The rain was cold and relentless, and she was running.

Her mind was blank, and she was running as if she knew the streets. Running as fast as she could, running so fast that her chest hurt and her legs ached. She didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not until there was silence behind her, and she could still hear footsteps and shouts, so she had to keep going. Had to keep running. She'd run until she bled, until the floor was smeared with vomit, if she had to. She wasn't going back. She'd die first.

No. She wouldn't. Something nagged her, she wasn't allowed to die. She'd clung to that thought through beatings, bright lights, injections, through pain and distress. She didn't know what it meant anymore, but she knew it was something she wasn't allowed to do. So she kept running.

Captain Jean Havoc could think of a million things he'd rather be doing than going to pick up Brigadier General Roy 'I've fallen into a whiskey bottle and I can't get out. Again' Mustang, but somebody had to. Breda had drawn the short straw last time, and Fuery was on a date with a nerdy chick from accounts, so while he had better things to do, it was him or no one. Well, maybe Becca, but that normally lead to bitter screaming matches in the middle of the street, and Havoc wanted that even less.

He couldn't blame the man, not really. They'd gotten their bodies back in working order, they'd saved the country, and Ishval was being rebuilt back to it's former glory, but the cost had been high, and they all felt it like a bitter ache in their chests. The General though, he'd been a broken man ever since they'd been given the news. Sure, he worked hard, but Havoc couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the man crack a smile when he wasn't Acting The Part, or whatever it was she'd called it.

The she in question; Riza Hawkeye, had died two years ago, and nothing had been the same since.

Havoc was lost in thoughts, about Riza, the General, Rebecca, and their grief, when a terrified and bloodied woman run into traffic, causing him to slam on the breaks. Hard.

She stared at him. He stared back.

Long blonde hair was plastered to her face, and her clothes (they looked like surgical scrubs, Havoc thought) were soaked through to the point where they were clinging to her body. There were bruises on her face and arms, and she was splattered in blood, but there was no mistaking those impossibly wide brown eyes.

Riza Hawkeye. The woman who had died on the Promised Day, was alive, and staring at him.

"What the fuck?" He muttered, before opening the car door, and stepping out into the cold rain. How long had she been out in this? She must be freezing.

"Riza?!" He asked.

"Who?" She asked. "Please, I need help. There's… I can't explain, but please?"

There were so many things wrong with this scenario, and if it got him killed then he hoped Rebecca wouldn't hold it against him. He couldn't leave her here though, not when every sense was screaming at him that this was his friend - his sister in arms. Even if it was something else, they'd need to get to the bottom of it.

"Get in." Havoc said, and got back in behind the wheel as she jumped into the passenger seat.

"Drive." She ordered, and okay, the evidence that this was Riza just kept adding up. She used the same tone when giving orders, that's for sure. Still, he did what she asked, and he drove.

The tall man was silent, and for some reason it bothered her. Like he should be chatting, or at least asking her questions. It wasn't normal for women to run out into traffic like that, was it? But something kept him silent, kept his thoughts from becoming questions that she didn't even want to answer, and it was annoying. Still, she was grateful that he was driving her away, and he'd even put the heating on when she'd started to shiver.

"Thank you." She said, eventually. After the silence became too much, and looked far too relieved that she'd started to speak. This was his car, he could've started the damn conversation if he wanted to.

"No problem." He said. "So. What happened?"

Blood. Screaming. Fire. She didn't know what she'd done, not well enough to explain it to a stranger that didn't sound crazy.

"I escaped." She said, as if that was an explanation, which she knew it wasn't.

"Well. No offence, but I can see that." He said. "Fuck, Hawkeye, we thought you were dead, and then you just run out into traffic like that. What the fuck is going on?"

Hawkeye? And what had he called her before, was it Riza? It felt alien, but she mouthed the names to try to get a taste for them, to see if saying them felt familiar, but it didn't. It felt hollow and strange, like the name of a person she'd never met before.

"I don't know…" She said. She didn't know him, she didn't know who this Riza Hawkeye person was. All she knew was the bright lights, and the pain that had been her constant companion for what felt like her life. "I don't know anything."

"Right. Okay. Right." He said. "We're going to get this sorted."

"We?" She asked. "And why? And who is this Riza person? And who are you?"

"That's a lot of questions," He said. "Right. Fine, it's fair, this whole situation is fucking weird anyway-"

Well. She couldn't argue with that.

"Okay, I'm Jean Havoc. Riza Hawkeye - who looked exactly like you - was my colleague." He - Jean - said.

"Colleague?"

"Yeah." He said. "We were in the military - well, I still am - but she died a couple of years ago. Which is why you looking like her is pretty fucking weird -"

"I'm not dead." She said, quietly.

She wasn't dead. She'd clung to life, sometimes with the tips of her fingernails digging into it, holding onto it out of desperation, and she couldn't remember why she'd been so desperate to keep living, other than she didn't want to die.

"I'm not allowed to die." She said, her voice still quiet.

Jean slammed on the breaks, and stared at her in surprise. "What did you say?"

"I - why did you stop?"

"What did you just say?" He repeated.

"I'm not allowed to die." She said, her voice stronger this time and she stared at him defiantly, as if he was one of the people from the lab. One of the people that wouldn't break her - but had they broken her? Had she just forgotten?

"This is so fucked." Was all he had to say, and he started driving again.

He didn't answer anymore of her questions.

Rebecca Catalina was actually used to being dragged out of bed in the early hours of the morning by Jean Havoc, but those phone calls were normally a lot more What Are You Wearing? And a lot less Come To This Safe House And Bring Extra Clothes And A First Aid Kit And Don't Tell Mustang But Oh Shit Someone Needs To Pick Him Up. If this turned out to be some sort of weird sex thing, she was so going to punch him.

Grabbing the duffle bag from the back seat, she made her way to the front door and knocked. The rain still hadn't let up, and she pouted as her curly hair started to get wet. She was holding the bag over her head when Jean opened it, and whatever snarky comment was about to come out of her mouth without thinking died right there on her tongue.

"What is it?" She asked, softly. He never looked this worried, that was normally more Breda's thing. At least it had been since… but she didn't want to think about it. "Is it the General, has he done something stupid?"

"It's not Mustang." He pulled her into one of the rooms off the hallway and closed the door. Okay. Weird.

"So what is it? Did Breda get the idiot home safe?" Rebecca asked.

"Yeah." He said. "Look. This is going to sound crazy, and believe me, I know, but I was driving to pick him up from Madame Christmas's and this woman ran out in front of me and I swear it's Riza."

Rebecca felt like her mind had stopped. The duffle bag fell from her hand onto the floor with a thud and she stared at it. Was that why he needed the clothes? The first aid kit? Was that why they were here? Was Riza here?

"That's… where is she?" Rebecca asked. "I want to see her, Jean."

"Upstairs. She wanted a shower, and she was pretty bloodied up. She didn't tell me what happened but…" Jean shrugged. "Look, Becca, she doesn't remember anything. Not her name, not me, and I mentioned you and… nothing."

The amount of terrible things that could've happened to cause that would've been overwhelming if Rebecca let herself think of them, but she blocked them out and blinked back the tears that were stinging her eyes. She couldn't fall apart. She wouldn't fall apart. If it was her, Riza would keep it together.

"Is that why you called me instead of him?" She accused.

"No. Well. Partly." Jean admitted. "I just think right now she needs someone to patch her up and… be a friend. The General drunk off his ass isn't who we need right now."

Rebecca nodded in agreement, a drunk Mustang was the last thing any of them needed. She picked up the duffle bag and walked up the stairs and knocked on the bathroom door.

"You decent?"

"Um, sure."

It was Riza, sitting on the edge of the tub and wrapped in a towel. A little skinnier, a little more bruised, and some of those scars hadn't been there before, but it was Riza. Rebecca had to physically restrain herself from launching herself at her best friend. Instead she just tried to smile as warmly as possible, and hoped it wasn't coming across like a crazy maniac smile.

"Do you remember me?" Rebecca closed the door behind her with a click and got out the first aid kit.

"No. Sorry. I don't remember Jean either." Okay, Riza calling him anything other than Havoc, that was going to take some getting used to.

"I'm Rebecca, we went to the Academy together." She explained. As if that scratched the surface of their friendship together, the late nights complaining about men, the shopping trips, the bottles of wine and Xingese food they'd consumed by the bucket. "We were friends."

"Oh." Riza said.

"Hey, don't feel bad about it." Rebecca said, and she took Riza's hands in hers. Her fingers her calloused and her knuckles were bruised. Had she fought her way out of somewhere? "Do you remember anything?"

Rebecca rubbed antiseptic lotion over the grazes, and gently inspected her friend's arms, legs and feet for any other cuts. Where she found them, she cleaned them gently, and she listened as Riza started to speak.

"An old house. A man locked behind a door. A boy with black hair. A library. Needles. Sand. Fire. Guns. A dog. A storm. A metal man. And I'm not allowed to die." She listed quietly. Rebecca stared at the floor for a moment, trying to piece it together and also trying not to burst into tears.

"That's something." Rebecca said. "Or at least it's a start. We can help you put it together and get your memories back."

Riza nodded, and pulled the towel around herself tighter. "I was held in a lab." She offered. "I could probably find it again."

Rebecca stared at her, she hadn't even thought about going after the bastards that did this. She'd been thinking about getting her friend back, not sending the fuckers to hell for turning her best friend into a person that looked at her like a stranger. "Good." Rebecca said. "We'll find them, and make them pay for this. But first, let's check your back for injuries."

The fact that Riza had a tattoo on her back wasn't a surprise, Rebecca had seen hints of it over the years, and she'd stopped buying the whole 'scars from Ishval' excuse for avoiding backless dresses about six months after she came back. This, however, was not what Rebecca was expecting. The blood red ink, and burn scars, there was a story here that Riza couldn't tell her, a part of her life permanently etched onto her skin that she had forgotten.

Mustang probably knew about it. She'd seen that symbol on his gloves enough times to know what it meant.

"Do you know what it means?" Riza asked. "The tattoo. I saw it in the mirror but I don't remember. Obviously."

"You never told me about it. It was something private," Rebecca answered honestly. "But Mustang might know."

"Mustang?"

"General Whatever. He was your superior and you guys had a weird history." Rebecca said.

"Right." Riza frowned. "Can I get dressed now?"

"Oh, uh, sure." Rebecca said, and dragged her eyes away from the flame alchemy array on Riza's back. "There are clothes in the duffle bag. Come downstairs when you're ready and we'll have food."

Rebecca left the room feeling more confused than she had when she went in. It looked like Riza, sounded like her, but she never thought she'd live in a world where Riza Hawkeye didn't know who General Mustang was. She'd never been his biggest fan, but that - more than anything else - proved to her how serious this was.

Riza might be back, but without her memories who was she? And where had she been?