Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, but I wish they did. At least then I would know what was going to happen to them in the end . . .
024. Not There
Slowly she closed the library door, hearing the catch click into place as it was pulled to. She shut her eyes and let her palms rest on the wood for a moment, as if saying goodbye to the room as well as to its former occupant.
"Riza?" The quiet voice of Roy Mustang did not startle her – she had even been expecting it. It was sad and low and it tried to comfort her. "Are you doing all right?"
She nodded. "It's just strange to think that he'll never go in there again. I won't be seeing him bent over a book and scribbling notes. He won't be falling asleep in his chair with a pen in his hand. This room is empty now because he'll never go inside again."
It had been a few days since the funeral. Her father was now buried in the ground but she felt an eerie lingering, almost like a ghost wandering the halls of the house. She turned and looked at Roy, standing there in his new blue uniform. She knew he would be gone soon, too, and she would be left alone in the creaking old house. She didn't like the thought.
"I'm sorry, Riza," he said. She wasn't sure whether he was apologizing because her father had died or because he too was planning to abandon her. Or whether it was because he knew now what her father had burdened her with. He had had that same sad apologetic look on his face when she had bared her back to him. But he had nothing to be sorry for.
"It's all right," she lied. In her mind he was already headed for the door, his receding back out of reach. She desperately wanted him to stay, to make this old house seem like less of a prison for departed spirits. Her hand drifted over the pocket in her skirt and she could feel the little card he had given her, stating his division and barracks number and all the information she would need to find him when she went to central and she thought about following him now. She didn't really know what she would do until she was old enough to go to the academy, but she could find something. She was only sixteen, but she could find some work and an apartment. Maybe. She just wanted to stay close to him. With her father gone, there was nothing tying her to this house but dead memories.
When the time came she watched him leave and she knew, though all she could see was his shrinking back, that he still wore that same sorry expression as his steps carried him farther and farther away from her. And when she finally closed the door on his retreating shape, those same hands pressing a second lingering silent goodbye to the unfeeling wooden barrier, she knew that she was the only ghost still wandering the halls of her enormous, empty sepulcher of a home.