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“Mom?”
Riza’s Mustang’s eyes flutter open, and a gentle hand is pressed to her shoulder.
“Mom?”
Riza smiles and glances down at the baby in her arms.
“You know, if you hold him all the time he’s never going to learn to sleep independently.” Dani grins, reaching her arms out.
Riza chuckles as she hands over her grandson. She’s sitting on the screened porch of Hawkeye Manor in an old rocking chair. The moon is high in the sky overhead, and she can hear the crickets chirping, the river bubbling.
“I used to tell your father the same thing about you,” she says, stretching.
Dani smiles, cuddling the baby.
“I’ll see if I can get him down. Do you want some tea?”
Riza nods.
“I’ll make it.”
She pads through the house to the kitchen and turns on the kettle, humming softly to herself. Just as she’s finished fishing mugs out of the cupboard and adding tea bags, Dani re-emerges. Her dark hair is tied in a messy bun at the top of her head, and she looks tired, but happy.
“Baby went down okay?” Riza asks, pulling the kettle from the stove just before it starts to whistle and adding the water to the tea mugs.
“Yeah,” Dani chuckles. “He didn’t even want to nurse; he was really out. Thanks, Mom.” Dani accepts her cup of tea, and the two women sit at the kitchen counter, stirring and sipping.
“How’s Alfred doing?” Riza asks.
“He’s adjusting,” Dani says with a grin. “He keeps groaning that it makes no sense that it’s more than twice as much work with two kids than it was with one.”
Riza laughs softly.
“Spoken like a true alchemist, always trying to break it down into math and science.”
Dani shrugs.
“He’s good, though. We’re both happy.”
Riza nods and smiles.
“And what about Beverly?”
“She’s good. Sleeping in our old room.” Riza gives another contented nod, and they lapse into silence.
“How are you, Mom?”
Riza's smile is soft.
“Oh, I’m fine, sweetheart.”
A piercing wail cuts through the night air, and Dani wrinkles her nose.
“Huh. Yeah, well I know when you’re lying to me, but lucky for you your grandson has great timing.”
Riza chuckles. She gathers up their used mugs as Dani goes to tend to the baby and washes them out in the sink. For a moment, she considers how lonely it is to dry dishes by herself and remembers…
“I don’t mind helping, Ms. Hawkeye, honest. I do it for my sisters at home all the time.”
“You can’t stop progress.”
“I can if it leaves soap scum on my dishes.”
“I think he likes rocking on the porch,” Dani says, bouncing the crying baby as she re-enters the kitchen. “Wanna come sit with us again and try it?”
Riza pulls herself back from her memories and joins her daughter and grandson. The baby doesn’t want to settle, and after a few minutes Riza can’t quite contain herself.
“Can I try?” she asks, holding her arms out.
Dani laughs.
“Anytime you want, please .”
They switch spots, Riza moving back to the rocking chair with the baby where she’d woken up only a half hour before.
“See? There now,” she murmurs tenderly, stroking the infant’s cheek as he settles against her. “Mama shouldn’t have woken us up, hmm? We were just fine. We’re just fine now.”
“You were right…She does get heavy in your arms when she falls asleep, and…it feels wonderful.”
She continues rocking, humming and murmuring to the tiny boy as his little breaths grow deeper and more even.
“Your Father and I loved sitting out here in the evenings,” she says wistfully. “Even when we were younger, before he screened it in.”
Dani smiles, sadly, watching.
“I know,” she says.
“You know, he loved to hold you. I think you attended more of his cabinet meetings the first year of your life than I did,” Riza says with a quiet chuckle. The pain of her postpartum depression during the first months of Dani’s life is overshadowed by more warm memories that float to the surface of her mind.
Roy, holding their daughter on his bare chest, lying in their bed. Singing to the both of them as they lay cuddled in his strong embrace. Dancing with her at a formal ball, the child standing on his feet. His rich laugh. His dark gray eyes.
“I miss him, too, you know,” Dani says quietly, breaking into her mother’s reverie.
Riza opens her eyes and smiles sadly.
“Well, of course you do. It’s only natural to think of him, at times like this.”
Roy Mustang never met his grandson. He’d died, while Dani was pregnant, of a heart attack. Riza figured the stressful lives they’d led contributed. Nobody could ever have said he had a weak heart.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She sighs, meeting her daughter’s warm brown eyes, so like her own.
“I’m getting by,” she says honestly. “Some days are harder than others. I’m glad you’re here, though.”
The Elrics are visiting for only a few days. Alfred’s healing alchemy practice keeps them traveling, and the family goes with him, staying together. Riza is grateful that their travels brought them East.
“You’re lonely,” Dani says, and Riza shrugs.
“Sometimes,” she admits.
“I worry.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“You and Dad,” Dani says, biting her lower lip. “It’s still strange to see you without him. You’ve always been such a complete unit, so devoted to each other. Sometimes I can’t believe he’s really gone.”
There’s no good answer to this, so Riza continues rocking the baby, staring out into the night.
“Sometimes I worry,” Dani continues, with an air of throwing caution to the wind, “that without him you’ll just…give up. Waste away here on your own.”
Riza would be lying if she says it hadn’t crossed her mind in the immediate hours following Roy's death, to follow him onward as she once promised, but …. She shakes her head.
“Oh, sweetheart, no,” she says, quietly. “You don’t have to worry about me like that.”
Dani continues to gaze at her, one eyebrow raised.
She’s far too much like you, Roy. Too perceptive.
Riza sighs deeply.
“Honey,” she says, “I loved your Father more than my own life.”
“I’ve heard you say that so many times. It worries me,” Dani insists.
“No, no, listen.” She pauses. “Your Father and I went through things together that I hope you will never have to understand.”
“I know, Mom.”
“But we decided together, a long time ago, to stop looking for reasons to stay stuck in the past. To look forward to the future, and that’s what I’m doing.” She continues rocking, looking down at the little boy in her arms once again. “I have a full life, even without Dad. I’ll always miss him. In some ways, it’s like parts of me are gone with him, and I’m sure you can see that.”
She looks up, and Dani nods, sadly.
“But I have my gardening club. I’m starting that defense class I told you about.” She recently arranged with the local authorities to teach a class in weapons and basic defense for women, teaching about gun safety, simple hand-to-hand combat skills. “More than that, even if you’re not here always, I’ve got you and Alfred and Beverly—and now our little baby Roy.”
She gently pats the soft black curls on the baby’s head, just like his mother’s and grandfather’s.
“I’ve got plenty of life to live.”
Since her husband's death, a slow sort of epiphany has broken over Riza.
She’s been a criminal for most of her life. Even before she ever committed a crime, living under the thumb of her father’s control, she always felt a sense of guilt. After Ishbal, that guilt had become heavy, a heavier burden than she’d known how to carry alone. She was fortunate she’d never had to try. Even before she'd known how to share it with him, Roy had shouldered the load at her side.
After the people of Amestris and Ishbal voted against conducting war crimes tribunals for the soldiers of Ishbal, a formal treaty was eventually signed, pardoning any service member willing to donate his or her time by working to rebuild, helping refugees, or performing other acts of service—all in keeping with the Ishbalan teachings of restorative justice.
Technically, she is no longer a criminal, but she's always felt like one. Over time, the sense of being guilty faded. These days, as Riza looks back upon her life, the moments she and Roy managed to carve out for themselves together—she feels only a little guilty for what she’s stolen.
Time.
Little moments, over the years, then bigger and bigger chunks of it, until at the end they’d stolen nearly thirty years of marriage. It was a life, Riza knows, she didn’t deserve. And the time that remains to her now, she doesn't deserve, either, but she accepts it gratefully.
Sometimes she still searches her heart and mind for the gut-clenching guilt. The feelings that made her push away her loved ones and any hope of finding happiness. The desire to punish herself and be punished. The sorrow and despair that once convinced her so often that she'd be better off, that it would be better for the world if she were dead.
But it isn't there.
She's been more isolated lately, but for the first time she can remember it's not because she's suffering or ashamed. She doesn't have the same desperate, aching, terrifying needs. She no longer needs constant validation from anyone, because she's found ways to supply it to herself.
Her past can never be erased. But it's not heavy in the same way. She can see now that her whole life has led her towards becoming the person she is now. She can't regret a past that has brought her here.
Perhaps epiphany is not the right word—because it's not world-shaking. It's pleasantly surprising. And peaceful.
She is content.