I don't own FMA.

Companion piece to chapters 22 & 23

Theme: Betrayal

-:-:-:-

She kept reminding herself of Roy’s words, telling herself that tomorrow would be the day he snapped out of it.

When she returned home from school and the plates of food she'd left out for him remained untouched for the second day in a row she took dinner to him in his study.

He was on his hands and knees on the floor, mumbling to himself as he wrote a strange text around an intricate array he’d drawn on the cement floor.

All the rugs had been thrown aside haphazardly, books laid open, scattered across various points of the array, so unlike any array she’d even seen before.

“Father, you need to eat,” she implored, planting her feet in his line of view.

His gaze traveled from her feet to her eyes, but from the glazed over look of his eyes she doubted he really saw her. “Almost done, almost,” he murmured.

She sighed and put the tray over the blank spot it looked like he was going to fill next.

Before she went to bed, Riza cracked the door of the study to see if he’d eaten.

He was hunched over a spot of text in the array. He studied it carefully, spit on the cuff of his robe, and then erased a word.

She spotted the tray on his desk. The food didn’t seem to have been touched, but the glass of water had been emptied. She looked back to him and he was replacing the word he’d scrubbed out with another one. She heard him mumbling and hoped he was reading the strange text, not talking to himself.

-:-:-:-

When she woke, she looked into his study as she passed it by, and he sat snoring in his chair.

She took her time fixing eggs and toast for breakfast. He was awake when she entered his study with another tray. He looked up from the paper on his desk and smiled at her.

Riza was startled by the smile, but didn’t let it show.

“How would you like to help me?” he asked as she picked up the dinner tray and replaced it with one laden with breakfast.

“With alchemy?” she asked, caught off guard.

He nodded.

“Sure,” she agreed, and he smiled at her again, a smile that reached his eyes, a smile like the ones she remembered, like the ones in pictures she’d stowed away from before her mother’s death. A warm pleasure pulsed through her veins, made her skin tingle, made her smile back at him, made her believe Roy’s words.

“Really?” he asked.

“Mhm, I promise.”

“Do you have school today?”

She nodded.

He pulled open a drawer and she could see him silently counting out money. “Here,” he said, holding out a red pouch to her.

She moved the tray from the night before to her side, holding it close against her waist, and took the money with her free hand. Her eyebrows shot up at the weight of it.

“I need ink, lots of ink.”

She nodded again.

“As much as you can buy with that, black preferably, but it really doesn’t matter if it’s all the same color.”

She nodded. “I’ll get it on my way home from school,” she promised.

“Good girl,” he murmured as she left his study. He moved the tray of breakfast over, it was blocking his view. He looked between the array on paper and to the one on the floor. He noticed part of it had smudged, and he wasn’t sure if he had done it or if she had, but it needed to be fixed. He pulled a fresh piece of chalk from a drawer and carefully lowered himself to the array, making sure his hands didn’t hit the floor at the same time.

“Can’t put it here,” he mumbled. “Not on paper either,” he argued with himself. He couldn’t see how he could keep this information so easily accessible to any alchemist that wandered by in the future. A giant array on the floor could be discovered and even destroyed just as easily as on paper.

He fixed the array and shuffled back to his desk.

“But where? How?” he asked the plate of scrambled eggs.

He heard the front door creak shut and was hit with inspiration.

With the agility he’d had in his younger days, he jumped up from his chair and ran to the kitchen. He pulled open drawer after drawer, shaking his head at the silverware, but grabbed a handful anyway. Through the cupboard he went until he found the glasses. He pulled them one by one out of the cupboard until it was nearly empty.

Then, he climbed up the stairs and made his way into a room he’d avoided for years on end. He hoped the boy hadn’t been so heartless as to throw all her things out when he’d told him to clean out the room, and after much knocking and stomping on floorboards, he found a couple loose pieces of wood when moving the bed aside.

He gingerly lifted the floorboards and found a stash of his wife’s things under them. He marveled at the boy’s ingenuity, the little cubby hole had been made with alchemy in the layer of cement that made up the floor of the second story.

He found her sewing needles and paint brushes mixed in the first box he opened. Not bothering to put things back in order in the room, he took the entire box with him down to the kitchen. With a strange gleam in his eyes, he loaded the glasses and silverware into the box.

Its contents clinked together as he rushed to his study, not caring if they broke.

He quickly cleared his desk, putting everything on the floor beside it.

After a quick study of the needles, glasses, and silverware, he pulled the chalk from his pocket and drew an array on his desk.

He dumped the gathered glass, needles, and silverware into the middle of the array. When the light died down he smiled at his finished product.

-:-:-:-

When she got to the dirt path leading to her house, she turned to the boy following her. “Thanks, Terrence, I didn’t realize they were going to be that heavy,” she said, and held out her hand for the paper bag he held.

“I’ll walk you to the porch,” he offered and walked past her before she could protest.

Riza rolled her eyes at her classmate’s insistence.

“Really, you didn’t have to, thanks” she said once they stopped at the stops to the porch.

“It’s my job,” he said, going red in the cheeks as her hand touched his when taking the bag from him.

“I’m sure you don’t usually go this far on deliveries.”

“For you, I don’t mind,” he flirted.

Riza couldn’t help the blush that rose to her cheeks. No one had ever been so direct with her. “Uhm, well, I’ll see you next week,” she said and rushed up the stairs to the door.

“Have a good weekend,” he called as she closed the door behind herself.

Riza shook her head at the flutter in her stomach as she made her way to the kitchen.

She had to glance at the drawers and cupboards twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. The cupboards and drawers hung open as if someone had been searching them for something.

“Father?” she called, running to his study. “Father?”

The room was dark, but she could see him at his desk. “Father,” she said through a relieved sigh.

“Your back, did you get the ink?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes, but dinner first or else it might be hours before we eat,” she demanded, and then turned away and left him there.

She was closing the cupboards when he shuffled into the kitchen.

He was removing everything from the bags when she finished. “No black?”

“No, Mr. Leck wouldn’t let me buy out the entire stock of it for fear that he’d loose business,” she explained.

“Red’s good,” he murmured as he held the glass inkwell up to the light. The liquid gleamed the color of blood in his hands.

He put the ink back in the bag along with the rest and looked into the bag of food, his mouth watered and stomach grumbled.

“We’re having chicken salad, and I got a loaf of fresh baked bread,” she told him.

“It’s still warm,” he commented as he pulled the bread out of the bag it sat in by itself.

She nodded.

“Can I help?” he asked.

Riza looked over at him with concern. “You don’t have to,” she told him while he pulled the vegetables out of the other bag.

“I want to…I may not have cooked in a while, but I’m still as capable as they day I started teaching you,” he explained.

“You could chop vegetable for the salad,” she suggested as she found a knife for him to use.

“I could do more,” he volunteered as she handed the knife to him.

“There isn’t much else to do. The chicken has been marinating all night in the refrigerator,” she explained.

“Oh,” he said, at a loss for words.

The chopped up chicken sizzled as she dumped it into the heated cast-iron-skillet.

Her eyes followed his hands as he reached for his robe pocket.

“Father,” she pleaded.

“It’s faster with alchemy,” he remarked, but his hand went to back to the knife instead of his pocket.

“It won’t take any longer than cooking the chicken,” she said. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she looked over at him anticipating a scolding for talking back to him.

When he just laughed, she relaxed, but not completely. He was acting strange, and she wondered if something had happened while she was at school.

An hour later, they both sat at the table and ate the chicken salad with slices of buttered bread.

She smiled as she ate, marveling at the fact that he was actually at the table with her.

When he finished, she took his plate for him.

“Don’t worry about the dishes, what I need to do will take all night,” he told her as he followed her into the kitchen to grab the bag of ink.

She plugged up the sink and filled it with soap and water to at least soak the dishes. He drummed his fingers on the counter while waiting, but didn’t show his impatience any other way.

He heaved a sigh of relief when she followed him to her study.

He turned on all the lights in his study as they entered, and then scooped an old button up shirt up from his desk.

“Go put this on,” he ordered.

She took it and made her way out of his study.

“Backwards,” he called.

She shook her head, wondering why he would possibly want her to wear the shirt backwards, but didn’t question him.

He worked quickly to unload the bag of all but one inkwell and transmute the ink into his creations which he stowed carefully back away in the bag.

When she returned wearing the shirt backwards, he was pushing the sofa close to his desk so he would have to best light in the room. She hurried over and helped him.

“Lay down on your stomach,” he told her, and she did.

She started to doubt him when he unbuttoned the shirt and then unhooked her bra.

“Father?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“It’s okay, I just need your back for a little bit,” he reassured her.

Something cold and wet was one her back, she squirmed.

“This’ll go faster if you hold still,” he said patiently.

She nodded.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him reference a paper on his desk every couple of minutes.

“Beautiful,” he muttered to himself as he placed the thin paintbrush on his desk.

She started to sit up, but he held her shoulder in place.

“That was just the guidelines,” he told her.

She didn’t understand. Guidelines for what? She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until he shoved a paper into her view.

“For this, my greatest creation, the most destructive, yet wonderful alchemy ever,” he proclaimed.

“Father?” this time a plea as she saw the vial filled with ink attached to a thick needle that he pulled out of the bag.

She hadn’t noticed the little, spare generator beside his desk until then.

“No,” she said as he hooked it up to the generator.

A churring sound filled the room as the needled worked up and down, a drop of ink fell from its tip onto the desk.

“You promised you’d help,” he reminded her.

“I-I didn’t know,” she stuttered.

“Promised,” he repeated, using all the strength he could to keep her from rising off the couch.

“Father,” she begged as he brought the little machine to hover over her back.

“Promised,” he roared.

A sob escaped her lips as the needle touched her back. Not physical pain, not yet. Just the feeling of betrayal that twisted her insides, burned her throat, and made her regret having had dinner first.

“Hush, and don’t move,” he demanded, applying more pressure to the shoulder he held down.

She bit her lip against sobs when the pain started. She tensed her body against the needle, but that only intensified the pain.

He pulled away to get another ink filled machine. When her eyes followed his hand, he brought the machine closer to her face. He tapped a piece of metal wrapped around where the needle and glass met. “There’s a coil in there, it takes the electricity to a little gear that moves the needle,” he explained.

She puked on the floor. He cursed, pulled her hair as it came loose from the hair band that had been holding it in a bun.

“Put your hair back up,” he demanded, but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t help him. She was still puking.

He hurried to the desk drawer he’d pulled money out of earlier and quickly found a pair of scissors.

He gathered her hair into his ink-stained hands and pulled it tight.

“No!” she screamed.

“You should have put it up when I asked,” he hissed.

She tried to sit up, but he used his elbow to hold her down while he cut through her hair as close to her head as he could get.

She wailed in protest and he threw the hair across the room. It scattered across the chalked-on floor and shone in the lights he’d turned on hours ago.

She cried in silent tears, she would have sobbed, but the pain that ran through her body as the sobs jolted it hurt too much, she was too weak for anything more than the silent tears.

“You’re horrible,” she growled weakly.

“You promised,” he snapped.

“Not to this,” she whispered. “Never to this.”

“You’re my daughter, my flesh and blood, mine to do as I see fit with,” he murmured into her ear.

He pulled away and laughed.

She broke at that maniacal laughter. That wasn’t her father, that was just a shell, a monster only pleased with completing research. Roy Mustang had lied, her father had lied, and her mother had lied. It wasn’t going to be okay.

She screamed as her back stung with the touch of the needle. The edges of her vision went black. The black crept inward until she couldn’t see anymore. She panicked for a moment, and then her thoughts grew fuzzy and eventually ceased.

-:-:-:-

Her eyes blinked open to pain. Her back teemed with it. Pain like she’d never felt before. A million tiny cuts all merging together.

She tried to push herself up from the couch. Her nose wrinkled at the putrid smell. She remembered and emptied her stomach again.

He started awake at the sound.

“In the bucket,” he shouted, shoving it towards her.

She purposely missed.

“Stay there, I’ll get you some water,” he told her.

She watched him hurry out of the room, stunned. How could he do that to her, and then go for water when she puked.

She was crying when he returned.

“Shh, shh, it’ll be okay,” he cooed. He rubbed her shoulders, but her body only shook harder at his words and touch.

“It hurts,” she whimpered.

“I know, but it’s beautiful,” he reassured her.

“No,” she cried, pushing his hands away as best she could.

He looked at her, heartbroken that she couldn’t be calmed.

He picked up a rag from another bucket and mopped up the puke.

“It’ll only hurt for a couple days, it might itch after that, but not hurt,” he informed her.

She turned her head away from him, buried it in the couch cushion.

He sighed. “I had no other choice,” he told himself more than her.

She didn’t move.

When he finished cleaning the puke, he left the room and returned with another bucket of water. This one he poured on the floor. He used the mop to scrub away the lines of chalk. He couldn’t let anyone discover it unless he wanted them to.

He laughed as he used a match to burn the paper it was drawn on. How ironic, using a match to burn the paper that held the secrets to manipulating fire, he thought to himself.

“One day, you’ll understand I’ve entrusted you with the greatest secret of all,” he told her.

She snorted.

“I’ll put some lotion on it later,” he called to her as he left the study.

She suddenly understood why her father trusted no one. The pain of betrayal was too much. She closed her eyes as hoped for something to happen, for her father’s precious work to be destroyed somehow.

-:-:-:-

A.N. - This turned out differently than I was originally planned, because I somehow lost the file that held the first half of this chapter, and had to start from scratch with the few ideas I'd jotted down in a notebook. Another on the long-ish side. Hopefully I got all the typos, I spent quite a while just re-reading it when I couldn't get to the document manager to upload for reading

Thanks for reviewing: Legendary Chimera, Adelaide MacGregor, JackSparrow589, Hand-Made-City, YourFavouitePlushie, Everystep, RRForever, OTP, Illuminating-Darkness, Alynawatlovers, WargishBoromirFan, RoyxRizaFan, Dailenna, Kannami, MoonStarDutchess, Craziestanimefan, Deniece, Gimpyslair, Winglessfairy25, Everystep, Silvery Mist, Kitsune Moonstar, Sweetdeath04, Bizzy, Momiji-k, Fated Love, Blaze Alchemist, YourFavouitePlushie, MoonStarDutchess, Chou Aoi, Bar-Ohki, WhiteLadyoftheRing, Free Hero, Chibified Indian, Ruingaraf, Mirage992, Chaoticlullaby, Syolen, SilverGothicSweetTooth, Ehxhfdl14, Crystal Mage, Pickles the Great, Animluvr8, Anne Packrat, Kuroxdoragon, Yun Min, The Flaming Bitch Alchemist, Desert-Storm-Cloud, DaEvilGenius, Blaze Alchemist, GoldenViolin127, Jennlyn78, Kasumi_Ryumizu, LittleChemist, and Hunter-Robin.