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“Jump,” he says, and Riza doesn’t think about it much, she just follows - do as you’re told like she was brought up to believe, obedience and the good naturedness that she always felt was her mother’s doing, even if she barely remembered her face. Riza doesn’t remember much from those hazy, heady days before her mother died. She had been young, though not so young that she couldn’t comprehend the finality of her mother’s lowered coffin, or her father’s grief stricken eyes that followed it. She remembers that, but she doesn’t remember her mother’s face or the smell of her perfume, and it bothered her forever until she learned to overcome that feeling of immense loss, the hole in her life that she did not know how to explain.
There were long stretches of nothing after that, and then there was Roy.
Roy, with his boyish grin and his overenthusiastic charm that annoyed her father, but also pleased him a great deal. Ambition was at the heart of it and he could see that, he admired it, and it was that which ultimately led him to allow this stranger’s son into their house and into their life.
Riza did not let him into the house that first day he showed up, but she had no qualms about letting him into her heart. She didn’t realize it then, but this was the sort of thing she had longed for, the uncompromising love of someone who was not obligated to do so. Roy loved her, though not at first; he befriended her and cared about her in that genuine way that he cared about everything. Riza had what she explained away as a schoolgirl crush and though she did not giggle when they locked eyes, her heart fluttered all the same.
Still, she dated other boys, and Roy dated other girls in the very sporadic downtime her father gave him. She gave him advice and he told her she looked pretty on her way out the door, and sometimes late at night Riza would stare at Roy’s bent over, serious face and wonder what it might be like to kiss that furrowed brow. She had often wondered what attracted her mother to her father and thought that she was beginning to learn something about life and chemistry, the gravitational pull that led to passion and the static shock that pricked her hand as Roy twirled her in her father’s kitchen, this is called a foxtrot, watch out for the dishes.
They grew up together and shared in the attraction that two teenagers in close quarters often do, and then they grew apart before her father’s death and Ishval thrust them back together.
Riza did not love him then, she is sure of it, but she is also sure that Roy did, loved her then as he loves her now, passionately, almost violently, with a need that tore at his stomach and made him do reckless things like pace outside her tent at night, wondering if he should go in. Guilt, too, drove his desire, but she eventually knocked that out of him - your guilt is thrown at me and takes away my agency, we are each empowered to make our own decisions and here I am, here you are, sand and the abyss stretching before us, possibilities cast aside and then thrust ahead. I chose this.
Maes once asked her if she believed in marriage and she had told him frankly that she wasn’t sure that she did. She believed in partnership and the bond of two who did not need government and God to solidify their commitment. She believed overwhelmingly in the choice of love and would strive to make it every day when the time came, labels be damned.
Roy had stared at her over the edge of his whiskey tonic, wearing his good humor like a mask. Riza did her best to ignore him as Maes’ eyes bounced between them, too smart for his own good, too good of a friend to them both. Later, when the bar had emptied and Roy had left to call them a cab, Maes put a comforting hand on her shoulder, told her nothing lasts forever except if we want it to. Roy placed his fingertips at the small of her back as he led her outside and she wondered through the haze if she should kiss him.
Kiss him she did, eventually, between the four walls of her apartment when he ceased his pacing and she finally decided to let him in. It set off a chain of kisses that spanned the next decade, accents to the quiet moments in between the frantic, sometimes overshadowing everything else in their importance. Roy never was very good at prioritizing, not in Riza’s opinion, and she did her best to keep him on track while he did his best to thwart her at every turn, desperate declarations and Maes nipping at his heels, get yourself a wife.
Riza was not sure she’d ever be somebody’s wife, their lives weren’t that clean, but she told Roy she loved him and she meant it every single time. Roy told her he loved her a thousand times more and drew her to him every chance he got when they were alone in the office, Havoc and everything else just beyond the door. It was dangerous, but they knew no other way.
Roy had once teasingly offered to teach her how to kiss, alone in her father’s house, and they had both laughed at the absurdity of it. Now she wonders if she had taken him up on it, would their lives have turned out differently? Would Riza be a wife with children circling at her feet, and would Roy hang his hat on the coat rack in the foyer, honey I’m home, how was your day?
She knew everyday how his had gone, just as he knew hers, and though they did not share a house, they both hung their hats on the coat racks in their hearts. Roy did not need to promise forever for Riza to trust it, and though he boasted of others to the men, she knew that he would give up the world for her if she asked.
“Jump,” she says, and Roy doesn’t hesitate, he just follows, clutching her hand to his chest.
For Riza, that is enough.