Their first order of business upon returning to Central was a trip to the hospital. Though she was now capable of taking several steps in a row and managed to keep herself upright more often than not, he was still thoroughly convinced that there was something wrong with her that went beyond Roy's eyes. It had first started on the train. Within reason, she was exhausted and nodded off on occasion though she rarely slept well, and had developed a cough though he thought it was the direct result of a scratchy throat. What seemed not so much within the realm of possibility fell into subtler things; she was sick to her stomach almost constantly, and would avoid eating to try and quell the discomfort. She also seemed warm to the touch; not necessarily feverish but certainly warmer than he would expect.

And so when the train finally came to the station in Central, Roy immediately guided her off and headed for the nearest hospital that he knew of. As it was late in the evening by then and he had woken her up, she was groggy for the beginning of the walk. However, when she started to realize where they might be headed, he could feel Riza's arms tense as they approached the towering white building.

"Roy…" she murmured, shaking her head. "I don't want…"

"It's okay," he replied softly, keeping a grip on her arm to steady and guide her. "Just a quick checkup, I promise." He made a point at keeping his eyes away from her face; imagining her expression was bad enough.

"But Ro—"

"I promise it will be quick, Riza. But you need to see a doctor."

She seemed to submit to the fact that she had no say in the matter, and grudgingly allowed herself to be lead to the hospital for said checkup. When they arrived, they sat in the triage waiting room for nearly half an hour while they waited. A nurse kept looking Riza over with a weary look of concern, before she finally came over and made a remark about how pallid the woman looked. The moment the nurse approached, however, Roy could visibly see Riza sinking into the chair, eyes wide with muted panic.

"Are you all right, miss? If you really aren't feeling well I might be able to see if someone can see you now…" the nurse looked anxiously from Riza to Roy, waiting for a response.

"The sooner a doctor could see her, the better," Roy quickly replied before Riza even opened her mouth. "She really isn't feeling well and we just returned from out of town."

"Of course, sir, I'll see if there is someone who can spare time to see her now." The nurse and Roy, Riza realized with a mild look of disgust, were talking about her as if she weren't there.

"Roy," she mumbled, drumming the fingers of her right hand nervously in her lap, "I really don't want to see a doctor." The way she stated the phrase made her sound more afraid of seeing a doctor than trying to argue her way out of it.

"I know," he replied gently, resting his palm against her drumming fingers. "Just a little while longer."

The nurse returned shortly thereafter, and cheerfully guided them into the rooms of the emergency department, explaining that she had found one of the more friendly doctors on his break and that he was happy to take a quick look at one Miss Riza Hawkeye if it meant that she could go home sooner.

Now Riza was staring vehemently at the hospital gown that the nurse had provided her as she sat on the examination table. The ties alone looked menacing, and the thought of the last time she had seen such a gown left her sick to her stomach. Roy was waiting patiently outside the small room while she 'changed', but slowly she eased herself to the floor and cracked the door open.

"Have you changed?"

She shook her head slowly, stepping aside to leave him room to come in. Roy eyeballed her curiously, and then realized that the hospital gown looked suspiciously similar to the gown he had found her in. He scooped it off the small examination table and set it on the counter. "I don't think the doctor will mind."

They sat quietly in the exam room for a few moments, before finally there was a knock on the door and a middle-aged man in a white coat walked in quietly.

"Good evening Miss Hawkeye," he said far too cheerfully for the late hour. It was nearing midnight. "My name is Doctor Bethune. What can I do for you today?"

Riza looked slowly from the doctor to Roy, unsure as to where to even begin. Her stomach ached and she was starting to feel faint from nerves. Hesitant, she offered the doctor her left hand, though there were certainly other, more serious injuries to attend to.

The doctor took her wrist gingerly and rolled up the sleeve of the oversized sweater, revealing her shoddily bandaged hand. Without a word, he slowly unraveled the bandages, revealing four very crooked and out-of-sorts fingers. "How did you manage to do this?" the doctor asked slowly, "if you had fallen then they would be broken in the same place." While he waited for her response, he went to the opposite side of the room, returning with small splints and clean bandages, frowning. She remained silent.

"Miss Hawkeye," the doctor said warningly, "I need to know how this happened." His fingers were still gingerly wrapped around her wrist, eyes traveling down the bruises and scratches over the limb.

Roy was looking at Riza, waiting to see if she would respond. Riza, however, just winced as the doctor snapped each bone back into place and splinted them tight to allow them to heal. For a few moments, Bethune went about his work with quiet determination, until he lost his patience with her.

"Miss Hawkeye, you'd best explain to me how you've managed to become injured, or I will have to figure it out." He sounded irate. His voice was wavering just slightly, and his dark eyes swung around the room to land on one very distressed looking Roy Mustang.

Riza swallowed, her eyes still wide and uncertain. Finally, she murmured her response. It was quiet and hesitant, as though she couldn't even bear to admit what those men had done to her out loud. As though speaking the words of the disgrace they had brought to her would only solidify the things they had done.

Bethune leaned closer, "Did I hear that correctly? Attacked, taken out of town, rap—"

"Yes." She didn't allow him to finish. Couldn't. And Roy stood anxiously in the corner of the room, watching uncertainly. "Yes. That's…what happened."

For a moment, there was mutual silence from the three occupants of the room. The clock was ticking in the right corner and somewhere far off a machine was beeping. Bethune swallowed, turning from the patient and heading for the cabinet. "That makes things a bit more difficult."

Riza proved to be a very well-behaved patient—for the most part. She allowed poking and prodding, assuming the door was not fully closed and she was not left in the room alone with the unfamiliar doctor. It was when he wanted to shut the door fully for a proper examination of her nether regions that she panicked and fought back.

She fought back to the point where they brought in a sedative to still her enough to allow a proper examination. Disgusted with himself, Roy took a position at the head of the small hospital cot, his fingers settled in her hair, gently stroking it to try and soothe her frazzled nerves, murmuring words of assurance to her as he kept his gaze focused on the wall over the doctor's head.

"Mister Mustang, there is a substantial amount of tearing and—"

"I don't need an anatomy lesson!" Roy snapped, his eyes flashing.

"I apologize. Has she made any comment about how many times they did this to her?" Bethune paused, and Roy found himself disturbed by how conversational the man could be during such a personal examination. "From what I can see, it was not a one time thing; they raped her multiple times."

The word rape sounded so violent he wished that the doctor had used a different term.

"I would make a very reserved estimate at perhaps five times, maybe six. The likelihood that it was more than that is particularly high, but I have no intention of asking her. I'm concerned that she might have conceived."

He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, dark eyes staring absently at the doctor. "What?"

Bethune sat upright, completed with his examination. He carefully stripped off the rubber gloves he was wearing and tossed them into the waste basket, frowning, and the lines on his face deepening as he thought. "I believe she might be pregnant. She's displaying all of the early signs, and the likelihood could be very high with all things considered."

Roy's fingers fell still, hanging limply in Riza's hair, his gaze darkening. "What is the probability of that?"

"I would say at least seventy percent, if not more."

The phone booth was small, and it seemed overcrowded with Roy and his fury as he glared at the wall, waiting for Maes to answer the damned telephone. Every ring had him questioning whether this was a good idea or not—more than once, Roy was tempted to hang up.

"Hullo?"

Roy grimaced. It was reasonable to expect Maes to be asleep, but he hadn't wanted to—"Hughes."

On the other side of the line, Maes rubbed his eyes, trying to awaken himself to comprehend the anger in Roy's voice. "Roy? Whatsamatter? It's almost four in the morning…"

"Those pricks had their way with her, Hughes," Roy murmured into the receiver, his gaze darkening just at the very thought. "An examination proved what their letter said. Doctor estimated six times at the absolute least. Six times, Hughes!" His fist collided with the wall in front of him, desperately trying to fight back a more violent reaction.

Maes struggled to process the information. She could, of course, mean any host of people, but Maes knew few members of the opposite sex that Roy would bother calling him at four o'clock in the morning about, and only one of which he would be so defensive of. "You found Hawkeye?"

Roy coughed. "Who do you think, Hughes?!"

"Roy," Maes said slowly, hesitantly, as he sat up properly and inched away from the bed he shared with Gracia. He didn't want to wake his wife. "You need to calm down."

"The doctor thinks that the chances of her having conceived by one of those sons of bitches are high! He thinks she might be pregnant, Maes—pregnant. By one of those pricks." Roy could feel his fingernails digging into the flesh of his hand as he struggled to keep himself from slamming his fist into the wall once again.
"Unless you want to attract a crowd and alert the world to Lieutenant Hawkeye's current situation, I'd lower my voice," Maes said warningly.

Maes could hear a few ragged breaths on the opposite side of the telephone line, each one more of an irritated gasp than anything else. Roy didn't respond. "And knowing you, I'm pretty sure there's nothing left for you to do to them, because they faced your wrath already. Am I right?"

There was no answer; the only sound was the shaking breathing of one particularly infuriated Roy Mustang. Maes knew from the moment the letter came in that things wouldn't end well for anyone involved. Roy was extremely protective of his subordinate officers, particularly Riza. Maes had determined that it wasn't because Riza was the only female officer in the group (because when all was said and done she could defend herself far better than most of the other officers), but because of the two's friendship. It had grown over the years of them working together, but Maes had noticed right away that there was some sort of connection. She protected him, and he protected her.

As for those idiots who did this to her, Maes knew they were dead. There was no escaping Roy's fury when he was this angry. He didn't want to really consider how things had ended for them when Roy found Riza, but it didn't take an Investigations officer to figure out that the two kidnappers were long gone. "Roy?"

There was no answer on the other side of the telephone line, and Maes paused, listening. Roy was still there; he could hear the breathing, and every once and again a mumbled curse. "You're at the hospital, right?"

Roy snapped out of his trance, shaking his head a bit. "What? Yeah. We're at the hospital."

Maes sighed, frowning. "What room is she in?"

"Hughes I don't think she wants—"

"What room is she in?" The serious tone that sank into Maes' voice made Roy realize that the man was particularly concerned. Maes would be coming to the hospital, with Roy's permission or not.

"One-oh-three," Roy said tiredly, swallowing.

"Good. Don't go anywhere, I'll be there in a few minutes."

Maes had been concerned about the condition of his friends the whole way to the hospital, and more so as he trekked down the abandoned hallway at the indecent hour of the night. Roy wasn't hard to find; sitting alone outside of a halfway-closed door on a chair that had obviously been dragged out of the room, the man looked bone tired and unreceptive.

It took a moment's consideration, but Maes made the decision to bypass the weary looking Roy, and peered into the hospital room. The sight stalled his breath, and he shook his head quickly to snap himself out of it. At first, under so many bandages and so properly tucked into bed, it was as though he were attending her funeral, not visiting her in the hospital. It took several minutes of watching her chest rise and fall as she inhaled and exhaled to confirm that she was not dead.

Satisfied, he turned to Roy, who was absently staring at him.

"Sitting out here isn't helping her," Maes said cautiously. He slid his hands into his pockets, and frowned, leaning against the doorframe. "What the hell happened to her?"

Roy tensed, looking up. "Exactly what I told you happened," he snapped, eyes flashing in anger. His fists were tightly balled, and he swallowed thickly, trying to restrain his frustrations. Maes hadn't done anything—it was those two piles of ashes who—

"Calm down. Think about it; this is Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. She's been long known for her even temper and hesitance to accept any sort of assistance. But she let you take her here. Don't you realize that means that she trusts you? That she's at the point of willingly accepting your help, because things are that bad? Because maybe, for once, she needs you? You can't possibly be that dense, Roy."

Every word that tumbled from Maes' mouth was a slap to the face. "Shut up, Hughes."

"You aren't helping her by acting like this," Maes replied slowly, green eyes peering slightly at the still-asleep Riza. In the back of his mind, he was aware of how much they must have drugged her; from what he recalled, she was a particularly light sleeper. Roy's conversation on the telephone ordinarily would have woken her.

"It didn't help much that I let her walk home alone at 0200 hours, either," Roy spat, voice dripping with sarcasm. Maes wasn't surprised by the man's defensiveness, but that didn't leave him content with Roy's behavior, either.

"You told me you offered to walk her home a couple of times and she turned you down. Contrary to what your guilty conscience would have you believe, Riza is a grown woman and she's perfectly capable of making her own decisions—whether you like said decisions or not." Maes frowned, looking at the floor warily. "Calming down would help her now. She needs you."

The shorter man's fists slowly unclenched as he took a few hesitant steps back into the hospital room, scooping up the armrest of the chair and bringing it back into the room with him. Roy warily placed the chair where it had originated, and then continued over to the bed. Sighing heavily, he looked down at the sleeping form. She was propped carefully on her left side—the wounds on her back required at least some time without pressure on them, and the broken ribs on the right side of her chest did not lend themselves to a comfortable rest. Until about two hours ago, he had never realized that lying down for a rest could be so complicated.

"Does she know?" Maes was standing opposite Roy, next to the hospital bed.

"No. She was pretty sedated by the time Bethune got that far," Roy replied slowly, swallowing.

Both men fell into a comfortable silence, eventually returning to the chairs set in the corner of the room by the window. Roy rested his chin against his palms, elbows on his knees, intently watching Riza as though afraid to shift his gaze. Maes chose to step out of the room only once, calling Gracia to warn her that he would not be home until the next day. By the time Maes returned, Roy was sitting upright again, waiting for him.

"Something wrong?"

Roy shook his head, glancing up at the ceiling, "thanks for coming."