Roy shifted against the bed as Ed's metal fingers pressed deep into him.

He dreamed of the color, sometimes, nights when he woke up sweating and threw open the window just to look up at the sky and know the whole world wasn't red.

He and Nii-san were going to have to come up with whole new equations to talk about what had happened to him and probably some new technical vocabulary too. The thought steadied him, and he smiled.

The first assassination attempt should probably not have come as a surprise. And, in a way, it didn't.

Faint color painted her cheekbones and she gave him a mild glare. "Don't you start too. Gracia is bad enough, giving me those doting looks every time I turn around."

"Lisa." The whisper drew her attention from his hands to his face, and her lips parted. Roy was looking at her—at nothing but her—with a focus she'd only ever seen when he faced mortal danger. Except that, where his eyes were cold, then, they were warm now.

"Ross-kun," he murmured, not seeming to notice. "What do women really want?"

It was a messy idea, a jury-rigged, special-dispensation way to disorder records and assignments. It proposed to bend regulations into pretzels without ever quite breaking their letter.

It was Mustang all over.

"I've never met another woman who's so beautiful when she isn't trying."

She really couldn't help a satisfied smile at the stunned realization spreading over Roy's face. To be perfectly honest, she didn't try all that hard.