A/N: Roy shows up in the next chapter, and then we get to the blossoming friendships! And nothing more until Riza's older! For now, I wanted to focus on Berthold and the moments of lucidity that Riza will be able to look back on fondly in the future. Please enjoy, and please leave a comment to let me know what you think!

Clarity (n): the quality of being coherent and intelligible

"I've decided what you are doing here."

In her periphery, she sees his thin eyebrow arch as he turns his face to regard her.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

It has been over a year since their first encounter. He appears beside the lake every few weeks, usually sitting against a tree by the time she has finished swimming, unless it is winter and too cold for her to swim, in which case he slides down a tree and soundlessly lies beside her, never touching her but remaining close enough for her to feel his presence. The cold radiating from his skin is always cooler than the air surrounding her.

There is no schedule to his appearances, sometimes he will be there two weeks in a row and sometimes he will not show up for over a month. It has one of the few inconsistencies in her life. He is never the first to talk, but he knows more about her than she has told him. He knows her name, for one thing. And she has never seen him anywhere but by the lake, on the western shore. It is as if he is bound to the place, like he can never leave it.

As she lies in the grass, she usually tries to ignore him for some time before she gives in and speaks to him. Something primal tells her not to, like he is something to be avoided. But he is still something, and that is all she has in the way of company. Every time she sees him or speaks to him, he considers her like he has never met her before, re-evaluating every tiny movement or thought that she expresses. He feels like Judgement, and although she can't quite bring herself to care about his opinion, it is enough to be considered.

"So what have you settled on? A wood-dwelling man? A spirit? A figment of a lonely girl's imagination?"

She scrunches her forehead, still looking up at the sky. "I don't know."

"Ah. Doesn't sound like you've decided anything, if you can't even decide whether or not I'm real."

She traces the stars with her eyes, making patterns of geometric shapes. "It hardly matters at this point what you are."

"It matters a great deal to me. But please continue. So what am I doing here, then?"

She stares at the stars that are beginning to sprinkle throughout the sky. "You're here to help me keep my voice."

This earns a laugh. He often laughs when he is surprised by her. The sound is too feral and uncontrolled to be pleasing, exactly, but she gets the feeling that he likes to be surprised by her. It is like he is something all-knowing, so when she says or does something that he doesn't anticipate, she feels like she has gone off-script in some kind of story that he has written.

"Very profound, Riza. If not a bit self-centred."

She turns her head to the side and looks at him. His hair is a little longer than when she first found him – or he first found her – but nothing else seems to have changed. He has the same sharp face, the same small but bright blue eyes. He looks at her with the same mixture of curiosity and knowing.

"Maybe I'm helping you keep your voice too."

"Is that so?"

"It doesn't sound like you use it much."

This warrants another laugh from him, dry and gravelly like he is sick. But she has only known this rough voice, so he is either perpetually sick or this is his natural cadence. She returns her gaze to the stars. She doesn't use her voice much either, rarely has the need to. Sometimes, she has dreams where she is unable to speak, and unable to remember her name. Those dreams have no sound at all, and even her thoughts are fragmented and nonsensical. She wakes up sweating and panting and very, very cold. Those dreams are scarcer the more often she is in his company. She uses her voice. She hears her name.

The knock on the door surprises her, then annoys her in quick succession.

Necessity has turned her into a creature of habit. With such little time to herself, she has perfected an automation when it comes to handling her tasks. She prepares breakfast in the morning, wordlessly serving it to her father in his study or his bedroom, eats her own breakfast hurriedly, cleans up and leaves for school. After school she comes home, sorts the mail, makes dinner and cleans more. She does a deep-clean of two rooms a day, which means it takes her the working week to come full-circle. Afterwards she does her homework and if there is any light remaining in the day, she fills her time with reading or listening to music on the gramophone. Shower. Sleep. Begin again.

So a knock on the door on a Tuesday evening feels completely out-of-synch, like the jolt one feels when they take an extra step on a staircase and their foot falls through air.

She opens the door, and a man towers over her. He has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and when the door is ajar, he looks at the air above her before adjusting his gaze downwards to her, an almost shocked expression on his face.

"You must be Miss Hawkeye."

It's not a question, so she doesn't answer. After a brief pause, his smile falters and he clears his throat awkwardly.

"Your father is expecting me. Is he available?"

She raises an eyebrow in question at him. Over the past couple of years, their only guests have been military men trying to recruit her father and large men in black clothing threatening to take their possessions as compensation for unpaid debt. This man isn't dressed suitably or intimidating enough to be either of those things. She has no idea what her father would want with him.

"Why is the door open, child? It's freezing!" Her father stumbles into the hall in slippers and a brown robe, eyes wide and frantic as he walks towards her. He will sometimes pace around the house when his head hurts too much to read and he is too manic to sleep. In those times, he will talk some nonsense to her about the house or school or what she is making for dinner, but it is always a one-sided conversation, and only sometimes makes sense. It is a tactic for him to clear his head of alchemy before beginning anew. Deconstructing and reconstructing. His inquiry is the first full sentence that she has heard in a long time.

When he gets closer to her, he stops in his tracks and looks at the stranger.

"Ah yes, that's right. Come in, come in." He gestures wildly with his hands, almost resembling a beckoning motion, if not for its jarring agitation. Riza opens the door further and steps aside as the boy enters. She notices the suitcase that he drags behind him and into the threshold.

"Mr. Hawkeye, sir."

"No 'sirs' here, my boy. I'll show you to the study, you're to be there tomorrow at sunrise." He turns to Riza. "Take the suitcase to the spare room." Back to the boy. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Oh, not yet."

Back to Riza. "Do we have enough to feed another?"

Riza simply nods, taking the suitcase and wheeling it down the hall to the spare room. She doesn't remember him ever worrying before about a person being fed; himself and her included.

"Do you see where she's going? You'll be sleeping there, my boy. Now come."

As Riza enters the room, she scans it to make sure it's suitable for sleeping. It is not one of the rooms she has on her cleaning roster – she can't recall a time when they had an overnight guest – but some dusting and a change of bedsheets would suffice until she has time to give it a proper clean.

Because of her father's inability to speak plainly, Riza has picked up how to understand things without all of the information given. There is a young man in the house, expected by her father. She will be feeding him. He has brought a suitcase and will be staying in the spare room. Her father is showing him to the study.

He is here to learn alchemy.

She knew he started receiving letters of request. Berthold Hawkeye used to teach chemistry part-time in the city, and when he gave it up and became a hermit, rumours spread through all of Eastern that he was focusing on alchemic research full-time, and that he had become obsessed with his work. Those rumours were true, but Riza still finds it exhausting that they are spread with such reverence and respect. He has become a romantic figure, someone who is pursuing truth at all cost, even the cost of his mind. People love to hear of tragic heroes and to glorify madness. Those people don't have to live with him. Except now this boy does.

The bills are paid on-time again for a few months, until the boy leaves again, screaming that he can't understand the madman and he's wasting his time trying to learn anything from him.

She never got his name.

The second time an unexpected knock comes, she is less surprised. When she opens the door and sees a blond, tanned man in his early twenties, she lets him in and takes his large suitcase. This time, her father does not leave his study, so she shows him straight to his room and informs him that tonight's dinner is porkchops and mixed veg, and that her father will see him in the morning.

The man introduces himself as Adam Wesley, and she amends it to Mr. Wesley as she tells him she will bring his food to him. His accent is strange, nothing she has heard before, but his voice is deep and musical. Before she closes the door, she spots him taking something from his suitcase. It is another, smaller case with a hard exterior, one side long and thin before curving into a larger hourglass shape. Her eyes linger on it a second more before the door blocks her view.

As she finishes preparing dinner, she hears slow, sombre notes blow through the house like a breeze. For a moment, her fathers mutterings in his study are almost as melodic.

When she brings his meal and sets it on the nightstand, he untucks the violin from his chin and smiles in thanks at her. She decides against asking him further questions and excuses herself.

Later in the evening, the violin music begins again. She hears the door of her father's study open and sees him poke his head out. He looks almost child-like in his curiosity. After a few moments, he smiles serenely, and it catches Riza off-guard to see her father smile like that. Like he is at peace.

He notices her watching him and turns his attention to her.

"Do you know the song?" His voice has lost its frantic edge, it comes out soft and steady.

Riza barely manages to register the words in her mind. She listens for a moment to the unfamiliar tune and shakes her head.

Her father smiles wider.

"And I won't be sent across the sea
To fight in someone's war,
While my love stays here to wait for me
To wash up on the shore."

A sea shanty, and a rebel song at that, by the sounds of it. Amestris is land-locked, and while they haven't banned music just yet, someone could get in a lot of trouble if they were caught by a soldier singing rebel songs. Most rebel songs are anti-Amestris, and for good reason, if her father's ranting about the military is anything to go by. But how does he know it? They are so far from the sea, and it's not like they get many foreign visitors, or visitors at all.

Still, looking at her father's tranquil smile fills her with a sense of calm herself. She returns the smile, a small tick in the corner of her lips, like she doesn't quite remember how. She suddenly wishes she knew the song, so she could sing him the next verse. He sang to her, and she wishes that she could return it, that they could have a conversation in music. It is the closest she has ever felt to her father, and so she smiles.

Her father hums under his breath and returns to his study, closing the door softly behind him. Riza is suddenly stricken by the thought that while she has learned to read her father's eccentricities, he wasn't always like this. He had a past and a mind at some point. For the first time, the question comes to Riza's mind: Just exactly who is her father?

"What should I call you?"

"Pardon?"

"I never thought to ask before. Do you have a name?"

He chuckles. "I like it when you treat me like we're friends."

She frowns. "Aren't we?"

"Don't be offended. Friendships aren't anything particularly special. Everyone experiences them at some point, they are as common as algae in a lake."

"But I still think I should call you something."

He sits up from his place on the grass and looks down at her, hair spilling in his face.

"You have no reason to call me anything."

"But what if I want to… summon you?"

He smiles. "Summon me?"

Her cheeks flush. "I don't know the right word."

"I'm either here or I'm not, Riza. You don't call for me, I come and go as I please."

"So you're here because you want to be?"

"Yes."

"Why do you want to be here?"

His grin widens, wrinkles cutting through the papery white skin at the corners of his mouth. "You amuse me. You're a very interesting little birdy, you know. They don't see it, but they don't care enough to look. All day surrounded by madness, and it hasn't taken you yet. Very interesting indeed."

Riza looks up at him and considers the words. She doesn't know what a friend is, especially if she was willing for a second to entertain the idea of this being as a friend. But she has never held the interest of anybody before. Her mother adored her, but that was the business of mothers. And even the duty of parenthood couldn't bring her father to show much in the way of love, or even interest.

If it's all she has, she'll take it.

The oldest person in Riza's class is soon to be sixteen. She herself is the youngest by far, thirteen years old and two years ahead by merit of her studies. She has a degree of natural talent and no small amount of work ethic, and although she doesn't want to leave school early and find herself in the limbo of her home until she is old enough to leave, she also couldn't turn down the offers to skip a couple of years for fear of losing her scholarship.

The children in her class are more mature company than she had previously been accustomed to, but they are also completely uninterested in befriending a child. She doesn't blame them; she has similar reservations. The teachers are always trying to catch her out, as if they are angry with her for being in their class. She answers their impromptu questions with quiet mumbles and takes their annoyed silences as validation of her proficiency.

She studies three languages for her electives, ancient Xerxean (many of her father's textbooks at home double as excellent study aids), Aerugian (she picked it before her father's Aerugan apprentice Mister Wesley arrived) and Cretian. She enjoys learning about the cultures of different countries, especially since she can't remember ever having left her village. Isvallan was on the curriculum a few years ago before the study of the language was banned for seemingly no reason. Her Aerugian teacher believes that their curriculum may be next, as the rebel groups in Aerugo have begun to grow in power and mobilise towards the border with Amestris.

Riza worries that this stupid country will go to war with everyone, and all languages will be banned except Xerxean, which is technically a dead language. Riza worries that none of the languages will be banned because they will all become dead languages.

When she has to decide on her fourth elective, she considers her options carefully. She could go the easy route and pick something she is good at in order to further secure her good grades and her scholarship. But she is good at chemistry, and some physics, and she knows that she doesn't want to take any path that would use them. They are too much like alchemy, and she never wants to entertain the idea of pursuing that. Her father lost his footing on his path, stumbled and fell and his mind came tumbling out. If she were to follow in his footsteps, she would fall into the same trap.

She listens to her teacher go through the options, listing the name of the class along with some basic information. Her ears prick when her teacher explains one in particular.

"Philosophy. The study of being. Along with learning rhetoric and logic, you would also be studying ethics, what is morally wrong or right, and who gets to decide these morals. In essence, it is the study of being. What is it to exist, what makes us human, what is our purpose?"

Her mind lingers on the image of the long-haired boy by the lake, with his unsettling thin smile and pale skin, and the unanswered question he asked her almost three years ago:

"So what am I doing here, then?"

She signs up for philosophy.

She is expected to take up three extracurricular activities to fill the free periods in her timetable. Her options are wide but her parameters are narrow. There are two divisions, culture and sport. She cannot do three activities in one division, it has to be two of one, one of the other.

She picks two sports and one culture activity. Her sports are easy choices, she signs up for martial arts and archery. Most other sports available are team-based, and not only does she dislike the forced interaction with her classmates, they are also older and bigger than her, and while she could handle one-at-a-time, she doubts her chances against entire squads of them.

She is small and quick and surprisingly strong, so she flourishes easily in martial arts. The two strains of martial arts they learn are judo and kickboxing. With judo, she finds it hard to throw people but they find it harder to catch her, so she tires them out and waits for the perfect grappling opportunity. With kickboxing, the points system they use is all about scoring hits, so she ducks and weaves and lands small, quick jabs at her opponents as they complain that she is too small to fight.

With regards to archery, her coach considers her a prodigy. She has always had a good eye, and she quickly learns the optimum posture and breathing necessary to keep a steady hand. She feels a real sense of power, holding her bow. It is school property, but so few have taken up archery this year that she is the only one to use it. She keeps it in a separate corner of the equipment shed so it doesn't get trampled by carelessly flung balls or rowing equipment. She treats it carefully, afraid that if anything happens to it, she will have to find another sport.

She enjoys the feeling of blocking out every sound and focusing solely on the tiny red dot in the center of the target. The sensation of dulling all of her senses until she is left with just her sight is not entirely unlike the muted feeling of floating in water.

She has left it so long to choose her third activity that the principle is threatening to choose for her. She does not want to spend two hours a week playing chess, especially since the students who choose chess mainly do so in order to chat freely for the duration. Nothing else really stands out to her; theatre is far too showy, creative writing doesn't grab her as something her clinical mind would be able to grasp and she did not want to draw candlesticks or paint fruit.

The threat of not getting to choose follows her home that evening. She is listing through the options in her head as she walks in the door, trying to figure out the lesser evils. It takes her a moment before she hears the loud conversation in her father's study.

"-to help my people!"

"And a noble cause it is."

"But you won't give it?"

"It hasn't been perfected yet. Too volatile."

"They're going to destroy my country!"

"I'm sorry, my boy."

"Don't call me that! I'm not a child and I'm not your son!"

"You aren't even far enough in your-"

"I don't need basic alchemy! I need to fight!"

"I cannot give you what you want."

A beat.

"Then I have no purpose being here."

Mister Wesley storms out of the study, face red and breathing heavily. He stomps towards his room and almost collides with her before he sees her.

"Miss Hawkeye. Piccolina."

She doesn't care for the endearment. "What is wrong?"

"I… need to go home to help my family. I am sorry, child. I wish you the best of luck."

He goes to his room, and as the door closes behind him she is left in the kitchen.

Mister Wesley had made it almost a year under the tutelage of her father. He is polite and sometimes a little too familiar with Riza, treating her like a little sister even though Riza had never really spoken to him. She won't miss him.

But his violin and his general presence makes her father much easier to deal with. He speaks in coherent sentences, goes to bed because he knows he has a student to teach in the mornings and sings softly to the fiddle's renditions of rebel songs in the evenings. She will not miss the apprentice, but she will miss the music in the evenings.

Her father emerges from his study and paces the hallway.

"Wish I could help. Not good enough. Not finished. And him. Barely capable. Too powerful. No. No. Can't help. Luck to him. Military dogs!" He sees her. "They'll come for me, Riza. War is coming. Recruitment team. Don't let them in. Blue coats. Don't let them in."

She gathers the jist of what he is saying and nods, her eyes stinging as she regards his widened eyes. He has been so much better in the past year. He has asked her into his study to help him translate Xerxean texts. He has sat at the table during dinnertime. He has sung along with Mr. Wesley's violin, and when she had picked up enough lyrics, she had sung along with him. He smiled when she did, his face plainly beaming with the kind of pride Riza suspects is normal for a father to show his thirteen year old daughter. They had a semblance of normalcy, and she can already feel it slipping away again.

Mr. Wesley exits his room, suitcase in tow, and shoots her one last apologetic look as he leaves, before glaring at her father. As her father watches him through the window, he mutters incoherently again.

"They'll come. Aerugean student, stupid of me. They'll come. For me. Oh God, for her. Stay away from her! No, she's safe. Keep her in school. She knows nothing. They can't take her. They can't take her."

Riza looks up at his pained face as he continues to blather on to himself. He looks like he has woken from a nightmare, and the sound of his half-sentences are so pained they make her want to cry. She drowns out the sound with something more peaceful.

"Come ye men, it's time again
To show them all we're worth,
They put a price on everything
That's good about this earth…"

The effect is instantaneous, her father's shoulders relax and he half-closes his eyes. He doesn't smile, but his face softens into something less anxious, as if his thoughts have settled for the time being. She wishes desperately to keep that look on his face forever. In the back of her mind, she decides wholeheartedly on what her extra-curricular activity is going to be.

He sings along with her for the next verse.

"But they have undervalued us,
And they'll live to rue the day,
When they discover that their lives
Are the only price to pay."

A/N: Prepare for more entirely made-up or real-but-modified rebel songs in the future. I want Riza to have a real anti-military sentiment before she ultimately decides to join up.