So I heard it’s royai week! I can’t draw something everyday but I would love to do a little sticker! Wanted to do a little vote to bring us royai nerds together and vote for something.
Hey remember that time I was like “I’m totally going to write a chaptered fic during Royai week and it’s gonna be great and timely and make SO MUCH SENSE” and then didn’t update for like four months? I remember it. I remember it a lot.
Read on AO3
Chapter Six: Revival
The clearing is still, and Riza notices that even the usually centering sensation of her own breath is absent.
“Let’s meet this fascinating father of yours,” Rainer says, and she can tell he’s focusing intently on something. There’s a transmutation circle on the back of the photograph, she realizes suddenly. He’s tapped into her subconscious through the circles on the trees, and now he’s somehow forcing her thoughts to generate a particular memory. It must all be linked. She realizes too late she’s said all this aloud when her train of thought is interrupted.
“Astute, considering you’ve never had an aptitude for alchemy,” a voice comes from the darkness, and Riza’s blood runs cold.
“What do you want from me, exactly?” she asks, ignoring the shade of her father as he steps into the middle of the clearing from seemingly nowhere but in reality from the dark depths of memory. He’s as he was not when she saw him last - frail and dying, confined to his bed - but as he was during Roy’s tutelage. He is stern and sinewy, but with a spark still in his gray eyes. Interesting that this is the version of her father that the transmutation brought forth - him at his most content. “If you think you’re getting anything out of me about alchemy-”
“Well that’s where I have a slight confession to make,” Rainer tells her. “You may have been under the impression that I’m here to extract some information from you, correct?”
“That’s usually what an interrogation entails,” she says warily, hand on her gun even though there’s no reason to believe it will do any good.
“Do you know - well, you couldn’t possibly,” he amends. “I tried to become a State Alchemist. Several times, of course, as most do, but I’ll never forget the first attempt. It must have been 1905, 1906 when I came to Central City with my dreams and notes. ‘The Slumber Alchemist’, that’s what they’d call me. My skills weren’t as fine-tuned then as they are now but nevertheless, I put all of the Fuhrer’s guards to sleep in minutes. The only problem was that they woke up again.”
“So you needed to figure out a way to keep them asleep,” Bethold fills in, and Riza looks at him aghast, because that was the thought already forming in her mind. But of course he’s only an echo, he isn’t real, and she needs to stay sharp and learn what Rainer wants from her.
She hopes that he does in fact want something, as she’s officially in over her head.
“Correct,” he continues smoothly. “So I did that, and came back, and was rejected again. And again. But what really stuck out to me the first time was that nobody even paid attention to my admittedly underwhelming show. No, they were all talking amongst themselves and I later discovered why - the man directly before me had done something unprecedented, flashy, and with great potential.” Riza’s mouth is dry and she squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes, someone had conjured fire from thin air.”
She turns around, thinking the very sight of the General will reassure her but there’s no one but Havoc, standing at parade rest, hands crossed over his gun as though he’s at ease although she can tell even from here that every muscle in his body is tense, alert. The hairs on her arms stand on end as she realizes that something happened outside of her dream bubble, something drew the others away. Havoc is her guard, although she knows that the only thing she needs to be guarded from is in here with her.
“What do you want?” She asks again, venomously, when she turns back around. “I’m no alchemist. Even this trick,” she gestures vaguely at Berthold, “isn’t going to make me able to tell you something I don’t know.”
“I went back to Central City six months ago,” he continues, as though he hadn’t heard. “To try again with the new regime. And do you know what I was told?” She does, as it happens, or at least she can guess, but she waits for him to continue. “I was told that they are taking on no more State Alchemists. That during peacetime, they are only giving grants to very select branches of research, biomedical and the like, but that State Alchemists are being phased out.”
“And so you’re getting revenge on everyone who was given the title,” she says bitterly, and he smiles, mouth closed, eyes unchanging.
“I’m helping to phase them out.”
“Those other homes that were broken into,” she says, “you killed them.” She hadn’t heard of a death in any of the team’s reports, but it’s possible they weren’t informed.
“Not quite,” he counters. “I simply did this,” and he gestures towards her body, suspended mid-fall, and she understands in a flash. “If they were all such brilliant, capable alchemists then surely they would be able to free themselves from a simple transmutation net? Alas, none of them have succeeded. I wonder if your Flame Alchemist will be able to?” Riza can’t help it, she draws her gun and holds it up, shaking although her hands do not waver.
“He’ll never fall for something like this,” she hisses.
“I thought that too, at first, but chances are greater if he’s thrown off by something like, say, his right hand woman being incapacitated,” and there it is. She’s a pawn, again, in the General’s undoing. “He may be a great alchemist but what good is he really when his adjutant is locked in her own mind, tormented by her demons.” She drops her weapon entirely and it vanishes before it hits the floor, no longer tethered to reality by her touch. This is not the first time she has been used against him, and if they get out of this, she knows it won’t be the last.
“He won’t be,” she says finally.
“He may,” chimes her father solemnly. “He’s bright, exceptionally bright, but he doesn’t always think logically when under pressure, does he?”
“Aha,” Rainer says quietly. “Well if you’ll excuse me, my accomplice should have secured the manor by now and so I’m needed elsewhere.Enjoy your… solitude.” Riza looks up furiously.
“I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to come after you,” she tells him and is rewarded with another mirthless smile.
“My dear, many brilliant State Alchemists failed to escape this exact situation. What makes you think that you, a soldier and a lapdog, will be any different?” He does something then, with the amulet around his neck and the next thing she knows he’s vanished. She whirls to see the other, physical version of him sit up slowly, and get to his feet. He looks back at her, though she’s sure he can’t see her, winks, and strides off towards the house.
“Terrible business,” Berthold says. “If you’d only turned out to have a gift for alchemy.” Riza stands still, fists balled, breathing heavily, fighting the urge to sink to her knees.
It’s all nothing more than a dream, she thinks. And how do you wake from a dream?
-x-
They were on her at once; she hadn’t seen them sneaking up to her post, how could she not have seen them? The ishvalan guerilla fighters were armed with blades, and she got only a single shot off before having to use her gun to block as they rained blows upon her. One man danced past her to bring his knife in, cutting towards her body quickly, too quickly-
She woke in the night with a yell, thrashing wildly before she remembered where she was.
The nightmare had to have come from sleeping in a strange place- she didn’t have them quite so often anymore. She was in a city in the east with the Colonel on an assignment and somehow the Powers That Be at Eastern Command had failed to book a room for the Colonel and his adjutant, resulting in the two of them having to share a modest sized room with a single modest sized bed.
There had been a brief but furious standoff where they each insisted that the other take the bed until Riza, exhausted and annoyed, had simply ordered him into the bed before climbing into the other side herself, close to the edge to put as much space between them as possible. She’d slept soundly until now, and the faint light in the room told her dawn wasn’t far off. There were hands firmly gripping her shoulders that released her as her breathing evened out. She looked over at Mustang, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she told him, still shaking. He hesitated and then wrapped his arms around her gingerly, ash though she might either break or bolt. She stiffened before letting herself relax into the embrace, leaning her head sideways to rest on his chest, pushing down the distress at how easily the motion came.
“It was Ishval,” she said, unprompted.
“Do you dream about Ishval often?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that she could feel as well as hear. She breathed in time with him, her racing heart slowing back down.
“Not often. Just when I’m stressed, or someplace unfamiliar. I’ll be fine,” she told him, doubting it. More than likely she would be lying in silence until it was time for them to get up, but it didn’t do any good to say so. Unusually for her, however, after a few more moments of breathing in time with him and letting his warmth seep into her she was feeling her eyelids grow heavy. He was sturdy, and rubbing small circles into her back, and the usual heightened tension that strung across her bones after a nightmare wasn’t finding purchase.
“Do you want me to sleep on the floor? Give you some space?” he asked, pulling away as though it had just occurred to him that perhaps their sleeping arrangements were uncomfortable for her. And until now she would have agreed that yes, they were.
But in the predawn light, wrapped in his arms, she couldn’t recall a time where she’d felt more whole.
“No,” she said quickly, before she could think better of it. “You’re helping.” She felt her cheeks start to burn. “What I mean to say is-”
“Understood,” he finished, a trace of amusement in his voice. They both settled back down, close but not quite touching, facing towards each other this time. Nothing more was said, and he seemed to fall asleep first, his breathing slowing and evening out, limbs relaxing. She’d never know afterwards what possessed her, but the world, like her, was somewhere between awake and asleep, basking them in a weak blue light. Shadows pooled in the hollows under Roy’s eyes and she wondered if tonight, sleeping beside her, was the most sleep he’d gotten in a while. She shifted closer, settling an arm across his back,curling into him, filling empty spaces as though they were perfectly fit to each other.
The next morning, neither of them mentioned it, briskly rolling out of bed and into their uniforms. She never could be sure about him, but it was the best night’s sleep she’d gotten in a very long time.
-x-
In the clearing, Riza paces.
“You aren’t real,” she says firmly to the shade of her father. Neither is she at the moment, she remembers, both of their incorporeal forms standing in the silent clearing. Havoc’s back is turned as he guards her still-suspended form. Berthold blinks slowly and real or not, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“Real enough to you. Didn’t I teach you better than to walk into an obvious trap like this? Those circles aren’t even concealed,” he replies, nodding towards the tree. Riza knows it’s her own subconscious berating her but it still stings.
“You didn’t teach me much of anything,” she grumbles, surveying the circles, but she can’t make sense of them. A coma, he’d said. She was sleeping. She reached out hesitantly, fingertips grazing the ends of her own hair, loose around her shoulders, as though she can put herself back in her body like slipping on a coat. It doesn’t happen, however, and she turns back to her father’s silent floating visage. “You can’t even help me,” she says quietly. “You’re a memory - you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“Seems true enough,” he concedes.
“And yet I’m talking to you anyway.” She tries to step outside the treeline but find that she can’t - the alchemical sigils are forming a barrier, a cage containing her. She half-expected this but it’s still frustrating.
“Can you destroy the circles?” he asks patiently, and she shakes her head.
“I can’t do anything like this, I’m not real,” she exclaims, resuming her pacing. She has always dreamed a often and vividly. More after the war, of course, but those were usually nightmares. When she was very young she would sometimes scramble to tell her mother about the fantasy worlds she entered when sleeping, insisting it was all real until her mother was able to coax her back to sleep. Her father, she remembers, never dreamed, at least not that he could recall. But he slept so seldom that perhaps his body was too worn down even to dream.
“There must be something you can do,” he presses, and she turns on him.
“Maybe I would know a little more if you hadn’t given up on me,” she spits, and the memory of her father looks surprised. “It’s true I’m not a fast learner, but you didn’t have any patience! You wanted someone whose mind worked like yours, and that wasn’t me, but I,” her voice shakes, betraying her. “You never made me feel wanted, or important, but I am both of those things, and I need to get back to my team.”
“To your team, or to-”
“I think I would like it if you left,” she says, closing her eyes tightly. When she opens them he’s gone. Now she can focus, she thinks, blinking hard.
Rainer had said she was asleep - no, not entirely true, he’d said she was closer to a coma. That explains why there was no waking her, a usually light sleeper, when her men where shouting feet away from her. But if trained, accomplished alchemists couldn’t work their way out of this then how can she expect to? She’s only a soldier, a sharpshooter really, and -
She realizes with a start that the gun is back in her hand, and raises it slowly to regard it. This is a dream, unlike any other but fundamentally the same. She doesn’t know much at all about alchemy, it’s true; just what she’s absorbed through nearly thirty years of constant exposure. But she knows herself, and she knows what it feels like to wake with a start, sweating and shaking in the middle of the night. Quickly, before she can think much about it, she brings the gun up to her head and pulls the trigger.
She barely has time to throw her arms out in front of her before she topples to the forest floor, jumping right back up again, gun at the ready, and meets Havoc’s wide blue eyes, his gun also reflexively trained on her due to her sudden movement.
“Shit, Hawkeye, you scared me,” he says, lowering it at once. “What-”
“We have to move quickly,” she says, scrabbling briefly in the leaves to retrieve her sidearm where she’d dropped it earlier.She takes one frantic look around but he’s been left alone to guard her prone form. Riza takes off at a sprint towards the house, and Havoc follows without hesitation, their footfalls crunching, moonlight illuminating the way.
This wasn’t the norm for them, but damn it was one of the best ideas they had! Roy thrust into her again, his long bangs sticking to his wet forehead. His hands gripped her thighs as Riza’s tightened her grip on the hair on the back of his head. She pressed her lips roughly against his, whining desperately. She wanted to scream, but their destination of choice was not scream friendly. Roy groaned as he let her slip lower just enough so that he could get a tad deeper into her. Her head fell back and Riza bit her lip, closing her eyes tightly as if opening them would bring her back to Earth and far from the clouds that she was swimming in. She felt herself convulsing around him. She could tell he was also trying to keep quiet, despite the intense pleasure, but he barely held back the grunt he was giving her. She could hear it. He was holding back everything but his hips colliding his hers. Riza let her hands fall to his shoulders, using it as leverage so she could move against him, even if it was a little bit, it was going to drive them both crazy.
It worked. Her head hit the wall, resulting in a slight bang as he picked up the pace. He was getting close, and she was right behind him. She could feel his fingers digging deeper into her ass, his body slowing and coming closer to hers. It was intimate and it was hot. Their sweat sealed them together with their muffled moans. They both teetered on the edge of a heavenly release. Her breath was frozen in her lungs, waiting on him. However, she knew for certain that he was waiting on her too.
“I’m not certain that this kind of action is completely necessary.”
They both stopped, cold-blooded, in the realization of their immediate situation.
“No,” she breathed. “Fuck, no…”
And Riza wanted him to continue. She wanted him to flood her with a rush worthy of the highest waterfall in Amestris. But now, they couldn’t move.
“Shit,” he growled. “I thought you said this office wasn’t being used.”
She punched his shoulder as she looked at the ceiling. “It wasn’t supposed to be used. I swear.” If their sexual tension wasn't going unresolved before, it was now!
“I’m just saying that if we don’t move now, it may be considered a weakness to the brass in Central.”
“It can’t be approved without General Grumman’s approval anyway.”
Roy panted as he looked down at the two of them. His eyes darted around the tight supply closet looking for an exit, or maybe any hope of redemption in the case of discovery. “What are the chances that they are going to want to clean?”
Riza quickly hushed him. “Maybe they are going to go away,” she whispered quietly. “Be quiet.”
Roy pulled from her. She could feel him still hard. Even in their vulnerable moment, he was still raging to go. There was so much temptation to grabbing it and stroking it, letting her juices lubricate the pumps. It was tempting to get him off while the other officers were right outside. However, this was the closest they’d gotten to being caught, and it wasn’t exactly a moment to risk it.
“There are traitors all along the East here,” a deeper voice said quietly. “They hide in the smaller villages. We should be going and finding these people who are inciting this unrest.”
“That’s Captain McAvoy,” Roy grunted.
Riza’s head dropped. “We’re never going to leave,” she whined. “He never stops talking.”
Roy bent over, reaching for his pants. “We have to be quiet,” he breathed.
“No shit,” she growled back. She reached for a mop that was about to drop as Roy bumped into it.
“Captain,” another voice argued. “They are rebels. All of them are traitors in our concern. They fight against the state.”
“I always knew you’d be the death of me,” Roy grinned.
Riza did not think that this was the moment to be joking, let alone if the joke had quite a bit of truth in it. She put her finger to her lips, still holding the mop. It didn’t even matter if they were dressed or not, being found in the closet together was going to be the end of their military careers, maybe their lives. She motioned for him to hurry up and dress as she reached over to the lock. Riza knew that the lock was going to click, though she wasn’t sure if it was going to be loud enough for anyone to notice. It’d still be some slight protection. They’d have to go get the key… And a lock wouldn’t save them if that was the case. The locked door was only a preventative. It was a hope that they’d notice it was locked, decide it wasn’t worth their time, and forget about it.
“Sir,” a voice interrupted loudly. “With all due respect, I think excessive troops will only exacerbate the insurrections.”
“We are supposed to stand aside and watch as the East erupts into flames? Central will walk in and call us weak.”
The creaks of chairs sliding on the floor were the perfect moment. Click. She waited, listening for any indication that it’d been noticed.
“We will lose credibility if Central troops come down.”
Nope, they were in the clear.
She looked from the door as Roy kissed her bare breasts. “Hey,” she snapped.
“What,” he snickered. “I can’t help myself.”
She swatted him away. “We’re about to get court-martialed and you’re wanting to grope me?”
He rolled his eyes dramatically. “It’s not groping. I’m kissing. This is a grope,” he grinned, grabbing her breast.
It took all of Riza’s willpower to not screech, and not to smack her superior officer. She swatted him away instead and nodded towards her uniform. “I gotta get dressed,” she mouthed. The talking outside was starting to quiet, but they both knew that the meeting was far from over. They could be in the closet for an hour, maybe more. Riza hated meetings with Captain McAvoy because of his persistence and his specific attention to detail. There were numerous occasions that she had to kick her Colonel’s foot to keep him from nodding off. She buttoned up her uniform and straightened it out. She reached into her pocket to find it empty of the object that she was looking for.
“My hair clip,” she whispered as she started to panic. “You took it out.”
Roy’s eyes grew as he looked around. His hand dug into his pocket. “Shit,” he rubbed his face. “Do you have your name on it?”
She shook her head. “It was brand new.” Riza’s shoulders slumped. “Damn it, Roy.”
“Hey,” he quickly countered. “Don’t go blaming this on me! You could have grabbed it too!”
She glared at him. “You took it out.”
“Maybe they won’t notice,” he hoped.
“They won’t notice, but if we do walk out of here, my hair will be down. And I never have my hair down.”
He thought for a moment before reaching into his pocket and pulled out a pencil. “Just do it up with a pencil like you did at dinner last week.”
Riza didn’t like it. The office would notice. Breda would notice. But it was the only option for now. Maybe she’d make a quick escape to home and procure another one. She took the pencil, holding it her mouth as she did her hair up. “We are so screwed,” she mumbled.
Roy shrugged casually as he leaned against a bare wall, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m hungry, he muttered. “Next time we do this, remind me to grab a granola bar.”
“You don’t have a serious cell in your body, do you?” She muttered lowly while still glaring at him.
Roy ran his hand through his hair and shrugged. “There’s nothing to do until then. I wonder if we can bang on the door and tell them that we were trapped in here and hoped someone can rescue us?”
She bit her lip. “It smells like sex in here, Sir.” She fell along the other wall, sitting down against it in the tight quarters. “I should just tell them that you trapped me in here.”
Roy glared at her with his dark eyes. “You wouldn’t dare,” he growled as lowly as he could. “Wouldn’t matter. They’d know it was the other way around.”
She snorted. "Yes, because any low ranking officer wants to trap their superior in a closet with them."
"When it's me… "
She put her finger on her lips, hushing Roy right away. "You're going to give us away."
He sat down again the opposite wall and pouted. "Not how I wanted to spend my day," he sighed.
She didn't answer. Riza didn't really even care. She was leaning towards the door instead, trying to hear through it without touching it. She was internally confused about why that office was being used when it wasn’t scheduled to be. This was probably a meeting Roy was supposed to be attending! She closed her eyes as she strained to hear.
“Should have told Havoc,” he muttered as he brushed some dirt off his uniform. “I could have told him that if we weren’t back by…”
“Will you shut up,” Riza growled. “I’m trying to hear if you were supposed to be at this meeting.”
Roy raised an eyebrow. “You should know,” he responded all too casually. “You plan my whole day for me. The only thing I’m responsible for is making sure Fullmetal doesn’t die.”
“And how’s that working for you,” she snarked back, still straining to listen.
He scratched his cheek. “I don’t know… I haven’t heard from him in a while. Huh.”
“Speaking of responsibilities,” Riza remembered as she turned from the door. “There is a request for the release of ammunition for the cadet school.” Her foot hit his. “We can’t conduct the training exercises until you approve it.”
Roy tapped her foot back. “You can sign it.” He leaned his head back. “As your superior officer, I grant you all the power today.” He yawned.
“Yeah,” she tapped his foot again, this time harder to keep him from sleeping. “How’s the responsibility coming?”
He raised an eyebrow.
She gestured to the room.
“Hey,” he leaned forward, putting his crossed arms over his bent legs. “You planned my whole day. You’re the one that planned this.”
“You accepted it.” Riza returned fire. “You could have denied my request.”
He snorted, leaning back and yawning once more.
“You’re going to get a nap?”
“There’s nothing else to do. I can’t do you.”
Riza hit his foot again, making a louder pop sound than she should have. “You snore,” she whispered aggressively.
Roy pulled his boot from hers and leaned towards her again. “Then don’t let me,” he whispered back.
“I’ll smother you,” she muttered, leaning back towards the door.
“For someone who is so adamant about us being quiet, you sure are making a lot of conversation.”
She looked towards him, seeing his eyes closed and his head leaning back against the wall. Sure enough, he was going to go to sleep. That probably was the safest thing he could do. If the meeting went on longer, he’d probably start flirting again. She stretched her legs out, leaning her boot against his hip, and crossed her arms. Roy had two sleeping faces. One of exhaustion, and one of boredom. In the desert, with raging sandstorms, and echoing screams, his body would collapse against a wall, with her on the other side, and he’d close his eyes. It was one of the few times he looked restful. Boredom came easily. He’d lay his head back, sometimes drool out of the side, and snore loudly. Riza tilted her head as she looked at her Colonel now. She didn’t think he was sleeping, or if he was, it was a half sleep they had both mastered over the course of their service. It was when you were resting but was listening to see if Havoc was nearby. She smirked. He was listening. He wasn’t as stupid as he played off to be.
It was probably best they did listen. Riza was sure that Roy was not scheduled to attend this meeting. However, knowing this kind of information wasn’t a terrible thing to have, especially against internal enemies. If anyone understood it better, it was Roy. Information was key. So, as much as Riza wanted to play him off as being a bit ignorant in this situation, she knew he was listening.
Her body froze when she heard some one’s heavy steps approach the door. However, her goosebumps didn’t dissipate when they walked away. The discussion was getting heavy, and louder, so it would be expected for some officers to be walking around. She debated standing up, however, that really wasn’t going to make it better or worse when they were caught. Instead, she let the hairs on her neck stand on end, and her ear close to the door. Roy didn’t move either way. His breathing had slowed and his head had, in the meantime, slumped forward. He’s asleep, she thought, rather annoyed.
“We can’t sit here and discuss this forever,” one officer began to argue again. “The fact is that we need to make a decision to go out there and take action. We need to propose the idea to Grumman.”
She was starting to smell cigar smoke. Lieutenant Ficher was probably there too. That smoking bastard loved to jump into situations before he needed to. He was a big mouthed, hot-headed, lunatic if anyone asked her opinion.
“Give me today to gather some more information. If I can locate the general facility of the rebels, then we can advocate for a specific troop movement. Grumman is too conventional, he’s too conservative in his movements.”
“He’s careful,” one corrected.
She bit her lip. “Just go away,” she breathed.
“Patience,” Roy whispered. “They will, just wait.”
So, he wasn’t asleep, she thought, amused that she had underestimated him.
Roy opened an eye and grinned. “Want to continue our little activity when they leave?”
Riza rolled her eyes. “You’re going to get us caught.”
He snickered. “Naw,” he shut his eyes again. “But if you’d like, I can bring dinner to our own little meeting tonight.”
She snickered affectionately at him from the side.
“McAvoy, is this your assistant’s hair clip?”
Roy and Riza’s heads shot up, frozen in immediate fear.
“It was right here under the desk.”
“They found it,” Roy smiled sheepishly, flinching away from Riza’s backhand swat at him.
“No, she braided her hair today.”
“I thought this room wasn’t supposed to have any meetings in it.”
Riza dropped her head into her hands. She started counting the number of female officers who wore clips to pull their hair up.
“It’s brand new,” the finder’s voice clarified for everyone.
“Odd,” another added. “No one should have been in here.”
“I’m sure that it was a cleaning lady,” McAvoy, in his boisterous deep voice dismissed the object. Riza heard the item hit the trash can.
“See,” Roy smiled, still trying to look innocent. “We’re fine.”
A few more minutes passed as the officer’s filtered from the room. The two gulped as they hoped that they were finally alone in the room before opening the door. Anyone could have stayed there, but they found it empty. “Damn,” Roy breathed. “We are going to have to keep it to my office.”
Riza turned to him sharply, putting her hands on her hips. “We are not doing this again.”
He held his hands up in defense and let her walk by. Riza was so angry at him. He put them both in a very vulnerable position. She could accept that it was her fault to a certain degree, mostly that she had hinted at the idea to begin with, however, Roy was the one who insisted on a freaking janitor’s closet! She calmed herself as she walked down the hall, making it to their office. Roy would follow later, hopefully with her freaking hair clip.
“Ah,” a booming voice echoed. “Lieutenant Hawkeye.”
Riza’s blood ran cold. She didn’t skip a beat, nor show one drop of sweat as she turned and smiled gently, even bowing a little. “Good afternoon Captain McAvoy.”
“You haven’t seen Colonel Mustang, have you? I was hoping to get that report I ordered yesterday.”
Riza shook her head. “He left a while ago. I will see if I can find it and have him complete it by day’s end.”
“Thank you.”
Riza sighed as she turned, wanting to quicken her escape.
“I like your hair like that,” he commented after her. “When did you start wearing it like that?”
Riza looked over her shoulder, touching the pencil that was wrapped in her hair. “Oh, I started today. I’m trying something new.”
Captain nodded and waved. “Have a good day, Lieutenant.”
Roy better stick that clip in his pocket, she sighed to herself.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
My first fanfic for this year’s Royai Week.
There’s another one I have in the works that should be up by Saturday, and I’m hoping to have a third one done by the end of this week as well, though I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Either way, feel free to leave any comments and let me know what you think.
