The town bells of Mebdo toll at eight in the evening, and the day comes to an end far earlier than in Central or even East City. Their sound echoes softly even through the villages higher up the mountain, blending in with the chirping of crickets and nocturnal birds. But in Madame Alcott's house, the sound is drowned out by the laughter and conversation in the living room, where the madame has gone on to entertain her guests following her interview.

Riza hears them from the top of the stairs, the madame laughing heartily at a story animatedly told by General de Havilland as though they were old friends catching up after a long separation. Any tension that may have come from their interview that afternoon is gone, and perhaps it's part of the reason behind the sudden arrangements that Riza has spent the past couple of hours preparing for the guests. She even missed dinner to attend to it, but it was a welcome excuse not to socialize with anyone.

She takes a deep breath then steels herself to descend to the living room. As the warmly lit room comes into view, Riza stops at the last step of the stairs.

"Pardon me," she begins. "The guest rooms are ready, if you'd like to settle in."

de Havilland finishes his cup of tea, sighing in satisfaction. "Thank you very much, Miss Hawkeye." He then turns to the madame. "Miss Alcott, you are far too generous. Lieutenant Mustang and I would have been happy to find accommodation in the town proper."

"Oh, nonsense!" says Madame Alcott, waving her hand dismissively. "We're perfectly happy to have you here as our personal guests during your stay in Mebdo. Riza knows well how much I love to entertain. And after all, it would be much more convenient for us to meet my students here. We will be very comfortable, and we can talk for as long as we want."

"Splendid. I look forward to these meetings. Miss Hawkeye, please lead the way."

Roy rises from his place at the end of the couch, where Riza surmises he has been keeping mostly to himself, judging by the tension that is released from his limbs. She turns before they can properly exchange a glance, then heads up the stairs with the men and their luggage behind her.

On the second floor, Riza turns to a long corridor and leads de Havilland to the first room—the house's former master bedroom, when the madame was much younger and her family lived together. The general smiles and bows his head in thanks.

"Good night to you, Miss Hawkeye." To Roy, he says, "And to you as well, Lieutenant Mustang. It's been a long day. We will discuss our plan for the next two weeks over breakfast."

"Sir," Roy affirms from behind Riza.

de Havilland closes the door behind him, and then Riza is left alone with Roy. She nods to acknowledge him. "This way."

There is something peculiar about the act of leading him to his room at the end of the corridor. Riza finds herself incredibly conscious of the way Roy's eyes feel on her back, of the unspoken fact that much has transpired between this moment and the first time she showed him his room at the Hawkeye house. A moment from a lifetime ago, between two different people she wouldn't recognize if she were to see them now.

She opens the door for Roy and backs against it to let him through. As he passes her, he comes almost close enough for them to touch. He is suddenly more real to her than he has seemed throughout the day. Riza is struck by his presence, never having stood this closely to him before.

He turns and looks at her, as though weighing the silence that hangs between them.

"It's good to see you," Roy says at last, good-naturedly. "It's been a long time."

His face is half-illuminated by the light of the room and difficult to read even up close. Slowly, Riza responds, "Yes, it has."

"I didn't think this is how we would see each other again."

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"Neither did I, most times. I..." Roy averts his gaze as he struggles to articulate himself. His words come out in stutters with a short, nervous breath. "I thought you were…"

His voice dies in his throat. Riza can only imagine what must have made him believe that the worst had happened to her, but in light of everything she has been through, the matter of her death seems so trivial.

"Is this any better than what you expected?" Riza asks, only belatedly realizing how unsympathetic the question sounds. Roy looks as though his face had been splashed with cold water, and so she tries to look apologetic, speaking more gently. "You'd better get some rest, Mister Mustang. It looks like you'll be as busy tomorrow as you were today."

She begins to close the door and is suddenly stopped when Roy grips its edge.

"Wait," he says. He breaks into a small, friendly smile. "We've known each other quite a while, haven't we? Maybe it'll be easier for the two of us to not be strangers to each other. Please, call me Roy."

A pause.

"Good night, Lieutenant."

She avoids meeting his eyes as she closes the door, doesn't look back when she walks away, towards her room. And then, as if out of nowhere, her tiredness begins to set in. It's been a long day, and she has yet to finish even one of the transcripts she had been working on for the madame. Riza feels that she might fall asleep as soon as she tries to continue working in her room.

She has just begun considering to work in the kitchen instead when she reaches the second floor landing and finds Madame Alcott coming up the stairs.

"Riza, my dear." The madame squeezes Riza's arms affectionately. "I'm afraid I've overworked you today. I can't thank you enough for helping me take care of our guests."

"It's no trouble at all, madame," says Riza.

Madame Alcott studies her face silently, and she realizes that her strained smile has betrayed her. Riza is no longer surprised by the way the madame always seems to guess exactly how she is feeling, even in complicated matters related to her father for which the madame could never fully grasp the reason.

The madame takes a deep breath. "I am deeply sorry for the way I spoke of your father today."

This catches Riza off-guard.

"My opinion of him never has been favorable, but I should have known better than to express it so brashly at this time," the madame continues. She cups Riza's cheek with one hand, rubbing it with her thumb. "What matters more is how you feel. It's all right to grieve."

Perhaps Riza is getting sleepier, or she simply finds comfort in the madame's sincere apology. She smiles more warmly this time and bows her head in respect. "It's all right, Madame Alcott. I understand. I always knew how you felt about Father not letting me learn alchemy. But you've taken care of me since the night he died. I could never repay that."

"Your presence here is quite enough. Retirement hasn't been easy all by myself, so I'm glad to have you here for company. You are welcome in this house no matter what, hmm? Now get some sleep, my dear."

Riza watches as Madame Alcott retreats to her room at the other side of the landing. "You too, madame."

It is silent in the house for the first time since that afternoon. Riza believes for a moment that it will give her the respite she needs to both resume her work and, later, get a good night's sleep. But she couldn't be more mistaken. Whatever good her last interaction with the madame did for her dissipates as soon as she enters her room, leaving her to deal with the complicated shock of seeing Roy again, the sting of Madame Alcott's unkind words for her father, her distaste for the false graciousness she has had to display through it all. It is two in the morning when, having barely started transcribing the second set of documents on her desk, Riza finally gives in to the lull of sleep, resigning herself to the same old nightmare that is sure to come to her once more.

Barely three hours later, it isn't the flames or her father that wakes her.

She seems to feel every sensation all at once. Limbs aching from sleeping in the wrong position, heart palpitating like it does every morning, skin so drenched in sweat that her clothes cling uncomfortably to it. Her mind, clear and alert after her first dreamless sleep in a long time, as though she has been awake for hours.

In the absence of her usual nightmare, her subconscious had drifted off to other unwelcome thoughts. And although in four months she has gradually taken control of her mind by way of her mantra and her tasks that leave her with little time for anything else, these thoughts get the better of Riza now as she peels her damp shirt off her back. First she blames Roy Mustang for disrupting her peace in her new home, but deep down she knows that the truth has never left her. She had simply buried it beneath her grief; she has no choice but to face it again now, as she would have eventually.

Arms crossed around herself, her fingers brush gingerly over her shoulders, then down her sides. She takes one deep, ragged breath, stands in front of the room's full-length mirror, and turns around.

The intricate red array on her back hasn't changed. Every word of the inscribed passages is accurate to her memory, every stroke and swoop drawn right where they should be. It is still perfect and precise and the most fascinating thing Riza has ever seen. It overwhelms her with an old sense of reverence for Berthold's work, the crippling doubt she overcame to have his work tattooed on her back, the searing pain of the moment that it happened. Her long-suppressed feelings, emerging from the hidden corners of her mind at last.

For two years, it was the most important thing in her possession, and her father's death has made it even more invaluable. A precious secret turned into his final inheritance. But the flames that were absent from her sleep are here now, etched into her father's work and turning it into a reminder of tragedy, and she knows why she has needed to pretend that it never existed in the first place. Riza's fingernails dig into her skin, clawing at whatever part of her back she can reach and leaving raw, pink trails.

It must go. It cannot be part of her.

Riza doubles over on her knees. It takes everything she has not to scream. She scratches and scratches and she wants to stop, not for the sake of her stinging skin but for her father who trusted her sound judgment to keep his secrets safe.

"This alchemy must not end up in the hands of just anyone," her father had said. "Do you understand?"

She did. She still does. But how could she live with flame on her skin when she can no longer even bear to have it live in her head?

Something like this should be the least of her worries right now. Outside the window, the sky has turned from velvety blue to a brighter shade, tinged with warm yellow along the horizon. The sunrise serves as a direct reminder of Riza's unfinished work from the day before rather than the abstract measure of reality that she usually considers it to be. She shakes her head, willing herself to focus. There are errands to be run in town, chores to be completed, the profiles of the madame's students waiting to be transcribed—where does she even begin?

Out of nowhere, a plan comes to her like a spark.

There is a flurry of activity in the Alcott house over the next two weeks. Just as Madame Alcott had promised, she welcomes alchemists from all over Mebdo to meet with Roy and de Havilland, who in turn find that many of their interviewees are friendly with the madame. A number of them were taught by the madame as children, while others are grown adults. Each one is glad for an excuse to see the madame.

The interviews begin in the morning, just after breakfast. Madame Alcott sits in on the interviews, curious about their guests' beliefs in alchemy, proud to share her personal philosophy of alchemy as a congruous practice. Riza is present as well to take notes on Madame Alcott's behalf, since the madame has expressed an interest in recording these different beliefs and in keeping up-to-date on her former students' work since taking them under her wing.

For the rest of the day, Riza retreats to the kitchen, still observant even as the interviews in the living room end and turn into more casual exchanges filled with laughter and, in the case of the madame's former students, reminiscing over their early experiences with alchemy. It isn't difficult to keep up as Riza has met many of these former students before, during personal visits to the madame. Marcus Jacoby, Cassandra Evans, Daniel Lawrence—she recalls their names, the number of siblings they each have, their parents' occupations and more.

Riza then sets her plan in motion. Being familiar with the way alchemists protect their research from prying eyes, she uses these details about the students' lives to encode the information from her tattoo into a more innocuous format. Birth dates and ages replace values in scientific formulas; names, addresses, even favorite foods become code for the elements that make up fire and concepts related to its creation and sustainment.

There is a responsorial psalm in the tattoo, the Libera me, which Riza can recite from memory. She rewrites this as the students' passing statements during their interviews and her own commentary of their interactions with the madame.

Originally, it begins:

Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,
When the heavens and the earth shall be moved,
When thou shalt come to judge the world by fire…

In Riza's new notes, the passage becomes:

Daniel Lawrence visits the Madame again today, coming up
from his home in town to the higher areas, here in Upper Mebdo.
He still regards her very warmly, and thinks the world of her.

It's a painstaking effort, transcribing conversations during the day and then rewriting them late into the night as she looks over her shoulder, studying the details of the tattoo again and again in front of her mirror. But before she knows it, a week has passed and she has completed creating her new notes—twenty full pages of her notebook containing detailed information on flame alchemy.

However, Riza quickly finds herself feeling uneasy rather than fulfilled. Strange. She knows she has gotten every detail correct, explained every concept accurately, but the work leaves her restless for two nights afterwards; second-guessing herself tires her out more than creating the notes did.

At last, it dawns on her: she is filled with guilt. When Berthold tattooed his research onto her back, she knew that he didn't intend it to simply be convenient or easily carried by Riza wherever she went. He had meant for it to be guarded with all she has, and for her to give it away only with full trust, confidence, and intent. But creating the notes had been a selfish plan, a fact that she only sees now after getting past the need to dissociate herself from something that is, after all, a permanent part of her body.

Selfish, not to mention dangerous.

And so in the dead hours of the night, Riza sneaks out of her room with the notes, a hastily formed plan leading her to the kitchen. As she approaches, she is suddenly filled with dread, a cold sweat coming out through her back. She falters only for a second on the stairs, taking a deep breath before finally entering the kitchen.

Riza hasn't cooked a single meal since moving in with Madame Alcott, hasn't started a fire in the hearth even once. The madame has been completely understanding of her unwillingness to do any chore that directly deals with fire, and so Riza has not needed to come anywhere near fire until now. She is already trembling as she takes a box of matches from the cupboard and carefully lifts the firewood from the storage compartment into the main chamber of the cast iron stove.

She holds her breath and strikes the match.

Riza turns away, staggering against the kitchen table. She grips the edge of the table tightly as the fire behind her crackles into steadiness. When the fire begins to grow silent, she takes another deep breath, forcing herself to face it again and keep it burning by adding more wood. And it's only then that she remembers the need for kindling, that the fire could have started burning hotter and faster with it. Her notes. The sight, sound, and feel of fire paralyzed her so quickly that she has nearly forgotten them.

There is a sudden sound of movement outside the kitchen as she retrieves the notes from the table. Then, Roy Mustang appears before her, and the pages slip through her hands and scatter all over the floor.

Roy awoke long before he heard the sound of movement in the kitchen in the middle of the night. He isn't even truly sure he slept at all, but since hearing the disturbance, he hasn't been able to even try falling asleep again. Not that it matters, Roy thinks. He hasn't had a good night's sleep in more than three months. Nevertheless, some disruptions are more welcome than others; the kind that breaks complete stillness while he is awake is certainly preferable to the horror he meets when he is asleep.

He has since made a habit of studying and practicing his alchemy whenever he needed to tire himself for bed. It's far more tedious than the routine he briefly lived out in East City before meeting de Havilland, but he has made enough progress to make the effort worthwhile. Tonight, however, Roy allows himself to be drawn to the puttering in the kitchen instead of his study materials; he would best be useful if a thief has broken into the house, after all.

He doesn't know what he expected to find there. Certainly not Riza, her eyes tired but frantic at the same time, rigid as though she'd been caught in the middle of something unpleasant.

"Miss Hawkeye, are you all right?" Roy asks, approaching tentatively.

A stack of papers had fallen to the floor with his arrival. Roy nearly steps on one of several pages' worth of handwritten material, which Riza quickly begins gathering. He crouches down and reaches for the papers which have fallen farther away from her.

"It's nothing," Riza mumbles. "I was making tea for myself. I couldn't sleep."

Roy pauses for a moment. He hasn't stopped to wonder what the nights have been like for Riza since Berthold's death. It's no wonder that she would struggle with sleep, but how different might her nightmares be from his? What does she see, what haunts her? It couldn't be the same dark, crumbling heap of bone and ash that comes back for him each night, but he can only imagine how much worse it must be for Riza.

His voice is surprisingly gentle when he hands the papers to her. "Me too."

She briefly hesitates to take them back from him. "Thank you."

Roy watches as Riza carefully taps the papers into alignment with hesitant fingers, then sets them down slowly onto the table. He doesn't notice the silence stretching far too long, or Riza seeing the way he looks at her hands. Her grip on the papers tightens. "What are you looking at?"

"Oh. Uh…" His gaze flits over to the stove, and he clears his throat. "You haven't put on the water."

Riza blinks and shakes her head. "Right."

She quickly moves around the kitchen, gathering what is needed for making tea from one cabinet, then another. As Riza busies herself with the tea, Roy sits by the table, his attention drawn to the notes she left near him. Curious, he takes the first page and reads it carefully.

"Are these about Madame Alcott's students?"

She responds after a moment's pause. "Yes. The madame likes to have notes on them. It's why I've been present at their interviews. But I already know them from before, so it wasn't difficult to write their profiles."

"I can see that. This is very detailed." There is another moment's silence, as though one were waiting for the other to speak first. Roy hesitantly attempts to carry on the conversation. "I guess all this work for Madame Alcott has been keeping you preoccupied."

The paper leaves his hand suddenly; Riza has grabbed it, replacing it with a cup and saucer in front of him before taking the rest of her notes as well. She sits across Roy, placing the notes protectively close to herself.

"I understand that you're upset about Father's death too, Lieutenant Mustang," Riza says rather sternly. "But I still find it difficult to talk about him. I hope you understand."

"No—no, that's not what I meant," Roy quickly replies. "I just... I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Riza frowns again. And although the admission had been sudden, he is overcome once again by the fear he first harbored about her upon finding that she has disappeared from the Hawkeye house. The memory is as palpable as a flame, the way that the assurance of her survival is as sobering as a cold splash of water.

"Thank you for your concern," says Riza. "I don't see why, though. You're not obligated to look after me."

Roy offers a kind but sad smile. "I know I'm not family, but that doesn't mean I care any less. You welcomed me as Master Hawkeye's student all those years ago. Your family looked after me while I was there. I'm grateful for that." His smile fades. "When I came back from the military academy and found your father dead, and you, gone… I knew I had to do anything to find you. Alive. I would have taken care of you if I knew then. If you came to me."

He isn't sure that Riza believes him. But expressing his anxieties about her for the first time gives him a sense of relief; it's more than he could ask for after all that has happened.

Riza speaks again after a long while. "I've been doing all right. There's no need for you to dwell on me, or Father."

"But I do. This isn't just about Master Hawkeye." Roy hesitates briefly. "You might not be safe… not here."

"... what do you mean?"

Roy swallows, and he takes a deep sigh. He isn't prepared to answer the question, because he didn't plan to talk about it this way—he hasn't made a plan for it at all. His suspicions came about nearly two weeks ago, and since then, he has wondered how best to share them with Riza without causing unnecessary alarm. All he knows is that they concern her once again, whether or not she realizes the delicate situation she is in. Then Roy decides that it doesn't matter how he tells her in the end.

"I'm sorry for asking you this again, but I need to know if you remember anything from the night Master Hawkeye died." She begins to protest, and Roy urges gently, "Anything at all."

At the very least, she seems to give the question some thought. She shakes her head. "I've tried to remember, Lieutenant Mustang. I really have. For the past few months, I'd hoped something would come back to me. But all there is… all I see is fire. Sometimes I hear Father's voice, calling for help… but I'm never able to save him." Riza exhales in resignation. "And I remember running away. How terrified I was. How I couldn't turn back because there was nothing I could do."

"Yes, there is."

There is simply no easier way to say it. Roy continues in a whisper, "I suspect that Madame Alcott had something to do with Master Hawkeye's murder."

Riza bolts up from her seat. Angry, confused, alarmed. "What are you talking about?"

"Please listen to me," Roy says, rising from his seat as well. He looks around and over his shoulder, then leans forward with his hands on the table. "You already know what General de Havilland and I have come here for. We're concerned about the safety of alchemists all over the country; what we don't tell just anyone is that it's because of what happened to Master Hawkeye. We believe he was killed because he did important and dangerous work by pursuing his research on flame alchemy."

"What makes you say that?"

"All the evidence points that way. The damage left behind by the fire that killed Master Hawkeye was minimal and confined to only one part of his study. Fire would have spread quickly in a place like that, unless it was controlled and deliberate. And I tried to recover his research from the remains, I looked through his personal journals and decoded them—there was nothing left behind about flame alchemy. His research is missing."

"I don't see how Madame Alcott has anything to do with this."

"I didn't want to consider it myself. I know how well-loved Madame Alcott is here, and I know you've been doing well with her. But out of all the alchemists we've talked to these past few months, she is the only one with a motive, and no alibi."

"What—"

Roy goes around the table and comes face to face with Riza, bringing his voice lower. "Madame Alcott bears an incredibly deep grudge against Master Hawkeye over his practice of alchemy and over you. She wanted flame alchemy to be accessible to all, which wouldn't have been possible while he was alive. And above all, she was in Cameron the night he—"

"That's enough, Roy!"

He steps back, startled by her sudden use of his first name.

"Don't talk about things you don't understand," Riza says harshly. "The madame has been there for me since the night Father died. No matter what she thought of him, she took me in, she looked after me. I don't remember much of that night, but I'm sure of this. The madame is nothing like the person you think she is."

It is the first time he has seen fire in her, and the least that she seems like the Riza he remembers. Roy backs away, but it must be grief, he thinks, something that he knows almost as well as she does. His own grief is why he is here in the first place, hoping that she might have the answers to Berthold's death. He approaches cautiously, delicately.

"Miss Hawkeye," he begins. "Riza. Please don't misunderstand. There's been an investigation back in Cameron, and I've thought about what I've learned about her, the way she speaks of alchemy like your father did—"

"And that's all this is to you. This is all about my father." Riza exhales scornfully. "No. This is about flame alchemy, and it doesn't matter to you how you obtain it, even if it hurts other people. Even if you hurt me and Madame Alcott." She shakes her head in disgust. "It's not what Father would have wanted."

Riza turns and walks away with her notes, their tea forgotten, Roy helpless as he watches her leave.