Sherlock Holmes AU: Roy & Riza (from the other perspective)
Roy Mustang grew up in his foster mother’s bar, learning how to speak in code and how to pretend to be from somewhere other than the gutters and street-corners in his accent and manners. (His sisters are very good teachers.)
He was always scientifically inclined (in that his appetite for the subject was voracious) and when he was fifteen he was apprenticed to an alchemist.
Master Hawkeye was an ass.
He was also a genius and Roy learned a lot in those years and, most importantly of all, he met Riza.
The moment he realized that he was the first person ever to stand up for her to her own father he decided that he was going to do his best to always protect her, and everyone else he could.
Ishval destroyed him in ways that had nothing to do with his eyesight. In a way, he felt the loss and the burden of the secret of how he truly became blind were no more than he deserved to bear.
(He was caught in the explosion, but he didn’t spend the hours it took to find him lying in the rubble the way the doctors told him he was found. But he doesn’t like to think of that too much. His nightmares are still full of fire, but a lot of them happen in white rooms in front of faceless smiles and he only holds onto his gloves to hide the fact that the array is burned into his mind in a way that renders them unnecessary.)
Ishval destroys him and the day of his release from the hospital comes closer and closer and he finds himself idly wondering if he should even bother using his pension to buy a ticket to Central or if he should just wander the streets until he dies like the dog he is.
And then Maes Hughes bursts into his room, cheerful and forceful and before Roy knows what’s happening he’s seated at the Hughes’ kitchen table, listening to Maes prattle on about his brand-new daughter with Gracia’s calm and amused voice chiming in here and there.
It turns out his screaming nightmares overlap with Elicia’s fussy moments pretty well. Neither adult Hughes gets much sleep for at least a month.
For some strange reason, trailing after Maes as he hops his way around the city, solving murders and finding lost puppies…it helps.
One day, the presence of his sightless eyes unnerves a man so much he stumbles in his false alibi and Maes saves a little boy from a horrible fate as a result. Roy had never hidden his eyes behind glasses but the savage glee he feels from weaponizing them takes him by surprise. He’d been numb for so long.
The next day, he finds himself considering compounds to tip the end of his cane with. A sharp enough tap, angled just so could generate sparks…
If he’s going to be the sidekick for East City’s own consulting investigator, he might as well earn his keep.
Two days after he’s moved out of the Hughes’ apartment and into a much smaller pad of his own, he follows Hughes into the precinct to meet the new Lieutenant and when she speaks his heart stops beating because he hasn’t heard that voice since the days when he could see her face.
It’s a little awkward at first. (Maes doesn’t help, with his loud declarations broad hints that now that Roy has been discharged fraternization isn’t a concern.)
The arrival of the Elric boys from Resembool is a relief in that it distracts Hughes long enough for Roy to get up enough courage to quietly ask Riza out on a date.