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Games without Frontiers

Chapter 24: Where the Rain Gets In

Rating PG

Soundtrack: Fixing a Hole – the Beatles

She was opening the door to her room when she heard his voice behind her. Looking up reluctantly, she saw that the hallway was deserted but for his shadowy form a few paces away. He only moved one step toward her, enough for her to see him under a hallway light.

"Riza..."

"No." She cut him off. She couldn't hear him, couldn't look at him, right then, not when she just wanted to curl around herself and sleep away the pain and the fear and the revulsion.

There was also something she needed to do so that she could put the threat to her psyche behind her.

He tried again. His voice was deep and trembling, vibrating through her. "I shouldn't have sent you up there."

She turned to him and snared him with her gaze. No. None of this was not his fault. "I was the best person for the job," she told him. "You know that and I know that."

"Yes," he whispered, allowing that, but not releasing himself from responsibility. "But-,

"No, Colonel," she hissed back. "Not now." She moved to stand in front of him and placed a hand gently on his arm. He grasped it and waited. "Tomorrow, I'll need you," she told him at last, trying to make him understand. "Tonight, I need this."

He sighed; the nodded. She wasn't sure he understood, but right now that didn't matter. She could feel him standing there still, even as she opened her door and walked into her room.

She waited a moment, hoping he wouldn't try to come in, forcing her to lock her door to him. Finally, she could hear his steps moving away. She sighed.

She did lock the door that connected her room to the room next door – his.

The room was sparse; an overstuffed double bed, two rustic nightstands, a small secretary, with a few sheets of complimentary stationery fanned out over the top and a utilitarian fountain pen. On one nightstand sat a delicately decorated ceramic washbasin, pitcher, and on the floor, the ubiquitous and obsolete chamber pot. All she needed. She checked that her rucksack was still tucked under the bed and that her night clothes lay over the chair. On that nightstand, she saw the folder with the information for their mission. Picking it up, she stuffed it securely in her rucksack and pushed the thing back under the bed.

Then, she tried the window, made sure the lock was in place. Turning back to the bed, she saw that it was neatly turned down, and her pillow was fluffed. On the other night table, the wash basin was already filled; she tested the water and frowned. It was room temperature, but it would do right now. Not exactly the lap of luxury, but it would do.

That animal put his hands on her, had shoved one down her trousers, and run his thumb over her nipple.

In the privacy of the darkness, she allowed her revulsion to overtake her. She yanked the chamber pot over and vomited what little she had in her stomach away. As soon as there was nothing left, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood, trembling and bleary-eyed. She stripped the cursed shirt off with quiet determination along with the pants and tried to scrub away the memories of that vile touch. The lukewarm water did nothing for her – that would take an hour-long shower in almost boiling water.

He'd almost touched her there. If she hadn't screamed like a stupid little girl, they wouldn't have known, they wouldn't have found her in time, and he would have. The fight or flight response (called the acute stress response by the military) always gave a person what they needed to survive a situation if even for a short time. She'd learned all about it, she knew every symptom. She'd seen it in the eyes of fatally wounded soldiers. Since flight torture was impossible, the soldiers fought with all that they had to either survive or to die with dignity. She'd thought herself fortunate that she had never, nor would ever, have to deal with such trauma.

Her luck had run out. The wound to her psyche wasn't fatal, but it was scarring and dark. She had spent every year since her father had died building and maintaining her sense of self, her self-confidence. Daily, she smoothed on her veneer of calm composure and had managed to face her days without being affected by what was part and parcel of being a soldier.

Being a soldier meant dealing with trauma every day, whether it be in real life, on between the pages of reports, and medical records, and transfers. Each terrible tale had struck hard against her invisible wall, but never penetrated. Now, Kimblee, with just a couple of well-placed touches, and with his psychosis full blown and frightening beyond belief, managed to press through. Now she had to come up with a way to fix the hole left behind.

She crawled between the spare sheets and pulled the pillow into her arms. One hand strayed to her lower abdomen, cradling it in gentle warmth. There was very little to feel, just a small curve, but she still ran her fingers over it, assuring herself – assuring it – that everything was all right, and that everything would be okay. She smiled to herself realizing this was her first official act as a mother.

Sleep would be long in coming, this she knew, so she lay there and stared at the ceiling, allowing pictures from her memories to play before her eyes. She needed to go through this, this review of her memories. This internal debriefing, so that she could file it all away in their proper places and get on with her duties. And her life.

Her mind danced over the earliest memories. All of her earliest memories, the happiness she had felt before her mother passed away. Her childhood, gleefully torturing a skinny young boy with a thatch of unruly black and knobby knees, who hung on every word her father said. Her coming out party, escorted by the same kid, both of them feeling the resentment of have to be paired off in this way. Only because, he told her, dancing for him had been something that came with a stage and a pole and a guy with a cigar playing the piano.

Then, there was the day her father had called her into his study.

It hurt.

Truly, it did. There was no other way to describe it. No pretty words to camouflage it. There was pain and then there was this pain.

Her father's apprentice was off on some "errand" that her father had sent him on. The errand was probably as futile as arguing that what he wanted to do to her wasn't right or necessary.

Straddling a chair turned backward, her chin resting on folded arms, her father held her gaze with his callous grip of dark eyes. He told her what he was going to do, not as if she had permission to debate with him, but as a certainty. She shuddered but did as she was told. There was no use arguing with Berthold especially when the subject was his great work.

If anyone had asked her back then, she would have said there was no rational excuse for acquiescing other than that he was her father. It was better to deal with this than whatever he had in store for her should she refuse. Now that she was an adult, she probably could understand that Berthold was a man who held control in his tight grip, and anything that tampered with it was punished severely.

The sheer curtains at the window allowed a fresh breeze to sweep over her exposed back, soothing her wounded skin somewhat. On that chair in the middle of her father's inner sanctum, she sat, still as a statue. Slowly and methodically, the needles nicked her skin and injected blood red ink just below the surface. It felt like the sky was falling on her back in tiny shards, depositing drop by drop of pain right under her skin, seeping into her bloodstream and marking her inside and out. The needles pressed deeply, but not too much, just enough. Just enough to mark her memories. It felt like hummingbirds were tearing at her skin.

He was determined to finish this thing in one sitting because he knew that even she had limits, and there wouldn't be any punishment that would make her submit to any more of this agony again.

She wanted to ask then what it was for, all of the extra detail Berthold insisted on and the words in the archaic tongue. But, she knew that he thought his daughter beneath such arcane things. There were no off-handed explanations of alchemy from him. She wasn't even allowed to step foot in his study to wander among the books, so she could at least absorb some of the monumental knowledge her father carried. No, she was just his test project, his grand experiment, and this would be his magnum opus. His masterpiece and his living legend.

There were those who would have told her she was downright insane to allow him to mark her permanently. Especially with such a dangerous thing as an entire alchemical array, fully loaded and terribly powerful. To madly become a walking, living breathing weapon, her very body into the hands of one of those dangerous creatures, madmen geniuses, those alchemists even if he was her flesh and blood.

She skipped the conversation at her father's grave, and what happened that memory coated with a pink and yellow miasma that she could never seem to remove.

She marched through recollections of heat and sand, and dirt. She found the time when she scrabbled over the ruins of a city in search of someone. She remembered the feel of the rifle in her hands as she stared down her target. The sweat in her armpits, on her brow, the back of her neck.

And finally, she found the memory.

She walked into the tent filled with officers and commanders and bloody-handed state alchemists and reported for duty, stiff and tired from two days of what could only be called stalking. It had been the brashest thing she had done in her short life, volunteering to be his adjutant the night before. And he did intimidate her, but she hadn't been about to back down, despite the look of scorn he gave her. Her temerity had reflected in his eyes when he looked her up and down.

She remembered the way he'd peeled the gloves from his hands like he was stripping another persona from his skin. He distractedly handed them to her and moved to grab some water from the pitcher sitting on the table by the door.

He wasn't the same person remembered; that clumsy little boy was gone. He was different.

Then she remembered the others in the room, and finally, she found the other him violating her memories like he violated her skin. They called him Ruin. Major Zolf Kimblee.

He'd walked up to her while she stood there, walked around her as if she were on a block being sold. He had a look on his face that made her want to wash as he leaned forward, reaching out a hand.

"Hawkeye," he'd said her name as if it were his possession. "You have a smudge on your nose, little bird," he'd said. His voice was slick and oily, and she almost shied away from it before she remembered that she hadn't been told to stand at ease.

And then her Major had stepped in front of the other one. "Did I give you permission to address my soldier, Kimblee?"

The two of them faced off, but it was not because of her. She could tell this was a battle that had been started between them far before she'd even stepped into the tent. She could sense the hatred and contempt in the air like the ozone that seeped from their pores at all times.

Kimblee backed down then, under the watchful eye of the other older men in the room.

And Major Mustang made her stand there at attention for a good ten more minutes, before barking an order that she find him a place to put up a tent for the night. Away from the others.

And that was when it all began.

Riza sighed. She'd found what she sought. The recalling brought her back to a clean slate and allowed her conscious mind to remember everything that had passed between them since then. It allowed her to remember that he was there for her now, in more ways than just the one, and would be for as long as he could be, or wanted to be.

Tonight, she'd needed this.

And tomorrow, she would need him.

She exhaled, releasing all tension in the air. She'd slept after worse nights. It was just a matter of letting the exhaustion in her body take over. She closed her eyes and willed her mind to shut down, to let her body take control and do what it had to do to help physically her recover.