I Don't Know What I Am, But I Am Who I Am

———

A pleasantly sweet scent fills the air; a splash of vivid colors is the first thing Riza sees when she wakes up one morning, sometime after the Promised Day. Her eyes take time to adjust to the striking sight against the backdrop of the hospital’s bare cream wall. Purple, pink, and red flowers sit in a tall glass vase on her bedside table.

Riza doesn’t recognize the kind they are, but they are so beautiful, so full-bloomed that they almost seem like they aren’t real. She finds herself smiling in admiration, then sits up to take a better look—carefully, so that her still-healing body doesn’t ache more. The blossoms’ rounded, delicate petals seemingly form trumpet-like shapes, and they bear hints of yellow, giving the red ones an almost flame-like appearance.

“Lieutenant?”

The Colonel’s voice is quiet, careful. It almost feels like it has been weeks since Riza last heard him speak, but only because it isn’t the same confident tone with which he has greeted the many visitors to their shared room and conversed with the doctors and nurses. It’s a tone she has heard only a few times before, but one she is deeply familiar with. Vulnerable, almost intimate, even. She remembers it best—bitterly—from the Promised Day, when the flames that had filled the tunnel died down and he fell to the floor, asking for her forgiveness.

He waits before he speaks again. “Are you awake?”

Riza doesn’t respond. It isn’t because she hasn’t fully recovered from her injuries yet; while there is a dull ache where her neck had been stitched closed, and speaking takes a great deal of effort, she is capable of short responses. It’s a different part of her that resists acknowledging him, still raw with the heartbreak of witnessing his rage. Her throat aches with the effort of choking back tears.

She lies back down on her bed and looks away from the flowers.

———

Riza witnesses many arguments in their room the next week or so. As the Colonel regains his strength, despite his eyes remaining blind and his hands still largely useless, more and more visitors come by to talk about cleansing the ranks in Central and strengthening ties among the troops from the different regions and moving forward with the restoration of Ishval. He is fiery and fully engaged in each conversation, almost as if they were back in their office and hadn’t just nearly lost their lives in battle.

She prefers this to the tense silence that had filled the room in their first few weeks of recovery. In private, the air had been thick with unspoken apologies and open secrets and things that they have long since accepted could not be addressed with words alone. But in moments that bear resemblance to their old daily lives, there is no burden to figure out what to do next, or what to make of the lines they had crossed in fear of losing everything they have been living for. There is only their work, and the choice to trust each other.

Another week passes, and Riza wakes up again to a vase of fresh flowers by the bed. This time, they come in white, pink, orange, and red, and they have a fainter scent, but Riza finds them just as lovely as the blossoms that had been there before.

“Tulips?”

The Colonel exhales as a small smile forms on his lips. He is lying on his side and facing Riza, his gaze turned vaguely in the direction of the flowers. His eyes are still as blank and cloudy as they had been by the end of the Promised Day, but they are relaxed, almost contented.

“Yeah,” he responds quietly. “I was thinking they would be nice to see in the morning.”

“They’re beautiful.” Riza pauses, then looks up at the tulips again. “That can’t be the only reason you chose them.”

He chuckles. “Well, they’re certainly not for me to look at. But I like what they mean. Pink tulips say that you wish someone well. Orange ones are given to the people you appreciate.”

“I didn’t know that different colors meant different things.”

“They do. White flowers often represent innocence. Or they can mean, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Riza stares at the Colonel’s face as he seems to wait for her response. His expression has turned somber, but there is far less despair than there was when he last offered his apologies. There is concern and longing and a wish that Riza can guess only because she has wished for this too: for things to return to the way they were before.

She rises from her bed wordlessly, then crosses over to his to sit at the edge. He blinks, still not seeing her, but feeling her weight sink into the mattress. His fingers twitch as she reaches for his hand tentatively, no doubt feeling her warmth and the apprehension of crossing yet another line between them.

The Colonel’s hand is rough, made even more so by the uneven scar across the back of it. Riza delicately skims across the raised red lump, his smooth veins, his knuckles, before slowly sliding her fingers into the gaps between his. He squeezes her hand with what seems like great effort on his part, but his thumb is gentle when he runs it over hers.

“What about the flowers you got before?” Riza asks, finally breaking the silence.

“Freesias. They’re a symbol of trust.” He carefully pulls her hand to rest on his chest. “There were many things I didn’t say back in the tunnel. But what I needed you to know the most was that your trust has meant everything to me.” He pauses. “It still does. And it always will.”

Part of Riza has always known this—the same part of her that broke and hurt when she thought that he had lost his way, the part of her that ached to forgive him even when she wasn’t yet able to. Peace settles in her now and drives away what remains of her doubt. She has always known that she would welcome him back, that he would find his way back onto the path they’ve long shared, but she will never admit the reason that she knows all this.

That this moment came is enough.

———

Roy returns to an almost unrecognizable apartment when he is discharged from the hospital at last. He was barely living in it when he last left home more than two months ago, before the Promised Day; he hadn’t even had enough time to sort the few possessions he has. But it isn’t in disarray like he expected, and for a moment, he wonders whether the Philosopher’s Stone had truly restored his vision or had left him with hallucinations.

He steps inside slowly, like he’s careful not to disturb anything. The place is neat and newly dusted; his furniture is all in place, his books sit in straight stacks and his picture frames are aligned, and other small things like his dinnerware and cufflinks are nowhere to be seen, perhaps kept away in containers. It’s as if someone had anticipated his arrival and made sure that he would be comfortable as soon as he was home.

The most curious detail is something he is certain he’s never had in his place before. A small clay pot sits on his windowsill, bearing a cluster of delicate white flowers that are unfamiliar to Roy. He strides past all his things to examine them up close, with their slightly drooping heads and thin, pointed petals. No name comes to mind, and no recollection of ever having bought them or even having seen them before.

Thankfully, he finds a small brown card on the sill next to the pot. It bears a painted illustration of the flowers, with a typewritten label right below that dispels any doubt of how his apartment was prepared for his return or of where the flowers had come from—and all at once, his simple house seems much more like a home than it ever has.

It reads: