Summary: At the right angle, in a line of sight, one might wonder why he never stopped staring at her for so much as a second.
Theme: 080. Categorise
Disclaimer: If I owned Full Metal Alchemist, Olivier would be Queen.
Angles
080. Categorise
She categorises normality.
"You are different."
Riza tells him, her voice hushed. Sometimes, though it is rare, she speaks to him like this. Like he is a star cradled in the curve of her tongue. Roy thinks that she would keep him that way, a beam of light stashed under her pillow until the morning; if only it did not disappear by then.
"Why?"
Roy asks, tracing the burn mark on her back with aching, tired fingers; knowing that she should have freckles there for him to play constellation with instead. He imagines the world on her skin: Andromeda, Lyra, Orpheus. Raw earth in tumult against the sunlight when the beautiful moon went down because they could not see such beauty anymore.
"Anyone else seeing this would kill me, Mustang."
His hands trace the blackened sun and he wonders if this means he will leave any imprint on her. He feels as though he could run his fingers along her bare bones and find years of untouched dust when he retreated, coating his skin and leaving his imprint on her as a reminder of not being there to stop her from becoming a formula to everyone. She had not deserved it. Part of him believes he has done this to her, that he is taking her away; but every morning she gets up and sees only him, as though he is the last shining thing remaining – and he cannot take that away from her.
"That is no different to this, if you really think about it."
She smiles wanly, the light escaping. He wonders how this is possible, how years of her are possible. She is a paradox, a cruel joke in the existence of her father. But he understands. He knows that she is wary. The fingers that caress her back can just as easily burn her. To her, the human condition would be a sickness if she could bare the alternatives. People have only ever made her suffer.
"You are not killing me."
He is, he does not say. He is just doing it in a new way. Others gave her smiles, sharp and taut like the edges of knives. She fell into the significance of what was on her skin, and not the significance of herself. He has already decided he prefers the latter. This is why when she had offered to follow him, he had not refused. It is only her that keeps him with some semblance of normality; she stops him from falling into neat little categories like rebel and special and different.
"Love in itself is murder."
He would feel her smile across the continents like an age old warmth, the undying light of a star. The ironic thing was, nobody here would know when a star died – people only found out when the light was suddenly gone three hundred years later. He wants to make her feel less lonely like that. He presses a soft kiss into her shimmering blonde hair and prays she understands.
But normality cannot fit into neat little categories when she does not know what it is.
I imagine the first moment Riza let him see her mark to be something like this. I cannot see Roy only ever wanting her for the secrets because he did not leave her behind afterwards; and even in the end he has not abandoned her. On a side note, Min – I hope you understand what I mean now. How can we ever hope to decide what is normal and fit it into neat little boxes?
Reviews & criticism appreciated.