The Alchemist's Daughter
A/N: Thank you to everyone who read Chapter 1. Many thanks to Syd001 for the review!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Chapter 2: 8
Eight year-old Riza Hawkeye knew something was wrong when she came home from school and no one was in the study. She walked from room to room but found no one. She ran outside when she heard a car pull up in front of her house. Her father looked pale as he stepped out of the family's car. Riza looked past his shoulder but saw no one else in the car.
Before she could ask, Berthold embraced her in a tight hug. He shook his head as he released from the hug.
Riza looked confused, but when she saw her father start tearing up, she began to tear up as well.
"Promise me something," he said gruffly.
"Okay," she said with a cracking voice.
"When we bury your Mother, do not cry. She wouldn't want that," he said.
Riza looked up more confused.
"Cry now, but not later. Be strong."
"Okay."
Riza kept her promise. Probably due to her age, she was able to hold her emotions in check during the burial. One year prior, her mother had tried to explain to her that she was very sick and that she was not going to get better any time soon. Although Riza did not really understand what "not going to get better any time soon" meant, she did notice how her father acted differently. He no longer sat in the study with Riza and Evelyn after dinner. Instead, he holed himself up in the attic. When she did see him, he looked like he had seen a ghost. While before her mother became sick, she saw him smile, he never smiled anymore. As her mother's sickness progressed, Riza almost never saw her parents—her father absorbed in some alchemic subject, her mother in her parents' bedroom.
After about a week of this isolation, she barged into her parents' bedroom. She begged her mother to get better.
Evelyn just shook her head sadly and said, "I can't."
"Please," she cried as she pressed her face in her mother's hand.
"Please look after your father." "
"But I need you to look after me!" she pleaded looking back at her mother.
"I will always be there. You just need to be strong. Be strong for your father."
After the funeral, Riza and her father sat in their kitchen at the same table he made when Evelyn was still healthy.
"Riza," Berthold said quietly. Riza looked up at her father.
"I know you won't understand what I'm going to say, but your mother's passing has got me thinking."
"About what?"
"My own passing."
"No!" cried Riza as she slammed her fists on the table, "you can't leave me too!"
"Don't worry. It won't be for a long time," he said, trying to sound comforting.
"Then why did you say that?"
"Because I want you to think about the future."
"The future?"
"Yes. I want you to carry on my work after I die."
"Alchemy?"
"Yes. We'll start tomorrow." And with that he retreated back to his workspace in the attic, leaving Riza alone. She quietly started to cry until she fell asleep at the dining table.
"Riza," someone said shaking her shoulder. She stirred and sleepily looked up. Her father placed a plate of toast topped with preserves in front of her.
"Eat. We've got a long day ahead of us."
"Alchemy?" she asked groggily.
"Yes. Come to the study when you're done."
Riza ate in silence and found that she didn't feel like crying. It was as if she had cried out all her tears the night before.
She got up, put her plate in the sink and left the kitchen.
Her father had cleaned off the coffee table and had moved a small chalkboard in front of it.
"We'll start with some basic alchemic theory."
"Are we going to make a mallet again?" she asked hopefully.
"No, not just yet. We're going to go over the details of what made it possible for it to be formed."
Berthold spent the next four hours going over basic chemistry and principles of alchemy. At first Riza was attentive and soaked in the information. However, towards the end, her attention started to wane and she became restless. The butterflies outside of the study window started to become more interesting than whatever Berthold was talking about molecules.
"Riza, are you paying attention?" her father asked. Riza looked at him noncommittally.
"What are you not understanding?" he asked trying to keep from sounding too stern.
"Why can't we just make the mallet?" Riza asked petulantly.
"Because, you need to know the basic properties of the rock and the stick. And when you know what you're looking for, you can enhance the final product by picking the right materials. It's like the table in the kitchen. We could not just—Why aren't you paying attention?!" he snapped at the end.
Riza looked at him hurt and slammed her pencil back down onto the table and ran upstairs. Berthold sighed and ran a hand over his face tiredly. It wasn't her fault that she was seven and here he was trying to teach stuff that most people twice her age have trouble comprehending. He tried to simplify the information as best as he could and thought he had. He picked up her notes. Her notes from the beginning of the lesson were neater than even he expected. But somewhere between the naturally occurring elements and the history of alchemy, he noticed that her notes became less precise and when he thought she was taking notes, she was drawing the butterflies that had commandeered her attention towards the end.
Berthold slowly walked upstairs and peered into his daughter's room. It was empty. He heard a quiet sniffle coming from the room that he used to share with his wife. He opened the door a bit and saw his daughter sitting at his wife's vanity trying to hide her crying, but her quivering shoulders gave her away.
"Riza," Berthold called softly.
"I'm sorry," she replied.
"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped like that," he said as he crossed the distance between them. "We don't have to try anymore if you don't want to."
"I want to. But I don't think I'll be any good at it."
"It's okay."
"No, it's not. Who'll carry on your work?"
"Don't worry about that now, Riza. I should not have brought that up. I'm sorry."
"I miss mommy."
"I do too."
Berthold opened Evelyn's jewelry box and saw the pair of silver studs that she had worn on their wedding day. From a distance they looked fairly plain. However, upon further inspection, they had a small, engraved design. Berthold had crafted the earrings for Evelyn and the design was a copy of the transmutation circle used to make the earrings. When Evelyn proposed piercing Riza's ears at six, he was worried Riza would reject the idea. But stoic Riza didn't even whimper during the piercing process—probably because Evelyn suggested that she get her ears pierced.
When he took out the earrings, Riza looked at him questioningly.
"Here," he said holding them out for her in his palm.
Riza's tiny hand hesitantly reached out and took them.
"She wore them on our wedding day," he said quietly.
"Can I wear them now?" she asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Thank you."
Berthold nodded stiffly before leaving his daughter in order to return to his refuge known as the attic. Riza looked in the mirror and started to hum her mother's favorite song as she removed the earrings she was currently wearing and carefully put her mother's earrings into her ear lobes. Afterwards she looked around the empty bedroom and then down at her lap. She sighed sadly before she walked over to the door, turned off the light, and left the room.
A/N: A certain someone is going to appear in the next chapter. :D
Thank you for reading! Questions? Comments? Sandwich orders (I used to work in a sandwich/coffee shop)?