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Only Yourself to Blame

Summary:

In the bowels of Central City Riza comes face to face with a monster she doesn't know how to handle.

 

Whumptober Day 30: Burn it Down; Mirror; Confrontation

Notes:

Content Warnings:
Suicidal Ideation
Self Hatred

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Riza would be foolish not to be terrified, the dull numbness she's developed over her many years as a soldier continue to serve her well in situations like this. Which is to say that, yes, she is in fact afraid, but she can ignore it. She can push it down and do what needs to be done without a second thought.

Her eyes are sharp as she stalks through the caverns, she has to find Roy. He's going to do something wretched. He's going someplace she cannot follow, he's going to jump into an abyss she cannot pull him out of.

So she cautiously went against his orders and delved into the labyrinth after Envy and after her Colonel. Only now, she's afraid she might be hopelessly lost. She has the fleeting thought of what if I don't reach him in time?

Then she sees it, hears it, an exact replica of herself talking to Roy. Trying to convince him to stand down.

"You don't have to do this!" The false visage of her shouts at Roy.

"Stay out of this, Lieutenant," Roy spits back. Riza knows she made the right decision to follow him. If he can't even tell that isn't her… he may be more far gone than she thought.

But she can't think that way, so she shakes off her nerves and she levels her gun at Envy.

It's startling looking at herself through the other end of her gun. Maybe it makes her sick, maybe it makes her some insane freak of a woman; but a small part of her delights in it.

A bullet to the brain is the least she deserves for all she's done. To watch herself take a shot straight through the head… maybe it'll be cathartic, maybe it will make her feel just the slightest bit better about all of this.

Riza has spent years fantasizing about this very thing. She mapped it out too, down to a damn science. She plotted and adjusted her plans depending on how exactly she was feeling that day. Then she'd lull herself to sleep at night with the daydream of actually following through.

She never has, and it comes in waves - the cycle of dreaming about it and inching close to the day she actually does it.

It's so easy to pull the trigger, easier than it should be. And maybe it's bad but she doesn't stop at one bullet. No, she fills that damn image of herself with lead.

It's what she deserves, after everything she's done she deserves to die the same way she has killed hundreds of others. It's cathartic. It's poetic. It's addictive.

"Lieutenant! Riza! Snap out of it!" Roy is shaking her shoulders and suddenly she's coming back to herself. Like her soul momentarily separated from her body to allow her to commit this act. She almost wishes she'd remained untethered.

"Sir?" Riza blinks mildly at him.

"What the hell was that?!?" He asks hotly, "What the fuck were you thinking?"

Because he knows, Roy always knows, that she has fallen down an all too familiar spiral. The one where she wants to give up, the one where she wants to die.

And he is not having it.

"I can't lose you both to that wretched thing!" Roy shouts clutching her face in his hands. "Stay with me damn it!"

She shakes herself, trying to come out of the dissociative state she has fallen into more times than she can count. But it's so hard to come out of it when… when… when she wishes it was her that was dead and not Hughes. Talk about irony, how dare that thing lull her into the despair she tries so hard to combat.

"I need you, Riza! Don't go where I can't follow, don't go somewhere I can't find you! None of this is worth it without you! Please!" He begs her to stay, he begs her not to let go, he begs her to come back.

She thinks, for the briefest of moments, that she shouldn't come back. What right does she have anyway? What right does she have to claim a second chance? Hasn't she run out of those?

Suddenly, Roy's forehead is resting against hers.

"Damnit Riza, I'm in love with you, don't you know that? Don't you know I won't make it without you?"

Some small part of her had always hoped that was true. A small shred of hope that he might feel even a fraction of what she feels for him. To hear it, however, it does something to her chest she hasn't felt in a long time.

A violent lurch of her heart fully snaps her back into reality. Roy can't give up, he always promised he'd continue the fight, he always promised he'd make sure their dream of a better Amestris would come to fruition. The unspoken belief that Riza has always held close is that he would carry their dream to completion alone should she die before that future becomes the present.

But now he's saying no; he's saying there's no future for him without her. And she aches in response. She aches because she loves him too, she aches because she never realized that they are intrinsically tied up in one another. She aches because she always thought that she was the only one who would be lost without him, she aches because all this time he has loved her with the same intensity that she loves him; and she aches because neither of them can bear to live without the other.

"Roy," she whispers closing the distance to kiss him.

It's harsh and heavy and full of all the things they've never been able to say. All the things they could never say. Roy and Riza are two people who are so deeply bound their veins create one line as they latch to the others forearm. They are one, they have always been one.

"Disgusting," Envy has seemed to recover from Riza's assault and they both scramble apart to retake their defensive positions. "Seriously, are you pathetic humans really professing your stupid undying love when you are literally about to perish? I'm going to be sick."

"Shut up Envy I've been waiting YEARS for this!" Ed shouts from a different tunnel.

When he and Scar (of all people) appeared, Riza hasn't a clue… which is frankly embarrassing. But Riza will deal with that later…

"Hey Colonel, you still feeling crazy?" Ed asks cracking his knuckles.

"I've come off the rage but I could still go for barbecue," Roy smirks as the four of them line up.

"Finally, I've been waiting for a proper fight!" Envy becomes a horrific creature, a monster with a thousand faces.

"Colonel," Riza pulls out a fresh gun. "Light them up."

"It would be my pleasure."

Notes:

Not crazy whumpy but it's got the spirit! Ed's part literally made me cackle while writing this. Hope you liked it!

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