68 Intricacies- Chapter twenty- Fireworks

As a teenager, Riza considered Roy to be a lot of things. She considered him to be intelligent, more than capable of becoming the future wielder of flame alchemy (even if he had a tendency to act before he thought and often had to be pulled out of trouble by Riza). She considered him a good friend and a good person in general, someone who was kind and polite but also outgoing and stubborn, someone who encouraged Riza to speak up and listened to her when she did. She even considered him to be attractive, handsome without the ego that sometimes came with it. All of these considerations came together to create Riza's ultimate view of him, the one that she held the closest to her heart.

Riza considered Roy to be a firework.

Fireworks, by design, work best in the dark, preferably with the night sky. With the death of her mother and the perpetual absence of her father, Riza felt her life was just that: dark, the comparison of it being like endless night feeling like too much of a stretch to her because even the night had stars sometimes. To Riza, this darkness had no light, not even tiny specks that could have acted as her stars. It wasn't until the fireworks, her fireworks, started in the form of Roy Mustang that Riza started to get a small reprieve from this darkness, a reprieve that only grew longer and longer as the two teens got to know each other more. By the time Roy left for the military for good, when he officially had the power to be the Flame Alchemist, these light displays were at their full force, powered now by the promise that Riza would get to experience this colorful burst of light for a long time to come.

Little did they know that these fireworks would soon dissipate as war raged on under them, their full color never really coming back but their potency all the more obvious and, if anything, strengthened. Despite the fact that these fireworks were now monochrome, that they had been used for reasons they shouldn't have, Riza continued to watch these fireworks (or, for a more accurate statement, watch over them now), the deep boom in her chest from the fireworks setting off an already ingrained sound in her heart, one that she simply couldn't ignore.

After all, it was hard to just leave Roy Mustang, especially after all he had done for her.

For it was his color that made the dark more bearable to her.

And it was his light, bright and bombastic that carried with it an infectious spirit of perseverance, that lit up her future path.