a/n oh boy. for some reason, i love torturing riza. im so sorry riza. im so sorry all of you.
Hawkeye's hometown was quite small. Like Resembool.
It was honestly quite the match, Ed and Al thought.
It was a little father north, but still out East.
They even passed Resembool on their way in.
Maybe they could say hello to Winry on their way back.
"This shouldn't take long," the Lieutenant had said,
handing Ed and Roy a piece of fruit to eat on the way.
She didn't want this to take long.
The Colonel slept on the train, head thrown back,
legs hoisted up, arms crossed, mouth hanging open.
If you looked closely, Roy held onto the fabric at Hawkeye's elbow
between his second and third finger to stay steady while the train bumped and jostled.
Maybe just to hold onto her.
Ed was nearly in an identical state, except snoring. Quite loudly.
Leaving Riza and Alphonse wide awake to listen.
Al watched her stare out the window.
"Lieutenant?"
Riza looked to him.
Her eyes looked pink, puffy maybe.
He supposed she was tired. It was quite early, after all.
But, her eyes glistened in the rising sun.
He couldn't ever imagine her crying.
So, that couldn't be it.
"Are you alright?
She smiled subtly, "Of course, Alphonse."
Riza sighed and watched the hills roll by,
the cows and the crops and the East.
Yes, much like Resembool. Al was quite surprised at the similarities
they had discovered between he, his brother and Lieutenant Hawkeye.
He never would've guessed.
"We'll be there soon," she said to the window.
True to her word, the train did stop soon.
Ed and Roy yawned far too loudly.
Yet, Riza had to be prompted to move.
She just kept staring out the window.
The Colonel said sleepily, "Lieutenant."
"Oh, yes" she jumped, "I'm sorry, Sir."
They stepped off the train,
grabbed their bags and got a car.
"You're Berthold's girl." The man behind the desk said.
Though Roy nearly thought Riza purposefully tried to change her voice just a tad.
She averted her eyes often to the counter or anything behind her shoulder.
She let down her hair even.
She still looked like her mother, Roy thought,
or what he saw in the pictures she still had left.
She still couldn't hide from this place.
"He wouldn't like that uniform." The man muttered.
Riza couldn't remember who the man was. She didn't go out much as a girl, of course.
Only ever to go to the convenience store or to see Roy off to his departing trains.
But, it was a widely known fact that Berthold hated the military.
"No one in that town will ever truly be fond of us," Ed remembered her saying
when Roy made a comment on the train, "Do you think they'll like our outfits?"
Even so, as much as Ed really didn't prefer the navy uniform stashed in an old box
in the back of his closet he couldn't help but mutter, "have some damn respect, asshole."
"My father is gone." Hawkeye responded, unphased.
The old man gave a 'humph' and took her coins. "What brings you back?"
The man eyed the Colonel, almost remembering a boy who looked similar long ago,
with that messy mop of black hair and an exuding, commanding confidence.
Though, he couldn't quite believe the man before him
and the boy from his memory were one in the same.
For the Colonel didn't look confident at all in that moment.
He kept staring at Hawkeye. He kept resisting to rub the back of his neck
He kept feigning composure. But, even that old man could see right though him.
He must have been someone new.
"And with visitors," the man added.
"Nostalgia." Riza said. It was cold and harsh and a flat out lie.
The old man looked a bit skeptical, a bit judgmental, altogether unfriendly,
when he handed them the keys to an old car out back,
one that was to take them all the way to the Hawkeye Estate.
Riza sighed heavily and took them. Roy drove.
Ed and Al started to wonder if this was such a good idea.
Something was strange.
No one mentioned it.
Until they reached dead terrain,
brown grass and worn down hills.
That's when the little town began to look less
and less like the place the Elric's called home.
The whole landscape appeared to crumble, too dry, too brown, too dead.
The hills and the fields went on for awhile before they finally stopped in front of a vast estate
with a small house smack dab in the middle. A house that matched the petrified landscape perfectly.
Sick weeds took over the fields and the steps and the posts.
Windows were shattered, the paint was chipping.
It looked as if it would cave in, give out under the weight of its age,
and the burden of the dying land surrounding it, suffocating it.
"Are you sure this place is…" Ed started."Safe?" Al finished.
The Colonel gave a snort, "No. Not at all."
"I hid the notes somewhere in the house," she said,
once again staring out the window. She sat still a moment.
They waited for her word.
"You three stay here. I'll find where-"
"No." The Colonel cut her off.
"It wasn't a-" Hawkeye bit through her teeth,
but he was already out the door, "Fine."
Ed and Al watched Riza fling her door open,
and slam it closed, quite a bit more insubordinate than usual.
But, the two officers still kept their composure as they marched toward their past
as if they were going into battle. Except Hawkeye demanded to be in front.
She struggled to be in the front.
She wanted to do this alone.
Get in and get out. Then disappear.
Riza only slowed down at the doorknob.
She hesitated, as if it was hot, as if it could burn.
Riza could feel Roy watching her. She braced herself,
grabbed the door, and opened it. She breathed in,
her stomach sank. She lifted her chin and walked in.
She could do this.
It was just a house.
The air was stale. The floors creaked under their feet and the Elrics cringed.
Sure, it was just a house. But, there was something there they felt they shouldn't disturb.
Still, they followed her diligently. She stayed close to the wall.
Her fingers stuck out just so, grazing and tracing the wood beside her.
The silence was suffocating, scary even. Ed hoped hearing himself talk would solve the issue.
"Did you live here, Mustang?"
"Yes," he said, then knocked on a door to their right
with the top of his knuckle, "This room was mine."
Hawkeye had stopped at a doorpost on the other side of the hall,
running her hands along the grain,
remembering.
She was surprised,
more so outraged
she couldn't quite remember on command.
She blocked it all out, maybe. A safety measure.
"Perhaps in my room." She muttered to herself,
opening her own door, stepping inside.
Ed studied Mustang's door. It looked black, charred even.
He twisted the knob to reveal a room that looked just the same.
The bed toppled over, the walls burned thin. He could almost smell smoke.
"What happened?"
Mustang turned his gaze away from Riza, wandering around the bare room of her young years,
and to the boys. He peeked inside his door, and gave a solemn reply,
"He burned it when I left," he said, "He wasn't happy when I left."
He didn't want to remember seeing that aftermath when he returned from the academy.
He had thought he'd seen the worst when he opened that door.
Riza had recounted her father's frenzy to him.
Roy was exiled from the house, her father screaming.
Roy disappeared in a cab. He knew that, he lived that.
But, afterwards.
Berthold lit the room ablaze, then he stood like stone in the doorway,
watching it burn. The house filled with smoke, Riza laid low on the floor to breathe,
bracing her door, hoping he wouldn't burn the whole house down.
Hoping,
praying.
When he moved to his study, leaving the flames behind,
Riza went to work. She worked all night to put it out,
to save whatever skeleton memory she had of her friend.
I left her with him.
He thought he hated himself for it then, more than he ever could.
Then he saw the tattoo, and the universe proved him wrong.
He could always hate himself more
especially when it came to her.
Riza Hawkeye could take care of herself. But her father was an unmatchable force.
She had always worked for his affection. Consciously or no.
She never had a chance.
Not when he left.
He burned. He raged.
He screamed. He maimed her.
And, Roy wasn't there to stop it.
"Maybe his..." Riza emerged from her room,
whispering to herself, "Maybe his study."
Roy's eyes shot open, "Lieutenant, wait."
She didn't. She didn't seem to hear.
She followed the wall down the corridor,
and the Colonel followed after her.
Edward and Al peered inside the room
Hawkeye had called her own.
It was bare. Undecorated. Uncomfortable.
But, of the basic features it did have:
a bed, a dresser, a mirror,
Nothing seemed as it had been touched.
"It looks like she just up and left," Al said,
while his brother scanned the floor, his eyes drawn
to the molding where the wood met the wall.
Scratches. Near the nightstand.
For some reason he found himself kneeling down to them,
he traced his fingers over the letters, wiping the dust away.
"Riza," he read, "The Lieutenant's name."
Al pointed to the extra scratches below,
Ed wiped away the age.
"Roy," Al read, "The Colonel."
"How long do you think they've known each other?"
Ed wondered aloud, marveling a bit at the mystery that
was his superior officers.
"I imagine for-
Then there was screaming, broken by harsh breaths, sobbing,
gasping echoing through the empty house.
Ed and Al jumped to their feet and sprinted down the hall.
"Lieutenant!" Mustang yelled desperately
watching her fall to the ground, clawing at her clothes.
It itched. It burned. The moment she stepped into the room.
She focused on the shelves, the books. Any possible hiding place
for the notes she stowed away. They could be anywhere.
They could be anywhere.
But, then the itch grew fierce, the burn flared on her back,
tracing the markings in full force.
Her scars cracked and blistered.
She could feel the needle.
She could feel the ink.
She could feel the fire.
Riza had to pull of her jacket, her sweater. Anything separating herself from her skin.
She scratched and scraped and raked into her back, "Get it off. Get it off. Get it off."
Riza whispered, she muttered, she screamed, she sobbed.
"Lieutenant!" Roy fell to his knees in front of her, begging.
"Hawkeye, answer me."
That's when Edward and Alphonse froze in the doorway.
That's when they saw it.
Her back toward them, she sat crumbled on the ground.
She stretched her arms every which way across her bare back. As far as they would go.
She dug in deep. She drew blood. She screamed and pleaded and sobbed.
It was surreal, unbelievable. Edward thought he might be dreaming,
hallucinating. Maybe the stale air or the dead land were toxic.
Maybe the house itself.
"What's-" He started.
"Ms. Hawkeye!" Al cried.
Edward shook his head, got rid of the fog, the thick air of terror,
and gathered his thoughts in time enough to register the marks,
the code, the salamander, before Roy could toss his black coat around her.
"That's your circle-" Edward snapped to Mustang, disbelief, fury,
hatred as he connected the dots, he could almost see the sigil
bright on the Colonel's hands, though he didn't wear his gloves.
"What's the hell is going on?"
Edward lunged through the door.
Hawkeye sobbed, and choked, and shook.
Roy was quick, though in panic, in terror.
He shoved Edward, throwing him out of the room with tremendous force.
Edward stumbled through the door frame, collided into the wall. The whole house shook.
"Leave, Elric!"
He slammed the door in their faces.
Al held Ed back. Ed was ready to break down the door.
But, Ed listened to his brother.
Maybe it was the shock.
The wood barely muffled the Lieutenant's sobs,
her muttering, her whispering. Maybe it was the noise.
"Get it off. Get it off.
Burn it. Burn it.
Burn it."
Roy attempted to quiet her. He braced her,
though she fought. She broke away, she pushed away.
He locked her down, muttering her name, begging her for a response.
Quickly all fell quiet.
Edward lingered before Al convinced him to leave, to wait outside.
They were gone before they could hear Riza say into Roy's shoulder,
"You were gone. You left."
"I'm so sorry," he choked, rocking her, "I'm so sorry."
"You were gone," she trembled.
So foolish, she thought.
So weak, she thought.
But, Riza couldn't stop her words.
"You left."
im so sorry. review, follow, pamper me.