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Bound By

The red thread of fate works in mysterious ways, binding two souls regardless of time, place, or circumstance. A single fiber altered can unravel the universe, but the ties that bind Riza Hawkeye and Roy Mustang are everlasting, in this life or any other.

A/N: Happy Riza Hawkeye day! @ruikosakuragi and I are excited to share the first of ten stories, each an exploration of Royai around carefully selected themes set in different universes, including canon. These chapters can be read as stand-alone fics, though they will converge in the final chapter. Many thanks to @areyousanta for the lovely commissioned art! All asks, likes, reblogs, kudos, comments, and reviews are encouraged and very much appreciated.

Chapter Summary: Commemorated on every Amestrian newspaper today, the headline large and in bold font: “The Anniversary of the Civil War: The Flame Alchemist to Address the Nation.” But only Riza Hawkeye has the full scoop, complete with a red thread of fate that only she can see. Theirs is a tale of fire and sand, alchemist’s chalk and gunpowder, regulations and regret.

Chapter 1: Regret

read chapter 1 on ffnet // ao3

Riza couldn’t remember the last time she looked at it, the red string that only she could see.

As a child she had been entranced by its permanence, tugging and pulling, reeling in the cord until she could reach the end. When the end never came, she had growled in frustration and came bounding into her mother’s private library, one thousand and one questions at the tip of her finger.

The bedridden Elizabeth Hawkeye had had a curious fascination with the supernatural, wishing she had been acquainted with the dead, hoping she had been born a hundred years sooner. Riza wasn’t sure what had come first: this obsession or her sickness. Or if one had driven the other. But Elizabeth’s strange, little preoccupation had led to a curated collection of parapsychologie texts and thick, colorful tomes of folktales, rivaling her own scholar husband’s accumulation of scientific books.

In one of these, Riza had discovered the Xingese tale of the deity Yuè Xià Lǎorén. She could still remember the beautiful cursive, rolling on the yellow-aged paper as though it had been handwritten with care, “Two people who are connected by the red string are bound together by Fate itself.” The next thing she realized, she had voluntarily reported her findings to her father, who had returned her excitement with an unkind-set of emerald eyes and disgust stitched on the seam of his mouth.

"It was her overly active imagination," Elizabeth had said, her warm words coming to her aid, "nothing to worry about."

Her father had huffed with disdain, proceeding to rain down vicious words about Elizabeth’s nonsensical readings. If there was one thing Riza Hawkeye loathed to see, it was her mother’s defeat, with Berthold Hawkeye in the center of the tribunal, accusing. Condemning.

Since that day, Riza had vowed to never acknowledge the string’s existence. She would go on, day after day, pretending as if she was like any other children. Normal. Happy. Unbound by the scarlet thread. Then a boy of twelve knocked on her door, dark features tempered by a bright smile and a fervent gaze. He was there to learn alchemy, he said. And when Riza looked down, the same red string was looped around his little finger. She continued to keep her secret to herself, but she didn’t feel so alone anymore.

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