Tiger

It was not the first time she caught him looking at her with a mesmerized expression.

She knew he regretted her involvement during the Promised Day, the way his eyes looked at her while her life was being taken away was proof enough of his guilt, however, she couldn't pinpoint the meaning of that exact look he adopted recently.

It was like... No, what a ridiculous idea! He couldn't feel that way about her...

But she could feel that way about him...

She didn't know when she started feeling it… maybe while he lived in her father's home, but she couldn't be sure… those times were filled with sad memories and part of her never wanted to remember them...

Maybe it was when she showed him her tattoo, how he touched her back softly, respectfully, without a hint of a perverted feeling... Yes, it was probably the first time she felt her heart hammer in excitement and not fear...

And when, years after that, she showed him her naked back once again, he realized how a terrible burden it was, he knew she was suffering, and while he burnt her back he suffered with her. She could remember how those warm drops from his eyes felt against her marred back, and how, during that week after their return from the war he would leave, outside her door, a cup of hot tea and a bowl of chicken noodles.

Riza shook her head to get back to the present, and once again found him observing her. Was he worried she might be traumatized? It was not the first time someone tried to kill her...

But it was the first time he had to watch without being able of helping you...a voice said inside her head.

She couldn't make herself stop wondering what his expression in those moments really meant… If he was losing a good soldier and subordinate or if the pain she saw meant something else... But, she would never raise the question, she liked the comfortable silence between them too much to let her naïve thoughts stain their relationship.

She would suffer in silence, like she learned in those sandy lands of Ishval… However, when she remembered the words he said while he thought she was unconscious, in the hospital, the hopeful, naïve part of her being couldn't stop from raising its head and sniff the air like a cat smelling a plate of milk.

Maybe, just maybe…

And when, she saw the old man selling the umbrellas she couldn't stop the reflex of taking one and letting it over his desk.

And when he smiled at her the cat became a tiger.

In case you are confused the part about the hospital and the umbrella happens in the first chapter.