This time, though, you won't be able to erase them. It'll just be marks on top of marks, scars she'll always have. She'll practically be wearing the evidence of what you did.'
It wasn't until a few hours later, when those thoughts and more had swum around his head for as long as he would let them, that he finally disclosed what he had been thinking to Riza in the form of apologies. He was sorry to have done it in the first place, sorry he put her in so much pain, sorry that she was going to have scars and marks and there was pretty much nothing he could do about it, sorry that he broke so many promises that he still wanted to keep to her, even now. He probably would've gone on until sunrise if Riza hadn't cut him off.
"Roy," she began, her voice hoarse. "I want you to remember two things. First of all, this...this was my decision. I wanted you to do this, so you have nothing to apologize to me for. The other thing you need to remember is that...whenever my father put these secrets on my back, I, or at least that part of me...was pretty much paper to him at that point. And usually, paper that holds terrible secrets almost always ends up getting burned."
AN: Review, please! Next time, we'll start on the "C" prompts!