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It wasn’t like either of them had to say it. The truth of their reality lingered in the space between them.
Still, Mustang could always be relied on to say what didn’t need to be said.
“Looks like we’re going to have to talk about it, after all.”
There had been so much lead-up. So much sweet predictability, making every moment more bearable, making every stifling day somehow special. She was still trapped, still felt bigger than the skin that held her in, but there was Roy. A boy who seemed to actually see her, and not just the things she did for him that she resented.
She should have known it was all too good to be true, but she allowed herself to hope, for once.
His smiles were easy, but contained just enough nervousness to reassure her that he wasn’t playing with her. He helped her, when Berthold didn’t give him extra work to do, and chatted with her about everything, nothing. He found her when she took walks after thunderstorms, mud caking her shoes as she breathed in the electric air.
“It’s my duty,” he insisted, teasing. “What if you fall in the mud and get stuck?”
“You can’t think that I’m that hopeless,” she laughed. “Are girls that fragile in Central? I can’t believe it.”
“No,” he laughed, quiet, like it was a secret between them. “I’ve never met a girl who was fragile.”
She smiled at that, letting her feet carry her gloriously forward after being cooped up in the house all day. Roy kept pace easily, and they made their way to Riza’s favorite spot. A weeping willow, draping herself over the creek. Riza had spent many afternoons in her shade, reading one of the three non-alchemical books in the house as she listened to the burbling of the creek.
“Berthold says my training is nearly complete,” Roy said, as Riza walked around the willow, running her fingers along the bark.
The information hit Riza like a bolt of lightning, and she was glad her face was hidden from him by the tree. She should have expected that. He’d been here for three years, after all. No other students had lasted even a year, though, so she had no way to judge.
“Really?” she managed to say, in what she hoped was a neutral tone. “Congratulations.”
When she rounded the tree, Roy was there. Hands in his pockets, eyes on her feet.
“Thanks,” he said, but he sounded like he didn’t mean it.
“What are you doing next?” she asked, forcing herself to ask, even though she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to ask what was going to take him away from her, what was going leave a hole in her life the shape of someone who seemed to truly care.
“Military,” he said, making her heart sink further.
They didn’t get a lot of news out this far in the country, but she heard things when she picked up supplies from the general store. There was another war. Or maybe a continuation of the last one? The military was recruiting, and they especially wanted alchemists.
“Oh,” she said, turning back to the creek. “Father won’t be happy about that.”
“What do you think about it?”
He came up beside her; she could feel his presence like he was a planet her body yearned to orbit.
She held herself straight, not letting his gravitational pull affect her.
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
His hand touched hers, ripping her gaze from the creek to land on the point of contact with astonishment.
“It matters to me,” he said quietly, wrapping his fingers around hers, but just barely. Like he was cradling a bird and scared to crush it.
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said, her voice more air than sound.
Her eyes were still on their hands. She was afraid to move, afraid that somehow she was misunderstanding him, and this would be the only time he would touch her. She couldn’t bear to cut it short.
“I’ll come back,” he said with his own confidence, well worn and lived-in.
He always spoke as if he knew for a fact that everything he said would be true. Riza often wondered if he felt that confidence as much as he exuded it. She wondered what it could possibly feel like, to move through the world like that.
“You might not,” she said, because if she was good at anything, it was spoiling the moment.
His hand pulled away from hers, confirming that she had once again said the wrong thing. But before she could take a steadying breath and make her excuses, he was stepping closer to her.
“I will come back,” he said, and the hush of the words made her look in his eyes for the first time. They were earnest, dark, and intent on hers. “For you.”
Riza stared at him, not breathing, for five beats of her rapidly-pounding heart.
“What?”
“I—” he rubbed the back of his neck, but still his eyes were on her. “I’m doing this all wrong.”
“What?” she asked again, since that was apparently all she could say.
“I love you,” he said, his confidence mixing with something soft. It stretched and warmed the words into something that filled her up from her toes to her nose.
She released a breath all at once. She was feeling too many things at once: shock, joy, confusion, delight.
“Will you wait for me, Riza Hawkeye?” he asked. “Will you write to me? You don’t have to promise me anything, but—”
Riza launched herself at him, colliding into him with a kiss that was full of laughter. It felt like relief, and tasted like bliss.
A crash, loud enough to be heard even at this distance, rang through the still air and pulled them apart. Still breathing heavily, they looked at one another in confusion, then started quickly back to the house.
To find Berthold on the floor of the dining room, unconscious, with a shattered plate at his side, looking sicker than Riza had ever seen him.
It was the start of a storm that never broke, turning into a whirlwind that pulled Riza’s life into pieces and left her with unrecognizable rubble and a gun in her hands.
“We won’t talk about it,” Roy had said (promised? commanded?) after.
Thus it became anathema between them, for so many years to come: a moment that had hardly started before it was over, that lived only in the most protected corners of their minds. Despised in the darker moments, clung to in the darkest ones.
Until one day— it was no longer the thing they never spoke of.
It was their reality, their future.
“You don’t have to make me any promises,” Riza said this time. Older, wiser, and once again in a comfortable sweater instead of a uniform.
“I’d like to make you every promise,” Roy argued, but he was smiling as he kissed her again. “If you’ll take them.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, then laughed against his frown. “Of course, you ridiculous man.”