Rocking, rolling, riding,
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away
He was young when he came to learn from her father, but she was younger still. Neglected and lonely, Riza's attempts to put herself to bed were often futile and Roy could hear her snuffles through the walls nearly every night. Master Hawkeye, for all his knowledge, was blind and deaf to the needs of his daughter and left her mostly to her own devices.
The earth over the grave in the backyard was still fresh and overturned as a cruel reminder of what happened only a few weeks before he had arrived. Rumors spread faster than the people could carry them, bitter and biting, for no one had the guts to approach the manor and inquire to the true nature of Eliza Hawkeye's untimely death. He often heard that one of Master Hawkeye's experiments had gone wrong. Another story insisted that she had never been quite right after her father disinherited her, frail in mind and in body. His own speculation was tuberculosis, though he doubted even he would ever know the real story.
He had a habit of falling asleep in strange places with a book over his head and waking up in the small hours of the morning to the jolting chime of the grandfather clock in the parlor. It was far from comfortable to come back into consciousness sprawled out on the attic stairs, but it was the third time this week and Roy only managed a grimace, twisting around the vain effort of straightening out the knots in his back.
Riza's door down the hall was cracked open, light slipping through, muddled by shadow and grime. Oddly enough, there was no sound coming from her room. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or unnerved, but the silence was a break from the tears she always tried to hide.
Roy found himself walking past his own bedroom and hesitating in front of hers, hand covering the doorknob. He knew what it was like to lose a parent – that could help, couldn't it?
His own mother flashed into his mind in a memory half mixed with a photograph. He couldn't miss her. Not like Riza missed her mother. His was some strange mix of desire and longing, not truly remembering but unable to leave his mind, a ghost that could never really leave him but would never be there for him either. Riza's loss was an open wound, fresh and gaping with no hope of bandaging.
Nevertheless, he pulled the door open a little wider.
"Mama?" came a soft, shaky voice, broken and yet impossibly hopeful.
His heart fell as he stepped into the room, hand tugging at the hair on the back of his head like it always did when he felt a lump growing in his throat.
"Sorry," he mumbled, staring down at the carpet, "just me."
"Oh."
Unsure of what to do, they did nothing at all. Riza wiped her eyes furiously, but the tears refused to stop.
"You can cry. It's okay," he said finally, daring a step toward her.
She shook her head, fists clenching in the old quilt that covered her bed. "Papa says I'm six now. Big girls don't cry like babies do."
Roy shrugged, turning to sit next to her and covering her hand with his. "Everybody cries, though. Aunt Chris says it's a way for the sad to get out so it's not all bottled up inside you all the time."
Riza didn't respond, choosing instead to lean against her father's apprentice and bury her face in his wrinkled, threadbare dress shirt. Her tears were as quiet as a six year old could manage, deep, heaving sobs that made her entire body shake. At a loss on how to help her further – a nine year old's intuition could only stretch so far, after all – Roy only pulled Riza into his lap and rocked her back and forth gently.
"It'll get easier, okay?" he murmured, running a hand through her hair and watching his own tears fall onto her small, blonde head. "I promise."
She only wept.
Shh my friends. It hasn't been two months. I'm not a horrible human being at all.
