Thank you so much, thee-eternal-child, for your long review! Thank you so so much too for the quotes - I always love to know what you liked in particular! I was having a lot of fun with that moment too, Reign driving grown men crazy xD Well, we know Roy wants to spend time with his kid but yes, he most definitely has the ulterior motive of bragging with her. Very happy you liked that one sentence about him needing a chair - I was fond of that too :) And your analysis of Riza - come such a long way... as has this story. A splendid idea you had about it needing writing. I enjoyed myself a lot and I'm very grateful you reached out :)
Guest, thank you so much for taking the time for such a wonderful review! As was plainly obvious, I didn't really want this to end either xD Boy is definitely coming up in the sequel - he'd the POV. (Basically just stalking- ahem, observing his parents to excuse me writing about Royai as parents :D). Thanks for the excellent push towards the wedding - I was going for a 1000 word mini epilogue in the office but then your review came in... ;)
Golden Flame 611, what a huge review! Thank you so much! Yup, Grumman enjoying himself, Havoc and Rebecca, Hayate for sure... Riza doesn't have it easy ':D Yet another vote for the wedding. And there will be siblings in the sequel, one of them a boy ;) Love the rambling, hope to see it again! Also very subtle of you. Me: Thanks for your support, this is the last chapter. Golden Flame 611: SEE YOU NEXT CHAPTER, hint hint. xDxD
And finally Munya, I must have read your review at least three times now, it makes me so happy! Both the previous one as well as the one on chapter 35. Of course, I see you - you're the one who pushed me to get going and write that chapter ;D Don't worry, there will be Royai family coming up once I get a proper outline in order. It'll be both the sequel to this as well as simply a husband and wife plus Mustang babies/kids story. I'm not done with them yet xD I wish you happiness and health for all time as well!
Missed Royai Day by a hairbreadth, but here we are: Happy Royai Day: Wedding!
Thank you again for your support and would love to see you for the sequel.
Enjoy!
Epilogue
It wasn't the tiredness of her arms or the ache of her back as much as it was the tingling of undersupplied fingers that bothered her. Riza steered towards the changing unit. Reign was becoming heavier – as she should. Little dents where her knuckles were hidden promised gained weight and were simply drop-dead adorable.
"Can I do it?" Roy skidded to a halt next to her.
Riza spooked, stared at him with big eyes. He stared back, expectantly.
"Do what?" She didn't reach for the drawer with the nappies, neither for wet wipes or a fresh romper suit.
He noticed, slowly realising she hadn't been planning on using the baby unit at all. Roy was a big fan, almost a fanatic of the baby sling, and so he tended to forget how Riza needed to put Reign down every once in a while. If she got to hold her at all.
"You were…" he backpaddled awkwardly, "going to do… something. I think." He cleared his throat.
Riza smiled. It lured out a grin, a sheepish one. One that she loved.
"You can try feeding her but I doubt she will like you very much after that."
"I can help you feed." His brows wiggled suggestively. "I can even do a tasting."
Riza scoffed to swallow a hearted laugh. With her hand flat on his face, she shoved advancing, puckered lips away. Not to be discouraged to easily, Roy kissed her palm with a mocking smack.
Reign gasped at the sound. Roy gasped because she gasped, and she held her breath because he did. A heartbeat passed, three pairs of eyes ogling each other, unblinking. Riza looked from Reign to Roy. When she saw the way his brows subconsciously rose higher with each time his daughter's eyes flashed to him, a snort built in her throat.
Reign and Roy's gazes snapped to her. He gasped again, this time for breath. Riza overplayed her unladylike grunt with a chuckle. Reign followed each noise with her eyes. She stretched her little arms ever so slightly, kicked a leg in mute excitement when Riza's hands returned to her sides.
Roy was closer, nearly merging into Riza before she could pick her baby up. The eagerness was back.
Unable to keep from chuckling, Riza surrendered Reign to grabby, exceedingly tender hands. He hardly needed the sling, she found; his hands spanned most of Reign's back. He cupped Reign's head, fit her to his chest as if gently laying a sapling into the perfectly dug-out mould.
Reign was quiet, quieter than usual. Her eyesight was becoming better, Riza assumed, reaching the couch with its tufted upholstery and fringy throw pillows. Much to take in.
Roy on the other hand wasn't as relaxed about the newfound silence, and so he shadowed Riza wherever she went, absently watching what she did, occasionally commenting in hushed tones for only Reign to hear, hoping for a reaction.
It made Riza feel stalked but at the same time, she couldn't help smiling – something he would also comment on with soft coos above Reign's ear. He stood around, shifted from foot to foot, rocked a little. Where Riza would use her free hand to clean or keep paperwork in range to study, Roy's primary action when holding Reign was, well, holding Reign. Carrying her. Making up for all the months of Riza having to carry her.
When Reign didn't demand to eat, Roy wasn't disappointed that his opportunity to tease Riza about breastfeeding had dissolved. No, he was beaming, beaming so brightly his cheeks glowed a happy red. Reign had fallen asleep on him.
With a warm smile of her own, Riza sat next to him where the side of the mattress bowed under his weight. His hands must have cramped, stuck in position, but where she had expected discomfort, Roy's features were mellow and unwound. A frown came then, his nose wrinkling just the same. He inhaled briefly, again, and again, a staccato promising a—
Riza's fingers darted to pinch his nose. "Do not sneeze on the baby."
Roy's breath got stuck. Turned away from Reign, he released it in a burst of laughing. Riza tutted, glanced at Reign, but when Roy dropped with his shoulder against Riza's, his laughter infected easily.
Slumping into him just as much, Riza closed her eyes. She sighed, blissful when Roy's lips stamped her temple.
Reign watched in silent, sleepy wonder.
Roy's gaze mellowed like butter left in the sun. "Be sure to remember that, little love." He adjusted her, freed his weary hand to stroke her cheek. "Because you won't be hearing your mother laugh very often."
"Hey."
"Am I wrong?"
"You have no right to say that when you're the one hearing it most often." Riza sat up, arm itching to but refraining from perching pointedly on her hip. "In fact, you're the only one who makes me laugh like that."
"I rest my case."
Now Riza's hands weren't weary or tired or undersupplied, and yet she fumbled with the backing of her earring. A gift from Grumman. Dangling on a silver chain, so fine there was no peering through the links, hung an upside-down obelisk with a sapphire in its centre. Extravagant, ornate, stunning. Military blue.
A semi-public ceremony was their compromise. Grumman knew the crowds well, knew when and how Roy should ride his wave of increasing popularity. A civil service with high-ranking guests from the military, a few diplomats from Aerugo and Creta and even the princess of Xing, Mei Chang. Next was a parade in a horse‑drawn carriage – six white horses! – to the great ballroom of Central's town hall. Most of the esteemed guests were invited to stay for the toast and Grumman's speech, but afterwards, the night finally belonged to the couple and their chosen friends.
Inviting family apart from Grumman was out of the question for obvious reasons, though it didn't stop a handful of Roy's sisters to pose as waitresses.
The backing fell, the earring alongside it. Riza cursed when a faint clink announced its descent under the vanity. Instead of bending down right away, she gripped the wood of the vanity. Hair braided, pinned up, rosy lipstick, elongated lashes, and a veil more delicate than wisps of clouds framed shrunken, flickering pupils. She closed her eyes.
Deep breaths, Riza told herself. But her lungs stumbled and her heart stuttered incoherently. Just a public appearance, just like any other press statement or addressing of the troops. Only she wasn't to stand behind Roy, impartial, invisible. She was half of the spectacle.
The dress felt heavier with each passing minute, dragging her knees down into her feet like a weighted blanket. Down, lie down, it seemed to tell her. Her body was in agreement, sagging yet upright, one rush of adrenaline chasing the next with every thought of what lied ahead.
Riza pushed into her shoes, trying to ground herself. A gift from Rebecca – white, simple, a strap to keep them on her should she have to run. She wouldn't have to, at least not due to danger, Rebecca had said. For leaving Roy, perhaps, she had shrugged, grinned teasingly. But she was right, Grumman had seen to it that their every possible route in town would be secured.
Peeking through the curving legs of the vanity, Riza found her head buzzing with the change of angle. She sat up straight, checked if her hair and the veil had survived the movement, fished for the earring with her toes clad in white. Everything was white – the dress, the veil, the shoes, the lingerie that made her want to take flight (how could she be in front of all of those people, serious, important people, secretly wearing lingerie?!), the garter Havoc had gleefully procured – so white she thought to become blinded by it.
The backing slipped into her lap, then into her palm. On the sixth attempt, Riza set it down on the vanity, speared rather than guided the post of the earring through the lobe of her ear and picked the backing up. One done, one to go. Another sigh rippled from her throat. Perhaps she would be too exhausted to care anymore by the time she was ready, Riza half-hoped, half-dreaded.
She had already messed up enough during the final week of preparation, crowned by her now infamous slip of the tongue in the office. Not a day went by that one of the team didn't mention it.
Roy had sat at his desk, content that his aide had been returned to him, however briefly. They had been six days away from the wedding but at the same time nineteen days away from the Ishvalan railway completion that would connect Ishval's northern most village to the City of Womiob in the East.
Thirteen days in between – minus travelling time, plus baby. Lightning honeymoon the men called it. Cruel was the word Roy used.
He had ended an important call a minute ago, but the receiver still dangled from his left hand, the right one too busy writing to notice his frozen state. Finally dropping the receiver with a ping, he leafed through a stack of documents. A precise lick to his finger and the sheet stuck, turned more easily.
Riza watched from the corner of her eye. She hadn't slacked off at Grumman's, she never had at work, not once. Still, she felt she had never been more efficient than now. On high alert to make Roy's job easier for him in any way. Any way at all, seeing as it was her last day in the office. Ever.
Then it would be staying at home, taking care of Reign and the dogs, awaiting her love to watch him be the doting father he was. Awaiting officials too, planning meals and conference strategies. He would limit them, Roy said. He hadn't promised, because they both knew he couldn't. He was getting close to their goal, so close so frighteningly quickly.
The stack ended, the desired sheet not turning up. Roy raised his eyes. "About the reinforcement demands…"
"Yes, love?" She stood. And stopped.
Fuery failed completely at subtlety, staring blankly at her. Breda's gaze went to Roy, then to Riza, then to Havoc. Havoc's cheeks had meanwhile puffed to the brink of explosion, a frown painfully forcing down laughter.
Riza cleared her throat. "My apologies, sir." Her face was on fire, her neck well on the way.
Roy's lips curled with amusement. "None taken."
"That's not what I said."
"Right. What was I asking about?" He grinned, beamed fondly when she stiffly produced the enquired sheet.
She hadn't arrived back at her desk when Havoc's cheeks deflated like a balloon squeaking to floppiness. His eyes sported tears, a redness similar to hers hiding an outburst she was glad he managed to swallow. The snickering came though, Breda, Fuery and Falman – finally back where he belonged – joining in.
Riza had ignored them the same way she ignored the pain of stinging her ear rather than adorning it with the second earring. White – the veil, the dress, by now her face too. When a woman fussed about giving birth, they said countless women before had already survived it. Riza didn't have many friends her age who were married, and none had been afraid to do so. And she wasn't afraid…
No, she wasn't scared to be married. She had never wanted more to be married to Roy – well, never more than that one night, her head light with ill-considered alcohol, her body heavy on his back, then under his, dreams running rampant across her tongue in the heat of desire. That night, she would have done anything, anything to keep him in her bed forever.
Now he was in her bed each night and in their kitchen each morning. Now she of course wanted to marry him – to be married to him. The wedding part, she could do without.
"You're not allowed in there— hey!" Rebecca was jangling outside. "You can't—"
The door opened and shut. For a second, Riza wanted to draw her gun, somewhere under the long, lace-studded skirt, and it scared her to realise how it wasn't the effort that stopped her from reaching for it, but her will to save herself. Too exhausted to care it was.
Roy had always looked good in a three‑piece suit but dead black with the same light sheen as his slicked-back hair… Something fluttered to life inside Riza's panic-choked chest. In the breast pocket of his suit stood a single hurtsickle – military blue. He had insisted on the suit instead of his uniform, paid for its breach of protocol with blue banners and a wedding bouquet made up of artificially coloured roses, hyacinths and blue hydrangeas.
Behind his back, he kept on clutching the doorhandle. To slip right out? To keep Rebecca from following?
Whatever plan he might have had, if any at all, it flowed out his ears alongside the rest of his pragmatic brain. All senses reduced to sight, his eyes drank Riza in where she sat, earrings dangling, veil settling from spinning to the door. Rebecca's voice carried, then Havoc's, bending her nagging around the corner and away from the door.
A cloud passed in front of the sun. The room darkened, then brightened again. Cars must have been scurrying about down below, people, security, those white horses. Inside, they didn't move. Only stared. Breathed. Thrummed with racing hearts.
Riza glanced at the vanity – never herself in the mirror. The necklace, matching sapphires dripping down in perfectly even spaces, lied untouched. The clasp seemed indefinitely small. Gingerly, as if removing a shard from an open wound, she picked the necklace up, trailed it across the wood before holding it in front of her neck like a preview. A question. Her hands shook, her miserably creased brows only drawing attention to them.
Roy released the doorhandle. In the place of a frown, he offered a wry smile. His hands were trembling all the same.
It softened Riza enough to return a smile, a small one. The necklace taken from her, she brushed the veil aside for him to reach her neck. Still shunning her reflection, she closed her eyes. The silver prickled with cold, but Roy's hands were warm, his knuckles caressing her nape with purpose where he had brushed it lightly in his frequent attempts to close the fastener.
His lips descended next, on her nape, below her ear, seeking skin.
"You can still say no."
"You know I can't. They're all here."
He pouted a little.
"And because I won't leave you."
"Better late than never." A grin replaced his sulking.
She searched for his hand without looking, found it on her shoulder, squeezed it less to reassure him than to soothe herself. A light tug had her on her feet, and he raised her hand in his, prompted a spin she hadn't thought herself capable of at that moment.
His eyes were greedy, his voice thick with more than enchantment. "Do me a favour and wear that lipstick at home sometime."
"I'll let you watch me reapply it in a minute." She kissed him – brief, proper.
They had practised, of course they had, how to kiss in public. Havoc and Rebecca had vastly different opinions on what was appropriate when the registrar pronounced the fabled words. Grumman had insisted they be kept in – promoting the image of the potential future leader to the female audience. A loving husband, a caring family man. Never mind the child born out of wedlock and the laws stretched into somersaults in obvious favouritism. Nepotism would be the new slander of the press.
Rebecca could be heard scurrying in the hall. Riza used her chance to steal another kiss, to get used to its dissatisfying terseness. Her hands hovered, imagined the bouquet, but his hands fit so naturally on her waist and she didn't want them away from it, didn't want them clasped soberly in front of himself as if accepting a new medal pinned to his chest.
"We can keep practising at home."
"We will." She didn't praise his joke, she was serious. How he was taking his new responsibilities so easily – always had – she would never understand. She wasn't the 'First Lady' as the team lovingly dubbed her yet, and she wouldn't be for a whole while with Grumman becoming cosy on the throne. But from today on, she would never be the side dish, the package leaflet, the extra luggage to a powerful man. She would be his second half – an accessory perhaps, but one scrutinised like a diamond for clarity.
Rebecca knocked on the door as if waking a moody teenager who was turning over in bed for the third time. "You already cursed your luck. Don't add tardiness to the list."
Roy growled something under his breath, held Riza more tightly. She couldn't for the love of whatever god there might have been abide by reason and step away. Her head dropped to his hammering heart, empty hands finding their way home over the lapels of his suit.
"Don't worry, I have a couple of insiders prepared to crack you up."
"You wouldn't dare," she snarled, smiled.
He kissed the top of her head. "I would. But I won't, because then I'll never see what I've been promised you bought just for today." Two fingers traced over the high laced collar, down to the clasp of her bra hidden beneath the dress.
"How can you even think this far ahead?"
"It's what'll carry me through." Another grin, another kiss to her crown. Then a hiss and a minute of hastily scrubbing his lipstick remains off the veil.
Rebecca was outraged. She banned him before he could watch the desired renewal of colour to Riza's lips, towed away to take his place at the altar. He hadn't arrived yet when Armstrong was already dabbing his tears with a frilly handkerchief. The other Armstrong had her arms crossed, ankle resting pointedly over her knee. Roy didn't want her there any more than she wanted to be there, but Grumman had made clear that her pardon from treason came with conditions.
Reign was with Chris, equipped with bottles and bottles and bottles of milk for which Riza had squished her breasts sore. They doubted the spoilt princess would be content with basic needs – milk, clean nappies, sleep. The first and last day Madame volunteered to babysit, Roy humorously foretold.
"Here we go." Havoc nudged Roy. As if that was necessary.
Roy's ears were bleeding for the sound of the music that announced Riza's descent down the aisle. Grumman had never looked happier. Roy had never looked happier, at least so the guests would say for years to come. Not Riza's dress or the pomp or the six white horses, none of it stuck in the heads of the people as much as Roy's smile steamrolling the crowd.
She held the bouquet, and his hands twitched to hold her like he had in front of the vanity, but he bowed to the protocol, his lips alone enjoying the privilege of touching her. Until her hand came up, just one, away from the crowd, gently cupping his cheek in time with the brush of their lips and the first toll of the bells.