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: 087. Memories
Disclaimer: I do not own Full Metal Alchemist.
Angles
087. Memories
In all the time Roy has known her, Riza has rarely spoken of her memories.
Somewhere in the back of his mind she runs in her garden, finding bugs in the grass and rubbing dock leaves to calm her sore skin. She never went beyond the fence in those days. If she had, it would mean a hiding on her part. It was not as painful as everything else she experienced, but she would always avoid the wrath of the man who sat in his study; muttering incantations and formulae, watching his daughter from the corner of his eye. For her, there would be no freedom beyond the bars of the cage. At age eight, there was no life beyond this home with her father, his apprentice and the nanny. There was no escape.
Then at thirteen, there is Roy. He has watched for five years as she has become more and more confined. There is no more running in the garden, only her screaming and burnt flesh; only her bedroom and looking outside to the sun. She grows pale and finally he gathers up the courage to see her as more than the progeny of his tutor, and see her as a young girl who keeps a rifle under her bed because she knows there will still be worse to come. He starts with a baptism of fire, and as most things burn and they runs through the fields; for the first time in five years he hears her laugh. And it is for him. He loves her for it even now.
"I will never leave you."
He grabs her around the waist, and kisses her roughly in the dark. His alcohol addled mind is replaying the last twenty years, the years since he has known her. But he tells the truth; in all this time they have barely separated at all unless it has been forced. There is no existence without her, nothing before her that is more important than her being there. She has filled his memories with her being; everything seeps from her and paints his life with beauty. She makes everything worth remembering.
"Shut up and sleep, Mustang."
She will not listen to him, not like this, but he means it. Still he does not let her go, and eventually she gives in; sleeping next to him curled into a ball. Hayate does not move to protect his owner, and even then Roy thinks the dog knows more than he does. But he is warm and comfortable in his stupor, and he presses his head into her back. Riza, who could never defend herself, not even from him. Riza who he would gladly burn everything for if she would only say the word. Riza, whose memories she will not gladly remember although he has been in them over and over; smiling and being her friend and never letting her go.
He is surprised that in the morning, he does not wake up alone.
It surprises me that they will never admit how much they need each other.
Reviews & criticism appreciated.