Summary: There was a haze to the features, to memory, to the inexplicable certainty of knowing. They will find each other again.

Notes: Written for Royai week. Mild spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Follow-up to my fusion AU flashfic Winter Soldier.

Warning: Blood, injury, violence

Thing With Feathers

Roy flips the hinge of his pocket-watch back and forth, making her smiling face appear and disappear and reappear, over and over again. One of her rare, radiant, genuine smiles—one of the last times he ever saw her, one of the last memories which he examines now, in fevered silence, waiting for someone to come collect him or silence him or threaten in some way.

"I know what I saw," he whispers to himself, and he's ready, twisting around in his chair as soon as the door opens. "Listen, Hughes, I know what I—"

"Fullmetal confirms it," Hughes sighs, holding up both hands. He crosses over behind his desk as the boy follows him in, shutting the door clumsily.

"Hughes—"

"Fullmetal confirmed your report. As did six other eyewitnesses. Blonde woman, around 5-and-a-half feet, automail left arm, dressed in tactical black."

"It was her."

"Roy—"

"I'm tellingyou, Hughes. It was her."

Hughes drops into his chair heavily, not quite making eye contact.

"Who the hell was she?" Fullmetal asks quietly.

"Riza Hawkeye."

The name alone sends a thrill of hope and nausea straight through him, as Roy speaks in clipped tones.

"We all served together during the Ishvalan War. She was a sniper—a lot of time alone in the field, far from other units. Final days of the war, she disappeared. Not a lot of bodies recovered, so she was listed as killed."

"That was five years ago," Hughes says. "There's no telling who she is now."

"She didn't even know her own name," Fullmetal says, and Roy shoves himself up, pacing the narrow length of floor between Hughes's desk and the door.

"She knew me," he snaps. "She said my name."

"Yeah, she knew my name, too," Fullmetal drawls. "And then she tried to kill me."

"The woman I knew would never have done that—"

"Because she's not the woman you knew," Hughes interjects.

"They must have done something to her!"

"They who, Roy?"

"Whoever took her—whoever captured her at the end of the war, they must have brainwashed her or indoctrinated her or something."

Hughes says nothing, gazing up at Roy with that same awful pity.

"She said my name, Hughes. She knew me. In that moment. She was breaking free of something."

"Well, she didn't break far enough," Fullmetal says, swinging out the stump of his missing limb. "She still tried to kill us both—and almost succeeded. Look, Colonel, whatever your friend was—"

"She can be again!" Roy says, turning to Fullmetal with a hard look. "I got through to her. If I could just get close, figure out what they did to her, what they want—"

"And what if it can't be fixed?" Hughes challenges. "What if getting close just means getting yourself just close enough to be killed?"

Roy stops mid-stride, mouth falling closed, brown knitting. He knows what's being asked, but those words in that order cannot puncture the haze of hope.

"I have to know," he says, mouth dry. "Maes, I have to know."

"And we're supposed to just sit back and watch it happen."

Hughes leans forward and pulls the pocket-watch across the desk, glancing at the picture pasted to the inside.

"Roy..."

He sighs again and closes the watch.

"It's been five years. Still haven't let her go?"

"I can't," Roy says. "Not yet. Not 'til I'm sure."

o.o.o.o.o

She watches the mechanics work on the damaged arm across the room: the same passionless detachment with which she assumes she has always watched. It is hard to pinpoint the knowledge, exactly, but the framework appears in spider-lines behind her eyes—a silhouette in haze that will disappear if she focuses on it. So she must, as always—somehow as always—track in silence the shapes in her periphery. She knows this scenario has played out many times before in many different places. After many different kills.

But she has made no kills tonight—she looks down and curls her flesh hand into a fist. Uncurls, and curls again.

Her target was the boy: blond and diminutive and full of reckless fury. An alchemist with great power, but even alchemists can't dodge every bullet. Her first shot had destroyed his automail arm and by rights should have killed him too. If not for the interloper.

Average in height—broad shoulders and enough muscle to serve his purposes. Black hair and black eyes, and a mouth which narrowed in hesitance—tightened into something close to a frown and etched the corners of his eyes with premature lines. The uniform fit him loose.

He presses down on the cut—presses his hand into her hand, like they are children again and she fell from the weir when he told her over and over to keep back from the edge. He is explaining something to her, lips working over pink-and-white flashes of his teeth and tongue—and she is struck by the impulse to kiss him quiet and then they will be children again—they will be and she will make it so—and then when she kisses him, he does not taste the way every romance has taught her to expect. His hand in her hand makes it somehow okay, though.

Curl, and uncurl. The mechanics have peeled back the thumb-plate to fix the joint beneath.

Blackness is not just night—it is the blindfold they have hastily tied around her eyes and she cannot feel her fingers or flex her hand or anything lower than her elbow and she is so afraid to look but there's more she can't let them see, so much more she must keep from prying eyes and it takes work—it takes hours to wedge the mask from her face and hold the stream of cold over her left shoulder but they were stupid so stupidto leave the watch alone because she gasps and he leans over the bed and she snaps an arm around his neck, waiting for the cigarette to drop and ignite and when they come to find her she is cradling the charred stump of her arm and shoulder and she is screaming with laughter.

"Soldier, turn."

Curl, and uncurl. They lift the arm and approach her. One of them has a cigarette clamped between his teeth, and with her flesh hand, she reaches up and snaps his neck.

She has no concept of time passing. They drag out the body, they return with guns, they lift the automail arm and set it out of reach. Curl, and uncurl. She is watching the floor and sees his boots first.

"Soldier, report."

"Mission incomplete," she says, in a voice roughened by the sandpaper of disuse. "Disruption by state protectors. Two alchemists. Flame and Strongarm. Ancillary targets, distracted by civilian endangerment but familiar with terrain."

"And the target?"

"Target not terminated," she says: passionless. Detached.

Curl, and uncurl.

"Could not be put down."

"Couldn't," he repeats, "or wouldn't?"

Curl, and uncurl.

"Ancillary target Flame," she answers, and something in her chest snaps in half. "Called Soldier a name. Riza."

She looks up and focuses on his one eye.

"I knew him."

His hand cracks across her face, knocking her gaze sideways, away. She is focusing now on the smeared muddy footprint left by the dead mechanic, watching him in the periphery.

"Soldier has no name."

"Has no name," she repeats, licking blood from her split lip.

He takes her chin with one hand and turns her to face him again. Eyes on his boots, but her glance flickers up just once. Her mouth tightens into something close to a frown.

"But I knew him," she whispers.

He drops her and stands, and she watches him turn away.

"Clean slate, gentleman. We have a deadline."

They will reattach her arm afterward, as always. Framework. Spider-lines.

Arm and torso strapped down. She opens her mouth to accept the bite-block.

Curl, and uncurl.

She watches King Bradley leave, a silhouette in haze.