Royai One-Shots

Sleepless Nights Spent Dreaming

Summary: The aftermath of the Promised Day leaves Roy and Riza in the midst of countless sleepless nights. Fortunately, neither of them have to spend this one alone.  (For the Fruits and Roots discord Royai Week — prompt used: "sleepless nights")

Heavy rain made the stone lions weep. They faced off perpetually with mirrored snarls and extended carved claws as they guarded the massive staircase leading to the newly-begun reconstruction site of Central Command. Roy stood alone beneath the sightless gazes of the stone behemoths, soaked as the rest of the world around him.

Since the battle of the Promised Day, those steps he previously walked daily suddenly seemed more daunting than ever. Evil had been uprooted from the depths of Amestris, but had left the country in shambles, in both a literal and political sense. All he wanted was to rest, but his ambitious will refused to be quieted. The near-death experience, though not his first, left him wondering if he truly had what it took to accomplish the impossible goal he set for himself.

He laughed weakly to himself, feeling a bit ill. "I must be losing my edge."

He pressed so hard between his eyes that he started seeing stars. His sigh shook as it puffed cloud-like before him in the chilled air, as if his very lungs were uncertain of their existence. He likely would have remained a brooding, rain-washed statue if a familiar voice hadn't called out to him.

"Colonel."

He stiffened. Riza was the last person he wanted to see at that moment. On the verge of breaking, feeling so incredibly weak and helpless...

Dammit. God dammit. He should have been stronger than that.

Steeling himself with a sharp breath, he turned to face the woman that, no matter what state he was in, fully supported him in any way that she could.

"You have a bad habit of getting caught in the rain," she said. "I had a feeling I would find you here."

It was odd to Roy seeing Riza in civilian attire. A warm beige sweater was worn beneath a long black coat to stave off the chill of the unusually frigid spring evening as she sheltered beneath a black umbrella. Seeing her dressed so casually and not in uniform was foreign to him, but that was not the only change in her appearance.

"You cut your hair," he said. She pushed her hand through the back of it, a little uncertainly. "Yes, sir. I found it easier to maintain."

"It looks nice."

She looked down with a small smile. Roy smiled back, then spotted the bandaging beneath the collar of her turtleneck. The wound inflicted to kill her, a savage attempted execution meant to push him to commit human transmutation — not even a month had passed since it happened. It stoked a twinge in his heart.

"Are you sure you should be out moving around?" he said, craning his neck to get a better look. Riza pulled the neck of her sweater higher.

"I'd go crazy staying in that hospital room any longer. It was like pulling teeth to get them to finally release me."

These words did little to assure Roy of Riza's wellbeing.

"How did you convince them to let you go? Not at gunpoint, I hope."

"I said you would need the extra support to make sure you wouldn't overdo it. I suppose they think we'd slow each other down enough to not do anything reckless."

"Heh, how foolish they were..."

Little more than a bluff with the state the both of them were in. Despite having the Philosopher's Stone restore his lost sight to him, he refused it to be used on injuries that could heal themselves. Riza had the same sentiment. If it, an imperfect stone, could break at even one more unnecessary use, it needed to be used to heal Havoc's paralysis. Roy needed all the support he could get to bring the Ishval Restoration Plan into fruition.