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Title: Remember, Remember

Rating: Teen and Up

Prompt For Royai Week 16 on Tumblr: Forgotten

Remember, Remember

It is a year since it happened. Riza will not read any of newspapers today on the anniversary. She knows what they will say about the war criminal and former Fuhrer Roy Mustang. She won't read their lies.

She sits up in her bed and rubs her eyes. He invaded her dreams again last night. He barely speaks to her in them anymore, and when he does he doesn't sound quite like the Roy she remembers. Her subconscious cannot capture it.

Sometimes, she wakes in the middle of the night, tears rolling down her face, heart racing and throat raw from screaming.

She was there again last night with the shooting squad lined up, the jeers of the voyeurs ringing in her ears and the soft cries of their friends. She sees it over and over again in her dreams. It's gut wrenching every time. But the worst dreams are where she saves him, because she loses him all over again when she opens her eyes.

She can't believe a whole twelve months have passed since she watched him die in front of her.

It's 365 days after Roy Mustang breathed his last breath and she made her last salute.

That day he faced death with an acceptance that she could not understand. A bodyguard is not meant to stand idly by and let the one they are protecting be executed.

She still has not forgiven him for that, even though she can understand his reasoning. The guilt they carried together after Ishbal still burns strong within her after all. She can't forgive herself either.

Black Hayate jumps up on the bed beside her and snuggles into her. She leans into his warm body for comfort.

She is afraid that the day will come when she will begin to forget what Roy looked like - a face she saw almost every day of her adult life. How could she forget when she knew the planes of his face almost as well as her own?

So, she takes a tattered photograph from her bedside table and pores over it, drinking in everything: his eyes, his smile, the way his hair fell over his face, the quirk of his lips and the five o'clock shadow on his jaw.

A picture can't do him justice, she thinks, but it's something.

She can't forget. She won't forget. Not when he always put his country before himself. He did it time and time again. She will remember his sacrifice, she won't forget him.

Others will, but never her.

A flame burns bright within her.

Fin