Work Text:
Riza Hawkeye collects memories.
Well, she thinks, that sounds a bit dystopian.
It would be more accurate to say that she collects photographs, letters, trinkets- anything she can salvage, from any event that made her happy.
Her tiny apartment in the heart of Central City has become a giant, ever-growing scrapbook, covered wall to wall with pictures and empty envelopes; she stores every letter she receives in boxes beneath her coffee table, hangs the doodles Rebecca slips her during the workday on her refrigerator using the magnets that the Elric brothers bought her for Christmas.
Every six months, she goes through the photo albums she keeps stacked neatly, side-by-side on the built-in bookshelf in her laundry room; she tells herself it's for the sake of refreshing the picture frames on her desk, but she knows as well as anyone that she just likes to reminisce.
It's one of those days now, and Sunday morning finds Riza on her living room floor, surrounded by stacks of heavy albums, all open before her. Black Hayate sleeps soundly in his chevron-patterned bed, blanketed by sunlight.
She always starts with her family photos- a small album carries the photos from her childhood. She spends a while looking at one of her mother and father's wedding, aged by time. The edges are tattered and browned, but Riza treasures it all the same- too much to put it out, because the frames on her desk always run the risk of being nosed at and shattered by her hurricane of a dog.
Besides, there are some things that she wants to keep for herself.
She flips over pages that feature photos of herself as a little girl, face smudged with dirt and fistfuls of flowers in her chubby hands; a hastily-snapped photo of her standing at the sink of her childhood home, washing dishes(she knows Roy's handiwork when she sees it, even though she's never labeled the picture). Her mother, standing in front of the house with a baby Riza in her arms, and her father, candid at his desk with piles of papers before him.
Riza closes the album, and does not linger on the feelings that arise when she looks at it, the remnants of her father's humanity. There was so much she would have liked to tell him as she grew up, so much she wanted to learn. There was never enough time; could never be enough time.
With a sharp exhale, a physical action and attempt to expel those thoughts from her mind, Riza moves on to the second-largest of the albums, which teeters precariously atop a tall, mismatched pile. When she flips open the brown cover, a loose program slides out- she picks it up with a fond smile, watching the gold text on the front glint in the yellow light seeping through her window.
It's written in cursive- 'Edward Elric and Winry Rockbell' neatly printed across the thick paper. The gold line around the border is interrupted at the bottom by the words 'Wedding hosted by Rockbell Automail', and beneath that, the alchemical symbol that Riza remembers Ed wearing on the back of his jacket for his entire young life. She grins at the representation- most likely a compromise made at the last minute, if she knows Edward and Winry- and safely tucks the program into the flap it fell out of, doing everything she can to preserve it.
Riza keeps flipping through the album, occasionally pulling pictures. She sets aside one of Ed and Winry's first dance(that will look nice on the shelf in the dining room, she tells herself decisively); another of Alphonse and Ed, smiling wide at the camera; Roy and Ed on the verge of a fistfight, Roy's hair coated in a layer of baby blue frosting. She skims over snapshots of herself and Roy, swaying at the edge of the dance floor with his face in her hair, pointedly ignoring them because she doesn't like to look at candid moments like that one, herself being affectionate toward her superior.
Winry stole her camera during that particular instance, and later claimed that Riza couldn't get mad. It was Winry's day, after all.
The little minx.
When she's satisfied with the few photos she's chosen, she replaces the album in its assigned location(on the bottom shelf at the very end), and puts her childhood album on the main bookshelf, where she keeps it separate from the rest.
The next collection holds a photo of herself and Rebecca at the military academy; she has a rifle slung over her left shoulder, and Rebecca is smiling wide, as she always does. Below that, a snapshot of their graduating class from the academy, all in uniform. Riza sits in the bottom right corner, a service cap perched jauntily on her head and her knees tucked up beneath her.
She studies her own face for a moment, before time began to catch up with her. She's nearing forty now, but she was barely eighteen there, still baby-faced and short-haired. She sees the traces of brown eyeliner on her eyelids that Rebecca hastily applied before they took the photos, and the lip gloss she used to favor making her mouth glisten ever-so-slightly in the camera's flash.
The earrings Roy- Mr. Mustang, to her, back then- gave her for her sixteenth birthday adorn her ears in the picture. She knows that now, they sit in the bottom of her jewelry box, waiting to be worn at work on Monday.
She slides the photo out of its plastic casing and puts it on the pile, choosing, for today, to neglect the rest of the album.
She knows it's full of newspaper clippings about the conclusion of the Ishvalan Civil War, articles about the country's collective relief and photos of the battleground, gruesome as they may be- the burnt buildings and broken bodies of a thousand families.
She knows she has to keep them; she often feels inclined to look at them, to remember how she felt then. To read every column where her name was mentioned, listed among the war's heroes, and to let the weight of everything she did settle on her shoulders.
But not today. Riza does not have to feel that burden today.
Instead, she opens another album, one labeled '1917'. Smiling up at her on the first page she opens to are Ling and Lan Fan, who visit regularly at Ling's insistence(for Lan Fan's sake, although neither of them would admit it). They stand on either side of her kitchen counter; Ling has a donut in one hand and a bit of jelly smeared in the corner of his mouth. Lan Fan, unmasked, flashes a peace sign at the camera while passing him a napkin. She pulls that, too, to add to her quickly growing stack.
Across from it sits an only-slightly shaky picture of Riza and Lan Fan together; Riza has an arm around Lan Fan, who's mid-sentence and half reaching for the camera, looking simultaneously amused and concerned.
She flips aimlessly through the crinkling pages, pausing to chuckle at a photo of Ling, passed out on the sidewalk, and Ed, squatting by his side with one eye closed and his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth(a pose that Riza has never liked; she's always wished he'd just smile for a photo). The next one, which is much blurrier, features a figure that is most definitely Lan Fan- even though her face isn't visible- violently shoving a laughing Ed out of the way and throwing the passed out Prince over her shoulder in the same motion.
The next page is home to a semi-focused photo of Roy, sitting at her kitchen table with a smile on his face. Behind him, in profile, is Ling, his head thrown back in laughter and his arm around Lan Fan, who has her head in her hands- presumably to hide her blush. Riza decides this is one of her favorites and tucks it away to put on her desk.
Toward the back of the album, Winry, Mei Chang, and Lan Fan stand in a row. Winry has both Mei and Lan Fan in headlocks, squishing their grinning faces into her own. She decides that she has to write to all three of them soon; it's been nearly two years since she had all six of the kids in Amestris at once. They've all gotten busy with their respective travels and tasks- in all fairness, Riza has, too, but she always misses them when they're away for too long. It's been ages since she's seen Alphonse and Mei.
Reaching up for the notepad she keeps on her kitchen table, she scrawls a reminder for herself to send letters to Xing and Resembool.
She carries on; sorts slips of paper, flips through diaries and portfolios and ten thousand souvenirs of times past. She skims fond fingers over the much-younger faces of Jean Havoc and Heymans Breda, posing dramatically in front of Eastern Command; she flips past a ten-year old photo of herself and Olivier Armstrong at the Northern and Eastern Summit, noses turned pink from the cold(Riza is smiling. General Armstrong is not); a picture of Alphonse, in a plush armchair, reading aloud to someone she can't see; Mei and Lan Fan chopping vegetables together at the kitchen counter; Ed giving Lan Fan bunny ears, and the subsequent arm wrestling match that took place.
She unearths her mother's recipe box; a binder full of letters, all preserved in hard plastic casing.
Dear Lieutenant Hawkeye,
My friend Riza,
Dearest Major Riza Hawkeye,
Colonel Hawkeye,
Miss Hawkeye,
Miss Riza;
From, Edward Elric. Yours, Rebecca Catalina. Prince Ling Yao; thank you, General Olivier Mira Armstrong; with all the love in the world, Winry Rockbell-Elric. I'll see you soon- Major Roy Mustang.
They tell her they love her; they miss her; they'll write back more often. Olivier tells her to "man up and join us at Briggs". Roy tells her he'll be back in her hometown to visit at Christmas, if everything at school goes to plan. Ed tells her that Winry's alright. Rebecca worries about her sleep schedule.
She doesn't know how this bunch got separated from the rest of her neatly-collected letters, but she doesn't mind the surprise. She decides that the green binder will live on the top shelf in her kitchen, for her to forget about and find another day. It's not worth the trouble of stuffing it in the over-full boxes in the living room, anyway.
After a brief scuffle with a chair, which is half-stuck beneath her dining room table at an angle that only Jean Havoc could accomplish in his dedication to half ass himself into completely screwing things up, Riza sits back on her living room floor.
She rifles through a cardboard bankers' box, full of manila folders of receipts and old work documents- this is the practical part of her morning, the reason she can excuse such blatant dwelling in nostalgia. She writes notes and balances accounts; she remembers she has to call General Mustang to file those reports by Wednesday, otherwise he'll face another chewing-out from Fuhrer Grumman, and she knows the team will never forgive him if he forces them to work a weekend because of his own forgetfulness.
In the bottom of the box, she finds a loose stack of pictures, held together by a blue binder clip. With a frown, she picks up the pile and is confronted by her own face, wearing her military blues and service cap once again, this time adorned with the decorations she received after the Promised Day. She stands arm-in-arm with Roy, who is beaming with pride.
Evidently, she was not as organized as she thought she had been. In the pile, she finds pictures that she hasn't seen in years- Ling and Lan Fan, roughed up, tear stained, cross-legged in grey-green hospital chairs. Havoc and Roy, talking by a window; Roy's eyes, unfocused, looking just past the unshaven Havoc in his wheelchair. Edward and Alphonse with their teacher, Izumi. Al, frail and smiling in a hospital gown. Ed staring down at his right arm, now made of flesh rather than metal. A newspaper clipping of Scar and Major Miles.
At the very bottom, she sees herself, clean of blood, hair loose around her face. She sits at Roy's bedside in a nearly-dark room, holding his hand in hers and pressing it to her forehead; her eyes are closed, and she appears to be speaking to him. Maybe praying.
The picture is crooked, like whoever took it didn't want her to notice them. She doesn't know when she stored this, when she developed it; she can't say that she's ungrateful for its existence.
She smiles a fond smile and leaves the pile at the bottom of the box.
She doesn't need to display moments like these. The memories exist, weighted like concrete, in everyone's minds, and reminders are not always necessary.
However- there is something that lives in Riza's mind that does not mind the ugliness of it all. The bloodstains in her white jacket. She knows that- that something inside her knows- the quiet, the aching, the sitting in dark rooms with nothing but the sound of your own voice, must exist for the good parts to arrive.
She was raised in her father's study, amid books about alchemical principles and the philosophies of altering matter, notebooks upon notebooks filled with transmutation circles and calculations; she understands the concept of equivalent exchange as well as any alchemist.
She puts her boxes and photo albums back on the shelf with careful hands, and when it all looks the way it should- organized by year- she puts the kettle on the kitchen.
She makes green tea with too much honey, as always, and puts it in a teacup trimmed with gold and adorned with flowers. She stirs it and the sounds rouse Hayate, who comes trotting into the kitchen and stretches, front paws on her thigh. She clicks her tongue at him but bends down anyway, cupping his black-and-white face in her callused hands and kissing him on the forehead. He barks half-heartedly and presses his head into the crook of her neck, nose cold, and as she hugs him he licks her beneath the chin. Laughing, she shoves him away.
"Bad dog," she scolds, and her voice does not truly break the silence but makes it warmer.
Hayate follows her into the living room, jumps up onto the sofa where she doesn't like him to be, and falls right back asleep in her lap in an instant, like he'd just been waiting for her to sit down.
The warm weight on her lap makes her sleepy, and she surveys the piles of photos strewn about on her living room carpet. She can't make out any details, only the glint of the plastic in the light. She had planned to finish the process of changing out the pictures in their frames this morning, and maybe do laundry in the afternoon and see about finding a birthday gift for Rebecca- but there are other priorities, like sitting on her sofa in the sun, Hayate asleep on top of her.
She knows Rebecca's been eyeing the necklace in the front window of Manaudou's, anyway, and her birthday isn't for another two weeks.
So, she picks up the book she's in the middle of(something secondhand and philosophical, filled with marginalia from the previous owner), and finishes her tea.