Senses
Part III: Sound
By SP

There was the ceiling fan, lazily spinning around to no end. There was also his wall clock, five hours and twenty-seven minutes slow, but still worked all the same. He thinks it was in the office before he moved in, but never really cared enough to fix it. A flickering light just to the right of his desk became an issue after he came in the office that night, though he never cared about it until now. Almost every little thing that interrupted his reverie became an issue now, distracting him from the task at hand.

It wasn't even technically proper office hours and he couldn't focus.

There was just so much to think about, so much to deal with, so many more issues to fix in so little time. He didn't expect his Thursday night to end up with him watching the moon rise, still in his rumpled uniform in his near-bare office. He expected better from Bradley, he expected his informers to give him a hint about the transfers, he expected more from the military. Above all things, he expected more from himself.

If he couldn't protect the people he cared for the most, how could he ever recover from a setback like this? Even more so, how could he even be Furher?

In fact, how could he keep her alive at this point? Sure, she can take care of herself. She can throw anyone off her trail of snooping and investigating and spying. But against a Homunculus… that's a whole different challenge. She's the most logical hostage for them – he's practically given up on all this "sacrifice" bullshit Bradley (or Wrath, Mustang wasn't sure what he should call him anymore) has been whispering of, so Hawkeye has become the priority in his life. Should've had her as a priority beforehand, so this wouldn't have happened. He always though he would somehow rescue her one day, as corny as it sounds, or she could get herself out of the bind that they're both trapped in.

But not now. Maybe not ever.
It was truly strange to him how powerless he was. One of the more powerful men in Central, perhaps in all of Amestris, and he couldn't lift a finger to help his friends. He couldn't trust himself to watch over the people he trusted the most. Even though his back was always covered, he couldn't cover theirs'. Fuery, Breda, Falman, Havoc… even Riza.

He failed them all.

They would find some way to survive. That was hammered into them until it became instinct. Underneath the radar, they would get information and survive. He had no doubt of that. Something always came to him that helped him in the slightest bit.

The trust was gone, though. That total reliance, at least on their side. If they were reunited, they'd cooperate, but there would be tension that no actions or words could really patch up. Even Hawkeye would be like that. His cold, reliable, wonderful Lieutenant was a hostage, and the Flame Alchemist had no firepower to bring her back.

Mustang tipped his chair back, leaning against the edge of his desk. His fidgeting fingers played with the lapels of his collar, the ribbons on his jacket. He was restless, and was too scared to try to get through the papers he'd procrastinated on. There'd only be guilt and the endless stream of "what if's?"

When he was learning alchemy from her father, they made their own codes, passed between dinner trays and shared books, that Berthold practically ignored due to the apparent random jumble of letters and symbols on scraps of paper. All he wanted at that time (besides the obvious alchemical knowledge) was her friendship, since the most prohibited thing would always be the most pursued and desired, particularly any sort of relationship with Elizabeth. It was the same in Ishval, though clandestine meetings and messages posed so much more risk in a warzone than in chilly snowy nights. Their little tricks and secrets would be shared with Mustang's subordinates, to knit them tightly together, to know everything about each other, all to make their operations flow smoothly. But there were always a few words and codes Riza would never employ or teach to the others, and he never pushed it. Roy wanted one little thing to keep for himself about her, no matter how selfish that sounded. That's all he could really have.

He supposed he expected something from her, just a note or a torn piece of a gum wrapper, almost every day since she's been gone. Just… something to let him know she's stable, she's okay, she's safe. There were so many trip lines and webs to navigate day after day now that he couldn't risk reaching out to her. Ever.

The more miserable part was that his Lieutenant thought the exact same thing.

He could only watch and wait now, to bide his time 'till it was safe to pursue any course of action, if possible. So he would sit in his office, drowsing in and out of sleep, hearing the echoes of Havoc's coughs and Fuery's radio static of the past creep into his mind, soon to join the recesses of his mind with excited tone of Maes and Riza's laugh when she was truly and fully happy, not just her usual sarcastic chortle. We're all ghosts at the end of the day, Mustang says to himself with a tinge of a cynical smile at his lips. As if the pervasive silence wasn't enough to drive the spike deeper into his heart. He missed the unremarkable sounds of the day, his personal orchestra for each chess piece that is – was – his. He doesn't even get visitors anymore, so the door doesn't creak in its awful manner of welcoming visitors. Like the way it just did.

Like the way it just did.

Roy sat up, boots scraping the floor as his hands clenched the armrests of his chair. He was almost positive the building was vacated at this hour, that it was just him and his phantoms that he couldn't ignore or rid himself of.

He knew his hair was a mess, his shirt was wrinkled beyond repair, and his ignition gloves were still tucked inside the bottom-left drawer of his desk, where Hawkeye put them last. He didn't even have a letter opener to poorly arm himself with. However, that didn't stop him from standing up, staggering over to his door, and gently pulling it open with its barely audible groan, knowing that he should be on his way home, he should just go to the nap room, and forget about the person that shouldn't have returned here.

That could be taken care of later.

It seemed as if his fatigue was wiped away when he saw her, cloaked in darkness and shadow, standing by the open window as the moving clouds mostly blocked the moonlight that streamed onto her profile and turtleneck. Her jacket was folded neatly onto the unused desk that was pushed against the wall, and her fingertips barely graced the wood, almost afraid of retracing the memories of months gone by. The clip in Hawkeye's hair glinted in the moonlight, as did her trademark earrings. Roy folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe, letting the simplicity of the moment last until he knew (with their luck) that it would be shattered in only a few minutes.

"The view from this window has never been good." She sounded distant, almost removed from her material body.

"Thank god I never have to look out of it." It's not like she started much of a conversation, so she wouldn't get much of a response.

"The windows in the Furher's office overlook almost all of Central."

"Enjoying your new job, aren't you? Already comparing me to your new superior."

"Don't be so rude, Colonel." Her frank tone was almost music to his ears, a needed sound to remind him of how much he needed her. "They're almost too much. The windows," she reaffirmed. "Too big, too wide." The fall of her shoulders with her sigh portrayed her exasperation. "I like the smaller ones."

"Me too," he admitted. He shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way over to his Queen, leaving the light of his office to the darkness of her old domain, her old kingdom before she was captured. The view from the window was as depressing as she meant it – it overlooked a few rooftops, and then ended in a concrete wall only a few hundred yards away. Like the wall that blocked any real interaction between them.

"How long do you want us to stand in silence, Colonel?" She nudged the toe of her boot against a dusty wastebin. The emptiness was eerie without the takeout boxes and books haphazardly stacked on desks and along the walls when this room was still inhabited.

"I was actually planning on asking you a question, Lieutenant."

"Fire away, then."

A rueful smile appeared on his face. That was what he missed – always challenging him to do better, always expecting more from him. Making him a better man. "How have you been, Hawkeye?"

He knew what she would say – good, well, healthy, decent – but he felt a need for common courtesy that was the foundation for the wall between them. He could only be polite, a typical gentleman to her. That's all he could ever be, and it wasn't nearly enough.

"Fine," Riza says without missing a beat. "And you?"

He pauses, without knowing quite why. Words are everything and all they have between them, since nothing else is acceptable, and they dangle more weight over them than a normal person could ever estimate. "I've been better, I guess."

"Oh," she whispers with a sad smile.

"Yeah." Even fine was a hefty word. That nothing was good, nothing to report on. That conditions were survivable, but it was still too risky to conduct reconnaissance. That she would live, but didn't know how many days she had left. He thought I've been better was worse. That he misses the past. He misses Falman's tight-lipped grimaces and Breda's footsteps that shook the penholder on his desk. And most of all, that he misses her, and every single damned thing about her. Which cuts the deepest of them all.

He's grateful for the ensuing quiet. She's not yelling at him or walking away with disappointment etched on her face. It's the things she doesn't say that he relies on the most. This silence is what keeps both of them alive, motivating them to both work for a day that there would be something different, something better than what's fallen in their laps now.

Roy stands near to her now, close enough to reach the clip in her hair and deftly pull it out. He settles for watching the near-indiscernible rise and fall of her shoulders in time with her breathing. This is easy enough. It's when the silence breaks that it gets difficult to say anything that would be good enough.

"Why did you come back?" He meant the words more seriously than they sounded.

Riza turned from the window, completely facing him now. He was never afraid of eye contact – but now he wanted to shy away from her gaze. Though he returned her look with equal intensity, his palms balled up in his pockets to resist touching that face, to not lock the door to his office. They were never safe, not even when she was technically not his subordinate.

Even with the guns in their holsters (and most definitely loaded), this may have been the most vulnerable he has seen her in their entire time together. Not when she showed him her back when Master Berthold died, not when she saw him for the first time in years in Ishval, not when Lust almost killed the both of them. She had freedom then. She had free will. She had choices.

And now she has none. She's blocked in on all sides, like a weak bird desperately attempting to break free from its cage. The circles under her eyes were darker than they used to be, and there was a particular gauntness in her face that wasn't from her natural skeleton. No, this was the look of someone who was haunted.

She was scared, that's what it came down to. And she knew it all too well. Was it because of her fear of Bradley? Or the separation from him?

No. Impossible.

It was apparent she chewed what she would say; the look on her face said it all.

"I… I never left," she finally breathed out.

Of course you left, you were taken away from me, I was supposed to keep you safe, I promised your father that I would, I couldn't do the one job a dying man left me, I want to take you away from here and never –

Oh wait.

Of course.

She didn't leave where it mattered, right? It was practically a confession, if he twisted the words around the right way.

Now was not the time to be emotional, Mustang. It's not the time. Man up.

He straightened his back in a futile attempt to regain some control over his body. "You should leave. He could be watching."

Riza – his Riza, in a sense – shook her head in her obnoxiously stoic manner. "The Furher went home tonight. I won't be needed until roughly five hours from now."

"It's that late?" Roy feigned a yawn and peeked a look at his watch. It was that late, but he didn't want this conversation to wrap up quite so quickly. "Then you should still go. You need to sleep."

"The same sentiment applies to you, Colonel," she replied with her perfunctory curtness.

He crossed his arms in front of his chest once more. "I'll sleep when you do. I'll even walk you home."

Even the darkness couldn't shadow the small shake of Riza's head. "Not here. Not now. You know better than to be seen with me."

Roy almost wanted to stamp his foot in a childish tantrum. "It's not like there are monsters hiding in the shadows, Hakweye. You're not a kid anymore."

Her sigh was discreetly audible. "I know." She inconspicuously slid forward. Not too much to be indecent, but enough for an onlooker to tell that there was something unspoken of dangling between the Colonel and his most trusted First Lieutenant. "I just wished some things never changed."

"Me neither."

They were at an impasse, once again. Both knowing there was so much to be spoken of between them, and so much that they weren't allowed to ever think of.

A pale white arm appeared in the gloom, reaching out to him. It was half pleading for some sort of contact she had been starved from, half begging for him to reject the motion entirely and disregard it ever occurred.

He had done the reaching before though. Too many times to count. Now it should be her turn.

Her hand wavered, trembling before his cheek, as if it would set her on fire if she dared to touch him.

She dared, cupping her hand around the crook of his neck, sliding her fingers into the hairs at the back of his neck that brushed the collar of his uniform and her thumb resting just behind his ear. It wasn't quite the romantic gesture he expected, but nonetheless the only comfort he craved at the time being.

The only fire that was started was the one coursing through his veins, imploring and insistent for more contact, more Riza, more of this feeling that he craved for so long. His face turned closer to hers as her other hand grasped the other side of his face, pulling him down to her eye level. He could count the alternating shades of light brown and dark brown in her eyes, and trace the slight ridge above her eyebrow where she split open her skull when she fell down a rotten staircase in the Hawkeye mansion. Her nose brushed against his by the tiniest bit, and her breath smelled like the usual tea – but aged, as if she had it long before the moon rose. If he wanted to, he could even close the few inches between their lips, and forever alter what they've both constructed between themselves for their sanity.

For a brief moment Roy envisioned crushing her against the desk, pinning her arms above her head as he ravished her in the exact manner that a woman such as her ought to be properly ravished, with all proprieties and rules and codes disregarded for that one moment they could bear to have together.

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Out of purely selfish reasons, of course.

He couldn't do anything unless he was sure she wouldn't rebuff him, leaving him stranded and alone and blind without her. So his arms dangled loosely at his sides, well aware she was just as scared as he was. She nudged her forehead against his, forcing him to look at her and drink everything in about her, not just placidly removing himself from the situation.

Her lips moved, soundlessly at first, but then only a few words managed to trickle out. "You know I'll find my way back to you. One day, someday. I will." Riza's short phrases were in a calm tone, more to assure herself than him. "I will find you. I promise."

And he had nothing to say in return.

So the silence prevailed, as it usually did. His arms simply moved to pull her closer to him, wrapping his arms around her lithe figure, just beneath the holsters of her firearms. They were only as close as the bulky material of their uniforms would let them be, but that barely mattered. The military-issue turtleneck felt rough but comfortable in his palms, reveling in the feel of her body against his hands. Roy merely rested his forehead against her shoulder, allowing him this one moment of weakness, just to feel her one last time. Who knew if there would be another time like this?

He could feel her head turning as well, into the hollow where his shoulder became his neck. She breathed deeply, and he resisted doing the same, lest he ruin this one glorious moment.

It seemed like a cruel trick or fate that they fit together so perfectly. The way Riza was tall enough so that the height difference let him fold her tightly into himself, or how his arms easily held her waist close to him. Roy wanted to say so much, and he opened his mouth (though he wasn't sure if he would shoo her away or confess everything that's been held back for years about her) to do exactly so.

As if she knew what was going on behind her back, Riza muttered "I already know, Roy" into the fabric of his collar. Her fingers tightened their grip, going so deep as to pull at the skin underneath.

After a pause of countless moments, Mustang found the strength to speak once more. "Do you?"

This time, he was only met with silence.

But it was in the things that she didn't say that Roy Mustang needed the most.

AN: Yeah. Here it is! I'm actually pretty happy with how this turned out, since I'm still not pleased with Part II. Halfway done with this story wheeeee! I have all my school stuff going on now, so I wanted to publish this chapter before my life gets super crazy (with not a lot of time to write). So if ya liked, please R&R, it's super-duper appreciated.

Thanks,
SP