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Roy is going to have to watch her die.
The sword against Hawkeye’s throat is infuriatingly quiet. There is no resonant snap of fingers, no roar of flames, no gunshot to echo through the hollow air. The blade sings silently through her flesh and she looks surprised by the first spurt of blood—like she didn’t even feel it. And then Bradley’s precursor lets go of his hold on her and she tumbles forward, and it’s like that surprises her too, like she didn’t expect her strength to leave her. Like she couldn’t fathom what was happening.
A second later the panic sets in and he watches her eyes widen. Hawkeye gurgles, a horrible, wet sucking sound as she frantically tries to staunch the bleeding. With her other hand she scrabbles for purchase at the bare, cold floor, smearing it with the blood that is starting to pool around her, caking it into the creases of her palms and under her nails. She chokes, retches around a throatful of blood. A lungful. She is drowning and suffocating and bleeding out all at once.
The golden tooth doctor walks in a wide arc around her, hands folded behind his back and a smile still splitting his face. He looks down on Hawkeye with a sick glee, like she is nothing more than an insect smeared between his palms.
“Well, Mustang, what will it be?”
The realization hits him and he almost crumbles under the helplessness of it. Riza Hawkeye is going to die right in front of him and there’s nothing he can do. So he strains against his captor and howls threats. Tries to wrench his arms free from their hold but to no avail. Roy locks his eyes with Hawkeye and calls out to her, begging her to stay conscious; she is whale-eyed and frothing bloody spittle, her pupils completely blown out from fear, but she is looking at him. Imploring him to understand. And he does, of course he does, because it is her. It’s like she’s screaming it right at him, clear as anything.
This is a trap.
There is no outcome where he performs the human transmutation and the Homunculi don’t win. They are asking him to play right into their hands and he knows he can’t, even if it is the only thing that would save her. Roy looks to Hawkeye and estimates she has three, maybe five minutes left. She is clutching the tear in her throat with both hands now, her hair and clothes rusty with her blood, the stench of iron almost unbearable even where Roy is held, meters away. Her teeth gleam in a silent, animal snarl as she labors over each agonizing breath.
If he doesn’t fold for them in a bid to save her (and he wants to, so badly) they are banking on his grief to drive him to try to bring her back. But she is still glaring at him, the amber of her eyes dull and lightless in this horrible place, pleading wordlessly for him to leave her, that he can’t let them win. She does not take her eyes off him for a moment, not even when her gaze has lost its focus and her heaving wet gasps have become reedy and shallow. Her irises roll back just once, her body going slack for just a moment before she jolts back to him, like she was fighting against sleep. Fighting. Fighting to the bitter end.
This is it. There is no ‘out’ this time. There is no third option. Roy wants nothing more than to crawl to her and hold her so that at least she doesn’t have to die alone on the floor of this place. But there is no way that their captors would allow that, so Roy does the only thing he can to offer her one last moment of solace. He looks her directly in the eye, uses all of his strength to force conviction into his voice when he loudly refuses to perform the human transmutation.
Her eyelashes flutter and her lips twitch in response, her face still contorted with pain, but he can see the way relief softens the edges of her expression. He thinks he might have even seen her nod. He hopes above all hope that she is still lucid enough to read all the untold emotions in his gaze. How fucking gutted he is, how his life will never be the same when she’s gone from it, how viscerally he wished things could have been different—that he’s sorry, that he loves her. The words are in his mouth to tell her, he has to be certain that she knows.
But then her eyes close, and Roy is sure he’s lost her.
There are no words to describe grief. There never have been, not in the wake of his parents' funeral, or after Ishval, or when Maes was killed, and certainly not now. The horrible empty. The unbearable overflow. Each inhale fills him so full of rage and pain that it's going to boil his blood, sublimate his bones and turn him inside-out, turn him to vapor. And then each exhale guts him and he's left with nothing, with just the empty ache, a husk left behind until the next inhale comes and he is torn apart again.
Hawkeye's body is a smear of pale and gold and black and red, and he can't breathe, can't look away from her. Roy had known Hawkeye for longer than he hadn't, seventeen years by his side, and if he takes his eyes off her now he'll have to accept that she is gone. When Bradley stole her from him, alive and just for a few months, it threw his world on its axis and it was all he could do to keep going. But now she is gone. Gone forever. Gone for no reason. Gone because they needed another bartering chip against him.
And Hawkeye is so fucking young. Not even thirty. It's just not fair; she had never been given a fair lot in life and now she will never get the chance to reclaim even a sliver of happiness for herself. She never got to adopt another dog, never got to see the ocean. Would never get to see the other side of the plans they'd been working towards since the war, because by god he can't fail now, he refuses to let her years of sacrifice be in vain.
Seventeen years by his side and he had never told her that he loved her. She had to know, right? There was no way she couldn't, not with how she could stare into him and know the very shape of his soul. But he hadn't told her. She never heard it from him. And now she never could, and Roy will have to grapple with that reality for the rest of his life.
Conviction sinks its teeth into his heart, burying the despair that he can't afford to feel right now. He'll carry her from this hellish place himself, give her the dignity of a proper service. Buy two plots at the cemetery and she'll only have to wait for him for a little while, because he'll still be dead before the decade turns over if he has any say in the matter. Every reparation document he signs, every step forward he takes, every breath that enters his lungs will be for her. 'For Riza', carved into every brick he puts into place.
And then he will beg to be put down like the dog he is, and then he will go home to her.
What happens next is a blur in his mind, a cacophony of noise and movement. He remembers patterns and colors alone as he acted on pure animal instinct, and suddenly he is kneeling over Hawkeye—over Riza. The little girl from Xing is saying something he only half-hears but he would do anything, agree to anything if she thinks she can save his Lieutenant. He doesn’t know a thing about medical alchemy, he is useless here. There is a blue flash and he waits to see any sign of life in her, her skin still horrifyingly grey and lashed with bright crimson. Maybe it didn’t work, maybe they were too late—
Before he can fully start to spiral her eyes twitch underneath her eyelids and Roy is frantic to pull her into his arms. The girl is scolding him to be careful, that the wound is only very tenuously closed, but he is too busy crushing her to him, his cheek against hers as he smears his coat with her blood. He finds her pulse with his thumb, and it’s fluttery and faint but it’s enough for him. She is alive.
Roy wants to kiss her temple; her name is caustic in his throat, burning a hole through his esophagus with the desire to say it out loud, to call her back to him. But this isn’t the time, it’s never the right time for them, and there are still appearances to uphold. He is furious that even here, even now, he is still thinking like that. And then Riza stirs in his arms and for a moment that’s all she is—his Riza.
“You understood…” She rasps, her voice like sand shifting against cloth, and he can see the relief on her face.
“Of course. Of course. We’ve been together for so long.” Roy hopes she can feel all of the things he can’t afford to say right now, too.
--
“What would you have done?” She asks him softly in the hospital afterwards, unable to talk above a whisper until her vocal cords have healed. “If May Chang hadn’t been able to save me?”
Roy huddles against her warmth, unable to stop his arms from tightening protectively around her waist. She has taken to slipping into his hospital bed with him at night, both of them desperate to confirm that they are alive and keep the nightmares a bay. He hums to let her know he has heard her, trying to get a hold on his thoughts. She smells like warm bedsheets and the antiseptic ointment used on her stitches and he does not want to go to those dark recesses of his mind where images of her dead on the ground lurk. He shifts his head against her shoulder and feels the way his stubble drags against her gown, tethering himself to the moment with the sensation of it.
“I wouldn’t have tried to bring you back.” He says finally. “Because I know you wouldn’t want that. Because there isn’t even a precedent to know whether it would work, even with a philosopher’s stone.”
“Good.” She whispers against his hair, and he feels the way the tension in her shoulders eases.
“But I-“ he struggles to swallow around the lump forming in his throat. “I’d live on for you, but nothing would ever be the same—”
“Hush, I’m sorry. We’re both here; we're both alive.” She hurries to remind him when she senses him on the brink, and her hands soothe down the backs of his arms. Roy allows himself to imagine that the brush of her lips against his crown is meant to be a kiss.
“I’ve realized that I don’t know how I would live without you. I’ve never been more afraid than when I thought you were gone.” It is very much a confession, and he hopes she won’t brush him off. They have been skirting around this thing building up between them for the past few days, but Roy is tired.
“Colonel…”
“Riza, not here,” He does not intend for it to be so intimate, he tells himself, as he glides his hand from her waist up the contour of her body: over the plane of her shoulder blade, up her neck, finally cupping her face. He strokes his thumb across the high of her cheekbone and feels her eyelashes flutter against him.
“Roy,” she says his name like she is testing the way it feels in her mouth. She swallows hard and he can hear her grimace at the pain it causes. “This is dangerous.”
Maybe she means her sharing his bed. Maybe she means his nose against her neck. Maybe she means the way he is about to cross that final line that bisects their professional and personal lives.
“I know.” He lifts himself from the crook of her neck to look in her direction—hopefully. He can estimate where his hand is in space and uses it as an anchor point. “But I need to know that you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying, and not telling you how much you mean to me.”
“I do know, you don’t have to—”
“I need to tell you. Please.” He waits for her to protest, but she is quiet and still, save for the way her breathing is coming faster. He didn’t realize how close he was to her face until he feels her breath fan out against his mouth. “I don’t ever want to be without you again. I love you, Riza. I've loved you for so long.”
She exhales sharply and he feels the tremble of it over his skin. He kisses her gently, briefly, his lips managing to find the side of her mouth. He thinks he should be surprised by how easy it is, to kiss her and tell her he loves her, but then again, it’s her.
“Now you know.” He tells her when he pulls back, releasing her face so that she can retreat if she wants to.
She does not retreat; she curls around him, a soft noise escaping her as she draws him back into her embrace. She doesn’t say anything, just strokes through his hair and tucks him under her chin, breathing shakily against the top of his head. Roy wraps his arms around her and is content to hold her, pressing a kiss to the bandages on her throat. She is quiet for a long time.
“Once we cross this line, we can’t go back.” She whispers finally, teetering on the edge.
“I’ve made my decision, but I’ll follow yours. Whichever you choose. I’m just tired of pretending.”
She nods slowly against him. He imagines her pulling back, kissing his forehead apologetically, before she returns to her own bed and leaves him alone in the dark. As long as she knows, he tells himself, he’ll make it be enough.
But then her hands are against his face and her forehead is pressed to his. She is so close to him, her nose brushing along his. Roy can tell from the cadence of her breathing that she is scared, so scared of the uncharted territory that lay on the other side of this. The fraternization laws and the threat of a court martial. How terrifying it is to be vulnerable and allow themselves a single, selfish happiness.
“I’m nervous, too,” he admits, so she doesn’t have to. “I know it won’t be easy, but I want to try.”
Riza kisses him and her lips are so warm, so soft, and when she tilts her head he feels tears on her eyelashes. They breathe together and he thumbs the wet tracks on her cheeks, trying to soothe the frantic, frightened energy that is thrumming under her skin. She has been holding strong since the events of the Promised Day, and maybe it is all finally too much. Roy coaxes her back and shifts so that he can settle her against his chest, her hands twisting the fabric of his hospital gown as she clings to him and fights to regulate her breathing.
She is so strong—his Hawkeye, his unshakeable Lieutenant—that it’s so easy to forget that she is just a woman. A woman who has endured more trauma than anyone her age should have to bear. He hushes her gently, his hands pressed protectively over her back. Even through the heavy bandaging on his palms he can feel the notches of her spine, fury kindling in his chest when he realizes the toll that her tenure working under Bradley had taken on her; the psychological torment she was subjected to under the threatening watch of two homunculi, one of which still lives.
“I’ve got you, Riza,” he promises. “No one will take you from me again.”
She nods against him, the fabric of his hospital gown growing damp where she’s pressed against, and he wraps his arms around her more firmly and holds her through the storm. She weeps against him quietly until all of the tension has left her body and she is liquid in his arms, and for a moment Roy thinks she may have fallen asleep. But then she shifts, and he feels her nose the loose neckline of his gown to one side and press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.
“I love you, too.” She whispers and he can feel the flick of her tongue over skin, just briefly, and on the ‘too’ she presses her lips against him in another kiss. He feels her mouth curve around each syllable against his chest and surely she must be able to feel how his heartbeat has quickened.
Morning will come eventually, and Riza will have to return to her own bed to avoid the scrutiny of the nurses, but for now he can hold her, and she can whisper words against his skin. For a few moments they can forget the night terrors that recall images of Riza's slit throat or the swords driven through Roy's palms. In this stolen time, in this liminal space, the world narrows to where their bodies tangle together on the too-small hospital cot.
There is temptation to pretend that they are a normal couple with simple lives, but there is something beautiful in the truth, too. That they are two broken people finding solace in each other the way that only broken people can, kissing each other clean, making themselves whole again.