Driving him back that evening, Riza felt more helpless than she had in years.

She glanced over at him out the corner of her eye, taking in his curved spine and arm braced against the window cradling his head. She looked back at the road, trying to smother the harsh and biting wave of grief that reverberated through her body and urged her to pull the car over and just park, so she could cradle her own head and mirror him in taking in the enormity of loss.

But she couldn't do that.

One of them had to keep going. They had worked out a nice, even system, the two of them. They maintained careful orbit around each other, moving through the world, never leaving their backs unbarred, never leaving room for something to come in and disrupt the steady pull. When one of them snapped and hit the point where continuing on was too much to bear, even for another instant, the orbit shifted and the other took up the new center of gravity, moving around and around in relentless circles while the other recovered.

She swallowed back the thick press of tears in her eyes, knowing it was her turn to orbit, her turn to insulate him from the outside world. And she didn't mind.

She couldn't help but think that of all the men to take, the world was cruelest for taking Hughes. She kept hearing the shrieking of his daughter, over and over again, like the shrill thin voice was trapped in her car and ricocheting against the windows. It was like the bloody cries of children she had heard in Ishval, echoing down the sun and blood-bleached streets. She wondered if this was the price of equivalent exchange, taking blood for blood, father for father.

And yet she still saw his sunburnt face at the crest of a sand dune, lines of murder and genocide etched on his face, but with a raw and sincere smile of cracked and scabbed lips as he held up a picture. Whenever she spoke with him during her time in Ishval, letting the prattling of his life wash over her as he spoke with force that seemed to be an effort to convince himself as much as it was to convince her, she could imagine for a brief instant the forgotten realities of home.

She felt Roy's eyes on her and she turned and looked to the passenger seat. He was staring at her with a bleak intensity, eyes inching over her face even when she caught his gaze. She tried to ignore the painful thrill in her veins and focused on driving.

"What is it, Colonel?"

She felt him hesitate a moment, mouth opening and then clamping firmly shut. The muscles in his jaw roiled as he forced whatever he had been about to say back down.

"Nothing."

She sent him a look to let him know that she knew it wasn't nothing—of course she knew—but that she wouldn't push it. She knew the place he was in right now, and she knew it was a place to respect. He would open up when he was ready to, whether it be in a week, a few months, or a few years.

She finally pulled up to the curb in front of his house, engine lulling to a halt. They sat in silence as the dull red light of the sun cast everything on the streets into sharp relief. They watched the shadows grow darker and darker as the sun descended in its bloody late afternoon trail.

When the clear impressions of evening began to set in, he opened his mouth and tried a few more times to form words before he finally settled on, "Thank you."

She looked at him in concern. His eyes were fixed on his hands in his lap, gloves laying on his knees. He picked them up in a white knuckled grip before opening the car door and letting himself out stiffly. She let herself out, knowing she couldn't let him go into the dark emptiness of his house with nothing but the somber thank you knocking around the inside of his head.

"I'll walk you to the door," she said, trying to ignore the reality that the door was just ten paces away, that she was trying to make excuses so he didn't have to be alone until he absolutely had to be, that he knew she was making excuses.

They trudged up to his front door in uniform, and she felt something strange unfolding inside of her. Suddenly, the blue collar against her neck was stifling, the heavy boots on her feet weights to drag up and down that were keeping her from following him. She tried to crush the feeling in her chest, knowing why she did what she did, why she could feel the skin-warmed metal of her guns on her ribs, and thighs, and in the sides of her boots. Equivalent exchange. It was her turn to give back (suffer). And yet, with the scent of the freshly-turned grave turning rancid in her nose, and the echoing screams of Hughes' child that reminded her she could never bear to be around upset children for long because it reminded her of watching their small bodies blackening under the yellow heat of flame, she couldn't help but think when will it be enough?

They stopped at his door, and she watched for a moment as his broad shoulders tensed, then shook before he turned and looked at her. Her breath caught in her throat.

All the layers she had watched him build up year after year and all the subtle changes that she had watched his face and expressions undergo were suddenly stripped away. He looked at her with open, stinging vulnerability. His eyes were soft, haunted in his face, cheeks hollow and rounded the way they had been when he was just a student, and covered with tears. She felt like she had stepped into the past, and she couldn't stop her trembling hand from reaching out to it, or the frenzied begging of her heart— take me back. Take me with you back to before.

She took in a shuddering breath, the seconds seeming to stretch into a tenuous strand that was tugging her hand back to duty and sense and rationality—

But then her hand was settled against the warm, wet skin of his cheek, and the seconds and their pull faded back behind the roaring of loss and triumph in her ears and the resounding hollowness she found at her core. His hand rose up and clasped over hers, holding it there, and they stood shaking in the crashing tide of forbidden intimacy and regret.

"Please don't go," he whispered.

She hesitated, pressing her lips together to keep herself from saying god knew what, but his eyes pleaded with her softly. Please don't, they begged, please don't close yourself off right now.

Her breath hitched and she found the urge to cry welling up again, because everything was so overwhelming. The loss of their friend, the reminder of what they had done together, and him standing in front of her like it was years ago, like he was leaving after dinner and a night of studying her father's notes and tea—sheepish, young, and innocent.

"I'm scared," he said. She looked back up at him, and she could see it in his eyes. The raw, cloying presence of fear stared back out at her.

"Roy, I—"

She was surprised by her own use of his first name, but he was not. It had just slipped out effortlessly, the way it had before he was Colonel. Before she was Lieutenant.

"I can't let them take you, too." His voice cracked and he let out a harsh, concentrated breath. "I can't find you in a telephone booth, Riza, dammit, I just can't."

"You don't have to—"

"Then stay."

She felt parts of herself begin to dissolve as her own layers began to fade away. She knew he could see it when she saw the soft spark of hope in his eyes, and the budding recognition as he looked down at the Riza who had never known the reassuring weight of a gun in the bloodied palm of her hand, and the Riza who was inextricably melded to the transmutation cirlce on his gloves and the space at his back.

"Alright."

Something in his face flared back to life, even beneath the grief, the loss, and the sheer weight of survival. Thank you, it said. I'm sorry, it said. I need you, it said.

They stepped through the front door of his house, the reassuring weight and warmth of his ungloved hand clasped in hers, moving to the kitchen to make some tea and sit like they had used to all those years ago and to just try and remember. And if they didn't do it for themselves, they did it for the man they had lost who had taught them that above all else, they had to find ways to keep coming home.

Oh my god, I am so sorry, this hurt so much.