Chapter 6: Regrets? Maybe...
Rissa walked into the hospital with some air of dignity, more than she had the last time she had been to the wretched place that smelled of chemicals and death. Wait, where had that thought come from? Rissa stopped in her tracks, since when did death have a smell? She thought to herself, and yet that was the only way she could describe the smell that hid behind the smell of bleach and cleaning supplies. Reason shook herself out and walked straight to the elevators.
Reason's father was on the top floor, the recovery ward. It was a long elevator ride with Iris and Adrian at either side of her, and the ding going off every few seconds. She felt like she was going to explode if she couldn't get out and see her father soon, maybe the stairs would have been faster, at least then Rissa could have controled her own speed.
Finally the door opened and Rissa was almost bolting to room 804, the room her father was in. She managed to stop herself, holding onto the frame of the doorway as she looked in. There in a hospital bed was her father, gnawing on something - probably gum - and playing a game of solitaire. He looked up from his game, and gave Reason that chapped lipped smile she remembered so well. Her father's blonde-grey hair was much shorter than it had been, and missing in some patches. No doubt it had been burned off like that.
"Dad..." Rissa said, and passed the first bed that held a midnight-black haired patient, and went straight into Jean Havoc's open arms. He smelled of mint and smoke, the tobacco kind. "How did you manage to get a pack of cigarettes in here?" Reason said, a knowing smile on her face.
"Wha-" he cut himself short, and shook his head, a small string of laughter coming from his chest. He should have known better than thinking he could get something passed his daughter. "Your Godfather Heymans was in here not too long ago, he brought them in." Rissa's father looked almost like a school boy who had got caught playing a prank on a teacher, an odd but familiar look on the old soldier.
"Oh! That reminds me!" Rissa dug in her pocket and pulled out the engraved lighter and passed it over. "It's out of lighter fluid, but it's the only thing of yours I could scrounge up..." Reason's father looked at the lighter and sighed, though Reason didn't know why. Adrian and Iris pulled up chairs beside Rissa and they sat and chatted for a while. That is, until the unfortunate...
Out of this air, Jean Havoc's hand snatched at his daughter's, and pulled it close to his eyes. Rissa had talked animatedly as always, and she had been careless enough to let her tattooed palm face her father for more than a second. Everyone stopped talking, even Iris, as they waited with trepidation for Rissa's father's reaction.
"Rissa..." Her father began, he was the only person who constantly called her Rissa, never Reason.
"Dad I-" Reason also began, but the look of anger on her father's face cut her short.
"What are these?" Jean said, the words were harsh and icy with anger.
"... They're transmutation circles dad - I've decided to try to become an official alchemist." Reason said, her voice quivering slightly. She had meant to break this to her father gently, but she had been careless and forgot to hide the tattoos she had gotten.
"DAMMIT RISSA!" There was rage in his voice, he was so loud that the black-haired patient stirred slightly in his sleep. "You drop something like this on me! Why your mother would-"
"Mom is the one who taught me..." Reason said, her voice soft.
"What?" His voice was still angry, but it had lost some of the force he had.
"Mom taught me how to use alchemy, how to draw the circles, everything! She's been teaching me since I could hold a piece of charcoal in my hands, I didn't go behind your back, she did." She was staring at her father, her face as emotionless as ever.
Jean Havoc was about to make a comment - who knew what about - when he went into a violent coughing fit. The machines he was hooked up to started to blare warnings, his heart rate was going down fast, and a nurse ran in. Behind her was another nurse and a doctor, the doctor walked up to Rissa's father and placed a mask over his mouth. As the damaged man took a few breaths through the coughs, he realized the doctor was trying to knock him out. Jean tried to look at his daughter but his eyes were closed, and he was unconscious before he could see her face again.
"I'm sorry dad..." Rissa said as the doctor wiped his brow.
"I'm sorry about that, you three, if we don't knock him out cold during one of these fits then he could very well start coughing up blood - which would be very worrying." The dark haired doctor said. The 'you three' comment had made Rissa look back and see that indeed Adrian and Iris had been there the whole time, somehow she had forgotten about the twins. The doctor continued, "We're going to need to completely cut him off of his cigarettes, if we don't he'll end up killing himself before he can heal from this."
Rissa sighed, "Thanks Doc,"
The two nurses and doctor walked out of the room, but only seconds later a blonde burst through the door. She looked about Reason's age, maybe a year or two younger, and she also seemed to be in quite the rush.
"I KNOW you're awake Niklaus! Don't you dare pretend to sleep when you've wrecked my automail so badly!" She said, her golden eyes glinting with malice.
