Summary: At the right angle, in a line of sight, one might wonder why he never stopped staring at her for so much as a second.
Theme: 073. Parting
Dedication: AngelWings228, thank you!
Disclaimer: If I owned Full Metal Alchemist, Roy would not be insert spoiler here.
Angles
073. Parting
"Come back."
Riza knows her words are not soap and water – they will not wash away the burning fear and the thoughts of needing him or make this insignificant again – and things are not as simple as she always wanted them to be. If time is an hourglass then she is wondering when the sand began to tip down her throat instead and make her throat this sore. Even if her words are weak and this is failing along with every other relationship she has ever had in any sense whatsoever, she does not want it to end. It just cannot.
"You know that it would be wrong." Roy answers. His lips are shaking, but she does not know if it is from the cold or something resembling heartbreak. Because he was always too clever for the real thing, too clever for her and she does not want him to protect her if it means she does not see him anymore. He had been gone for a whole year before. Nearly four hundred days and millions of seconds and she does not want it to come down to him going again for her sake. She tries to reach out, but quickly drops her hand to her side. He is the fire, she is the ice. If she touches him, she will burn because it will mean he will not want to save her anymore; and even if she is strong this is the way that it has always been. Change would be terrifying.
"Stay close to me." She says instead, almost like she is trying to find a compromise. She has read stories about people stranded on beaches waiting for their lost loves, and every romance she has ever hidden under her bed with a plot like that is something she can so believe in that every time she puts the book down she can remember what the sand felt like under the fingernails of the character she liked best and how him not coming to get her was probably what she wanted to kill her, but really it was dehydration. Because Riza has always thought logically, even if she always wanted to see the beautiful side of things like he did.
"But then you will die." He tells her flatly. What is best, she almost questions; to stay with somebody you love and watch them sicken and die, or to leave them and see through a telescope how they have lived like you could never let them? She knows that if things were different, she would want him to live. But she would not have the strength. She does not want him to have it, either.
"The same will happen if you leave." She tells him, wanting it to be a threat but they both know it is not. She might be courageous for him, but she is not courageous enough for herself and she would never leave him behind unless he forced her hand. He places a hand on her heart, and knows what he says will be true even if it is not for him. A thousand miles away he may still love her, and he hopes she will move on; but he knows deep down she will not. She will be there waiting into infinity for him to return, no matter what.
"But your heart will still beat."
I do not like this one. Hmm.
Preview: Their fingers miss by millimetres.
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