Mother Of Shitposts

“What do you want from me, exactly?” she asks, ignoring the shade of her father as he steps into the middle of the clearing from seemingly nowhere but in reality from the dark depths of memory. He’s as he was not when she saw him last - frail and dying, confined to his bed - but as he was during Roy’s tutelage. He is stern and sinewy, but with a spark still in his gray eyes. Interesting that this is the version of her father that the transmutation brought forth - him at his most content. “If you think you’re getting anything out of me about alchemy-”

“Well that’s where I have a slight confession to make,” Rainer tells her. “You may have been under the impression that I’m here to extract some information from you, correct?”

“That’s usually what an interrogation entails,” she says warily, hand on her gun even though there’s no reason to believe it will do any good.

“Do you know - well, you couldn’t possibly,” he amends. “I tried to become a State Alchemist. Several times, of course, as most do, but I’ll never forget the first attempt. It must have been 1905, 1906 when I came to Central City with my dreams and notes. ‘The Slumber Alchemist’, that’s what they’d call me. My skills weren’t as fine-tuned then as they are now but nevertheless, I put all of the Fuhrer’s guards to sleep in minutes. The only problem was that they woke up again.”

“So you needed to figure out a way to keep them asleep,” Bethold fills in, and Riza looks at him aghast, because that was the thought already forming in her mind. But of course he’s only an echo, he isn’t real, and she needs to stay sharp and learn what Rainer wants from her.

She hopes that he does in fact want something, as she’s officially in over her head.

“Correct,” he continues smoothly. “So I did that, and came back, and was rejected again. And again. But what really stuck out to me the first time was that nobody even paid attention to my admittedly underwhelming show. No, they were all talking amongst themselves and I later discovered why - the man directly before me had done something unprecedented, flashy, and with great potential.” Riza’s mouth is dry and she squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes, someone had conjured fire from thin air.”

She turns around, thinking the very sight of the General will reassure her but there’s no one but Havoc, standing at parade rest, hands crossed over his gun as though he’s at ease although she can tell even from here that every muscle in his body is tense, alert. The hairs on her arms stand on end as she realizes that something happened outside of her dream bubble, something drew the others away. Havoc is her guard, although she knows that the only thing she needs to be guarded from is in here with her.

“What do you want?” She asks again, venomously, when she turns back around. “I’m no alchemist. Even this trick,” she gestures vaguely at Berthold, “isn’t going to make me able to tell you something I don’t know.”

“I went back to Central City six months ago,” he continues, as though he hadn’t heard. “To try again with the new regime. And do you know what I was told?” She does, as it happens, or at least she can guess, but she waits for him to continue. “I was told that they are taking on no more State Alchemists. That during peacetime, they are only giving grants to very select branches of research, biomedical and the like, but that State Alchemists are being phased out.”

“And so you’re getting revenge on everyone who was given the title,” she says bitterly, and he smiles, mouth closed, eyes unchanging.

“I’m helping to phase them out.”

“Those other homes that were broken into,” she says, “you killed them.” She hadn’t heard of a death in any of the team’s reports, but it’s possible they weren’t informed.

“Not quite,” he counters. “I simply did this,” and he gestures towards her body, suspended mid-fall, and she understands in a flash. “If they were all such brilliant, capable alchemists then surely they would be able to free themselves from a simple transmutation net? Alas, none of them have succeeded. I wonder if your Flame Alchemist will be able to?” Riza can’t help it, she draws her gun and holds it up, shaking although her hands do not waver.

“He’ll never fall for something like this,” she hisses.

“I thought that too, at first, but chances are greater if he’s thrown off by something like, say, his right hand woman being incapacitated,” and there it is. She’s a pawn, again, in the General’s undoing. “He may be a great alchemist but what good is he really when his adjutant is locked in her own mind, tormented by her demons.” She drops her weapon entirely and it vanishes before it hits the floor, no longer tethered to reality by her touch. This is not the first time she has been used against him, and if they get out of this, she knows it won’t be the last.

“He won’t be,” she says finally.

“He may,” chimes her father solemnly. “He’s bright, exceptionally bright, but he doesn’t always think logically when under pressure, does he?”

“Aha,” Rainer says quietly. “Well if you’ll excuse me, my accomplice should have secured the manor by now and so I’m needed elsewhere.Enjoy your… solitude.” Riza looks up furiously.

“I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to come after you,” she tells him and is rewarded with another mirthless smile.

“My dear, many brilliant State Alchemists failed to escape this exact situation. What makes you think that you, a soldier and a lapdog, will be any different?” He does something then, with the amulet around his neck and the next thing she knows he’s vanished. She whirls to see the other, physical version of him sit up slowly, and get to his feet. He looks back at her, though she’s sure he can’t see her, winks, and strides off towards the house.

“Terrible business,” Berthold says. “If you’d only turned out to have a gift for alchemy.” Riza stands still, fists balled, breathing heavily, fighting the urge to sink to her knees.

It’s all nothing more than a dream, she thinks. And how do you wake from a dream?

-x-

They were on her at once; she hadn’t seen them sneaking up to her post, how could she not have seen them? The ishvalan guerilla fighters were armed with blades, and she got only a single shot off before having to use her gun to block as they rained blows upon her. One man danced past her to bring his knife in, cutting towards her body quickly, too quickly-

She woke in the night with a yell, thrashing wildly before she remembered where she was.

The nightmare had to have come from sleeping in a strange place- she didn’t have them quite so often anymore. She was in a city in the east with the Colonel on an assignment and somehow the Powers That Be at Eastern Command had failed to book a room for the Colonel and his adjutant, resulting in the two of them having to share a modest sized room with a single modest sized bed.

There had been a brief but furious standoff where they each insisted that the other take the bed until Riza, exhausted and annoyed, had simply ordered him into the bed before climbing into the other side herself, close to the edge to put as much space between them as possible. She’d slept soundly until now, and the faint light in the room told her dawn wasn’t far off. There were hands firmly gripping her shoulders that released her as her breathing evened out. She looked over at Mustang, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” she told him, still shaking. He hesitated and then wrapped his arms around her gingerly, ash though she might either break or bolt. She stiffened before letting herself relax into the embrace, leaning her head sideways to rest on his chest, pushing down the distress at how easily the motion came.

“It was Ishval,” she said, unprompted.

“Do you dream about Ishval often?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that she could feel as well as hear. She breathed in time with him, her racing heart slowing back down.

“Not often. Just when I’m stressed, or someplace unfamiliar. I’ll be fine,” she told him, doubting it. More than likely she would be lying in silence until it was time for them to get up, but it didn’t do any good to say so. Unusually for her, however, after a few more moments of breathing in time with him and letting his warmth seep into her she was feeling her eyelids grow heavy. He was sturdy, and rubbing small circles into her back, and the usual heightened tension that strung across her bones after a nightmare wasn’t finding purchase.

“Do you want me to sleep on the floor? Give you some space?” he asked, pulling away as though it had just occurred to him that perhaps their sleeping arrangements were uncomfortable for her. And until now she would have agreed that yes, they were.

But in the predawn light, wrapped in his arms, she couldn’t recall a time where she’d felt more whole.

“No,” she said quickly, before she could think better of it. “You’re helping.” She felt her cheeks start to burn. “What I mean to say is-”

“Understood,” he finished, a trace of amusement in his voice. They both settled back down, close but not quite touching, facing towards each other this time. Nothing more was said, and he seemed to fall asleep first, his breathing slowing and evening out, limbs relaxing. She’d never know afterwards what possessed her, but the world, like her, was somewhere between awake and asleep, basking them in a weak blue light. Shadows pooled in the hollows under Roy’s eyes and she wondered if tonight, sleeping beside her, was the most sleep he’d gotten in a while. She shifted closer, settling an arm across his back,curling into him, filling empty spaces as though they were perfectly fit to each other.

The next morning, neither of them mentioned it, briskly rolling out of bed and into their uniforms. She never could be sure about him, but it was the best night’s sleep she’d gotten in a very long time.  

-x-

In the clearing, Riza paces.

“You aren’t real,” she says firmly to the shade of her father. Neither is she at the moment, she remembers, both of their incorporeal forms standing in the silent clearing. Havoc’s back is turned as he guards her still-suspended form. Berthold blinks slowly and real or not, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Real enough to you. Didn’t I teach you better than to walk into an obvious trap like this? Those circles aren’t even concealed,” he replies, nodding towards the tree. Riza knows it’s her own subconscious berating her but it still stings.

“You didn’t teach me much of anything,” she grumbles, surveying the circles, but she can’t make sense of them. A coma, he’d said. She was sleeping. She reached out hesitantly, fingertips grazing the ends of her own hair, loose around her shoulders, as though she can put herself back in her body like slipping on a coat. It doesn’t happen, however, and she turns back to her father’s silent floating visage. “You can’t even help me,” she says quietly. “You’re a memory - you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

“Seems true enough,” he concedes.

“And yet I’m talking to you anyway.” She tries to step outside the treeline but find that she can’t - the alchemical sigils are forming a barrier, a cage containing her. She half-expected this but it’s still frustrating.

“Can you destroy the circles?” he asks patiently, and she shakes her head.

“I can’t do anything like this, I’m not real,” she exclaims, resuming her pacing. She has always dreamed a often and vividly. More after the war, of course, but those were usually nightmares. When she was very young she would sometimes scramble to tell her mother about the fantasy worlds she entered when sleeping, insisting it was all real until her mother was able to coax her back to sleep. Her father, she remembers, never dreamed, at least not that he could recall. But he slept so seldom that perhaps his body was too worn down even to dream.

“There must be something you can do,” he presses, and she turns on him.

“Maybe I would know a little more if you hadn’t given up on me,” she spits, and the memory of her father looks surprised. “It’s true I’m not a fast learner, but you didn’t have any patience! You wanted someone whose mind worked like yours, and that wasn’t me, but I,” her voice shakes, betraying her. “You never made me feel wanted, or important, but I am both of those things, and I need to get back to my team.”

“To your team, or to-”

“I think I would like it if you left,” she says, closing her eyes tightly. When she opens them he’s gone. Now she can focus, she thinks, blinking hard.

Rainer had said she was asleep - no, not entirely true, he’d said she was closer to a coma. That explains why there was no waking her, a usually light sleeper, when her men where shouting feet away from her. But if trained, accomplished alchemists couldn’t work their way out of this then how can she expect to? She’s only a soldier, a sharpshooter really, and -

She realizes with a start that the gun is back in her hand, and raises it slowly to regard it. This is a dream, unlike any other but fundamentally the same. She doesn’t know much at all about alchemy, it’s true; just what she’s absorbed through nearly thirty years of constant exposure. But she knows herself, and she knows what it feels like to wake with a start, sweating and shaking in the middle of the night. Quickly, before she can think much about it, she brings the gun up to her head and pulls the trigger.

She barely has time to throw her arms out in front of her before she topples to the forest floor, jumping right back up again, gun at the ready, and meets Havoc’s wide blue eyes, his gun also reflexively trained on her due to her sudden movement.

“Shit, Hawkeye, you scared me,” he says, lowering it at once. “What-”