She didn't know when she realized that she knew things that she shouldn't've. Knew things that she never learned.
She Knew that the way that the man - who the woman insisted she call 'Daddy' - screamed and yelled and hit was wrong. Knew that the woman who called herself 'Mommy' putting up with it was bad. Knew that everything about this house and this life was different.
But different compared to what?
And she Knew, more than anything else, that her eyes – golden like fresh wheat and jewelry and distinct as all else – were perfect, like nothing else.
No matter what The Man and The Woman said about freaks and mutations and disgusting -
She loved them, her eyes. Even if she didn't know why.
They were all she had.
She counted days and nights and times she slept. She listened to the words they said and repeated them. But she wasn't learning, really. She knew their words and many others – she Remembered guttural sounds and flowing vowels and staccato beats –
She told herself stories in those staccato beats, and felt a little better at the comforting sound.
She told herself stories because no one else would.
Because what else could she do?
She wasn't cute, or adorable, or wonderful like babies were supposed to be. She wasn't charming or lovely or … well, anything. She was just the freak baby with too smart, golden eyes.
And The Man resented her for that.
She realized she had been counting days for over 400 nights before she understood that there would be no celebration. Not like she thought there should've been. A party to celebrate her birth … that was what people did, right?
Because she Remembered a house full of people, with hair like the sun and eyes to match, with black hair interspersed and blue eyes scattered. With loud shouting and good natured fighting and love, so much love it was coming out of the walls and –
There was none of that in this place.
And that same day, when she hummed herself a quiet tune recalled from wherever the things she Knew came from, she realized something: she didn't have a name.
Or if she did, she had never heard it.
She decided she wasn't going to love The Man and The Woman after that. She Knew enough that that was wrong.
(They were not Mom and Dad.)
And she didn't like things that were wrong. She had to fix them.
By the time 882 nights had passed since she started counting, she forced herself to stop waiting to hopefully get a name, and just choose one herself. No one else was going to give her one.
But what to choose …
She found out, from overhearing The Man and The Woman that they were called Rubia and Thomas Hughes.
Hughes.
Maes Hughes was a good name. A hero's name. A good name.
But Maes was the name of a man, and May … sounded like someone else. She couldn't take those names any more than she could have a meaningless name.
(She didn't want to have a meaningless name. A person without a name was worthless, and if a name was going to give her worth it better be a damn good one.)
She Knew that Thomas meant 'twin' while Rubia meant 'jewel.' Hughes meant 'son of Hugh,' a name which meant 'heart' or 'mind.'
Thomas Hughes was a twin of minds. Rubia Hughes was a jewel of the heart. And she …
Well, she was just her.
She had gold eyes she loved more than anything and she was too smart. She Knew things she shouldn't and she had love she wanted to give and no one to give it to.
She loved stew and tall glasses of milk and spicy foods, and she loved the feel of the wind on her face and sun on her neck.
And she loved the rain, when it came. The rain made everything hideous beautiful, even if only for a moment.
Rain … Raina. Queen.
The Queen of Minds. No. The Queen of her own Mind.
Knowledge is power.
And she was teeming with knowledge.
(All Knowledge comes with a price.
One she Knew, somehow, she had paid.)
Raina had counted 935 days when the argument happened.
"Look at her!" The bellow had come from downstairs, tuning her into an argument that sounded like it had already gained its wind. "We can't send her out there – we'd be disgraced!"
The Man. Talking about … talking about her. And her freak eyes.
"But she needs to," The Woman tried to feebly fight back, barely audible through the walls. "We can't keep her here."
"She's a brainless freak," The Man declared with finality. "There's something wrong with her mind."
The sound was too soft to carry after that.
'Something wrong with her mind.'
Not her mind. She was a Queen in it.
But she felt less sure of that every day.
The Woman drank more and more these days, and the Man worked more and more, too. Soon it was as if the house was a ghost house, and there was nothing there but her and the paint on the walls.
And the books.
Books felt like starting over. Like no one was judging her for anything but putting it down before she was finished. Books were a companion who she never had to fight for and … that was nice.
Raina figured that she Knew people, but … never really knew any. At least the heroes in books seemed like the kind of people who she could befriend. Kind of people she already Knew, already loved.
And then one day, she found mention of it. Just the slightest mention of –
Alchemy.
She was careful, ever so careful, as she planned. A bit of chloroplasts here, a bit of gelatin there. Some salt and a handful of carbohydrates and silicon.
A precisely drawn circle. The spark of a transmutation.
And, with shaking fingers, she looked in the mirror and peeled back her eyelids, placing the covers over her beloved irises.
She blinked them into place, once, twice. They settled.
And in the mirror, her eyes were The Woman's bottle green. Her gold perfectly hidden.
Her eyes green, her hair black, the cast of her eyes vaguely Xingese.
She hated it, but she Knew that her eyes needed to be hidden.
(The Man and The Woman wouldn't even notice these days. They never looked at her, much less in her eyes.)
It felt like a secret, being kept hidden. Which was good, Raina figured. Because she thought it would feel like a lie.
Like everything else was.
She was a lie.
Raina had counted 1,584 days when The Woman announced that she was pregnant.
'Shit.'
She Knew that this was not the house for a child. That the drinking and The Man's anger and the lack of any love would kill any baby that wasn't her, that didn't Know things like her.
She panicked. She -
Had to save this baby.
She stole some money from The Man's wallet and snuck out for the first time, keeping down and low as she picked through unfamiliar streets, passing unfamiliar sights.
Foregin but familiar. Like a book she reread after many years.
She had never left the house before … but she Knew what she needed.
She stole and bought in equal measure, books on babies and vitamins and baby clothes and food - days and weeks of stocking and tricking and bartering and pleading.
Months and months and months of endless attention, work. Her tiny body pushed to its limits.
Then on a day when the Man was gone and the Woman was the size of a whale -
The baby came.
The baby was the most beautiful thing Raina had ever seen.
He was red and squealing and shivering from the wet, and she had to use a pair of sewing shears to cut his umbilical cord but he was beautiful.
She saw that the Woman was not going to leave the tub, soaking in her own fluids and tears and dirty bathwater, and realized that it was really going to be down to her.
The baby had barely breathed its first breath and the responsibility for him fell on Raina. Had always and will always fall on her.
Fine. The Woman and The Man couldn't love them? She would love enough for the world.
And when one day the baby grew up, he would build a family just like the one she Remembered, with love coming out of the walls.
She swaddled him closely, holding him close and supporting his head. The day was warm enough and the sun high enough she didn't need a jacket as she trudged towards the hospital.
On the way, she thought on a name …
Maes was her world.
And an echo of a tale bounced around her mind as his exuberance, his smile. The way he never cried, would be all smiles right up until he became relentless and determined. He was …
He was like the hero that she named him for. The man who fought endlessly, who changed things, right up until he died. The story she felt connected to, indebted to.
Raina remembered the story of his death clearly. A phone booth, a bullet. A friend on the other end of the line. A child and a wife left behind.
But her little Wolf wasn't going to die like that. Her little Wolf would watch his kids grow up.
But only after Raina watched him grow up, first. She was okay with that.
Maes turning one was rough. Because she knew, Knew what he deserved. Deserved kids brought in by tired but smiling parents, and a cake large enough to share. Photos and presents, new shirts and dirty trousers. Happiness and balloons and love from people who were not obligated to give it, with arguments and thrown wrenches and alchemy sparking for entertainment and showmanship.
But Raina couldn't give Maes any of that.
But she could give him some things. She gave him stories, and smiles. Hugs and kisses, tiny loaves of sweet bread coated in honey.
The Man and The Woman didn't even realize the day.
By the time Raina had lived 3,000 days she had the system down.
She broke bowls and spilled milk, tripped and made a mess and stared The Man down. Because the first time that she saw the bruises marring her brother's perfect skin, she knew that it could never happen again.
Even though it did, because she was not strong enough.
Her little Wolf was curious.
Oh he was so curious, and as much as she wanted to give him anything – everything – she couldn't. She didn't know everything, for one, and what she did Know –
It could get him killed.
She couldn't fix the oppressive fear she felt from the city as she crept down the streets at night, the wariness everyone walked with. But she needed to know more.
So she stole books, creeped into bars and restaurants, lingered around vendors. She learned everything she could, every snippet carefully memorized. She learned about the military, the laws. She learned about prices and trade, who slept with who and what the wife was doing about it. She learned.
And when she came back as the sun began to rise, she taught.
(And when she discovered more books on Alchemy, she Remembered the things she Knew. About equivalent exchange and how equal is not equivalent and how Truth –
"Why?" Maes had asked her once, when she was tucking him into bed. "Why did you name me Maes?"
Raina paused, thinking. She had told her brother stories in the past. Ones she Knew, and ones she learned or made up. But … something held her back, a voice whispering for her to stop. Not to tell this story, not ever.
"Maes is the name of a man who loved so much he died for his family," Raina answered finally, settling for a partial truth.
"I wouldn't die for all my family," Her little Wolf wrinkled his nose. "Only for you."
"Family doesn't end with blood," Raina just smiled, feeling the glow of love in her chest. "And it doesn't have to start there either."
(An echo of sharp amber eyes and white gloved hands and the smell of baked apple pies. Yes, Maes would have a family of his own, one day.)
When Raina had lived 4,562 days The Man got shot.
Because he was a drunk, who got sloppy on duty. Raina couldn't make herself believe that he didn't deserve it.
But the injury was a problem. The Man got meaner, yes, but he got smaller too. He didn't work, barely ate. He didn't lift a finger, only creating bedsores next to his complacent wife. The Woman was glad for an excuse never to get up again.
She could smell their filth from the hall.
But she hunkered down, steeled herself. Because The Man was injured before, before Maes. And he had work sent to the house that he completed as his knee healed.
Raina had been forging The Man's signature for years.
So she wrote a letter. Sent it. Packed bags for her and Maes to run, just in case, and kept an eye on the front walk every day waiting for soldiers – right up until a letter came in return.
And she got to work.
Amestris. Fuhrer King Bradley. State Alchemists. Armstrong. Grumman. Hakuro. Briggs. Ishvalan. Central. East.
Each word landed like a bullet. She was in a warzone, and each shot was a condemnation.
She allowed her brother to live in a world like this.
No, not only. She cursed her brother in a world like this.
Maes. Maes Hughes. Her Maes Hughes with glasses and oh so green eyes, and an intellect she could never hope to match and –
And Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes, with a bullet in his chest and Flame on the other end of the line and a daughter and wife left behind –
Maes Hughes, who died in that phone booth.
Her little Wolf.
No.
Not on my watch.
The Woman spoke to her for the first time … first time in years.
"I'm sorry …" The voice came from behind her as she was beginning to close the door, taking the half full tray with her. "Lauren, I'm sorry."
Raina … Lauren looked back. Saw the vacant gleam of alcohol in her supposed mother's face, The Man laid passed out next to her.
She turned and walked away, not allowing herself to look back.
"Never trust someone telling the truth, Wolf," Raina told him once. "Someone with power who tells you the truth is hiding something much worse."
Don't trust them, Wolf. Don't trust anyone.
No one except for the woman with the world in her sights and the man with the fire between his fingers.
(Not even her.)
She taught him math far more advanced than his teachers knew, and talked about science and people. How people lied and why, how to sway a room your way. What governments do, how they mess up and how they lie - and what kinds of governments you could overthrow and how –
Lessons. Lessons she never remembered learning but lessons all the same.
She gave him everything she Knew. Stories of dictatorships and revolutions and coups, where people went wrong and how politicians can destroy you. Stories of lies and blackmail and grabs for power, histories that she Knew she shouldn't know, or hadn't happened yet.
She gave them anyway.
And she learned everything she could, so she could give that to him, too.
"Knowledge is power, Wolf," She would tell him, knowing that every bit she gave him could save his life.
And Knowledge comes with a price.
(And if sometimes she sat while Maes was at school, hunched over books on alchemy that read like science but felt like home – well, maybe she could admit (only to herself) that power wasn't the only thing she was after.)
The Woman died drinking herself to death after Raina had been alive for 4,845 days. The Man died hours afterwards, out of some kind of sympathetic reaction. But certainly not of grief.
The Man didn't have enough love in him to grieve.
But there were bodies upstairs and there was work to be done, so she rolled up her sleeves and told Maes to stay downstairs, to make a fire.
One day, he would see blood and bodies. In war. But not today, not when there was still part of her sweet brother who loved the people who should've been their parents.
She took a metal-backed hairbrush of The Woman's – was The Woman's – and sketched a careful transmutation circle on the ground. Made herself a knife sharp enough to cut bone.
Used The Man's leather jacket and thick boots to make buckets, reinforced with the carbon from their clothing.
And for her little Wolf, for the sake of holding them together, she set to work.
She bled, disarticulated, and disassembled The Man and The Woman who brought her into this godforsaken country, which was no great gift – but she did so quickly, efficiently. Like a sheep.
She tried to be kind. Because she did not love them, would not miss them. But she had to be grateful for them, not for her own life.
But because they brought her Maes.
When she burned what was left of them, she pictured a man with a kind smile and eyes like steel, fire between his fingers. Fire was a tool, and the first time she had ever really used it was to kill.
She thought she understood the man with the name of King a little more, after that.
Raina composed a flawless letter on the dead Man's behalf, detailing the recent death of Rubia Hughes. How it was necessary to take over her family's business to honor her. She spun lies of sugar and fat, honeyed and sweet scented – all to keep Maes. All to make the military stop caring.
The Man gave no one any reason to care about him.
The pension, when it arrived, she immediately got in hard money and put away.
She had plans for it.
And with no illusion of restraint, nothing to hold her back, she settled back and got to work.
Forms filed under The Man's name to get a shop, get it furnished with shelves and wares. The permits and forms and paperwork needed to make it real, more to backdate it. An illusion after a number of weeks to rebrand it, introduce 'new management' to beat back any thoughts of it not existing before.
And Raina realized around the time that as she reached 5,000 days that what that actually meant is that she was now 13. She was bleeding monthly, and filling out her dresses, and when she put on a blonde wig and transmuted her contacts blue and added a high pair of heels she became another person; she became the manager of the shop, young in face but old in spirit.
And all that time she taught Maes everything she could. Lies and deception, acting and fabricating.
Even the things she wished she didn't have to.
"Remember," She clutched his hands, eyes locked on his. "Out there, you are Maes – you create who that is. In here, you are Wolf."
(She gave him the nickname before she realized how she had cursed him. The wolf in sheep's clothing. But now she saw that it was more than just a name.
Now, she might be able to use it to save him.)
"Are we not the same?" Her eight year old brother had asked, not understanding. "They're me."
"Maes is the part of you that follows their rules," She felt her mouth twist at the word, determination settling in her gut. "But Wolf is the part of you that is free."
"How do I make him? Maes, I mean." Her little Wolf asked, squeezing her hand.
"You distract," She said. "You put up a face, of ignorance and distraction and excitability and rule following and affability and geniality and being just another pretty face – and you create that out of yourself until he can stand alone."
And you survive.
"And that's it?"
"Almost. But it's not easy." She warned, "Be careful who you make yourself into, Wolf: you're the one who's going to have to live with him for the rest of your life."
And a long one it shall be.
Later he was brave enough to ask.
"Who are your two sides?" Wolf asked her, flipping through an alchemy textbook absentmindedly next to her. "Raina and … who?"
She had almost forgotten, the name croaked out through the putrid air.
Lauren. She had never used it. She supposed she better start.
"Rubia named me Lauren," His sister replied, lips twisting. "Lauren is slow, cannot speak well, and never had the brains to go to school. She can keep house, and that is all."
Not that she was ever given a chance to do more. Raina had to fight for more. All because of a pair of golden eyes.
(Eyes that she had never let him see.)
"And Raina?"
"Raina," Raina smiled – really smiled, pushing back her guilt. "Raina teaches her little brother, who she raised herself, how to lie in a military dictatorship. Teaches him political theory and thought experiments and math and alchemy because one day he's going to need it. Raina tricked the military for years, disposed of two bodies at the age of twelve, and is actively plotting how to fake a death that already happened. Raina is a force of nature."
Raina was going to save her little Wolf.
The Queen and her Wolf.
Father could go fuck himself.
"I like Raina best."
"So do I, little Wolf," She bared her teeth. "So do I."
"Be wary of people telling the truth," Raina warned him when he turned nine. "Your truth is not the same as other people's truth. And be careful, people telling the truth always have something to hide."
Truth was a great Gate and endless white and a sickening smile.
And Raina was fearful – of Truth … and of the truth.
And when she closed her eyes, she could see the great gate looming above her as hundreds of black hands lunged for her neck.
Wolf was the best liar in his class, because of her teachings – and once she tested every bit of his mask with a fine scalpel, Lauren came out.
Because Lauren was the steel fist in the silk gloves that Envy, and that fucking Dwarf, would never see coming. She had to be.
It was slow, but worth it. Being seen in public, taking a more public place in the shop. Playing up the mental challenges and amping up her sweetness. The damsel in distress, the sweet dumb girl. The one no one ever suspected.
(She could picture the laughs that she Knew would've come at the image of her a helpless damsel – in another life.)
And slowly, she remembered what it was like to … to live again, even if just for a little while.
"Why?" Wolf asked one day, bolstered by her insistence that he question everything - even her. "Why do we hide?"
How do you tell a child that the world is wrong?
"Because you and me, we know too much," Raina explained gently, correcting one of the lines on his array. "And I am a woman – I would always be underestimated far more than you would be. So I use it."
"What's your goal?" Wolf asked after another moment, cleaning up the chalk and trying again. "Why do you work so hard?"
How do you tell your brother he was going to die?
"Because one day you're going to need Lauren, in order to get me."
The Maes Hughes she Knew of, his skills in Intel and subterfuge were blossoming in her brother under her careful tending. She expected that if it hadn't been for her countless, undefined years of experience on him, she would've been quickly surpassed.
(She thought she Remembered more, these days. Maybe she would even Remember where it all came from. How she got … well, here.)
And she watched as he grew, as Wolf and as Maes, and she watched as he learned. As he began to see the rot coming in, follow the smell of disease. And everyday that he lost a little more of his innocence, she cursed herself for being thankful.
Because innocents died. Especially in Amestris.
She was sixteen and her brother eleven when Maes dressed in his slightly dirtied school uniform and made the military dance.
She realized, only months later – after they had returned with emancipation forms in hand – that she hadn't been worried. The military was nothing; it was the beasts pulling the strings that were dangerous.
And any belated worry dissolved, because they were free.
Lauren Hughes was in charge of her brother, no one knew of the deaths and disposals of The Man and The Woman, and her brother was good enough to lie successfully to the military at 11.
They were going to survive.
And, maybe, even … maybe even live.
Between her careful construction and sale of pottery and wares – alchemy disguised as honest work – Raina began to write.
She had to write.
She Remembered how much sway a handful of words hold. How books, ideas, concepts spread like wildfire, and just as devastating. And Maes was … her brother was wise beyond his years because of her words, her ideas – what she Knew.
But the man who needed it. The man with artfully disarrayed hair and stitching on the back of his gloves, he was not wiser. And wisdom would be the only way she could …
Help him, she supposed. Help him save everyone.
Help him save her brother. Her family.
So she wrote. For the man with the tilt of Xing in his eyes and the charm of snakes lurking behind his teeth. She wrote for him.
Her brother grew up too quickly.
Years passed, giving him everything she could. Everything and anything to make him happy, make him wise. Make him prepared and capable. Everything and anything – for him.
And she Knew, because she had cursed him, that he would join the military.
Go to war, a war that was just genocide paraded as just.
And she couldn't stop him. But she could help him. Do it right.
So when he was turning 17, and she had lived 7,989 days, she filled out the forms he needed to enlist, leaving a space left for his signature on the dotted line.
Despite becoming an adult herself, becoming mature in the eyes of society, she never really considered … love for herself. She had one goal in life, and that night was years away.
But when a polite, steel spined young woman applied to work in her shop, a Memory sparked.
Gracia.
She wasn't really living, only fighting. But her brother … her little Wolf wasn't the same.
And she did like the idea of being an aunt.
On the day that her brother turned nineteen, Raina bakes a small cupcake and settles in the back of her shop after closing. Sits down, ignoring the dust and dirt on the floor, and pulls out a candle.
And she swallows, gripping a match. She inhales, closing her eyes, and presses her palms together – the match gripped awkwardly between her two thumbs and pointer fingers.
The sound and light of the match flaring to life startles her eyes open, and she can only stare as the fire she created without a circle burned down to her fingers.
On the day that her brother turned twenty, Raina got a letter – a letter coded down to the color of the ink – about a certain Flame Alchemist and his potential. About the good heart under all the cinders and the aspirations they shared.
It was a promise to come home soon, and to figure out a way to drag the man of cinders and ashes along with him.
She smiled, glad that she hadn't interfered too much.
They deserved to have each other, her little Wolf and their country's Flame.
With her brother home, the relationship between him and Gracia flourished. Raina watched on with quiet joy.
Because she was afraid, when she told her brother to cleave himself into two, that she had destroyed his future. That the cost of saving him would be erasing his future.
But war is a good excuse for cynicism and unknown skills to come to light, and part of their love for each other – Gracia and her brother – was how they discovered more and more about the other each day.
Maybe, just maybe, she did the right thing.
Years passed, plans were carefully laid. And written.
A Perspective on Government was the first crack in the wall, the beginning of the flood. It was every class she had ever taken on governments, every story she ever heard about politics and leaders. It was every lesson her parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts had ever given her. It was political theories and debates and years and years of history that had already happened and had yet to come and it was everything. Everything she could give.
She signed it Thomas R. Mason, a defiance against The Man, who loved his country, and a nod to the Hero, who died for his people.
Her little Wolf thought that the 'r' was a nod to her chosen name, but it wasn't the case. It was a nod to the man who would one day revolutionize everything. The one who the book was really for.
And when the State caught on, realizing just what she had published, she relished the gossip she heard in the shop. The soldiers and their families that frequented her store were loose with their lips as they bemoaned and denied and condemned, and all she could think was that it was working.
No one suspected the hardworking and loyal soldier or his slow, uneducated sister.
And when A Perspective was banned, Raina threw herself even further into part two.
When Raina wrote An Understanding of Power she knew she was taking a gamble. That once was a quirk and twice is the beginning of a pattern. That once another book came out, the efforts to find Thomas R. Mason would double, tripple. That she would have to be even more paranoid and vigilant than ever.
Then she realized that she had to, was obligated to.
And with only a twinge of reluctance, she allowed her little Wolf to add a preface.
It wasn't for her, after all.
Somewhere along the line, when her brother turned twenty-five and became an engaged man with a wife that really knew him, Raina forgot that she was growing herself.
That she was thirty, and running her own shop. That she was a blacklisted writer with a cult following, and to this day no one alive knew the color of her eyes.
And she realized that she had never been thirty, Before. That growing old was novel, and strange. That when Truth had -
When her brother told her about the two boys with the blood of Van Hohenheim in their veins and the wrath of Truth crashed down on their heads, she Remembered.
She had Gracia watch the shop, packed herself a bag and a trunk full of boxes, and took the car keys – only at the last minute remembering to leave a note.
Barely sleeping, powering ahead and hurtling down back roads, she makes it to Resembool as the sun is setting. She turns off her headlights, shoves back the surreality, and alchemizes the back door open.
The house is completely unfamiliar, understandable because in only a couple of months it would be burned to the ground.
She investigates carefully, holding her breath as not to disturb what would become a burned shrine of a children's fear. Of her grandfather and her great uncle's fear. The last residence of Slave 23, of Trisha Elric.
She steels her resolve.
She heads back to the car, unpacks the boxes. Stuffs the car full of books and manuscripts and journals, grabbing knick knacks and photographs and jewelry. She Remembers as best she can every regret her Grandpa had ever expressed about the fire they had set, and gathered the stuffed animals and the pictures of her great grandmother. Their first transmutations and Trisha Elric's shawls and Van Hohenheim's old jacket.
And she puts it all in the trunk, slamming it shut.
She put up the symbol in her shop when she had first opened the Timber Wolf, even though she hadn't fully really realized why until she Remembered more.
She was hoping, maybe, that … maybe one day her grandpa would walk in, dragged in by her great uncle. That she would be able to hear the creak of his limbs, the towering feeling of being beside his height. That with her great uncle, she may be able to even look at eyes like hers. That … that maybe she could see that she wasn't the only bit of gold in this world.
Instead, she attracted the attention of Colonel Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist.
When he walked in, only years of experience hiding her emotions stopped her from gasping aloud, drawing undue attention to herself.
His eyes on hers, thought … they burned.
She can still feel them on her after he leaves.
Raina has counted 11,472 days when 'Maes and Gracia' became 'Maes and Gracia Hughes' – and when they do she can't help but think that the tolling of the wedding bells sounded more like death knolls.
But she puts on a smile, and distracts herself with food and cake and the eyes of the future Fuhrer President on hers. Distracts herself with the codes and the phrases and the tests they throw at each other, taking in each other's wit.
No wonder Grandpa always respected the man, even if her great uncle never seemed to be able to say anything about him without the word 'bastard' thrown into the mix.
And after the ceremony and the first dance, Mustang extends a hand to her and she can't do anything but smile and dance.
And when it was time for toasts, she turns up Lauren full force and trusts her brother and sister-in-law to be able to tell the genuine from the act.
"Love is hard," She starts, looking down at notecards that are actually completely blank. "And love is hard when you do it alone. So, I am happy that my brother and my new sister do not have to love alone, and I want them to always remember that love is the only truth we have."
She looks up at her brother, locking eyes – his as green as grass and hers as false as a lie – and she packs as much truth in as she can, in that one look.
"And I want you to remember that the words we give to the ones we love are nothing compared to the sacrifices we give, the actions we take."
She gets a polite applause, after that. Pitying. But Maes? Mustang and Hawkeye?
They got it.
When Uncle Ed is twelve and her brother is twenty-seven and her grandpa is a suit of armor with the soul of an eleven year old boy bonded to it, the Fullmetal Alchemist earns his title and becomes the youngest state alchemist in history.
Truth, is she so glad that Mustang fixed the no-age-limit thing when he took over.
And Raina is thirty-two when Aunt Elicia is born, and she becomes her Aunt Elicia's Aunt Raina.
(Timelines and families and family timelines are weird.)
When her little Wolf names her niece and her aunt for her, calling her Elicia Regina Hughes, she thinks that she might cry. But she doesn't, not yet.
She hasn't cried in her 11,740 days. She isn't going to start now.
When her brother comes to her with his manuscript for The Scapegoat and a request for her to edit and review, she is bowled over.
And so, so very proud.
The book is everything she taught him, but more. It is his ideas, his perspective. Everything she has taught him but expanded.
She gave him everything and multiplied it tenfold.
She forces him to sign her copy, burying it carefully in her great grandfather's collection for safekeeping. But if she could, she'd shout it from the rooftops.
That her brother had surpassed her, become better.
That her brother was going to live.
Maes hears about her grandpa's house burning down and confronts her.
"How do you know?" He demands, focused like an angry Auntie Winry. "You knew those boys would burn their house down – that's why you took their books, their keepsakes. You knew I would become a soldier, that I would need to know everything you taught me. You knew that I would try to overthrow the government."
How does she tell the truth? That she doesn't know?
That whenever she thinks about it the Memories slip away?
"I won't lie to you," She finally says.
"When we were kids, you used alchemy to burn Thomas and Rubia to nothing," Her brother switches tactics. "Why?"
"Because I couldn't let them take you from me, split us apart."
"Why?"
"Because I do everything I do so you make it to thirty," Raina forced herself not to shout – Remembering the haunted look on Uncle Ed's face and the sad smile on Aunt Elicia's and the way that Grandpa would talk about the man who her brother was to become. "I realized that I doomed you. So you will make it to thirty. And then forty, then fifty and sixty and to a hundred if I can manage it."
And Truth be damned if she can't.
"When did you …?" He started to ask, studying her eyes – the secret, facade, that she still to this day has never revealed to him. Because she can't. "When did you decide I was worth more than your own ambitions, life?"
"You are my ambition, my life," Raina corrected him, squeezing his hand. Her family, the one she loved first, would never again be hers. All she had was a dead man walking – a dead man who she just wanted to save. "Don't you forget that."
When Raina drops by one day to give Gracia a new pie dish, she has to force herself to freeze and not react at the resonance of a clap and the crackle of a transmutation – not to attack back when a spear pulled from her brother's couch is pointed straight at her neck.
"Who are you?"
(… In the safety of her own mind, she could very much admit that Uncle Ed was short as hell.)
And Truth it was weird seeing him do alchemy.
"Brother!"
And … and there was Grandpa.
"My name is Lauren," She speaks slowly, trying not to cry and hoping it came off as her being scared and not emotionally attached to a suit of armor. "Lauren Hughes."
Her grandpa shifted, standing with a creaking groaning sound that was forigen and strange and sounded like home, and it was probably a good thing she had a spear to her throat because she wanted to do nothing more than throw her arms around his middle, to hug her grandpa.
But she had to settle for the incredibly relieving and nervewreck feeling of having her doting Uncle Ed in child form stare her down the shaft of his spear –
With his golden eyes.
"Are you Mr. Hughes' sister?" Grandpa asked her, his voice too-young and too-wary. Her Grandpa didn't sound like that, and she latched onto that one detail. A lifeline.
"Yes," She nodded as much as she could with a blade at her neck. "Is Gracia here?"
"Sorry, Ms. Hughes," Grandpa – Al, Al – stepped forward and pulled Uncl- Ed's spear away from her neck, allowing her to relax. "She said she needed to pick Elicia up from a friend's."
Raina just nodded again, not trusting her voice.
"So what're you doing here?" Ed asked her rudely, and she had to quench down a smile at his petulance.
"I could ask you the same," Raina replied rather than rile him up further. "This is, after all, my brother's house."
"Mr. and Mrs. Hughes are allowing us to stay with them," Al replied, and Raina sent him a warm smile at the sound of his uncertainty. "Why are you here, if I may ask?"
Raina reflexively held up the package, wrapped in tissue paper and string as it was, before setting it on the table by the door. "Just dropping off a new pie tin for Gracia. I'll be on my way, I suppose."
"Wait a sec," Ed's too-young voice cut her off, and as she turned away from the door she was yanked down to his level (rather far) and inches away from her Uncle's Scary Face – though not as effective on a twelve year old.
He studies her, and she forces herself not to react. Not to do as her family trained her and pin the brat – her Uncle – to the ground Great Grandma Izumi style. She settles on a bland face common to Raina, if not unusual on Lauren.
"You look … you look familiar," Ed finally says, even as Al worries audibly behind him.
Well, if anyone was to know exactly how much Trisha and Al was in her face – as she was so often told – then it would be Uncle Ed. But between Grandma Mei and Mom's Xingese blood and her hiding Great-Grandpa Hohenheim's eyes, she wasn't worried.
Too worried, that is.
"You've met my brother, you know." Lauren answers, straightening up and forcing Ed to let go. "I should be going."
And she made it all the way back to her flat above her shop before her legs gave out under her and she laughed and laughed until the pricking of tears faded from her eyes.
"You're quiet."
Raina looked up from where she was balancing her books, cocking her head at the Colonel dressed casually across from her. She spared him a smile.
"Oh?" She went back to calculating. "I didn't realize that I was ever loud."
"You're quiet in more ways than one," He answers, gaze drifting to check the door. "What's wrong, Princess?"
(Oh, she was royal alright. In the Before, she was in the line of succession and everything, though not exactly close to the top. The nickname was funnier because he didn't know how accurate it was.)
"I'm worried about something that I know is coming," She decides to answer half-truthfully, mindful of her words. "And there's nothing I can do to stop it, only mitigate it."
Roy's gaze is sharp on hers, and she pushes back the feeling of guilt that comes with eye contact. The guilt that comes when someone sees green when there should be gold. Dad's gold, Grandpa's gold. Slave 23's gold.
Xerxes gold.
"I'm here for you," Is all Roy can say as the door chimes open.
It's all he needed to.
Lauren Hughes is thirty-four when the Elric Brothers break into and destroy Laboratory Five.
Raina has lived 12,546 days when her Grandpa and Uncle discover the truth about Philosopher Stones.
Raina Mei Elric lived 12,553 days and 23 years when her chosen brother, Maes Hughes – her childhood hero – gets shot in a phone booth by Envy, the Elric family version of the boogeyman.
But as she promised herself – the world – all those years ago, Maes Hughes was going to make it to thirty.
So when she sees Envy walk away with the gun that shot her brother and Gracia's face, she waits only until she can no longer feel the disgusting pulse of the homunculus before she peels out of her hiding spot and walks over to the body on the ground.
Lauren's footsteps stop, and Maes opens his eyes.