Can we just pretend that I've done the disclaimer already?
Second Thoughts
"Oh, God," said Mustang.
In the rest of the bar, the clamor of voices raised in laughter and conversation, of mugs and tins and glasses clinking against tables and other vessels continued unabated, but at the table in the corner furthest from the door all noise and movement ceased. Jean Havoc paused in the act of raising a glass to his lips and shot a confused sideways glance at the Fuhrer, and Fuery twisted in his seat on the other side of Mustang, staring at the Fuhrer with his face creased in puzzlement. On the other side of the table, Breda paused in the middle of a particularly long, gruesome joke he was telling Falman, who was looking down at his drink gravely and probably not hearing a word he was saying, and the Elric brothers and Doctor Knox broke off their heated whispers on some vague alchemical subject and turned to stare as well.
"Oh, God," said Mustang, again. "Riza."
"What about her?" asked Breda, squinting at Mustang's pale face.
Mustang said, with abrupt finality: "I need to get drunk."
"Easy there, Fuhrer," said Havoc, and set his glass down. "You already are drunk. Any more and you'll wake up sometime next week, all hungover, and then it really will be 'Oh, God, Riza– '"
"'I didn't mean to miss the wedding–'" grinned Breda.
"'Please don't shoot me'," finished Havoc. "What's the matter?"
Mustang leaned forward and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. "I can't marry Riza," he hissed.
There was a silence, and then Falman looked up blearily from his drink and said, "You should have thought of that before you proposed to her. Sir."
"I did – only I'd forgotten until now!"
"He means he hasn't been drunk since before he proposed," interjected Doctor Knox. "He always gets depressed when he's drunk."
"Buck up, sir," said Havoc cheerfully, slapping Mustang on the shoulder genially. "She won't eat you."
"Yeah, what's the worst that could happen?" said Breda.
He and Havoc began a flow of cheerful banter, while Falman retreated into his drink, Fuery swirled his beer around, and the Elric brothers resumed their argument without Knox, who had dropped out in favor of gazing absently through a wall. Mustang pushed his glass away from him, pondered for a moment, and then announced grimly:
"I'll spend all my time at work and she'll get bored and run away with the postman."
"Right," said Havoc, cheerfully. "Your job is now in the same building as your living quarters, remember, Fuhrer?"
"The Lieutenant wouldn't run away with a postman," chimed in Fuery.
Mustang looked gloomily between them. "She wants children. I'll be a horrible father. They'll all be warped."
"But you're good with children," said Fuery, mildly astonished.
"Yes, but," said Mustang, and abandoned that line of defense. "I don't know how to make women happy."
"Oh, please, Fuhrer," grinned Havoc.
"I'll get cranky and argue with her and she'll hate me."
"You know," said Edward, looking up from a diagram he was drawing, "you're a real wimp when you're drunk."
"Be a man, Fuhrer," said Breda.
"It's just the pre-wedding jitters," said Havoc. "Trust me, there's nothing – "
"I have blood on my hands!"
The words fell on them like a blow.
In the silence that followed, Mustang ground his teeth and began, in a tight, brittle voice, "I can't – " but Knox leaned across Fuery and made a swift, practiced jab at the Fuhrer's neck. His voice cut off abruptly, and he fell forward onto the table.
"Hey," said Havoc, mildly. "That's a not a nice thing to do to a man at his own bachelor party. What did you do?"
"Pressure point," growled the doctor, briefly, and ran a critical eye over the others at the table. "Last time he got drunk enough to say anything about having blood on his hands we had to dig half a platoon out of the rubble. Fuery, you're not drunk. Can you handle these three?" This with a gesture towards Breda and Falman, who were attempting to arm-wrestle with the arms of their chairs, and Havoc, who had put his head down on the table halfway through the doctor's second sentence and was singing quietly and out of tune.
"Yessir," said Fuery, soberly, and began the difficult task of routing his comrades out of their comfortable chairs.
"Maybe you two had better go with him," said Knox.
"I can drive," said Edward, indignant. "I haven't had anything to drink, anyway. Still a minor, remember?"
"Hm," said Knox. "On second thought, I'm old and tired. I'll let you two handle him. Know where Chris Mustang's place is?"
"Er," said Alphonse, while Edward spluttered furiously behind him. "Yes, but doesn't the C – the Fuhrer live in the presidential suit now?"
"He does," said Knox, gruffly, "but Hawkeye's been staying with Madame Christmas for about a week now."
Edward grumbled under his breath, but Alphonse nodded understandingly. "We'll take care of it. Help me get him out to the car, niisan."
"Useless idiot," growled Edward, but he pulled one of Mustang's arms over his shoulders without undue violence while Alphonse stooped under the other, and the brothers set off for the door behind Fuery, who was herding his three charges in the same direction.
Knox stared after them, his eyes lingering on Mustang's limp form, then tossed back the last of his drink and got out his wallet.
"Idiot," he said.
-o-
Madame Christmas' place had shut already when the Elric brothers arrived, but lights were still on in the upper windows, and when Edward rapped on the back door one of the girls was there almost instantly, giggling at the sight of the unconscious Fuhrer and making clucking sounds with her tongue between giggles.
"Come on in," she said, holding the door wide while they staggered past her. "I knew he'd get sloshed, he's been dying to ever since he became acting Fuhrer. I thought he'd do it the night before the inauguration," she added, leading them up a carpeted staircase, "but he didn't, and I lost two thousand cenz. The haul from this'll make up for that, though."
"You were betting on whether he'd get drunk?" said Alphonse, scandalized.
"And on how drunk, exactly," said the young woman. "I think Vanessa bet that he'd drink until he passed out. She'll be collecting a pretty penny on that."
"He didn't pass out," grumbled Edward. "Doctor Knox knocked him out."
"Apparently he was about to blow up the bar," added Alphonse, helpfully.
"Re-eally," drawled the girl, looking over her shoulder and raising an eyebrow. "Hm. Okay, this way."
They followed her up another set of stairs, this time with more difficulty, because Mustang had begin to stir, and kept on twitching his feet as if he meant to try to walk and kicking the two boys instead. After the tenth twitch (which somehow went awry and caught Edward on the shin) Edward opined that the Fuhrer was awake enough to walk by himself.
"I'm tired of dragging his drunk butt up stairs," he added.
"Niisan!" said Alphonse, reproach in his voice. "He's not really awake."
Mustang chose that moment to make an incoherent noise – something like "nnnnnhrgh" – and raise his head to look at his surroundings in a befuddled way. "Where are we? What happened to the bar?"
"You blew it up," said Edward.
"Damn," said Mustang, briefly.
Alphonse managed to look indignant and sympathetic at the same time. "Niisan – you didn't really blow it up, Fuhrer, niisan's just pulling your leg."
"Oh," said Mustang. "Good. Where are we going?"
"Riza's room," said the girl, cheerfully.
Mustang looked up and her and appeared to think for a moment. Finally, he said: "I'm not drunk enough," in a resigned tone of voice.
"I hope she nails your hide to the wall," growled Edward.
"Niisan!"
"What? He can't fire me, I'm retired."
"I'll have you arrested for treason," said Mustang, blearily. "Thanks, Al, I can stand. Edward, would you call my secretary and tell him I'll be back in an hour or so?"
"Do it yourself," grumbled Edward, but he ducked out from under Mustang's arm and turned away, and Alphonse, with a last worried glance at the Fuhrer, followed his brother back down the stairs.
"You didn't have to run them off like that," said the young woman. "Well, here's her room. Give me a hug before you go in – thanks – and try to remember what Madame said she'd do to you if you hurt little Riza."
Mustang grimaced. "I'd rather not."
The girl laughed, not unkindly, and he watched her move away in the direction the Elric brothers had gone. Then he turned to the door, squared his shoulders, and knocked.
-o-
Riza hadn't been expecting anyone, but when she'd retired to her room earlier that night, an uneasy feeling had settled on her, and instead of getting undressed she'd pottered around aimlessly, pushing wooden boxes against the walls, disassembling and reassembling her guns, re-packing things she knew were perfectly fine the way they were, and pausing now and then in her restless movement to pat Black Hayate or rub behind his ears.
The knock at the door did not surprise her. She got up from the chair by the vanity, the barrel of a pistol still in her hand, and went to open it. That it was Roy at the door did not surprise her, either, although she couldn't think why.
"Good evening, sir," she said.
He looked down at her, his face set in a familiar expression: easy smile, slightly raised eyebrows; debonair, she might have called it, except for the dark smudges under his eyes.
"Good evening, Riza. Mind if I come in?"
"Not at all, sir," said Riza, and stepped back, holding the door open. "There's only one chair...." she began, but he waved away her apology and ignored the chair, opting instead to sit on one of the wooden boxes, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees, his fingers laced together, and his chin resting on the backs of his linked fingers.
He was gazing across the room, not looking at her, and as she shut the door and moved back to her chair, she wondered what her face looked like. She knew she had little control over her expressions; even when she'd been working as Fuhrer Bradley's aide, she'd been unable to keep herself from showing exactly what she thought on her face.
To avoid facing him now, she turned slightly away and began putting the pistol back together. "How was the party, sir?"
"Good," said Roy, and she could hear the hesitation in his voice. "I haven't had that much fun in months."
Riza lifted her eyes briefly from her work and looked over at him. Roy's smile was gone, and his dark eyes were fixed on the wall opposite him.
After a long moment of silence he said, neutrally, "I suppose you know why I'm here."
"Yes, sir," said Riza. "You've come to ask me to reconsider."
"You always know," he said, looking over at her with a smile that tried to be careless but only made him look weary.
"You know what my answer is, sir."
The smile fell away. "Riza, this isn't what we want."
"I disagree, sir." The last piece slid into place, and Riza put the gun down before turning to meet his eyes. "This is what we want. Everyone has reservations, sir – not just about who they trust, but who they're willing to let trust them."
"You always know," he said, again.
"Yes, sir."
"Isn't it enough for you to trust me as your superior?"
"You trusted me with your life, sir."
Roy made a helpless gesture. "But this is – and you are...."
She said nothing, and he looked away.
"You're trustworthy. You're good. These hands...."
He stood up and held them out to her, palm-upward, and in the flickering red light of the lamp she could almost imagine that they were stained with blood.
"No one should ever put their trust in these hands."
"The fate of an entire country rests easy in them," said Riza.
The reddened hands contracted into fists. "They didn't give their trust to me, I took it from the ones who held it before me, and only because it had to be done. You don't have to. You could have said no. Why didn't you, Riza?"
"You know the answer to that, sir."
For a moment she thought that he might shout at her, but he only looked away and then sat back down on the box, his head in his hands. "It's not safe," he said. "I don't protect people, I kill them."
"I was in the war too," she reminded him.
"You only wanted to help."
"So did you. And you have."
"But not before...."
Riza waited, and he held his hands up again, staring at them with clouded eyes.
"I'm afraid to touch you."
She knew it. He had rarely touched her before their engagement, simply because there was no reason to, but afterward he had, once or twice, and she had felt it: he wasn't awkward, it wasn't that he was afraid that she would mind, but every touch had ended with the same careful withdrawal, as if it had been something he'd done on impulse and then thought better of.
"I'm afraid to be near you."
She knew that, too. He didn't show it, but then he never did, and she could feel it anyway; the light banter they exchanged was brittle, a thin veneer over a host of doubts. He flirted with her in the exact same way that he flirted with Madame Christmas' girls, except that when he flirted with them she didn't get the feeling that the flirting was there to keep himself from realizing how afraid he was.
"You trusted me with your back once before," he said, "and I betrayed that trust. I broke that promise on the battlefield in Ishval. I broke. You don't deserve that."
"Every soldier is broken," said Riza.
"I've already proved untrustworthy where you're concerned," he told her. "That saying – two wrongs don't make a right."
"But two halves make a whole," she said, "as long as they fit together."
She could see his eyes changing, the darkness fading away, and he leaned back against the wall, and, for the first time in months, looked at her without regret shadowing his eyes.
"Do we fit, Riza?"
"You know the answer to that."
Roy sighed. "I'm an idiot," he said. "Are you sure you still want to marry me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good," he said, firmly, "because I don't think anyone else would be able to put up with me."
"Of course not, sir," said Riza, and smiled.
Finis
A/N: Ummmm.... I cannot keep from thinking that this is the dumbest thing I have ever written in my entire life. It's not even really in character - well, the Mustang here is similar to anime!Mustang, but this is the mangaverse - so I have no idea why I wrote it. (I imagine that if Mustang and Riza get together, they won't be dramtic about it at all - they'll just show up at work one Monday morning and when someone asks what they did over the weekend, they'll say "Oh, we were bored so we went down to the registrar's office and got married," and that will be that.) Anyway, this wraps up my short series of Royai fics. Thanks for reading!