#riza mentions counting steps to figure out the distance they travelled

[rizah]

OK, Berthold used his daughter and Grumman is ambitious, and they both underrated Riza. But what about Roy ? He used her too, if we're being honest : if they hadn't met again in Ishval, would he have come back to her or got in touch with her after that? It seems he hires her because he feels guilty, ashamed, and wants to atone for Ishval, like she does. We always blame Berthold, but Roy isn't better - in the beginning, at least. No?

sorry i got to this weeks later, i’ve been super busy with uni and firefighting and staring deeply at the wall wondering if my existence should even be here ANYWAY

i like the cut of ur jib anon, i really like the cut of ur jib

i totally agree, from the outset it really looks like that. BUT i can’t really think of a ‘good’ way to spin an alchemy like flame alchemy without the whole destructive aspect of it being Blatantly Obvious - so i’m loathe to say that roy was 100% manipulating/using her in the same way i see berthold doing and grumman trying. riza chose to divulge that knowledge to him and she acknowledges that she has to accept some responsibility in the aftermath of creating a new flame alchemist. 

i do like the angst of them being caught up in that whole ‘young love’ affection stuff, and a naughty part of me really likes the idea of exploring a roy who is scrabbling for whatever power he can find at 19/20 to make a point to the military, but even that’s veering into ooc territory for him. ultimately i think they were young ppl who were very idealistic about the world and it took the war for the years of propaganda and naivete to be stripped away. what i love about roy’s character is that despite those horrors he’s left with grit determination to be the change he wants to see, and riza follows him to atone for the consequences of those choices.

i think her choosing to go to ishval hinges purely on learning (or perhaps realising) that flame alchemy has some uses when it comes to Exploding Ppl and Things. i think roy would’ve tried to find her afterwards, but riza struck me as somewhat aimless at the funeral so who knows where she would’ve ended up if not in the military. however - @hlwim​ did a lovely story called ‘homefront’ which explores that premise a bit (go read it. it’s hella).

it’s super easy to blame bertie bc we see the dude for like 10 panels at best but to marry someone and have a kid with them... he’s got to have some redeeming characteristics tucked away somewhere. i would really like to see a fic or even some character studies which flesh him out a bit more and give him some humanity.

ultimately tho, roy is better simply bc we get to see him change. there’s an argument to be made that his intentions were more noble (than say, the more neutral ones of bertie preserving knowledge for knowledge’s sake) but we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 

[by-nina]

Never Mine to Lose

AO3 | FFN Royai Week 2021 | Day 5 – “illicit affairs” by Taylor Swift Rating: K+/T (drinking) Genre: Romance/Angst Word Count: 2,500

A/N: Or, the story of how Riza ends up with one of Roy’s shirts.

It matters—it bothers Riza that when she enters his car, she catches a faint trace of the perfume that she and Madame Christmas had given him for his birthday. The scent all at once soothes her, has her imagining him there with her and all the ways that this night could be different. It’s sweet in one moment, sickening in the next—she rolls down the window, lets the breeze carry the scent off into the night so she can properly breathe and be on her way.

Riza knows better than to indulge in a high that she cannot afford.

———

The last day of the working week has been nothing but one delay after another. By evening, Roy’s patience is already wearing thin. He’d gotten stuck in a meeting that ran far longer than necessary, had to wait around for urgent paperwork that was supposed to have been delivered to his office in the morning but had gotten swapped with documents that were meant for other departments, and been roped into entertaining a visiting diplomat who wasn’t even his guest. The day ends at 1900 hours, at which point he literally sprints out of his office because he’s running late for a date.

He brushes his hair flat onto his head as he grabs his coat, keys, and briefcase, along with a change of clothes that he keeps in a desk drawer. Leaving his team to wrap up the work that has piled up due to the day’s setbacks, Roy hollers instructions and a hasty thank-you to Lieutenant Hawkeye over his shoulder on his way out. He’s out of Eastern Command and at its parking lot in just three minutes, which is when he realizes his mistake.

HAWKEYE, RIZA G., reads the dog tag attached to the set of keys in his hand. Roy squints. Sure enough, he is holding the large silver key to the Lieutenant’s car, a little brass one stamped with 611 for her locker at the military’s gym, and three others that he doesn’t recognize. He turns around in a brief moment of hesitation, considers running back to get his own keys—there isn’t even any time to wonder how he ended up with the wrong ones. His date is expecting him in about fifteen minutes at a location that’s thirty minutes out, and he still has to change out of his uniform somewhere along the way.

Roy clicks his tongue impatiently, steps into the car, and starts the engine.

———

The Colonel has been gone for an hour when his team finally completes the day’s work. With a collective sigh and a stretch of their weary limbs, they quickly set off to their respective plans for the evening. Havoc and Breda decide to try out a sports club that has just opened downtown; Falman heads to the market, mentioning a new book that he has been meaning to get his own copy of; and Fuery goes to meet his parents for dinner at a nearby café. The room is abuzz with their chatter in one moment, and in the next, Riza finds herself leaving the office last.

A pair of keys glints on the Colonel’s desk as Riza is tidying it. One long silver key for his car, and a copper one which must be for his front door. Riza picks up the keys for a closer look as it dawns on her that there has been a mistake—that perhaps he had carelessly taken her keys after she’d had to move both their cars in the parking lot that afternoon (no thanks to a direct superior who had forgotten to have slots secured for a visiting diplomat and his staff), or perhaps she had given the keys to him in her hurry to attend to her other responsibilities. Now, he has taken her car across East City to go on a date, and she must take his to go about her own plans.

The walk down to the parking lot is heavier than it should be. It might not matter so much if the day hadn’t been incredibly stressful, even for Riza, or if she and Colonel Mustang were on the same page about the purpose of his ongoing date. But it matters, of course, because he is taking her car for his work. It matters because the date is another one of his undercover meetings, and he is meeting the informant for only the first time tonight.

It matters—it bothers Riza that when she enters his car, she catches a faint trace of the perfume that she and Madame Christmas had given him for his birthday. The scent all at once soothes her, has her imagining him there with her and all the ways that this night could be different. It’s sweet in one moment, sickening in the next—she rolls down the window, lets the breeze carry the scent off into the night so she can properly breathe and be on her way.

Riza knows better than to indulge in a high that she cannot afford.

———

Miss Vivienne Smith makes pleasant company, all things considered. She is lovely and tall, her brown hair set in delicate curls and her posture both elegant and relaxed. She is able to carry a conversation with ease and quick wit. It’s easy to see her as an asset in terms of gathering intelligence, and it’s certainly helpful to be working with other informants around Amestris besides Vanessa, Madeleine, and the other girls at Madame Christmas’ bar.

Tonight, however, they aren’t trading information. This first meeting is for introductions and pleasantries and, in part, for an assessment of their potential partnership. Roy must impress not only Miss Vivienne, but also her employer, Mr. Keith Schreiber, a public relations specialist who works with businessmen and high-ranking military officials alike. A successful enterprise like theirs is just the kind of connection Roy needs in order to outsmart the powerful and influential obstacles to his ambitions.

Over dinner and wine, Roy relies on his usual charms and charisma to get to know Miss Vivienne and what she does at Mr. Schreiber’s firm. They talk about the news, but nothing too serious, because that would be bordering on talking about business secrets in public. They talk about their friends and other interests, at which point Roy realizes that Miss Vivienne wants to get to know him on a more personal basis than he even bothered to consider.

At this point, it all feels wrong.

For all of Miss Vivienne’s pleasant qualities, his mind is somewhere far less romantic than this lovely restaurant. It wanders back to the office on a languid afternoon, to silent drives for work for which he cannot keep his eyes on the road, back to the damn parking lot where he should have left all these thoughts when he left in the Lieutenant’s car. Perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps it’s the traces of Riza’s—the Lieutenant’s presence in the car and in the keys in his coat pocket that make this evening so unbearable.

Perhaps the problem is that there isn’t anyone else he would rather be with tonight.

———

On her way home to Cameron, Riza takes the road less traveled by.

It will take her an hour longer to get to her destination, but she needs to be distracted. Black Hayate doesn’t seem to mind. He’s been well-behaved in the passenger’s seat since she picked him up from her apartment, and he excitedly stands on his hind legs and leans towards the window when they drive past the moonlit rolling landscapes just outside East City, the lush mountains and sparkling rivers leading to her hometown. Riza smiles for the first time this evening, both at Hayate and at the view.

She makes a mental note to have the car thoroughly cleaned of the outside dirt and Hayate’s fur on the car seat once she returns from her trip. That’s in addition to paying for what she uses of Roy’s gasoline.

It’s so much trouble for one little mistake that wasn’t entirely her fault in the first place, if at all, and she curses Roy under her breath for it. What a mess he’s made of her plans tonight. She had been looking forward to her trip to Cameron for weeks, and something like accidentally switching vehicles should only be trivial, it shouldn’t get to her—but not on a night when the figurative distance between them feels greater than the distance she is driving. Not on this night when she is most in need of his company. Not when she is on her way to her mother’s grave.

Her tears fall before she even reaches Cameron.

———

The night ends with a courteous kiss on the hand and an empty promise of meeting again.

Miss Vivienne waves goodbye to Roy after he has dropped her off at the steps of the East City Hotel. It’s only then that Roy breathes a sigh of relief at last and a knot comes undone in his chest. At last, he is alone and there are no more appearances for him to keep, no unwelcome company that he has to force himself to entertain. The empty passenger’s seat feels far more comfortable than Miss Vivienne’s presence did.

In the quiet, Riza’s absence, colored by the mere thought of her, fills the space with something—whatever it is that was missing from his date with Miss Vivienne.

It’s all at once sobering and more intoxicating than any drink he’s had tonight.

Roy arrives at his apartment shortly after and allows himself inside with a spare key which he keeps under his doormat. Coming back from the evening he’s just had doesn’t quite feel like coming home; it’s as if he were a stranger intruding on his personal space. His chest feels heavy and unsettled with each step he takes. His shoulders curl forward with all the discomposure of a man who’s just had to leave his lover without being seen. Between his fingers, he grips Riza’s keys like a secret he needs to keep.

In the few hours he remains awake, Roy keeps a bottle of brandy for company on his couch. It isn’t a peaceful silence. Glass by glass, he imagines all the nights he has had to spend dressed to impress with a coat and tie and an insincere smile—has it been a hundred, or a thousand, or a million times? He’s lost count by now, but it hardly matters. His mind fills the blanks with Riza in each one, indulging him in all sorts of imagined scenarios where he takes her out on a lovely night before he takes her home.

At some point, he has to admit that it’s no longer the alcohol that has him thinking of Riza this way. It’s her—it’s the years they have shared together, the home they have made in each other, and god, how he wants her.

Ever the fool, Roy reclines in his couch and holds her keys to his lips, where the dog tag sits cool and solid against his skin—no substitute for what her lips must feel like. On Monday, he will tell her that the chain of her dog tag came undone at some point when he was using her car. He will tell her that he’s sorry for the inconvenience, but he simply cannot remember where he had dropped it, and that she can simply ask for another one from the logistics department.

Tonight, he falls asleep with the small comfort that he will have one small thing to keep from her and remind him of her wherever he goes.

———

It begins to rain as Riza is seated by Edith Hawkeye’s grave.

She would have recognized the smell of the earth if she hadn’t fallen asleep with her arms around her knees and her tears soaking up her sleeve. Hayate quickly leaps to his feet, nudges at her with his snout and barks at her, but the downpour has already caught her by the time she opens her eyes, and she is soaked from head to toe by the time she gets to Roy’s car. Riza opens the passenger’s side door for Hayate before rushing to the trunk where she had deposited her bag of clothes for the trip. Of course, it’s at this time, of all times, that the trunk gets stuck and refuses to open.

Riza rushes back inside, dripping and shivering in the driver’s seat, cursing again because now there’s more cleaning to be done before she can return Roy’s car on Monday, and because he doesn’t even seem to have one of his coats lying around for her to borrow until she gets to the inn. Then, she reaches into his glove compartment, and she is lucky enough to find a plain white shirt, still crisp from being folded at the laundry shop. She quickly strips off her top and her undershirt, and when she pulls his shirt on, the warmth soothes her and stops her shivering almost immediately.

The local inn isn’t too far away from the cemetery, a mere five-minute drive. Riza apologizes for the trail of water that she leaves as she checks in, then heads up to the room she will be sharing with Hayate. It’s small and dimly lit, containing only a rough-hewn bed for one and a side table to match, but it’s more than she and Hayate will need for one night. It’s small enough to be cozy—it should be small enough to dissuade unwarranted thoughts, like the desire for another person’s warmth.

The silent solitude doesn’t make for good enough company, however. Those thoughts don’t leave her even when she has finally relieved herself of her drenched bottoms and dried off her skin and hair. She sinks into the bed, warmed by the old woven sheets and Roy’s white button-down, too exhausted to change into something of her own, too desolate to try coming up with a proper excuse to keep it on her person. Her rationality, her last defense when it comes to matters of the heart, utterly fails her.

An hour, then another trickles by without any promise of falling asleep. The longer Riza lies awake, the worse she thinks of this unkind hand she and Roy have been dealt. The cruel irony isn’t lost on her, how she must look the other way every damn night that Roy isn’t with her, in spite of the truth about what he means to her. She cannot scream. She finds solace in listening to the crash of thunder and the rush of the downpour outside her window. She whispers her frustrations into the storm so that no one can hear, because she can only ever allow her emotions to exist in secret.

It’s one moment of truth amid the million lies she must continue to live behind:

She is his; she always has been.

She knows just as well that he is hers.

And Roy knows—deep down, he must know this, too. They have been together far too long for anyone else to speak in the same secret language that they have shared for most of their lives. Surely Roy will not mind when he notices that he is missing one white shirt, and he will understand what it means to her, allow her to keep this one clandestine promise of keeping her company in whatever manner they can allow.

These are the hopes of a fool, but on this night, a fool is what Riza allows herself to be.