I don't own FMA!

Never a Mother to Me

"We don't need Mom. We can get along fine without her." Roy's body shook with the force of his cough and his father stopped to feel his forehead. "I really don't think you should be outside, Roy. It's freezing out there, and you haven't eaten dinner yet." Roy swallowed hard and looked around their 'house'. It was even smaller than an apartment, because most of it was used as floorspace for their clothing store. It didn't help that most of their furniture wasbroken and that there were holes where they slept. Dinner consisted of a watery soup... thing. He understood that it was the best his father could do under their reduced circumstances, but...

He wished it could be better, and that he could help too. Roy was exceptionally clumsy at sewing and handling the machinery, so as a consequence he felt exceptionally useless. The only thing he could do was deliver things in this freezing weather to people who didn't want to come out of their warm houses. He pulled his jacket closer around his shoulders and shivered, noticing that there were even more holes now than before.

He felt that he was a burden on his father as well, though he would never tell Roy that. He was shooting out of his clothes, and it was one heck of a case of inconveniant timing. There was hardly enough money to buy food, let alone buy too much cloth to make Roy clothes from. Roy had learned to live with it, the holes in his clothes, the too-short clothing that exposed his ankles and wrists to the unforgiving bite of the cold.

But Alchemy made everything better... sort of. They didn't have to pay for heating, and Roy was glad that they didn't have to. Flame Alchemy... that was what he was good at. Maybe when he was old enough, he'd join the military so he could support his father and himself, even become a State Alchemist. They didn't need his mother, of course not.

Roy picked the packages off of the counter and pushed open the shop door. He was frozen for a minute as the cold swamped him, but then he regained control of his senses and pushed forward, his father close behind him. Roy studied him out of the corner of his eye for a second. He was a bit scruffy, sure, but what could you do in times like this? It had been much better at one time... before...

Roy felt as if he were a hundred pounds heavier than he actually was. His heart was pounding in his chest and he felt hot and sweaty, perspiration beading on his face. Then her face swam into view.

"M-mother!"

"Violet..." his father murmured.

Violet held her hand to her mouth and gave them a superior smile. "Oh. Is this how you're surviving without me then? In rags?" She laughed in their faces, and his father's face burned. She was decked out in furs, an elegant violet dress and high heels. She opened her crocodile skin purse encrusted with real gems and tossed a ten dollar bill at them. "Go on, see if you can find yourself something to wear!" she laughed, turning on her heel. She did not even bother to look at Roy. She put her arm around another man waiting for her and Roy stared at the bill she had flung at him.

He stomped it into the snow and staggered unsteadily. What was wrong with him? He felt... felt... his knees gave way and he fell into the snow.

Roy's eyes opened slowly and he was assailed by white. "W-what? Where am I?" his father was wringing his hands by his bedside. "Roy! You're alright!"

"What happened?"

"The doctor's said that you caught that plague... it's been going around in the kids... you heard of it." Roy's face whitened to resemble the color of a sheet. "H-how much was the hospital bill?" His father looked at the cap in his hands and wrung it, too.

"It cost everything we had left, Roy... and we're still indebted to the hospital." He remembered his mother being only a few feet away and he opened his mouth to ask about her.

"Violet looked and kept walking Roy," his father said bitterly.

When Roy got back from the hospital, his father closed down the shop and sold everything he had. It turned out that their lack of business was due to the store that Violet had opened just to spite them. Before his father sold the machines, Roy rummaged around for an old notebook and flipped the pages to the sign for fire transmutation. He grabbed a pair of white gloves from an old box and sewed the transmutation circle into it. The next day, Roy turned sixteen and entered the military as the Flame Alchemist.
ABOUT 15 YEARS LATER...

"I'm home! Now where's my pretty lady, eh?" Brigadier General Riza Hawkeye shushed him and hugged him as he came through the door of their mansion. "I'm glad you're home, Fuhrer," she said. Roy grinned and stroked her hair thoughtfully. "How many more months then?" he asked, patting her swollen stomach. She giggled and placed his hands a little higher, where Roy could feel something kicking his hand. "Should be sometime soon, I hope you can wait a little longer to be a daddy."

"No way! But I can try..." he said slyly. "But I can't believe... that they made me Fuhrer! This is great! I've fixed the fraternization rule, Riza." She nodded in approval and Roy suddenly looked regretful. "I've got to go back to work, so I'll see you later, okay?" he kissed her lips. "Bye."

Ding dong... Riza opened the door donned in an apron, since she was cooking lunch. It was a woman dressed in expensive looking furs, though she was quite old. "Hello? Who are you?"

The woman laughed, high pitched and flirtacious, and Riza immediately took a disliking to her. "Why, I'm the Fuhrer's mother! Is he home?" "No... he'll be back later..."

"Alright, then I'll just wait!" she let herself in, and before Riza could protest, sat herself on the sofa. "Nice place you got here." Riza nodded and went back to the kitchen to wait for Roy to return.

Roy turned the key in the lock and opened the door. "I'm home, Riza!" he went to the living room to strip off his uniform and was about to throw it onto the coach when his arm stopped in mid-swing. He said nothing and put his uniform on a coat rack for the time being, then walked around to the kitchen. "Riza... when did she get here?"

Riza shook her head. "About an hour ago..." Roy rubbed her stomach gently. "How are you doing? Has she given you any trouble?" She leaned her head into his chest. "She's a... a..." Roy smiled a little. "I know. It's alright, I'll take care of it." Roy left the kitchen to face the inevitable in the living room. He sat on another couch opposite his mother.

"What do you want?"

She laughed into her hand and Roy ground his teeth. "Nothing, I just wanted to see how my wonderful, darling, baby is doing."

Roy remembered everything she had done to him. Everything.

The day he had transmuted something of value, or to him anyway. It had been a puppy figurine out of metal, and he had run to show her. She had looked at him with contempt, taken the figure, and smashed it against the wall. As the five year old tried to pick up the pieces of his toy, she said, "Why do you bother making worthless junk?"

The day she left, he had grabbed onto her dress crying for her not to leave. Only six at the time, he had not understood why she would want to leave. She had shaken him off roughly and slammed the door behind her.

Then, when he was eight, there had been the incident on the street. He had seen her again, and ran to her. She was with one of her new boyfriends however, and when he had questioned her about Roy, shepushed him away with her foot as if he were a piece of rotting flesh. "This? I've never seen him in my life, the filthy little urchin!" Roy started to cry and ran back to his father in tears.

And now she was sitting here in front of him, all smiles and charm, calling him her baby and gushing how much she missed him. He ground his teeth harder but forced himself to keep his temper. Riza sat next to him and put his hand on her stomach gently, pain in her eyes. "I'll be done in a bit, alright?" She nodded and leaned against him for support. "Maybe you should go upstairs..." Riza looked at him, a smile on her lips. "Oh? But there are five of them; which one?" Roy laughed. "Preferably the second floor, so you don't have to walk so much." She went upstairs and he stared at his mother.

"I'll put this as nicely as I can manage at the moment: Get out of my house."

His mother froze. "Is that how you treat your mother?" she said frostily.

"You've given my wife grief, and now I want you out. Tell me, does my mother remember how she treated me?"

She said nothing for a while. "I was still your mother!" she hissed.

"You gave me life, yes. But you were never a mother to me.

"So now I will ask you one more time. Get out. Of my house."

She got up in a rage and stormed out of the house.

Roy stood at a grave and placed flowers on it. "See Dad? I told you, everything would get better in the end. It's just... it's just too bad your life never got any better..." Riza stood beside him, a pair of twins wrapped up in bundles in her arms. "See? This is where Grandpa is, he was a nice grandpa," she said, tickling the babies gently. Roy looked at the grave a little while longer, then smiled. "Yeah. Yeah he was."