Chapter 38: Reunion

The weeks that followed were the longest for Riza since Roy's departure. Her father's cough seemed to be worse every day, and she rarely was able to leave the house. When she needed medicine or food, she ran to the village with lungs burning from the cold, dry air. Thankfully, the roads had stayed clear this winter. On one such trip, about a week after she had posted the letter, she arrived in town just in time to see the train pull into the station. Ignoring the guilt she felt at delaying her return, she sprinted the last few blocks to the station without feeling a trace of the exhaustion that had had set in toward the end of her run.

Only a few people had gotten off the train, all of them familiar faces but none of them friendly. There were no dark-haired city boys, no soldiers with eyes that brightened when they caught sight of her. Surely her letter would have arrived by now. Three days before the new year and no word, no sight of him; she had secretly hoped they would be able to spend the holiday together again but now it seemed unlikely. Claire had sent an invitation to a party with a handwritten note scrawled underneath, wishing her well and her father good health so she could come. Riza didn't much care for parties, but the thought of spending the night alone when she could have been with a friend only compounded the loneliness she had felt these past few months.

With a heavy heart, she made her way to the drugstore. A new antibiotic for the pneumonia that refused to budge, that she suspected had morphed into bronchitis sometime in the last few months, cost more than twice as much as she had with brought her. She had already tried everything else she had deemed safe after hours and hours of poring over her mother's old medical books. Books she supposed she soon would have to sell to make ends meet, even though she desperately needed them to aid in her efforts to nurse her father back to health.

Though a growing sense of despair gripped her heart, she refused to show it as she walked out of the store. She still had enough money to buy a little food, and she had set a series of snares in the woods that she would check as well. Hopefully there would be enough rabbits to make a nice stew, something to warm the ice from her fingers and stave off the gnawing hunger. She had given her father a heel of bread slathered with the last of the jam for breakfast. There had been nothing left for her but a little tea, but he had been so ill that she hadn't dared leave him alone until now.

The grocery store made her feel a little better for once. The prices were higher than she would have liked, of course, but they were no different than she was used to, and the necessities were affordable with what little she had left. Eggs, butter, flour, yeast, salt, sugar, carrots, and green beans were stacked carefully in a sack once she had parted with her change. The weight of it all comforted her as she carried it back up the hill. It was too heavy to run with, and her arms were weak from hunger, but knowing that she would be able to eat something soon was comforting.

Once she arrived home, she began measuring and mixing the ingredients for bread. It was a mindless task and she shifted her attention out the window, watching the murder of crows gathered in the bare branches of the apple tree. If her snares hadn't worked, she supposed she could always use them for target practice. The meat was safe if cooked properly, even if there wasn't much to the birds once the feathers were stripped away. There were plenty of them to pick off, at least. She vaguely remembered telling Roy about the winter when she had been forced to eat them and wondered what he would think if the first meal she served him when he came back was crow and carrot stew. He'd probably laugh and pretend to choke after the first bite before telling her she was a miracle worker to make it edible.

And then she would smile because it was so nice to have him back, so nice to have someone who thanked her for things, even if she found it somewhat irritating to be thanked for the little things she did almost without thinking. Still, it was better than her father's stony silence. Not once since he had fallen ill had he thanked her for a meal, for medicine, for the all-night vigils she had been keeping by his bedside with increasing frequency.

Once the dough was mixed, she placed it in the oven at a low temperature. It would never rise quickly enough otherwise. Satisfied with her work, she hung her apron on a hook, tucked a sack under her arm, and slung her rifle over her shoulder just in case larger game crossed her path.

The snares had caught four rabbits, and thankfully the crows hadn't touched them yet. She set to work removing the bodies and stuffing them into her sack. It was quick work, and not particularly messy thanks to the cold. It kept the smell at bay as well, which she was equally grateful for. She sat on the back step to clean them, throwing the skins to the raucous crows that hopped just out of reach. There was less meat on the rabbits than she had hoped for, but it would be enough for a week if she rationed it well. She went inside to finish preparing dinner with the birds still squabbling behind her.

It turned out that both the stew and the bread lasted longer than Riza had expected them to. Feeding her father had gone from a chore to all but impossible as 1905 rolled around. She was lucky if she could coax him to eat even a tiny bowl and half a slice of buttered bread a day. The nights were getting worse as well, and after three in a row spent at his side, sleeping only when she was too tired to keep her eyes open and even then only for a few minutes at a time. She wished they could afford to take him to the hospital, where nurses could watch him in shifts and take much better care of him than she could hope to. More than ever, she needed her mother back. She would know exactly what to do, and her presence would probably give her father more of an incentive to get better than a life poring over the same old books and being waited on by Riza. His research was complete, she knew, since it was etched permanently into her back.

One night, she was so tired from washing dishes after dinner, that she went into the dining room to sleep. The chairs were softer than the ones in the kitchen but still uncomfortable enough that she wouldn't oversleep. Just fifteen minutes, she told herself as her arms curled protectively around her head, shutting out the last light of sunset through the window.

She was vaguely aware that someone was shouting. It had gotten dark and she had apparently been asleep much longer than she'd intended. She stood up immediately, toppling the chair and bruising her ankle on one of the upturned legs as she raced out into the hall. The light was on, though she hadn't left it that way. Fear seized her heart but she continued up the stairs, but then she heard the shouting again, saying to call for a doctor. Roy. That was Roy's voice, a little deeper, a little more frightened than she'd heard it before, but she would know it anywhere. She skidded around the corner to her father's doorway to see Roy holding her father, a pool of blood on the floor between them.

Her fingers curled into fists against the doorframe and she shrank against it in fear. There had been blood before, the past few days, but never this much. As though he could sense her presence now, Roy turned, eyes wide, face pale.

"RIZA!" The fear, the despair in his voice frightened her but she managed to pull herself away from the doorframe and into the room, one foot mechanically moving in front of the other as she approached the bed. Roy had come back at last but her father was dead. "What are you waiting for? Go for a doctor, and hurry!" he said as she stopped by the foot of the bed.

She shook her head. "It's too late, Roy. He's already gone."

Refusing to believe her, Roy shook his former master's shoulders. "Master Hawkeye? Are you—?" He gave up when there was no response from the body in his arms. That seemed to be all the confirmation he needed. Carefully, Roy slid the man back under the covers, resting his head on the pillow and closing his eyelids with a gentle hand. Before he turned back to Riza, he wiped his face on the sleeve of his uniform. She wondered if he was trying to hide tears or sweat or both. "I'm sorry," he said. Though he was facing her, he wasn't able to meet her eyes.

"It's not your fault," she said gently. "I'm the one who fell asleep when I should have been watching him."

"No, I should have come back sooner. I got your letter two weeks ago, Riza. I should have come right away but I thought my aunt could use the extra help getting ready for New Year's since I was on leave from the academy." He sank onto the edge of the mattress, not noticing or caring that it wasn't far enough; he slipped off and sank to the floor at her feet, burying his head in his hands. "Fuck, Riza, what are we going to do?"

Riza knelt in front of him, staring at him until he met her eyes. "In the morning," she said when he finally looked up, "we'll go down to the village with the body. It's too dark and too cold now."

"You're telling me. I almost thought I'd have to spend the night in town after the train got delayed by a storm in the mountains." Roy drummed his fingers against his knee as he looked at Riza with such intensity that she had to turn away. Perhaps he still cared for her the same as before, perhaps he still was the same boy he had been when she had seen him off at the station so long ago. Perhaps he was because she swore she could still see the old affection in those eyes

Chewing her bottom lip, Riza looked nervously up at the bed. She could think of nothing more to say with her heart hammering a rough and painful staccato louder than she could make her voice at the moment. One of Roy's hands closed over her own, bringing her attention back down to the floor. She pulled her hand away as though it were on fire. It didn't matter how he felt about her or she about him when the mark on her back meant that she could never have a relationship with anyone—not even Roy. Sooner or later, and she supposed sooner based on the way she felt about him, things would reach a point of no return, where she would either have to decide that she trusted him completely or lie and say she wasn't interested in him anymore.

"I'm so sorry, Riza," he said, sympathy mingling with the affection in his eyes. "I've been talking about myself and you're the one who lost her father tonight."

Riza shrugged sadly. "He was more of a father to you than to me. For the past year, he's been my patient more than my family."

"I'm sorry," he said again. "If I had known…"

"You couldn't have done anything," she said. This time she put her hand on his. He hadn't moved it after she had jerked away.

"I would have come to make sure he was given proper treatment. I could have sent someone with money if that didn't work." He gave her a regretful smile. "I guess there's no need to dwell on that now. You look exhausted."

"I don't know if I'll sleep tonight," she admitted. "I had a nap before you got here anyway."

"So that's where you were. At first I thought you might've gone out," Roy said.

Riza frowned at him. "So you just let yourself in?"

"I knocked and no one answered. Besides, you left the door unlocked." He shrugged, trying to look as innocent as possible.

"That's because no one comes out this way," she countered, the words calling up a faint recollection of their first day together.

"Well I did."

For a moment, it felt like they were young again, which, Riza realized, was a strange thought. They were still young, after all, and neither of them had really been innocent for a very long time. As though he could read her scattered thoughts on her face, Roy scooted closer across the wood floor and pulled her into his arms. She tensed as his hands fisted into the back of her cardigan even though she knew he couldn't see what was beneath.

"Sorry," he said, starting to pull away. "You probably aren't used to this anymore, are you?"

"You just startled me a bit." It was half the truth anyway. She returned the embrace and he pulled her close again. Even though she knew she couldn't let herself fall back into a romantic relationship with him, she let herself enjoy this. Roy's hugs were still the best in the world and he'd been giving them to her since the beginning of their friendship, when neither of them would have dreamed other feelings would develop between them. It felt so good to be in his arms again that she let go of the pain she had been holding in, and soon, her tears stained the shoulder of his uniform.

Roy's arms tightened around her as her body shook with silent sobs. "It's okay, Riza. Let it all out. I'm right here. I'm right here."

She cried for longer than she wanted to, shedding tears for her father, for the man he should have been and once was, for the lonely months she had spent taking care of him, for herself and the horrible, ugly tattoo on her back, and for the future she and Roy could never have because of it. She cried because she was exhausted and didn't know how to stop, because the sun would rise and Roy would inevitably leave again and she had no idea what would become of her, and all the while, he held her and whispered soothing things in her ear and she could have sworn she felt a few of his tears land in her hair. She cried because he had come back here for nothing and soon she would lose him all over again because she didn't dare ask him to stay or tell him how she felt about him. And sometime still well before sunrise, the tears ran dry, but they remained holding each other on the floor of her father's bedroom until dawn added its light to that of the lamp that shone above them on the nightstand.