Chapter Two: Afraid of His Own Shadow

Roy Mustang did not sleep all night, though not for lack of trying. At some point after midnight, he downed what was left in a nearly-empty bottle of whiskey, but even that could not keep him from tossing and turning. Earlier in the night, before the thunderstorm had died down, he had twice picked up the phone only to hang it up again without dialing a number he shouldn't have known by heart but did anyway. When he picked it up a third time, a little past one in the morning, he called Hughes, but no one answered. He was probably at Gracia's for the night. Roy hung up and hugged his pillow to his chest, wondering what it would be like to hold someone he loved instead. It had been so very long since he had that he could scarcely remember what it was like.

He was wrong to send her home. He had known that immediately, and he had spent the rest of the day wondering at the back of his mind if he had sent her to the same fate as Laurel and Elizabeth. She had been within rights to tell him he was abusing his authority, and hell, a part of him had hoped she would even though he knew that it would mean trouble for both of them if word got back to the higher ups. With a sigh, he ran his hand down his face. He knew perfectly well why he had sent her away, why he had accused Riza Hawkeye of all people of being too emotional. There were a hundred reasons, and they boiled down to one essential truth: he was a jackass.

It all would have been so much simpler if he had let her go and put all memory of Riza Hawkeye behind him. She had accused him of forgetting her once, and he wondered now if there was ever a time when he could have done so. Abandoning a person was not quite the same as forgetting her. In his nightstand was a photograph that had spent the better part of the last seven years gathering dust, and he knew that, even if he dismissed her from his command tomorrow, he would not be able to throw it out.

The clock showed a quarter hour past two now and he had long since resigned himself to a sleepless night. He switched on the lamp and opened the drawer to fish out the photograph with tattered edges. As he stared at the faces frozen in time with a tender expression on his face and overpowering guilt in his heart, he wondered how many days in her life Riza Hawkeye had been happy. Once, he could have asked her and she might have told him. Now he was as good as a stranger, and her private matters were no longer his to inquire after. She was a bodyguard, a war buddy, a subordinate. That didn't leave much room for her to be a what-if, a regret, a long-lost friend. He had promised once to look after her, and here she was, tasked with looking after him.

With as much delicacy as he had left in him, he returned the picture to its hiding place. He kicked the covers from around his feet and lifted the back of the futon until it resembled a sofa rather than a bed. He went to the kitchen and rinsed the sour taste from his mouth with water from the tap. The first dull ache of a hangover had already begun to settle over him and he resigned himself to not only a long day but a long week as well. Not for the first time since arriving in East City, he found himself wanting to go home. It was a strange, nebulous sort of longing, and he was never quite sure what it meant. Most days, he found himself wishing for his old bed above Madame Christmas's bar, with his strange, assorted family of his last living relative and the girls she had taken under her wing. But on other days, he could think only of the woods. Tonight was one of those nights, and he was perfectly aware that it was his argument with Lieutenant Hawkeye, his stolen glance at a moment that felt like it had taken place seven hundred years ago, that had him missing the countryside.

He remained in the kitchen for the rest of the night, and as dawn began to lighten the storm-grey sky, he brewed a pot of coffee. His hangover had arrived in full-force and the caffeine did little to ward against it, but at least it dulled the exhaustion that had begun to settle over him in the past half hour.

The mood in the office when he arrived was even more somber than it had been the day before. Lieutenant Hawkeye's face was set and her eyes looked sadder than usual. Lieutenant Havoc had dark circles under his eyes but he didn't appear to have touched his coffee. Perhaps the most distressing of all was the look of abject horror on Kain Fuery's face. The kid was barely eighteen, fresh out of high school when Roy had recruited him. An enlisted man still half a boy and utterly unprepared for the horrors that came with military life. Roy felt a twinge of regret that he hadn't sent the boy off to Central to find some radio station to work for. Just a twinge and that was all. With one last sweeping look at the men in his command, he barked out his first order of the day: "Report!"

It was Breda who answered, hesitation in every word. "There was a body in the river this morning. An autopsy is being performed right now, but Laurel Tomson's husband confirmed that it was her. He's being held for questioning downstairs if you want to speak with him, sir."

Roy sank into an empty chair and massaged his temples, hoping he looked more thoughtful than hungover. "Lieutenant Hawkeye, did you see or hear anything unusual in your building last night?"

"No, sir," she said.

He allowed himself to feel the relief he had been holding back since he saw her sitting in her usual chair. It had been ridiculous to fear for her safety when she had no real connection to the victims, but he had been worried all the same. He wondered if she knew he hadn't been exaggerating when he told her he would tear East City apart to find her if anything had happened. He wondered if she had found it insulting. Regardless, he was enough of a coward that he would never know. He had left immediately afterward so he wouldn't have to see the answer in her face. Three months of working together and he was still doing everything in his power to avoid being left alone with his bodyguard. He supposed that one of these days they would need to be able to speak openly, but for now, he was content to hide behind his shame and spend as much time away from her as possible.

At length, he stood again. "I'll go speak with the husband. Hawkeye, Havoc, with me."

Alfred Tomson was a small, mousy man in his late thirties. His face was puffy, red, and tear-streaked, and though Roy was far from a mind-reader, he knew at once that the man across the table was innocent. No man who truly loved a woman could have harmed her.

You could. You did. The soft rebuttal came in Riza's voice from the deep recesses of his mind. Beside him, she stood still, and when he dared glance her way, he swore he could see the outline of her scars through the thick wool of her uniform. His stomach churned.

"Mr. Tomson," Roy began after clearing his throat, "what can you tell us about your wife's disappearance?"

The man looked up, a lifetime of grief written across his face. "She—she never came home Monday night. A-and now she's d-d-dead." He burst into tears and buried his face in his hands. Havoc held out a handkerchief, though it took a few moments for Alfred to notice it. He accepted gratefully and blew his nose.

"Was there anyone who might have wanted her dead? Any enemies? An ex-lover, perhaps—yours or hers?" Roy asked.

"There was no one," Alfred whispered. "Everyone loved Laurel."

"Everyone," Roy echoed. "What do you know of a man named Evan Peters?"

Alfred frowned. "I can't say I've heard that name before."

"He worked for your wife and he's been missing since yesterday morning," Roy said.

"I don't understand. Laurel disappeared two days ago." Alfred dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief before looking up at Roy with a puzzled expression.

It took a moment for Roy to decide how best to put what Hawkeye had told him the previous afternoon. "We have reason to believe that your wife was having an affair with the man."

Roy was convinced Alfred was about to start crying again, but instead, he began to laugh. "Laurel? An affair? This has to be a joke. She said she was having problems with one of her staff, but an affair? Not her, not my Laurel."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Roy closed his eyes. "No further questions. Havoc, see that this man gets home safely. He's been through enough."

Chair legs scraped back, followed by footsteps and the sound of a door opening and closing and just like that, he was alone with Riza Hawkeye once more. Few would have believed it, but the Hero of Ishval had a coward's heart, and while it would have—should have—been so easy just to talk to her, to ask if she was holding up alright, he couldn't even open his mouth. All he could do was leave the room with her following in his wake like a sad and restless ghost.

The autopsy report was sitting on Roy's desk when he returned to his office after dismissing Hawkeye to assist Breda and Falman in compiling a list of Evan Peters's friends and family. He sank into his chair to read it as rain lashed against the window behind him. His stomach turned as he looked at the photographs and so he set them aside face down. Laurel Tomson had been strangled to death the previous afternoon and thrown into the river just before midnight. From the bruising on Laurel's neck, the medical examiner concluded that the killer had small hands. With bile rising in his throat, he set the report aside. It was all starting to make sense to him—the missing cat, the conversation in the elevator. When he received the call only moments later that another body had been found, he knew before he was told that it was not Elizabeth the M.P.s had found.

Twenty minutes later, the rain was falling harder than ever and Roy stood with Lieutenants Hawkeye and Havoc in a riverside warehouse on the outskirts of town. Evan Peters had been found at last, naked in the middle of the concrete floor with a gaping, bloody hole where his cock had been. His pale skin seemed bloodless and judging by the knife-marks scattered across his abdomen, he had died from blood loss.

"Hell hath no fury, eh, boss?" Havoc said in a thin voice.

But it was Hawkeye whose reaction troubled him the most. The change in her face was subtle, something only a person who knew her as well as Roy would notice. The horror etched into her face, the realization in her eyes. He had never seen her look so at a loss for words, and it would have been so, so very easy to cross the distance between them, to put a hand on her shoulder and reassure her that she couldn't have known from elevator small talk what horrors her seemingly-sweet neighbor was capable of.

But he made no move, offered her no comfort. Instead, he ordered the M.P.s to cover the body and wait for a medical team to arrive. There would be another autopsy report before the day was out, but that would have to wait. In the meantime, someone would have to find Elizabeth Sawyer and bring her to justice.

As the three soldiers made their way out onto the quay, Roy turned his collar up against the rain. To his left, Havoc hunched over his lighter to keep the rain off until the end of his cigarette began to glow. He tucked the lighter in his pocket and placed the unlit end in his mouth. The air was chilly enough that Roy was half-tempted to ask for one himself. When he glanced to his right, Hawkeye was gone. She had moved to the edge of the river and was staring out at the murky grey water as though she could not feel the cold. Whatever her thoughts were, they were a mystery to him.

For the first time, concern won out over his fears and he strode over to her. "Are you alright?" he asked.

She shook her head but gave no other indication that she had even noticed he was there. Her brown eyes seemed far away as the wind ruffled her short hair. North, he realized. She was looking north. Toward home.

"Lieutenant," Roy began softly, hesitantly, "I think we should talk."

She looked at him over her shoulder, and the wistfulness in her eyes had died, giving way to ice that seemed so foreign to their usual warmth. "There is nothing to discuss. Sir." She turned away from him then and headed back toward the warehouse, leaving him alone with only Havoc and the smell of rain and smoke for company.

The atmosphere back at headquarters when they returned was even heavier than it had been when they had left. Roy excused himself from the rest of his team while they filed paperwork in a subdued quiet. Alone in the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and tried to convince himself that this was going somewhere—the investigation, his career, his determination to make things as right as they ever could be again. He had thought when Hawkeye had appeared in his office that it had been something of a ceasefire, a tentative peace between them. It had been a fool's hope, but then, when had he ever been anything else where she was concerned? He had been so determined to let her go, to leave the military behind as she had wanted. But he had needed a bodyguard and it had seemed something like fate when he had learned that she was still enlisted. Though he could blame only himself for her involvement, he knew she carried guilt to match the blame she laid on him. He had taken advantage of her trust, had turned her secrets into a weapon in spite of his lofty promises, and she had every right to hate him for that. But he was also the one who had led her down this path, had inadvertently convinced her to throw her fate to the Amestrian war machine as well. For that, he could never blame anyone but himself.

He splashed another handful of water across his face but he could still see the accusation in her eyes on that first day they had met on the battlefield. A ghost from the past. His biggest regret. If he had just listened to her, if he hadn't been a thrice-damned coward too afraid of disobeying orders to do the right thing, none of this would be on her shoulders. And maybe, she wouldn't hate me now, he thought, ashamed of himself for it. That was the least of his concerns, and it was no less than he deserved.

Back in the office with the rest of the team, he sat as far from Hawkeye as he could manage and waited for the autopsy or for news of Elizabeth Sawyer or for the damned rain to stop or—or for anything to distract him from the disquiet in his heart. And so he was relieved when the door opened and a staff sergeant poked his head in to say, "They found her."