Riza stared at the black ceiling, listening to the tired rattle of the air vent and the soft, rhythmic beeping of the machines in the room. She had tried counting her breaths, tried closing her eyes and imagining nothing but emptiness, and tried clenching and unclenching every muscle in her arms.

But she couldn't sleep until she knew he was asleep. It had been a few hours since they'd exchanged their subdued send offs.

Goodnight, Lieutenant.

Goodnight, Colonel.

But neither of them had fallen asleep, and no matter how long she seemed to wait for his breathing to slow and soften, it remained controlled and measured. They shared the collective silence, knowing the other was still awake, waiting for something to change.

She couldn't take it anymore.

"Colonel," she ventured into the stuffy darkness.

"Yes?"

She pressed her lips together, trying to pick her words. They had come so easily in the light of day and in the rotten air of the underground. The hospital cot seemed to suck the ability to communicate out of her body.

"Why haven't you fallen asleep yet," she finally asked.

It could have been a simple enough question to answer in another context, but she found herself terrified and in near painful need of the answer. Was it the new, disorienting blanket of darkness he had to live in? Was it the death and the destruction and the rending of his soul from his body and into a place that tore him apart and stitched him back together incomplete? Was it the loss of the future he had molded out of the stubborn idealism that had dragged him headfirst through the blood, the fire, and the mud of his years in the military?

"I don't know."

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to press out the pain. She licked her dry lips and forced herself not to change her breathing pattern. He would notice. He would worry.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She took a slower breath, and finally managed with a sharp crack in her voice, "I'm sorry, Colonel."

There was a long pause, and her fingers gripped the metal sides of her cot till her skin was hot and painful against the unyielding metal. Had she only made it worse? She was so used to knowing everything going on in his head, seeing it flickering beneath the surface of his eyes. Right now, she felt nearly as blind as him.

"Sorry for what?"

His voice was careful, direct, and controlling something she couldn't name. She forced herself to calm down, to think rationally about what she could and couldn't say.

"I'm sorry about your eyes."

She instantly felt like she had slapped him, or cracked him over the head with the flat side of her gun. She took in a sharp breath that she knew he would hear to prevent herself from saying more, from shoving him further and further away.

"Lieutenant—" His voice was quiet, overwrought with something that might have been pain, might have been regret, might have been an apology—"I can still see you."

She stopped breathing.

She shoved her shoulder into the hardness of her mattress, pushing herself up on her elbows and ignoring the strain of newly grafted scabs trying to pull the hole in her throat back open.

"What was that," she said in an intense whisper, eyes fixed on the dim outline of his form on the hospital bed. "You can see me?"

She could make out his head turning to face her in the darkness, and she tried to ignore the flaming kernel of hope that she knew was pointless.

"Yes." He paused, took in an uneven breath. She wondered if this would be their new way of communicating—searching for the irregularities in each other's breathing. Suddenly she remembered the hot metal of her phone in her hand and the smothering haze of panic after she had first confronted Pride, and the sharp concern in his voice when he had said, "What's wrong?" Had he read her breathing then, or had it been her voice?

"I can still see you there on the ground in all that blood." Her skin went from burning to freezing in an instant as his wavering voice continued. "You know, that's all I can see right now." He swallowed heavily and she closed her eyes again, as if it would make any of this better. "You're just lying there, looking at me. Just looking at me. Telling me not to do anything."

"Colonel, I—"

"And I can't."

The harsh break in his voice echoed around the little hospital room. She could hear his sheets shifting and rustling and she opened her eyes to see him dragging his hands up and down his face, like he was trying to wipe something out of his eye sockets.

"And the last time I saw you, your face was covered in so much blood. That's all I can see now. I can't see anything but your bloody face telling me to sit there, and I can't—"

"I'm fine, Colonel," she said in a panicked rush and weak attempt at authority, desperate to make him stop. "I'm fine, I'm right here, it all ended up ok—"

"And it was all my fault, they were using you to get to me!" He was speaking faster and faster, his voice getting lower with distress. "There was this huge fucking pool around you, and it was all because of me! God, Riza, everything that happens to you, it's all because of me!"

By the time he finished, he was breathing heavily into the silence of the room as she tried to process what had been said, to try and find a way to take it and move forward with it.

And she also found that all she could offer to him was an observation with searing and simple vulnerability.

"You called me Riza."

He continued to breathe raggedly, and she heard him swallow again in the darkness. "I don't want to call you by what I've made you into anymore."

The tables had turned. She felt like he had been the one to slap her in the face now, and she felt the hot, bubbling uprising of angry and hurt tears in her eyes.

"How dare you," she whispered. "How dare you take responsibility for everything I am today—"

"It's all my fault!" His voice was near guttural with frustration. "I just hurt you, and hurt you, and hurt you, and I just can't do it anymore! You know what I've done, you've seen me do it, and felt me do it! And you laid there in that puddle of blood after you put your gun at the back of my head and saved me and kept your promise, and now I—"

He broke off suddenly, and the anger seemed to leech from him, sinking down to the floor that supported the separated islands of their beds. She felt like she was lying on the stone again, watching the utter hopelessness and despondency creep across his face when he understood her glance. He started speaking again, and it sounded as though he was speaking through a mouth full of broken glass, trying to navigate his way around the cutting words and the blood that pooled between them

"After all this time and effort, you've been left with nothing more than a shell. A sick, angry shell. How's that for your Colonel, then? How's that for making the lives of the people I love better? Tell me that much, Riza."

She ignored the sharp prickling of skin on her neck as she pushed herself up fully until she was sitting. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and his head shot up in the darkness, searching for something he couldn't see.

"Lieut—Riza. What are you doing? Don't do this, you aren't ready for it."

She heaved herself to her feet, swaying for a moment with her hand on her bed. His begging only seemed to fuel the hurt, angry, writhing mess of feelings in her head and chest.

"Riza! Look, I'm sorry, I'll stop! I won't say anything else tonight, I swear!" Every use of her name felt like another blow. She saw him fumbling with his blankets, trying to swing his own legs off his cot. "Please just lay back down. Please."

She took a shaky step, and then another. Hadn't it always been like this? Unsteady progress in the dark, never quite seeing each other. She bit her lip, and the taste of coppery blood in her mouth was almost nostalgic.

She stumbled forward, arms catching on the edge of his bed. Immediately, strong hands locked around her arms, hauling her up and off the floor and into a heap on the opposite end of the mattress. The hands lingered for a moment on her arms, grip loosening in the strange, tense silence. Then letting go. She watched them drift uncertainly back to his lap.

They sat facing each other in the darkness.

Finally, she reached for his hand, grabbing it and lifting it slowly to her cheek, fitting it along the line of her jaw. She felt his hand tense against her wet skin, and his head lower toward hers in concern and shame.

"No blood," she whispered. "You don't have to see it."

She reached down and grabbed his other hand and pressed it to the other side of her face.

"No blood," she repeated softly, emphatically.

His hands started to tremble against her skin. "But I did this." His thumb brushed up over the rise of her cheek and her tears dribbled over his nail. "And it's always the same. This is all I've brought you."

She laid her hands over the backs of his, slid them down his arms, over his shoulders, up his neck, and to a stop on the sides of his face so they were sat facing each other in the same position. She sucked in shuddering breath.

"You have given me so much. More than I could ever begin to tell you." He started to lower his head and she brushed the shroud of his hair away from his eyes with shaking fingers. Reluctantly, he looked up at her with searching, blank eyes that couldn't quite focus on hers. She rested the tips of her fingers on his temples.

"Roy." His name felt like an apology on her lips. "Don't take away my sacrifice. It's mine, not yours. It's for you, not done by you."

She watched as his eyes filled with tears and his hands pressed more insistently against her skin.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "For everything I've done."

She took a rattling breath, unsettled by the warmth beneath her hands and their closeness. She should have known something like this was going to happen, that they couldn't just go on the way they had.

"I have never," she began slowly, "felt more grateful or relieved than when I woke up with your face above me, making sure I was alive."

His eyes flooded with emotion, and she found herself thanking whatever force that governed their world that he hadn't been robbed of this. He leaned forward and something in her chest tightened and cemented her into immobility. His forehead rested against hers, warm and solid, and the backs of their hands touched with palms pressed against each other's faces.

"If I had to stand on your grave alone, I wouldn't make it." He let a shaking breath out into the small, warm space between their faces.

She trembled for a moment, and steadied herself by staring into his unseeing eyes. "I wouldn't let the hate take you, and I'm not letting this take you either."

She was close enough to nearly feel the sad little smile break across his face. "If you go on keeping me on track, this won't be anything more than a minor set back. Besides, you knew how to tell me where to use my alchemy nearly as well as my own eyes used to."

She let her smile mirror his. "You've never had to do it alone. It's going to be different, but I'm ready to follow you right back into hell when you're on your feet again."

There was a long silence as they enjoyed the simple denied pleasure of closeness and openness. The warmth of his skin on hers cloaked her in a sense of safety and relief. The throbbing of her neck faded further away than any painkiller had been able to banish it. For the first time in what felt like years, in this dark little room, Riza felt like she had come home.

After too much time had passed, and the rhythm of their breathing was perfectly matched, she knew it had gone too far, that it was time to turn back. The warmth of his fingers against his face was intoxicating, and she knew they couldn't get any closer than this without hitting absolute ruin. But she still found her words to be traitors.

"I don't think I should try to go back to my cot," she said quietly.

"I don't want you to go back to your cot."

She hesitated, leaning away from him and back towards distance and safety. After all, how were they going to confront this new sense of intimacy in the morning?

"Please," he whispered. "You take one side, and I'll take the other."

She wavered, but if anything convinced her, it was the openness of his face, the complete absence of pretense.

"Alright."

He made space by shuffling to the side, letting her move to the top of the bed. She lowered herself down into the leftover warmth where his body had been, and for the first time since the end of the day, she felt like it was really over, as if she had been expecting the fighting to break out once more all the way up until this point. She realized she had left her gun under her own pillow across the room, and felt the sudden compulsion to return to it.

And then he settled down with his back to her, shoulders brushing hers, pillow moving as he set his head to rest. The calls of her gun quieted, and she let her eyes drift shut.

"What will we say tomorrow when the doctors come in?"

His back settled more firmly against hers.

"That we're two very tired and very damaged people, and that we can't be held responsible for the needs of our broken souls."

She laughed softly to mask the discomfort of exposed truth, hand curling under the pillow. "When did you become so eloquent?"

"Diplomatic rhetoric."

"Hm."

She felt herself sinking into the warmth and the rhythm of his breathing at her back. It would be oh so painful in the morning, and she would know the bitterness of reality as soon as the doctors came in to check on them and pull them back into dignified separation before their friends came.

She had just accepted this reality, and started to drift off in the present, when she felt him turn and heard his voice directly behind her.

"Riza."

"Colonel."

Silence reigned before he said in a hesitating voice, "Just my name, please. Just for right now. I promise we can go back in the morning."

She pressed her lips together, hating how good his name felt in her bruised and bloodied throat and wondering just how they were going to go back from this.

"Roy."

"I want to let you know something."

The electricity of anticipation built up in her chest.

"Yes?"

A few more aching moments of silence, and then softly, "I didn't feel real until I heard your voice again."

She stared off into the darkness for one beat, then two, and then her eyes filled with tears for the second time that night.

She let herself ignore the screaming protests of her rationality as she turned and buried her face in the linen of his hospital shirt.

"Just for tonight," she whispered, aching as if she had been torn apart, but warm as if she had just been pressed back together.

His hand came to rest behind her head, fingers tangled gently in her hair and arm resting on her torso.

"Just for tonight," he repeated solemnly.

When they were separated the next morning, they both couldn't help but realize that after all this time, they still couldn't stop lying to themselves.