Day Six: Memories

(Rated T for language)

They ask him if he's fine, and he tells them yes, but Roy has always been a fantastic liar. The only person who knows him well enough to call bullshit is Riza, and she hasn't said anything yet. And he can't check her expression because, well…if he could, then he wouldn't be lying in the first place.

There's a shuffling to his left, like the sound of sheets sliding against skin. Riza is tossing in her sleep again. Guilt turns his stomach and burns like acid in his chest. He knows she's okay, has been told that so many times it's starting to wear a rut through his inner ear, but sometimes it's hard to believe them because he can't check for himself. The last time he'd seen her, her neck had been sewn together by a few slapdash tissue sutures. Reconciling that image with the imagined one of her healed is not easy.

Her breathing shifts as it evens out, and he finds himself relaxing as she does. At least there is this, that he can still hear her lying in the bed next to his. She is alive, and he can hear that in every fill of her lungs, with every shift of her body. It's a small consolation for being able to see her alive and well, but it's something for him to cling to.

Tentatively, he opens his eyes and moves them from side to side, straining and squinting and waving a hand in front of his face. He doesn't do this during the day, when he's surrounded by doctors and nurses and his team, but here in the darkest hours of the morning, he is not the only one robbed of their sight. No one can watch him struggle and fight and try fruitlessly to see through clouded irises.

Nothing. Not even a shadow, or a shade, of a hint that anything else exists in this new, pitch black world.

Riza shifts again, and he lets his hand fall down to his lap. His eyes flutter close, because what use is it to have them open when they don't work?

What use is he, if they don't work?

A little voice in the back of his head that sounds eerily like Riza scolds him. You are not useless, she tells him, not even a little bit, because eyes don't make a person. You're still a mind and a voice and a pair of hands, and what use is there in having those if you're not going to use them?

She has a point, he knows. And he believes her, this Riza inside his head, but it's hard to accept when it's the middle of the night and it's just him. It doesn't help that Riza herself is asleep just five feet away, and he can't even turn his head to look at her.

He thinks of her, the last time he'd seen her, and he sees the stain of red on her shirt collar. This is not the last image he wants of her, but he doesn't have a choice. Maybe that's what has him terrified and anxious—that he will never see her again.

She'll stay by his side, he knows, because she promised to always stay by his side. He will still hear her crisp voice by his ear, still feel her calloused hands as she hands him a cup of coffee. But he won't see her face when she raises a skeptical eyebrow, or the dangerous glint in her eye when the others (try to) poke fun at her. And though he's seen her a thousand times, it doesn't feel like enough. He doesn't want to rely on memories, because all memories fade, eventually.

What if he wakes up one day and he can't quite remember the exact curve of her jaw? Or the way her bangs sweep across her forehead? Or the flecks of amber in her eyes? Panic has him clutching at his bed sheets, desperate for something solid to anchor him. He has faced down so many enemies, fought so many battles, and yet this is the thing that brings him to his knees.

Pathetic.

As he tries desperately to reign in control, another thought hits him: it's not just that he's worried about losing his memories of her, it's that he only has so many. They're not enough, he thinks. She has so many shades of sarcastic looks, and he's pretty sure he's only discovered about half of them. And now he'll never know what the other half look like.

His chest aches fiercely at the thought. Memories aren't enough, will never be enough to capture her, to capture any of those he cares about.

"Sir?" Her voice is thick with sleep, and he stiffens at being caught in the middle of what he thinks might be his first panic attack.

"Go back to sleep, Lieutenant," he says, but it can hardly be counted as an order when his voice is wavering so much.

"What's wrong, sir?" she asks gently, and dammit, now she's sitting up and turning to face him (he thinks).

"Nothing," he says, but with all the conviction of a frightened child.

"You're lying," she says, and there it is, calling him out on the bullshit.

"I know."

"Are you going to tell me what's been bothering you?"

He snorts, waving a hand in front of his face. "You mean it isn't obvious?"

"There's more to it than that, isn't there?"

He doesn't like to admit weakness, but she is his exception. "It bothers me, that I won't see anyone again. I don't like relying on my memories of them, because they're not enough."

She is quiet for a few minutes, which drives Roy to the edge of distraction. He can't see her, doesn't know how she's looking at him, and that scares him too. "Make new ones," she says finally.

"What?"

"You don't want to rely on memories? Alright then, don't. Make new ones. They don't have to be visual, you know. Remember someone's voice, their scent, the feel of their hands. Remember the conversation, the laughter. There's more to a person than how they look, sir, and I think you should focus on that."

The answer is so stunningly simple that it renders him speechless. It sounds so obvious when she says it, but he doubts he could have reached that point on his own. She always did have a way of opening his eyes, and even though she can't do that now, she's still managed to clear his panic-fogged mind and drag him back down to earth.

"Does that help?" she asks, sounding a little anxious. He can only imagine what he looks like now.

"Yes," he answers. "More than you know, I think."

A new resolve fills him up, and the next morning, he calls for boxes and boxes of files. If he can't do things visually anymore, he's going to have to adapt. As Breda and Falman read out agriculture reports, Roy listens the shape of Breda's words and the inflection of Falman's sentences. When Fuery hands him a glass of water, Roy feels the dry skin of his fingers. Havoc wheels in at one point, bringing with him the smell of cigarette smoke and cologne.

With Riza, though, he memorizes it all: the tone of her voice, the soft roughness of her skin, the faint smell of lavender. He begins to create an imprint of her in his mind that will not be washed away by time. It isn't the same as before, but he wasn't expecting it to be.

But days later, when Marcoh lifts his hands from Roy's eyes, and they flutter open with fully restored sight, he finds that nothing really compares to seeing Riza.