A/N: Most of this chapter takes place over the span of a few weeks. It seems fast, but the next chapter will have explanations/more examples.
Well... You'll see...
Edward was the first to release himself from the ropes that had held him prisoner. As he rubbed his wrists, he rushed over to his semi-conscious wife and began frantically untying her bindings while repeating her name in an effort to keep her with him.
If he had to guess, they had been tied down for six hours or so. Meaning that the men that took Hawkeye were long gone...
Finally, he felt the rope slacken then fall, and her along with them. Reaching out, he caught her and eased her to the ground.
"Winry," he gasped as he placed his hand on her face. "Winry, please answer me."
She wearily obeyed, opening her eyes as she placed her hand atop his own. "I'm alright," she murmured tiredly. "Just...just worn out."
"Did they hurt you anywhere else? How's-"
"Edward...he's alright," she reassured him as her free hand went down to rub her stomach. "Actually, he's doing very well. He hasn't stopped kicking..."
Still, he continued to press as he leaned over her, asking any and every question that came to mind, in which she confidently and truthfully answered every single one.
Finally he accepted her reassurances. After pecking her gently on the forehead with his lips, he turned his attention to the third prisoner. Rushing over to Roy Mustang, he prodded him on the shoulder.
The Flame Alchemist, whom had stopped responding to Edward's words hours ago, barely stirred, his head hung limply.
"Mustang," Edward growled, trying to hide his worry, "Wake up."
Still no response.
Edward's stomach dropped. They had both been beaten up pretty badly, but he didn't think Mustang was hurt that severely. Still, he knew that the older man had been in an immense amount of pain to begin with.
As he began to on push Mustang's shoulder in an effort to wake the man, Edward's eyes slowly wandered over to his other shoulder. With the way the fabric of his jacket fell, it was not apparent that it dislocated. However, Edward was positive it was...
They had been walking toward town when they were ambushed. It happened so quickly that Mustang didn't have the chance to react, even by clapping his hands.
They somehow knew that he was able to do clap alchemy now, because their first targets were his hands. One of the monstrous men that had attacked them instantly went for the Flame Alchemist's arm. Taking it between his massive hands, he had pulled and rotated. Despite Edward being a reasonable distance away, he still heard the terrible noise Mustang's joint made upon separation.
The resulting scream that Mustang responded with had been enough to distract Edward from his fight long enough to get him tackled to the ground. As he struggled in an attempt to get away from their grip, Edward could see Mustang still fighting, his left arm hanging limply at his side. However, it didn't take them long to subdue and bind him as well.
After that, it was only a matter of time before their captors toted them back to his own home and found the women almost unaware of the assailants. If Hawkeye hadn't heard them, he suspected that the fight would have been a lot shorter.
She had fought valiantly in an attempt to beat off the intruders, but he knew that eventually she too would fall. And when she did, she still fought; trying desperately to barter for their lives as they were threatened.
Then, for some reason, the insane man and his lackeys listened and agreed to spare them in the last moments she was conscious...
Finally his constant prodding and pleading got him a reply.
Mustang groaned and slowly lifted his head. After blinking a few times, he gasped, eyes snapping over to the last place he saw Hawkeye. The grief on his face was clear when he saw the remains of a shattered lamp in the place she had been.
As he began to become more aware of his surroundings, Edward raced to the kitchen and back, bringing with him a kitchen knife. He carefully sliced through the ropes around Mustang's legs, body, and hands.
"How's your shoulder," Edward finally asked, his eyes scanning up to its joint.
Still staring vacantly ahead, Mustang murmured, "Fine," as he absently reached up to rub it. The instant his hand touched it, he winced violently and hissed.
"Hey! Take it easy," Edward scolded as he raised his hands to help the man. However, he stopped when Mustang slowly rose to his feet and attempted to take a step forward. Almost instantly his knees gave out and he crashed to the ground.
"Idiot," Edward snapped harshly as he tried to push the fallen man into a sitting position.
But Mustang's determination was stronger than Edward's command to remain still. Again the man tried to struggle to his feet. This time he muttered breathlessly, "We need to find her... She needs me."
Edward clapped a hand in the man's shoulder and pushed him back down. "I know that! We will; I promise we-"
"No," Mustang snapped. "We need to soon. No... Sooner than that. Now."
Edward felt his stomach drop. Why now? Of course they needed to find her. But the urgency in Mustang's voice was genuinely scaring him.
"Because," Mustang choked out, "Because she warned me..."
He had called it 'hell,' but Riza wondered if the crazed doctor even knew the meaning of the word.
Ishval during the war was hell.
Being reassigned under Fuhrer King Bradley and pulled away from her superior officer had been hell.
Having her throat slit and having her life dangled in front of the man she loved had been hell.
This...was not hell. Unless he considered three meals and four escorted trips to the washroom as its definition.
Obviously she wanted nothing more than to get escape. She had pushed against every concrete block she could reach and twisted every single iron bar that held her in this small, prison-like cell to check if anything had been loose. Unfortunately, everything was tightly sealed.
Her demands to be released, or at the least receive information on why they held her there, were constant, albeit still unanswered. The doctor would merely chuckle and shake his head from the other side of the bars when she did, ignoring her venomous glare.
She hated him.
Her feelings of loathing were there, seething just below the surface.
And she could tell that he feared her, or at the very least was very, very uneasy while around her. He always brought at least two goons with him, always keeping them between her and himself.
But even they, she came to realize, were slightly put off by her. One of them, the one with a lanky and thin body was, she deduced, mixed with a reptile of sorts. Another, she discovered, had been blended together with some kind of bird, his large oblong nose being the evidence. A third that she saw only on rare occasions had large, rippling muscles, but was extremely skittish. Horse, she later discovered. Unlike her, their physical features were nearly unchanged...
And although their uneasiness was subtle, it was clearly there. And that's when she realized that in their eyes, she was a predator, and they the prey.
The thought was foreign and unsettling to her, but she kept it in the back of her mind for future reference.
Because in a way, their reluctance was strangely satisfying...
"How are things going?"
"Fine, fine," Beller answered into the phone's receiver with a hint of pride. "Everything is going smoothly thus far."
"Then why is it taking so long," Thomas demanded agitatedly. "You said that-"
"I said that it takes time, General," Beller appealed to the angered officer. "Sometimes you have to break something more before you can fix it; it depends on the individual. That takes time," he explained.
"I've done my waiting," Thomas growled through the line. "It seems as though your methods are not working."
"They are, they are," Beller reassured quickly. "It's subtle now, but I can see it working clearly-"
"See what clearly," the General snapped.
The doctor cleared his throat nervously. "M-mannerisms, sir. Mannerisms, actions, simple gestures," he listed. "My methods are to irritate until it begins to show these 'signs'.
"The soul of the animal is long gone; it's dead. But its influence, instincts, irritants are still there below the surface. I aim to irk her enough to make the habits arise.
"For example," he explained, "The animal hated to be caged; that nearly drove it mad! And she's beginning to show signs of discomfort, because she's-"
Pacing.
That was all Riza seemed to do now.
She'd stop only when the doctor and his lackeys disrupted her, when they'd bring her food, when one of them would come to escort her to a washroom, or when she slept. Other than that, despite how much she tried to stop it, she found that she couldn't. As soon as her guard was down, she'd find herself on her feet again, pacing back and forth the entire length of the cell.
If she stopped, an anxiety-driven tightness would form in her chest and the walls would seem as if they were closing in on her. So her solution was to continue, allowing herself that time to think and plan.
But still... It nearly felt as if she was being driven mad.
"And-and I've noticed a curious decline in word association and understanding."
Riza didn't know when it had first happened, but at some point the doctor's words had begun to no longer make any sense.
It started with one word in a sentence, but it soon progressed to another, then another.
She couldn't figure out what language it was. Aside from her native Amestrian, she was familiar with some Cretian and a hint of Xingese; though she could recognize Aerugean and Drachman when she heard it.
But this...this was a completely different language.
"I've also noticed that's she's becoming more accepting of certain... circumstances."
The first few times the doctor and his musty-scented monsters came into the cell demanding a blood sample, she fought. She struggled and writhed and clawed at their grasps until they were able to pin her with her arms behind her back. Even when they moved one of her arms for the sample to be taken from, she still attempted to defy them. This resulted in them painfully twisting it until it almost came loose from its socket.
Once it was all said and done, they'd leave, with the doctor throwing a thoughtless, "Thank you, Eighty-eight," over his shoulder. To which she'd respond by bitterly correcting him with, "Riza."
But he never took the correction to heart.
After probably the ninth or tenth blood draw, she finally stopped struggling and stopped correcting him. What was the point?
"Although," he chuckled darkly as he looked down at his throbbing, casted hand, "It seems that no matter what, I can't get her to like me."
Every time the doctor came in, he was accompanied by at least two other guards, oftentimes they would enter before him in order to restrain her. They knew that, if given the chance, she'd try to make him pay. Plus, keeping her restrained made them feel at ease too...
One of the times when they had come in to draw her blood, the doctor noted that one of her ears was drooping slightly. The one that was bothering her slightly more before when she was convinced she had begun to develop an ear infection.
A quick glance inside it confirmed that she indeed had one.
As he pulled away, one of the men let their guard down and loosened his grip ever so slightly.
That moment was all she needed.
In one swift movement, she clamped her teeth down tightly on his hand.
The beginnings of the resulting scream only fueled her hatred as she clenched her jaw and sank her teeth deeper and deeper until-
Snap!
The sound confirmed it.
She obediently let go as the two chimera that were holding her yanked her away, the doctor himself pulling his broken and bloodied hand away from her, cradling it in his arm.
Tasting blood in her mouth, she spat it out while fixing her hardened, loathing glare on the doctor. The corners of her lips twitched with the ghost of a wicked, triumphant smile.
For a moment he mirrored her cold gaze, until his lips curled upwards as he began to chuckle. His chuckle then morphed into a laugh, which quickly escalated into a gleeful roar.
Taken aback by his change in response, Riza felt her face soften slightly as her glare became a look of confusion.
She was in such a state of dismay that she hadn't realized the other chimera had released her. It wasn't until they were out of the door, ushering the injured doctor out that she even processed what has happened.
Even as he was leaving, his crazed eyes followed her, his fits of laughter escalating the further he got. Finally he was out of view, his chortles dying as he moved away.
In a complete state of shock she stared down at her hands in disbelief, trying to process what had just happened.
Why... Why had she done that?
"So I can assure you, sir, that this will work," Beller said as he ended his explanation.
The man on the other end of the line was silent for a few moments. Finally, General Thomas spoke, his tone hushed. "Very well then... I expect you will call me when it is time for me to take part in this. Understood?"
"Y-yes, sir," the doctor stammered as he tried to hide his smile. "I will call as soon as-"
Click.
Pulling his ear away from the receiver, the doctor grinned madly.
Things were finally beginning to fall into place.
No longer able to ignore the ache in her legs, Riza took a break from her excessive pacing and sat down on the bench she used as a bed. Burying her face into her hands, she tried desperately to pull random names from her head to see which ones fit.
In her dream last night, Roy had been there, of course. But there had also been two others; others she felt she should have recognized.
They looked like they were related, both of them with golden hair and golden eyes. At some points in her dream they were older, and at others they were smaller. The younger of the two, however, would change shape and become larger and metallic.
That made no sense. Metal wasn't flesh and flesh wasn't metal. She dismissed it as a dream; it simply wasn't possible...
Still, she felt something nagging at her at the back of her mind.
She had known them at some point...
This time she knew she was simply forgetting. She knew these men.
That night she dreamt of a team of five without including herself. At one point she had known their names... But now she couldn't think of them, except for Roy's. He was a constant, unwavering reminder of who she was.
The others, though, were fading from her mind.
Did the one with gray hair have rims around his eyes, or did the heavier one? No... The heavier one was the one that lit sticks on fire and put them in his mouth... Right? Or was that the small one with the black hair?
Then what did the sandy-haired one do? What was his role?
Their voices, faces, and features were fading...
She had killed people. In a land of sand and red-eyed people; she had slaughtered them.
Roy-no, Major- had been there too, setting fire to the rest.
His eyes screamed 'killer.'
No doubt her eyes declared that too...
They were both there...but why? What had been their purpose? They both clearly did not want to be there.
She remembered a time when, after the gunfire had ceased for the night, he found her and held her, chasing the nightmares away.
Wrapping her arms around herself and pulling her knees to her chest, she desperately tried to relive that moment; when, despite being surrounded by blood and hate and war, she felt safe and loved.
This wasn't happening...
This wasn't happening!
What were his features?!
His eyes? Were they blue or obsidian in color?
His darkened hair? Neatly trimmed and combed back or shagged and messy?
She had tried desperately to keep his image in her mind, clinging to it for dear life. She couldn't forget him... She wouldn't!
He had been her everything! Her purpose, her dedication... Her life... Love...
Or had he been? Had she been trying to hold onto the face of a simple stranger this entire time? Did she replace the one she was supposed to remember with the wrong visage?
No... because why would she have tried to keep this image in her mind so desperately unless he held a great significance to her.
...What was his name?
With both of her hands on the side of her head, she rocked gently, trying to ease the pain that accompanied her trying to remember.
She whispered something under her breath, but that didn't even seem remotely close to a sound that would define who he was to her.
The image she had in her mind was beginning to contort and change.
She tried in vain to keep it in her mind. No... she couldn't lose him.
He was all she had left! She couldn't... She couldn't...
No.
No.
No...
As the throbbing in her skull began to dull, she moved her hands from the sides of her head to her bury her face into them. Her eyes had become wet with tears.
Taking a deep breath, she decided to start anew as she tried to dry her face.
But...What was she trying to remember...?
The sound of footsteps woke her with a start.
These ones were different. The sounds they made were not normal.
She rolled over and watched as he doctor, two of "his," and an unidentified man appeared.
They exchanged words briefly before the doctor pulled a set of keys and unlocked the door, ushering the three others in. He, however, remained outside. As he should.
She kept her glare on him longer than she intended to, her lips pulled back menacingly.
He should stay out there...
Suddenly her view of him was blocked.
Glaring up at the one that was in her way, she identified him as the unknown man. Looking at him from down to up, she realized that he was the source of the unusual footsteps. Because instead of two legs he had three; his third, wooden one held in his hand, most of his weight leaning into it.
Her glare was met with his piercing, hardened eyes.
Suddenly, something inside of her begged for her to run. The hairs on her neck stood on end amidst her internal panic.
But there was nowhere to go. They'd catch her.
But his gaze... It was unnerving, it was unsettling, it was... Terrifying.
She instinctively lowered her gaze to the floor, ears pressed firmly against her head.
What did he want? What did he want? What did he want?!
...Did he want blood?
She slowly lifted her arm and offered it to him, wanting it to be over with already.
But much to her surprise and horror, he slowly knelt down to her level and gently pushed her hand away. Then he began to speak.
But she didn't understand him. His words, noises, were blended together and were completely unintelligible.
Then his words stopped, possibly realizing she wasn't listening.
She heard the sound of ruffling, but dared not raise her head.
Without another word, the aged unknown shoved something flat and thin into her field of vision.
Despite her discomfort, she willed herself to raise her eyes to look at it.
He moved it closer to her. He wanted her to take it.
Reluctantly she did.
Examining it closey, it appeared as if there was someone stuck inside of it.
Flipping it over, she was greeted with a blank back.
So just on one side...
Turning it back, she glared at the person in it.
He had dark hair with equally dark eyes, pleasing to the eye. The garments he wore were identical to the stranger's...
For a fleeting moment, she felt a pang of recognition and an ache in her heart, though it quickly passed.
What was she supposed to get from this?
Slowly looking back up at the unknown, she saw that his lips were pulled upward in a smile that showed through the graying hairs on his face. When his eyes caught hers, he began to speak again, but he ended his string of words with a certain type of inflection.
He was asking her questions.
But she couldn't answer if she didn't understand him. And even if she could, her ability to even form coherent sounds in response had disappeared...if she was even able to to begin with.
His questions were becoming choppier and shorter, the pauses between them longer and more drawn out.
She kept her eyes down on the paper in her hands. Maybe the words had to do with this?
None of them seemed to fit, however.
It wasn't until he had uttered a question that was familiar that she finally looked up.
"...Eighty-eight?"
She recognized that... Because that was her name.
A/N: Look, a gift! A new chapter for the holiday season. So Happy... Holidays?
Eckham made an excellent observation. In Chapter 5 Roy kind of let Wilson, who is five ranks lower than him, walk all over him. Why did he let him do that without severe consequences?
I'm going to say that it was awkward writing in my part! I don't think I fully conveyed what was going on in Roy's mind. He should have definitely been more angry than I made him out to be. At least in my mind at the time, I was focusing on when he heard about his men being interviewed and when Wilson said the order was given to exterminate the chimera. At that point in my head, Roy's thoughts were reeling, and he became more focused on getting to Riza before General Thomas did. So he kind of "let it slide."
...But don't worry, he will make up for it.
Fun fact*: A wolf's jaw is powerful enough to snap a moose's femur after a few bites...
So, thank you for the reviews, follows, and favorites! You guys are great.