The Handkerchief

A/N: Here's a little something for the Writers Anonymous's Fairytale challenge, based on the Armenian tale variously known as "Anahit" or "The Handkerchief". (Sur La Lune listed the latter as African, which is either a typo, convergent storytelling, or an interesting cultural spread, but it's perfect for anywhere people value practical heroines, clever adventure couples, and kickin' outfits. The Cold War-era additional emphasis on "yay feminism and public education boo religious scams" are just gravy for my inner Edward Elric.) I don't own any of them, of course. Gotta admit that I picked this fairytale because the Armenian cartoon of "Anahit" that was unfortunately removed from YouTube had the heroine ride to the rescue on a horse with a flaming mane and tail and gave her love interest a loyal canine who doesn't respect the fourth wall unless she's around, and I had to include a couple Rejected Princesses references. I was originally planning on including some scenes from Riza's PoV, but I was running out of time and word count. Maybe in a later chapter…


It was hot. Roy's throat was so dry that he wished he could just wring the sweat out of his itchy dress shirt and drink that, if nothing else. His adoptive mother had had his suit freshly starched and ironed for this morning, and done up his fanciest cravat before sending him off with a packed lunch and all his luggage, but it had been a long, bumpy, tightly packed train ride, and lunch was as distant a fond memory as the neat lines of his outfit. Roy was a growing young man; surely Chris Mustang knew that it would take more than two sandwiches, a couple apples, a bottle of lemonade, and a handkerchief full of cookies from his sisters to fill up someone so used to flashing sad gray eyes at the barmaids at any hour of the day. He had nothing left for wandering down the dusty country roads, hoping to find his destination before he keeled over from the heat.

Master Hawkeye hadn't been able to meet Roy at the station, nor had the old alchemist seen fit to send anybody. He'd sent Roy a map of his town in their correspondence leading up to this apprenticeship, and Roy would have to make his own way if the teen were to prove himself worthy.

When he'd first seen the map, Roy had assumed that his master had skipped details about the town. It had only displayed the railroad station, a few buildings on the main street, and a pump well near the village green where he would turn in order to get to the estate. If there were side streets, they weren't shown. They weren't visible from the station, either. Roy had always thought that his hometown was Hicksville in the Sticks, the western edge of the world, but his mother's bar was palatial compared to this sad little village.

A limp and listless attempt at bunting for May Day hung from the general store, post office, and a disappointingly empty inn huddled near the tracks, but the party was elsewhere. Roy hoped it was inside. The train had been stifling, but there wasn't enough breeze to combat the direct sunlight.

Plodding down the road under the weight of his suitcases, Roy was numb to the sounds of music and childish laughter floating from the sunburnt green around the bend. He barely had the energy to raise his head to check for the well, clinging on only out of hope for a relief to his thirst. He looked up just in time to take a pitcherful of water to the face.

"Got you!" the kid squealed triumphantly, darting away from any potential counterattack. Roy might be more bothered under other circumstances, but right now, his soggy clothing was more relief than problem. Getting upset could wait until he wasn't steaming purely from the heat.

He pawed the water from his eyes with the hem of his sleeve and chose to focus on the well rather than trying to identify his attacker out of the pack of five- to eleven-year-olds, all armed with pots, jugs, buckets, and anything else that might hold their liquid ammunition. There were near as many lined up in front of the well, empty vessels clutched before them, as there were little kids causing mayhem in the village green. The refill process was surprisingly orderly, with no one dumping on anyone in line until they had run a preset distance from the well, and a blonde angel only a bit younger than Roy stood supervising the pump, working the handle for the littlest terrors. Her dress was mostly dry, but the dark blue fabric clung from sweat or a bad example that was doubtlessly the reason why the rest of the children were behaving now.

Roy wouldn't have minded being a bad example. From the rolled sleeves to the darker high-necked back, the color looked good on her, but like his own suit, Roy thought it would be better when wet.

"You need something? Or did you melt when Ana tossed her jug at you?" She paused between fill-ups, and Roy realized that he'd been dripping and staring for longer than was polite.

"Water please?" he croaked, limply dropping his suitcase and holding out his hand in lieu of any vessel of his own.

"One minute." She filled the containers for the next six children waiting for their turn at the pump, and then motioned Roy forward, remaining all business despite the poor lost soul melting at her feet. It gave him extra time to appreciate the strength of her bared arms and bend of her back as he waited for mercy, at least.

"Here you are." She handed him an abandoned vase, likely rejected from the game for its high fragility to capacity ratio, and Roy drank deeply. "Don't choke on it. I took care of the children first to give you time to dry out and catch your breath, not to transfer all the water to your lungs."

"And because we were here first! First come, first serve, right, Riza?" the boy next in line piped up.

"Yes, Petros. Why don't you take over for a bit while I see what brought our thirsty guest to visit?" The blonde - Riza - ensured the loyalty of her deputy by proclaiming how sacred a duty well supervision was, and only the strongest and most mature of eleven-year-olds might be trusted with it for even so much as half an hour. Roy had no doubt that little Petros would be happy to man the pump for the rest of the afternoon, if Riza wanted it. Roy Mustang would, too, just to please her, and she wasn't even judging Roy's skill at bucket-holding.

"Sorry about that. The council always talks about putting in better plumbing and a real fountain, but I think I'll miss it when I don't have my part to do for the May Day snowball fight." She offered to carry one of his suitcases, and the touch of her hand against his on the handle was worth the burning warmth it spread from fingers to chest to Roy's face.

"I don't think I'd mind actual snow today." He took another gulp of water, trying to pass his flushed cheeks off as due to the original reasons.

"You should have gotten here early; the children usually can't save their last snowballs in the icebox all spring, but most of their parents are good enough sports to let them chill the water the night before."

"And you're a good enough sport to keep refilling for them?" There were some blessed cloth awnings dotting the green further away from the road, emanating snatches of fiddle and drum, and Roy turned his steps toward this last bastion of civilization. Maybe there would be chairs and punch, but even if he had to collapse on the grass, better to do it out of the sun.

"The older kids usually give up the game early to get ready for the dancing, but dancing is hot and Father doesn't approve of the frivolity." Riza shrugged. What a shame. She moved so economically that Roy had no doubt that she would be a vision on a dance floor. "But you didn't come bearing suitcases to get a dunking." Whisky brown eyes regarded him as patiently as a hunter watching game.

Roy couldn't help preening just a little at the chance to show off. "Well, if you really like pumping water, I won't transmute the well, then, but I've been invited to become Berthold Hawkeye's apprentice."

Riza remained impassive. Her little town might not have much, but they did have access to a genius that even Central might envy. "I'd just as soon you don't do that. Father was tied up for a week when the last would-be apprentice broke a pipe, and most of the village had to walk down to the old cistern for water."

"Your father's a plumber, then?" Roy asked, eager to learn more about her.

Riza only shrugged again, her back straight despite the beating sun and luggage gripped in both hands. "Sometimes. He tries not to get too involved in other people's lives, but he does better when he's not buried in research. He forgot to tell me that he was taking on someone new." It was Roy's turn to give her a reassessing look. It wasn't as if Master Hawkeye had sent him a picture or discussed his family. He got the feeling that Berthold Hawkeye was quiet about a lot of subjects. "I suppose I'll learn your name if you can handle Father's moods for a few days," Riza said with a similar dry sense of understatement.

"Roy Mustang, Miss Hawkeye," he supplied bashfully.

She nodded, but still kept her distance, turning without stopping past the May Day awnings toward what must be the alchemist's home. Roy was once again struck by a sense of disappointment that he wouldn't see her dance today, but it was hot, and Master Hawkeye was expecting him. He slumped as he followed, leaving the vase and any sense of his pride behind with the festival.

"Forgive me if I don't remember right away. Most of the apprentices don't last long past the limits set on their alchemy." Roy could only hope that he wasn't imagining the touch of playful challenge beneath her aloof, polite tone.

"I trust Master Hawkeye has his reasons. I'm not going to push for advanced techniques before I've learned the basics."

"It's not just learning the basics." Riza Hawkeye reached for the collar of her dress, touching the back of her neck in a more vulnerable display of nerves than Roy had yet seen out of her. "Alchemy can be useful, but it can cause as many problems as it solves. If there's anything that Father refuses to teach you, it's usually best to drop it."

"I'm learning alchemy to find a way to help people," Roy promised. "If it doesn't work, maybe you can teach me the old fashioned way to fix something." Her sleeve had slipped back down her elbow, and Roy noticed the worn hem, restitched and let out to make the dress last far longer than anything his mother or her girls had ever had to wear. "Like maybe you could show me how to sew."

That earned him a soft half-smile. "That sounds like a good reason to learn. We might come to an agreement, Mister Mustang."

"Please, call me Roy."

"If you stay with your apprenticeships, I might learn your name," Riza teased him, hitching up the suitcase and leading him on to the Hawkeye estate. The sunshine reflecting off her golden hair was going to burn him, and Roy would happily walk right into it.


"Does that look like the Fullmetal Alchemist?" It wasn't hard to counterfeit unconsciousness despite the ranting just outside his cell. Roy's head was still spinning with pain, and his limbs were too heavy to compare to automail. Even opening his eyes to slits had been an ordeal, and that was with no light but from a crack below the door. "Do any of you idiots see blond hair, a red coat, and a metal arm and leg?"

"He is pretty short, at least." Roy was in sudden agreement with the angry mob boss. Whoever said that needed a good throttling. He was average height, on the tall side, even - Havoc, Hughes, Falman, Grand, and Armstrong just happened to be giants, and they must be feeding something to the Briggs soldiers for so many of them to tower over Roy. Alphonse Elric didn't count, either, trapped as the boy was in armor made to fit his father.

"You clowns were supposed to get an alchemist, not one of their military babysitters." So they weren't after Ed, in particular. Roy kept telling Fullmetal that there were more advantages to wearing a uniform than just displaying a basic sense of taste. These goons hadn't found Roy's pocket watch, and they had caught him without his ignition gloves on, a rare occurrence for the legendary hero of Ishval. No wonder they had mistaken him for an average military dog; he was too young and good-looking to register as any alchemist besides Flame or Fullmetal, and Flame always wore gloves.

(For reasons like this. Short jokes weren't the only aspect of being Amestris's most obvious young prodigy that Edward Elric had inherited from his mentor. Golden eyes and automail limbs and a bright red coat that was practically bigger than he was made Fullmetal an even clearer target, and that was without Ed's seven-foot little brother clanking along beside him. Roy had to stay sharp, and keep the kid even sharper.)

"Maybe we can use this, boss. Fullmetal is known as the people's alchemist, right? We dangle this guy as bait, and he can't fall into the trap fast enough for his own liking." Great. A goon with ideas. Roy would moan, except that he knew that this crook had Edward pegged and Roy's head hurt too much to risk having to move.

"Yeah, that'd get us the Fullmetal Alchemist waving his knife wrist around, his armored brother ready to transmute this whole place into our tomb with the clap of his hands, and if we're lucky, only the Flame Alchemist to cook us alive once the Elrics are done with us! Do you have any idea how difficult it was to separate Mustang's crew and catch even this little dweeb off-guard?" Roy felt offended on Fuery's behalf. Clearly the mob boss thought that they had caught him instead. "Have you never heard of the Hawk's Eye? We might have enough fumes down here to take the colonel with us, but she's the best sniper to survive Ishval and she'll be right at his back, ready to take us out before you morons even see her." So it was more than just a concussion making him dizzy. Good to know before Roy dug out an emergency set of ignition gloves. He could only wish that they'd pinned Riza as well as Fullmetal. She might well snipe these goons without leaving a trace, but Riza Hawkeye was uncomfortably far from Roy Mustang's back right now. "We do not need them to know we're after them."

"But if we've got one of their men, they're gonna be on high alert, boss. We can't turn this one loose and we can't kill him unless we really want them to come after us like somebody called Fullmetal short."

"We use their paranoia to our advantage. We stay in their orbit as legitimate military contractors, concerned about Colonel Mustang's missing crew member. We're going to have to be patient before they start splitting up to search a wider net, but Fullmetal and Flame are both loyal to their dogs. They'll take all the help they can get to find him, and once we cut an actual alchemist away from the rest, we can earn that bounty. We just have to be able to take one alive."

Roy was afraid to know who was willing to pay for any alchemist, and wanted them still breathing. He could understand attacks from Ishvalan terrorists, exacting any sort of vengeance they could get upon Amestris's soldiers in return for the horrors that had been inflicted upon their people, but civilian and new State Alchemists like the Elric brothers should not pay for Roy's crimes. Maybe keeping the alchemist alive was an attempt to sort out the innocent from the guilty, but this crew seemed much too cavalier about it to suggest that their patron had such things as morals.

"Uh, but how are we gonna pass as contractors, boss?" the brain trust asked. "We don't exactly have anything to sell."

The mobster just chuckled. "Since when did a military contractor come in on time, under budget, and with decent products to show for it? We'll connect up with some company, and make a little side profit while we wait out Flame and his dogs."

Roy heard the squeal of ill-lubricated metal as the goon squad broke up. Apparently someone wanted to get a closer look at their prisoner. He wrenched his eyes open, blinking with more befuddlement than he truly felt as the shadow slid across his face. The oxygen mix down here was off and it was making him lightheaded. It stank of sulfur and methane, too.

"You've got one chance to convince me to keep you alive," the masked figure said. Either this one didn't understand the consequences they'd just discussed, or was bluffing to see how much Roy had overhead.

Roy whimpered, not entirely an act in the face of having to sit up, and propped himself on his elbows, surveying what he could make out in the dank cell. The only light was a battery powered flashlight in the mobster's hand; they clearly didn't trust the air down here. With his gloves, Roy might have been able to purify the oxygen a bit, but it was limited enough to leave everyone more than three feet away breathing pure methane. Better leave off for now than risk getting lost underground with nothing left to breathe, as much as he might feel these criminals deserved to choke on the lingering smell of rotten eggs and cow gas down here.

"Killing me wouldn't sit well with Mustang's team," Roy offered in understatement. If they didn't realize that they had the Flame Alchemist himself, no reason to inform them. Like the Hawkeyes had driven into Roy's head during his apprenticeship all those years ago, alchemy could cause as much trouble as it fixed.

"What, you think you're some big shot? I don't even recognize you as one of his inner circle." Colonel Roy Mustang, as the Flame Alchemist, was bold and charismatic and ambitious in public, drawing attention with his clever ideas and flashy appearance. Without any of that, Roy was just another dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale man of average height in rumpled military blues. Forgettable, when he needed to be.

"You can call me Berthold… Berthold Christmas." His adoptive mother had taken up a stage name upon moving bar to Central. She was there to watch out for him and that cute little Hawkeye girl, Chris insisted, not lean on Roy-boy's name and money among the capital's bigwigs. She'd made her own so quickly that the dramatic, restless teenager still inside him wondered why they hadn't jumped into the Central spy network a dozen years ago, but the answer to that was probably blocking the door to his cell. "I do certain things for the Colonel out of sight of the public."

"Are any of those things useful? Or are you just the one he puts in charge of dumping his one night stands?" The Flame Alchemist had a certain reputation, and a set of little black books that he wouldn't let anyone else touch.

"My wife told me that a soldier who can darn socks and replace lost buttons will always have friends in the barracks," Roy offered innocently. Riza would probably forgive the exaggeration. Flame also had lots of pretty adoptive sisters who fed him information from their mother's bar, and alchemy notes he coded in women's names and phone numbers. Calling Riza Hawkeye his wife wasn't anything that certain people weren't already thinking, either. (Maes needed to shut up about it before Roy slipped and called Lieutenant Hawkeye something incriminating in public.) "She taught me how to sew, and I embroider gloves for the colonel."

"So you know alchemy symbols?" The mob boss brightened, perking behind the flashlight and inadvertently turning it directly into Roy's eyes.

"I copy from a pattern that the colonel drew for me," Roy answered modestly, turning away and blinking back night-blindness. "I got used to adding my own little flourishes, but I can follow a design if I have it in front of me." He didn't want them to demand he reproduce his most infamous circle from memory. Let alone accidentally activating it and exploding them all down here, who knew what could happen to an unsupervised circle?

"Let's see what you've got. Maybe we have our contract option right down here."

"It's awfully dark in here, and the air is too stuffy for the cloth. I won't be able to make my best work under these circumstances." Roy kept his head down, trying to get a better look at the world beyond his cell out of the corners of his peripheral vision. The floor inside was dirty stone, but knowing what it was connected to would hint whether he was stuck in an abandoned root cellar, a condemned mine, a half-refurbished cavern, or some emergency bunker on the borderlands. His team was familiar with East City, but not all the little farms and hamlets outside the city proper. Roy didn't know how far his kidnappers had stolen him away.

"You'd best get used to it. We're not taking you for walkies so that you can memorize the terrain and attempt an escape."

Well, there went that idea. Roy shrugged as if it meant nothing to him. "I'll need a light if I'm going to avoid pricking a finger and giving the alchemists something to track me with." Granted, Roy didn't personally know anyone with that particular skill set, but it sounded clever enough to give his captor pause. He'd have to check in with an alchemist with more medical expertise than Roy himself had, once he got out of this; it sounded like a good project for somebody with some biology under their belts.

"You'll get cloth, a needle and thread, and a light," the mobster allowed. "But if I see one drop of blood on it, I'll set the cloth on fire and pack it under this door."

Roy looked up enough to incline his head in understanding. "Couldn't have me sending a message, could you?"

He got hit for that. Worth it.

The mobsters had arrived in force to examine his first sample, holding the handkerchief up to the light to be sure that there was no blood hidden beneath the stitches. "The border is uneven," their boss complained.

Between circle notation for "capture," "flame," "underground," "danger," and "low oxygen" picked out in a pleasant little repeating border design, Roy had skipped stitches representing his last known coordinates on each edge of the cloth. Hopefully his team would be able to narrow his current position down from there. The Elrics had been reading alchemy symbols longer than they had Amestrian, and Breda and Falman would quickly notice the long spots in the thread. More than all of them, however, Roy trusted Riza Hawkeye to recognize his hand. She had taught him to sew, and she knew his style. She knew the symbols her father had tattooed into her back, the ones she had asked him to destroy after everything went so horribly right in Ishval. She would quietly alert the rest of the team, and lead the charge forewarned once they helped her find him.

"It's difficult to keep the stitches all the same in low light," Roy said instead.

"We'll see if this is worth letting you live, Christmas," the mobster grumbled, taking away the cloth and lantern.

Roy didn't know how long he'd been left in the dark before they returned.

"Mustang wouldn't see me," the boss said. "Probably sleeping off a hangover or something, but luckily for you, Lieutenant Hawkeye liked your work. I said I needed to show off our wares to other military members; I expected Strong Arm or Silver to take the bait before any of Fullmetal and Flame's team, but she insisted on buying the sample out of my hands. Said her boss needed fresh gloves, and Mustang's second didn't seem aware of you when I mentioned that I thought he had a guy for that. You're telling me that Hawkeye herself has never heard of Berthold Christmas?"

Roy knew he was in trouble, but never let his confidence slip. Riza wouldn't have, either. "Oh, I bet she reacted when you said my name. She's just maintaining the integrity of the investigation."

Fortunately, there were enough other issues afloat for that to tip off his captors now. "I don't like getting this close this fast. It's too easy to be safe. You need to make more samples for me to show Strong Arm, Ironblood, Silver, and Sewing Life. None of them are ideal, but we don't have to get Fullmetal. Better make me something with a Flamel, though, just in case. Surely you can manage something that famous, at least?"

"I can't guarantee that it will do for you what it does for Major Elric, but I can put a pattern together." Of course the snake design would do exactly what it did for Edward Elric: make the wearer look pretentious. But Ed had found ways of hiding his secrets long before he'd met Roy, let alone joined the military. The teenager's actual rank felt more foreign on his tongue than Roy's own alias, but that was what Fullmetal got for refusing to ever dress the part of a State Alchemist. People assumed the black pattern was sewn into all of his red and black clothes and actually accomplished something like Roy's gloves or Armstrong's and Grand's etched gauntlets.

"Shall I start working on more for Colonel Mustang, as well? If you sold one item to Lieutenant Hawkeye with the promise of more to come, she'll be suspicious if nothing else is delivered," Roy said. Having served with them in Ishval, Roy knew Alex Armstrong and Basque Grand to be fundamentally intelligent, decent men who might help his team for the mere honor of catching a threat to the State (and taking all the credit and getting the bragging rights for saving Roy), but Commanche had been handicapped early in the war and Tucker had joined up after, never running much in the same circles that Roy did. He would have trouble alerting Strong Arm and Ironblood without giving away the game, let alone warning off Silver and Sewing Life. Better if Roy could stick to sending coded messages to his team.

"Oh, no. I'm making the gloves for Mustang. Can't have him figuring out that his new ones are made exactly the same as his old ones." So there was a bit of brain behind the gas mask. Roy would look forward to trying out what the mob made for him. Purely out of professional curiosity, of course.

"I don't think he'll let the design out of either his sight or Lieutenant Hawkeye's. He's always right with me when I'm copying the pattern."

"That's a chance I'll have to take. Might give me an opportunity to take him alone." The gas mask might be in the way, but Roy could feel the smirk behind it. He bit his lip to contain an answering grin.

"I'm not sure it will work out the way you think." Roy left it at that for the moment, letting the criminals interpret his turn away from the light as they would.

It wasn't long before they were beginning to crack. "Strong Arm is everywhere at once. How can he be constantly underfoot and still recommending us to every low-class dog with a hole in their socks?" Because Alex Armstrong's voice carried for miles; the more embarrassing the louder, bless him. Maybe the gangsters should have stuck with needlepoint when they had the chance.

"I thought he was based in Central. Shouldn't his assignment be done by now? I think they may be onto us, boss." Roy could only hope.

"I still haven't seen Flame, and Fullmetal has been skulking around, rubbing his hands together whenever he and that guy in armor catch me looking for an alternative way into the building," another goon reported, right beyond Roy's cell. "Thought I saw light reflecting off a scope from atop HQ."

"Do we pull out?" the brain trust asked. Roy just turned his needle through his hands as he listened in silence. It was too late for that.

"How are we supposed to get away now? Do you want to tell our shadowy associate that the deal is off?" There were audible gulps at that reference. Roy would have to keep them alive for interrogation. He didn't know who this shadow was, but he needed to find out. It definitely wasn't sounding like a just spirit uncovering old war crimes.

Roy tried to sleep when he couldn't hear anyone moving beyond his cell. Listening in might offer him more clues to pass onto his team with the embroidery samples, but he wasn't so much adjusting to the bad air and worse lighting as Roy was just trying to soldier through the constant headaches with as little extraneous exertion as possible. He trusted his team. Still, he would have loved to have been awake and able to see the expressions on his kidnappers' faces when Riza, Havoc, and Fullmetal led the raid on the cell.

"Lieutenant Hawkeye," he greeted the first friendly face he'd seen after endless days in the gloom. As faces went, this one was especially welcome. Her electric lantern in hand and rifle slung across her back were even better. "I see you got my intell."

"Clearly they need to air this place out. Berthold Christmas? You should have been able to come up with a less obvious alias than that, sir," Riza answered back as professionally as if they were already signing the requisition request forms. Of course she knew his name after surviving those long-ago apprenticeships.

"You definitely owe us for saving your sorry ass, Colonel!" Edward added from where he was restraining jailers turned prisoners with stone pulled directly from the floor. Havoc nearly tripped over the grooves Fullmetal had hollowed out.

"'Us,' Fullmetal? The lieutenant saved me a decade ago, back when she taught me how to use more than alchemy to solve my problems." Roy caught the edge of a grumble from the team's resident tetchy teen genius, but it was more in the vein of how Ed already knew that there were alternatives, not anything against Riza. Roy Mustang nodded toward the mobsters and their stone cuffs. "Maybe someday one of us will teach you how to use a thread. It'd be nearly as thick as a rope in your hands."

Roy took as much comfort in Edward's expected rant as the ignition gloves Riza Hawkeye handed him. These were a pair she'd sewn herself, and with her work covering him, Roy had the world at his fingertips.