AN: Yet another beautiful fanart of young Roy nd Riza as Roy is leaving his master's house. Done by the super -xX Cookie Monster Xx-, can be found on my profile. Give her some kudos!
He couldn't have been more than ten when he realized Riza and himself were different – different not only because of the big house they lived in or because they didn't go to school, but different in another way altogether. It had been a sunny afternoon, and Master Hawkeye had told them to go play in the garden when he first made the discovery. After a few hours of playing, Riza had been tired and wanted to go back home, but Roy had discovered a really cool anthill and wanted to see how long the small insects would keep entering and exiting it. Riza held no interest in the tiny insects whatsoever and was hungry so he sulkily told her to go back home even though Master Hawkeye had made Roy promise not to let Riza walk alone anywhere by herself. The building wasn't so far away, the boy justified to himself as he watched the little girl with her short yellow hair run on chubby legs towards the big house. He nonetheless breathed a deep sigh of relief when he saw her disappear into the front yard and went back to watching the tiny insects.
A half hour later, as his own stomach started to grumble and the ants remained fairly boring, the young apprentice decided to follow Riza's lead and run back to the house. In fact, he really wanted some lemonade, and there was an itch on his elbow. Had one of the ants bitten him? He had tried to be careful. He was glad Riza had gone back earlier or she would have been bitten too, and then they would both be itchy.
He spotted Riza waiting for him at the front door, a cookie in hand, and his stomach rumbled even more. The boy sped up, running across the uneven grounds to the front steps. Running until he tripped over a stone and landed heavily on his knees, face contorted in a grimace. Just then, he heard a scream, a high-pitched scream exactly from where Riza was standing, and the next thing he knew, the girl opened her mouth and wailed in pain, her cookie dropping to the ground.
Roy hurriedly got to his feet and made his way to the distressed child to soothe her, but her tears wouldn't stop. She simply kept crying and crying which was very unlike Riza. And finally, when she was coherent enough to explain, she pointed a chubby finger to her knee where a big bruise was forming – one that matched the one on his own knee exactly.
Both Master Hawkeye and the village doctor said it was sympathy pains. The old healer on Sloan Street said it was alchemy or witchcraft (she was notorious for thinking both the same). Everyone said the two children would grow out of it.
They didn't.
Growing up, Roy and Riza each knew exactly how the other felt because they felt it too. Every time Riza went off to be by herself, he knew she missed her mother because his own chest ached with her pain. And every cut, burn, scrape and bruise he suffered, she felt as well. Over time, the physical symptoms did lesson, but the emotional bond between the two only increased until they had no choice but to be happy together lest they risk hurting each other. Those were the happiest years of his life. Not just because of his own happiness, but also Riza's that he could feel magnified inside himself. Life had been easier then, when all he had to worry about was finding different ways to make her smile.
Leaving her was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He'd had to do any number of hard things since, of course. Burning her back, agreeing not to perform human transmutation for her sake, watching her walk behind Bradley… But back then, when he was just a young man and she had looked even younger than she was at the time, yes, it was the hardest thing he had done, a mistake that he had been repeating ever since despite promising himself he wouldn't. He had wanted to join the military, and the selfish part of him had wanted to take Riza along too. Master Hawkeye made a good show of not needing anyone despite his deteriorating health so why not let him be on his own? But even as the idea had uncurled its ugly tentacles in his head, he had known Riza wouldn't agree. She loved her father, and she wouldn't leave him, not for anything or anyone.
Not even for him.
The thought had enraged him further. That she was wasting away in the tiny village, chained by her obligations to a stubborn old man who only wanted a housemaid until he died. Roy had no sympathy for his Master at the time, only anger and resentment. Anger at all the wasted years without accomplishing any tangible alchemy skills and resentment that the one person he knew he couldn't live without would not put him above her father. He spent a week convincing himself he didn't need Riza. That she was simply a childhood companion and a habit he could get out of whenever he wanted to. He somehow managed to convince himself that Riza didn't mean more to him than a convenience – and cadets at the academy were granted as many conveniences as they liked.
Still, he never forgot the look on her face when she came down the stairs that day to find him at the door, his two cases packed and another bag slung across his shoulder. Her face went white for a minute, and he fully expected her to drop the tray she was holding, but she didn't. She simply walked to the nearest windowsill, set the tray down without a sound and continued to stare at him as if unable to believe her eyes. At one point, she might have even extended a hand to touch him, to feel if this was really happening.
And what was worse, he could feel everything she was feeling. The shock, the surprise, the horror, the painful, claustrophobic feeling of someone cutting off your air supply, leaving you gasping and breathless. Her eyes hadn't watered, they had simply asked why. Why he was leaving without saying a word, why he hadn't even bothered to inform her, asked her to come along even. Why he was walking out of her life just like her mother had so many years ago.
His Riza hadn't cried in a long time, and he didn't want to see her cry now. So, without a word, he picked up the two cases and nodded towards her, walking out the door and effectively out of her life.
Or so he thought.
Most cadets remembered their academy days as full of equal parts hard work and fun. Hard work because their instructors expected nothing less than perfection, and fun because as futurde soldiers of Amestris, alcohol, girls and other general facilities were aplenty. Everyone loved a boy in uniform and made allowances for him. That coupled with Roy's natural charm and popularity should have made his academy days some of the best in his life. Then why did those years now only serve to remind him how painfully his chest had ached on nights when he was sober enough to feel it? Why did the company of a friend like Hughes not make up for the loss of Riza? Why, in his dreams, did those eyes stared at him forever accusatory?
He didn't know what made him decide to go back almost two years later. He can't even remember justifying the trip to himself now. All he really knew was that one day he saw a couple of children chasing each other in Central Park, and the next thing he knew, he had requested leave and was on the first train east.
The girl that opened the door to him was not a stranger, she was Riza. But whether she was his remained to be seen. He saw his Master die, but didn't see her cry. He tried to apologize to her by saying he wished he could change the world. She took that to mean by flame alchemy. What he really should have said was that he wished he hadn't left and that they were still the same. He, not a man pretending to be a soldier complete with uniform, and she, not the shy girl removing her blouse to reveal what she had been subjected to after being abandoned by the boy who had once promised her father he would never let go of Riza's hand when they were children.
She asked to follow him, even if it meant enlisting, and he agreed because he was sick of pretending he could live without her. The plan had been simple. He had been left guardianship of the Hawkeye estate as well as the girl, and he could sign in place of a parent on her enlistment form. All her father's other worldly possessions would be sold and the money saved in an account under Riza's name to be kept until she came of age. Until then, she would be supported by the good country of Amestris, which paid for her education and lodging at the academy. Roy intended to marry her after being commissioned.
And then Ishval happened.
They had just started being comfortable with each other when order 3066 was issued, deploying all alchemists to Ishval effective immediately. He had to leave, and once there, he didn't really want to write to tell her what they were being asked to do in the name of Amestris. Just as well, as she was there a few months later to see it all for herself. Over the last few years, he was afraid he had been losing touch with Riza and her inner thoughts and feelings. His mind reasoned that all the time he spent away from her must have taken a toll on their "connection" – after all, proximity was a relevant variable in most equations.
Except what they had defied all logic, all the time. Because the avalanche of all her feelings, fears, hopes, regrets, self loathing and misery came back to engulf him the moment he set eyes on her the day she saved his life. Just as when they were growing up, he could feel everything she was feeling, and he knew so could she. They spent so long staring at each other, taking in each other's auras that words hadn't been necessary. Their tale was always of the eyes, written in glances and felt deep in the heart, and at that moment, both their hearts were broken – never to be fully healed again.
That was the second time he ruined her life.
Anything that exists outside of logic, which defies all recognizable patterns and is completely unpredictable, refusing to bend to any rules science might put down upon it, is referred to as existing on the planes of chaos. Roy had always seen his and Riza's relationship as existing on the planes of chaos. How else could it have survived so much against all odds? How else would Riza have the strength, patience, endurance and masochism to stand by him again and again after he repeatedly disappointed her? In fact, she was his personal chaos. She defied all logic, all expectations one could have of a lover, a partner, a subordinate, a friend, or any number of roles he could ever assign to her. He knew her enough to know that he had it right all those years ago. They were each other's bad habit, too far gone to give up on now no matter what the consequences. They never had to say a word for it to be understood, not just by them but everyone around them. It was written plain for everyone to see and exploit that Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye simply went together – these two words just sounded wrong when not mentioned together.
On the Promised Day, she pulled a gun on him and told a lie. She said she would kill herself after killing him. What she should have said was that she was going to kill them both because he knew for a fact that her promise to kill him was a lie. That if there ever would be executions, there would be two. So closely were they melded into each other's personality that neither knew how to exist as an individual. Everyone in the team had at one time or another remarked that Hawkeye worked as an extension of Mustang, but they hadn't noticed that he worked as an extension of her as well. Both didn't have enough left in them to make two individual humans, both were living half lives – the only way to survive and move forward was as each other's halves, to pool enough resources to make an almost human who would set the sins of their past selves right. In a sense, both Roy and Riza had died in Ishval. What had emerged in their place was a single entity in two empty shells with a promise to keep and a wish to die doing so.
And he almost lost that half of himself too on the Promised Day. The day he left her for the third time, even if not intentionally. The choice to perform human transmutation for the unlikely promise of returning her to safety had been stupidly simple. The whole world against Hawkeye – what a pitiful choice, really. Because his whole world, worlds and universes, could only ever be made up of her. The promise of dedicating whatever life he had left to Ishval had dissipated in thin air as his hands reached automatically for the array, the electrical pulse of alchemy already coursing through his veins. If there was even a slight hope – no matter how false – that his Riza would come out unharmed, he would be a fool not to take it. The world and his own priorities had been crystal clear in that one instant, and it scared him later to think about it. But at the time, Riza was more important than anything else there ever was and could be in this or any world.
She didn't agree, of course. They had never really seen eye to eye on how divine Riza Hawkeye really was. How infinitely more precious than anything this tainted and sullied world could hope to produce.
And most recently, he had once again ruined and possibly killed her when he let her take that stray bullet meant for him. The inspection had been routine and the area covered well. No one had expected a scared rebel not used to handling guns, but no one batted an eye when Captain Hawkeye was the one who took the shot. Why would they? It was her job. She was a great soldier. She was also going to die one day because of him.
As he knelt by her side, watching the puddle of blood – her blood, their blood, he couldn't tell – widen, all he could feel was the numbness and Riza's own sense of duty. Had he been able to, he would have yelled at her to stop thinking of him and think of herself for once. But he couldn't, all he could do was try and staunch the blood flow as paramedics rushed to the scene.
He fully intended to ask her to leave the military once she recovered. To marry him, if she would still consent to that, or to make her own way in life if she so wished. Anything as long as it kept her out of harm's way. He knew he wasn't exactly the ideal husband, but she wasn't the ideal wife. They simply went well together despite all their flaws – or maybe because of them – and he had asked her to share a life, even if a half one, with him after the Promised Day. She had said yes. There really was nothing else to say. The half lives they were living apart could just as well be lived together, and they would feel less lonely this way.
But then the doctors said she was suffering from retrograde amnesia, and in a flash, the opportunity to set things right presented itself. He had never imagined a life without Riza Hawkeye just as she had never imagined life without Roy Mustang. But now they had a chance to rewrite the rules of their game of a life. Fate had presented them with a restart option, and Roy would never be able to live with himself if he didn't let her take it. He knew perfectly well how much she loved him, and he loved her far more than that even. But had that love been by choice or a habit so deeply conditioned into their being that they could not think of a life without it? Now, they had a chance to find out.
And for her sake, he hoped she would take this opportunity to relieve herself of the burdens of her past, to forget all her obligations to him, to never worry about matching her breath and heartbeats with his. He hoped that for once in her life, she would be what she wanted to be all those years ago – simply Riza Hawkeye, no strings attached.
End Note: A lot of you have been wondering where Roy is and now you know. This was one of the most exhausting chapters to write because picking apart the threads in their relationship is like trying to count every drop in the ocean. And to all my Prides/Selims, I know you watch me! I would also love to hear what you think. XD