A/N: Ok, here I am, posting again! I wrote this a few months ago, inspired by flybynight00's 'Broken Glass.' I'd check that story out, too, if you like Roy and Riza as a couple.

A/N2: I apologize for any tense changes, or word confusion, because I don't usually write 1st person or present tense. Also, this (and everything I write) is un-Bata-ed, so all mistakes are my own.

Disclaimer: The fact is, much though I would love to have Roy around so I could just hug him ('cause seriously, you don't get a much more tortured soul than him. And tortured souls need hugs.), I do not own FMA, it's characters, or anything else but my plotline.

BTW, if you like Star Trek, please, please PLEASE check out my other stories? Particularly 'When Logic Fails,' 'cause I really love that one, and it makes me sad that very few people have reviewed it.

Sorry, that was my commercial break. Now, here we go. A Liza Mac-and-Cheese production…. 'A Way Out.'

A Way Out

It had been a week. A week since Maes Hughes' funeral. The office had been all but silent since then.

None of the usual banter, no Hawkeye Eyebrow of Death. Even Havoc's compulsive smoking went unpunished. The bickering would've felt too normal, lighthearted. Too like it used to be. They all went about their work with the bare minimum of communication between them.

The Colonel, when he was in the office at all, was even quieter than the rest. After a few days, he'd stopped coming in almost completely. No one would give it voice, but there was an unspoken understanding that he was off somewhere, alone, drinking himself into oblivion.

He kept himself together for a while, trying to find Maes' killer. But that's past. Now, though I hate to admit it, he's off at some bar or another, or at home for the same reason. Anything to escape. I know that's what he's thinking. Still, he won't hurt himself. He still has to kill Maes' murderer, and the people who helped said person do it, and anyone who knew it was going to happen, and he can't do that if he's dead. So he'll get through this like he has so much else. Unstable, but alive.

- I was still there when Colonel Mustang himself came in at about one in the morning. The door slammed loudly behind him, but I didn't flinch. The dim glow of my desk lamp was the only light in the room with the blinds closed, but it was enough to make him out plenty clearly. Both him, and the bottle in his hand.

He didn't glance my way, and I didn't say a word. I turned back to my papers, and he made his way (unsteadily) to his office, closing the door behind him. I sighed, my pen flying over the page in his name. Again.

- I came into the office after midnight. My days were so turned around between drinking, passing out, getting up to vomit and drinking again, I was more awake then than the rest of the day. If you call conscious but utterly stoned awake. And besides, I couldn't face the boys, all avoiding my eyes, and then Riza looking right through me and reading my mind. If I'd had to look into those eye of hers and see goddamn pity, I'd hurt someone. I wanted to hurt someone anyway. I punched the living shit out of that ass in the bar. And then I hit the bartender. And then I got thrown out.

I froze for a moment when I saw her there, and thanked her mentally when she didn't speak. I needed to get to the office where I didn't have to look at her and her fucking pity.

I sat heavily behind my desk, pouncing on the papers Riza left pertaining to Maes' case even though I can hardly read them through the haze of scotch. I simply kept pouring the drink into my glass and drinking it and pouring again, until I gave up and simply drank it from the bottle. I threw the glass hard at the wall. I needed to hear it break, to hear it shatter and fall to the floor.

And then I took another drink and leaned back in my chair, hoping to die or at least pass out again. And then the door opened, and I could feel her eyes on me without looking.

- I heard glass break inside, and rose quickly. I didn't want to open the door, but I did it anyway. The smell of scotch was overpowering, and for a moment I couldn't think around it.

The Colonel was seated behind his desk, leaning back in the chair with the bottle still in his hand. Not wanting to hurt him further without meaning to, I retrieved the handkerchief from my pocket and crouched to clean up the remains of the glass, and the liquor that had leaked from the remains.

I gathered the glass in the palm of one hand, careful not to cut myself, and mopped up the scotch from the carpet with the handkerchief. It wasn't until I'd thrown the glass in the garbage and was folding the thin cloth that the Colonel spoke.

"We shouldn't let the world stop, should we Lieutenant? Just keep going with our fucking work with the same fucking dedication." His words were slurred, and he didn't open his eyes, though I knew he'd monitored every one of my motions without the aid of sight.

There really wasn't an answer for that, so I simply said what I was thinking. "You shouldn't be drinking so much, Sir."

He laughed bitterly. "What? You think I'm drunk?" He pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the desk. "There isn't enough booze in the world to get me drunk." He put the bottle to his lips, and took several swallows before placing it back on the desk.

That clearly wasn't a true statement, because as he attempted to go to the door, he staggered and nearly fell. I blessed quick reflexes as I caught him around the waist, supporting most or all of his weight.

I knew my eyes betrayed my concern, and that he didn't want any of my pity, but I didn't dare turn my eyes away as I helped him to the couch, sitting beside him.

Why? Why wouldn't he let me help?

- Why did she have to catch me? Why did she always have to keep me from falling? I wanted to fall. Just this once so I could hit the bottom. I was so close. Just one more stumble and I would be at the bottom of the deepest pit in this living hell of mine.

She dragged me to the couch and sat next to me, not saying a word, but her eyes never left mine. I knew that I was the source of the pain in those eyes of hers, that worry. But dammit, how could she still look at me with worry? Concern? Fucking respect? She should've been appalled. She should've wanted to slap me across the face. I wanted her to hate what I'd become. Wanted her to hate me as much as I hated myself.

"Sir, please let me drive you home. You shouldn't be here like this." Riza said after a while. 'Sir' indeed.

"You're right, I shouldn't be here. Maes should be here, and I should be in a pinewood box in that goddamn cemetery!"

She bit her lip, and I saw, from the corner of my eye as I struggled to my feet, Riza Hawkeye, Lt. Hawkeye, blinking hard against the tears.

Still, she nodded once, stood stiffly, and left the room without another look. As soon as she was through the door, she crossed her arms tightly around her chest.

- I didn't exactly mean to leave; I still had every intention of driving the poor bastard home, but I was going to cry, and I couldn't let him see me that way.

So I returned to my desk, and I turned the light out, and I hunched over in my chair in the dark, and I cried.

I cried for Maes, and for Gracia and Elicia, and for my father, and for all the poor people in Ishbal, and for the Team, and for Roy's pain. I cried the tears I knew he hadn't let fall.

I cried for who Roy used to be, and for the man he was becoming.

And when it was over, and I'd cried for everyone else, I cried my own pain away.

And tears are much more powerful things than liquor.

Tears fix the pain, where scotch can only numb it.

And as I finally pulled myself together, and dried my cheeks and neck, and sat up in my chair to finish my (slightly water-marked) papers, I heard the loud-ish thud from the next room that said he's either passed out or lost his footing, and I dutifully rose to my feet and stepped through the door, and covered my mouth and nose with both hands as I stopped dead, horrified, in the doorframe.

- I heard her crying at her desk. For nearly half an hour her muffled sobs rang through the office, the only sound there was to pierce through the fog the scotch had inflicted upon my brain.

Still, even though I knew those tears were for me, I kept drinking. I couldn't help it. No, I wouldn't help it. I didn't want to feel the pain anymore.

So I kept drinking until I thought I could do it. And then I staggered to my desk and opened the drawer, and pulled out the single dagger inside. I kept it there in case I didn't have my gloves, though that never happened.

I held the knife with no hesitation, letting the scotch clear my mind, and then I set it to my arm. Not my wrist, but my forearm. I stayed still for a minute, not breathing, and then I pulled.

The pain was excruciating and fantastic all at once. The blood dripped quickly down my fingers and onto the carpet as I repeated the process with the other arm.

Already dizzy from the alcohol, the blood loss was enough to push me over the edge, and I fell gratefully into unconsciousness.

- Roy lay crumpled on the floor, blood running from sickly gashes over his arms, coating the carpet and his uniform. I froze for a second, and then I ran to him, falling to my knees beside the shell of my old friend.

I turned his head slightly, feeling for a pulse. It was slow, and a bit weaker than it should've been, but knowing his current status even before tonight, I wasn't surprised. So I got back to my feet and ran to the phone, dialing the hospital as quickly as I could without missing a number.

I explained the circumstances between one breath and the next, and had hung up before the woman's parting words had reached me.

I returned to his side, crossing my legs and pulling his head gently into my lap as I took off my military jacket and white undershirt. I tore the black shirt quickly and unceremoniously, tying the strips off as bandages around his arms before I put the jacket back on, limited cover though it was.

After that, all either of us could do was wait. I let myself stroke his hair gently, like I had when we were kids and he'd fall asleep under the cherry tree in our backyard.

Except that now, he wasn't asleep.

And there was no peace on his features. Only relief. Relief that he could escape that much sooner than waiting on the scotch.

He really wanted out that badly.

So? Please review. I'm just a kid, I take no news as bad news. Please, make me feel like people enjoy my writing?

I'm kidding, I get not leaving a review. I'm generally a silent reader myself. But still, please? I really do get scared when nobody reviews.