AN: To see a hauntingly beautiful fanart of Riza sitting at her mother's vanity table, see my profile. Thank you, Sonja Jade for capturing the moment so perfectly.

On a side note, lots of hugs to Lou Nebin because she is just that much loved!

March 1903

She knew it wasn't right, but she couldn't stop herself from doing it again and again. Of course, she was never obvious about it. Her father would be furious if he knew. Not only was she perfectly aware of the biological ramifications of what she was doing, but she was also aware of the danger she would be in if discovered. At least her father let her go out now to do the weekly shop. If he knew what she was doing right now, he would simply lock her in her room and pass her food through the cat flap. And if she dared as much as die on him… Riza shuddered at the very thought.

The teenager sat in front of her mother's vanity mirror, looking at her own reflection in its cool if slightly dusty surface. She used to hide in this room when she was a little girl because after her mother's death, no one had ventured in here. The rules were still the same. No one ever entered the room, not even she unless it was for this very reason.

The blonde slowly lifted the small knife she had smuggled in her apron from the kitchen, its smooth edge catching what little light the curtained windows allowed in the room. Working carefully, the girl lifted her skirt and rested the edge of the steel on the inside of her thigh. She would never be stupid enough to cut anywhere anyone could see. And as recent experiences had taught her, even her back wasn't safe.

She had expected the tattooing itself to hurt. Had prepared herself for it as her father had rubbed something cold all over her skin, but the pain hadn't come. Belatedly, she'd realized he was gentle enough to numb her skin before starting his work. He didn't want to cause her any unnecessary pain.

And yet it felt wrong to just lie there with nothing to take her mind off the fact that she had been nothing but a means to keep his research safe all this time. That she hadn't meant more to him than a lockbox at the bank. The realization had hurt, but her back hadn't, and that was just not how things were supposed to be. How could she hurt so badly every day and not have even a single scar to show for it? So in her attempts to remedy that, she had taken up one of her father's spare razors and gone to her mother's room for the first time in years.

Of course, if she was honest with herself, she always wished that she wouldn't be able to make it into the old and dusty reminder of the past. That something at the door would block her way. That she would trip over the sleeping form of someone like she had so many years ago.

But he was gone now. Gone because he had betrayed them and joined the military, and that was about the only thing her father could not forgive. He had raised his apprentice just as much as he had raised his own daughter, and the fact that he always received money from Central for doing so had never came across in the boy's upbringing. Her father had always treated them equally, when things were good and when they weren't. When money started becoming scarce, both their chores had been doubled. When her father's health started failing, both had been equally responsible for looking after him.

Except Roy was gone now – and he was never coming back. Why would he? What did he have waiting for him other than a sick old man and a broken girl with multiple scars crisscrossing the insides of her thighs? Why had she ever believed she could have been enough to keep him here was beyond her now.

Taking a deep breath, the girl pressed the knife gently against her already scarred flesh, watching as a thin red line appeared. She watched until that small line started weeping scarlet before finally releasing the knife. Riza simply watched the fresh wound bleed, feeling heady as the blood dripped down her thigh.

A moment later, she glanced at the door, just to make sure the doorway was as empty as it had been for almost a year now.

She wakes up covered in sweat, the picture of the girl in the dusty glass as clear in her mind as it was in her dream. The girl who looked like a younger version of her…

The hospital psychologist had warned her that this might happen. That her mind will attempt to recover her memories while in a semi conscious state when it can't recover them in the conscious one. But was it a dream or a memory? Did she always have dreams before? Or is this simply a memory that's trying to break through to her conscious mind?

"Only one way to find out," she mutters as she peels back the comforter and stares at her pajama-clad legs. Taking a deep breath, the woman slips a finger underneath the waistband and slides the simple pants down her hips. As inch after inch of skin is revealed in the soft glow of the lamp by her bedside, the Captain feels her blood freezing in her veins.

For old and faded they might be, they were still there, patterned against her inner thigh like clues to a mysterious code. The knife marks she etched on her skin a lifetime ago glow white against her creamy skin. Shuddering, the blonde pulls her pajama bottoms back on and sinks back against her pillows.

So she is the teenager in the dream, or memory. She was once that unhappy. Unhappy enough to cause herself pain. And that explains that tattoo on her back too. Her father gave it to her. But what of the burn marks? Did he give her those too? It doesn't seem like it because the girl's father hadn't wanted to cause her any pain. And she doubts those marks appeared without at least some sort of discomfort.

Perhaps it's time to stop relying on witnesses and start looking for hard facts on who Riza Hawkeye is, she thinks as she closes her eyes, attempting to lure back a sleep that had fled her world completely for the night.

The worst thing he ever witnessed in his life happened in Ishval. And if he ever told anyone that, they would be smart enough not to ask further questions – assuming that it was his work as a human weapon that had scarred him so.

It wasn't.

Of course, killing people en masse on a daily basis weighed heavy on his conscience. He had, after all, promised to protect the very people his flames – the flames he had taken from her – were destroying, but that was nowhere near as horrible as seeing her there amid the blood-soaked sands or the time when Maes was almost killed in a rebel attack.

But even the knowledge that his best friend had almost died and the only girl he ever cared about had sealed her fate wasn't that bad compared to the worst thing he had ever witnessed. No, even watching Kimblee blow people up as they begged for mercy would have been a welcome sight.

What really drove home how much of a monster he had become was her helplessness.

It happened in a half destroyed temple near the Daliha district. Riza was there praying for a child she had accidentally shot earlier when a few stray Ishvalans cornered her. The papers might make the soldiers out to be heroes, but in Ishval, they were anything but. It was common knowledge that their aim was murder, and no one cared how you used a body before you disposed of it. As a result, hundreds of women and children were raped on a daily basis before being put to death. He had heard jeers and laughs about it around camp.

So the Ishvalans were within their rights to treat female soldiers as their male counterparts would have treated Ishvalan women. It didn't matter to these men that Riza was in a place of worship, that she was mourning one of their own. She was just another blue-clad body under a sand-colored cloak, and that was enough.

But still, that wasn't the worst part. Female soldiers got cornered sometimes, and most of the time, they were either quick enough to reach for their weapons while the Ishvalans only had their hands and crudely made sticks or they would at least scream loud enough so that the nearest soldiers would come running. Riza did neither. She simply watched the men come nearer in mute terror. And then, when one grabbed her, she didn't lift as much as a finger in protest let alone reach for her sidearm. Just stood there, turned into a statue as the three men approached her from different directions, forming a semi circle around her.

Roy still remembered the dead look in her eyes as the men pinned her down by the alter, one pulling at her blonde locks while the other struggled with her military issued trousers. A third simply watched as though he was Ishbala reincarnated, serving justice to his people.

The alchemist came just in time to see what the men were up to, driven by an instinct he couldn't identify to head to the half crumbling temple. His flames made quick work of the three would-be rapists, but they had done nothing for the dead stare Riza had sported. Through the entire episode, she hadn't said a word, hadn't even looked anywhere other than the ceiling of the building they were in. He walked over to her and called her name several times, but her gaze remained unfocussed.

Carrying her in his arms as a last resort, he took her to the medical tent where the doctor on duty said that she was in shock. There was nothing physically wrong with her, but she needed time to digest what had happened. He took her back to his own tent and sat with her, talked to her, splashed water on her face, did everything he could until he got a response from her. And it was those few simple words that Roy Mustang knew would haunt him for as long as he lived.

"Why did you stop them, Sir? It's not like I wouldn't have deserved it."

End Note: And now you see why this is rated M. Probably some of the darkest stuff I've ever written so apologies if that's not to your liking. Please let me know your thoughts on the chapter.