Chapter 25: The Fear of the Father

Silas would be furious.

Cecilia shouldn't have agreed to assume the position of Roy's fiancée, but she couldn't stop her curiosity. Roy wouldn't use her, but she doubted him all the same. If she revealed who she was, she would know Roy's true intentions with her. It happened with Graham, the Amestrian military man that almost cost her life, and the incident could repeat with Roy.

She was blinded. That would explain her propensity for making stupid decisions around him. She almost couldn't wait for everything to come and bite her in the ass to teach her to stop repeating her mistakes.

Silas stormed into her apartment hugging his briefcase to his chest.

Cecilia jumped, dropping the pile of folded blankets she had been carrying onto the couch, and shouted, as soon as her father came into view, "I thought I took all of your copies of my house key."

He took one look at the remaining disarray of her living room where she and Roy had made their love nest last night and glared at her as he set his briefcase down.

"What are you thinking?" he demanded. "You're smarter than this! You said you would handle things! This is Graham waiting to happen all over again!"

"I haven't told him anything about me," she told him once he calmed down enough to listen. That statement set him off.

"But you will! You will because you can't help it or because you want to feel closer to someone! You will because that is what you do when you're in love! You're honest and you say everything, even all of the parts that you hate to remember, you want them to know all about you, understand you, but Cai—"

"Silas!" she snapped, her heart jumping to her throat when the first syllable of her name left his lips in his heated speech. He was slipping.

Silas grabbed her by the arms and held her firmly, bearing down on her with all of his anxious fears. "We cannot trust the men in the military. You learned your lesson with Graham, or at least I believed you had. He tried to sell you out to the Fuhrer. If I had not been in the building, if I had not heard him say your name you wouldn't be standing here. You wouldn't be safe. Safe as you can be. I don't know where you'd be. You'd be used for political gain. You'd be waved in front of the Volkov family and used to incite a war that Amestris has been waiting years to start. You cannot put yourself in this position. You cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to yourself. Do not do it for the love of god, think of what you suffered and what Arisha went through. You promised her. You promised that you'd—"

"S-Stop." Every sentence was a memory or the implication of one that she spent years trying to avoid. It never stopped anyone from hunting her down or finding her. She bore the scar of the wound that almost left her dead. "Stop making these assumptions when my engagement to Mustang is fake!"

"Huh?" Silas blinked skeptically. "What? Fake? But you're in love?"

She smacked his arm as hard as she could muster. "Who's in love?"

"Ow!"

"He asked me for a favor!" she continued, but lowered her voice. "I'm not compromising myself in any way. We're going to be pretending to be engaged for when we attend the Fuhrer's party together."

"As Oona Marshall?"

"No, someone else. You'll have to tell everyone that your daughter won't be in attendance because she's had an emergency that she needs to take care of or something."

"But you're my daughter. People know that."

"They think Isabella Croft is your daughter. At least, people think that's what I look like. It works."

"What purpose does this serve? Why does Colonel Mustang need a fake fiancée?"

Cecilia glared at him. "I'm sure you know why, so there's no point beating around the bush."

"Do you want to know?" asked Silas, serious. "If I tell you, you might change your mind and run. It would be beneficial to our cause if I did say it."

"I want him to tell me," said Cecilia. "I want him to tell me all of his truths. I don't want you to do it. It wouldn't be fair to him, especially after he promised that I would be the first to know."

"You're in love with him," deduced Silas.

Cecilia's face grew hot instantly. "I'm attracted to him and I like him as an individual, but I'm not in love with him! Not yet, at least."

"Not yet?"

"Look, we're here to talk about me buying a house!" she shouted, changing the subject. "Did you wire the money into my account or did you bring it with you?"

"With me. You would've gone to the bank anyway."

"So, you came all this way to lecture me? Why bother if you were going to give me the money anyway? You could have saved yourself the breath."

Silas frowned. "I will have you know—"

"Thank you, Silas, for always worrying about me," she said, interrupting him, taking a step closer to him. "You may not be my real father—"

He slapped his hand over her mouth and forced her to turn towards the entrance where a very shocked Roy stared back at them.

Shit.

Roy entered the apartment and shut the door with his foot, sticking both hands into the pockets of his coat. "So what's this about not being your real father?"

Cecilia and Silas sat him down in the living room. Silas forgot to lock the door on his way in and she cursed him for it.

There was no other way around things. They would have to move to the second stage of lying after being caught in the first stage of lying.

"I'm adopted."

"She's adopted."

"I can smell the bullshit without needing to sit so close," said Roy, arms crossed over his chest.

"Check official records if you don't believe it," said Silas.

"Official records claim that you have one daughter, Oona Marshall, and those documents can be doctored. You were in the right position to be able to do all that fifteen years ago. Your file is classified for a reason too, meaning even if you were the Fuhrer's personal assistant, you played an important role in the structure. If I went into Eastern Command and in an audience with my commanding officer said that I believe Silas Marshall rewrote his family documents, would you get away with that scotch free?"

Cecilia sighed. "Mustang, if I confessed that if you went to your commanding officer to say this about Silas and about me, that you would be responsible for my future exploitation, would you believe me?"

"Oona!"

She raised her hand up to silence any further protests from her father. He swallowed them down.

Roy stared at her, eyebrows knit together and furrowing his brow. "Why would you be exploited?"

"My name, my real name, carries a certain weight."

"That isn't a good reason," said Roy. "You two are making it real easy for me to build a case against you, but even I know that I'm being cornered." His eyes fell on Silas. "I understand that there are people you don't mess with and something tells me you're one of them."

Silas grinned. "It's nice to meet a dog that knows his place."

Roy looked furious and ready to fire back, but Cecilia interjected in time.

"There really was an adoption," she said, praying to diffuse the situation. "The circumstances surrounding the adoption aren't exactly neat, so Silas wanted it off the record and claimed me as his real daughter. I can explain things to you in greater detail later, but you should be at work and I should be house hunting. You can ask me all the questions you want when you come home."

"You will answer all of them," stated Roy, leaving his seat.

"I will, I promise."

She walked him out of the door and outside of the apartment, out of Silas' line of sight, she kissed him goodbye.

"I promise," she whispered with her forehead pressed against his.

Roy kissed her again. "Don't spend too much on the house."

She watched him go, her fluttering heart never once calming to a steady beat as she returned inside of her apartment and locked the door. Silas waited impatiently for her in the living room.

The same sigh that escaped her, left him—relief. So close.

"We need to get our story straight," she told him.

They waited half an hour before they discussed the details of the new story that they would be telling Roy. Cecilia felt guilty about it, but she convinced herself that her actions weren't wrong. It was self-preservation. If she didn't take precautions, she could end up dead in the street like Melrick did or in her apartment like Petunia. She hated the idea that if the truth came out and Roy was the one to tell it, that the possibility existed in which he might be blamed for harboring the truth and be punished as well. Not only that, she was making it impossibly difficult for him to ever trust her and no real relationship could be started without a foundation based on trust, but she couldn't tell him everything now because she didn't trust him either.

This relationship with Roy would never work even if their feelings were mutual. It was best for it to stay physical, no commitment or attachments necessary. It would take her some time to be able to separate her real feelings from the act, but it wasn't impossible. She could do it.

She was punishing herself.

No.

As she spoke to Silas, she made up her mind. After the party, after all of it was said and done and Roy got what he wanted, she would disappear. Go back to South City, try West City, or even go to North City. That was the only way things could work, by not existing. He would forget about her and she would forget about him.

Silas was right. She couldn't keep putting herself at risk. She needed to stay protected and hidden for as long as it took for the people hunting her to leave her alone.

She said it before. She resolved to accept that fact before, but she was too stubborn about leaving her feelings behind to follow through—a horrible trait of hers.

Silas set the briefcase down on her table and walked up to her. He took her face gently into her hands and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes as he lingered close to her, the warmth of his affection made her feel content.

"I love you, Cath. Do not let this become more than it should. It started as a favor, so let it end as one. Nothing more. When you are done, come home. You can stay there or you can branch out somewhere else, whatever you want, I will do for you."

Cecilia smiled. "Thank you, Silas."

"Now, if it is just a favor that I'm playing along with, I can help you house hunt tomorrow morning if you'd like."

"Thank you, but I know that you're busy, so go finish whatever work you're neglecting."

Silas left her home and she continued tidying up her apartment. She would see a realtor about purchasing a house once she was done, with any luck she would be able to go see a couple of homes that afternoon.

xl: I, too, cannot wait for all of Cecilia's bad decisions to come bite her in the ass.

My thanks to animexxfreakxx, sox0359, and Kimono Kay for your reviews.

Have I mentioned enough that I am free from school? I'm free!