#i think just getting out of just royai-centric stuff will be good for me

[tsaritsa]

for the serpent has died and i’m leaning by your side (5/6)

this fic can also be found on ff.net and ao3.

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He hates being reduced to the role of civilian – a convalescing civilian, even more. He hates the red tape that surrounds his recovery; hates that Riza still hasn’t come out of her coma like the doctors said she would.

The aftermath of the Promised Day isn’t pleasant for anybody involved.

She's still for days. He watches her breathing, watches the rise of her chest in slow, steady beats. She runs like clockwork – to the point where he can use her to count the time. Fourteen inhalations is equal to roughly a minute. He watches the drip attached to her left side. Every nineteen and a half seconds releases another bout of her medication. He watches the sparrows that cluster outside the window, chattering for the stale bread he throws them when lunch comes around. He counts the tiles in their room, their sides, and how many squares he can find within. She grows paler with every hour, the anemia becoming painfully clear. The blood did not take; and now Riza Hawkeye is fighting a battle on two fronts when one nearly killed her on its own.

He wakes at nine and watches her for fifty-five minutes before a nurse comes in to take him for his daily physio. Some days they do eye exercises: they practice focusing at different distances, reading unidentified texts at quick speed, exposing him to light in bursts that make him vomit on more than one occasion. Nobody is particularly sympathetic to his plight – they simply wait for him to finish kneeling over the rubbish bin before they pick up where they left off.

Sometimes they work with his hands and fingers: practicing cursive and basic shapes with different pens and paintbrushes. This kind of rehabilitation is harder because he has an actual injury hindering his progress, as much as he hates to admit it. They focus on hand-eye coordination; he spends time with the young children in the hospital, threading gaudy beaded bracelets for all of them that takes him more time than he’d like to admit to finish. They’re sweet children, and it is both humbling and sad that they’re the ones who give him the most affection. One girl called Daisy is absolutely besotted with him and demands that he plait her long silken hair every day – in return, she gives him sloppy and spit-smeared kisses all over his face. He’s not entirely sure how this is fair payment for his services but the nurses tell him in low tones that her parents abandoned her once it became apparent she would not be completely cured of her illness, and that this is the first time she’s responded so well to an adult who isn’t her doctor.

It’s easy for him to forget that there’s life that exists beyond his own, that there are problems that he can’t solve so easily with paperwork and his signature. There is nothing he can do for a girl who is barely six and already learning truths about humanity that he is still coming to grips with.

The wounds are still healing, but each day he feels like he is retaining more of his fingers – by the end of the fifth day in hospital, he is able to grip a pen for an entire page of cursive writing with only a slight twinge in his muscles. The doctors and nurses clap for him, and when they return him back to his room for lunch, she lays there, just as unnaturally still as when he left her, her steady breathing the only indication that she is alive, and not an unusually pretty but sickly doll.

"How long will she be in a coma?" he asks the nurse. She shrugs, and checks off the paperwork on his clipboard before leaving the room. He knows she has been under a lot of strain – and he had managed to read over her own clipboard before the doctors realised what he was doing. His men hadn't been lying to him – Riza had been quite literally put through the wringer, but the extent of it was still unfolding.

She'd already had one seizure during surgery, he thinks grimly, and her chances of another one were alarmingly high. Her blood was still reacting badly to the Rhesus-positive donation, and in hushed whispers he heard nurses talking about how there was now a complete national shortage of O negative and A positive blood anywhere in the country.

What stung even more was that he couldn’t even help. A donation for an O negative person could only come from another O negative – and the doctors were even on the fence about their decision to give her O negative Rhesus positive blood, (despite the dick that had dropped by to seemingly gloat about his decision to all but poison her).

Anything more, they whispered, and we would kill her.

He hates being reduced to the role of civilian – a convalescing civilian, especially. He hates the red tape that surrounds his own recovery; hates that Riza still hasn’t come out of her coma like the doctors said she would. He waits, and watches, and wishes, but nothing changes. There are still fifty-eight tiles in the ceiling. The sparrows still ask for food when he knows the Elric brothers are also feeding them, a few rooms down.

Riza still breathes, fourteen times a minute.

Edward comes by late Thursday afternoon. He looks lighter than Roy has seen him in years – finally he looks more like the young man than the soldier he had been pushed to become.

“Hi Colonel Butt,” he says, dropping himself down unceremoniously at the foot of Roy’s bed. Roy scowls and leans back into his pillows, crossing his arms gingerly.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Fullmetal?” He tries to keep the fondness out of his tone, but it proves too difficult – despite all the shit he’s going through – what Riza’s still going through, motionless and entirely unresponsive next to him: he is honestly so happy for the two boys. He still can’t quite get over seeing Edward with two arms made of flesh – it has already started to tan, gain muscle mass even after only a few days since he got it back. Roy’s hesitant to acknowledge that he has always viewed them as surrogate sons, in a way – besides being grossly inappropriate to say so while he was their direct superior officer – he was also well aware that Edward would find it difficult to accept the admission without publically rejecting it.

Perhaps when all the dust has finally settled he might be finally given the chance to do so, but until then Roy will hold his tongue. There’s an unconditional understanding that the boys already know, but there is a distinct difference between making an educated guess and being told.

Edward shrugs, drawing his legs up to sit cross-legged. “I thought you could use some company,” he says simply. He jerks his head in Riza’s direction. “Any change since last time?”

Roy shakes his head. “I don’t know whether to consider that a blessing or curse now,” he confesses. “A blood transfusion didn’t go well…so now it’s just a waiting game to let her body sort itself out, I suppose.”

“Well that’s shit,” Ed says bluntly. “She’ll pull through though. You best be prepared for the lecture she’ll have ready for you when she wakes.” His face splits into a wide grin. “Don’t think anybody will want to be around you guys for a while after that.”

Roy sniffs, and raises his eyebrows disdainfully. “If you’ve come to make fun of me, you can piss off, thank you very much.”

Edward leans an arm against the attached table at the end of Roy’s bed, poking at the food leftover from lunch with disinterest. “Whatever Mustang. I know you hate it in here just as much as me.”

Roy adjusts himself against his pillows, sighing heavily. “Can’t fault you there, kid. Has Alphonse been allowed to leave his quarantine yet?”

Edward makes a face, picking away at the stale bread roll. “We’ve been trying to figure how we can sneak him out to see something other than a hospital room but I think the nurses are onto us. They keep barging into the room like they expect us to be shooting drugs or something.” He laughs a little, but it is tinged with sadness. “Al’s been…not too well. The doctor gave him a vaccination for smallpox and the – what’d he call it? – DTE or something-”

“DTP,” Roy cuts across him smoothly. “Diptheria, tetanus and…pertussis, I think. You two didn’t get any when you were younger, did you?”

Edward shakes his head. “Winry’s parents used to be the go-to doctors for vaccinations because they always had shipments coming in from the big cities with their automail parts, but after they died people stopped getting them. It was too expensive.” His face drops suddenly. “This means I have to get one too, don’t I?”

Roy nods and tries to hide his smile. “I’d recommend it,” he says. “Get them all done in one go so you don’t have to worry about them later – they’re useful if you’re thinking about travelling abroad.”

Edward makes a face. “I’m done with travelling,” he says pointedly, and Roy raises his eyebrows in a sure you are way.

Edward sighs absently, pulling the bread roll apart. “I miss Win,” he says after a long pause, his long bangs hiding his face from Roy. “Like, she knows that we’re okay and that Al’s got his body back but…” he trails off, pulling the bread apart more roughly now. It crumbles under his grip easily, scattering over the remains of the unidentified meat they served for lunch today that Roy only took a bite of to decide he’d instead wait instead for Breda’s daily excursion to the deli down the road.

“Can she not come visit you here?” Roy asks carefully. He knows the young mechanic can be a touchy spot for Edward – knows and understands how important she is in his life.

Edward shrugs in a noncommittal manner. “It wouldn’t be the same, you know?” His voice is half wistful, half defeated. “Like, all the roads and railways in the East have been trashed and I know I’d be able to get her up here no problem but…it wouldn’t be right. Neither of us is in any condition to have lots of visitors – Al especially – and I don’t want to make her worry any more than we’ve already made her do. We’ve caused her enough pain.”

“I don’t think Winry would see it like that,” Roy says reproachfully, sitting up a little straighter. “She’s always going to be worried about you, whether you’re back home in Resembool or off saving the world – which, by the way, thank you for that. You’re considered family in every sense of the word and it’s not going to change all of a sudden just because you have. If she’s anything like you’ve described to me, she is going to be immeasurably happy for you. Like we all are,” he finishes pointedly, watching the younger man duck his head, red blooming through his cheeks.

It’s quiet in the room for a while. Roy grabs one of the books that Falman had left for him – apparently people in the North had nothing better to do than write lurid and exceptionally long tales of Drachman spies and wily Amestrian woman seducing them with ample bosoms and craft beer. Edward remains sitting at the bottom of his bed, alternating between pushing the leftover food around with a fork and flopping out onto his bed, idly quizzing him on various elemental properties and alchemical theories. It’s a welcome reprieve from what his life has been reduced to – waiting and waiting and waiting with no real end in sight. He knows Edward must feel the same, and he doesn’t begrudge him what little change he can make to his routine right now.

Eventually a nurse drops by and nearly drags Edward off the bed, fussing over him and chastising him for leaving his brother alone for so long. Edward rolls his eyes and gives Roy a pointed look as he leaves, Roy understanding that to mean he might be seeing Alphonse in the flesh (and doesn’t that feel strange to think? To fall of his tongue like it’s a normal thing to say about a fourteen year-old boy?) sooner than the doctors and nurses would have him believe.

this chapter feature some beautiful art by @rebbi-sonnenhell, which u can see on the ao3 version of this fic. i’ll be sure to reblog the art once they publish it bc i am in love with it a LOT

[tsaritsa]

hiiii can you recommend royai fic? i may have read everything you've ever written so i need more content to consume. lmao

oh heck that’s a lot of fic to get through haha (also wow u even read the stuff i wrote when i was 11? ur braver than any us marine anon). i did a quick backtrack through ffn and ao3 and found some that should whet ur appetite! (i hope there’s some unfamiliar ones in here for everyone to discover and enjoy)

interlude, @capthawkeye​ | i am gonna rec this until the end of days bc it’s just that good. it’s got angst. it’s got post-sexytimes. it’s got some of the most in-character dialogue i’ve ever read. do me a favour: read it, and then come back and cry with me

midnight conversations, m.c.e. black | i genuinely don’t remember what happens in this fic but 11 year old me liked it and it had an interesting plot

of ballet and bullets, serenanna | part 4 of a series, but can be read alone. this is a v bittersweet fic for me bc the author died unexpectedly midway through writing. also has the bonus of an edwin b-plot too!

words that linger in the silence, blue-crystal-9 | mangahood, solid shit here. it’s the Good Kush. i love promised day shagging okay sue me

a coded confession over coffee, wargishboromirfan | little ditty but i love it

hellbound, @the-flame-and-hawks-eye​ | there’s a reason shay is known as the queen of angst royai round these parts and this fic is really the cherry on top of an already awfulgreat premise. i’m taking 94 years to get thru this bc i am not v good with violent stuff but it is well worth the time

an apple a day, kitsune moonstar | there’s 333 chapters of royai to work through. 300 and 30 fucking 3. 

under the influence, yellow mask | what i really miss about fic nowadays is that there’s this big push for canon (which i get, the series is awesome), but finding fics like this one are harder now and i honestly miss it. sometimes i want silly shenanigans with no worry about the overarching plot!

my body aches to breathe your breath, prodigy | it’s porn and prose and gorgeous and so very them

buried alive, @rizahawkaye​​ | another one i’m getting thru slowly. this premise is great, the characters are amazing and it’s a riza-centric story with the hovering royai angst just lingering at the back of every chapter

homefront, @hlwim​ | au where riza never goes to war and ends up caring for the elric bros post-trisha. what i really loved about this fic was the attention to detail for life in that era as well as the ever-growing tension as the elrics try to prepare for human transmutation under the watchful eye of riza

espionage, janieshi | cannot recommend this enough - one of my fave fics that looks at young!royai

what time takes, yellow mask | this is strictly more of an edwin fic than royai but it’s a big ensemble cast and when the focus is on royai it’s glorious. i will never be over her hand holding on to his in those final chapters, that shit breaks me every time

dinner for two, and subterfuge too, sceptick | fake dating! but real dating, kinda. roy is besotted when he shouldn’t be

the closed circle, hmmingbird | are u really a royai fan if u haven’t read this fic? maybe. but u should read it anyway. i love the fics where royai visits edwin post-promised day and the sexual tension is through the roof

first few desperate hours, sixpences | some killer angst post-transfer for team mustang. roy is pining; we’re all crying from feels

do you even have to ask?, @poppo911​ | the team mustang banter in this piece is gorgeous, and the whole scene in the library is to die for. i love my overt royai as much as the next gal, but this study in restraint is what we all need just as much

eyass, yellow mask | one of the few 03-canon fics that i genuinely enjoy from royai. angst ahoy! (but the good kind)

never break the chain, @capthawkeye​ | did u know we also have a smut queen ‘round these parts? her name is mar and she makes me feel things. it’s royai. but roy is now host to greed. greed has a thing about possessiveness. catch me swooning bc i’m all flustered and bothered

for your eyes only, @ohmytheon​ | roy? staring at riza? it’s more likely than u think (5 times, to be exact)

this is by no means a comprehensive list, not one meant to deliberately exclude the many many many royai authors out there who all produce incredible work. send in ur favs to me if u think i’ve missed one worth promoting, and u can also check out the fic tag on my sideblog too (most of it will be royai by default).

happy reading!