Anything for You part2

She was glad today there was hardly anything going on and she could basically sleep on her desk if she wanted to. The ill feeling had passed, as it usually did after about 11 or 12 in the morning, but she still felt weak and tired, and though she never put her head down on her desk to sleep, she was able to read a book and look professional while relaxing. She was sure she was coming down with something or another, and hoped it would only last for a few days, but she wasn't too concerned about it. It only affected her in the morning, and she only threw up once in a while after noon. She was positive it couldn't be too serious.

"Good morning Brigadier General!" Cheska beamed stopping at Riza's desk with a stack of books in her arms. "How are you doing today?" She seemed way too happy. Riza thought she was actually scared of her for a while and she was talking to her now like they were best friends.

"I'm doing fine, thanks," she replied still a bit confused. "You seem happy."

"Oh yes!" she began. "Today is just so beautiful! I don't have a reason really, it's just that I woke up this morning and looked out my window and thought that everything was just so bright. The birds were singing, the sun rise was lovely, the war is over, the country is going to be a complete democracy soon… Everything is just so exciting you know?" Riza smiled at her. The truth was, it was very exciting, and everything was as it should be. Who was to say that Cheska shouldn't be happy about it? She should be, after everything everyone had gone through to make it happen. "And the most exciting part is that you and I get to be a part of it, I mean, you more then me of course, but even I have a small part in the changes the country is going through, and I don't know, it just makes me feel amazing!"

She really was happy, and she wasn't afraid of showing it. In a way, Riza was happy too that people were feeling the way Cheska felt. It kind of made her feel like a celebrity, even though Mustang was the real star, or at least the only name that hung on the lips of the people in the country as the hero.

"Oh, I forgot!" Cheska remembered. "The Fuhrer said you weren't feeling very well, is everything ok?"

It was just the flu! Why were people making such a big deal about it? Everyone knew she was capable of taking care of herself, and yet they were treating her like a toddler.

"That jerk…" she muttered under her breath. What gave him the right to go along and tell everyone he ran into that she was a little pale in the face? He irritated her sometimes when he did things like this to seem charming, because he wasn't. Ever since that night under the city he wanted give her some courtesy where it wasn't necessary or needed. He was the one who said it was strictly business and they could go on with their lives afterward, not her.

"I'm feeling fine," she replied as nice as she could, (which wasn't very nice in fact) "I've just been having some stomach problems as of late. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Well…" Cheska began now a bit scared of the wrath of Riza, "I don't know much about your situation, you know, you and the Fuhrer, but he did seem very worried about you, and… I guess I was just curious… I'm sorry for bothering you Brigadier General." She made a quick bowing movement and started again down the hall.

He was… worried… about her? Why? He knew more then anyone else how independent she was. She didn't NEED his concern, but still, it was a little bit nice to have it anyway…

"Wait, Cheska!" Riza called from her desk. The book keeper spun around on her one heel surprised that Hawkeye sought her out before she did. "It's a slow day… maybe you and I could hang out for a while… just enjoy each other's company for an hour?"

Cheska smiled, nodded, raced over to her desk, set her books on the floor, and sat down in the chair next to her. The scene reminded Riza of when she was a little girl and had been invited to sit at the cool girl's lunch table even though she was a geek and a nerd. She swore she wore the same glowing smile that was on Cheska's lips right now.

"So, what's up?"

******

They talked and laughed for about an hour or so, and Riza was surprisingly adapting well with her. She had never had many "girlfriends" and had never actually talked to anyone for a long amount of time besides about military situations. Now, she felt like she was really opening up to someone… like for a moment, outside of sexual experiences, she was free to feel like a woman. She liked it.

Pretty soon, the sickness was brought up again, shockingly this time by Riza herself.

"So what exactly is going on with you Riza? You can tell me…" She trailed off figuring she had gone off the deep end on the whole being friends thing. The Brigadier General probably didn't have much of a social life and if they were going to be friends she was going to have to take it slow. She wasn't like Winry after all.

Riza really didn't notice.

"I don't know," she started, playing with her fingernails. "I've just been getting really sick in the mornings for the past few days, but I could feel it coming on about a week ago. I'm run down all the time no matter how much sleep I get, and I feel like I've been getting unnecessarily angry at Black Haiatai for no reason. I still think it's just the flu, but I've just been feeling strange…"

Cheska had read a book on nearly everything, every kind of illness you could think of, every type of alchemy, even random cook books were things she could recite backwards and forward just for fun. She had stumbled upon a book that described Riza's symptoms once…

…but… Riza?

She decided it couldn't be possible.

"Yeah, that really is weird," she replied, instead of giving the explanation of what she actually thought it was.

"Brigadier General Hawkeye," Mustang's voice cut like a knife through Riza and Cheska's conversation. They both snapped their heads up; completely amazed they hadn't heard him walk up to them before he was standing right in front of them. He was stealthy, but not THAT stealthy. "I gave you some papers to take home last night, did you finish them?"

"Yes sir," she answered shooting up into a standing position to reach over her desk. She could feel the blood rush away from her head when she did this, and when she looked at Mustang, he was a shade of purple and yellow. Her hand plummeted down onto the desk to steady herself as she felt her body sway forward.

Get a hold of yourself Hawkeye…

All she could hear was a soft ringing noise and two muffled voices that seemed to be off in the distance. Everything was going in slow motion as the vertigo in her mind took her to what seemed like a new dimension. She sensed a soft hand strictly grab her wrist and looked up at her Fuhrer as his lips moved, yelling something at her but there was still hardly any sound but the incoherence of his voice.

She swallowed hard and tried to pull herself out of it, but her last ditch effort failed to suffice and the world went black.

*****  

"WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?!" Mustang screamed louder then necessary at Cheska, his hand still firmly gripped around his number two's wrist. He knew he was being too rash and all, but Hawkeye was never like this. She was never sick, and if she was, she never let anyone know about it, but it was almost obvious to him now that she was in need of help.

The thing that scared him was the fact that she NEVER needed help. And now she was unconscious… It HAD to be something that could knock out a bull to be able to keep this woman down. He had worked with her long enough to know that.

"I-I don't know!" Cheska stammered. It was a mistake to let people know she was happy and try to make friends. She wanted to cry.

Cheska stood there with her fingertips to her lips and a petrified look on her face. If Mustang didn't act fast he was going to have two people on his hands that were passed out.

He grunted, pushed the book keeper out of the way, knelt down before the Brigadier General, and scooped her up into his arms.

"I'm taking her to the nurses station. You seen nothing," he stated before he sprinted away from her down the hall, holding Riza with a childlike clumsiness, careful not to hurt her.

As Cheska plopped down in the chair again to catch her breath she heard Mustang call to her from down the hall; "If the country falls apart while I'm gone, blame me!"

*****

Riza regained consciousness as she lay in a hospital bed in a paper gown. She didn't know anything about the room yet, including where it was in the first place, so she just tried to breathe deeply and count the notches in the ceiling.

The wheels in her head weren't exactly turning yet, and she had to focus on who she was for a moment.

Riza Hawkeye… Brigadier General Hawkeye… second in command to Fuhrer Roy Mustang…

It snapped.

Fuhrer Mustang!

She snapped her whole body upward all of a sudden having all the memories of the event before the blackout rush back into her waterlogged brain. She had passed out right in front of her leader and showed the ultimate form of weakness to him first hand.

Those papers that he wanted suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world.

"Whoa, take it easy!" A hand flew over and landed on her knee.

There was someone else in the room with her?

She peered over at the unidentified person and was relieved, as well as horrified, to see Mustang sitting by her bed with a stupid comforting smile on his face.

"You just passed out," he happily said to her, hand still on her knee.

Her bare knee.

Her naked knee.

She held her breath and swallowed rigidly focusing on that hand. The one with the transmutation circle scratched and scarred into it. The one used for destruction and pain resting on her flesh as a friendly sympathetic gesture. If she had only been doing her job the right way that day, he probably wouldn't have to have the disfigurement on his skin for all to see. It was a reminder that he needed her. That's what happened when she wasn't there. That's just the tip of the iceberg of what COULD have happened.

How scared she was when the humunclous smiled her dense grin at her and proclaimed he was dead. The way all of her insides began to fall apart and the wasting of bullets as she pounded them into the head of something she knew couldn't die.

And then… she was willing to join him. Not because of the fact that if she went back to Central without him she would be persecuted, she had been persecuted worse in her life after all.

She would have joined him because she vowed to follow him to the end of the earth and back, and if death was a choice in either following her promise or not, she would have gladly taken it.

When he stepped out of the flames of the doorway he immediately put her heart back together, and she wanted nothing more then to throw herself at him and never let him go. Of course, they only nodded at each other and left the ruins like men.

But in the week following she buried her face in the pillow on her bed and cried everyday like a little girl. Black Haiatai was the only one who knew, and she liked it that way.

She was a soldier who couldn't do her job, and somehow got into the position of Brigadier General because she was the Fuhrer's friend and…

…though it was only for a moment…

…something more.

She almost let the tears she felt behind her eyes run down her face, but held them back remembering he was there.

"Are you ok Brigadier General…?" he carefully approached scooting forward in his chair to be closer to her.

She all of a sudden felt undeserving of being that.

"…yes… sir…" she peeped minutely, her eyes remaining downcast.

"They said you were severely dehydrated and it was a miracle you were able to even walk in here this morning," he stated. He could see her self esteem departing her and had to bring her up again. He would probably never say it to her outright, but sometimes he needed her vitality when he had none. She had been there for him through thick and thin, and never once had she ever asked for any kind of help from him. He had taken, and now that he was Fuhrer and had the means of giving back, he wanted to give back to her.

Of course she would definitely not appreciate accepting help from anyone especially the young Fuhrer. He had to make it subtle.

Riza glanced over at the bag that hung on the wall that contained saline solution and was attached to her arm, but her eyes returned to the warm hand on her skin.

"Hawkeye…?" he felt like he was talking to a wall.

"This is very inappropriate sir," she finally said, regaining her sense of right and wrong. He shouldn't be touching her in any way; especially after what had happened between them and how affected by it they both seemed to be lately.

"Oh," he muttered, retracting his hand from her and placing it in his lap. It just seemed so natural to touch her in her time of need he actually forgot what he was touching. "I apologize Brigadier General." He hated being professional with her.

She continued sitting there motionless for a moment trying to fight back tears. Why was she so damn emotional lately? It wasn't like her.

"I am to…" she finally said.

He leaned forward in his seat and tried to look at her as tender as he could.

"Don't ever be sorry for being human," he declared strictly. She didn't want to look at him, but his face was so close and consoling she couldn't help it. The only other time they were face to face like this was…

"Be sorry for things you can control, but never apologize to me about things like this." She nodded silently and smiled a sweet small smile at him. It was the nicest thing he had ever said to her.

He smiled back at her in the same fashion. Though neither of them were, they reminded each other of two virgins.

He grabbed her hand and his smile turned into more of a smirk as he sat back in the chair again.

"Besides, you don't have any time to be sorry, you have to help me run this damn country! I'm only an elected official; I can't do it by myself!"

She beamed a whole hearted grin and snapped back her hand from his grasp. Same old Mustang. What a jerk! He was only joking after all, but they both knew he was also telling the truth.

"You're awake. Miss…" the blonde nurse who had come in the room a moment before flipped through pages in her clipboard. She looked like she just got out of medical school, small figure, straight blonde hair, young, legs that were so long they almost went up to her neck. Riza knew what Mustang's reaction would be. She peered over at him to expect him drooling all over himself, but he just sat there looking straight forward making no advances on the young woman.

Maybe Riza wasn't the only one who wasn't feeling well.

"Brigadier General Hawkeye," she announced finally finding her name. "Wow, high rank, way to go!"

"Um… thank… you?" So this woman was a bimbo too. Mustang should have been hyperventilating.

The nurse turned to him.

"And… no… wait a minute!" she gushed. Riza couldn't help but roll her eyes. Awesome. Another fan. She gets sick and her nurse has a crush on Mustang, could the day get any better? Seriously?

"Are you Fuhrer Mustang!?" she blushed.

"Why yes I am!" he gushed back, loving the attention.

"I'm Miranda," she came over to shake his hand, but when she presented it he took it and kissed the top of it making her giggle and blush harder. Riza wanted to punch both of them.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Miranda," he said coolly. Riza completely hated them. Right now, she jokingly wished she was a communist in another country so she didn't have to deal with him hitting on everything that had a vagina.

She steamed as she glanced over at them giggling at each other like idiots. She wished she had her gun…

"Sir," she interjected. They both stopped and looked over at her. 'I'm sorry, did I disturb your conversation?' "I hope I'm not out of line in saying this, but could I speak to Nurse Miranda alone for a moment?"

He nodded his head, dropped the nurse's hand and walked out of the room. Miranda watched him the whole way.

"He's really cute!" she beamed at Riza turning around again for a split second to face the closed door he was standing outside of.

"Yup," Riza responded unenthusiastically. "He's a real looker."

If they spent more than half a minute together she would feel differently...

"Can you tell me why I passed out nurse?" she began, hoping the conversation about Mustang would be finished.

"Oh yes," she began. "I thought someone told the Fuhrer so he could let you know when you woke up, but I guess he forgot." Riza could let her believe that, as long as she heard something from the horses mouth instead of the jackasses… or maybe in this case, from the cows mouth…

…Whoa! That was meaner then she meant it!

"You were so dehydrated we couldn't believe you were walking around like that! You must be Brigadier General for a reason!" She smiled. Her testimonial was a good pick me up for Riza's ego.

"Well… there is something else though…" Riza held her breath. Miranda's tone was something no patient wanted to hear. It was just the flu… right? "The doctor wanted me to ask you a few questions before I tell you for sure, ok?"

"Alright…?"

"Ok, well I guess the first question is… ok I'll just combine the first two questions into one; Have you had any sexual intercourse in the past three months, and if so, with how many different partners?"

It was ironic that they were just talking about how good looking Mustang was and now she was being asked about sex.

Maybe the whole thing was more serious then she imagined…