Chapter 4: Necessary Evil

The scream had come from the treatment area, and it wasn't stopping. This wasn't just a patient in pain; there was a desperate, keening quality to the cries. Riza and Roy hurried towards the sound, Riza trailing more slowly because of her injury.

"—brought in two days ago from the war zone. He's been unconscious," Sara was telling Urey in an urgent voice. They were both rifling through boxes of supplies.

It was an Ishvalan patient, a man perhaps in his early 30s, lying on a cot. Bandages swaddled the top half of his face, leaving only his eyes uncovered. He was staring at his right arm—it was heavily tattooed—and shouting something in Ishvalan.

"We need sedatives!" Urey yelled to the assistants, who were also frantically searching for supplies.

"There aren't any! I think we ran out with the last patient!" the older assistant cried.

The man continued to shout, this time in Amestrian.

"A State Alchemist—" He had not seen Roy; he was staring into the empty air above his cot. A flashback, thought Riza. She remembered what Roy had told her and shuddered.

He turned his head and caught sight of both Rockbells. "Amestrians!" he bellowed. "Unforgivable!" He sat up, then grabbed a surgical knife from a nearby table. "You—you bastards!" he screamed, and lunged at the doctors.

From Riza's perspective, it seemed to happen in slow motion. Roy ran towards him, slid on a glove, snapped his fingers—

The man incinerated. He fell to the floor, dead. Smoke rose from what was left of his body, the air smelling of charred flesh.

The room filled with screams from the other patients, but Riza barely heard them. A living man had disappeared in front of her, replaced by a man-shaped block of charcoal. Impossible.

Everything felt unreal, dreamlike. She touched her lips. They felt greasy, as if she had been cooking over a hot stove. She turned to look at Roy. He was staring into the air, face expressionless, fists clenched.

Order 3066. Extermination of all Ishvalans. The words resounded in her head.

This couldn't possibly be real. It was one thing to be told that he'd used flame alchemy to kill people. It was another to see it happen in front of her. To feel the air, to smell it. To taste a man's death on her lips.

"You did this…" she heard herself say, "...to civilians."

He looked back at her with shame filling his eyes, but said nothing. What could he have said?

"How…how could you do this?" She felt as if she were speaking from very far away.

He still said nothing.

Suddenly time snapped back to its normal pace, and the reality of the situation hit her with full force.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?" she screamed.

For a moment he looked pained, as if she had struck him. Then slowly, his face hardened back into its mask.

She turned and ran, out of the clinic, blindly, oblivious to the pain stabbing at her ribs. Outside, she fell on her hands and knees and vomited. The convulsions ripped into her side, causing her more pain than she had ever felt, and it was finally too much. She howled in agony.

She slumped over on the ground, sobbing. The man she loved was a murderer. And she was the one who had put the weapon into his hands. The flame he used to kill had come from the alchemy she wore on her back, her father's alchemy, whose secrets she had entrusted to him alone. And he had done…this.

Each sob felt like a dagger thrust into her ribs, but she couldn't stop. The whole world had gone mad. Nothing would ever be sane again.

After awhile, Sara Rockbell came for her, led her back inside, and put her to bed.