Absent

Chapter 21

Recollection

Roy watched her settle back into the routine, just as easily as she always did. There was comfort in the process of their work, the job that they were trained to do without thinking. So much of being a soldier was focusing on the task at hand, not always rank and file or lock and load, even the paperwork portion of their job was automatic. No sooner did an incident happen than they mentally logged the important facts that would have to be recorded, so he could see how Riza was going to just try to go about business as usual and hope it staved off the questions until later. He would do whatever she needed and hope he could restrain himself when it came time to question the man who put her in harms way.

"I left the office this morning at approximately 0900 after being notified by my commanding officer that he and the team had been out all evening on an undercover mission in the warehouse district. I took my dog for a walk to location, to examine the site. It was there that I discovered the coin, exhibit A, and picked it up." That was was harmless and it was only what followed these events that she found herself questioning how to report. Riza hoped she would get further than this, their time was limited to put together an acceptable description of events.

Roy watched her put her pen down and waited. He could see she was trying to find a place to start.

"I came back to the office with the coin, to show you," Riza continued, off the record. "I walked in and you were on the phone with Hughes. Ed burst in and called you 'Roy' babbling about something he found and you two were just...friendly. It was actually really sweet."

Roy snorted. "You didn't think something was wrong with that?"

"I thought you were all playing a prank." She admitted. "My desk was gone, everyone was working...Hayate's bowl was missing. You and Ed were friendly and you had your work done and were going to leave to help Ed with his research. Then I went to your desk and you looked at me like I was a threat. Ed covered his notes with his hand and there was a picture on your desk of you in your younger days at the Elric's house. Young you with Ed and Al and their family, even with the Rockbells at a picnic. You and Hughes. Then you and the team without me. "

"I would never..."

"I know you would never pull a prank like that. I know." She said and leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling fan. It was all such a clear and vivid memory despite happening in a dream several hours ago. She could easily tell this story, it was just a story at this point. "You apprenticed with Ed's Dad. You lived with the boys when they were little and learned alchemy there. Something was off, I felt in my gut that you never knew me. I felt it in the way you looked at me, I knew you could never look at me like that. Like a stranger. I did my best to try to figure things out so I told you I was looking for some alchemy information. I showed you the coin and both you and Ed forgot about everything and practically drooled on it."

Roy watched her think of something and lean forward to get the coin out of her pocket, the coin she absolutely refused to let him near. "I can't believe I was able to take my eyes off you to look at some shitty token. This other me was an idiot."

She looked at him with the 'someone could be listening' glare and he just shrugged. She pulled the coin out and examined it. Probably the only time she had really looked at it was in the warehouse lot, and only for a second or two, yet she had committed every bit of it to memory. Enough so that she was able to recall it perfectly in her dream. Now that she was telling the story, she had a chance to retrace her steps and question them. "How would I know about the language of Xerses? Why would I have equated that with Ed and Al?"

It was an odd question and he tapped his fingers on the desk as he thought about it. "We went back to their house after we met them the first time to cover up the transmutation circle as best we could. Just in case someone else came by. You remember moving that rug from the living room to the study with me?"

"Yes." She remembered that day. Only after they had seen Ed and his damaged body did she let the impact of that transmutation hit her. They were in that room trying to cover things up and she saw blood...but no body parts. If war had taught her anything it was that limbs could be obliterated but they did leave a mess behind. There was no tissue, no bone...just blood from where an artery pumped blood onto the floor because the leg it used to supply was missing. The limbs had vanished, taken by alchemy.

"We did our best to hide the evidence. The circle, the blood and all those notes." Roy said. It was his first glimpse into the true brilliance of the Elrics, seeing their notes and work in human transmutation. The failure to perform it and their survival had secured his interest in them, but seeing their work with his own eyes made him appreciate them as alchemists. "We spent the whole afternoon there. There were some books I found on the shelf that were in a language you hadn't seen before..which was odd considering your father's extensive collection. I told you it was from Xerses and I had seen it before when I was little at an exhibit in the National Museum. An exhibit that was removed years ago, probably because someone else recognized it as alchemy. "

She remembered that day now, the conversation lost in her memories until today. Young Roy had been interested enough in that artifact he found to learn a dead language and decode a piece of scroll from an ancient civilization. He casually mentioned it last year to the boys when they were talking about an old obscure bedtime story their Dad used to tell them. Their Dad who collected books from Xerses and told them he read it in there somewhere. However the boys were adamant about rereading those books and never finding that story. "This coin, has that language on it, I think. Can you verify and tell me what it says?"

Roy cocked an eyebrow and she got up to bring the coin over to him so he could see it. She was careful to not let him touch it. "It's an old idiom that means, 'The other side of the coin'."

Riza clenched her hand tight around the coin. "How could I know that? You told me that in my dream which means that somehow I knew it! How did Henry know about this dead language and know that you knew it?"

Roy reached over and wrapped his hand around her clenched fist. Hearing her distress, hearing her vehement questions made him realize she was still unsure about what had happened to her. This hesitation wasn't just about finding the words to put in a report or protect him from statements that he could twist to feed his own self-loathing, this was genuinely about Riza not knowing what happened this morning. It really was a dream, a dream she questioned every aspect of even to the point of wondering if it really happened. He wanted to support her through this and be the reassurance that she wasn't losing her mind. "It's an alchemist's fairy tale, one that appears in most 'Introduction to Alchemy' books, one you've probably read a few times and Henry had to as well."

Riza wished she could feel that same confidence in herself that she had felt in that dream world, however speaking about it all made her scrutinize every word. Living in the moment, riding the adrenaline and powering through the unknown was easy in a dream where she knew things were not right. Here, in reality, she was scared of the consequences of her words. One misstep could wound a man she loved and reduce her faith in herself to distinguish between truth and imagination.

Roy continued, seeing that his participation in this was needed, seeing that his contributions could help her in some way. "The story goes that there was a archaeological dig at Xerxes back in the 1870s and they discovered a tablet with an inscription on it that read "descend into the dark abyss for the elixir of life". Being that 'Elixir of life' was what some of the ancient cultures called the philosopher's stone, the ruins were almost instantly overrun with everyone from alchemists to treasure hunters all looking for what they thought would be the long sought after mythical prize."

Riza remembered this now. It was another story, like the Philosopher from the East, that alchemists considered a romantic history of their science. She looked to Roy as he continued, his face saying that he believed in her and that he was here to help her believe in herself.

"After damned near destroying the ruins, the original archaeologist finally unearthed a well at the location of his dig. A well. " Roy said and squeezed her hand. She took a deep breath, more confident in her experience now that she could place where this information came from. "Water was the 'elixir of life' referenced, not the philosopher's stone, and the tablet was once part of the structure housing it. Eventually they determined the phrase was about embracing fears and things not being what they seemed. An ancient idiom for looking at both sides of a situation, because the darkness is cold and the epitome of fear but you trust and rely on the liquid in the bucket you pull up from the depths. On the surface it is bright and warm and comfortable, but you'd die without the water from below. Two contrasting locations can occupy the same space, just on different layers. And the moral of the story to alchemists is about verifying the source of Truth before accepting it's context."

Riza didn't remember it quite like that, but Roy was so much better with words than her Father. He was also giving her something more, his own encouragement woven into the fabric of that simple little story. "And Henry, he was so moved by this story to engrave it on his coin?"

"A little bit of flair." Roy said and took his hand back. Then he watched hers turn over and open, revealing the coin in question. He looked it over, then etched it out on his notebook. "I think it also was a way to get some credibility for his work. There is nothing quite like using some proverb in a dead language to make yourself look like an intellectual."

She could hear Roy's hostility in the snide remarks. "This alchemy worked. I don't understand how you can still be doubting the man's ability."

"Riza, true alchemy is about deconstruction and reconstruction." Roy said and finished his sketch, Riza turned the coin over so he could see the back. "This was a weapon, destruction, disguised as a advancement for mental health of soldiers. The odds of someone being able to come out of this were not very high. His research was incomplete, he could active this transmutation circle and put the victim in a coma, however once the body reacted to the chemical manipulation the equation changed. The elements were unknown, hell they were always unknown. He had no idea what level of chemicals were in the subjects body to begin with, it was risking a persons life to even activate this. That's not alchemy, that's flippantly gambling with someone's life."

She nodded. It made sense. Alchemists knew mass, atomic weight, density, components of alloys, atmospheric concentration of gases...however the level of chemicals a body was producing at any given time was not quantitative. She turned the coin over for him to see the other side and make his own notes about it.

"He made it work, most of the time. However, he was unable to reverse it. All this...shit on the back is just that. He couldn't know measurable amounts of anything after the brain took over and tried to fix an imbalance. This isn't a switch. He had no way to undo this and if he tried he would more than likely have caused some chemical reaction in the brain that would have killed the test subject." Roy shook his head. "He was relying on the subject to find their way out of this, knowing it was a dream. If they refused to leave and embraced that fantasy than they were going to be lost. That was the summation of his defense when I questioned him. If he was trying to cure a soldier of reoccurring, debilitating nightmares, and they could not help themselves out of it...he wrote them off as a loss and then bragged about the State not having to pay for care for this individual any more. That they were too damaged to be of use to the Military anymore."

She took a deep breath. No wonder Roy took offense to Henry, no wonder he went after him with all the power he had. Roy had told her about Henry, vaguely, and mentioned this coin. How did she go so long in that dream world without making that connection? How was this coin not an obvious connection to that alchemist who was plotting against Roy for a week? What kind of bodyguard was she if she so easily dismissed information like that and took so long to remember this vital information that he had handed to her?

"Lieutenant, I don't want to rush you...but I have to know. How did you get out of this?" Roy asked.

"I had help." She admitted. Kimblee had told her the obvious, like he always did. Truth she couldn't see because she was too emotional. She shook her head, this could wait until later as right now he needed to know what happened so he could be knowledgeable about the situation she just gave him credit for seeing through. "Everyone I met gave me so much information, some useful...some not. In the end though, I believed I was capable of alchemy and I drew your array and manipulated oxygen concentration in order to force my body to react to the increase of oxygen. Override what was happening in my mind by threatening my own life. However, if I really did it...you would have felt it if you were holding me."

He heard the sadness, she had truly believed herself capable and that seemed to be what upset her the most. It tarnished her victory over this life-threatening alchemy. "You'd need to be conscious to activate an array, the energy needed has to come from the physical application of power. However I think you were right to believe in your ability, I always have known you could do it if you wanted to."

"I'm not a little girl anymore, Roy. You don't have to tell me you believe in me because nobody else will."

"Riza, look at the proof." Roy said and pointed at the coin. "You conquered this. This was not meant to be a maze with an exit and you made your own."

"It was a dream that I believed was real."

"It was a test that would have killed anyone else." He replied. "And as soon as you are ready we are starting alchemy lessons."

She rolled her eyes at that. "I told you years ago that I have no patience for that. Why spend years studying to start a fire when I could just strike a match and be done with it and spend my time getting real work done?"

"Well I made a promise to someone I love to not teach flame alchemy to anyone, so you're just going to have to come up with something else you want to do." He said and started to doodle a picture of her. "You can have oxygen manipulation without the spark I guess...I mean you already take my breath away."

He grinned and she couldn't help but smile at that. She wanted to say something but then laughed a little and walked back over to take her seat on the couch. How he always knew how to derail her bad trains of thought was unreal. "Let's get back to work, sir."

"Alchemy requires energy to complete the process, energy that comes from the body itself." Roy said. "It's always potential energy until it is set in motion, don't dismiss that you don't have the potential to do this."

"Do you want my report or my application for the State Alchemist program?" She asked as he sat there contemplating a way that she could have actually performed that transmutation without being physically able to.

"Anything is possible, just remember that Ed doesn't need to draw a circle at all. Philosopher's Stones circumvent the laws of equivalent exchange. Scar can deconstruct using just his one hand. There are always exceptions to the rules." Roy said. He knew she was telling him to move on, let her think she was just dreaming and the notion of her being an alchemist was silly, but he knew she had the ability if she ever wanted to tap into it. It pained him to see her doubt herself however, he could see her get uncomfortable because she was unsure about so much in this situation, so he let it go until later. "Sorry, continue with your report Lieutenant."