(no subject)
Title: The Fate You’ve Carved on Me
Author: cinaed
Recipient: likeadeuce
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Riza Hawkeye, Roy Mustang, Berthold Hawkeye, and Rebecca Catalina
Summary: Riza’s relationship with alchemy is complicated. (Alternate universe, pre-canon)
Warnings: Canon character death
Notes: Thanks go out to schlicky for beta-reading this for me. The title comes from “Gravity” by Vienna Teng.
The pale flame flickers in her cupped palms, leaping and sputtering in time with her unsteady breathing. Her hands do not tremble, though they would very much like to.
Riza stares at the flame for a long moment. Here it is, then, all her father’s research brought to fruition. Somehow she’d thought the moment would be more...impressive.
“Riza?” a voice calls from the hallway.
An instant later, the flame is snuffed out, only a lingering warmth betraying that there had been anything there at all. She needn’t have bothered-- there is no time to hide the rest of the damning evidence before her father’s former apprentice enters.
Roy stills in the doorway, his dark eyes widening and his expression going blank with surprise. He is wearing his uniform, the blue shade startlingly bright against the wood door frame. She can only guess at what is going on in his head as he gapes at Riza, the fire-retardant gloves, the alchemy circle, her father’s research notes, but it is a simple enough matter to put two and two together, and Roy isn’t stupid.
“Riza,” he says after a long stretch of silence. An incredulous smile forms on his lips, as though he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. “You....” He trails off, blinking.
Riza has a half-dozen responses on the tip of her tongue, some of them lies, some of them honest. When she opens her mouth to speak, though, what comes out is a flat, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see your father,” he says vaguely, gaze lingering on her gloves. Some emotion is working its way through him; she can see it in the way he bites at his lower lip, how his hands curl into fists and then relax against his sides. At last he lifts his gaze to meet hers.
She’s not certain what she was expecting from Roy, but a rueful grin isn’t it. “Well, that puts a damper on my plans,” he says. “I’ll need to make other arrangements.”
“Other arrangements?” she echoes blankly.
Roy quirks an eyebrow. “On the first day I arrived here, your father complained that if you hadn’t refused to learn alchemy, he wouldn’t have had to bother with this apprentice business,” he says. “If he’s perfected his alchemy and you’ve begun to master it, he certainly won’t pass along his knowledge to me.”
“Oh,” Riza says, a little stricken. She hasn’t thought about what her father will do once he learns that she has deciphered his code and is teaching herself his flame alchemy. Only now does she realize what she’s done. Her father will keep Riza here in this too-large mansion, forcing all his knowledge into her head, confining her here until he is finally satisfied that she knows all there is to know about his flame alchemy.
“I could hide it,” she suggests, knowing it’s futile. Her father will never give Roy his research notes anyway, not now that he’s joined the military and become one of those lapdogs her father so loathes. “You could still ask him to give you his secrets, and I could--”
“You want to lie to your father?” Roy asks. She cannot unravel his tone, whether he is surprised or disapproving or hopeful.
Riza quells the flare of temper that wants to lash out at him. She hides her discontent well, but Roy had been her father’s apprentice for three years before he’d left. Surely he’s noticed that she wants to travel, that she doesn’t want to be trapped here. All the plans she has made for when her father regains his strength begin vanishing like smoke.
“Do you want to lose this chance at flame alchemy?” she asks in return, voice steady.
“Not really,” Roy says with another rueful smile. “I--”
A loud crash interrupts them, and they exchange startled looks before running towards the direction of the sound.
Her father’s bedroom door is shut, but it is the matter of an instant to throw it open and race inside. Her father lies sprawled on the floor next to his bed, unmoving. Did he try to get up? Upon her last visit, the doctor told him to rest for the next few days, regain the strength he lost from his latest illness, but her father has never been one to heed doctor’s advice.
Riza kneels anxiously beside him. “Father,” she says, touches her fingertips to his throat. His heartbeat is weak and unsteady, and his skin hot to the touch, as though the alchemy he has devoted his life to has finally consumed him from within. She looks up at Roy, and the alarm must show on her face, because Roy says, “I’ll fetch the doctor,” and runs.
Left alone, she says again, “Father.” He stirs briefly, murmuring something indistinguishable, and then trails off into silence. Wrapping her arms around his chest, she tugs him back onto the bed, placing him atop his rumpled covers. He is too light in her arms, all bone and skin instead of muscle and fat.
He murmurs again, this time something that might have been her mother’s name, his eyes opening enough that she can see the whites of them. She takes his hand, glistening with sweat, and squeezes it. She is still wearing the gloves, she realizes, but it is too late to remove them. “Father, the doctor will be here soon,” she tells him.
There’s no comprehension in those fever-bright eyes, though, and his eyes meet hers with no sign of recognition. His breath rattles weakly in his chest. Even his coughs are feeble, barely shaking his frame.
She bows her head over his hand. “I performed flame alchemy today, Father. You should have seen it,” she says. The words come out too bright, too brittle, but she cannot staunch the flow of words, desperate to have her father look at her. “When you are better, I will show you. Please, just rest now.”
He coughs again, and Riza flinches at the sudden wetness on her cheek, closes her eyes against the spray of spittle. Then she flinches again, because there is the faint, wet smell of copper in the air. Even before she raises her free hand to her cheek to wipe away the liquid, she knows it is not spit.
“Oh, Father,” she says again, in a whisper.
**
**
After the funeral, Roy takes her back home. He stands there awkward and exhausted in his uniform as she looks at the mansion. She knows every room like the back of her hand, which steps creak and which locks catch. She has played housekeeper to this place since she was seven and her father fired the last maid in a fit of temper after the woman swept away his alchemy circle.
“I will have to sell it,” she says. The doctor’s bills have eaten away most of her father’s savings, and what was left of her mother’s inheritance was given to the undertaker for the funeral. Besides, the mansion was too large for two people; she doubts she could bear its silent, echoing halls with only herself for company.
Roy clears his throat. “Where will you go?” he asks.
“My mother’s father is still living. He might take me in,” she says, thinking of the letter she has yet to write to the general. She has not seen her grandfather in years, but his letters have always come as regular as clockwork three times a year -- on her birthday, on her mother’s birthday, and on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Roy’s brow furrows. “And your father’s alchemy? What will you do with it?”
“Study it,” Riza says. His notes are packed away in her suitcase, along with her mother’s journal and a few pairs of fire-retardant gloves. They are her father’s legacy, for good or for ill.
“Will you use it?” Roy asks. He folds his arms against his chest. “Do you even know the basics of alchemy?”
He doesn’t mean it as an insult-- she can see the worry in his eyes. “Do you think you were my father’s first apprentice?” she asks. “You were simply the one who lasted longer than a month. I’ve learned the basics a dozen times over.”
That lessens the worry, but does not entirely quell it. “And what are you going to do with his research?” he asks.
Riza shrugs. “Father was too worried about the misuse of flame alchemy to see the good it could do. I will become a state alchemist and protect our country.” The military will give her the opportunity to travel and see all of Amestris. Her father might have called them lapdogs, but she knows she will be protecting her nation. The newspaper is filled with descriptions of the border wars. With her father’s legacy, she can help put a stop to the bloodshed.
When she looks at Roy, he’s smiling that lopsided grin of his, the one that makes him actually look his age. “With you as one of the state alchemists, Amestris can’t fail,” he says, and extends his hand. “Good luck. And who knows, we might even see each other around.” When she raises an eyebrow, his grin widens. “I might not be a state alchemist, but I am still in the military.”
She takes his hand, feels the calluses on his fingers. He has soldier’s hands now. She can picture him dissembling and then reassembling a rifle. “Good luck,” she echoes, trying not to imagine Roy on a distant battlefield.
He squeezes her hand for a brief moment before he lets it drop. “Goodbye,” he says.
“Goodbye,” she answers, surprised to feel her eyes prickling with tears as he looks at the mansion for the last time. She blinks once, twice, before the sensation vanishes.
Roy raises his hand in one last brief acknowledgment, and then is gone, disappearing into the back of the waiting taxi.
She watches him go. Then she squares her shoulders. Inside the mansion, her father’s notes are waiting for her. It is time to see what this flame alchemy can really accomplish.
**
**
Alone in her tent, with the flap shut to shield her from the Ishval sun, Riza takes her father’s research and burns it. She watches the papers shrivel and blacken, and there is no satisfaction in it, just bittersweet relief.
Behind her, someone inhales a sharp, shocked breath.
Riza whirls, her hand raised, fingers posed to snap out a flame that will incinerate her enemy. Then she recognizes Rebecca’s familiar sunburned features and stills the gesture. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me,” she says. The sharp tang of adrenaline on her tongue sharpens her words.
Rebecca stares at the burning pile of paper, her expression shifting from surprise to confusion. “I thought your tent was on fire,” she says. “It doesn’t look like I was entirely wrong. What are you burning?”
“Paper,” Riza says, and Rebecca makes a face at her that screams Ha, ha, you’re hilarious.
Then Rebecca’s expression changes, turns into concern. “I...heard about Order 3066,” she says, stumbling over the words. “Are you all right?” She grimaces, as though wishing to take back the ridiculous question. Who could be all right after being ordered to commit genocide?
Riza doesn’t answer the question, just looks on as the last of her father’s research dissolves into ash. She doesn’t move as Rebecca places a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Look, if you need to talk or...or anything,” Rebecca says, “I’m here.”
“Thank you,” Riza says. They both know she won’t, but Riza forces her lips upwards in a weak smile, trying to banish some of the worry from Rebecca’s face.
They stand there, silent, for a moment. Then Riza takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. The ash swirls around her feet. She can see in her mind’s eye Roy’s concerned expression as he asks her what she’ll do with her father’s research, hear her father’s voice in her head snarling about the abuse of his precious flame alchemy.
She turns her hand over, rubs her fingers together until a small flame dances in the palm of her hand. It is such a small, insignificant thing, she thinks, and almost laughs. It would be a pained sound, she knows, and so she closes her mouth on the laughter.
“Lieutenant!” someone calls from outside. There is the distant sound of gunfire. “You’re needed!”
“Riza,” Rebecca says when Riza makes no move to leave the tent.
“Right,” Riza says, and closes her hand around the flame.
Author: cinaed
Recipient: likeadeuce
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Riza Hawkeye, Roy Mustang, Berthold Hawkeye, and Rebecca Catalina
Summary: Riza’s relationship with alchemy is complicated. (Alternate universe, pre-canon)
Warnings: Canon character death
Notes: Thanks go out to schlicky for beta-reading this for me. The title comes from “Gravity” by Vienna Teng.
The pale flame flickers in her cupped palms, leaping and sputtering in time with her unsteady breathing. Her hands do not tremble, though they would very much like to.
Riza stares at the flame for a long moment. Here it is, then, all her father’s research brought to fruition. Somehow she’d thought the moment would be more...impressive.
“Riza?” a voice calls from the hallway.
An instant later, the flame is snuffed out, only a lingering warmth betraying that there had been anything there at all. She needn’t have bothered-- there is no time to hide the rest of the damning evidence before her father’s former apprentice enters.
Roy stills in the doorway, his dark eyes widening and his expression going blank with surprise. He is wearing his uniform, the blue shade startlingly bright against the wood door frame. She can only guess at what is going on in his head as he gapes at Riza, the fire-retardant gloves, the alchemy circle, her father’s research notes, but it is a simple enough matter to put two and two together, and Roy isn’t stupid.
“Riza,” he says after a long stretch of silence. An incredulous smile forms on his lips, as though he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. “You....” He trails off, blinking.
Riza has a half-dozen responses on the tip of her tongue, some of them lies, some of them honest. When she opens her mouth to speak, though, what comes out is a flat, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see your father,” he says vaguely, gaze lingering on her gloves. Some emotion is working its way through him; she can see it in the way he bites at his lower lip, how his hands curl into fists and then relax against his sides. At last he lifts his gaze to meet hers.
She’s not certain what she was expecting from Roy, but a rueful grin isn’t it. “Well, that puts a damper on my plans,” he says. “I’ll need to make other arrangements.”
“Other arrangements?” she echoes blankly.
Roy quirks an eyebrow. “On the first day I arrived here, your father complained that if you hadn’t refused to learn alchemy, he wouldn’t have had to bother with this apprentice business,” he says. “If he’s perfected his alchemy and you’ve begun to master it, he certainly won’t pass along his knowledge to me.”
“Oh,” Riza says, a little stricken. She hasn’t thought about what her father will do once he learns that she has deciphered his code and is teaching herself his flame alchemy. Only now does she realize what she’s done. Her father will keep Riza here in this too-large mansion, forcing all his knowledge into her head, confining her here until he is finally satisfied that she knows all there is to know about his flame alchemy.
“I could hide it,” she suggests, knowing it’s futile. Her father will never give Roy his research notes anyway, not now that he’s joined the military and become one of those lapdogs her father so loathes. “You could still ask him to give you his secrets, and I could--”
“You want to lie to your father?” Roy asks. She cannot unravel his tone, whether he is surprised or disapproving or hopeful.
Riza quells the flare of temper that wants to lash out at him. She hides her discontent well, but Roy had been her father’s apprentice for three years before he’d left. Surely he’s noticed that she wants to travel, that she doesn’t want to be trapped here. All the plans she has made for when her father regains his strength begin vanishing like smoke.
“Do you want to lose this chance at flame alchemy?” she asks in return, voice steady.
“Not really,” Roy says with another rueful smile. “I--”
A loud crash interrupts them, and they exchange startled looks before running towards the direction of the sound.
Her father’s bedroom door is shut, but it is the matter of an instant to throw it open and race inside. Her father lies sprawled on the floor next to his bed, unmoving. Did he try to get up? Upon her last visit, the doctor told him to rest for the next few days, regain the strength he lost from his latest illness, but her father has never been one to heed doctor’s advice.
Riza kneels anxiously beside him. “Father,” she says, touches her fingertips to his throat. His heartbeat is weak and unsteady, and his skin hot to the touch, as though the alchemy he has devoted his life to has finally consumed him from within. She looks up at Roy, and the alarm must show on her face, because Roy says, “I’ll fetch the doctor,” and runs.
Left alone, she says again, “Father.” He stirs briefly, murmuring something indistinguishable, and then trails off into silence. Wrapping her arms around his chest, she tugs him back onto the bed, placing him atop his rumpled covers. He is too light in her arms, all bone and skin instead of muscle and fat.
He murmurs again, this time something that might have been her mother’s name, his eyes opening enough that she can see the whites of them. She takes his hand, glistening with sweat, and squeezes it. She is still wearing the gloves, she realizes, but it is too late to remove them. “Father, the doctor will be here soon,” she tells him.
There’s no comprehension in those fever-bright eyes, though, and his eyes meet hers with no sign of recognition. His breath rattles weakly in his chest. Even his coughs are feeble, barely shaking his frame.
She bows her head over his hand. “I performed flame alchemy today, Father. You should have seen it,” she says. The words come out too bright, too brittle, but she cannot staunch the flow of words, desperate to have her father look at her. “When you are better, I will show you. Please, just rest now.”
He coughs again, and Riza flinches at the sudden wetness on her cheek, closes her eyes against the spray of spittle. Then she flinches again, because there is the faint, wet smell of copper in the air. Even before she raises her free hand to her cheek to wipe away the liquid, she knows it is not spit.
“Oh, Father,” she says again, in a whisper.
**
**
After the funeral, Roy takes her back home. He stands there awkward and exhausted in his uniform as she looks at the mansion. She knows every room like the back of her hand, which steps creak and which locks catch. She has played housekeeper to this place since she was seven and her father fired the last maid in a fit of temper after the woman swept away his alchemy circle.
“I will have to sell it,” she says. The doctor’s bills have eaten away most of her father’s savings, and what was left of her mother’s inheritance was given to the undertaker for the funeral. Besides, the mansion was too large for two people; she doubts she could bear its silent, echoing halls with only herself for company.
Roy clears his throat. “Where will you go?” he asks.
“My mother’s father is still living. He might take me in,” she says, thinking of the letter she has yet to write to the general. She has not seen her grandfather in years, but his letters have always come as regular as clockwork three times a year -- on her birthday, on her mother’s birthday, and on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Roy’s brow furrows. “And your father’s alchemy? What will you do with it?”
“Study it,” Riza says. His notes are packed away in her suitcase, along with her mother’s journal and a few pairs of fire-retardant gloves. They are her father’s legacy, for good or for ill.
“Will you use it?” Roy asks. He folds his arms against his chest. “Do you even know the basics of alchemy?”
He doesn’t mean it as an insult-- she can see the worry in his eyes. “Do you think you were my father’s first apprentice?” she asks. “You were simply the one who lasted longer than a month. I’ve learned the basics a dozen times over.”
That lessens the worry, but does not entirely quell it. “And what are you going to do with his research?” he asks.
Riza shrugs. “Father was too worried about the misuse of flame alchemy to see the good it could do. I will become a state alchemist and protect our country.” The military will give her the opportunity to travel and see all of Amestris. Her father might have called them lapdogs, but she knows she will be protecting her nation. The newspaper is filled with descriptions of the border wars. With her father’s legacy, she can help put a stop to the bloodshed.
When she looks at Roy, he’s smiling that lopsided grin of his, the one that makes him actually look his age. “With you as one of the state alchemists, Amestris can’t fail,” he says, and extends his hand. “Good luck. And who knows, we might even see each other around.” When she raises an eyebrow, his grin widens. “I might not be a state alchemist, but I am still in the military.”
She takes his hand, feels the calluses on his fingers. He has soldier’s hands now. She can picture him dissembling and then reassembling a rifle. “Good luck,” she echoes, trying not to imagine Roy on a distant battlefield.
He squeezes her hand for a brief moment before he lets it drop. “Goodbye,” he says.
“Goodbye,” she answers, surprised to feel her eyes prickling with tears as he looks at the mansion for the last time. She blinks once, twice, before the sensation vanishes.
Roy raises his hand in one last brief acknowledgment, and then is gone, disappearing into the back of the waiting taxi.
She watches him go. Then she squares her shoulders. Inside the mansion, her father’s notes are waiting for her. It is time to see what this flame alchemy can really accomplish.
**
**
Alone in her tent, with the flap shut to shield her from the Ishval sun, Riza takes her father’s research and burns it. She watches the papers shrivel and blacken, and there is no satisfaction in it, just bittersweet relief.
Behind her, someone inhales a sharp, shocked breath.
Riza whirls, her hand raised, fingers posed to snap out a flame that will incinerate her enemy. Then she recognizes Rebecca’s familiar sunburned features and stills the gesture. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me,” she says. The sharp tang of adrenaline on her tongue sharpens her words.
Rebecca stares at the burning pile of paper, her expression shifting from surprise to confusion. “I thought your tent was on fire,” she says. “It doesn’t look like I was entirely wrong. What are you burning?”
“Paper,” Riza says, and Rebecca makes a face at her that screams Ha, ha, you’re hilarious.
Then Rebecca’s expression changes, turns into concern. “I...heard about Order 3066,” she says, stumbling over the words. “Are you all right?” She grimaces, as though wishing to take back the ridiculous question. Who could be all right after being ordered to commit genocide?
Riza doesn’t answer the question, just looks on as the last of her father’s research dissolves into ash. She doesn’t move as Rebecca places a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Look, if you need to talk or...or anything,” Rebecca says, “I’m here.”
“Thank you,” Riza says. They both know she won’t, but Riza forces her lips upwards in a weak smile, trying to banish some of the worry from Rebecca’s face.
They stand there, silent, for a moment. Then Riza takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. The ash swirls around her feet. She can see in her mind’s eye Roy’s concerned expression as he asks her what she’ll do with her father’s research, hear her father’s voice in her head snarling about the abuse of his precious flame alchemy.
She turns her hand over, rubs her fingers together until a small flame dances in the palm of her hand. It is such a small, insignificant thing, she thinks, and almost laughs. It would be a pained sound, she knows, and so she closes her mouth on the laughter.
“Lieutenant!” someone calls from outside. There is the distant sound of gunfire. “You’re needed!”
“Riza,” Rebecca says when Riza makes no move to leave the tent.
“Right,” Riza says, and closes her hand around the flame.