A/N: I told apriil I thought I was done with angst for awhile.
I lied.
When she looked in the mirror, all she saw was her father's face.
And she hated it.
Those gold eyes, so exotic, the representative features of a dead race, stare at her from a too thin face. Hers are bigger than his were. You couldn't tell behind her glasses, though. The gold would deepen or lighten with her emotions. She didn't show emotion anymore.
The curve of her lips, nearly always pulled down in a scowl, even when she was pleased. Impossible to coax a smile out of her now. Not even Wenry could make her smile anymore.
The shape of her nose. Her hair was now neatly contained in a ponytail instead of a braid. The thin rimmed glasses she had to wear because of her deteriorating eyesight. Even her scowl made her look like her father.
Ten years had passed since her father's death. His sacrifice for them.
{Gate of Truth, did she hate him for that.}
{Why did he have to stare at her from the mirror every single day?}
{Why couldn't she have looked like her mother, like Al did, instead of the man she hated with a passion, even after his death?}
Her hands clenched spastically on the bathroom sink. Clench it any tighter, and she'd snap the porcelain. She couldn't stay in here for too long. Wenry would worry. She didn't need a repeat of the argument they had last week.
{When had their marriage devolved into shouting and cold silences?}
{When had she turned into her father?}
{When did her work become her focus? Not her family or husband or country?}
{Just where had she gone wrong?}
Her gold hair, {his hair}, brushed the floor as she curled up into a ball.
She'd known (suspected) for a long time that she wasn't right in the head anymore. The Gate hadn't just taken her alchemy. It'd taken part of her sanity but waited for ten years for the effects to finally manifest.
{Was this how her father felt?}
{Did he ever feel as if he wanted to claw his own skull open and release the madness?}
{Was that the real reason he left their family?}
Tremors overtook her. She couldn't handle this anymore. The images were too much. Her mind was unravelling, breaking down like her body had every time she passed through the Gate. Why couldn't Wenry see that she needed his help?
Her work staved it off. When she stopped, all the images from the Gate rushed back, filling her head, clamoring for attention.
The whole of the world was crammed into her small skull.
Eventually, she would snap.
Just like that hated mirror.
When Wenry came home, he found her curled into a ball, silently weeping, the shards of the broken mirror littering the floor around her.