Riza's been through this enough times that there's very little emotion in her voice. There was no second guessing and no regrets for any of it, beyond having to tell him all of this now. "You didn't want to, but I couldn't let anyone else see it. I couldn't risk someone else deciphering the notes."

She remembers his face when she asked him; it hadn't been easy, but it wasn't the worse thing either of them had done in Ishval. Not that that made it any better, but she wouldn't have left Ishval if he had refused.

"It was too much to bare on top of everything else at the time. We both saw the destructive force of flame alchemy first hand and it held me down just as much as every life I took peering through my scope. And even if we had something like lasers, I would have had to trust someone else first." That trust had not been an easy thing to gain before Ishaval; after, it was worse.