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The sun’s setting had cloaked the clouds in a wash of pink, the fullness of them plotted one after the other as if someone had glued cotton to paper. A breeze coated in summer rustled her hair.
Riza Hawkeye watched the sunset dully, her back against the furthest bench from the train station’s ticketing booth. Why she’d picked that bench she couldn’t know, for no one else was here anyhow. She’d simply been walking and did not wish to stop. The bench was as far as she could go without stepping down onto the tracks themselves, and the thought of going back the way she’d come was too tempting to even entertain. So, she’d sat on that bench. The furthest from the way back. The pink ribbons of sunlight kissed the tops of her shoes.
I could go back, a voice said in her head.
“No, you can’t,” she quietly replied. The voice never spoke again.
Riza thought about that day often. Perhaps she should have gone back, she’d tell herself on endless nights of regret or sadness. If she had, she’d be better; she’d be happier.
“If you could do anything with your life…” asked the colonel late one night, far after the moon had risen and their crew had gone. “What would it be?”
Riza couldn’t answer. She did not know.
“I suppose I’d be doing this,” she’d replied. Her superior didn’t appear satisfied with the answer, and he huffed and straightened his spine to lean over his desk.
“This?” he did not ask, but challenged. She regarded him, and he looked at her quite seriously. “Of all the things you could do, this is what you want most?”
She’d barely laughed and stacked a few folders into a filing cabinet. He was a romantic at heart, a hopeless dreamer with a wild imagination. He’d always been like that; lost in his own head, or in realities that didn’t exist. Roy Mustang was nothing like Riza in that regard.
“No.” The lock clicked as she pushed the drawer closed. “But this is where I would have ended up, no matter the parallel.”
He’d gone uncharacteristically quiet, but she just continued filling away the night’s work. Perhaps the answer had upset him. Then again, it did her just the same.
She didn’t answer his question directly because it had already haunted her for years. Had she stood from that old stone bench, had she watched the pink cotton balls turn to purple night drifts on the walk back home, who would she be? To be so young again; to be in a place where she’d never held a gun; before she got on that train as Riza and got off several hours later as Cadet Hawkeye.
Who could she have been?
“And what about you, Colonel?” she had asked after some time, when he’d abandoned the conversation and began filing his own work. Her fate was always set, her past and future unchangeable. There was little enjoyment in speaking about it. Still, she felt closer to him when he spoke of jovial things. She treasured those glimpses of his imagination and prose. “What would be your ideal life?”
He put away the last of his reports, and was quiet long enough that she wondered if he was even listening to her. With a quick pluck of his hand, he snagged and slipped on his heavy coat. Colonel Mustang motioned at her to follow him, a sign that the night was over, and they flipped off the lights and began down the empty hallway.
“Railways,” he finally said above the faint footsteps they shared. “Taking shipments from one town to the next, meeting new people and experiencing new places. Never being forced in one place.” He’d looked down at her, and she looked up at him. “You know I don’t like lingering in one place."
That imagination, she thought with content.
“Sir, you also get bored rather easily. What could you do with days upon days of empty travel time?” They shared a little smile. His black hair ruffled at the wind as he opened the door, and she followed him outside.
“I think I’d read, mostly. Study on all sorts of subjects -- not just alchemy. Become properly educated.” His face went soft, and she saw that he went somewhere else. A daydream too enticing. “Maybe I could teach in my old age.”
“Teach what?”
“Well, I’m not sure, Lieutenant. I haven’t spent enough time on the railways reading different subjects to find what I am most interested in!”
“And in this fantasy,” she teased, savoring this private world he’d built, “what would suffice your natural urge to fix broken things?”
“In this fantasy,” he teased back, giving her a glance, “nothing needs fixing.”
What if I had gone back?
Blood the weight of the world would no longer be upon her shoulders or coating her hands. Sleep would come easier for her, and perhaps she’d even look forward to it. Maybe she’d be a little rounder, just a bit, the way most healthy women were. She could have picked up a hobby, and discovered parts of her own self she’d never seen before. Would she be different? Would she be better, like she wanted to believe she would be?
Roy Mustang had an inherent need to lead people, and to nurture empathy and righteousness. He was born to be someone - he was going to be someone. But in this daydream he’d concocted, he wasn’t any of that. Instead, he was comfortable. His life was simple - built to give him room to be himself, and nothing more.
Riza wished she could lie to herself and think the same could be true for her, but as she thought about it and tried so hard to come up with a profession or a vision of what she could have been, the answer finally came to her.
All of her alternate lives would follow the aging of a nobody. She would have stayed in that decrepit mansion just like she had as a girl, confused, lost, unsure of what to do. Maybe she would have gotten an undescript job in town to keep herself alive. She would have meant nothing to anyone, her hands would be clean of blood but free of meaning as well. That poison would still be whole on her back, and she’d be so preoccupied with its presence that it would imprison her and that life would be crafted by little more than tissue paper. Thin. Crumpled. Poised for collapse. Riza knew that that life would be intolerable to her, and she knew she’d have ended it before old age.
The game the colonel was playing was supposed to be different, and meant to be a fun escape or an engaging hypothetical. It was built to see different parts of yourself and the others you asked, and it wasn’t meant to cause any harm. She knew that, and Riza wanted to entertain it, she did. She wanted to fantasize about what her perfect life could be, to think of a peaceful happiness. She wanted to play the game.
But the game led her to a truth she despised, and she knew it would not do well to dwell on fantasies that could never exist.
Perhaps the colonel could have had that --- he was the sort of person to make something incredible no matter the circumstance. Riza was not like that. Before stepping on that train, she was that nobody that almost died in that field mansion. Such a pathetic creature, so hopeless and dazed. Her childhood was a fog of strange memories and wrong turns. That train led her to a place where she was finally able to find, after some time, a divine sense of stability. Now her life was black and white, a journey so simple that it was impossible for her to become lost. Guide him to greatness, save the country, die to protect it. Simple.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she was already in that daydream. The life she was living was the best life she was going to get, and if that lost creature that had gone back home was wondering what would my life be like if I had gone on the train, anyway?, the answer was here, beside him.
I suppose I’d be doing this.
Some days were harder than others in regards to the impossible feelings she harbored for the man she’d spent her entire life beside. Some days, she spent too long looking at the shape of his face. She would become too enveloped with the way his nose transitioned to lips, or the sharpness of his jawline. Some days, looking at him gave her chest a pushing agony that was often too painful to endure.
Most days were not like that, not anymore. Riza found ways to turn that off - to ignore it, or pretend it was never there. It can’t be there, she scorned herself more times than she could count. You’re only hurting yourself by doing this .
Age helped her. Years of aching glances and suffocating desire brought her practiced walls and experienced ignorance. Just another switch to flip in the machine that she’d become; flip , and he was just the colonel. Flip , and it was gone.
Tonight was not like that.
“Do you think any of this is worth it?” he’d asked quietly, the question mixing with the cold night air. The breeze brought her the words and blew her bangs about her face, rippling her hair and reddening her knuckles. She gripped the railing tighter, feeling the calluses of her palms press into her. Military events were standard, even common, and an expectation of someone like Mustang to attend. They’d done these events a hundred times, becoming so familiar with them it was nothing more than another day at work.
He’d had more wine than usual, and so did she. We’re in the center of Central campus, at a goddamned publicity event, surrounded by shitheads and kissasses. Drink with me . Something was different tonight, and she obeyed.
The event was long over, the only people in the ballroom being the cleaning staff. They somehow found themselves on an outside balcony, three levels above the dying event and peering at the city lights. It was quiet up there. Quiet enough for them to become lost in the ever complicated maze they’d built between them.
“ I hope so, ” she replied just as quietly. “But what else is there?”
She didn’t have to explain further what she meant. She knew he understood. Even if what we’re doing doesn’t come to fruition, and our vision of Amestris is never realized - does it matter? Because this is all we can do, anyway . What else is there.
She did not have to share these thoughts, because they were already shared between them. Their growth together - first as alchemist and alchemy, then major to warrant officer, and finally to colonel and lieutenant - nurtured a language that was entirely mute. She knew him better than she knew herself, and Riza could predict nearly anything the colonel did or said. His actions often were her own, and although he was impulsive and often quick to temper, rarely did he ever truly surprise her. She waited for him to mutter something sad, and to smell the sweet wine on him. They were about to have a discussion about the future, and she would lift his spirits before they walked back to the office. That’s what she predicted was about to transpire, and she was nearly never wrong.
Then he did something entirely different.
Cold from the touch of the railing, his hand drifted and covered hers. There was an immediate shock between them, a charge that whirled in the skin of her hand that he was warming. Her lips parted in shock at the brazen display while her heart seemed to jolt in her chest, a quick inhale as the charge continued to build. Flip , she begged. Flip. Turn off. Just the colonel.
She dared herself to look up at him, and saw Roy looking back at her. An inebriated Roy, and a vulnerable one. He looked deeply into her eyes, but held back his words. The silent language passed between them, and she saw the word in his gaze.
You , he answered. You are what else there is. Breath stuck in her chest, and desire tickled her lips at the way he looked at her. He wasn’t the colonel suddenly, but the man she was in love with.
This had happened before, in a number of scenarios. A crumbling bit of wall, or a peek into an alternate reality that could never, ever be entertained. Sometimes it was a look in his eyes, or a hesitation in his face when they were just too close together. She would ignore it, or mince words to bring him back to the reality they lived in. Flip , she tried. Flip. She couldn’t do it tonight - that part of the machine was broken, and the switch was stuck. He took a step into her. In the real world, and not this imaginary one that couldn’t be happening, she would have taken a step back to match. She would have slid her hand out from under his. Scolded him. Turned away.
Instead she just tilted her chin up to keep her eyes on his, and she watched him look down at his feet as some question burned in his mind. Static radiated between their bodies, his adorned by dress blues and meaningless ribbons and hers clad in the same high necked, sleeveless dress she always wore to these events. Please gain your senses , she begged of him, because I can’t find mine .
“Do you think,” he repeated slower, emphasis hanging on every syllable, “that this is worth it?”
The meaning was different, though the words were the same. Riza stared up at him, her neck slightly stretched to accommodate their difference in height. She felt the warmth of his breath on her nose before it was blown away by the night.
Ache poured out from him in waves, tightening the muscles of his hand so she felt his heartbeat through her own fingers. It was eating away at him, tearing him apart. Riza saw his pain more potently than she ever had before, and she knew he was asking if the sacrifice they made to be apart was worth it.
“Colonel…” she tried, one last, desperate attempt to force distance, but his eyes slowly came back and met hers.
“Please,” he said, begging, “tell me.”
“I--”, she breathed. A deep sadness washed over her and mixed with the desire, churning and gusting in the walls of her chest. “I hope it is.”
It was as honest an answer as she could give even herself. I hope it’s worth it , she consistently told herself, because this sacrifice is sometimes too great to bear .
His proximity was intoxicating, blunting her senses far more than the wine. Her lips wanted his, and she felt an incredible need to finally feel them moving with her own. She had fantasized about it many times, even had dreams where they could finally embrace, but it had never happened. Not even in their weakest times, in their vulnerable youth. Would it ever happen , she more frequently thought. The knowledge that it wouldn’t was agonizing.
Don’t let him, a voice inside her head screamed. Don’t let him.
His free hand, gloveless, came up and held her, his thumb outside her ear and his other fingers feathering over the nape of her neck. She shuddered, breathless, frozen, incapacitated. We could , she thought. We could.
We can’t.
She saw him eye her lips, and she knew the alternate reality was about to bleed with the real one. He moved into her, his face coming down to meet hers, his lips just brushing against her own and she shuddered beneath his touch---
And she placed a hand on his chest and withdrew the other from the railing so the icy wind could bite at the place he’d just been. He stopped. One last drop of desire filled his eyes and poured into hers, and she watched as some form of realization came over him. He closed his eyes painfully and leaned away from her.
“I want to,” he admitted as he went back to leaning down against the railing. His voice went quiet, broken. “Sometimes I think I need to.”
Still reeling from the loss of something she never had, Riza swallowed and opened her mouth.
“I know,” she managed. “I know.” I do too, she added.
“When, then?” he asked the city lights, turned entirely away from her. They blinked at him.
“I think…” She had to force herself to say it. “I think we have to accept that the answer could be never.”
Never .
“Never…” he repeated, mostly to himself. The colonel turned, looking at her with less desire and more fondness; respect; something more. He swept her bangs out from her face, a last touch of the moment they could have shared, and let his fingers hesitate against her for a moment too long before turning and stepping back into the building.
His departure left her winded and she collapsed against the railing in anguish. They could never be together, because this is the life they chose.
He was never going to be that railway shipper and she was never going to be that sad shell of a woman, because they chose these lives instead. They would never embrace, and Riza would never feel him the way she so desperately wanted to. Their uniforms kept them prisoner, yet set them free to be larger than they would have been if they never donned them.
A tear lulled in the corner of her eye and fell as she closed her eyelids painfully, the truth more potent, binding, and scathing than it had ever been before. If that damned switch wasn’t fucking broken , she wanted to scream. I could have protected myself .
Flip.