Title: Hap

Date: 17/03/2013

Author's Note: I felt it was time for a return from my fan-fiction writing hiatus. What better way that with a large helping of Royai angst? Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. The poetry is from "Hap" by Thomas Hardy.

If but some vengeful God would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy's love loss is my hate's profiting!"

Riza Hawkeye knew pain. There were too many times she could've died. Should've died. The irony was that she was the one sworn to a duty of protection, and she was the one who had lain down her life on the line in front of a great man. Yet it was that great man who had reached for her hand on the edge of that terrible abyss and prevented her from falling into its immeasurable depths time and time again.

The sharp hand of her father stinging on her cheek. The putrid stench of the blood of a first kill. The searing bubbling of the skin on her back, flames ripping through calloused flesh.

That day in the fifth laboratory. All those horrible hours under the Fuhrer's – no, under that monster's shadow, when she should've been anywhere else but there, been anyone else but his hostage.

Riza's neck twinged painfully - the wound was still scabbing, knitting itself back together. There were too many times when she should've died. This had been the closest she had come to the abyss though. So awfully close that there had been a moment when she thought he might not be able to pull her back this time, as she plummeted downwards, ultimately dragging him with her towards the fiery pits of a hell they were both destined for.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, consumed by a darkening blackness that rummaged through every vein in her body. Sleep was something not promised to the wicked, and she had killed too many people to be perceived as an innocent any longer. She exhaled deeply, the hospital scrubs rustling as her chest rose and fell – even breathing hurt her neck. Maybe it was some cruel irony reminding her so vulgarly how lucky she was to have lived that day. The Promised Day. She felt only the promise of scheming doomsters eager for blood and the downfall of a great man.

Her tawny eyes flickered open once more, scoring through the dark that did not consume her. The moonlight slipped through the gaps in the blinds, illuminating the aluminium bed posts and the IV drip plugged into the blue-grey veins at her wrist. She could not guess at the time of night, her sleep pattern far too muddled up by the bouts of unconsciousness that frequented her in the hours and days following the Promised Day. She was not glad of the light of the moon however, because it reminded her that she could see and he could not.

Roy whimpered from across the room; a pathetic, pitiful noise of a wounded animal. She had insisted on their sharing of a room, but it was times like these, when he cried out in pain, that she could not bear. Because it was her who had failed in the duty she had sworn all those years ago to protect him through hell and high water.

His own personal hell was a more difficult matter. She had seen glimpses of that internal inferno before: the days after Hughes' death, the confrontation with Envy. It was deadly, and it pained her far too much to know that he was forced to suffer so often in silence, when she was too incompetent to help.

He struggled beneath the tautly starched hospital sheets, his whispers giving way to jolted cries, until he gasped aloud, bolting upright in his bed. Riza held her breath as his eyes flung open, his breath haggard as his chest heaved – eyes so grey and dull, and absent of the dreams which once gave them such an ambitious glint that made men fall into his orbit as he strove towards the top. His dreams had been stripped from him now, but she daren't voice those innermost thoughts plaguing her mind. It would only hurt him, and she couldn't do that to him anymore. What use was a blind colonel?

Roy held his head in his hands, fingers white and trembling – or so Riza thought, because the moonlight made things so fuzzy. (Or was she still dizzy from blood loss, she could not tell.) He did not cry, but his breathes were still too drawn and too deep for her liking. What night terrors wrapped themselves about his mind and strangled him? A great man did not deserve to be brought to his knees like this.

Colonel, sir, what can I do?

There was no sound in her throat – she could not voice the words she longed to ask him. It had taken all the strength from her voice to guide his flames against Father; now she had no words to spare. Not even for him. Those cruel fates needed cursing again.

Roy groaned as he lay back down in the lumpy pillows, hands thumping dully either side of him, against the mattress, defeated. She thought of Hughes, and how he would've been able to light up the room with his presence alone. She had always been envious of his ability to do that, and his effect on the Colonel. He knew how to keep those demonous thoughts from the Colonel's mind infinitely.

"Lieutenant, are you awake?"

His voice resonated awfully hollow about the white, tiled walls. There was no victory without blood, and he had bled enough for both of them, for the entire team. He had lost too much in light of what should have been a victorious triumph. Riza tried her voice again, but faltered, spewing forth only a gravelly cough. Roy's intake of breath was sharp and harsh.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant. Don't talk."

Don't talk. She took that as an order. But it was one she wished to be able to disobey so badly.

Things had changed between them since the Promised Day. There was a new desperation in his grip as he held her, and she supported him, as Father fell – he did not let go as they were delivered to the medical tent, not throughout his barking of orders and his babbling of bloodied words. He held on firmly. No, they could not take his Lieutenant away. No, he needed her now.

Her duty was to be his crutch, in whatever sense of the word. They had whisked her away though, because there was still blood oozing through the collar of her jacket, despite her protests. And his protests. He was naked when she peered back over her shoulder – naked, unable to stand alone. His blindness had descended on him too quickly.

When she awoke after her operation, he was there – in blindness and defeat, but beside her. And she had smiled weakly at him, but he knew not of it, consumed in a mask of impenetrable, darkening dankness. So she reached for his hand, and held it tight – a firm and reassuring grasp to tether him to the reality he could no longer see.

The greyness in his eyes had not receded, still clouding the once beautiful, absorbing onyx that had pierced her loneliness that day he had pitched up on her father's doorstep, suitcase in hand, a cheeky grin plastered upon his face.

"It won't go away," the Colonel said solemnly, as she warped back to the present. Too weary. It didn't suit him. He didn't continue, because it choked him to tell her that it was the picture of her sprawled in her own, crimson blood that would not leave him. It was the fear that kept him awake at night. "Lieutenant." Her title gave him security, every time he let it drip over his chapped lips.

Riza tugged the stiff blankets out from where they had been tucked too snuggly beneath her hips, swinging her legs out onto the cold, hard floor hesitantly. It had been a while since she had felt any other sensation other than pain or how the rough sheets irritated her skin, so the chill echoed up through her bare feet and calves icily.

One step. Two steps. She moved with great cautiousness, because she could not fully trust the strength in her legs yet. The moonlight dipped, smothered by clouds in the outside world, and the room plunged into a deeper darkness. She fumbled for the edge of his bed, guided only by a dim glow from the sprawling city, tugging her IV drip as she shuffled.

"Lieutenant –"

His dull, grey eyes darted around the room as he felt the pressure of her hands upon his shoulders, warm and calloused and familiar. Pupils fleeting, he fought so desperately against the blackness to find a glimpse of her face above his, but found none. Such cruelty, that she could not offer him words of comfort, and he could not search for the face which he longed so desperately to find again. Her terracotta gaze was stern and unwavering, a strength she could only find when she could not be pierced by onyx intensity. Permit her this one look, and grant her solace that she might know the thoughts which burned the tattered edges of his quinacridone soul.

Roy clamped his hands over hers upon his shoulders, his fingers regaining some of their lost strength. He knew these hands. He always would. He recalled the way they fisted in his gritty, military uniform in the unforgiving deserts of Ishval, silencing the screams that wished to tear her throat a part. And the thoughts that speared the dark and lonely nights – her hands, clutched against her neck and drenched in her own blood, her eyes dappled in fierce intensity as she begged him: don't do it, Roy.

She pressed her forehead against his, in the blind hope that there might be some way of passing words between them. Until now, there had not been the need for saying the things better left unsaid.

I'm here. Even into hell.

How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sewn?

(C) The Prophet Lemonade, 2013. Please read and review.