1915—Central City

Roy is shaking when Dr. Marcoh and Breda lower him into the circle.

He's clenching his still bandaged hands so tightly that what can be seen of his knuckles is turning white, and Riza is afraid Roy's lip is going to start bleeding soon. She knows she's not the only one who's noticed their Colonel's blatant and uncharacteristic fear when Havoc's arm around her tightens.

"It's okay, Chief," he says lightly, "I swear, it'll feel weird, but it won't hurt. And it'll work, Doc knows what he's doin', dontcha, Doc?"

Dr. Marcoh's scarred face positively glares back at Havoc.

"I've studied the anatomy of the eye extensively, and I do have experience with philosophers' stones. I will do my level best, Colonel."

"I know." Roy says it quietly, and he does finally relax a bit, leaning back into the circle and letting his head rest on the tiled floor.

He's still shaking.

"Can we have a minute?" Riza rasps out, it's hardly even a whisper, but her voice carries in the small, unused hospital room. She's still really not supposed to be talking, but she can again, and this, this is important.

Everyone files out of the room quickly, with hurried nods and backward glances at their blind Colonel on the floor.

Everyone besides Havoc.

"Uh, Hawkeye, you sure-,"

"I'm fine, Jean." Her voice cracks on his name, and Roy turns toward them, brow furrowed. "Just make sure I don't trip and break the circle."

Havoc grimaces, but does help settle her gently on the ground next to Roy, as close as she can get without touching the lines. Her vision spins a bit at the change in elevation—she lost a lot of blood, and technically she's not supposed to be out of bed yet.

As if she'd miss this.

Havoc ensures she's sitting comfortably before backing quietly out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Riza grabs Roy's hand.

All of the tension finally leaves his body. He goes boneless on the floor.

"Roy." He doesn't turn his head to her, his milky, damp eyes glued to the ceiling.

She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to prattle on and on until her voice is really and truly gone, but at least make Roy smile with her last words.

She wants desperately to take the fear out of his eyes.

"I love you."

Roy finally turns his head to her. She's never said it to him before, and now that feels like a crime, to love someone so much, so wholly and completely and never actually say it out loud.

"I love you more." Leave it to Roy Mustang to make it a contest. Riza can't help her grin.

"I love you most."

Roy squeezes her hand.

"I love you more than most."

Riza laughs. "That's impossible."

Roy finally smiles. His eyes are still cloudy with tears, and his grip on her hand is near painful, but he smiles, and Riza feels like she can take a breath.

She rubs her thumb slowly up and down the side of his bandaged hand. "But I suppose," Riza whispers, "I suppose impossible things happen every day, don't they?"

Because madmen call down God from the moon, and little girls with terrible fathers turn into dogs. Little girls with wonderful fathers watch them die, and Immortal beings fall in love with ordinary ones. Countries get turned into transmutation circles and wars are started solely for the sake of bloodshed.

Little boys turn into armor turn into little boys again. All with the clap of a hand.

What is one more impossible thing today? What is one more clap today?

Roy takes a deep breath. "Yes, I suppose they do."

000

When Roy opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is her. The first thing he does is sit up, reach out his hand and wipe the tears on her cheeks.

Riza hadn't even realized she'd been crying.

"I was so afraid I'd never see you again."

She does now.

000

"I want to see Alphonse." It's Roy's first request, once they've gotten him out of the circle and he's had to chance to thank Dr. Marcoh properly, once he's suffered through bear hugs bestowed unhesitatingly on him by Falman, Breda, Fuery, and Havoc.

"Then let's go see Alphonse," Riza says, as loudly as she can manage. It's still barely more than a whisper, as she steps out from under Havoc's arm around her shoulder to grab Roy's hand again.

"Hawkeye," Jean begins, warning in his voice. Because maybe she came here in a wheelchair, and maybe she's not supposed to be out of bed because she possibly kind of maybe passed out on her way back to bed from using the bathroom this morning and maybe Roy doesn't know any of this yet because Riza swore Havoc to secrecy and-

"We'll be okay." Roy surely hasn't missed the knowing look Havoc was giving her, can't have missed it, because for all the greetings and thanks and discussions he's had beyond her since his sight came back, his eyes haven't strayed very far away from her, not once.

But he replaces Havoc's arm around her shoulders, pointedly ignores the wheelchair by the door, and waves goodbye to everyone as they slowly make their way out.

"You'll tell me if you need to stop." It's a statement, not a question, whispered softly into her hair.

"Yes, sir."

It's quiet, their walk down the empty halls. They're in a mostly empty part of the hospital, one that had recently be closed for renovations. And they're walking slowly, so damn slowly, and Riza's sure Roy just wants to hop skip jump, to run, because he's been basically healthy except for the fact that he was blind, cooped up in a hospital for days on end.

But he lets her set the pace. And as they reach the end of the hall, and the stairs that will take them down to Edward and Alphonse's room, when she says "stop", he pulls her over to an empty chair immediately.

"Are you okay? Do you need water? I can go back and get the chair, where's the elevator, isn't there-,"

"Just need a minute," She interrupts him. He nods thoughtfully, and takes a seat beside her. His eyes still haven't left her face.

"What's your list?"

"Hmm?"

"Your list?" Riza asks, because she knows him, and she's absolutely positive it exists. "The list of things you need to see, now that you can see again."

Roy smiles ruefully. "Think I'm checking off the boxes?"

"I know you are. What's after Alphonse?"

"Ed's arm, I suppose. But I kind of lumped that in together with Alphonse." Riza nods knowingly. "Elysia. I need—I should visit her more. It would've been sad to not see her grow up. I owe Hughes that, at least, if he can't see it.

"I'd like to go to the beach, I've never been before. Maybe climb a mountain. Actually sit and watch the sunset—sunrise, too. And I want, I want to go back to your house, sit by that old pond and the dock, go fishing again. We were always—we were always happy there. It's so peaceful. It's one of my favorite places in the world.

"And you-," but Roy stops himself, a blush growing on his cheeks.

"I'm that far down, huh?" Riza asks with a laugh.

"No! No! You were the top of the list, of course you were, I just-," Roy finally looks away from her face, out the window to the now setting sun.

"What is it?"

"When it finally sank in, when I really realized I was actually blind, I just—my first thought, it-," Roy shakes his head and looks back at her, biting his lip. "I realized I'd never see you in a wedding dress."

Riza's not quite sure the look she must make at that, but Roy grabs her hand. "I know we can't now, not this minute, maybe not for years. There are other things we have to do first. But I just—I want to marry you, Riza. Maybe it won't even happen until we're old and gray, but I don't care. I don't. I just love you so much, and the thought that I wouldn't see it when it happened was-," Roy isn't able to continue.

"I love you." Riza says it to him for the second time in her life. "For that split second when I couldn't talk and you couldn't see and I thought it would be that way always, that—that was my list. The things I needed to say. I love you, Roy."

Then his lips are on hers, and his hands are in her hair and on her back and she's crying, maybe he is too, but they're alive, and they're together and they're in love and-

Nothing else needs to be said.

000

Roy cries again when he sees Alphonse for the first time.

"Lieutenant, what the hell are we going to do? Fullmetal has a clone!" Roy laughs around his tears, gently, so gently, wrapping the tiny boy in a hug.

Al hugs him back as tightly as he can, the strain of it obvious in his shaking, twig-like arms. He looks better than he did a week ago, his long hair brushed through and braided back like Ed's, the bed sheets and hospital gown covering most of his still emaciated body.

Al's cheeks are too thin, his gold eyes enormous within a sunken head. His arms are knobby, his golden hair brittle. He simultaneously looks everything and nothing like Edward.

"I'm so glad it worked, Colonel," Riza hears Al whisper into Roy's chest, and Roy hugs him closer still, hand on the back of his head.

"Just glad I finally got to meet you, Alphonse."

Edward snorts wetly from beside Riza on his own bed, wiping his nose with the hand not in a sling. Riza sighs and pulls a tissue from the box on the bedside table, handing it to him.

"Stop being such enormous saps, the both of you," Edward whines, blowing his nose with the tissue. He uses the used tissue to wipe his wet eyes, "It's pathetic really."

Riza wraps an arm around Ed's shoulders and pulls him in close. He rests his head on her shoulder, his hair tickling her neck.

She thinks about the little boy she met five years ago, stuck in a chair, no arm, no leg, a suit of armor for a brother. The two little boys from the middle of nowhere who missed their mother and were much too smart for their own good.

She thinks about her Colonel, her Roy, the little idealist she met when she was eleven. The boy who just wanted to do some good in the world, and the world punished him so cruelly for it.

Riza thinks about them, about where they were and what they've done, and just how far they've come. Just how much they have left to accomplish.

It feels like an ending, and maybe it is, but it's the best of beginnings, too. They've won the day. And their prize, their prize is the rest of their lives, to live and grow and love and be.

For better or worse, they are still here. The world continues to spin for them.

It is the scariest and most exciting thought Riza's ever entertained.

Because none of them ever know what tomorrow will bring.

000

1925—Central City

"'Stop being such enormous saps, the both of you,' the Fullmetal Alchemist says, as he rests his head on the Lieutenant's shoulder. "It's pathetic really." But it's not.

"There's no such thing as a painless lesson,' Edward Elric thinks as he watches the Colonel and his little brother. 'They just don't exist. Sacrifices are necessary. You can't gain anything without losing something first. Although...if you can endure that pain and walk away from it, you'll find that you now have a heart strong enough to overcome any obstacle. Yeah... a heart made of Fullmetal.'"

"This concludes the final episode of the radio serial 'The Fullmetal Alchemist'. We at the station would like to extend a special thank you to all our dedicated listeners from the-"

CLICK

Roy falls back into the couch after leaning forward to switch off the radio, Maes sound asleep on his lap.

"I can't believe it's over," Nijah whispers softly at Riza's side, her red eyes wet. "I knew it was a happy ending, I knew it was real and everything, I'm just-," Nijah doesn't continue.

Shireen sniffs loudly from Riza's other side.

"Remember when Papa let us stay up late to listen to the first episode, while Mama was closing the restaurant?"

Nijah lets out a little laugh. "Mama was so mad. Especially after it gave me nightmares. Remember nice Nurse Ophelia? When she snuck the radio in after your surgery so we could listen, when I told her it was your favorite?"

Riza feels Shireen nod from where her head is buried into Riza's shoulder. Riza tightens her arms around both of them.

"Remember when we met Ed for the first time, and you said you thought he was a superhero?"

Roy laughs at that. "Ed still hasn't let me live that one down."

"It was a good serial," Shireen says softly.

"I'm sad that it's over." Nijah adds.

"Honey it's not over, not really." Riza finally says. "After that day, another story began. And another, and another. Life is really just stories, beginning and ending and beginning again. Living them, sharing them.

"And the best part is, now you're both part of our story, too. You two, and Maes, and the Hughes and the Elrics and anybody else who joins our family along the way. It just keeps on growing."

She thinks about them, these two little girls who snuck their way so easily into their hearts. These two children who lost so much, yet who still chose to give them so much life. So much hope and goodness and love.

Riza thinks about Maes, her little baby, the miracle she never expected, with his hair and face and mannerisms, so much like Roy, just like Roy really, but for her big brown eyes peeking up at them with such curiosity. Such love and awe for the world around him.

And Riza thinks about her husband. Her Roy. The Fuhrer. The boy she met when she was eleven years old, a little idealist who just wanted to do some good in the world.

The world is finally rewarding him for it. It's rewarding both of them for it.

"I love you, Mom," Shireen says softly. Riza kisses her head.

"I love you more."

"I love you all of you the most," Roy says smugly.

"Well I love you all more than most!" Nijah proclaims.

Roy and Riza both smile. "That, my dear, is impossible," Riza says.

"But I suppose," Roy adds, before kissing Maes' head and standing up to take him to bed, "I suppose impossible things happen every day, don't they?"

Riza will never stop being grateful that, for better or worse, they do.