DISCLAIMER: I do not own FullMetal Alchemist. No I don't. There are plenty of "If I dids" but I don't think I want to mention them all.

A/N: I'm taking a break from my two ongoing chapterfics – Snow White and the Eight Dwarves and Calculated Risk-Taker. In the world between sleeping-and-waking, my iPod happened to spew "Memories" by Within Temptation, and of course…I'm wondering why most of the time it's Emo-Roy. Why not Emo-Riza? Well, there are still a lot of those but…

Don't question the muses! I have this song stuck in my head and I need to Royai it out! Intendez? Muy bien. This might end up being morphed into one of the chapters of another fic I'm planning, the companion (not sequel) to Calculated Risk-Taker, Truth and Treason.

A/N (May 7, 2008): I haven't been posting in my FMA muse because I'm pretty sure it's dead until I get some serious hardcore Royai, but I had to edit this because after I read it, I realized Roy wouldn't be so selfish.

Your Memories
An Emo Fanfic by (le sigh) N.C. Stormeye

"Why won't you let him go? He's gone. He chose to leave. And there's nothing you can do about it."

"I have no idea what you're talking about Lieutenant Havoc. Now will you please get back to work."

"Hawkeye, come on, we've all noticed. You're different. Ever since he…"

"If you don't continue working right now I swear I'll put a bullet straight through your head."

"Alright, alright. I'm sorry. I'm just saying."

"NOW!"

Did you think they wouldn't notice? I suppose you did. I know you did. You always think that everything you do goes unnoticed now. You are nothing but a machine, reduced to going through tasks swiftly and efficiently, but soullessly. Even the flavor of your love seems different. Your dog knows it. He can sense it. Animals always can.

And somewhere deep down, people are animals too, in a way. We have our intuition. We have our instincts. His instincts told him to exile himself, without you. Don't you think, don't you think this is all for the best? He has destroyed everything you've worked for. He cannot face you, so he runs. He does not know, you never told him. You had chances too, and with discretion you both could have pulled it off, but you refused.

This is where your stubborn nature has gotten you, staring at faded photographs by candlelight. Crying. You never cried this hard before, not this often anyway. But now you do it night after night. I suppose it's part of being a woman, being so frail. You can appear strong all you want but the truth is that all those ruses amount to nothing when you cry. Strength can fade…and yours has. Haven't you noticed?

Why do you dwell on the memories? Why?

I hear you mumble his name. In your sleep, the tears keep coming. Black Hayate no longer tries to slip under the covers, next to you, for warmth. Perhaps your nature has affected him as well. He lies by the door, once in awhile raising his head to stare at it as if waiting for someone. Some nights he sleeps by the phone too, one ear jerked up as if listening for something amidst his puppy dreams. For a call that will never come.

How many times, at night, have you imagined his inebriated voice coming through that phone, still strong and silky amidst the haze of alcohol? Even those memories you hang on to, the embarrassing ones. Of him at his worst, a broken man. At least, back then, they seemed to be the worst that could happen. When things seemed like they could go on forever like that.

Stability. He liked it, I think. And you think so too. When you lie awake at night listening for the slurred knocking at your door, or the quick, powerful ones which mean that he needed you more than a designated driver. The excited knocking meaning he was behind that door, plotting something. Sometimes it was for you. Most of the time it was for the State. For his dreams.

You were entrusted with his dreams. They were your dreams too. You have every right to be angry at the fact that he is gone. He has left you among the rubble of his past desires. You faced trial, you were acquitted. So was he. In the mess of things he left, choosing instead that lonely outpost in the North to live out his shame.

And yet, even now, even as you cry and stare at the faded photographs, you understand him. You understand why he decided to part from you, like a limb that has been torn away and can never grow back. No replacements. Nothing. Just a shadow of what it once was, what you once were.

You move around, empty, like a ghost. Your footfalls are light and graceful, yet they are barely there. For a moment you think you understand how Mrs. Hughes feels…like the days have lost their substance and just blur into passages of time without him. Yet you try to hang on to the fact he is alive. Even if he does not think of you, which I am sure he does. He has given up everything…a pathetic shade of a hero's sacrifice.

You should be content with that, yet still you cry.

Why do you hang on to your memories as if they could bring him back? You remember the brief weeks when you both were suspended, not military. You were simply humans. You his nurse and he the patient. You would walk through the marketplace and choose food. So many shopkeepers would comment on how you looked then, comment to him. Call you his wife…that forbidden word that would make you blush and…scarcely believing it, make his eyes dance.

You had such chances then. Yet you wasted them, barely together. Your eyes forming the words you wanted to say, but your lips never speaking them. And now, as night fades slowly, ever so slowly into day, you look at a shadow of what he was, how he used to be, and you try to form the words with your mouth but still cannot.

Even in a photograph, the rules still force you, pry you apart. They force this stilted soul of a woman to continue her work without mourning. And do not deny you mourn. It is not so tangible as black ribbons and veils, but it is almost physical. There are almost real signs of how you weep for him. Like those tear-tracks on your cheeks that you clear away.

As the thoughts of him run through your head unprocessed, you cry. The memories blur into a tapestry of emotion, light and color. You remember, that is the problem. You cannot bring yourself to start over. There must always, always be signs he existed. He existed to you, closer than your own skin. His dreams still flow through you like blood. You'll still do anything to help him reach them, even if it seems impossible.

How foolish. How foolish can you be! You are living a death sentence. Each ay eats at you. His eyes, even in a photograph, haunt you. You've taken him almost as an obsession that brims just below the surface. The emptiness. Yet you still beat on. You still exist. You live…barely. You know you have to. It's not just a matter of duty or honor, it's a matter of living for the both of you now.

You will continue on, Lieutenant. A soldier is brave, even in the face of so much pain. She takes her wounds without a word. Most of all, she files away her emotions. They cannot interfere with what she must do.

A soldier is not a slave to her emotions, to her memories. So you continue on, as if you are still a soldier. And as you continue, so do I. I cannot stand to let you be like this. You must stop digging a grave for yourself. You must further the dreams we shared. Where I am and what has happened of late does not have to matter to you, but you must, please, even if it kills me, even if it kills you…

You must forget what we used to be. You must cut me out of your memories.

A/N: Ghost of a premature baby muse! Oh goodness. And if anyone wonders how Roy knows what's happening to Riza…well actually this is all Riza's POV. But perhaps lovers – even unacknowledged ones – are psychic? Maybe. Anyway it seemed only fair to set things write - I mean - right.