Careless Whisper (Fullmetal Alchemist)
The courtship had only begun when Ed came back from Xing, handsome and well-respected and two-armed and with his future all lined up ahead for him to knock down. Elicia, by then, was nineteen and beautiful and well-loved, by Roy no less than anyone: he and Gracia put walls up around her just high enough that Ed looked winded and triumphant each time he managed to capture a moment alone with her. The whole enterprise was respectful and practical, family-oriented and charming—Gracia’s style, not Roy’s, and in fact not even Maes’, who’d been a bit of a cad until he met Gracia and was required to be otherwise. Gracia’d found faith by then, and Ed Elric got married in a temple with nothing more than a rueful “would you ever have imagined.”
It could not have been less like what Roy had given Riza over the years: secretive, non-binding, only sexual when Roy was being particularly unfair to her. But then, Riza could not have been less like Elicia. Roy thought about her at fifteen sometimes, in her father’s home: the beginnings of a parable of a mad woman.
That manor had been lonely and quiet. Roy used to roam the halls at all hours of the day and night, thinking and learning the space down to the fine details: the creak of this beam, the sound of his tread on that carpet, the corners that weren’t quite at right angles, if you looked. Berthold kept his daughter from him, mostly, so Roy had only chance encounters with her in his wanderings: a pale, silent ghost with cropped hair and boy’s clothes, or dusty Sunday dresses twenty years out of fashion. She’d barely nod her head at him in greeting, but on occasion would proceed to trail along behind him, just around the corner: his footsteps on the carpet, then a pause, then hers.
Once, Roy was walking alone in the eternal, musty half-light, and he heard an unfamiliar sound. He followed the buzz as it unspooled before him and arrived at a door, which was open. Behind it, Riza sat with her chest against the back of a chair, her blouse pooled beside her on the floor. Her father stood behind her; the air smelled faintly of blood, and Riza was crying silently. Roy stood directly in the open doorway, and neither of them saw him.
Riza Hawkeye is not mad. Some nights Roy watches the mess of her back in the moonlight and quite seriously considers this her greatest achievement.
Ed and Elicia Elric’s first child is born the year Riza is forty, and Roy forty-five. There’s an announcement in script on clean, heavy card—they’ve named their daughter Enna, and are grateful for her. Roy flips it over between his fingers, but there’s no code. He places it on top of a pile and at the end of the morning hauls himself out of his chair and into the vestibule with the personal correspondence he’ll have Riza handle.
“Did you ever want a baby?” he asks, spotting the card again. It’s one of the many inquiries he doesn’t, on principle, make—like “do you sleep with other men?”, and like “have you ever?“, and like “you know I sleep with other women, and I’ve never asked you how that makes you feel.”
The bell on Riza’s typewriter dings, but she doesn’t reach for the carriage return. “Roy,” she says, rather than “sir,” terminating the conversation.
She does not look up from her desk, even when Roy reaches out to palm the birth announcement from the top of the stack. “Sorry,” he says, and retreats back into his office to pen his own congratulations.