Riza's life did not vary. She woke at the same time every day to an alarm in her ear and the weight of Black Hayate on her feet. She fed her Black Hayate, ate a quick breakfast of toast and coffee, and took him for a walk.
The walks had been getting slower and shorter as of late, as his sickness worsened and exhaustion hit him more quickly. Still, he loved his walks, and he would wake her himself if she chose to ignore her alarm.
So when she woke that morning after hitting her clock and dozing for a few minutes, when she felt the unmoving weight on her feet, she already knew. She slid her legs from under him and reached down to the foot of the bed to scratch one of his ears. He did not stir.
A stone fell in the pool of her chest and her throat constricted. "You poor thing," she murmured.
He was cool to the touch, and his joints were stiffening. She waited for several minutes with her hand on his side, hoping that his chest would rise and fall. It didn't.
She scooted back against her headboard and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes to stave the stinging there. If she had done a better job of taking care of him, if she had taken more time off, he might not have become sick at all. He might still be alive if she had loved him better.
He was not alive, though, and she sat on her bed, alone and wondering what to do next.
The veterinarian had told her to call in the event of any radical change. She took a deep breath that did not fill her lungs, stood on shaky legs, and left Black Hayate to trudge to her kitchen. She dialled the telephone number written in her address book and waited.
The telephone rang sixteen times before she realized it was far too early for the office to be open, and she hung up.
What was a person supposed to do when their dog died and the veterinarian did not answer the telephone? Where was she supposed to go? Was she supposed to go to work and leave him on her bed?
Nausea swelled in her stomach and she gripped the edge of the aluminium counter. She was going to be late for work as she tried to figure out what to do and waiting for the veterinarian's office to open. She needed to call Headquarters. She needed to speak with the General.
It was too early, though. The General would not be in for several more hours, and he might not even be awake yet. She still needed to call.
She swallowed her guilt and dialled his telephone number. While she waited for him, she walked to the table and sat sideways in a chair. She thumbed the taut telephone cord and thought that she could manage her next steps if she could just—
"Hello?" the General said in a low voice, broken and raspy with sleep.
Her shoulders relaxed. "Sir," she said. "I'm—"
"Hawkeye," he said, a yawn smothering the last part of her name.
"I'm sorry to wake you, Sir," she said, even as she smiled, just a little.
"I'm not—" He groaned and Riza heard sheets shifting before his voice came through clearer than before. "I'm not asleep. What's going on?"
She swallowed. "I'm going to be late today, Sir. I don't know when exactly I'll…" Her breath rattled in her chest and she gripped the collar of her pyjama shirt. "I'm sorry."
"Did Rebecca wear you down?"
How long would it take? Even after the veterinarian opened, how long would she be out of the office? How many decisions would she need to make? She would have to choose cremation or burial. Where did one bury pets in East City? Surely not in a normal cemetery.
She should have planned for it, but she had thought she had so much more time—
"Hawkeye?"
"I'm sorry," she repeated. She should have anticipated telling him. She should have known he would ask. "Black Hayate died sometime in the night. I need to, um…" She inhaled and blew her breath out through pursed lips. "I have to figure that out. I…" She swallowed, shook her head, and said again, "I'm sorry."
She waited for his response, but none came. She imagined he was rubbing the bridge of his nose, reasoning through what to say. It was a ridiculous request, she knew. She was guaranteed bereavement leave, but that only covered the death of a family member. No one received time off for the death of a pet. She'd be lucky, so very lucky, if he allowed her the few hours she needed to contact the veterinarian and make arrangements. She would be late, and there would be a record that she had been late. That would be better, though, than a record showing he had allowed her unwarranted time off.
Then he said, "Take the whole day."
Her chest warmed even as she closed her eyes because he couldn't. He just couldn't. It could be construed as favouritism, and they had agreed. They needed to live within the implication of the law. "Sir, I don't—"
"I'll see you Sunday at the train station," he said, then the line clicked and he was gone.
She pulled the receiver from her face and looked at it. She could still go into work, of course. If she did, there would be no filing a day off, no questions from Human Resources about why the General had allowed it on such short notice.
Before that, though, she needed to figure out what to do. Perhaps she did not need to wait for the veterinarian at all. Perhaps she could manage things herself and be at work sooner.
She did not, however, know where or how to begin, and her head spun while she tried to think of what one did with a dead pet.
Riza breathed in and out, in and out. She tightened her grip on the receiver, still in her hand. "One thing at a time." She would start by hanging up the telephone.
Then she went back into the bedroom where Black Hayate still lay and put her hand on his head. "I'm sorry I left."
He was on a wool blanket, one she had bought years ago. It was his favourite. He would drag it around the flat—into the kitchen, into the living room when she was reading, onto the bed in the evening—and he would sleep on it every night.
Or he used to. She took a deep breath and pulled the edges of the blanket over his body, swaddling him in dark blue yarn. Before covering his face, she stroked his grey muzzle. Any second, he would wake up and lick her hand, and everything would be fine.
When he did not wake, her throat closed and she whispered, "You're a good boy." Then she covered his face and sat on the bed, fighting back tears and struggling to breathe.
In time, the rush of emotion drained from her and left her empty. She looked around her bedroom. What next?
Riza stood and decided that she could not accomplish anything without first getting dressed. She grabbed the first blouse and skirt she saw in her wardrobe, and as she rolled on her nylons, she realized for the first time that day that the rain had stopped. She had not noticed how much cooler her apartment was, how the fog outside clung to the windows.
At least she would not have to endure the rain again.
A knock sounded at her door, and she ignored it and instead slipped on and buckled her brown pumps.
Her visitor knocked a second time, but she decided to pretend she was not home. She needed to take care of Black Hayate and go into work. Nothing would deter her.
The knocking came again, a series of sharp, incessant raps that continued until she gave up and marched to her door.
There was no peephole, but she could hear two voices in the hall.
"Stop that," one said, and the knocking stopped.
"Maybe she's not home," said the second voice.
"Where would she have gone, dumbass?"
She knew those voices. Relief surged within her as she threw open the door and saw Havoc, one hand raised as if to knock again, and Breda.
"Hey," Breda said first. "The Chief sent us."
Of course, he had. She stood and stared at them, both in dress uniform, while her chest swelled. They truly were the best of people.
Breda stepped into her home and asked, "Where is he?"
She pointed over her shoulder toward her bedroom and said, "In a blue blanket."
He nodded and walked past her, leaving her and Havoc in the entryway of her flat.
"Are you alright?" Havoc asked.
She smiled at him. "I'm not sure." When he shifted on his crutches, she said, "I'm sorry. Come in and sit down."
Havoc shook his head. "We're only here to pick you up."
Before she could ask where they were taking her, Breda returned with the little blue bundle in his arms. It struck her that Breda had always been afraid of dogs, even Black Hayate, but he was not then.
"Do you want to carry him?" Breda murmured.
The soreness returned to her throat and chest, and the heat returned to her eyes, and she nodded.
He passed Black Hayate to her, and she hugged his familiar weight close. Part of her still expected him to move, to poke his head out of the blanket and lick her face.
"Come on," Havoc said. "The cab's running outside."
She followed them out of the building and climbed into the back of a black automobile with Breda. Havoc adjusted himself and his crutches in the front seat, and the driver began to drive.
Riza watched the streets, shrouded in a thick grey blanket, pass by, and thought that everything that had happened that week, everything she had thought awful, was nothing. The night before did not matter.
Except one thing did matter, and she looked at Breda next to her and said, "I learned something about Elise Holfer."
His eyes moved from the bundle in her arms to her face and said, "We don't have to do this now."
She nodded. "We do." Her mind was not as focused as she would have liked. She might forget to bring it up later. So she told him what she had learned from Rebecca, about Elise Holfer and the arrest of a protester in early 1908, about how Elise Holfer might have had to make a statement or appear in a courtroom since she was the military personnel involved.
Breda pulled a brown notebook from his breast pocket and wrote while she spoke. When she had finished, he nodded, muttered a thanks, and looked over his notes.
After several minutes of silence, she leaned forward and asked Havoc, "Where are we going?"
He looked over his shoulder and said, "The cemetery."
The cemetery, as if there weren't hundreds in the Eastern—No. "The military one?" The General couldn't do that. The grounds were reserved for active-duty members and veterans with honourable records, not for dogs.
"I know," Havoc said, anticipating her protestations. "I brought it up when he called me. But he said," he held up one finger, "and I quote, 'I run this region. I can do what I want.'"
He couldn't do what he wanted, though. There was a Judiciary Corps and the General Council and the Führer himself, all things built into the military structure to keep officers from abusing their power.
The Führer loved the General, though, and he was on the General Council, and the Judiciary Corps had more important abuses to worry about, so perhaps this would go overlooked. The General would have predicted that.
Through the windscreen, the cemetery came into view. A field covered in rows and rows of light grey sentinels standing guard over generations of fallen comrades.
The cab driver slowed to a stop in front of the gates, and Havoc dug into his pocket for his wallet. Someone outside opened the door, grabbed Riza's elbow, and pulled her out of the automobile and into an embrace.
Rebecca's perfume surrounded her, and Riza asked, "Did he wake up the whole city for this?"
"Maybe," Rebecca said in her ear. "You know how he likes to make a fuss."
Riza knew too well that the General never did anything simply when excess was an option.
She brought one arm from under the bundle of blankets and hugged Rebecca, who squeezed tighter. Riza closed her eyes and buried her face in Rebecca's shoulder and let herself be held, if only for a moment.
"I'm sorry about last night," Rebecca whispered.
"It's fine," Riza said. "It doesn't matter." It could have been worse, and there were more important things that morning.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Riza sighed. "How?"
Rebecca hummed and rubbed Riza's back. "If it makes you feel better, I woke up with a killer headache."
"It does."
Rebecca pulled back and smiled, then she pursed her lips. "You're a disaster."
Riza smiled. Of course, that would be the utmost of Rebecca's concerns. Looking better was the key to feeling better according to her best friend.
Rebecca dug into her bag and pulled out a comb. "At least I can do something about your hair." She was not gentle, and the comb pulled hard at Riza's scalp.
"It's not an event, Rebecca," Riza said while she winced at a harsh tug.
Rebecca clicked her tongue. "It's not a livestock auction, either."
Riza couldn't imagine she looked that bad, maybe weary and dishevelled, but she endured until Rebecca stepped back and nodded.
"Thank you," Riza said, though the words were inadequate. Rebecca had known what she needed—to be taken care of for just a few minutes, to have just a touch of normalcy to remind her that she would be alright. She hugged Black Hayate close and fought back a new wave of tears.
Rebecca leaned in and kissed Riza's cheek before putting one hand on her back and leading her through the cemetery's main gates and down a stone path.
Headstones marched on all sides into the autumn fog, parting for her and her little dog.
The vastness overwhelmed her and she stopped walking. She had not stood in a military cemetery since the funeral of Maes Hughes, and it struck her that everyone there had died hoping to fulfil their own dreams for their country, hoping to end wars. Yet war had come again and again and again and again. They had all bought a lie and had been sacrificed in the monstrous machinations of the old regime.
Rebecca tugged at her elbow. "Come on."
Three figures crouched ahead of them in the fog, and as they drew nearer, Riza could hear their voices.
"Is this even allowed?" a small voice, Fuery's voice, said.
"I'm the one who signs off on burials in this cemetery," the General replied. "It'll be fine."
"There have been twenty-seven impromptu civilian burials in this cemetery alone," Falman offered. "Though all of them were human burials—"
"Thank you," the General said.
The men looked up when Rebecca and Riza approached.
The General, dressed in his formal uniform, knelt before a perfect, rectangular hole in the ground. At the head of the hole stood a light grey stone with "Black Hayate, 1912-1923" carved into it. He rose to his feet, and she saw behind him a child's casket and a length of rope.
She was about to ask how he had procured everything on such short notice before any shops were open, and how he had brought a gravestone with an inscription, but then she noticed at the base of the stone several telltale lines of a hastily done transmutation.
Of course. Everything was easier when one was an accomplished alchemist.
He looked down at all his preparations and then at her, asking if everything was alright, if he had overstepped.
She smiled and nodded once. It was more than alright.
Rebecca patted her shoulder, and Riza remembered that she wasn't supposed to just look at the casket. She tightened her hold on the bundle of blankets in her arms.
"Take your time," Rebecca said.
Riza shook her head to clear it. There was no time to take. They were all doing something so kind for her, and she was making them wait. It was time to let go.
She stepped forward, knelt, and laid him, still swaddled in his blanket, on the bed of white satin in the dark wood box. She tried to stand, but she found she had no strength to pull her hands from the cloth.
The General lowered himself beside her and whispered, "If you're not ready—"
"I'm ready," she said. Still, her hands did not move.
"Riza—"
"I am." One deep breath, then another, and then she yanked her hands to her chest.
The General rose and offered her his hand, which she took. She kept her head bowed as he helped her to her feet, brushed his thumb over her knuckles once, and dropped her hand.
Rebecca pulled her into an embrace, and Riza closed her eyes. She heard Breda's and Havoc's voices as they approach, and someone closed the casket with a dull thud.
She pulled back from Rebecca and saw that the General, who never performed labour if he could help it, along with Breda and Falman and Fuery, was lowering the casket into the grave with ropes. She looked back at Rebecca, who smiled and rubbed her arms.
She stepped away, faced the open grave, and nodded. It was time.
The General straightened and cleared his throat while Falman pulled the ropes and wound them into coils. Then the General began, "We're here to honour Black Hayate and his eleven years of life and military service."
Riza bit her lip and swallowed down the closing in her throat and blinked back the stinging in her eyes.
"Second Lieutenant Hayate was an exemplary soldier, brave and loyal," he continued. "But more than that, he was an exemplary dog."
She could feel him watching her when he whispered, "Do you want to say anything?"
Every word she knew stuck in her throat. She shook her head.
"I do," said Fuery.
Riza looked across the grave at him, and he met her eyes.
"Is that alright?" he asked.
She nodded. Of course, it was.
Fuery took a deep breath and said, "I found him…I guess eleven years ago, almost to the day. It was during the last thunderstorm that summer. He was so alone, and so small, and just wet and scared." He clasped his hands tightly together. "And I got that because I was always small for my age, and I was always alone in school, and I've never been brave, exactly, so…I don't know." He shrugged. "I took him."
Riza smiled in spite of herself. She remembered that day, she remembered Fuery's brining a soaking puppy into the office under his coat, wandering around and asking if anyone could take him. She had been torn between exasperation that he would pick up a stray without further planning and her own pity for the animal.
"He was a good dog," Fuery continued. "But he wasn't just brave or good. He was smart."
Riza smiled and looked down at her hands clasped in front of her. He was a very smart boy.
"I'd talk to him during stakeouts, and I always got the feeling he understood what I was saying. He could never talk back, but he was a good listener."
Riza understood the feeling.
"It just felt like he was one of us, sometimes." Fuery looked around at the group. "I know we're all thinking it, but I wish he were still here. I miss him already." Then he stepped forward, took a handful of the soil piled next to the grave, and dropped it on the casket.
One by one, the others did the same, scattering dirt until it was her turn. She forced one foot in front of the other and bent down. She grabbed a handful of the soil, took a deep breath, and dropped it. The earth hit the wood with a deafening thud.
Riza realized she had no handkerchief to wipe her hand on, so she brushed her palm on the hem of her skirt. She heard Fuery sniffling, and she turned to him. Some force pulled the two of them, the two who had loved him most, into each other, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
"He had a good life because of you," she whispered.
He squeezed her. "He was your dog."
She would not have had him, though, if Fuery had not found him.
After a moment, Fuery pulled back and dug into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he passed to her.
"Thank you," she whispered as she wiped her hands and regretted how woefully unprepared she was for everything that day. She heard a small crackling and turned toward the grave again.
The General had managed to cover it—alchemy, again—without her noticing, and part of her felt it was over quicker than she would have liked. She needed to be there for just a minute or two longer.
"Why don't we head back to the gate?" Rebecca said. She leaned in and whispered to Riza, "We'll give you a moment."
The men mumbled their assent, and Riza looked from them to the General, imploring him to stay. There was so much she needed to say to him, and she did not know when else she would have the chance to say it that day. And she was not yet ready to be alone.
He nodded, and she turned to look at the freshly covered grave. Behind her, the General told the group he'd catch up to them, and then he moved to her side.
When the others were far enough, she said, "Thank you, Sir. For everything." It was kind of him, so very kind, to arrange everything for her little dog. She knew the excuses he would make. Black Hayate had been brave. Black Hayate had functioned as part of their unit. Black Hayate had belonged to all of them. Still, she needed to remind him that he could face an inquiry from the Judiciary Corps for his conduct. "But, Sir—"
"He was an officer," the General said. "He deserves the burial of an officer."
She closed her eyes and swallowed the tightening in her throat. She remembered the day the General had, on a whim, declared Black Hayate a second lieutenant.
His alibi was apparent to her: he had not done it for her sake, but for the sake of the canine officer. There were still problems in his reasoning. "The rank was never officially recognized."
"It should have been," he said.
She sighed. There were other things worth fighting him over.
She gazed over the field of stones, so orderly in their rows and rows and rows, and she wondered how many there were. She wondered when she would join them.
"Maybe we'll retire to the country," the General said. "Be buried under a tree on some hillside."
She looked at him. He wore that same small, secret smile that had captured her childhood daydreams, and she looked away again.
"A quiet life somewhere in the East," he continued. "You'd like that, I think."
She would. There were things she missed, like the quiet community of a small town. One was never surrounded by strangers in the country, one was never alone or isolated unless they wanted to be.
And it seemed appropriate that they would end in the country, for there had they begun, in the few usable rooms of a once-grand estate. They had never been close; no charming city boy in his teen years wanted to befriend a shy girl of eleven, not when there were pretty girls and gregarious boys in the village school who would better suit. Still, she had watched him, and she had learned from him. How to be bold and assertive, how to be decisive, how to laugh. And though they were hardly friends, he was never unkind to her.
Then again, in the country, as they had stood over her father's grave—he had arranged everything then as well, she remembered. She had been his teacher that time, but she still learned from him. She had learned about dreams, as he meekly told her his for the first time. And she had learned, most of all, how to fall in love.
She had learned that again and again, even when he had left—though he had just learned she had no other family; and even when she saw him again in Ishval—though she was sure he had forgotten her.
Such thoughts were dangerous. They had agreed they were dangerous. How had he forgotten so soon? She said, "You'd get bored in the country."
She felt his eyes on her then, but she could not—she would not look at him.
"It wouldn't be the same," he said, his voice low and warm and full of promises neither of them could keep. "Things would be different between us."
They would be different, no longer children, no longer separated by inexperience on an age gap made more expansive by youth. It was a beautiful, dangerous dream.
He had always had such beautiful dreams.
"As for getting bored, I think Fullmetal has it figured out. Quiet, simple life in the countryside, frequent visits to the city when things are too slow."
This was his plan, then. He always had a plan. He likely had a whole plan for dealing with the Judiciary Corps, who would surely consider a military funeral for a dog frivolous and a misuse of his authority.
None of the others in attendance would testify against him. He counted on their loyalty.
Riza looked over her shoulder and saw Rebecca still standing and waiting on them. She was far enough that she could not eavesdrop, but Riza remembered that, despite their being amongst trusted friends, they were very much in public. Any caretaker or gardener might pass and overhear, and repercussions for their conversation would be worse than those for Black Hayate's funeral. "Sir—"
"We'll have a good life," he whispered.
Why did he persist, even when he must have considered the risks? Even when those risks had finally, after so many years, been discussed? She did not follow his logic, and that scared her.
"After all of this is over," he finished.
She did look at him then, because everything was far from over. If the next year did not play out in their favour, there was no knowing when everything would be over. It was painful to consider life beyond the immediate.
"I know," he said, and he turned his head away, but she could see the understanding and resignation in the set of his shoulders, in the tightness in his jaw.
Then he turned back to her, practised smile in place, and held out an arm for her to take. "Shall we head to the office?"
She tightened her fists at her side as she looked at his arm. It was an innocuous gesture—gentlemanly, typical, and even expected in their positions, but it would be foolish to touch him. She could not accept any more physical contact or comfort from him that day, for she would be left wanting more, and she had to train herself to stop wanting.
When she would not meet his eyes, he cleared his throat and let his arm fall, then started toward the gate.
She followed and said, "I'll get in uniform when we arrive." She kept a spare jacket and pair of trousers in a drawer, and she could borrow a pair of boots from—
"You will not," he said. "We're not working. We're having a wake."
She sighed. That was an unequivocal misuse of authority, and of military facilities. "Sir—"
"I've shut down the office for the morning."
"Sir!" She stopped walking. It was too much. She was grateful to him, for she knew in spite of his protestations why he had planned everything, but while everything else might have gone overlooked, shutting down his office for non-essential personnel…It was unheard of.
"The Judiciary Corps?" he said, turning to face her. He shrugged. "We were burying an officer. Or," he held up a finger before she could remind him, again, that the rank had never been official, "if that's not satisfactory, then we were burying someone who saved your life on several occasions. Exemplary bravery more than qualifies him for civilian honours."
Even if that were true, she had never heard of anyone's pet receiving civilian honours, even if that pet had attacked a homunculus fifty times its size. Even if that pet had been brave and good. Her eyes stung. "There will still be an inquiry."
He turned and started walking again. "I'm not concerned."
She had no doubt he had weighed every argument. He never moved without considering optics. "Charlie will be." She could imagine the General's campaign manager pulling his hair when he learned about an inquiry, bemoaning the press coverage and asking the General if he could go one week without his face on the front page of a tabloid.
"Let me handle Charlie," he said.
It was too much. "Sir," she said. "You shouldn't put yourself in a position of having to!"
"He couldn't even be upset," the General insisted. "I was burying the brave and loyal dog of one of my dearest subordinates. That's hardly scandalous. In fact, it's heartwarming." He nodded. "They make pictures about things like that."
Of course, he had considered that too. He was right. Filmmakers loved stories about dogs who proved incredible loyalty over the course of their lives, and Black Hayate had been loyal to military personnel. If some director in West City heard the story, Black Hayate might become the subject of the next war picture.
The General had considered the optics.
Something dark and sticky, like a slime, rose in the pit of her stomach and climbed inside of her as she considered that perhaps he had considered the optics before he had considered her. That perhaps press coverage of his heroics in defying stodgy regulations to carry out the burial had most informed his decisions that day.
She shook her head to clear the thought. She had never been blind to his flaws, and she knew he was selfish, but at least he was above using his subordinates' personal tragedies for his own publicity. He was above using her.
By the time they reached Rebecca, Riza had almost dismissed the idea entirely.
Outside the gates, the General doled out orders: who should travel with whom, who should procure alcohol—though Riza protested that point on the grounds that the General would need to work in the afternoon.
He overruled her, and as he opened the passenger door of his automobile for her, he said, "Today is not a day to worry about me, Major."
Then, after Falman and Fuery had piled into the back seat, the General added under the hum of the engine's turning over, "Today, let me worry about both of us."
She would worry. It was her job to worry about him, but it was also her job to obey, so she nodded.
It was a short trip to Headquarters, and when they arrived, the General gave Falman and Fuery several large bills and instructions to return with bottles of liquor. "I'd prefer fewer bottles of higher quality," he told Falman. "I trust you."
When the guard stopped them and asked for identification, the General complained while pulling out his card. Then he gave explicit instructions to allow Rebecca in. "She's a civilian, but she'll be arriving with Captains Breda and Havoc. Are they allowed in?"
The guard said anyone with proper clearance was allowed in, then he asked the General to fill out a document describing Rebecca and giving his explicit permission for her entrance. The General grumbled about the ridiculousness of the situation while he signed the bottom, and then he marched down the limestone avenue.
"I'm sorry," Riza said.
The guard waved a hand. "It's alright, Ma'am." He handed her card back to her. "It hasn't been an easy week for anyone."
No, it hadn't. She hurried after the General, but he held up his hand before she could say anything.
"I already know," he said. "I shouldn't get mad at him for it."
"Central will lift it eventually," she said.
He cleared his throat. "Speaking of Central," he started as they climbed the wide stairs. "You don't have to come on Sunday."
It was kind of him to say, if wholly untrue. She did have to. Wherever he went, she would go with him.
"I mean that the trip changed at the last minute," he continued. "You could take another week, if it would help."
She shook her head. "No, thank you, Sir." He had never needed to ask if she would follow him, but he always did, and she always would.
"This trip will be its own sort of hell, I suppose," he said.
They passed the remainder of the walk to the office in silence, and she thought it was good of him to act and speak with such normalcy. There was a comfort and a reminder in routine and predictability. The world continued, and if she continued with it, she would be fine.
He held open the office door for her and murmured, "Damn, I should have specified brandy."
Riza had faith that Falman and Fuery could find bottles of something that would meet the General's standards. As for the brandy… "You have a bottle in your desk," she reminded him as she entered the empty office.
His eyes narrowed, and he held her gaze. The ticking of the wall clock softened the silence between them. Then he said, "I didn't realize you knew about that."
She tilted her head to the side. Of course, she knew. She remembered his receiving a bottle from the Führer after another commendation. She knew he stored it where he kept his research notes, behind the false back of his desk cabinet, safe from standard inspections and nosy subordinates. She had not needed to see him place the bottle or seal the panel with alchemy. His habits were old, familiar companions to her.
The General rolled his shoulders. "Well, let's go break it open."
She followed him into his office, and he bent behind his desk and was briefly illuminated by sparks as he unsealed the wood panel. Through the window, she could see the fog lifting from the courtyard. How many times had the General sat under the tree in the northeast corner and tried persuading Black Hayate to eat a treat?
She bit her lip as a new wave of sadness hit her, but she could not cry. Instead, she leaned her head against the window frame and took slow breaths. She needed to hold herself together until she was home and alone. There would be no puppy to bury her face into, no one waiting for her, no one to give her happy kisses to cheer her up.
"Are you sure you'll be alright by yourself?" the General asked.
Riza turned her head and looked at him. Worry creased his brow as he watched her in return, and one of his fingers tapped an unsteady rhythm on the cork of a glass bottle. He had asked the question once before, or one like it, at her father's funeral, just before he had left her.
He was saying goodbye again. He had planned everything that morning as a different sort of farewell, one that had more to do with laws than with loss. Part of her wanted to be angry with him for it, for acting like he was giving her room for grief when he was, in a sense, giving himself his own catharsis. She knew, though, that the reasoning was irrational. She knew he cared for her.
He trusted her.
So she told him what she had told him years before, "I'll be fine." He needed her to be fine, so she would be.
He left the bottle on his desk and joined her at the window. "If you need anything…" He trailed off before he could say something they would both regret. He couldn't offer her anything without crossing lines.
"I know, Sir," she said. Riza looked back out the window. He was her commanding officer, and that was all he could be. He could not be her friend, no matter how naturally it came. He certainly could not be her lover. They could take care of one another, but too many rules dictated what sort of care they could offer.
Yet he gave her more than he knew, just by standing with her there at the window.
Voices sounded from the main office, and the General whispered, "They're here."
Riza nodded, but she did not want to leave. How could she, when she did not know when they would be able to share their silence again? They were close enough that they could touch. If she breathed deep and closed her eyes, she could smell the chamomile from his shaving cream. Warmth radiated off of him, and she wanted to live in that warmth. To hold and be held.
Those things were not hers to want.
She nodded again, and together they left the private office to join the rest of their comrades.
Havoc held the attention of the other three men with a story about Black Hayate and a pig and a milk truck. Riza knew the story, though Havoc was adding his own embellishments, so she joined Rebecca against the wall.
Rebecca stared into a coffee mug full of dark brown liquor and grimaced. "You want this?" she asked Riza. "The smell alone is making me nauseated."
Riza took the mug and set it on a nearby desk. "Why did you pour one then?"
Rebecca sighed. "I have a compulsive need to be part of a pack." Then she put a hand on Riza's shoulder and said, "Do you want to stay with me for a few days?"
Riza shook her head. It felt nice, letting Rebecca and the General take care of her, but she could not impose on their kindness. "I'm leaving the day after tomorrow, anyway."
"Should we get a photograph?" Falman called, and the room hushed. "This might be the last time for a while we're all together in this room." He shrugged. "Unless General Armstrong lets me come back again."
Breda cleared his throat. "About that." He took a deep breath, "I'm moving to Central."
The statement hit Riza like a slap. The room twisted around her and her stomach dropped. Breda continued, "I'm leaving service to do intelligence work full-time."
"We both are," Fuery added. "Two weeks."
They would be gone before she returned, then, and she doubted they would have time to meet while they were all in Central. She would come home to an empty apartment and a half-empty workplace. The realization clawed at her skin and made he feel almost nauseated.
While Havoc and Falman and Rebecca offered their congratulations, Riza looked to the General for an explanation. In the way his eyes flitted away from hers and toward Breda and Fuery, she saw that he had known. He might have encouraged it. She did not understand his thinking. It bordered on insanity. The last time their entire group had been separated, it had been a threat. And with the election fast approaching, why would he not keep all of them as close to him as possible?
"Human Resources should have cameras," Havoc offered, and he grabbed a telephone so he could order one sent upstairs.
Havoc, balancing on one crutch that day, approached Riza and Rebecca and said, "Listen, Major—"
"Therapy's going well," Rebecca said.
Havoc grinned and nodded at his crutch. "Yeah, it's great. I want to be completely off of these by the time he wins the election." Then he looked at Riza and said, "Major, you can't quit."
Riza leaned back from him. What a statement. "I wasn't planning to."
He held up his free hand. "I know, but you really can't. You can't leave me alone in this building. You can't leave me alone with…" He looked to where the General was laughing, probably at one of his own jokes, and finished, "Him."
The General turned and grinned at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and she said, "I'm not quitting, Havoc." She would probably spend the rest of her life working for the General. She knew no other way forward.
The office door opened, and a very harried soldier with a camera stepped into the room.
"Perfect," the General said. "Get a photograph of all of us."
Riza obeyed his direction to stand against the white wall, and the team followed suit. She thought that at least in black and white no one would notice that her skirt still had dirt on the hem.
Rebecca declined the General's invitation to join them, claiming she had never worked for him anyway.
They fell into almost natural positions, Havoc and herself on either side of the General, with Fuery on her other side. Black Hayate's absence between them brought on another bout of despair, and when she glanced at Fuery, who looked at the floor and then at her, she knew he felt it too.
"Are we smiling?" Breda asked from Havoc's other side.
Riza turned her head and found that the General was looking at her, asking what she preferred. She nodded.
"Yes, smiles," he said. He turned to face the soldier and Rebecca, who watched them all with a critical eye. "Pretend you like each other."
It was such an overused joke, and it had been long before the General had first used it, yet it made her smile with familiarity and comfort. She had loved all of these people for so many years, and she would think about that instead of saying goodbye.
She squared her shoulders and waited for the flash.
"Well," the General said after it was over and Rebecca was ushering the young soldier from the office, "I'm actually going to get started with my work. My adjutant has the day off today, but I think she'll kill me if she finds out I did nothing all morning."
The men chuckled, and Breda knocked Riza with his elbow.
As the General passed her to go into his office, he said, "See you Sunday." He closed his door before she had time to protest.
Breda left soon after, citing a need to continue his investigation. He told Riza farewell because neither of them knew when they would meet again.
The others slowly returned to their work, and Rebecca asked her, "Are you ready to go?"
Riza nodded.
Rebecca put a hand on her back. "Come on. I'll drive you."
Leo's and Rebecca's automobile had clean leather seats and always smelled new, even after two years. She wondered as she sat in the passenger's seat, if their automobile in the South was the same, or if this one only retained its newness due to lack of use. Though they kept a flat in East City, the couple spent most of their time working in the South or travelling outside the country.
Riza wondered what it must be like, owning something whose only purpose was waiting until she decided to use it again. She did not have to wonder, she reminded herself. She still owned a large, decaying estate in the country, and she never visited. It was not the same as owning a vacation home, she supposed.
"I can come in with you," Rebecca offered as she pulled up in front of the apartment.
Riza looked at the heavy front door to her building and felt her stomach sink. She might open the door slowly, so as to not hit Black Hayate, out of habit, and he would not be there, and it would all be real again. She did not know how she would react, and she could not subject Rebecca to that. So she said, "No, I'll be alright."
Rebecca leaned across the bench and hugged her and whispered that she should call if she needed anything, anything at all.
It was quiet when she entered the building. All of the other tenants had left for work.
She rested her hand on her doorknob. She should open the door quickly if only to prove to herself that she could. She turned the knob and pushed hard.
No black and white face waited for her, no eyes stared at her, no quiet bark greeted her. Her flat was empty.
She felt heavy and numb, like every bone in her body weighed her down and kept her from moving.
Perhaps if she made a pot of tea, she would begin feeling better.
She trudged to the kitchen, each step harder than the last, and put the kettle on to boil. She crossed her arms on the counter while she waited. When the kettle whistled, she turned off the burner and went to the cabinet where she kept the bags of tea, but she tripped over something on her way.
She looked down at her feet where she had managed to kick over an aluminium bowl and spill a little dried food across the floor.
He hadn't finished his dinner.
She stared at the scattered bits. She should clean them up. She should get her broom and sweep and clean them up, and then she should throw out the half-full bag and the bowls and the leash and all of the toys.
She needed to lie down. She needed to leave the bowls and the kettle and just lie down.
So she sidestepped the food on the floor, walked into her bedroom, and fell onto her unmade bed. Then she pulled the covers up over her head and hugged her pillow tight, as if the case stuffed with down feathers could lick her face to assure her that everything would be alright.