Riza always said she never wanted anything to do with alchemy. The first time she felt the needle dig in against her spine, she knew she meant it.
Her father never cared if she cried, and she did cry, but she also never fought him. Not on this, or on anything. He was her father, her only anchor in a large and lonely world. And for hating the military as much as he proclaimed to, he seemed to share their opinion on the value of unquestioning obedience. He rarely even needed to voice an order for Riza to follow it. She brought him meals, kept the house clean, and stayed out of his way.
She hid from him, feared him, and hated him with a cold rage that settled in her stomach and transferred to a hatred of alchemy generally. She'd heard stories of alchemy being used to help people, but in her house alchemy never helped anyone. It was just an excuse for her only living family member to disappear, leaving her to fend for herself until he needed her. He never called her by name, and even when she was crying, he never seemed to notice. He was always singularly focused on whatever was going on in his own head, and whatever he saw when he looked at her, it wasn't his daughter.
Whenever he finished marking his notes into her skin, he did at least seem to recognize on some level that she was in pain. He'd clean up the blood and run his hand through her too-short hair and look at her in a way that made Riza almost hope that he could see her. Maybe that look was the reason she never tried telling him to stop.
It never lasted. Her father faded away before the pain ever did, back into his lab and his head and his fucking alchemy, and she was left with a body she didn't want, blood-deep imprints coded into her flesh, years of research she didn't understand and had no desire to understand.
It was at the end of this cold war, with Berthold Hawkeye buried under six feet of fresh dirt, that Roy Mustang walked back into her life.
He wore the uniform of the Amestrian Military, and was taller than she remembered, and he had paid for the funeral for reasons she couldn't fathom, but beyond that she tried not to form any opinions about him. He was an alchemist. No matter what kind of childish games they'd played in the years he studied under her father - he'd been her first kiss, though she knew she wasn't his - there was still a gulf between them that couldn't be crossed. Because she'd made a promise to herself, sealed in blood, that she wouldn't let another alchemist touch her for the rest of her life.
She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and didn't meet Roy's eyes when she asked him "Can I trust you?"
And he frowned. " 'Course you can, Riza."
She nodded. The answer tumbled so easily from his lips. Yet she believed him.
He talked about making this country better (Be Thou For The People), he talked about how you had to give to get (Equivalent Exchange), he'd always helped her and never hurt her, and he called her by name. In every way, he was the exact opposite of her father. Could that be enough?
She held the secrets of Flame Alchemy, a burden she never wanted. If she gave it over to Roy Mustang, it might not erase the ink from under her skin, but the pain would not be hers alone to carry. She could give a lifetime's worth of alchemy up to another alchemist, and then it wouldn't be hers anymore, she wouldn't have to think about it, dream about it, or heal from it. She could have nothing more to do with it. That was what she wanted.
Roy led her into the darkened house and lit a lamp, setting it down on the table in the kitchen where the two of them had spent collective years studying in comfortable silence. Riza slipped off her shirt while Roy raised an eyebrow, but his sharp gasp erased whatever teasing might've escaped his mouth.
Riza closed her eyes, and exhaled slowly. She could feel the intensity of Roy's dark gaze, his eyes tracing the curves and lines, shapes and symbols, painful fragments that - she hoped - would form some kind of coherent whole, for him.
"What the hell, Ri?" he muttered.
She shrugged, pulling her shirt on again, knowing he'd need time, probably a lot of it, to make sense of the array her body has become. "It seemed… safer."
"Safer than what?"
She didn't answer that. An answer didn't seem to really be required.
The intensity of Roy's eyes on her had not subsided in the least. It was almost more uncomfortable when he was trying to make sense of the expression on her face instead of the lines on her back that she didn't even put there and had no ownership of.
She tucked herself into a chair at the opposite end of the small table from Roy, and traced the grooves in the wood-grain with a fingernail. "You can look at it whenever you need to. I don't care."
"Riza, I-"
"Mr. Mustang-"
"Roy."
"Roy. I want you to do this. It doesn't mean anything to me, but it means a lot to you. I'm right about that, aren't I?"
He blew out a breath, looking across the table at Riza. "I've never seen code like that before. I had no idea… if I hadn't just seen it, I'd say those kinds of transmutations were impossible. I mean, I'm just… extrapolating here, but…" His face took on that look of deep concentration Riza remembered from years ago, and he almost looked like her father did, almost sounded like him and he's an alchemist, this is alchemy, but it's Roy. "You want me to do this?" he said slowly, after several minutes, sounding uncertain.
Riza nodded. "I want it to mean something."