2003 canon, pre-series, supposedly fits in with canon.

(yes i'm aware of the fifty billion other things I need to update but HNNG PLOT BUNNY)

TW: pregnancy, blood, violence, abandonment, death

Questions Unanswered

She tucks her children into bed. Al gets into bed first because he can't sleep unless Ed helps tell the bedtime story, and that means Ed has to sit next to her. He makes all the animal sounds, and she can see his eager eyes following the text that they must have heard a hundred times by now. It never ceases to thrill her, that her beautiful little boys are already starting to learn alchemy, but can still be entranced by the simplest of stories.

She finishes with a flourish, ruffles Ed's hair and walks him around the bed to tuck him into the other side. He curls up next to Al, and it's not long before he's snoring. Al gives her a loving look – it always takes him longer to drift off.

"Goodnight, boys." She draws the curtains over the window, closes the door behind her and walks up the hall, bare feet soft against the hardwood.

She stops.

Somebody is waiting for her, door open behind them, moonlight making a silhouette of them against the dark-blue horizon that her hill looks over. And she's not sure, but she thinks she might recognize him.

Trisha knows that her husband is a mystery. Where did you come from? she asks, and she gets a general, half-hearted answer about a farm in the foothills of the mountains. What was your family like? and he finds some way to change the subject. She knows a sore subject when she hears one.

Marry me, she says, and he refuses, and there's fear – real fear – in his eyes. He says something about danger and risk and outdated social conventions, and once again avoids actually telling her anything.

It shouldn't have surprised her when he left, or when he stayed away. It shouldn't have, but it did – that's how these things always go, isn't it? And she looks at her beautiful boys and wonders how many of their questions will go unanswered, too.

The stranger slams the door behind him, and Trisha winces, hopes that Al's curiosity won't get the better of him. "My children are asleep," she says quietly. "What do you want?"

The stranger doesn't say anything, but strides forward, and she stumbles away from him, until he's backed her against the kitchen counter. He's younger than she thought; a pale, narrow face with the sunken eyes of an insomniac and the sharp cheekbones of an aristocrat. There's a sense of the feral about him, and Trisha reaches behind her, fingers closing around the handle of her kitchen knife. "Who are you?" she asks, and that familiarity is there again, in questions unanswered and ignored.

For a moment, she wonders if he can't speak, if he's one of those wild children she's heard about (and with hair the curls and spreads around him like ivy it's not hard to imagine) – and then he opens his mouth. "You're... Trisha."

"Trisha Elric. Yes." Fingers tight around the handle, ready to use it if she needs to.

"He didn't marry you."

It's like he drove the knife she's holding straight into her chest, but at the same time it gives her something. "You're looking for my... for Hohenheim, then."

There's a twist in his face, a black look in his eyes, and then suddenly he looks young again. Young and old. That's not new, either. "No." Pause. "Yes." Another hesitation, sharp teeth biting his thin, pale lip. "Not right now."

"Well, he's not here."

"I know that."

Trisha swallows. Part of her wants to look away from that stare of his, intense and uncomfortable and discoloured (nobody has eyes the colour of crushed blueberries and fading bruises, nobody that she's ever met, anyway) – but she couldn't even if she wanted to.

Her heart is hammering.

"I have nothing of value here," she whispers. "One look at this house should have told you that."

"What, you think I want money?" He actually laughs at that, and he ducks his head, breaking the held gaze as he snorts. He almost seems embarrassed. He is a child, then, she decides, and suddenly once again he looks old, and she's lost again. "Your children. His children."

Her knuckles tighten. "No."

His eyes are so full of wonder every time he touches her distended stomach, and it's almost enough to disguise what can't be hidden – that this is not his first child. She doesn't mean to feel betrayed by that, but she wonders – would it have been so hard to tell her?

She asks him. She should know better than to ask him anything, really, but she has to try. Have you been married – She trips on the word, but she has no other word. There was someone else. Wasn't there?

He shakes his head, but she knows him well enough to know that it's not a 'no', it's just a dismissal. "Does it matter?" he says, which is a yes. "I'm here, now, with you. The rest is unimportant."

It's important to me, she wants to say, but she can feel how tenuous her grip on him is, that at any moment she could breathe in the wrong direction and he would disappear like a petal on the breeze, lost in the sky, searching for some new place to rest. She's been warned about men like him.

She would have listened, if it hadn't been for his eyes. Young, and old, and as golden as the sun.

"You won't take my children," she states as boldly as she can, urging her body to remember the backyard scuffles, the alleyway fights, how she bound the bandages tight around her fists and wiped the blood from her nose with her pinafore.

"What, and you'll stop me?" That jeering, adolescent tone is back.

She knows how to deal with teenaged boys. That she can do.

She draws back her other hand, and slaps him across the cheek with a piercing sound – again, she worries that she's woken them up or intrigued them and no boys you need to stay in your room, stay away, stay asleep, Mommy can handle this on her own -

The startled look on his face is almost – no, not even almost. It's worth it. He hisses at her, and she stifles the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh at his expression. "You're not taking them, and you're not hurting them. And you're going to explain to me what grudge you have against my husband that you'll stoop to hurting toddlers over your spat."

"Spat?" he repeats incredulously, and collapses into a kitchen chair, running a bony hand through his hair. He hasn't eaten for a long time, she realizes, if the ribs jutting from the bottom of his ribcage are any indication, or the hollowness of his exposed stomach.

"You're angry," she says quietly. "I can understand that."

"What the fuck would you know, you stupid cunt?" he snaps, and she's tempted to slap him again.

"Hohenheim is a hard man to know, so no. I don't know much." She can't help the small undertone of bitterness that creeps in – it's so much easier to keep up the cheerful face when the sun is up and the darkness isn't opening up the wounds you'd rather hide.

"Hard man to know? No fucking kidding. You don't even -" He stops himself, and pulls his knees up to his chest, bare heels resting on the edge of the seat. "Just, walk away. I'll make it look like an accident. Easier that way."

She can't stop looking at him, trying to figure out why he looks so familiar -

"Stop looking at me!" And suddenly he's throwing a cup – Ed's cup, she vaguely realizes – at her head, and she ducks, wincing as the ceramic shatters on the cupboard door.

"Mom?" comes the sleepy whimper from the bedroom. The stranger's head darts towards the sound, but before he can even take a step, Trisha has the knife pointed at his chest, hand barely shaking as she presses it to his sternum.

"Don't you dare," she growls, eyes flashing. You can take the girl out of the fight -

And, amazingly, he raises his hand with a wry grin, mouth twisting up at the side. "Fine, fine. You have a knife."

She transfixes him with another cold stare, then slides the knife into the pocket of her apron, feeling keenly how exposed her back is as she turns away and slowly opens the door to Ed and Al's room.

"Edward? Alphonse? Are you all right?" she murmurs quietly.

Al rubs his eyes, half-asleep. "I heard a noise." Ed's eyes are open, but he's still mostly unconscious.

Trisha sits down on the edge of the bed, back prickling as the stranger stares at her. She can feel it between her shoulder-blades. "It was probably something outside. It's okay. You're safe in here."

"...You promise?"

"I promise."

She can feel the shift in the floorboards as the stranger outside moves, but the door stays where it is.

She kisses Al and Ed goodnight again, and wonders if tonight is the night she dies.

Trisha meets him when he barges in Pinako Rockbell's surgery, standing in front of the open door with a confused expression, the sun behind him like a halo – and blood dripping down his arm. "...I think I hurt myself," he says somewhat bemusedly.

"Oh for the love of – Get in here! Damned tourists," Pinako curses. "Trisha! Get me some gauze, needle and thread and a damp cloth. Oh, and some whiskey."

Trisha hurries off to get it, and the man himself doesn't really register until she's brought Pinako her tray of tools. She's about to leave, but he stops her with his good hand.

"Can you talk to me while she's stitching me up? I don't like needles much, and this is worse than the usual kind."

She stares at his hand for a moment (it's almost twice the size of hers, and she knows she's small for her age but she never thought about how small she'd look next to someone like him, who had to duck to get into the Rockbell house) and then sits down next to him. "What's your name?" she asks.

"Hohenheim."

"Hohen-?"

"Hohenheim." He laughs, then winces. "Bit strange, I know."

"Is that your last name or your first name?"

"Both," he replies almost too readily. "What about you?"

"Trisha. Trisha Elric."

"Oh, so you're not a Rockbell?"

She shakes her head. "I'm gonna be an automail mechanic, though. Just like Pinako!"

Pinako laughs at that, keeping her eyes steady on the stitching in his arm. "How did you slash your arm this badly?" she asks, with more than a hint of judgment. "I thought you were in a fight, but this didn't come from a knife. What did you do to yourself?"

Hohenheim grins sheepishly. "...I ran into a fence post."

"A fence post."

"I wasn't paying attention! It happens!"

Trisha laughs, then covers her mouth. More than once she's been told off for laughing like a boy (what do they expect when she was raised with a whole gaggle of them? nineteen is too old to be learning about when to use a napkin and when to look somebody in the eye), but Hohenheim raises his hand to her chin.

"You have a beautiful laugh," he says, and it's such a line, so obviously a line, but the goofy grin means she can't help falling for it anyway.

When she leaves their room, the stranger is leaning against the wall, arms crossed and hair falling over his face. It's green, she realizes – it can't be natural, but nothing about him is, down to the way he moves, catlike and serpentine all at once.

"You make a habit of lyin' to them?" he asks with a sneer.

"Only when I have no intention of it being a lie."

He doesn't respond to that, and instead raises his hand roughly to her chin, turning her face this way and that. "...You're not so fuckin' special," he pronounced after a moment, releasing her jaw. "You're not pretty, you're not powerful, you're not anything."

"I'm tougher than I look. And I'll prove it to you if you don't get out of my house, now."

He just grins sardonically at that. "Oh, yeah, sure. I'm not leaving until I get what I came for."

"The lives of my sons."

"I'll settle for just the older one, if you want to make a bargain of it."

She wants to slap him again, but she doesn't know how to express the utter horror and contempt she feels, the pain that anybody could be so carelessly brutal. She spits in his face.

He wipes it off, expression barely changing. "Was that supposed to be intimidating?"

"You're disgusting."

"You're not the first person to tell me that."

"They're children."

"So?" He shrugs. "If you want to blame anybody, blame him for fathering them in the first place. He knew what would happen."

Her stomach sinks.

Marry me, she remembers, and now she knows why he refused.

He kisses her for the last time (and of course, you never know the last time when it happens) when he heads into town to collect a book he's ordered. It's a normal kiss for a normal day, his beard bristly and slightly unkempt. He waves an offhand goodbye to Ed and Al, and Trisha sighs and wishes, not for the first time, that he'd let himself be more affectionate.

She comes back to that, again and again. If you were going to leave, you should have held them more.

By the next summer, Al can barely remember Hohenheim's voice.

And that's his fault, too.

"Fine," she spits. "If you're so eager for death, then go ahead. Kill me. I'm an adult, I'm easily worth two children." She doesn't let herself think too much about what will happen to her babies (Pinako will take care of them, loving, wonderful Pinako) but this way, they'll live.

She hopes.

She wishes she could guarantee it.

But the stranger doesn't do anything. "What the hell would I want with you?"

"I'm their mother. I'm Hohenheim's wife."

"You're not his blood."

"No. But he chose me." The old joy rushes into her heart, tempered by sadness and bitterness but still strong. He chose me. He chose me, the orphan with no money, no family, nothing but the stamp of the orphanage in my eyes. He chose me.

She sees something like real fury in his eyes this time, and she slides her hand back into her apron, even though by the time she gets the knife out it'll be too late -

He grins, but his eyes are flashing manically, the cruel set of his jaw telling her the truth long before he does. "Fine. I'll take you in exchange for your children."

"Promise?" she stammers out.

Bared teeth, sharp as knives. "Promise."

Her heart plummets to the ground, but she nods. She made her choice a long time ago – it's just coming to fruition now. "Your terms. But..." she swallows, and throws his own words back at him. "Make it look like an accident."

Those are all the words that her swelling lips and tongue will allow her, so she keeps her peace.

The boy's face does something strange – it softens, turns impossibly young again, and he reaches out to brush her cheek. She was crying, she realized, and her face flushed with shame. So much for bold and brave Trisha. Then he snorted, flicking the tear off of her cheek and walking out the door.

Hohenheim makes her coffee every morning – he's an early riser, so early that Trisha sometimes wonders when he sleeps. Somehow, it's never cold. She drinks it, licks her lips, then careful of the second young life growing inside her, she climbs onto his lap, kisses him, runs her fingers down the buttons of his shirt.

He stops her, cradling her hands in his, and rests her head on her breast. "...I love you," he murmurs.

"I love you too." She strokes his golden hair, silver strands winding through it and more every day. He's older than her, by how much she's never been sure. She counts the silver strands sometimes as if they'll give her the answer. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm... I'm scared," he whispers.

"Of what? There's nothing to be scared of."

"I'm not a father. I can't be a – a father." There's real fear in his voice, and Trisha holds him close.

"You already are," she whispers. "Edward loves you. He reaches for you every time he hears your voice."

He chuckles a little at that, then rests his hand over her belly, just beginning to swell. "Will this one love me too?" he asks, and he's still afraid.

"Of course." She lays her hand over his. "We're a family now." She kisses his forehead. "You, and me, and Edward, and our little one."

He smiles, although the fear is still there in his eyes, and she wants to ask him more, about what he's so afraid of, about what could terrify him so much that he dares to confide in her even a little bit. But at the same time, she's comforted. He told her – something. Not much. But enough.

She hangs onto that as his side of the bed grows colder and colder and the pillows forget the shape of his head. He trusted me.

She sits in a chair and watches for Ed and Al returning from school. They stayed late with Winry – something about a detention. Ed and Winry probably got into another fight. Trisha tries to be more disappointed, but her son and his best friend beat up the school bullies on a regular basis and she couldn't be more proud.

But the figure coming up the hill is too tall for either of them. The light catches off his hair like a halo. And even though she knows it isn't, it can't be, she stopped hoping years ago, she can't help but rise out of the chair, hope like a fire in her chest -

She falls. She doesn't know what she tripped on – her own feet, perhaps, her legs that have become too weak for her to walk around for long and oh, soon her secret will be out and it will be time for the grieving and the well-wishers and the vultures – and the hands that lift her shoulders aren't his hands. They're small, corpse-white with long fingers.

She avoids looking at his face, even as she settles back into her chair. "...Thank you," she says quietly, pretending her heart isn't breaking all over again. Time heals all wounds, but I don' t have any left.

"You're so fucking stupid," he snarls.

She looks up at him, at the eyes like faded bruises and the bloodless lips. She can see it in the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. The things that nobody would ever think to change. Perhaps the poison has given her new sight, new wisdom. Perhaps she's just going mad. "What's your name?" she asks finally, the question she never asked him years ago.

He shakes his head, dismissing her question – but then he bites his lip. "Envy."

"Is that your first name or your last name?" She's just torturing herself, but a dying woman's allowed her indulgences.

"Both." He refuses to meet her eyes. "You drank it. Every single fucking time. You didn't even try."

"No. I didn't." His hand is resting on the arm of her chair, and she covers it with her own. He flinches, but doesn't quite pull away. Cups of water on her window-sill, water that tasted like metal. "...You won't keep your promise," she stated. It wasn't a question.

"Did you really expect me to?"

"Of course not. You're just like your father."

He starts, glances up at her, then away, cheeks turning red and eyes flashing. "I'm not – I -" He doesn't bother finishing his sentence, turning away and almost walking away before spinning back to face her. "Just – shut up," he ends lamely, his chest heaving. He runs a hand through his hair, clenchesa handful of it, tangling it so it's even more like ivy, twisting and writhing around his head.

"Where did you come from?" she asks, even though she knows there'll be no answer.

He shrugs. "Doesn't matter. You'll be dead by the end of the month, why does it matter to you?"

She smiles at that, the answer left unsaid.

"That's what I thought."