Chapter Text
When she was a young girl, Riza had kept a small box of treasures. Things of no consequence that would have seemed like rubbish to anyone else. But to her they were beautiful, wondrous things. And when she felt achingly alone she would curl up in her room and look at the scant things in the bottom of the little wooden box; a red ribbon from a gift her Mother had given her, a button that shone like a rainbow when the sunlight caught it, a scrap of brocade fabric richly decorated with flowers, a coin from an unknown country with its unusual shape and foreign markings, and a picture she had found of a couple sitting on a bench, watching the sun hanging low over the ocean.
Riza had never seen the ocean, it was beyond all the borders she knew. She never expected to see the ocean, and so the picture of two people sitting, watching the sun, over such an unimaginably vast and unknown expanse of water was as intriguing as it was unnerving.
She had made up stories about the couple watching the sun rising, or setting, over the water. Stories of how they had met, and where they had been, how they wanted to be together and would be there for each other through all the unknown story to come.
Mustang's last day passed in a steady stream of meetings, signed papers and handshakes.
His last day as a serving Officer, his last day as a State Alchemist.
And at the end of the day, his Captain waited to drive him to his apartment for the last time.
The sun hung low over Central as Hawkeye guided the saloon through the streets. It caught her eye as she turned the corners that led to Mustang’s apartment, and in the split moment it flashed in her vision, a fragment of memory, the sun hanging low, drifted in her mind.
Mustang didn’t need assistance getting to his apartment. His blindness, once so devastating, now seemed a humbling inconvenience. Still he kept his hand laid on Hawkeye's arm and let her lead him into the building, up the stairs to his front door.
He found his key, and stepping through his doorway, he turned and laid his hand upon her arm again.
“Stay," he said. His voice waived as if it would fail altogether if met with the slightest resistance. Not an order, not a command, just a word, “Stay."
Hawkeye felt the uncertainty in his voice. She hadn't expected such a request, but neither was she surprised by it. She had spent many evenings at the Colonel's apartment. Always working on legitimate military business, despite what the world said of them. But the notion of staying now that he was not ‘the Colonel’ was suddenly unnerving.
"Is that an order, sir?" she tried to mask her own uncertainty.
Mustang struggled momentarily with the answer.
“How could it be?” he said as he turned inside.
“And what would we do if I did stay?” Hawkeye asked as she followed him through the doorway.
Mustang shifted on his feet, looked to the ground, and started to fiddle with the buttons on his greatcoat. Had he even considered what her reply might be?
"I thought we could just… Just spend time together.” he paused. “We can do whatever you want, really. Just be. Just be together."
Just that. To be and stay together. Without scrutiny or consequence, without condemnation or an immediate earth-shattering goal to achieve. Just to be.
“I could make you a cup of tea,” Mustang awkwardly stated as he pointed towards the kitchen.
“Well then, sir, I shall stay.” Hawkeye smiled in reply as she helped slip off his greatcoat.
The sun's low rays shone through the closed windows, the light playing across the dust on the glass, softening its entry to the room. Sitting curled beside Mustang on his couch, tea in hand, Hawkeye watched as the crimson sun slowly crept down. Its journey marked by the shadows from the window frame arching across the wall.
She took it all in. The red cast of the sunlight, Mustang’s hair catching the light and curiously highlighting both deep burgundy and midnight blue, the floral brocade vest hung over a chair, the unusual curve of his eye, almost Xingese. And the two of them, a couple, sitting together and imagining a vast and unknown future, intriguing and brave.
Familiar things that floated in her memory.
And they told each other the stories of how they had met, and where they had been, how they wanted to be together and would be there for each other through all the unknown story to come.