Chapter 24: In These Confines
The military academy was everything that Riza had hoped for... and more!
As a small child she had been an active one. Though fully capable of sitting quietly for long periods of time (and fortunately so, or she might never have survived), she had never been happier that when she was outdoors, charging about the yard on her hobby horse or building marvellous structures in the sand pile. She had loved the summers spent roaming the creek bluffs and climbing trees with Ben Hughes. Now, she spent four to six hours of each day engaged in some form of arduous physical activity – from running endless laps around the track, to resistance training in the gymnasium, to , to martial arts and hand-to-hand combat. Her willowy body grew hard with lean muscles, and she could bench press seventy-five pounds. Her goal was to reach one hundred and twenty, which was ten pounds more than her own bodyweight.
The physical training was not the only part of the program that she loved. Riza had grown up with books for company, and during her scant years of formal schooling she had absorbed knowledge like a deep-sea sponge. Now she was living a childhood dream and attending university. Two mornings a week, she walked or jogged the four miles to the Eastern University campus on the opposite end of the city. She was taking an assortment of courses in natural sciences, history and philosophy, and she was doing very well indeed. Many of the other cadets chafed at the academic requirements and complained about the workload, but this opportunity was one of the reasons that Riza had wanted to enrol in the academy in the first place.
Nor did she share her compatriots' attitude towards the strict discipline of military life. Most of her classmates were farm boys or the children of shopkeepers. A few, like Steph and Lucy, were young people looking to escape a life of backbreaking menial labour. Riza had more in common with her compatriots than she had expected to, for they were not the over-privileged social elite of Central Academy, but in one respect she was very different from the other cadets. Most of them had lived largely unstructured lives; casual, unfettered childhoods where the only firmly enforced rule was that chores must be completed on time. None of the cadets to whom Riza spoke seemed to have grown up with firm expectations of silence and obedience. She had a feeling that most of them had never sat still for more than an hour or two, nor been chastised for asking questions, nor upbraided for playing too loudly.
Part of her was jealous, but she still had to admit that her father's strict and abusive approach to parenting gave her an advantage. Closing her mouth and obeying an order swiftly and efficiently was second nature to her, where many of her classmates still struggled with the concept. Riza, indeed, thrived upon the enforced order. It was nothing she had not lived through before, with one important exception. The expectations were clear. They were carved in stone (or at least written in the regulations manual). If she learned the rules, and followed them meticulously, she would not be upbraided. She would even be praised. It was a formula that made sense: the military, unlike her father, was unshakable and predictable. It was a wondrous thing.
So all-in-all, Riza was happy. Then, near the end of January, she had an unexpectedly abominable day.
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It began, like any other day, at oh-five-hundred when Master Sergeant Rosenflower got out of bed. The barracks master was very quiet, and his awakening did not rouse any of the other girls, but for Riza – who had never before in her life shared a room with other people – it was enough to stir her from her deep and well-earned slumber. As always, she lay very still while he made his cot, gathered his uniform and his shaving kit, and slipped out into the darkness, letting in the briefest of drafts as he went. Then she got up and ran a hand through her hair, which as always had dried into strange spikes while she slept.
Her morning routine was rigid, and she never deviated from it. She made her bed swiftly and perfectly: corners squared, blanket as smooth as glass, counterpane folded into a perfect rectangle across the foot. Then she dressed: it was important that she do this before any of the others were awake, because to do so she had to bare her back. Off came the military-issued pyjama shirt, which was made for a man, and was hopelessly too large. Riza quickly slipped into the plain undershirt, which fit better. The moment of crisis was past, then, and she could don the rest of her uniform in peace.
Except that when she sat down on the end of her cot to pull on her boots, she realized that the girl in the next bed was wide awake, and watching her in the grey half-light.
"What's that?" Cadet Northrop hissed. Riza felt the bottom fall out of her stomach, knowing full well what the other girl had seen.
"What's what?" she countered with as much nonchalance as she could muster.
"On your back. Is that a tattoo?"
"Hush! Of course not!" Riza hissed. Ida Northrop was a notorious gossip. There was a crack among the cadets that if a secret was uttered within earshot of her at dawn, it was the hot topic around campfires in the Credoan trenches by nightfall. If Riza didn't diffuse this now...
"It is! It's huge!"
"Northrop, be quiet! You'll wake everybody up!" Riza pleaded.
"Then dish, honey. Where'd you get it?" She was up on her elbows now, an eager light in her blue eyes. It was a scandal, and she knew it.
"Nowhere," Riza said. "It's nothing, really."
"In Central? What's it symbolize? A cup and a... a circle of some kind... and those words, what language is that?"
"It's... it's..." There had to be something that Riza could say – anything that would distract the insatiable tattler. She wished fervently that Mr. Mustang were here. He could lie his way out of anything. "It's Ishballan," she said.
If possible, Northrop's eyes went even wider. "What?" she squealed.
"M—my grandmother was from Ishbal," Riza said. "It's... a prayer." She closed her eyes, and to her amazement a memory came flooding back. Her mother – long dark hair and sprigged dress – on her knees in the parlour, hands clasped and head bowed over a daguerreotype... repeating the same words over and over again; a prayer for the soul of her only son. "Ishbala, watch over Davell. In life You loved him. Gather him into Your arms and bear him on the wings of the morning, to dwell with You in paradise. Comfort we who remain here, and... and give us the strength to trust in Your love, and to live as You would wish us to, so that one day we may once again be reunited with Davell and with all of our loved ones who have died in You."
Riza opened her eyes with a cathartic gasp. She had had no idea that those words were pent up inside of her, and the memories that came with them... she had forgotten so much of those early days. Of Momma and her encroaching madness, the increasingly erratic behaviour, forgotten chores, neglected meals. Her father's frustration. Doctor Bella's interventions. That terrible day when the men in dark suits had come to carry her mother away.
Momma, wrapped in a quilt in a strong stranger's arms, crying out for Davell until the last moment. Not for Riza, her living child, but for Davell...
"Hey, hey, don't cry... don't cry!" Ida Northrop exclaimed in horror.
"I'm not!" Riza snarled, her hand moving defiantly to her cheek. It came away wet, and she stared down at her fingers as if they belonged to someone else. "I..."
"Who's Davell?" asked the other cadet.
"My brother," Riza said. "He died when I was..." Her brow furrowed. How had Davell died? The treehouse. She remembered Roy – Mr. Mustang – in the treehouse with Ben's little brother. Father had been so angry. He had locked her in the yard while he disciplined Mr. Mustang – Roy – Mr. Mustang...
Strange. How had she forgotten that?
Ida was staring at her, mingled shock and pity on her face. "I'm sorry," she said.
Riza was trembling, and she didn't understand why. She was having a hard time remembering where she was, and when. The dark barracks with the rows of sleeping girls seemed distant, and the memories flashing through her mind were so clear. Roy leaping between her and her angry father – Mr. Mustang, Mr. Mustang, Mr. Mustang... Her teeth rattling in her head as her father shook her. Rough hands stripping her shirtwaist from her back. Needle pricks biting endlessly, endlessly into her skin...
"Hey, Hawkeye, you gonna be sick?" Northrop asked unhelpfully, clearly horrified. "Hey! Hey, Hawkeye!"
Then suddenly someone had Riza by the shoulders and was leading her away, hurrying her from the barracks and out into the cold winter morning. Firm, capable hands held her as she trembled.
"Hey, Riza. Riza. It's okay. I'm here. It's okay."
It was Lucy.
"It's all right, Riza. If you've gotta ralph, it's better to get it over with."
"I don't," Riza breathed, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. She was covered in a sheen of perspiration, but the cold air was helping. It was grounding her, bringing her back and planting her firmly in the present. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine," Lucy said. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Riza lied. "Nothing."
For a moment she was afraid that her friend would call her bluff, but Cadet Bacall only shrugged. "Then can we go back inside?" she asked. "I'm freezing!"
She pointed down at her feet, bare beneath the baggy legs of her pyjamas, and turning vividly red with their contact with the frostbitten ground. Lucy twisted her face into a caricature of a grimace that made Riza laugh... a little.
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Cadet Jefferson slid his leg forward, twisted his wrist and then jerked both shoulders as he flung Riza over his head. She landed with a concussive thud! on the mat.
"Hawkeye!" Second Lieutenant Graves scolded. "Pay attention! You can do this in your sleep! Stop staring at the audience: they don't care what you're doing."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir!" Riza barked. She tried to focus on the bout, on circling her opponent. He was bigger than she was – but that was true of almost all of her classmates, and anyway it was no guarantee of defeat. On any other day, she could have beaten Jefferson in two minutes, because he was clumsy and he had lousy balance. Today...
Northrop was in the centre of a knot of cadets, whispering animatedly and now and then looking at Riza. She could only guess what the girl was saying. Hawkeye has a tattoo on her back. An alchemy circle. Strange words in a foreign language. Hawkeye's harbouring a secret. Power. Alchemy. Hawkeye has a tattoo on her back.
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Riza found it impossible to concentrate during the Tactics lecture that afternoon. Ida Northrop sat at the back of the classroom, and during pauses in the instructor's words Riza could hear the whispering. She knew what they were saying.
Snakes and an alchemical sigil. It must be some kind of powerful secret: why else would someone tattoo it on her back? Does anybody here know anything about alchemy? Maybe we could decipher it, break the code...
She thought of Mr. Mustang. His dreams, his future, his whole life relied upon passing the State Alchemist exam this spring. To do that he would have to impress the committee with his prowess, to prove that he was more capable than any other candidate, more worthy of State certification. His success relied upon his unique talents. If anyone else discovered her father's secrets, his talents would no longer be unique...
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The first-year cadets had an hour on the track that afternoon. Riza loved running: it gave her a sense of power and grace unlike anything else she had ever experienced. This time, though, she couldn't enjoy it. She soon wound up near the head of the pack, and quickly gained on the laggards, but as she lapped Ida and her friends, she caught her name, and she knew what they were talking about.
Hawkeye. Her back. A tattoo! Alchemical secrets! Hawkeye's back! Her back! I've never seen anything so hideous – Hawkeye's back is covered in an enormous tattoo! What kind of a girl would let somebody tattoo an alchemical code on her back?
And Riza knew that she was an abject failure.
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Not until suppertime did Riza discover what Ida had in fact been saying. A couple of her male classmates cornered her as she moved to sit down.
"Hey, Hawkeye!" said one. "I heard an interesting rumour."
Riza couldn't breathe. The truth was out. Everyone knew.
"Yeah," said the other. "Northrop says you're half Ishbalan."
"That explains the eyes," the first one put in, sneering a little.
Riza waited for the other shoe to fall. It didn't.
"Are you here to spy on us, half-breed?" asked the second cadet. "Gonna sell Amestrian secrets to the rebels?"
His friend roared with laughter. "Lucky she's at Eastern!" he chortled. "We've got no secrets in this dump!"
And they walked off, chuckling like a couple of baboons. Riza let loose a breath that she had not realized she was holding.
That was all? She was half Isballan? That was the rumour Ida had been spreading? For one thing, it wasn't even true, and for another, well, she'd rather her heritage became public knowledge than any of her other secrets.
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But Amestris was in conflict with the people of Ishbal. That evening, Riza received more than one dubious look. Some of the other girls seemed afraid to speak to her. A third-year cadet spat on her boots as he passed her in the hall. It seemed as if everyone knew, and no one liked it. Riza knew that in a few days this would all blow over: her eyes were the only indication that she had any Ishballan blood at all, and anyway Lucy had promised to spread a rumour of her own – that Hawkeye was the granddaughter of Brigadier General Grumman. How Lucy had found this out was not something that Riza had any desire to ask.
The fact remained, though, that Ida Northrop had seen the tattoo. She had seen it, even if she thought nothing of it. That her scatterbrained mind could only process one piece of gossip at one time was a possibility that Riza hardly dared hope was true. She might remember at any moment, and that scandal would be far worse than any slurs about Riza's tainted pedigree.
The very thought made Riza sick to her stomach.
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To round out the perfect day, the unthinkable happened that night.
For months, Riza's neat little arrangement regarding her bathing routine had worked perfectly. Though most of the other girls had long ago deduced what she was doing, none had complained about it or threatened to report her. They did occasionally tease her about being a prude, but since Riza had to admit that that was basically true, it didn't hurt to hear it. The ungodly hour at which she visited the shower bunker guaranteed her solitude and her safety from unexpected encounters with the other four-fifths of her class, too. After five successful months, Riza was comfortable in her unorthodox routine: nothing could go wrong.
She was scrubbing her hair with vigour, as if by doing so she could wash away the stigma of the awful day, when she heard an ominous creak.
Time seemed to stand still. Riza could hear her mind crying out that she wasn't alone, that someone was coming in, that she was standing here naked with her back – her horrific, dangerous, mutilated back over which she had been agonizing for the last twenty hours – to the door, and that someone was coming in! Then she whirled around, stumbling backwards to press her buttocks and her shoulder blades against the concrete wall.
The intruder was not Ida Northrop, coming to confirm what she had seen that morning. It was a male cadet with tousled, tow-coloured hair. He came through the door, tapping a cigarette as he raised it to his mouth. Then he spotted her and his eyes bulged enormously. His jaw went slack, but incredibly, the cigarette clung to its place, sagging from his lip without falling, like some kind of bizarre prosthetic.
Riza's hands flew to hide her bosom and her front, and she could not help the soft, mewling noise of wretched embarrassment that escaped from her lungs.
The dumbfounded cadet moved a hand almost hypnotically to pluck the cigarette from his lip. "Gah..." he said, completely inadequately.
"What do you want?" Riza squeaked. She had been doing this for months and no one had interrupted her. Why tonight? Because today was cursed, that was why. Her eyes darted longingly towards her pyjamas where they lay enticingly on the bench next to her greatcoat. The ten feet between herself and her dignity might as well have been ten miles. If she thought there had been gossip today, she should just wait until tomorrow!
"A-a smoke," the youth stammered. He was still staring at her as if he had never seen anything remotely like her. Riza realized with a fresh twist of mortification that he probably hadn't. She hugged her arm more tightly to her breasts, wishing futilely that the cracked cement would yawn open and swallow her.
It was small consolation, but the tall, bony cadet seemed almost as embarrassed as she was. There was a brilliant red flush across his cheekbones, and his eyes were now darting around the room as he desperately looked at anything and everything but her body.
"'M sorry," he babbled anxiously. "I'm on gate duty tonight, and it's cold. I can't smoke in the bog, 'cause the NCOs check 'em every hour, but nobody comes in here..."
"I do!" Riza challenged. "I've never seen you in here before."
"Naw, I'm usually here around oh-four-hundred," he admitted awkwardly. "I just needed one really badly tonight: I'm on duty with Loose Lips Larry, and he's hard on my nerves. Uh... you want a towel or something?"
"Please..." Riza exhaled. The other cadet took one from the shelves and moved to the edge of the drop-off, holding it out and staring resolutely at the ceiling. Riza had to suppress the urge to run towards the cloth. Instead, she edged along the wall, carefully keeping her back to it. She took the two necessary steps forward, snatched the towel, and flung it about her shoulders, covering the black web of ink – and incidentally her bosom.
"Thanks," she said softly.
The youth smiled at her. Then his eyes moved down and he flushed still more furiously. "S-sorry," he stuttered. "I guess you need two..."
He took the second one, and held it out so that Riza could wrap it around her waist, tucking it firmly into place.
"That's much better," she said, trying to put him at his ease. He looked like he, too, was longing for a fissure to open up beneath his feet. "Please don't let me keep you from your smoke."
"Y-yeah," he said. "Yeah, I think... uh, I think I need it more than ever now. N-no offence."
He dug into his pocket and produced a pack of matches, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't make a spark. Riza reached out, took them, and struck a flame for him. He took two grateful puffs, and then a long, desperate drag as the cigarette caught alight.
"Thanks," he breathed, taking another lungful of smoke. "That's better."
"My pleasure," Riza said quietly. Realizing that she had left the water running, she shuffled back into the shower enclosure and turned off the two taps, clutching the towel around her shoulders.
The other cadet was almost finished his cigarette already. Now that the moment of crisis was over and her secret was hidden beneath the bleached terrycloth, Riza noticed that he was a second year – which made sense if he was on duty at the gate.
"You should probably get back," she said, trying to be helpful. "Before your partner wonders where you went."
"I told him I've got loose bowels," the other cadet said. "By tomorrow, that'll be all around campus, but..." He shrugged. "I'm a bit of a joke anyway. I'm not the brightest. I just... I wanted to enlist, but I was too young. I was only fifteen when I started here. I think my parents like it better this way: it'll be another couple years before I see any action. Maybe it'll all be over by then."
"What will?" Riza asked.
"The civil war," said the third-class cadet. At her puzzled expression, he translated. "You know, Ishbal."
"That's a rebellion," Riza said. "A handful of insurgents are—"
He shook his head. "Nope. I grew up right near there. It's not a few radicals. The whole region's up in arms. Civilians, old folks, women. Kids. And they're Amestrian citizens. We've got to end it. We have to take out the ringleaders and restore peace. I... it sounds stupid, I know, but I thought I could... maybe... help."
"I don't think that's stupid," Riza said softly. Indeed, it sounded familiar. This cadet's ambitions were not the grand dreams of Mr. Mustang, but they were certainly similar in principle. He wanted to restore order. To protect the people. It was heartening: perhaps she and Mr. Mustang were not wholly alone in their aspirations.
"Huh. Well, lots of people do. They say we should just kill them all, and be done with it, but I don't think—" He glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the closed door. Then he ground out his cigarette against the wall and dropped it in the dustbin. "I gotta go," he said. "Sorry about... you know. Catching you in the shower."
"It's okay," Riza said. "I'm not really supposed to be in here."
He laughed. "Neither am I!" he said. Then something seemed to occur to him. "Hey, why didn't you just turn your back when I came in?"
The truth was out of the question. Or at least that truth. "I believe you should face your problems," Riza said, honest even in her equivocation.
"Huh. Face your problems. I like that."
Then there was a brief flash of the lamplit grounds as he left the bunker. Riza dried herself and dressed as quickly as she could, hurrying back to the barracks. Oddly enough, the encounter with the older cadet seemed to put the day's travails into perspective. It was not long at all before Riza was able to drift off to sleep.
To her astonishment, there was no fallout from that evening's encounter. Apparently the other cadet had no interest in telling tales of his private peep-show. Perhaps that was because he didn't want to admit to smoking while on duty, but Riza preferred to think that it was because he wanted to respect her privacy and spare her the humiliation of such a story. In any case, she was eternally grateful for the young man's discretion.
