Changeling (n): A child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy.
It's been six weeks since she was sent back to civilization. Riza is reluctant to call it home; whatever the word is supposed to mean, she's sure it doesn't apply to her.
The past six weeks have been a marathon of trying on new descriptors, seeing what fits and what no longer fits. Examining herself in the mirror and wondering if she'll ever like what she sees again.
Student . Even without a formal graduation, she's outgrown the term. She's learned far too much, immersed herself in the harshest truths of the world. In the academy, she shot sandbags and paper substitutes. She waded in a shallow pool before being thrown into a river of blood.
Veteran . Something about the word is still uncomfortable, constricts her chest and itches like wool. Veteran suggests that the war is over, but it doesn't feel over. Every time the night brings darkness and cold, every time a car backfires, every time she wipes a rag over the steel of her gun, she is back in Ishval. She still sees the world through crosshairs, like glasses she can't take off.
Survivor . She's heard the term a couple of times, from well-meaning soldiers who weren't there, who couldn't possibly understand. She hasn't survived anything. Riza Hawkeye died in Ishval. The Hawk's Eye sprung, fully formed, from her carcass. Every morning, she wakes up in the bed Riza Hawkeye was supposed to own. She puts on a dead girl's clothes, goes to the job she should have had, talks to the people who knew her and tries not to let it slip that she is an imposter. She lives the life that was owed to Riza; daughter, idealist, innocent. And she keeps up the charade because she has no other choice. Because for some reason, people hear 'hero' when they should hear 'killer', and she hasn't the heart to correct them.
Woman…
Riza learned the difference between men and women in school. It was clinical and black-and-white and far too simple a distinction. Even then, she knew there was more to it than that. And now, she has proof.
She was one of the last to request sanitary products with the provisions in Ishval, before the malnutrition and stress finally manifested physically. Pregnancy was easily disregarded as an explanation—even discounting the obvious, the world simply wasn't ridiculous enough to allow life to spring from such a barren place. Not then. Not while she was taking it from so many.
She was assured, time and again, that it was normal for women to skip periods on the battlefield. That in a way, it was convenient, one less thing to worry about. That in another way, it was poetic. The desert's last line of defense against an Amestrian invasion. Once this war is over, she was told, everything will go back to normal.
That was a lie.
She is beginning to fill out her body again. Less for her own sake—she is never hungry, her taste buds are like dead nerves and she can feel a slurry sit idle in the bottom of her stomach—and more to quell the concerns of those around her. It makes people nervous if she doesn't act like Riza Hawkeye, eat like her, drink coffee like her, keep her eyes from glazing over in a way that didn't fit the sharp-eyed girl. She is perfecting her surface-level façade. To the eyes of everyone else, she is close enough. Older, perhaps more hardened, but familiar.
But the desert is still inside her; hostile and barren.
Her walk to work is twenty minutes, just long enough for her nightmares to fall off like sloughed skin (she tries not to think sloughed skin, about how she feels like if she got her fingernails under the edge of a raised, rough scar, she could peel away the entire array in one smooth motion). By the time she gets to headquarters, the tremble in her hand is gone, her eyelids are less heavy and the bead of sweat on the back of her neck can be attributed to the warm morning. She can still feel the imaginary weight of a rifle on her shoulder. Its absence is like a phantom limb, it itches.
HQ is bustling with morning activity, as people make their way to their stations. Some don't notice her, some give acknowledging nods or waves, a few even say hello as she passes. She performs her responses accordingly.
She is the first in the office, and sets herself up for the day as her team slowly drip into the room. It's another ten minutes before he enters, last to arrive.
They look at each other for a couple of seconds, and a couple of seconds is all it takes. She knows enough about pretending to be normal to see that he's pretending too. Pale skin that looks as fragile and transparent as rice paper, sunken cheeks that haven't yet filled out, haunted eyes. His façade is strong but not strong enough, not for her.
And she knows that he sees her too, sees past the calculated exterior, sees that the skin suit she wears is hollow inside.
She's been trying on names for him as well, what suits her relationship to him.
Student. He arrived at her home like uncut cloth, ready to be shaped into something exquisite. That was how she first came to understand him, when they were young and all she knew about him was that he was studying under her father. At the time, that was all she cared to know.
Friend . The term had knit slowly around her, completely indistinguishable until suddenly it wasn't. One day, the word came into her head, and it wrapped around her like a sweater several sizes bigger than what was practical. Comforting and so warm, she had even considered the possibility of throwing away her blanket, of taking him to her bed. The thought feels silly now, that something so sweet and naive was ever possible.
Superior . The word didn't feel right in Ishval, when his rank was practically decoration, when he was more weapon than man. It still doesn't quite fit, not when he has given her so much power. She sees everything through crosshairs and he's the only person who knows that, who doesn't mind. Because she'll need to be ready to pull the trigger if he strays. Still, at the moment the term is most fitting. It is a uniform she can't take off.
She can't see him as a friend. Can't look at him for more than a few seconds. Can't afford to let either of their costumes snag and unravel.
Roy turns to the room for the standard office greetings, before returning to her.
"And how are you this morning, Hawkeye?"
"Fine, sir."
This is how the day begins, now. A new standard-issue, to replace the one that sat on her shoulder.
For the most part, she can handle the visuals. Sometimes, Ishval will appear like it has been painted onto tracing paper and held up in front of her. She can squint through the dark reds and browns and see the world beyond it. She can wake in the middle of the night, sweating and gasping, and look outside at the sky to take comfort in the blackness. Living in the city now has hidden the sky, the constellations and planets that so vividly adorned the desert nights.
How juvenile, she thinks. To be afraid of the stars.
It's the other senses that get to her. When Havoc brings the lighter too close to his face and burns a couple of strands of his fringe, she suddenly remembers what it's like to smell past burnt hair and skin, to inhale the aroma of bubbling fat and boiling marrow. She recalls the time a fellow soldier's stomach growled loudly, despite knowing the source of the smell. She suppressed a laugh, then. Because it would have been improper to laugh, but really what the fuck else was anyone supposed to do?
She suppresses a laugh now, too.
It's been six months since she was sent back to civilization. Riza wakes up earlier than usual, and something feels different. Familiar. She is curled up so much that her stomach muscles hurt.
No. Not her stomach.
Her legs rub together and she feels a cool wetness. The sensation jolts her, and it takes a couple of seconds before the bedside lamp is on and she is throwing the covers back.
For a moment, her vision blurs and she recalls the crosshairs. She hears the click, bang feels a dull thud on her collarbone. She sees a tiny hole in the front of a tanned face, a much bigger hole in the back, where the pressure cracked the skull open and pushed brain matter and blood onto the sand. She almost screams.
Then an earlier memory—from before she learned about hell and murder and sand—gently buzzes in the back of her brain, trying to explain the red on the sheets. Something about it feels like absolution, like she has been baptized in blood. Maybe Riza Hawkeye didn't die in Ishval. Maybe she just got lost for a bit.
She knows it isn't absolution, of course. And as she cleans herself up, she thinks about how all blood stains the same.
Her walk to work takes twenty-five minutes, just long enough for the events of the morning to sink into her like a cool balm. She walks slower because her insides lurch, thrum, beat like a pulse. The pinching pain is uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the emptiness.
She sits down as the rest of her team slowly drip into the office. Five minutes later and everyone's ready to start the workday.
She keeps her focus on her work even as her body tries to double over. She takes slow breaths as he doles out the standard office greetings, before turning to her.
"And how are you this morning, Hawkeye?"
"Fine, sir."
"You don't look fine."
She looks up at that, readying a cold glare for his decision to go off-script. But she catches his eye, and sees the softness of his features that he is trying to hide, the crinkle of his rice paper forehead and the squint in his coal-black eyes. He's worried about her. He knows there is something wrong, knows there has been something wrong for a long time. But he knows this isn't the same type of wrong.
The rest of the team are looking at her too, more curious than worried. Somehow, she's managed to make a scene.
Damn this man.
"It's just cramps, sir."
The room flushes with red faces, everyone's eyes widening as they hurriedly find something else to look at. Everyone except him.
A spark lights behind his eyes, and for a moment he isn't Roy Mustang, veteran or Roy Mustang, superior. For a split second he is as carefree and hopeful as he was before he left for the army. She had almost forgotten him. How could she have almost forgotten him?
It registers in her mind that his comprehension means he had probably used his rank to pull up her medical files. It would all be there, since her last visit. And he could have easily justified it to himself—"just checking if her back healed well." "Just making sure my men are in good shape." But she can't bring herself to be mad at the intrusion. Not when his eyes have some of their former light.
"Sorry to hear it," he says flatly, even as the corner of his mouth twitches.
A part of her is mortified that she just told her superior something so intimate. But now more than ever, the term superior doesn't feel right. She flits through some other descriptors in her mind, searches the closet for an old article.
Friend .
She feels the familiar warmth that the term used to evoke. It still doesn't fit quite right. It hangs loosely over her frame, and it pulls on her shoulders, too heavy. Too much.
But maybe one day, she could grow into it.