Edward is drawing something on the ground in front of him with a stick. Al laughs and claps his hands. Trisha finishes hanging the boys' shirts on the line for a moment, to watch them. The sun is bright and hot in the sky, but there's a light breeze blowing through every few minutes, making it a near-perfect late-spring day. She sets down the laundry basket and walks down the garden path toward her children.
"Mommy, come look!" Al calls, and Trisha smiles. She doesn't quite run to him, but it's close. She definitely hurries, and scoops him up in her arms, and her three-year-old son squirms and giggles and flails against her. She sets him down again, kissing his temple before he pulls and her hand. "Look!" he demands. He points at his older brother.
Edward squats on the ground with a familiar look of deep concentration on his face. Trisha's eldest child has always been serious, and insatiably curious. "How does this work?" "What's that made of?" "How come that happened?" She sends him to the Rockbell's when he gets particularly exuberant, because they went to medical school and she never even finished the tenth grade. He always comes back with at least a thousand more questions and it's enough to make Trisha at least partially reconsider that strategy.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and sits cross-legged in the dirt. "What am I looking at?" she asks cheerfully. Edward just shakes his head slightly, his "don't interrupt me" look, the same one he gives her when she calls him for dinner, resting a hand on his shoulder and trying to pull him away from the anatomy text that is his new constant companion ("He's four, Urey." "s'why I gave him a book with lots of pictures."). The anatomy book is lying mostly forgotten now, thrown into the grass several feet away.
Al climbs into Trisha's lap and she wraps her arms around him, feeling his jittery excitement as Trisha watches Ed biting his lower lip and squinting, and then pushing his hands into the dirt.
In the bright sunlight, it's easy to imagine she's just imagining the flash of blue light, seeing it out of the corner of her eye, that it's not really there at all. Al's still in her arms, but looks up at her as if studying her reaction. Trisha doesn't realize it, but her smile has disappeared, replaced by some troublesome emotion that sinks into the pit of her stomach.
"Mommy?" Al whispers.
"I'm fine, baby," she mutters absently.
A rustle of spring wind blows over the grass, kicking up the dirt and making Ed frown. He picks up his stick again and starts re-digging the line that's been disturbed, the curve of what is clearly a transmutation circle. In the center of the circle is a perfect sphere, a ball made out of clay. Ed ignores it, already making bigger plans, needing to try new things. Trisha can see the gears turning in his head in the way that only a mother can.
"Edward?" He's ignoring her, the way he always does when he doesn't want to hear her tell him to stop whatever he's in the middle of doing. "Edward! Stop right now!" Her voice is harsh enough that Al flinches in her arms, but Trisha has learned through experience that it's the only way to get Ed to listen to her when she really needs him to.
Her eldest son settles back on his heels and glances up at her. Just for a second. Then he's back to staring at the dirt. "Edward, look at me," Trisha says, more softly. He does. His lower lip trembles the way it does when he's done something he knows is wrong. But he doesn't know this is wrong. Does he? "Who taught you how to do this?"
"Nobody," he mutters. His fingers trace the shapes in the array. Circle. Triangle. Hexagon. Diamond. Their mathematical complexity alone should be beyond him. Children his age can barely manage a straight line with a slate pencil. He's not even in school.
"How did you know what to do, then?" she asks, hoping she sounds calm. Hoping she sounds patient.
Ed shrugs. "Dunno. I just know."
He licks his lips and his eyes keep flickering between her and the circle and it's obvious that he's dying to get on with his experiments and he doesn't understand why she's stopping him.
Why is she stopping him?
("Close your eyes." "Why?" "Because I want it to be a surprise." She could see the flash of red light even with her eyes closed, and then she felt the sharp thorns against her thumb. She opened her eyes to find a perfectly formed rose pressed into her hand. In the middle of winter. And the grin on Hohenheim's face that always made her melt.)
"Are you mad?" Ed asks.
Trisha shakes her head slowly. "Do it again," she tells him. His smile is huge, and he so rarely smiles. Trisha rests her chin on Al's head, and watches as the blue-white light spreads outward from Ed's hands, lighting up the lines carved into the dirt and then fading. The ball in the middle of the circle has been replaced by a primitive human figure, made of clay. Two arms, two legs, a head. Trisha frowns.
"Is that… ?"
"It's like Daddy's. But he never let me play with his."
"I know." She is actually crying now, and Ed frowns.
Al reaches up and rubs and her tears with the heel of his hand. "When Daddy comes back, he'll be really happy, won't he?" he says.
Trisha nods, although the way Edward is staring at her, she's positive she's not the only one who has figured out that Hohenheim is never coming back. He actually clenches his fists and hunches his shoulders, his anger overwhelming every aspect of his small body. Trisha gently pushes Al out of her lap, and reaches out for Ed. He doesn't generally like to be touched (Hohenheim hadn't liked it much either, she remembers) but he lets her wrap him up in a hug. She traces a small circle on his upper back with her thumb, a technique that has worked to calm him since he was an infant.
She places her other hand under his chin and looks into his golden eyes. "You really are his son," she breathes, and she kisses his forehead. Ed pulls himself out of her arms and scowls at the circle in the dirt.
"I don't care about him," he growls. "Stupid Hohenheim."
"Ed!" Al cries. He looks to Trisha, wondering if she's going to reprimand his brother for his rudeness. But Trisha lets the breach of etiquette slide (she remembers when he used to ask "Where's Daddy?" But that question disappeared from his repertoire more than a year ago.)
"I just wanted to make you happy," Ed pleads.
"You did, Edward. You do. This is… you are… you are my miracle. You are everything I ever wanted, you and your brother."
(Hohenheim always talked about how much he wanted children. They picked out names and nursery colors and he rubbed his hand over her pregnant belly with wonder in his eyes. He'd been so happy when Edward was born, and then Al. He'd been a wonderful father.
But if he was happy… if this was what he wanted, why would he leave?)
Trisha knows nothing about alchemy. The circle carved into the dirt makes about as much sense to her as the complicated automail blueprints Pinako keeps pinned up in her kitchen next to her recipes. "Can you show me what you're doing?" she asks Ed, genuinely curious.
He looks surprised, but then he nods. "Yeah. Look. Put your hand here." he tells her, and she does. "Now you just have to… think about what you want to make. You have to really think about it. You have to concentrate."
Trisha tries, she really does, but all she manages to do is break Edward's little doll into pieces of clay and sand. "I'm sorry."
"It doesn't matter, Mom." He settles back onto his heels again. "I'm thirsty," he says after a minute, as if it's just occurred to him.
Trisha smiles, and ruffles his hair teasingly. "Lemonade, I can handle, Mr. Alchemist."
Ed gets to his feet and pulls at her until she stands up. He doesn't let go of her hand, which surprises her, but she realizes it might be yet another of his attempts to make her happy. Her heart swells with love for him. For both of them. Al grabs her other hand and grins up at her, and they walk into the house together.