AN: Thank you so so much for your reviews! This was an exciting chapter to write! I hope you enjoy the read :)!
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. I own nothing.
Riza washed her face and made herself presentable before returning to the shed. Mustang was waiting on a sizable rock, the cleaned and kitchen-ready fish beside him in the old tin bucket. He stood up, dusting his hands off on the legs of his trousers, and picked up the bucket, ready to go.
"We're sleeping here," Riza told him without preamble.
His mouth fell open. "Is... is this a part of my training?" he stammered.
"If you like." Riza walked into the shed, leaving him trying to make the sudden radical shift in the way he saw his day panning outfit into a context he could wrap his head around. "Start a fire," she ordered.
It was a good thing she had restocked the kerosene and replaced the rotting floorboards a few weeks ago. It would probably stay waterproof through a short summer shower. But she was clear headed now, and the heaviness in the air wasn't her own shock-response anymore. They were due a thunderstorm, the radio weather woman had said earlier today.
She gathered a pot, the makeshift grill and some skewers she'd crafted over the last few years. A glance at the open shelves reaffirmed her certainty that there wasn't anything that could be turned into bedding. The blankets and fleeces that should have been here still hung on the laundry lines at the house. They'd just have to make do.
Mustang was kneeling beside the ring of stones, stacking twigs messily in a crisscross pattern.
"What are you doing?" Riza put the grill down and marched over.
"Starting a fire?" Mustang replied. "Why? Am I doing it wrong?"
"Yes. Go skewer the fish. I'll make the fire." She shook the twigs loose and shoved them out of the campfire ring. These great big city boys never knew how to do anything. At 17, he was at least two years her elder, and he couldn't even start a fire.
Mustang grumbled a little and grabbed the bucket of fish while Riza laid out some tinder and picked up the flintstone that sat on one of the rock-seats.
"Did Master Hawkeye say why we're spending the night out here?" Mustang asked conversationally. "Not that I'm complaining. It's a good night to sleep out in the open country air. What? Why are you making that face? What's so funny?"
"You'll definitely experience some country air tonight," Riza threw him a grin mid-strike. The flint sparked. "It's going to rain."
Mustang groaned, slumping off of the rock dramatically. Riza felt her grin widen. She gently sprinkled tinder on the source of the thin line of smoke until a small flame appeared.
"Think of it as a character building exercise," Mustang said with an accepting sigh.
"What does that mean?"
"It's something a mentor of mine said to me once," Mustang said, a small, warm smile on his face that had nothing to do with his surroundings. "It means things happen, good and bad, things we like and don't. We're defined by our reactions, as well as our actions. That strengthens our character, just like a strongman builds their muscles."
"I understand." Riza finished setting up the grill and Mustang placed the skewered fish over the crackling fire before sitting opposite her. "You have a lot of mentors."
"I like to keep their company," he said with a cheeky grin. "Wise words come in handy with the ladies."
Riza glared at him and he had the good sense to look abashed. It faded quicker than strictly decent, becoming firm and intense. "Your father is a genius. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe that."
"I know," Riza said, already having let him off the hook. She'd waited for any sign that this boy thought he knew better than his teacher, to stake his ground and hold onto it, but it never came. Something told her he wasn't the kind of person to let it go and flop around in Berthold's control until the alchemy master got sick of his spinelessness and tossed him out, either. Which meant he was being genuine. The respect in his voice when he asked Berthold questions, the way he lit up with true fascination under his long, ranting explanations, his willingness to listen and obey even if he didn't understand - he was enchanted. She was too grateful Berthold had finally found an apprentice who loved him, she couldn't bring herself to judge Mustang's naivety.
She rotated the spits and sat back to watch the flames, regretting the loss of the fresh vegetables that Berthold was probably turning into an inedible stew for his sister. Dull thunder rolled over the hills; the branches stood still, alert before the oncoming storm. The boy was staring again. She looked up to tell him off. The firelight was in his eyes, and for some reason, Riza entertained the thought that he could read minds.
"I think I just figured it out. He treats you exactly like he treats me." His dark eyelashes cast long shadows on his cheeks as the wind whistled over the lake and through the trees, sending the forest into a wild round of chatter.
She hadn't thought of it like that in years. The boy held her gaze - brilliant, dark reflections that looked at her and saw... what, exactly?
"Why?" he asked.
The question, this conversation - no, the entire day, Riza suddenly saw how surreal it all was. She was hiding in the woods from the aunt she never knew she had as a storm approached, and Roy Mustang just became the most interesting thing in the world.
He leaning in closer so his whole face looked like it was shrouded in smoke.
"It's how he sees people." The words came out of her as though he had compelled them. No, that wasn't right. She wanted to tell him. He'd hardly known her three months and he was the first person who had actually seen her father's relationship with her. Not watched with indignant or sadistic curiosity, but observed. It should have felt intrusive or violating but oddly, it touched her. Instead of pitying her, he empathized.
"He builds constructs of people because they're too unpredictable for him."
The north wind sent blasts of cool wind low across the lake, thunder shaking the ground. The air thickened, becoming humid and heavy around the campfire. They wouldn't be able to sit here for much longer. Roy sat back, listening thoughtfully as Riza continued.
"Alchemy makes sense. People are uncontrollable variables. Free will combined with alchemy's potential constantly terrifies him. On top of that, he gave up trying to follow the rules of social interaction. He says they stop the mind from thinking clearly."
"He just sorts people into broad categories of responsibilities and expectations," Roy said quietly, reaching over to add a few more twigs to the fire.
Riza shrugged. "It's a social shortcut."
"I get the feeling he doesn't update those often," Roy said dryly, but without any ill feeling.
"No, he tends to dole the same basic templates out. You're actually based off of an early prototype for me."
The surprise and confusion on Roy's face were almost comical. "He wanted you to be an alchemist?" Roy frowned, managing to sound both amused and a little disappointed.
"I wanted to be one, too. But I after I learned a little, I realized it wasn't for me." Riza poked at the closest fish until it turned over. That was the last time he taught her anything. "I noticed it when he got his first apprentices, that he was expecting them to think the way I did, and need the same type of guidance."
"It's working pretty well for me," Roy flashed her another smile, this one pridefully pleased.
Riza returned his smile wryly. "I guess you and my younger self have something in common."
"Yeah." He looked past her to the lake. "It's getting dark pretty fast, huh?"
The gild that should be lining the edges of the leaves and letting in shafts of golden-orange sunlight was absent, the bark beneath the branches cast in deep shadows. The surface of the lake had grown dull and restless. A thick smell of moist upturned soil and water hung over the ground.
Riza checked the fish. Not done yet. She sighed. They didn't have time anymore. Thick rings started forming on the lake where the first raindrops struck the surface. "Come on." She snatched up the bucket, fishing equipment, and flint and hurried inside the shed. Roy held the door open, letting in what little light filtered through the rapidly darkening woods until Riza lit the lamp. The howl of the wind dimmed immediately behind the closed.
"Guess we're really roughing it tonight." Roy looked at the empty bucket that once held dinner, managing to sound both resolved and regretful.
"There aren't any blankets here either," Riza told him, "and the wood is rotten along the struts and the roof. If it rains too hard and the lake starts rising, this place is going to be no drier than out there and we'll have to move."
Roy's face dropped with every new dismal piece of news, but when she mentioned moving he grew angry. "So, we have to go out there in the pouring rain? We'll get sick! I can't afford to get sick!"
Riza gave him a flat expression in exchange for his unhelpful remark.
"Where are we going to go if it floods?" he demanded, gesturing wildly to the floorboards as if they were already letting lakewater in. "Back to the mansion?"
"No, we can't go there." She didn't mean to be so sharp, but that was the one place they couldn't go, no matter what. She had to think of somewhere else.
The cave! Ice closed around Riza's heart. The cave was underground. There hadn't been any heavy rainfall since she'd found it and turned it into her personal retreat. Her rifle was hidden there. If the cave flooded... all those hours working, the secretive shopping and intercepting the postman.…
"Well, wherever we go, we should head there now." Roy rummaged through the shelves. "It's stupid to wait until the rain gets even worse. This doesn't feel like it's going to be a nice little shower."
"You're right," Riza realized, joining in the search. She found the other bucket and its lid on the lowest shelf. The extinguished lantern, flint and tinder were shut in and the bucket sealed with fishing rope. Roy hitched it under his arm, and the two of them stepped out into the downpour.
ooooo
They were soaked to the bone within seconds of leaving the shed. By the time they reached the wooden bridge that crossed a narrow portion of the lake, the water had risen up the embankment, swamping the posts. It was a good thing they had left when they did - any later and the bridge would have been under a foot of lake sludge. The river sloshed up into Riza's already waterlogged boots, congealed mud coating everything below the knees and making her feet heavy and unwieldy. The trees gave way to a pass of slippery rocks, gushing with brand new micro-waterfalls.
"I always knew I was going to die on a field trip, " Roy shouted, squinting through the sheets of water that streamed mercilessly from the sky.
"Can this conversation wait until after we've reached shelter?" Riza shouted back. Getting to the cave was going to be much trickier than she thought. The pass was a steep hike on a good day, but now she could barely see three meters ahead. She grabbed a thin stick off a broken branch on the ground and dug the mud out of the treads of her boots. "Come on. We're going to head up towards a landing in the rocks."
"Are you insane?" Roy's eyes were wide and terrified in the brief daylight as lightning crashed above their heads and the sky split asunder with an ear-shattering roar.
Riza took the bucket from him, pulling him closer to hear her over the storm. "I know what I'm doing. Just stay close to me."
"Just, if I fall..." his voice was lost in another roll of thunder.
She wouldn't let that happen. Riza grabbed his hand with her free one, the other using the bucket as a shield against the wind, and dragged him onward. Eventually, she had to let go in favor of gripping the rocks and branches along the way to make up for the loss of traction from her feet. Although the rain bore down, Riza found herself sweating from the exertion. The landing came into view and she dragged herself onto it, her groan lost to the monstrous roar. She put the bucket down and turned back to grab Roy by the arm and pull him the rest of the way up. Together, they staggered into the opening of the cave and collapsed against the inner wall, coughing and gasping like they were half-drowned.
As Riza's wiped the water out of her eyelashes, a glimmer caught her adjusting eyes. A thin stream had formed in the entry, heading deeper into the slope of the cave, towards her little soundproof haven.
"We have to keep going." She rushed into the darkness. Damp, clammy fingers grabbed her upper arm and pulled her back, forcing her to a halt.
Roy looked like a drowned kitten, his dark hair matted against his forehead. "I... Riza, I'm tired, hungry, cold."
She felt his trembling all along his arm and heard the shiver in his voice.
"And I'm pretty afraid right now."
He said the words so calmly, trying to be mature about it, but it was there in his voice. A fear of Riza, and what she'd do now that he had admitted weakness. He was 17, she remembered, nearly a young man, telling her he was afraid.
She removed his hand from her arm and held it in both of hers, trying to reassure him she understood.
"In that tunnel, there's a blanket, two cans of beans, some flint, firewood, a torch, a rifle and 5 rounds of bullets," Riza said calmly, looking him straight in the eye. "Most of that is on a shelf but the firewood is on the ground. The water is heading that way. If we get everything out before it floods, we can start a fire, get warmed up and finally have dinner."
The fear on Roy's face melted into hopeful determination. He squeezed her hands firmly. "Let's get that blanket."
ooooo
Today shouldn't be real.
The latest dilemma came from a very reasonable problem. They couldn't start a fire.
The firewood was sitting in an inch of gathered water. It seemed to be filtering away somewhere even further down, but not as fast as it was trickling in. The rest of Riza's supplies were salvageable and resolutely carried to the cave entrance. The opening was the only sheltered form with any light at all, if only in the form of occasional streaks of lightning that went off like the flash of a gigantic camera and painted the world in sharp black and white for a second.
It turned out that not only was there not a dry spot of ground to be found but somewhere along the trek, rainwater had seeped into the bucket. The lantern wick, flint, and tinder were as wet as the clothes they were wearing.
With starting a fire of any size out of the question, they retrieved the firewood and repurposed it into a stacked platform - a short-term buffer against sitting in water. Roy had been shivering so hard she worried he might shatter his teeth against each other. He wasn't a hopeless gentleman, Riza realized when it didn't take much convincing to get him to strip out of his soaking clothes and claim the dry blanket.
Riza tried to hold out for as long as she could but the cold was setting in her bones. The muscles in her back and shoulders tensed painfully and she couldn't relax them. Her toes burned.
"Mr Mustang," she said, unable to bring herself to face him. "I'm sorry to have to put you in this position. You may want to put at least something on, even if it is still wet because I'm afraid it's not safe for me to keep sitting out here like this, either."
She felt the young man stiffen beside her. On a practical, survival level, she was glad for the heat that rushed to her face at the pure audacity of her own statement. Most dominantly, though, she was having what could only be described as an experience of transcendence.
This was how today was really playing out. Calm, boredom, curiosity, annoyance, surprise, anger, confusion, guilt, sympathy, trust, fear. Those were the emotions she could list, pinpointing each complex moment in the day when she experienced it. She'd reached a new level of emotional fatigue and perhaps her mind was protecting itself by disassociating from the utter shame and embarrassment of kicking off the mud-caked boots and thick trousers and stripping out of the drenched blouse that sucked itself into her ribs like a vice, while Roy stared dutifully in the opposite direction.
He flinched when her clammy, wet shoulder hit the bare flesh of his now very warm arm. "This is not why I thought I would die on a field trip," he whined as Riza icy toes and limbs touched his while she rearranged herself until her whole body was submerged in the blanket.
"You're not dead," she said stonily, leaving out the yet. He would be if he tried anything funny.
Riza tried to hold herself still against the shivers that now coursed freely through her body on reaction to the heat Roy was giving off. It was bad enough that she had to tell him she was climbing in here with him. She wasn't about to initiate any kind of contact. Tomorrow was going to be difficult enough to deal with without a new brand of hormonal confusion thrown in the mix.
The very coals of hell pierced the soles of her feet and she yelped, nearly kneeing Roy in the thigh.
"Hey! Watch it! I'm just-" Roy's face and shoulders gave off significantly more heat. "The faster you warm up, the better for the both of us, right?"
His burning toes touched her feet again and she curled her legs out to embed her toes into their searing warmth. The length of his arm pressed against hers, his hand across his own chest, they watched as rivulets flowed steadily into the crevices between the boulders into the cave. Beyond the sheet of water, the once green world a blur of billowing gray. Gradually, Riza's shiver diminishing, the warmth and darkness finally letting exhaustion take root.
"Why do you think you'll die on a field trip?" Riza asked drowsily.
Roy chuckled. "Equivalent exchange," he said, sounding more awake than he should, given the taxing day and late hour. "I'll answer your question if you answer one of mine."
Riza groaned and pushed herself up a little straighter against the wall.
Roy took that as agreement. "It's something I've always imagined. I've never been on a field trip before, but I always expected it would be more dangerous than usual if Master Hawkeye ever sent me on one. He doesn't seem like someone who holds back on practical exercises. Of course, Master Hawkeye will probably end up killing me anyway for sitting here... practically... " his voice trailed off sheepishly.
His embarrassment was faintly amusing, but his words saddened her. He saw today, this 'a day in the life of Riza', as a planned and ordained learning experience from his teacher. That cover story was the reason they were awkwardly sitting side by side in their damp undergarments. The truth pressed against Riza's lips, begging to be spoken.
"Does that answer your question?"
Riza nodded dismally, knowing his fear of Berthold's reaction was unfounded, this time. In light of the events currently taking place at Hawkeye Manor.
"Good. My turn." Roy's careful movement shifted the sticks beneath them. "Who do you want to be when you grow up?"
Her dwindling mood lurched. She threw him an acerbic glare.
"I'm serious," Roy insisted defensively. "Besides, you obviously know I want to be an alchemist, and I want to be a good one, for the record."
"You want to be an alchemist who does useful things for the people around you." Riza's cheeks burned under the surprised stare her proclamation merited - had he thought she hadn't observed his lessons? "I've heard the questions you ask my father."
"Why else do anything?" Roy said with a grin. "Listen!" he shifted again. "I've been thinking of ways alchemy can be used efficiently to expand the railway system. If people could travel more, villages like Yiug could get more traffic, which means more business."
"That sounds useful," Riza noted, not sure why it didn't surprise her that he had thought about how to better the welfare of Yiug's residents, nor why her chest felt warmer for hearing him say it.
He leaned back. "I've done my part of the bargain. It's your turn."
Riza relaxed back against the wall. "I don't know." The rain seemed to be settling into a friendlier rhythm, though night had well and truly fallen. "I have a plan. Go to the city, get a job, probably find a hobby. Live a normal life. I have enough saved up to get the ticket and a friend of mine who lives in North City can set me up at the phone company."
She watched the clouds shift, letting in a dim silvery haze. She'd never spoken the plan out loud before. It sounded too simple.
"It sounds like you have the whole next stage ready to launch," Roy said causally, contradicting her thoughts. "Why haven't you done it?"
"Because there's nothing more than that." Her back slid a little down the wall, her eyelids following their example heavily. "Like you said, why do something if it isn't useful? I don't want to start heading in any direction just for the sake of being on the move."
"You need something to fight for," Roy repeated. His arm slipped around her shoulder and her head was pulled onto his chest. It should have offended her. She should have pulled away - this closeness wasn't strictly necessary and would make tomorrow that much more awkward. But was so warm and comfortable to not have the sharp sticks poking into her neck and shoulders. To lie down just for a second and feel so warm after being so cold. "What are you fighting for here?" His voice rumbled in his chest against her ear.
Riza smiled. "Tomorrow. A lot can happen tomorrow."
