If anyone were to ask who had the greatest influence on him as he grew up, Roy Mustang would have had to say it was his father. His father was a large man, tall, strong, with brown hair and brown eyes and tanned skin, and he had served in the military as well, though some time before Roy himself had been born. He was the obvous answer, the male principle, a symbol of strength.

He would not have thought to mention his mother, which proved she had the greater influence; the subtler influence is the one that lasts longest. Still, he would not have been surprised if she were mentioned. Of the two of them, he most feared and loved his mother, though she hardly commanded it.

She was a small woman, barely five feet, with the shaded skin, black hair, and narrow eyes of the Xing people. Thin and frail, she was nevertheless strong in other ways; strong in personality, strong in her demands, though she would have lowered her eyes and said nothing had it been brought up. She valued modesty above all -- openly, at least; inwardly, she raised subtlty above it.

Roy's earliest memories were of his mother's hair. While it was black, when she would light the lamps and he would sit in her lap, he would watch it with his own narrow eyes, watch the way the light changed on it. When firelight hit it, it would seem to darken until every possible colour was contained within, until he'd reach up a grubby child's hand and run his fingers through a rainbow.

The second memories he formed were of his mother's lamps. While electricity was common now and their own house was wired, his mother preferred to read, write, and work by gaslamp. She would take out her special cloths, one in each hand, twist the knob to start the gas, and rub the cloths together, starting a spark. "Don't touch," she'd warn her son, though he knew by then, he knew. "Don't touch." And she'd slide the glass covering over the flame and put the lamp somewhere safe out of reach. It was the first advice she ever gave him; at least, the first advice he would later remember.

She encouraged him to read by the time he was two years old, and he'd grow up hearing stories of how his father couldn't believe she tried to teach him that so young, let alone that she succeeded. "Discipline," his mother would explain, and his father would laugh the deep belly laugh that Roy never grew tired of listening to. Whenever his father laughed at her, his mother's lips would twist faintly, and in retrospect, what he'd taken as disapproval may have been a hidden smile, but that was only in retrospect.

"Discipline," his mother would remind him whenever he grew tired of the books she would place in front of him. They were long, and the words were strangely woven, and he wanted to be outside, playing. Discipline, he would remember, and turn another page. Discipline.

He knew basic maths by age three, and was starting into geometry. By age four, his mother started him on alchemy. "Just the basics," she'd tell his father when he'd frown, eyebrows drawing down. "Look, he likes to learn, can't you tell? He's never without a book. He won't practice them yet, just learn the forms. He's so good at math, why not start him on the sciences?"

Roy practiced alchemy in his room at night, after his mother had put the lamps out.

When he was five, he met the daughter of the next door neighbours. She was a quiet girl, and intelligent, and his father laughed about him getting them young, whatever that meant. His mother approved as well, quietly, saying that Liza was a good girl.

They didn't talk much at first, walked off to play together. He showed her his alchemy and she watched, silent, with solemn brown eyes.

By seven, his father decided to take part in his education, and taught him to use handguns. Liza watched this as well, and flinched every time a shot went off. His father would laugh. "Well, women will be women," he'd say, and Roy would nod - it was true, women would be women.

The guns were too large in his hands, but he would practice anyway, and Liza would always be somewhere behind him, watching, flinching at every shot.

At fourteen, he discovered women mostly by accident. Children in town would run, play, and he'd watch the way their bodies moved, watch the flat way men ran and the angled way women did, the way men moved forward and women moved up and down. Oh, how he watched, and when he wasn't at danger of being found, he'd watch through the window and undo his pants, touch himself to the motion.

From there the play came more directly, touching girls in back corners, quick movements, breath short and hands reaching, before any parents called, before anything happened. There were a few boys mixed in; not many, but a few. They were good, and fun, but girls were dangerous, and he found that interesting, that danger that one of them might catch his spark.

Roy thought he might have got one of them pregnant, at one point, when touching moved to sneaking off moved to more daring things, nudity. Bodies against bodies, her insisting it hurt, him insisting that it shouldn't, his books said this was perfectly normal, this is what people did. She saw a lot of boys after him, though, so he wasn't sure it was his. She married one of the boys, and he never got to see the baby, never got to see if it had dark hair and narrow eyes or not.

He was rather relieved not to know.

"You should be more careful," Liza said calmly, one day, watching him fire his gun in practice. He nodded, and that was that; he would be more careful.

In retrospect, he supposed it must be odd that he'd never thought of Liza that way.

Roy hadn't quite turned fifteen when his mother decided to send him off to school. They had a university at Central, with a library. "He's read every book we have," his mother said. "How else will he continue his education?" His father agreed, under duress.

Privately, he'd thought he'd rather stay, but his mother had always wanted him to learn, and how could he argue? She'd raised him.

He told Liza the next day and wasn't sure what to expect - tears, perhaps, denials, insistance he stay. He hadn't expected a measuring gaze, a nod. "I'll tell my parents I'm leaving," she said, and that was that, as if there was no question of anything else. That easily, there wasn't. He left, so did she.

At university, away from home, things were easier. He met another boy his age, Maes, and they studied together a lot, picked up girls together. Liza would study with them, but say nothing about the women, lips tight, eyes thoughtful.

He learned a good deal from Maes, mostly about women.

When he was sixteen, he was eligable for the military, and all the posters - we need you, we need you - were suddenly relevant to him. It was the war in the North that had caused so many demands for soldiers. Maes said he'd join too, and they'd both enlisted when they ran into Liza on the street, and told her what they'd done.

"Ah," she said, and turned from the course she'd been walking, towards the library, entering the enlistment office instead.

He never understood it on some levels; she hated guns.

Because he was an alchemist, he was automatically higher ranking than the others, but he was determined to do things correctly. Once on the battlefield, he might be a Major, but in training he was any other soldier. He ate in the messes, he slept in the dorms, he practiced with guns, he polished shoes and equiptment.

He was nineteen when he was shipped out to Ishbar, and twenty-three when he was called to perform as an alchemist as well as a soldier.

Basque Grahn, the Iron Blood Alchemist, interviewed him then; "What can you do," he'd asked, "to kill people?"

Roy had thought of his mother's lamps, how they worked, how fast an explosion forms in intensified oxygen, and had explained. He was assigned special gloves, later, a new weapon; they were ignition cloth for the spark, and had arrays for the oxygen.

He saw war, at Ishbar.

It wasn't exactly a genocidal policy, but it was close. Any who surrendered were to be sent to a prisoner camp. Any who resisted, no matter what age or sex, were to be killed. He used his gloves a lot, then; the smell of fire would always be partnered with the smell of flesh in his mind.

He met the doctors on the fields. The Rockbell Doctors, they were called; he never found out their given names until after. He saw them tending soldiers, the first time, and nodded to them; they nodded back, professionals. He wondered at the time how many burns they had treated.

The second time he met them, he was told to execute them. He'd avoided earlier executions, protestors and dissenters and soldiers who had gone AWOL forced to lay face down before they were shot. He had seen them, but avoided participating in any on either end.

Then the Iron Blood Alchemist pulled him aside, told him to draw his gun, told him to shoot them, and Roy was forced to be on one end or the other. It wasn't mercy; he wasn't allowed to shoot them face down. He watched their faces. It was amazing how easily the gun moved in his hands. A jerk. Another jerk. He watched every change that crossed their expressions, watched the path of the bullets. He couldn't stop watching after they'd folded. The male Rockbell was holding a picture of a girl. It took him a while to realize that it wasn't an eight-year-old Liza. He wanted to go home.

He couldn't stop watching.

Roy returned when he could, drank, let his gun kiss the underside of his chin. He said goodbye to his father and his mother, to Maes and to Liza.

And then he was stopped, and he didn't pull the trigger, and soon he was allowed to go home.

It took six months and a promise from Maes to pull him from his dark apartment and dark thoughts and dark taboos, but eventually he entered the real world again, and found Maes behind him and Liza in front of him, waiting. An unusual state of affairs, he thought at the time.

She took him out to a bar, and let him drink himself unconcious, and then carried him home, and he realized then that she too would be a friend for life.

The next day she was quiet about his house and he watched her moving in his room and wondered why he couldn't be attracted to her. She had removed her uniform jacket, and her form was that of a woman's, of a beautiful woman's, all curves, sunlight catching in golden hair, a sway to her walk and the helplessly unconcious movement of her chest. He should want her, he thought, and he watched her watch him.

Perhaps, he thought, he still saw the child in her, because the eyes were the same - large, brown, serious, demanding. They had a complete and utter faith in his abilities, and a terrifying knowledge of who he was.

Perhaps.

"There are no clothes in your closet," she said, and he blinked, because he had clothes in his closet. Everything he wore was in his closet.

He watched her; she watched him.

"How long have you had nothing but uniforms in there?" she asked.

Roy watched her, and wondered about her own closet; she was wearing her uniform today, she had worn it yesterday, and she was off duty both days.

"I don't remember," he said.