Work Text:
Roy is . . . not the most organized of men. Which is hardly a surprise after all the years spent shuffling his paper; searching his desk; and, on one memorable day, digging through every one of his jacket pockets. Roy is perfectly content to allow Riza to handle the organization of his life and affairs, and let the cards fall where they may.
Riza is so accustomed she doesn’t even think that strongly about it. She keeps careful track of everything in their possession, from Roy’s gloves, to his comb, to his favorite coffee cup. She knows the order of the correspondence on his desk and the spine of every book.
Roy is not organized, but Riza is. Even now, sleep foggy from too few hours of rest and aching as her bones settle back into their accustomed places, she knows the layout of their home down to the last spare button.
(The spare button is hers, surprisingly enough, a polished silver dome button to replace the ones stretched out of position when her jacket reached the end of its ability to accommodate her gradual expansion. Maisie is the rise and fall of their lives but getting used to needing new jackets every week during pregnancy was an unrepeatable event.)
So there’s no question that when Roy has misplaced a piece of his research that Riza would be the one to trundle upstairs and find it in his office.
Riza doesn’t understand a word of any of it, but she’s lived around Flame Alchemy for as long as she can remember. She knows what to look for even if she can’t make hide nor hair of it. Roy had sent her with “notes for balancing the equation of structured phosphorescence. I think it’s on the corner closest to the window” which guarantees it’s in a drawer somewhere.
“I wish you wouldn’t come with me,” she murmurs softly to Hayate as he follows her up the stairs, limping a bit on the last few steps and tail swinging sedately behind him. He’s not a puppy anymore but he’s as devoted as ever to trailing in her shadow, and the stairs are no longer kind to him. His nails click on the floors as he follows her down the hall, finally flopping down into a patch of sunlight outside Maisie’s room and resting his head on his paws.
She spares him a soft smile as she flips open the door to Roy’s office. It’s brighter than her father’s had ever been, natural light along a wall that only allows him to work for as long as the sun is up. Once it’s down he can always light the lamps without even looking up, but normally he takes that as a reminder to come downstairs and join them for dinner. And now that Maisie’s old enough to know what she should and should not touch, he does a lot of work on the kitchen table, sorting through paperwork and only grumbling occasionally, feet tapping in thought.
The corner nearest the window is, of course, completely bare of any paperwork, equations or otherwise. Riza sighs. That’s all she can do for her sweet, ridiculous man, and starts carefully sorting the papers she can see, careful to maintain whatever organization Roy thinks he has.
His notebook is half off the desk and spilling notes off the edge, but none of them look quite right. Riza doesn’t read Xerxesian but she knows the rhythm of alchemy.
More papers shuffled, tapped into arrangement and set in neat piles. She’s gratified to not see too many unsigned reports, it looks like he has everything still well in hand for work tomorrow. Or nothing he can’t have finished and ready for processing in an hour or so. Roy is still Roy, and it’s sometimes the best she can hope for.
She wasn’t planning on stumbling across the pressed envelope, yellowed around the edges and creased from years of wear but it’s pressed in his notebook like a flower, held between pages detailing the most recent movements in Drachma and something that looks suspiciously like a recipe of some sort, in what is clearly Al’s handwriting. It’s in a place that’s very nearly casual, but the paper has gone silk soft at the corners and it has nearly torn through where it’s been folded and refolded.
Riza knows this letter like she knows her own heartbeat – written in a cypher they came up with shortly after coming home (shortly before their commitment to treason). It was built off the combat medic’s Handbook, chapter 13 (Roy’s age when they met, by pure coincidence, but deliberate in its choice of Burn Treatment – 3rd Degree).
Her handwriting, crabbed and strained with speed and terror, desperately searching the cypher and unsure if she'll survive the Promised Day.
COL MUSTANG
IT'S LIKELY THIS IS THE END OF OUR PLANS. IF IT GIVES YOU PEACE, PLACE ME WITH MY MOTHER UNDER THE LILAC BUSHES. DON’T RUSH TO JOIN ME . I AM THERE BECAUSE I WILL PROTECT YOU TO ALL OUR POSSIBLE ENDS.
I LOVE YOU, ROY.
PLEASE KNOW THAT WAS MY ALCHEMICAL TRUTH.
RIZA
“I find it useful to keep the most important things at arm’s reach.” Roy’s arms twist around her waist as he ducks his chin against her head. “Saves me a lot of trouble searching for them later.”
Her smile is closed and tight, humor playing at seriousness. “Then it would do you good to put this old relic away and keep your direct reports somewhere besides the underside of your cup.”
Roy’s fingers trip over the small tear in the lower corner. “Didn’t you hear me? This is going in my memorial library, behind glass.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Right beside Maisie’s first tooth.”
“Fuhrer.”