Work Text:
At first, Hawkeye is dazed by the flickering quality of the light. It bounces warmly off the dark walls but doesn't reach back into the shadows. For a moment, she imagines red eyes gleaming in the darkness, hears the echo of cold laughter, and feels razor sharp talons cutting into her wrists and ankles, dragging her into the depths of the gloom where she knows she will never escape.
But no.
There are no eyes. The passageway is oddly silent. The bindings around her limbs aren't tendrils of shadow but rough, coarse ropes that fasten her ankles together and her wrists behind her back.
As she realizes this, she gasps and forces her sluggish mind back to racing consciousness. Her head and heart both thunder as she remembers.
The mission. The People's Alchemist Alliance. The ambush. And now….
"General?" Her voice is raspy from disuse and thirst. She looks around the room and realizes that the oddly flickering light emanates from candles. There must be near a hundred of them, of varying shapes and sizes, some mounted on candelabras, some on the ground or in the recessed, rocky walls of the cavern. This must be some sort of underground tunnel. Perhaps one of the passageways left behind after the Promised Day.
She tries to move and discovers that not only are her limbs bound, she's in an iron cage suspended from the ceiling. She struggles, but the ropes hold her fast and the rocking motion of the swaying cage makes her feel ill.
Maybe, most likely, a head injury—probably a mild concussion. That explains the headache.
But where…?
"General?" she tries again to make herself heard, wary of letting her voice travel too far, lest she might alert her captors to the fact that she's regained consciousness.
For a moment, when she hears no reply, she hopes that maybe she's mistaken and that Brigadier General Mustang wasn't apprehended along with her. Her heart leaps but then her eyes begin to adjust to the eerie semi-darkness, and she can just make out another iron cage hanging beside her own, a man's huddled figure similarly bound inside.
"Hawkeye?" He groans faintly. "Where—?"
"Sir, I'm here," she whispers, forcing herself to shuffle to the side of the cage nearest his feeble voice.
"Oh no," he murmurs. "I hoped… I thought maybe you'd…"
She swallows hard and tries to force herself to think clearly, strategically. She's still his bodyguard, and her most important function is that her principle survives this encounter.
"Are you injured, sir?"
The pause that follows the question makes her heart sink.
"I'll live," he mutters grimly.
Hawkeye licks her dry lips and tries to twist her body around to see him better, but the motion pulls painfully at her bound ankles and she suppresses a grunt.
"What do you remember?" she asks urgently. "How long has it been?"
"Only…Only a few hours, I think. There was an explosion. They tore half the street apart. I don't know about casualties, but there must have been…"
The faces of their loyal subordinates flash before her eyes. Hawkeye wonders which of them may likely be lying dead, buried beneath piles of rubble, but no. She has to focus.
"They took us and escaped underground," she concludes.
"Yes. They want—" He cuts himself off with a quiet groan of pain and Hawkeye tries again to inch closer to him.
"Sir, you're injured."
"A bit." His breathing comes in a rasp that she recognizes may be caused by a broken rib. Only life-threatening if it punctures the lung. She continues to squint in his direction. As she shifts her weight, her cage swings a little bit closer to his, and his face is suddenly thrown into sharp candlelit relief.
"Roy!"
She's not sure why it's his first name that comes out with her startled gasp, but she can see it makes a slight smile cross his bloodied lip.
"That bad, huh?"
He's been badly beaten. She can see blood around his mouth trickling from a cut on his forehead and stemming from his nose. His face is so bruised that she'd almost fail to recognize him.
"Shit," she hisses. "Shit, what happened?"
"What do you think happened?" he mutters with a mirthless chuckle that makes him gasp.
Hawkeye knows that this kind of beating isn't typically doled out in the name of senseless violence. They've done just enough damage to keep him in pain but alert and conscious and able to speak. They want something.
The People's Alchemist Alliance is a terrorist group consisting mostly of failed former state alchemist candidates. They believe that the military shouldn't horde the power that the state alchemists wield and it should be freely available "to the people" instead. In principle it doesn't sound so bad, except that the group truly wants to use that power for their own selfish ends—an agenda to amass wealth, to secretly run drugs across the country, and to act against anyone they deem "undesirable." That includes everyone from Ishbalan refugees, to people with automail limbs, and anyone else that they view as different from themselves.
Mustang and his team have been working for months to bring down this particular cell, and they chased them all the way here to Central from East City. Military intelligence assumed that they finally had enough solid intel to pin them down and make their arrests, but the group must have been forewarned.
There's only one reason why a group of rogue alchemists would keep a high ranking official like Brigadier General Mustang alive for torture and questioning. There's only one thing they could want from him—a force so destructive and lethal it would be disastrous to allow it to fall into their hands.
They want flame alchemy.
"Don't worry," he says lightly. "I didn't break."
"You think I'm worried about that?" Hawkeye snaps in reply. "Look at you…."
She knows he'd never break under torture, not for this. She's far more concerned about the injuries she can see, the blood coagulating on his skin.
"I've been through worse. Are you alright?"
His deep voice is growing stronger the more they talk, giving her hope that maybe he's not as badly injured as she fears.
"I'm fine, sir," she says. "I–they haven't even touched me. I only just regained consciousness."
His exhale is long and pained, but she can hear the relief in his voice as he murmurs, "Good. That's good."
Silence falls between them. Hawkeye isn't sure if he's fallen asleep or lost consciousness or what. She tries to look around at the cavernous underground chamber, for any kind of potential route of escape. She can see that Mustang, too, is bound at the wrists and ankles. Neither of them is tied to the cage, which could potentially give them some leverage. Perhaps, if she could swing her cage back and forth enough, it might break free of its mount. If it crashed to the ground whatever lock holds it closed might break open. Her hair is still fastened…she could easily pick the lock on his cage with a hairpin. She could get them out. If she could just….
"Stop."
"Sir?"
"I can hear you thinking from here. It's not going to work. There's a chamber of at least twenty of them, just beyond. Any loud noise will alert them, and then we'll likely be killed. Protocol is—"
"Protocol be damned, sir. I'm getting you out of here," Hawkeye growls fiercely.
"How very unlike you, Lieutenant," he murmurs fondly. Her stomach clenches. If he's forgotten her rank, he's more injured than she feared. "You love protocol." She shakes her head slightly, at a loss for words. "Best we can do is trust the team," he mutters. "Hold out and wait to be rescued. I don't like it any more than you do, believe me."
She hates it, but she knows deep down that he's right. There's too many unknown variables. Even if she were somehow to escape, she wouldn't even begin to know in which direction to flee. Stumbling around in the dark would cost valuable time and moving Mustang around too much might jostle that broken rib to the point that it does puncture his lung.
"It's okay, Riza."
"Sir?"
He so rarely ever calls her by her first name. She can just make out the trace of a smile on his bloodied lips.
"Can you…can you just turn your face a little?" She frowns and tries to do as he asks. "Ah, there. I can see you now." She trails her gaze back and forth across his abused face. She wonders how it is that his eyes always meet her like open doors, leading down into her core, to a place that nobody else ever sees. "Oh, no. No, don't cry, pretty girl."
She forces a strangled laugh and tries to roll her eyes at him, even as they burn.
"How hard did they hit your head, sir?"
"Just hard enough, I guess," he replies. "To remind me."
Riza swallows hard. He grunts, and his cage swings on its hinges, bumping lightly against hers.
"Sir?" she questions, concerned by his exertion. "What are you—?"
"Hold on. Just…there." He lets out another pained sound, and Riza realizes that he's swung his cage close enough to hers that he's able to grab onto one of the iron bars. "Can't transmute," he mutters. "Not with the way they tied me, but at least…"
She realizes what he's trying to do, and she can't quite avoid crying out in discomfort as the ropes around her wrists dig into her skin, but she manages to press her hands against the side of the cage closest to him and their fingers touch through the bars.
"There," Roy breathes. "There you are."
Riza can't hold back her tears any longer—not because her wrists or her head hurts, but because in the midst of his own pain and fear, the one thing he wants is contact. With her.
The one thing from which they've forbidden themselves, all these years.
In fact, he's only ever touched her with his bare hands—beside the occasional accidental brush of fingertips, which they both firmly ignore, always—an exceptionally few times, all vivid encounters seared in her memories.
When he hugged her the day he left for the military academy and again when he left to take his state alchemy examination. When he burned away the flame alchemy array and bandaged her back gently afterwards. The Promised Day, when he held her in his arms after she nearly bled out from the wound in her neck. And afterwards, in the darkness of their shared hospital room, in those first few hours when they thought that he'd be blind forever, that they'd both be leaving the military, that everything would change.
She's blocked those hours from her memory as completely as possible, but, still, his touch lingers.
"All of this time, I can't believe I couldn't see. You were always there in front of me. Riza, I—"
"Hush, Roy. I know. I know."
It wasn't a sacrifice to go backwards when Marcoh arrived with the offer of the Philosopher's Stone—not compared to everything they regained with Mustang's returned sight. It wasn't even a question to ponder. Of course they'd go back to the way things always were. Of course they'd proceed no further down the unspoken path where his touch might have found her numb, cold-sleeping spirit and led it out into light and heat and life—home.
Ever since, she's known what she's without. Without thought, without a voice, without a soul, finally aware that there's something more, hovering just out of her reach.
Because she doesn't deserve it. A genocidal murderer doesn't get to love or to be loved in return. It's not fair. There would be no equivalent exchange. It's only right that she should have the love of her life dangled in front of her every day, unable to reach out and say how she feels, to touch him, to feel his love.
It's the penance she's meant to pay until the day they die. Together.
If he's reaching out, now, that day might be today.
"Yes," she whispers. "Yes, Roy. I'm here."
She grasps onto his fingers as tightly as she can, even though it makes her own digits ache. This may be the last moment they ever have.
"Roy, I—"
"Don't," he says with a happy little sigh. "Save it for when we're out of here. Tell me then."
Her breath hitches around a sob as her fingers slide from his. Neither of them wastes the strength it would take to latch onto one another again. They've lived their lives starved of touch for so long that one fleeting moment feels like a feast. She could die now, satisfied and yet wholly unsatisfied, which somehow seems like the way it should end, after all this time.
The peace, of course, doesn't last.
"General Mustang and his loyal bitch." The threatening voice rents the shadows before the visage breaches the flickering darkness.
"Thorne," Mustang growls as the leader of the People's Alchemist Alliance appears, flanked by his henchmen. He's a short man with balding, rust-red hair; gray tufts at his temples and flecking his unkempt beard. Riza's not entirely unsure whether all the rust is actually blood. His narrow eyes slide back and forth from one to the other.
"Well, since you refused to break, Mustang, we've no choice but to give your lapdog a try," the villain says thoughtfully. "Though I doubt she knows anything useful. Perhaps her screams will loosen your tongue, no?"
Hawkeye lifts her chin, silently preparing herself to bite off her own tongue before she screams for them. She won't put him through that kind of agony. Mustang makes no reply, though she knows what it must cost him not to defend her, even verbally.
"Boss, you said—"
"I know what I said, Moody," Thorne snaps crisply. "All in good time. You'll have your reward for your service."
Riza watches the other man's piggy little eyes and knows exactly what he wants as his reward. Her skin crawls at the very idea of the man's hot breath on her face as he crowds her in. She resolves to fight to the death if that's what it takes.
"Protocol, Hawkeye," Mustang mutters quietly.
The protocol with which they're trained requires the ability to withstand any kind of torture. It relies upon their mental fortitude as soldiers and their trust in their comrades. There are a few core tenets of that protocol. Remember that rescue is imminent. Comply as much as possible. Don't fight back. Don't surrender intelligence. Be as docile as possible. And, as always, wait.
He's right. She loves protocol. But today, she'd rather die than follow it.
Her cage is unlocked, and she grunts as she's dragged out. The two henchman hoist her up between them, one arm under each of her shoulders, as they lug her away from her general, into another room.
Thorne, however, doesn't follow.
And, of course, his men lack any sort of real discipline, so the moment they're alone with her, they try to take what they want.
"She's a pretty one, at least," Moody sneers, rubbing his thumb across her face. Riza snaps at him, trying to clamp her teeth down onto his hand, and she's yanked backwards by her hair for her troubles.
"The bitch has teeth!" he laughs, fisting his hand in her hair and shaking her back and forth. "Come on, let's make this quick." He starts to tug at the waistband of her trousers, and Riza thrashes desperately, trying to get away.
"What's the rush, Hodges? Thorne won't be finished with the alchemist for hours. We can take all the time we want. I plan on enjoying this."
He flicks open a pocket knife and Riza lunges for it, stupidly. He backhands her across the face, and the pain hits like lightning.
This pain, she remembers. The fall of her father's fist. His hand in her hair. His heavy blows and harsher words. Her silent determination that she would live to spite him. Live on and be free of him and the damnable burden he cursed her with. Live on and make something of herself, prove that she wasn't worthless, that she could be happy, no matter how hard he strove to make her believe that there was nothing inside of her worth living for.
For some reason, the reminder breaks her. Riza slumps limply against her captor's chest as tears stream down her cheeks. Perhaps because she realizes she failed herself. She's never been happy, and she's become nothing more than a murderer.
"That's better," Moody croons. "A forceful hand, and just like a trained dog, she heels to her new master."
The knife is back in his hand, and he begins to cut away her uniform jacket, then her undershirt. It's a testament to her panicked state that it doesn't occur to her why she can't allow that to happen until after it does.
"What the—? Moody, hold on. Bring a candle here."
"What? Why?"
"Just do it!"
She remembers to struggle, but she knows it's too late. She sees Moody's piggy face approach, eerily lighted by the candle, which he holds high over her head.
"Is that—?"
"I dunno. Get Thorne."
The draft across her spine from the dank passageway brings goosebumps to her skin—not from cold but from sheer, unadulterated terror. Her back is exposed. The remains of the array are exposed while she's being held in a room full of alchemists intent on learning the secrets to flame alchemy.
She's never fucked up so badly in her life.
She would do anything to take back the last two minutes; even if she could, she knows it would be no use. They would always have wanted to see her body, to break it, to bend it to their will, which means they would always have seen the array, no matter the circumstance.
There's enough candlelight as she's borne back into the main chamber that she can see the shock and fear on Roy's face. He must realize what they were attempting to do because the next moment those emotions are replaced by rage as he throws himself against the front of the cage.
"Leave her alone! Don't you touch her!"
"Sir, I'm fine," Riza calls sharply. The last thing they need now is him losing his head. He cannot become the creature of rage and vengeance that slumbers inside his chest. She can't let him. They both have to be able to think if they're going to find their way out of this.
Rough hands pull the rest of her clothing from her torso, and apart from worrying about her breasts being on full display to the entire room, she feels fingertips on her back.
"But where's the rest of it?!"
"Nowhere you'll ever get your hands on it," Riza spits venomously. She dares half a glance at Roy, whose face is shuttered and blank as he watches them manhandle her. She can tell he's surveying the damaged array—the first time he's seen it in nearly fifteen years—trying to verify his own calculations, trying to ascertain that it is, in fact, still undecipherable.
Biting her lip, she watches his eyes, desperate to know. Finally, his gaze finds hers, and he gives a slight nod of his head. She nearly sags in relief. The pain that she endured all those years ago and the toll it took on him to perform the act have finally paid off. The secret to flame alchemy is secure. It exists nowhere outside the mind of Roy Mustang, and she knows that no matter what happens, he will never break.
This he already proved to her on the Promised, when he faced an impossible choice at a non-repayable cost.
"So, she's an alchemist too?"
Riza blinks in surprise and doesn't let herself continue to look at Roy, lest their reactions to one another give something away.
"Must be, to have it tattooed to her. I'd never have guessed it."
"Then she knows."
"Yes, she must know."
"So how do we get it out of her?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Riza's mind spins. She grapples for every last piece of alchemical information she was ever taught, trying to remember all the hours that her father tried to pound it into her head—literally, at times. She's tried so hard to forget it, but maybe if she can remember something, now, she can come up with a lie that they might believe. Maybe she can think her way out of this situation after all.
"Put her back in the cage."
She doesn't bother trying to struggle as she's heaved up and dumped unceremoniously back inside the iron bars, but she does manage to pick her head up enough to watch as Mustang is then dragged out of his own prison.
"You can see it in her eyes," Thorne says musingly as he stares up at Hawkeye. "She's no stranger to physical pain. Everyone eventually comes undone when tortured, granted, but it would take far too long to get it out of her, and we don't have the luxury of time."
Good. They know that the military will be on the hunt for them. They know that a rescue party is surely already on its way, and it's only a matter of time before—
"She'll break for emotional pain."
Riza's racing mind grinds to a halt. She hears a grunt and watches in horror as Mustang is thrown to the ground, and then his jacket and undershirt are cut from his body by the same knife that ripped through hers. For a moment she wonders whether they plan to do the same thing to him that they planned to do to her, and she recoils.
Only then he's raised up, and another henchman brings in a wooden stockade. Mustang is shackled into it. Riza notes with mounting terror that his shaking knees can barely hold him up. Whatever they already did to him before, he's in bad shape to begin with.
"Now, girl—"
She tries not to flinch, thinking again of her father.
"If you don't want to see your commanding officer suffer pain, you'll provide me with the key to decoding that fascinating array on your back."
"I will not," she replies, trying to keep the tremble from her voice.
"No?" Thorne's voice is soft, almost thoughtful. He keeps watching Hawkeye as he approaches Mustang, reaching out for one of his bound hands. He cries out in pain as Thorne grabs one of his fingers, bending it backwards until she hears a sickening crunch.
Hawkeye's stomach rolls with nausea as she watches Mustang try to contain the pain, breathing hard, his nostrils flaring.
"Oh, yes," Thorne says, laughing softly. "No, you can't stand to see someone you care about in pain, can you? We could try all day to beat and rape the answers out of you, and it wouldn't do a bit of good. We've already tried getting it out of him, and as you can tell, we haven't had much success. But if we force you to watch him suffer…I have a feeling, my dear, that you'll be singing like…" He pauses and lets out another sotto voce laugh. "Well, like a caged bird, as it happens."
"I don't know anything," Hawkeye says. "There's no point. You're right. I-I can't stand to see him hurt, so if I knew, I would tell you."
Thorne keeps laughing at her as he paces around the edge of the room.
"I'm sure that's what you'd both like me to believe," he says. "And perhaps it is true, but I have my doubts. Nevertheless…" He picks up a tall candelabra from the wall and approaches Mustang. "I would imagine that dealing with flame alchemy on a regular basis, one might grow quite used to enduring frequent burns."
He holds the candles up above Mustang's flat back, and she can see the wax drip down the sides and onto his pale skin. To his credit, Roy doesn't so much as flinch.
"So, you've built up a tolerance to it, is that it?"
"I don't know anything," Hawkeye says again, watching the flames sputter as Thorne continues pacing around Mustang in a wide circle.
"But it's right there on your very own back," Thorne says. "Surely you must know something. Even if you aren't an alchemist yourself. So, tell me, Captain. How does one create flame with alchemy?"
"I don't know," she says through clenched teeth. As if in slow motion, she watches as Thorne lowers the candelabra. Mustang's face twists, and his body jerks in the stocks as the flames kiss his skin, but he barely makes a sound.
"No? It's going to take a little more to loosen your tongue, is that it?"
He burns him for long enough this time that Mustang lets out a long, low groan of pain.
"Stop it!" Hawkeye cries, unable to stop herself. She presses her face against the front of the iron rungs of her cage. She can't watch, but she can't look away.
"I'll be glad to stop when you tell me everything you know about flame alchemy."
He burns Mustang again, now targeting his shoulder. She can smell the singe of his skin, can see the red blisters, can feel the pain in the echo of the scars on her back.
"Oxygen!" she shouts, and Thorne lifts the candelabra away. "It works by oxygen manipulation!"
"Yes," Thorne says slowly, pausing. "Well, I'm not a complete idiot, Captain Hawkeye," he says. "Even I worked that much out for myself. How does he achieve combustion?"
He waits as Riza racks her brain, trying to figure out the answer. Perhaps a part of her mind knows, logically, that she doesn't know enough to truly let the secret out, and that's why she tries so hard to comply. Or perhaps she can't bear the idea of watching Mustang writhe while the flames consume him. It's an image she's seen too many times in her own nightmares.
Thorne burns him again, targeting the opposite shoulder, and Roy grunts, hanging his head as he endures the torment.
"Riza," he gasps as the candelabra is lifted. "It's okay."
"Yes, Riza," Thorne repeats mockingly. "It's okay to tell us. Put the poor bastard out of his misery."
But she knows that's not what Roy's trying to say at all. Their eyes meet across the candlelit room, and she knows that he is trying to inject every possible bit of strength into his face as he manages a tremulous smile.
"It's okay," he says again. "Don't worry."
She sobs. It's not okay, and he damn well knows it. For the first time in her life, she wishes she'd actually been able to understand and learn flame alchemy. Roy's told her more than once that she's perfectly capable of it, if she'd only had a teacher who didn't berate her at every turn. He never offered to teach her himself because he knew what her answer would be. Now, though, she wishes that he had. If she only knew, she'd be able to save him.
He grimaces again, gritting his teeth.
"It's okay," he practically shouts. "I'm okay!"
"You're not!" She sobs.
She tells them about the ignition gloves, and Thorne laughs in her face. He uses a single tapered candle to burn spots on Roy's chest while he pulls desperately against his bonds.
And every time Roy opens his eyes, he finds hers and tries to comfort her. Sometimes it's all he can manage to mouth the words, but she hears them as if they were whispered into her ear, with his arms wrapped around her in the comforting embrace for which she's always longed.
"It's okay, sweetheart. I'm going to be okay. It's not your fault, darling."
She's not sure what's worse—knowing that she's incapable of ending his agony or that he is and refuses to do it. She knows that they can't allow the method of flame alchemy to fall into the hands of these madmen, but it doesn't stop her from wishing she could do something—anything to stop it.
She thinks, finally, that it will end, when Roy bows his head and stops moving. She's not sure if she's relieved or more terrified than ever, uncertain whether he's merely passed out of if he's—
"Napping, Mustang? C'mon, man up," Thorne says with a laugh. He puts down the candles at last, and Riza takes in a sharp sob, relief flooding her body. "Time to wake up."
She suddenly remembers that Thorne's claim to fame is a skill in bio-electrical alchemy, and she barely contains a scream as he approaches Mustang again, reaching out with his own tattooed array standing out proudly on the back of his hand.
He touches the center of Mustang's chest, passing a forceful electrical current through the general's body. Riza thinks wretchedly that it must feel like being burned all over again from the inside as the electricity shoots along every nerve. Mustang goes rigid, then he lets out a scream of pain as he regains consciousness, his limbs twitching wildly within their restraints.
"There," Thorne says, laughing evilly. "Can't have you sleeping on the job. A little shock to the heart, and you're ready to play again."
"No," Riza sobs. "Please, please stop! Take me, hurt me instead. He'll break if you hurt me!"
If only she could bid her own blood to run instead of his, she'd do it to stop his torment.
"Would he really, do you think?" Thorne wonders musingly, grabbing his captive by his sweat-sodden hair and lifting him up.
"No," Mustang growls defiantly. "I don't give a fuck what happens to her. I'll never give it to you."
Riza doesn't care whether it's true or not; she begs again for Thorne to hurt her instead.
"You know, I don't think you would," Thorne says musingly to Mustang. "No, you'd let her bleed out right in front of your very eyes to protect your damned principles, is that it, Mustang?"
"I would," he vows. "I have before."
Riza's face twists in revulsion as Thorne burns him again. And again. And again. Twice more, he revives Mustang with his electrical alchemy. Each time he screams in agony.
"Oh dear. I'm not sure his heart can take another jolt like that. You'd really better tell me what you know, if you want him to live."
"I don't know anything!" Riza shouts. "Nothing! You'll never know if you kill him! He's the only person who knows!"
"But don't you think by now, he'd have broken?" Thorne muses. "Maybe he doesn't know how it works. Maybe you taught it to him and have lived all these years in his shadow, watching your apprentice use the black art you're too afraid to wield yourself, is that it?"
"I don't know," she sobs, grovelling in the bottom of her cage, as broken and beaten as she's ever been in her entire life. She watches Mustang's chest heave with painful breaths as his eyelashes flutter, barely hanging on to consciousness. "Please, I'll do anything. I'll do anything!"
"Then tell me. What. You. Know."
Roy screams as the candelabra is held to his stomach.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop! Please, you'll kill him! Stop!" Hawkeye's chest heaves with sobs as she watches Mustang sag against he stocks again, losing consciousness. "Don't! Please don't!"
Thorne gives a theatrical sigh.
"Perhaps you really don't know," he muses.
"I don't," Riza swears, truthfully, hiccuping. "I've t-told you everything I c-can."
He hums, surveying the body slumped over the stocks, then nods to Moody.
"Stand guard here and alert me when he regains consciousness—if he regains consciousness," he says, striding towards the cage that imprisons Hawkeye. "This little birdie and I have some things to talk about."
Riza screams as a tongue of white hot fire licks her back.
"More stubborn than I'd have expected," Thorne growls irritably. He flicks the whip again, and she thrashes against the pain. "You could end it now, you know. Just tell me how to decipher the array."
Riza's not sure she could respond even if she knew. She's bitten her own tongue and lips raw and bloody as she tries not to cry out, so Roy won't hear. He concentrates the vicious attacks with the whip on her scarred skin, and every single stroke is like being burned alive all over again.
She got her wish. They stopped hurting Roy, and now her own blood runs thick and warm down her back, probably mixing with the reddish lines of the array in a garish parody of modern art.
He lashes her again, and her chest heaves with a sob. She's bound to a wooden cross-beam, her hands stretched out wide on either side of her head, splinters digging themselves into her face and arms. She hangs limply in the ropes, unable to hold herself up, and the strain on her wrists is an agony of its own.
Don't let me die here.
Because, surely, there must be something more. It seems she's been sleeping a thousand years, frozen inside without love, without touch. And she knows that's the atonement she deserves, to pay for her sins.
Or maybe it's this—an agonizing end to her life—alone, suffering, and knowing that she's failed in her one sacred duty: to protect Mustang. Even if he's survived the torture and whatever electrical alchemy Thorne was using to bring him back to consciousness, Riza's certain that they'll both be killed in the end.
It's what they deserve. It's fitting.
It's terrifying and lonely. It's painful, but it's right.
"Freeze! Drop it!"
She doesn't even register the familiar voice or process the words as she keeps sobbing, waiting for the next tongue of fire to engulf her and hoping that this will be the one to send her into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
There's a clammer behind her, yet the blow doesn't fall. Suddenly, a pair of hands floats into her vision holding a black utility knife that cuts the rope binding her wrist. Once released, her arm falls limply to her side.
"Can you stand?"
She manages to turn her head and takes in the blue eyes of Jean Havoc as he cuts away the ropes on her other wrist.
"Hawkeye? Can you hear me?"
"Yes," she mutters, blinking stupidly at him as her mind struggles to catch up with the sudden change. "Thorne?"
"Knocked unconscious and cuffed. Somebody else can clean him up later. Let's get you out of here and find General Mustang." She collapses sideways into him, shuddering and gripping his biceps for support. "Fuck, Hawkeye," he mutters. "What did they do…what is that thing?"
One of his hands hovers just over her upper back, and the realization snaps sense back into her. She shakes her head rapidly and wipes the tears, drool, and blood from her face with the back of her hand.
"Give me your jacket," she orders, her voice trembling slightly.
"Yeah," he says, releasing her to unbutton it and shrug it from her shoulders. "Sorry. But what—?"
"Not now, Havoc," she says grimly. "In fact, not ever. I'm giving you a direct order never to mention what you just saw—not to me, not to General Mustang, not to anyone, ever. Is that understood?"
He opens his mouth as though to argue, brow furrowed as she hastily buttons up the jacket, then nods his head.
"Yes, sir. We need to get out of here, though."
"This way. What's our situation?" she asks, stepping over Thorne's inert body.
"Team's set up a perimeter. I've got Fuery here." He taps his earpiece. "There's a black ops van parked a block away. I infiltrated alone to find you before we send in the ground troops."
"Then let's hurry," she mutters. "Advise Fuery that the General needs medical attention," she says. "He's been badly burned."
"Burned?" Havoc repeats incredulously.
"Come on," she urges, ignoring her own screaming wounds as they creep down the corridor back towards the candlelit room with the two cages hanging in the center. "And give me a fucking weapon," she adds, gritting her teeth. "There's at least two guards."
He puts an FN-1910 pistol into her hand, and Hawkeye breathes a sigh of relief, finally feeling some sense of control as Havoc mutters the status report into the radio.
"On my mark," she says as they take up positions on either side of the door. "3…2…1…Breach!"
Havoc kicks the door in, and she enters first, raising her weapon at the face of Hodges, who immediately raises his hands. Moody, however, reaches for his waistband, and Hawkeye doesn't hesitate to sink a bullet directly between his eyes.
"Restrain him and help me," she orders, nodding towards Hodges. Havoc does as he's bidden. "It's padlocked," she groans as she reaches the stockade, where Mustang is still slumped. "See if he has a key."
She looks up in time to catch it as Havoc tosses the silver ring towards her and winces as the motion pulls at the raw and bleeding wounds on her back. She doesn't have time to worry about her own injuries. They're painful, but they'll mend. On the other hand….
"General," she says as she unlocks the stocks. "Can you hear me? Wake up!"
He stirs slightly, groaning, but he doesn't open his eyes.
"Havoc, I need you to help me with him," she calls over her shoulder.
"Yeah," he replies. "Shit. Be advised, the chief's in bad shape. He's going to need an ambulance."
"That'll take too long," Hawkeye says grimly as they each take one of Mustang's arms. Her back screams its protests as she bears his weight. She ruthlessly ignores them. "You said we've got a van, so we'll take him ourselves."
"Copy that," Havoc returns. "I've secured both targets. If our egress is clear, you can move in all units in three minutes."
They leave Hodges tied up in the corner and Moody's body where it fell, in a pool of its own blood that glimmers sickeningly in the candlelight. Miraculously, they meet no additional guards. Hawkeye's surprised to realize that it's pitch black when they finally make their way up a long ramp, into the basement of a warehouse, and outside.
"How long?" she gasps, grunting as she hauls Mustang up between them.
"Nearly thirty hours," he replies grimly. "We fucking tried, Hawkeye, but we couldn't—"
"Don't," she snaps. "You did your best, and you found us. Where's the van?"
"Just here."
Together, they manage to bear Mustang's insensate form over to the van, where Breda and Fuery are both waiting.
"All units, move in," Fuery orders over the radio. "All friendly targets are clear of the structure. All units, move in."
"Help us get him in the van, and floor it," Hawkeye orders. "Nearest hospital."
"Are you injured?" Breda asks knowingly.
"Yes," she says through gritted teeth. "But I'll be fine. Get me a med kit, and get a heart monitor on him." She feels for Mustang's pulse as they settle him onto the floor of the van, kneeling beside him. She can't find it. She's not sure he's breathing.
No! You can't just leave me…
"Hawkeye, here," Havoc says as Breda pulls away, speeding towards the hospital. "Let me."
"I've got it," she snaps as she puts her hands on his chest and starts compressions, willing his heart to beat again, willing him to live. "Come on, sir. Come on." She pauses to tilt his head back, pinch his nose, and breathe for him. She tries not to think that this is the first and probably the last time she'll ever feel his lips on hers. His chest rises, and she gives another breath, then resumes compressions.
Wake up. Please, Roy. Please, wake up.
"What the hell happened?" Havoc asks.
"Bio-electrical alchemy," she growls. "They were using it to revive him when he passed out during torture."
"Shit," Havoc groans. She breathes into Mustang's lungs again, her own chest heaving with a sob.
"Please," she whispers. "Please, Roy."
Wake up. Wake up!
She wants him to see his gray-black eyes flutter open. She wants him to look at her in that way that makes her feel as though her own eyes are open doors, that he can see down into her core. She wants him to look at her as though she's known.
She's coming undone, fighting away the terror as she knows that he might never look at her again. She might not be able to save him, and if she can't, then she will become nothing.
Because Roy Mustang is the thing that gives her life. He brought color into her world for the first time the moment he crossed the threshold of Hawkeye Manor. He gave her purpose after Ishbal ruined all of their naive dreams. In the years since, all of the little stolen moments of happiness in her world have him at their root. He's the only thing that makes her real.
"Pulse check," Havoc says, reaching over her to press his fingers to Mustang's carotid artery. "Wait…" Hawkeye stills, staring down at his white lips and pale cheeks. "Yes! It's weak, but it's there!"
She realizes that he's breathing on his own, though it seems that each one costs him a great effort.
Riza sits back, staring at him, counting every torturous rise and fall of his chest.
"He's okay," Havoc says reassuringly. "I think he's okay."
He's really alive. He's really breathing. The color in his cheeks slowly returns. Riza brushes her hand against one of them, and she can't stop herself from bending down to press her lips against his forehead. She doesn't even care if the team sees or what they think. All she cares about is knowing that he's going to live.
The adrenaline that coursed through her body the moment she recognized Havoc's face as he cut her free of her bonds begins to fade. Her own pain returns tenfold. She slowly crumples forward with a low groan as the searing agony of her bleeding back rears its ugly head.
"Hawkeye? Hawkeye!"
She can't make herself answer as darkness rushes up to meet her, and she surrenders herself to the black.
Roy moans softly as he wakes, blinking his bleary eyes as he tries to adjust to the semi-darkness. From the antiseptic smell, he recognizes that he's in a hospital. There's a searing pain in his back and in his abdomen, just like the time—
"Fuck," he gasps, trying to sit up in the hospital bed as memories of the past two days come back to him in pieces.
Riza's fingers closed around his through the metal bars of the cage. The sickening panic of being shocked back into consciousness. Riza going down beside him as they were ambushed from every direction and his terrible fear that she'd been injured or worse. The sear of the candle's flame against his skin, again and again. The sickening horror he felt as he watched them drag her away, followed by the brief relief and pure terror of seeing her returned with her shirt removed. The beating Thorne gave him while interrogating him about flame alchemy. Willing himself to stay conscious so he wouldn't leave Riza alone.
Riza's lips on his, breathing for him, bringing him back to life. Riza, calling his name and saving him from the dark.
"Riza?"
"I'm here."
He breathes a sigh of relief through his pain, gritting his teeth. He's lying on his side, facing the wall, and he fights to turn over. There's a thick bandage on his left hand, immobilizing his finger in a splint. The burns all over his body ache and sting.
"Don't. You'll make it worse," she says weakly. He hopes to see her standing guard at the door; instead, she's lying on her stomach in a hospital bed of her own. She is wearing the same pale green scrubs that he is—the same kind they both wore after the Promised Day.
"Riza," he groans as he manages to settle onto his other side. She smiles faintly at him, then sits up in her bed, wincing. "What's wrong?"
"I'm okay," she mumbles, getting to her feet. He can tell she's injured by the way she's moving. He can also tell that he can't move, although his need to have her close outweighs his worry.
He reaches out to her, and Riza slips her fingers into his as she pulls a chair up to his bedside and sits. He notes that she's not on an IV, so she must not be too severely injured.
"What happened?" he asks. "I don't…" His memories of it all are fragmented. He's not even sure what is and isn't real.
"They tortured you," she whispers. "They thought…they saw my back and thought it meant that I knew how to perform flame alchemy, that I could tell them how to decode the array. And they realized that-that—"
Her eyes fill with tears, and she hangs her head.
"I'm sorry," she says brokenly. "I'm so sorry. I-I couldn't…I—"
"Hey," Roy says, sliding his hand up her arm so he can cup her cheek in his palm as a deep sob rattles her chest. "It's not your fault."
"But I'd have given in!" she cries. "I'd have betrayed everything you believe in, everything you've worked for. If I could have told them, I would have. I tried to. E-everything I knew. I—"
"Riza, stop," he begs, brushing tears from her cheeks with his thumb. "It's okay. It's over now."
"I wish you'd destroyed the whole thing," she gasps. "I wish you'd burned every inch and—"
Roy groans as he manages to raise himself into a partially sitting position, leaning on his hip and holding himself up on his elbow. He reaches out with his other hand and puts it on the back of her neck. She half rises from her chair as he draws her close, burying her face against his neck as she sobs.
"Never think that," Roy says, because they both know that destroying the entire array would have killed her. "Not for one minute. Your life is worth more than that damned symbol on your back. You are more."
He carefully runs his hand down the back of her neck. As soon as he gets to her shoulder, however, Riza flinches away from him and cries out.
"What?" Roy asks, raising his hand away from her. Riza sits back down in the chair and leans forward so closely she's practically resting her forehead against the hospital bed. "What…" Roy gulps. "What happened to you, after I passed out?"
"He kept reviving you," she says. "Thorne. With his bio-electrical alchemy. You've got first and second degree burns on your back and torso," she says. "The doctor says you'll heal, but they were more worried about the effects of the alchemy. It stopped your heart."
He blinks, trying to take all of that in. That's probably why he feels like he's run in a marathon, then been hit by a truck, buried, dug up, drug behind the truck for a few dozen miles, then finally made to run the race all over again.
"You…" He shakes his head slightly. "Were you in the ambulance?" When he closes his eyes, he could swear he remembers feeling her, hearing her call his name.
"The team had a black ops van. We brought you here ourselves. I was afraid there wasn't time to wait for an ambulance."
"You-You brought me back to life," he says, quietly awestruck.
Riza's lower lip trembles.
"I was so scared," she admits. "I've never been so afraid of anything. I thought I'd—"
She stops herself just short of saying "I thought I'd lost you", but he knows that's what she means.
"You're hurt, too," he says. "What happened?"
Riza closes her eyes again and swallows hard.
"Thorne," she says resentfully. "He…He's obviously a sadist. Sick son of a bitch. He had a whip."
Roy hisses, anger pooling in his gut. He'd love five minutes alone with the bastard.
"Did he survive?" he asks tightly. Riza nods.
"He's in custody. I killed one of them—Moody. They're pretty sure that they arrested all the others. So, in the end, it was still a successful operation, sir. It just—"
"I don't give a shit about the operation," Roy admits through clenched teeth. "I just want to know that he's going to pay for hurting you like that."
She wipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, then digs the heels of her palms into her eyes to try to stop herself from crying. He suddenly remembers her at twelve-years old, just after he came to study at Hawkeye Manor, limping around the kitchen and doing the same thing when he asked her what was wrong. Her father had whipped her with a switch for making a mistake in her lessons, and Roy had been horrified that anyone could be so cruel to such a sweet, delicate creature as Riza.
He'd hardly consider Hawkeye delicate anymore, but back then… She was so young and so naive. She was so locked inside her father's world, so entirely under his control that she couldn't even dream of a world beyond her front doorstep.
Yet when her father died and she finally had a chance for freedom, Roy infected her with his own foolishness and propaganda, inspiring her to join the damned military and forever altering the course of both their lives.
Roy knows that whipping her is about the cruelest thing they could have done to Riza, most surely inciting memories of her father's violence and his constantly cruel, demeaning words.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he murmurs without thinking about it, reaching to brush a lock of hair back from her face. She blinks at him, turning her head slightly to one side as she surveys him with a furrowed brow that he tries to smooth over with his thumb. "If I could have spared you from that, I would have. I'm so sorry I couldn't tell them."
Riza shakes her head.
"I didn't want you to," she says fiercely. "I'd never have wanted—" She cuts herself off, closing her eyes and shuddering. "I'm just grateful that you're the stronger one, because if I had known…"
Roy scoffs.
"It's not about strength," he says shortly. "It's… Well, for one thing, it's not the first time I've faced the decision of having to compromise your safety for the sake of the greater good." She looks down and away from him. He wonders if she's even aware of the little gesture she makes, flitting her fingers over the silvery scar on her neck. "But when I burned your back, I swore to myself that no matter what, I'd make your sacrifice worth it. I knew I was the only person alive who could ensure there would never be another flame alchemist, so I vowed I'd never divulge it to another soul."
"I'm just glad they didn't get what they wanted," she whispers.
Silence falls between them, but their fingers intertwine, resting together on the bed before him.
"You said—" Riza ventures. She clears her throat and squeezes his hand. "When we…when you reached for my hand." When his world narrowed down to the space between those two iron cages, when he counted himself among the dead and only wished that she would somehow manage to live. "You said…"
There were so many things he didn't say. However, now he has the chance and like a fool, he hesitates.
"Nevermind," Riza says, trying to pull her hand from his. "Sir, I—"
"No," Roy replies, clutching her firmly. "Damnit, no. I'm not—" He lets out a sharp breath and winces.
"You have a broken rib, too, sir," Riza mutters.
"Right," he grunts, trying to take a slower breath. "Riza…"
He thinks back to the night after the Promised Day. He wasn't able to see her face, but he read quiet joy in every word she spoke. He tasted it on her lips as he kissed her for the first time and held her close. He was happier that night than he's ever been in his life, despite the loss of his eyesight. It was as though losing his vision opened his eyes to everything that was truly important. For the first time, he could see clearly that his heart belonged to Riza Hawkeye and hers to him.
He can't pinpoint when he fell in love with her. It's simply been this way for so long that he can't imagine his life without her. He never wants to contemplate a life without her at his side.
Then Marcoh came with his stone, and Roy accepted the offer to have his eyes healed. He's kept his promises about restoration in the Ishbalan region, and he intends to continue to do so, always. He owes it to their people in every way possible.
But along with his sight came a return to cold formality and distance between them. She didn't venture over to his hospital bed again. He didn't dare to cross the gulf that sprang up between them. They never even discussed it. They simply slipped back into their careworn disguise of officer and subordinate and pretended that none of it ever happened.
He could do the same thing now. She'd let him. She'd follow his lead, just as she always has, even if he leads her straight back down the path into a hell of their own making—knowing and wanting each other but always holding back, never taking off their masks.
This time, he makes a different choice. He makes the right choice.
"I love you," he says softly. She looks up at him, wide-eyed with her lips parted in surprise. He smiles. "You can say it now, if you like."
Her expression morphs into a familiar one of fond exasperation as she shakes her head ruefully at him.
"I love you, Riza," he repeats, smiling like a fool.
"Y-You can't," she says.
"Sure I can. I do."
"R—Sir—"
"No, go ahead. Call me Roy. That's what people who are in love do, or so I hear. They use each other's first names."
"Sir," she repeats firmly, sounding faintly panicked. "We can't. You know we—"
"I know that the last time we sat in this hospital after a fucking near-death experience, I was blind. And that was after Marcoh healed me. This time… It's time to open my eyes to everything. Maybe…Maybe I just needed to wake up." He touches her cheek again, smiling sadly as he watches a tear run down it. "You woke me up, Riza. You breathed for me. You made my heart beat. It's yours, love. It's always been yours."
"But the laws," she whispers.
"Now you're the one that needs to wake up," Roy says with a rough chuckle that makes his chest ache. He groans.
"You should lie back, sir," Riza says in a tone of desperation. "You–You're on pain killers."
He laughs, then groans.
"Oh, shit." That really makes his chest hurt, but he can't lie on his back, either, so he lays on his side and grins up at her through the pain. "If I'm on pain killers, they aren't working. So I'm definitely not high," he says. "I just love you."
She bites her lower lip, then hisses slightly. He frowns as he realizes that her lips are red and raw. It takes a moment for him to work out that she was probably biting them while they tortured her, desperate not to cry out so that he wouldn't hear and—
"You're an idiot," she says darkly, sniffing and turning her face away from him.
"Riza," he says again, done playing around. "Look at me."
Slowly, she turns her face again.
"We'll figure it out," he says gently. "I promise you we will. Just…unless I'm completely crazy and you don't feel the same—"
"You're an idiot!" she says again, and for a split second a chunk of ice sits heavy in his gut as he thinks that maybe he's entirely misread the situation for years, and she actually doesn't. "Of course I love you. Don't be so stupid."
She leans forward and presses her lips carefully to his. Roy keeps his mouth soft against hers, mindful of her raw skin.
"I've always loved you," she says. "I thought… I thought that the military was more impo—"
"Not anymore," he says. "Nothing is more important to me than you, love. Nothing."
"I-I want…" She looks at him desperately, and Roy smooths her hair away from her forehead.
"What is it?"
"I don't know how to be close to you without hurting you, but I—"
"Get up here," Roy says, rolling his eyes. She shuffles timidly up onto the bed beside him, and Roy drapes his good arm over her waist. He can't hold her pressed against his body the way he wants to with both of their injuries, but for now, it's enough. He presses his lips gently against her forehead. "Some things are worth a little bit of pain," he says wryly.
A detail about their time in that underground cavern floats back to him, and he frowns.
"Riza?"
"Hmm?" She looks ready to fall asleep, and if he had to guess, she's been keeping vigil at his bedside since the moment they were admitted, not allowing herself a moment's rest.
"When we were…. I mean, when Thorne was…" He sighs. "I'm sorry I said that I didn't care what happened to you. That was only because I wanted to keep their focus on me," he says. "I knew I could withstand the pain without breaking, but if…" He closes his eyes. "If I'd been conscious while they were hurting you, I don't know if I'd have broken or not," he admits.
"Of course you wouldn't have," she says. "And I knew why you said it. When you do things like that, though, it makes it awfully hard to be your bodyguard. So, the next time we're kidnapped, if you could, try to refrain from getting the kidnappers to hurt you."
"I've heard I just have a punchable face," he says, chuckling and wincing as he shifts slightly.
They fall into a dreamy silence. Roy tucks his hand just under the hem of her shirt so he can feel the heat of her skin. He can feel where there are large bandages across her back. Their bodies are broken and battered, but in time they'll heal.
"I love you so much," Roy whispers into the darkness. "I'll tell you everyday, the rest of our lives, sweetheart."
"I love you, too," she murmurs sleepily. He presses his lips against her temple and lets his own exhaustion pull him down into peaceful slumber beside her.
"Well, I'll be."
"This should probably surprise me more than it does, right?"
"Guys, be quiet! They're trying to sleep."
"Out of the way, my boys."
Roy tries to roll over, but his entire body aches so badly that all he can do is let out a groan and squeeze his eyes shut tighter, trying not to let himself be pulled from sleep.
"Huh?"
"Well, Elizabeth. It seems you have some news to share with your poor old grandfather, don't you?"
Roy blinks and sees Riza's ashen face beside his on the pillowcase. He smiles briefly before registering the other voices in his sleep-riddled mind. Riza jerks away from him in surprise and tries to spring up out of the bed only to let out a pained cry and slump backwards.
"Easy, love," he murmurs in a low, sleep-roughened husk.
"Sir," she says urgently.
Roy turns his attention from her to the small crowd of visitors jamming the doorway to their hospital room, at the forefront of which is Fuhrer-President Grumman, followed by Fuery, Havoc, and Breda.
"I come all the way down here to congratulate you both on a job well done and to thank you for your service to the country, and this is what I find?" Grumman scolds playfully. "Honestly, I'm surprised at your behavior."
And naturally, Riza either doesn't hear or doesn't perceive the sarcasm in his tone, because her eyes fill with panicked tears.
"Well, you have been suggesting to me that I marry your granddaughter for over a decade, sir," Roy says, only barely able to restrain himself from reaching out to stroke her cheek, because he knows it would embarrass her.
"Indeed I have," Grumman says, chuckling. "I assume this means you're finally ready to make an honest woman of her, then?"
Roy winces as Riza's face loses what little color it had left, and she struggles to turn onto her other side and sit up. She's going to have to realize that people are going to think whatever they want regarding their relationship. Many will probably assume that they've been sneaking around together, flying in the face of the fraternization laws, and there's not much they can do about it.
Grumman, however, is smiling benevolently down at them, his blue eyes twinkling.
"Sir, I apol—"
"That's up to her, really," Roy says with a shrug and a small groan as he manages to lean up on his elbow. "Forgive me for not saluting," he grumbles, and Grumman chuckles. "Anyway, I haven't asked her yet, but I'm sure you'll forgive me, too, for jumping the gun. She did save my life yesterday, so I figured she'd earned herself a moment of respite."
Grumman beams at them both, and Roy reaches for Riza's hand.
"Of course she has," he says. "She knows I'm only teasing!"
Roy has to resist the urge to roll his eyes and point out that Riza knows nothing of the sort. He's always been a sort of awkward emissary between grandfather and granddaughter, as the two often seem bent on misunderstanding one another.
"Oh," Riza says faintly.
"Alright you three," Roy says, looking over Grumman's head at his men. "I'm going to say this once." He injects the steel tone of command into his voice, despite his rather indisposed position. "Not a word to anyone about this until Hawkeye and I figure out when and how we want it to become public knowledge. Got me?"
"Yes, sir!" Fuery says brightly. Breda shrugs.
"You owe me ten bucks, though," Havoc says, elbowing him in the side.
"Fine," Breda grumbles, digging into his pocket for his wallet.
After a (thankfully brief) mission report to Grumman, a thorough round of congratulations—both for the successful operation and their own personal good news—and a visit from the nursing staff for necessary vitals checks and adminstering of medications, Roy and Riza are finally left alone again.
"Get back over here," Roy says, smiling. Riza sits primly on the edge of her own bed and raises an eyebrow at him.
"So you're going to be giving me orders in our personal lives, too?"
Roy lets a cocky smirk slide onto his face.
"I can play that way, sweetheart, but maybe we should wait until we both heal up a little before—"
"Oh, hush," she mutters, blushing bright pink. He grins. He's going to very thoroughly enjoy exploring and exploiting that, discovering just how many ways there are to make her cheeks flush.
She does, thankfully, cross the room and slide into the bed beside him again, pulling the blanket from the bottom of the bed up over them both.
"I shouldn't be so tired," she mutters, stifling a yawn.
"It's the pain meds," Roy says. "I'm feeling it, too. They say the body has to sleep to heal, though, right?"
She hums softly, her eyes falling closed.
"Aren't you going to give me a kiss goodnight?" he pouts.
"It's like 1000 hours," she mutters.
"So, if I order you to kiss me, would that be considered an abuse of power?" he asks teasingly. "Only bec—"
He laughs as she presses her lips to his.
"Thank god, I finally have a foolproof way to shut you up," she grumbles.
"It'll work every time," he promises. "For about thirty seconds or so."
"Go to sleep, Roy."
"Yes, Captain."