Relics
Word Count: 632
Timeline/Spoilers: vaguely post-series but very retrospective; spoilers for Hawkeye and Mustang's pasts
Summary: She has no photographs of her father. — Royai Week, Day 4: Forgotten
Notes: This was actually the first fic I wrote for this week. I won't say that this piece turned out nothing like I planned it, but it's not quite what I expected. This wasn't my original idea for this prompt, but the first sentence suddenly came to me, and I knew I had to see it through. Wasn't having much luck with my other ideas anyway, and I finally got the chance to explore Riza's relationship with her father, however briefly. The goal was to write young!royai, and I guess in a way I did?
She has no photographs of her father.
Roy can hardly fault her for this. His respect for the man lingered only in the academic sense, and rather grudgingly so. This was the brilliant mind that encoded the secrets to flame alchemy, after all. But any love Roy may have borne the man, as one would for a mentor, dissipated with his death and the subsequent revelations of his daughter – Mustang's closest companion, even in those days.
He knew Berthold Hawkeye was a hardened man, could see it even as a fledgling student preoccupied with his own dreams and desires. It broke his heart on almost a daily basis to see young Riza's earnest attempts to gain his master's affection. But any rare spattering of praise or good will were heaped upon his apprentice, not his daughter. It's a wonder that she never grew to resent Roy for this. She simply receded further away into herself, particularly when he left his tutelage in order to enlist.
A child should never have had to beg for a parent's love the way she had. Her mother died when Riza was scarcely old enough to remember her, and she never knew any other family growing up, as she confessed to Roy at the funeral. Whether it was the death of his wife or his only child's lack of aptitude in his life's work that made Master Hawkeye the shell of the man he was, to this day, Roy still can't say.
Starved for love and attention as she was, and still just a teenager with her only comrade leagues away, it's no wonder that she submitted to her father's horrific request. Not that she could have refused anyway. Riza doesn't know that the man she called father was above using force in order to inscribe his legacy; he may have even thought it an honour he bestowed upon her. It's this very thought that continues to haunt her. So she clenched her teeth and made not a sound, with tears streaming down her face at the pain of the needle's application.
He called her "darling," she remembers. She's wholly revolted with herself that even after all that, her heart still clenched at the most minuscule show of affection, whether or not it was simple manipulation. Even now as an adult, she struggles to reconcile her feelings for him. She knows that at some point in his life he must have borne her the same sentiment reserved for his beloved deceased wife, but it was so long ago that any memories of such have faded. In his heart of hearts, he must have loved her if his last words to Roy were to 'look after his daughter'.
When daughter and apprentice finally wed, a number of people are quite surprised to see her so willingly assume Mustang's surname. She is still fondly regarded as 'Hawkeye' by her closest companions, and by other military personnel for practicality's sake. Though it's hardly out of the ordinary for the wife to take the husband's name, the general consensus was that a woman like her would surely retain her own name (at the very least to ease the ensuing paperwork burden).
Roy picks up on what they could never comprehend. When she asked him to burn that mark off of her back, she begged of him, "Let me be Riza Hawkeye on my own." In a way, it's much the same sentiment. As the last of her family line, it's the chance to sever her only remaining tie to that lonesome girl from that decrepit manor. Finally, she can be just Riza.
To him, it's all too fitting that the Hawkeye name and its cruel legacy remain a relic of the past. After all, she has no photographs of her father.
"You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's."
— Robert Frost
Notes: Please review and let me know what you think!