Chapter Text
Riza asks Chris to let her become friendly with the military officers who frequent her bar. She wants to have something of a monopoly on them, at least the generals. Chris doesn’t argue, in fact she tells Riza that she didn’t even have to ask. She knows why she wants to do it and she can’t dock her for being just a little bit biased and arguably corrupt, because she’s doing it for the better good, and because Chris herself is guilty of doing a lot worse.
The generals, thankfully, all immediately fall for Riza’s facade. She really thinks all of them are slimy, mostly sexist men, and she almost always wants to cringe when one of them hits on her in more than just a playful way -- all of them are older men, old enough to be her grandfather. But, she doesn’t complain, because she had agreed to do this. In fact, it was her idea.
She had told Roy that she would try to get any and all information she could from the officers by giving them alcohol, loosening their lips and being just flirty enough for them to spill their secrets. She had mastered the art, really. She is talented in being coercive, and plenty of men gravitate towards her at the bar, because she is the youngest girl there in just her mid-twenties. Roy had been uncomfortable with it at first, because he worried that one of them would take advantage of her or maybe even something worse, but Riza had been resolute. She had the best eye when it came to shooting, and she knew how to attack a man with her hands if he tried anything unseemly, what angle to stick her fingers into his throat or eyes. So, with hesitation, Roy had agreed that that would probably be their best option.
Usually, the generals have nothing new to say. She learns a lot about them though; how a surprising amount of them have failing marriages, or how they cheated on their wives, or why they don’t like other officers that she is friendly with. When they do have something interesting to say, though, she makes sure to take a mental note, to write it down in the code her and Roy had developed for this purpose, so she could call him wherever and whenever without anyone suspecting them, because she knew military lines could be tapped.
She writes it out before she calls him, or writes it all down in a letter. Riza gets across top secret information by recounting days that never happened to her. She tells him about her friends who don’t exist, how they went out for lunch and went shopping, when really she spent the day helping to take down a prostitution ring or catch a mob boss (the women of Madame Christmas are incredibly versatile). She creates a facade for herself, where she is a socialite with expensive tastes, and her name is Elizabeth. All of this is absolutely false, which is why it works -- no one would suspect her of being overly polite or manipulative, because she is merely a social butterfly who likes good company and even better drinks. It helps that Roy buys her expensive gifts, even if she tells him each time to stop, but he never does. His reasoning is that it “solidifies her cover.”
Whenever she calls, Roy acts overly flirtatious and cocky, which Riza jokes is a bad cover because it’s not too far from the truth. The subordinates whom he had picked to serve under him are subjected to listening to their flirtation, and they all begin to think that he’s merely showing off, and doesn’t truly have a girlfriend. Roy’s claim is that it works well, because all they suspect him of is lying about his girlfriend, which he isn’t.
After the war, when he had come home, their time was cut short when he was stationed in Eastern just a month or so after coming home. Even so, in that time, their relationship grew into something more mature and adult. Riza pushed him to talk openly about his problems, and he did the same for her -- she, too, openly cried to him about her first kill, or one that especially haunted her, and he had held her and let her get it all out like she had done for him. Roy showed her how to have a little bit of fun every once in awhile by taking her dancing, she showed him the benefits of staying in and just being close to each other; they put full faith and trust in each other, both of them became devotedly loyal to the other even if they were separated. Riza teases that their relationship is built on equivalent exchange, and Roy always has to laugh.
Sometimes, their fake conversations over the phone turned into real ones, he would tell her how much he missed her and she would, in turn, ask when his next opportunity for leave was. Her best friend, Rebecca, whom she had met because she frequented the bar in order to find some proper marriage material, warned Riza that long distance relationships never work. “It’s not that I don’t support you, but I don’t want you to get hurt.” Riza always promised she wouldn’t. What she doesn’t tell her friend is that their entire relationship has always been long distance -- it’s nothing new to them.
They live on borrowed time for a few years. All of their meetings were when he was on leave, or, if she had to be there for a mission or just for a vacation Chris told her to take, she would come to his office to directly talk to him, to stay with him for a few days. The first time she had, he had told her he wanted them to all work together on intel missions, along with his own cover for the five of them, that they were all sisters and she was the eldest, and they all ran a convenience store. His subordinates had been thoroughly surprised to find that this Elizabeth was real as she leaned over the desk to kiss Roy -- and, after a while, surprised that she was so handy with a gun, and that she was a near-perfect spy. One of his soldiers, Jean, had joked that she would put him out of a job before too long.
Their rendezvous were always too fleeting, they could never get enough of each other and it was like they were teenagers, excited and passionate. They had to get as much of each other as they could, because their schedules were tight and never knew when they could meet again. It always made leaving the hardest part; they would share goodbye kisses for a few prolonged moments, until Riza forced them to break apart. The pain left after a day or two for Riza, but Roy had always felt strongly, and his forlornness was no exception.
This was why his calling her that he was going to be transferred to Central was a big deal for the both of them.
“Do you know when?” Riza asks, holding the phone close to her ear like a giddy teenager.
“I’m not quite sure yet. Soon, though,” he answers, and she can almost see the genuine smile on his face as he talked to her.
Riza constantly waits with baited breath from that moment before he returned. His sisters and aunt claim not to know when he would be coming back, so she has to hope each and every day that he would call her from the train station for her to pick him up.
She walks into the bar on a Saturday evening, and she calls out a greeting, starting to ask Chris about a target as she begins to remove her coat to hang on the rack before glancing up, and seeing Roy sitting at the end bar seat with a drink in hand, with Chris behind the bar smiling knowingly as she rinses out a cup with an old rag.
Riza’s coat is forgotten, dropped on the floor of the bar as she walks towards Roy. He meets her halfway, nearly leaping up from his seat and he wraps his arms around her as she practically jumps into his arms, her arms wrapping around his neck and the power of the collision threatening to knock him over. He laughs, and she holds him tighter, nuzzles her face into his shoulder until she decides to pull back and grab his face and kiss him, once, twice, they lose count as the kisses grow deeper. She’s the one who breaks apart though, too excited to not talk to him. “How long have you been back?”
“Since this morning.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
She’s scolding him now, and he laughs again, the genuine, good natured one she has grown to love. “I wanted to surprise you.”
Riza gives him an incredulous look, but she doesn't want to bring down the mood by complaining -- besides, even if she doesn’t like surprises, this was the best she could imagine. She leans up to kiss him again, and Chris has to cough to get their attention after the kisses grew too sensual.
“I’d prefer if you two handled that in private,” Christmas said, but she still had a smile on her face.
Riza helps Roy move into his new quarters, it’s a small apartment that is barren so far except for a couch, and boxes are haphazardly spread around the room. She had insisted on helping, because she knew that if it were up to him, he would simply rummage through the boxes and never truly unpack. After they’ve finished (with much trial and tribulation) setting up his bed, she throws on one of his old shirts and climbs into bed with him, and he wraps an arm around her waist, soaking in the domesticity, but he remembers after a moment that he forgot to ask her something.
“Do you remember the Elric brothers?” he asks, glancing down at her. Her eyes are closed, her hand splayed against his chest and she has never looked more comfortable. She nods, so he continues. “They’re being transferred here too, and they’re coming after they finish up some business elsewhere...and they need somewhere to live.”
Riza’s eyes shoot open at this. She leans up, hovering over him as she processed his request. “Are you asking if they can live with me?”
He flushes sheepishly, knowing that he should have called and asked if it was alright beforehand, instead of springing it on her like this. “Maybe.”
Riza simple stares at him, before groaning and laying back down, exhaling against him. “I suppose they can, if they have nowhere else to go,” she says. “But I wish you would have told me beforehand.”
“I know, I know,” he says, he knows that he is in the wrong. “I’m sorry. I was too excited with the thought of living closer to you that it slipped my mind.”
She rolls her eyes, but there's still a small grin on her face before she begins to doze off. “Smooth.”
“I try.”
---
Riza attends Maes’ funeral. She had known him, Roy had introduced the two of them after Maes and Gracia had their first daughter, and he immediately had an amiable quality to him, and she always felt comfortable in his presence, even if he did brag too much about his family at times. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did, and especially so young.
She helps Roy pick up the pieces. There are plenty of nights where she has to call him at work because she knows he’s not come home yet, or is taking on more work than he can physically and mentally handle while trying to find Maes’ killer. She holds him when he finally breaks down and cries one late night, when he has finally accepted that his best friend is gone in the middle of the night. She makes sure he gets back up on his feet afterwards, she is the one who insists that he doesn’t let himself fall into a slump, that this is all the more reason to work harder towards his goal, because it’s what Maes would have wanted. Roy becomes a changed man almost overnight -- he doesn’t completely become alright (but then, it would be difficult for him to), but he is determined and serious and now Riza is working overtime, determined herself to find any clues or intel she can to who killed Maes Hughes.
Even if she worries about his mental state, her own takes a backseat to her work. She hardly ever sleeps, she works herself to the bone trying to find out something -- anything -- about how Maes was murdered. She comes home late most nights, and the brothers that she is housing are usually out late too, getting into some kind of trouble and coming home at early hours of the morning.
She always makes sure to have a small meal for Ed, the eldest, even when he isn’t home. She knows that he is much like her, valiant until he gets the job done, driven by trying to redefine himself from his past. She becomes attached to the boys, and it becomes maternal as time goes on. Roy often asks how she can even deal with them, especially Ed, but they never trouble her, in fact they both respect her deeply, and she returns it. She doesn’t try to treat them like children, not if she can help it; they’ve already seen enough hell to last a lifetime.
Riza begins to work more closely with Roy’s carefully assembled team of soldiers. They are all powerful and valuable in their own rights, and hers was her sharpshooting skills and espionage experience. They had all worked to make it seem like Maria Ross had been the killer, even though they all knew she wasn’t -- they had to get rid of her so no one would come after her, so they could get this case out of the public eye so they could continue their own investigation. Riza spent a lot of her time sitting at the top of the empty tower, the dog that Alphonse had snuck into his armor and into her home sitting with Fuery, who listened to her and Roy’s fake flirtation. It wasn’t really fake, but everything was carefully encoded and the cover of the five of them besides Roy running a small store was a secure one. Riza was almost glad she was alone in the tower -- even if she spent her time peering through a sniper scope, ready for any attack, she sometimes caught herself blushing at his attempts at flirting, answering back with a wittiness only he could match.
Somewhere along the way, they find themselves facing the homunculus Lust, who had told Riza that she was planning to send her off with her “man”, and Riza had shot until she ran out of bullets, even if it seemed like they would last forever. Thankfully, Roy had found a way to survive and kill the monster, but he sustained a serious second to third degree burn, collapsing after his battle. Riza worried about him day and night when he was in the hospital, and it affects her work. The sisters all notice, and they all speak with Chris to let Riza have time off, to sort out her feelings and take care of Roy. Chris had agreed -- Riza couldn’t work at her full potential if she wasn’t in the right mindset. So the girls took over her shifts and missions for a week or two, all while Riza stayed with Roy in the hospital. He was all too eager to leave, and when he had asked for his uniform -- no, ordered her to get his uniform -- she had to say no.
“You aren’t in the proper condition. Do you want to reopen your wound? If you aren’t careful, you’ll --”
“End up like Hughes, I know,” he cuts her off. The response seems morbid, as if he was talking about someone he had hardly known had died rather than his best friend. But, it could be a good sign, she thinks; he is nearly past his grief. “But I have business I have to take care of.”
“I’m not giving you your uniform.”
“Riza --”
“No.”
Roy gives her a look, one that irritates her, because her man is just as bullheaded as her, but he stands anyways and begins to walk away, in the direction where his uniform is, and she doesn’t have it in her to stop him.
Work becomes more intense now. She hardly ever gets time off, because she is dedicated to the cause, to exposing the corrupt government ruling over Amestris and the strange monsters at the center of it. She wonders if it’s really worth it a lot of times -- if she should be risking her life for something that feels like it will never truly succeed. The Elrics are still stubborn as ever, and when she peeks in on them in their shared bedroom sleeping, seeing how they haven’t given up despite the odds, she suddenly find it in her to keep fighting; if two teenage boys can keep going, she has no excuse to give up.
After rescuing the Xingese prince, fighting the homunculus Gluttony, and leaving the boys to fight the monster, they have to make a pit stop. She loads her guns while listening to Roy tell his friend, Dr. Knox, why he can’t just sit idly by while teenage boys fight for them, why he has to go to Central Command to find answers. After they get into the car, before he even turns the car on, she takes the chance to lean over in her seat and kiss him, taking his face in her hands before pulling away. He gives her a perplexed look, which lasts until she clarifies; “For good luck. You’ll need it.”
The look is still on his face, until he gives her a reassuring smile. “Don’t wait for me. Go to the bar, tell my aunt that everything is okay.” He pauses, suddenly becoming sober. “And if the Elrics show up any time soon, call me.”
“Be safe.”
“I will. I promise.”
---
“Hello?”
“Roy, we need to talk. Now. Off the phone.”
It was two in the morning, but Roy knew that it was something important if she got to the point that quickly. He asks her to give him thirty minutes so he can get dressed and look presentable, and he shows up at time outside her apartment door, looking slightly disheveled from being asleep moments before. He’s brought paper mixed with documents so that, in case she says anything, he can write it down and translate it later. She’s still in her day clothes, he had seen her earlier in the day and she is wearing the same clothes, but she looks more frazzled and frantic than before. Her hair is down around her shoulders and his anxiety is hiked up.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, taking off his coat after she let him in, bending down to pet Hayate behind the ears. She fiddles with the coffee pot, pouring two cups and making his brew, she has it memorized like it’s her own. She glances at him for a moment before turning back to the coffee.
“Oh, nothing,” she says, stirring sugar into her own coffee. “I just had the craziest day. I needed to tell you off the phone.”
He knows that she’s going to tell him a story about the sisters or a man she met, but he knows also that it won’t be as simple as that. He raises his eyebrows, moving closer to her. “Oh? And it was so important you had to tell me in person?”
Riza nods, and he sighs, clicking his pen and not glancing up when she sets his coffee down. “I hope you don’t mind if I work and listen.”
“Not at all,” she assures him, sitting next to him, looking at him and beginning her story.
Later that evening, when she is sound asleep in bed, he sits up with the lamp on deciphering her conversation. She had mentioned fake people, Sally, Emma, Lucy...he figures out what the message says, and it takes him aback when he figures it out.
Selim Bradley is Homunculus
He stares at it for a few moments, blinks once, twice, before Riza moves to place her hand on his arm, tugs at him. “Come to bed, Roy,” she says, her voice tinged with sleep, and he relents and burns up the paper before turning out the light and falling into bed with her.
Apparently, she tells him later in hushed tones as they both dress for the day, she had been confronted by a Homunculus called Pride. It was while she was walking Hayate, who had sensed it at the same time she did -- it took the form of the son of the Fuhrer, with shadows adorned with eyes surrounding his figure. He told her who he was, and that if she isn’t careful, he’ll have to keep an eye on her; but, for now, he let her off with a warning, and she rushed home as quickly as possible to call him.
It’s jarring in itself, to hear that she had somehow failed in being secretive even if it was her strongest trait; it doesn’t help that, days before, the rest of his team had been ripped from his control, stationed to completely different directions. It gives him an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“You need to stay out of this,” he tells her, but she shakes her head immediately as she brushes her hair.
“No. I need to help you now more than ever.”
“Listen to me,” he stresses, stops buttoning his shirt so he can face her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t want you getting hurt --”
“And I don’t want you getting hurt, Roy.” Her eyes are steady, but he knows that through her facade she is angry at him. “You may be stubborn about it, but I’m not just going to stand by when I can do something about it.”
“You’ve done enough by just telling me,” he responds, but he watches helplessly as she pulls away from him. He thinks about Maes, how he had been so determined to tell Roy about the Homunculus that had killed him, and he fears that she’ll end up the same way Hughes did.
Riza seems to understand. She starts to pull her hair up into her bun, hastily, as if she is pressed for time and is running late. “I know you’re worried, but I’m going to find information on Selim Bradley, and I’m starting today.” She glances up at him. “I knew the risks when I agreed to help you.”
He is astounded. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve her devotion, what god above he pleased to earn her love, selfless just like his. Instead of arguing any more, he nods.
He leaves before she does, with her kiss on his lips and an “I love you” before he walks out her door. She tells him to come by the bar in a week, and he does after work a week later. His aunt is behind the bar, and after he greets Vanessa, she gives him a look up and down. “You better be thankful for her,” is all she says, and Riza appears from the back with a few documents in her hands, sliding them across the bar to him. She debriefs him on all the information she found, that in all these years, he has never aged, but has appeared in different points of history. He asks how she was able to collect all this information, but she simply presses a finger to her lips for a moment, leaning forward against the bar on her elbows. “All I can say is, things are about to become more serious. Be careful.”
Roy heeds her warning, takes it to heart. He begins preparing himself and his men for the fateful day where everything will change, the day she warns him about because it is inevitable.
---
The Promised Day takes a toll on everyone, but it hits Roy and Riza harder than many of the others. He is blinded after forcibly committing human transmutation, her throat is slit as an unsuccessful bargaining tool to get him to voluntarily do it. The other sisters and Christmas had left for Xing, to protect themselves, but Riza had been insistent on helping him on the Promised Day; she wouldn’t hear any objections he might have had about it. They had gotten this far, and she wasn’t going to back down now. He doesn’t argue with her.
Luckily, both of them survive, but he remains blind before Dr. Marcoh can come to Central, with his Philosopher’s Stone. After he asks to heal Jean first, and after much debate with Riza, Roy decides to use it on himself. Her reasoning is that Marcoh wants to use something that killed innocent Ishvalans on Roy because he is dedicated to rebuilding Ishval -- he wants his evil to result in something good. Even after all these years, she still makes things fall into place in a way that makes sense.
The first face he sees when he regains his sight is Riza sitting next to him, staring at him with concern etched across her face, concern that he feels that he doesn’t deserve. Her face breaks out into a smile, and he realizes he had almost forgotten what she had looked like. “Hello,” she says, her smile growing smaller but still beautiful even so. She reaches down to grab his hand and squeeze it, his vision is blurry and the pressure reminds him that this isn’t a dream.
His men around him are talking, telling him congratulations, but he only cares about the woman in front of him, even if his vision of her is blurry. “How’s your vision?” she asks.
“It’s blurry. But I suppose it’s better than being blind,” he tells her. She nods, and he can see well enough that the tears that run down her cheeks are easy to spot. He reaches a free hand up to her face, to wipe them away. The men seem to take note and they all realize that they should leave them alone for a moment; they shuffle out of the room quietly while her tears keep falling. “Are you okay?”
She nods, laughing through her tears. “I’m just happy that you can see,” she says. “And that you’re even alive.”
Her thumb traces over the raised pink scar on his hand, something she did when he was blind to let him know she was here, that he was alive. “Don’t cry,” is all that he can think to say, like he’s an awkward teenager again.
Suddenly, everything hits him all at once. He thinks of how they met, when she was so demure and introverted but not truly shy, at least not shy enough to not ask him to deface her back; how he had always been a late bloomer when it came to love, but always was more outwardly passionate than her about his revelations; how he had hurt her when he stopped writing to her during the war, because he thinks he is an unlovable murderer, and while the latter may be true, she loves him anyways; and where they are now, him wielded with her father’s alchemy and her devotion, while she receives unconditional love and a man she can believe in in return, and suddenly he wants to apologize for everything bad he has ever done to her. “Riza, I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” she asks. She looks so confused, as if she doesn’t know what he has to be apologizing for.
“For hurting you over and over...for burning your back, for making you wonder if I loved you back, for stopping writing to you, for getting you into this entire mess, for...for…”
His words are spoken so quietly she has to listen carefully to hear him. She shakes her head, and finally her tears cease. “We’re in this together. We always have been. Have you ever known me to be someone who gives up something I love when times get too difficult? I chose to be in this entire mess, to be with you. You don’t have to apologize. It’s okay.”
Roy stares back at her with wide eyes, and he knows his eyes aren’t blurred from bad vision when he feels hot water spring from his eyes. He sits up, aggravating every bone in his body, and it’s like she knows his every move; she catches him in her arms, he buries his face in the crook of her neck and sobs. It’s like he’s getting out every frustration from the past decade and a half they’ve known each other, and she holds him as tightly as she can while crying with him.
The men don’t come back. The nurses don’t come by either -- the couple suspects the team had warned them not to come by the room. The next time a nurse makes her rotation, though, she only peeks in for a moment. Roy and Riza are asleep together, her curled into his hold, on his bed. She doesn’t wake either of them; instead, she turns out the light, and closes the door gently. Riza stirs for a second, recognizing the noise, before Roy’s hand tightens on her hip in his sleep, nudging her back to sleep.