"And you sit there." Riza spoke, setting one of her toys on a chair in the living room. She was sitting around, adjusting each of her play mates as she got ready for a game.
"What are you doing?" Roy asked, walking over to her while holding some books that belonged to Riza's father.
Riza looked up at him, "Playing house."
The boy laughed a bit, "Don't you need a mommy and a daddy to play house?"
She sat quietly for a second, "Well yeah but…"
Roy raised an eyebrow, "What's wrong?"
"…" she was silent for a moment, "Usually I just have one of my stuffed animals play that part…" Riza held a stuffed bear in her hands while she looked down at it, squishing it's body so the arms and legs would move.
He stared at her for a moment before he spoke, "Well, I am spending the night tonight, right?"
"Y-yeah…I think so." she replied, "But what does that have to do with it-"
"If you wait till your dad lets me off, we can play house together then and I will be the daddy." he told her with a smile. "Just wait till this afternoon and we can play."
She nodded as she watched Roy walk off, carrying the stack into the other room. It had been a few months since Roy had been taken under her father's wing. It still puzzled her as to how he could work with her father. The boy probably knew more about her father than she did herself.
Riza frowned, looking at her stuffer bear. She still couldn't grasp her small hands around the fact that she barely knew anything of her father. He never told her any stories or taught her how to do anything. Their entire relationship was distant.
There were moments when she wished that she could help him. But her father never would let her. He put his books on the top shelf for a reason, he wanted to ensure that she never caught a glimpse of what he was doing. All she knew was that it had to do with Flame Alchemy. It was something revolutionary, something that would change the world.
And it was all worth it to change it for the better. "Right?" she whispered to her bear, feeling tears swell in her eyes, spilling out to land on her fingers. "It's all…" she sniffed, "To make the world even better than it already is."
She was lying to herself, but she made her little mind believe it. Despite how much it hurt to lose her father a little more every day, so long as she kept lying that it would all be okay, then maybe someday it would be.
Throughout the day, Riza tried to find ways to occupy herself. She had already gone through and cleaned everything, and aside from her toys in the living room, the house was spotless. As she patrolled the house, she looked for some way to entertain herself.
It was suddenly when she came across her father's room. Riza stood by the door and looked at it. Her hand extended and touched the door knob, turning it slowly as she pushed the door open.
She peered inside and cautiously made her way inside.
Riza had already cleaned in there. The bed was made, not that it ever was unmade, and everything was dusted.
The young girl slowly walked around the room as she stared at everything. There were no family photos adorning the walls, nothing at all. The place hardly seemed as if it had been lived in.
She looked up on the shelves and saw a few Alchemy books. Riza stood on her tiptoes in attempts to reach them. She always wanted to see what was in them. Slowly every day she was growing, and now she could feel her fingertips touching their spines. She brushed them gently as she tried to wrap her hands around one of the books.
Her hand managed to grab one as she pulled it down. It slipped from her grasp and fell open onto the floor.
Riza peered over to find it was in fact filled with random papers and pictures. She picked up one of the photos and felt her eyes swell up with tears.
There was no alchemy in this book.
The picture contained one of her father and some woman holding a child. The photo was old, not containing any color and it's edges looked damaged. The woman was sitting in a bed, the child cradled in her arms and a smile on her face as she looked at her baby girl. Her father was standing next to her, bent over as he held her shoulders, looking at his child with a smile on his face as well.
"This is…" she whispered, tracing her fingers over the photo. It was the first time she had ever seen her mother. Never before had she asked anything from her dad about her, she just accepted that she didn't exist.
She flipped through the pages and pulled out photos of her parents when they were younger, the pictures damaged from seeing many years. Her mom was beautiful, she looked so young and happy. Every picture that she was in she was smiling and each one looked genuine.
The same thing with her father. Riza had never seen him so happy.
As she browsed through the book, she even found pictures from when she was very little. He had documented all of the events that took place in Riza's toddler years. He wrote down her first words, the things she learned and photographed all of those precious moments.
She had no clue that she meant so much to him.
All of this time, Riza figured that her father thought nothing of her, that he just was letting her live there. She loved her father, but she never knew how he felt towards her. She was important to him.
The girl sobbed out of pure happiness. Her tears dripped down her cheeks as they wet her neck. Her father cared. That was a feeling she never thought that she would ever know of. She never knew how wonderful knowing something like this felt.
Riza wiped her eyes as she breathed heavily. She tried to stop herself from crying as her throat ached, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She felt her heart swell with a fullness that she never before felt. That emptiness that once occurred was now gone, she never needed to feel loneliness again.
