Author's Note: I was trying to write another chapter of The Secrets We Keep and this was born. Whoops.
Alex remembers growing up on the streets quite clearly. There was no "before homelessness" for her, just then and there, sleeping behind dumpsters, pick-pocketing from ditzy women in their thirties who were too engrossed with their phone conversations to notice they were being robbed, and running from the police if one person just so happened to notice something was amiss; or if Alex screwed up somehow, which was usually the case.
With Ed, it was another story entirely. She was a whole five years older than Alex, street wise and confident in a way her younger sister couldn't hope to replicate, though she never quite learned to find peace with it the way Alex did. Ed remembered how it felt to have a home, to have a bed to sleep in every night with clean sheets and downy pillows. She remembered their parents, their neighbors, and it was her memories that never allowed her to find sanctuary in the dirtied alleyways of their city.
Her older sister taught her how to be a thief, though her golden eyes always seemed to grow distant whenever Alex pulled off a small heist without a hitch. "You see that person over there, Al?" Ed would ask, pointing subtly toward a woman or man who obviously lived for the finer things in life. "What would you do if you were lookin' for food money and you came across them first?"
"I'd take whatever."
"Why?"
"Because we need it more than they do."
No matter how often Ed denied it, she was a good person. She stole when necessary and only from those who probably wouldn't miss what was being taken too terribly – though, really, who were they to judge? – and she always encouraged Alex to do the same. She tried to take on small jobs, but no one wanted to employ a thirteen-year-old with only a third grade education. Alex remembers seeing Ed's dejected expressions whenever leaving an establishment, usually small convenient stores, though she would always smirk when she caught Alex watching, tossing her younger sister whatever treat she'd managed to steal while inside.
Ed had seemed fearless back then. She took on so much responsibility at so young an age, and she was always a person Alex looked up to. Pessimistic though she was, Ed braved every day with a smile, all too happy to go dumpster diving if they found themselves without even a quarter. She made being homeless fun, and Alex never wanted for anything growing up, wasn't aware that there could be anything out there that would keep her as happy and loved as her older sister did.
Alex didn't know it then, but she was the only one who'd been content with the way things were.
They managed to survive on what they stole for years until people started wising up to their scams. Bulletins were posted about the two blonde children roaming the streets, preying on the innocent, and the sisters had to lay low. After a while, it was difficult for even Ed to pull something off, and things began to fall apart. Alex remembers a period when there wasn't much to eat, not that there ever really was, that lasted almost two weeks. She thinks that must have been her sister's breaking point, when Ed realized that if she didn't do something soon, they weren't going to make it.
Alex was too young to know what was happening, but she did notice when her sister started disappearing during the night. Ed would direct Alex to their normal place and sit her down against the wall, pulling anxiously at her ragged jean jacket while she glared down at Alex. "You stay put. Don't talk to anybody, not even if they seem nice, and don't go anywhere until I come back. Got it?"
"Where are you going, Sister?"
"Nowhere important. You won't even notice I'm gone."
Alex did notice, and she shivered her way through countless nights without her older sister at her side, forcing herself to stay awake lest someone come and try to take her away. Ed always warned her about adults realizing they didn't have parents and coming to separate them. Alex didn't want that. Her sister was all she had, and she was going to stay with her, no matter what. That first night Ed left, she didn't come back until an hour or so before dawn, and while Alex swears her older sister was crying, it may have been just a dream or a trick of the light.
Ed had only been thirteen.
Things got better after that. Alex happily devoured any food her sister happened to present her with, not old enough to even think about questioning why sustenance was suddenly available again, her only thought being eat and eat fast. Ed seemed to be happier once Alex's cheeks started to fill out again, and her face was always soft with relief and a hint of pride whenever Alex denied more, claiming she was stuffed.
Sometimes Ed had enough money to get a hotel room for a night or two, and while the desk clerks always eyed them warily, no one ever put up a fuss. Alex still doesn't understand why. Looking back, she thinks that anyone who stared into her older sister's eyes should've known that something wasn't right.
They had a routine. During the day, Ed and Alex were together, walking through the busy streets of a town that didn't seem to know they existed now that they weren't stealing as often. Sometimes they would go to the park, but Ed always grew nervous when women would try to play guessing games as to which child belonged to which parent. Of course, no one ever claimed the girls – they do seem really thin, Amy, especially the younger one – and Alex never protested when Ed grabbed her hand and quickly led her away.
At night, Alex was on her own. Ed would disappear after sundown, leaving Alex to her own devices for hours at a time. The younger girl would try to sleep, curled up in a ball and listening to the sounds of the city around her, but everything was harder without Ed around, even sleeping.
One morning, when Ed was walking with a slight limp and Alex was struggling to stay awake, exhausted from yet another night alone, a voice called out to them. "Edith Hoenheim?"
Ed paused in the middle of the sidewalk, her fingers tightening on Alex's hand to the point of pain, and Alex looked up in a daze, just noticing the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy that had appeared almost out of nowhere. "Holy shit." He choked out, almost on the verge of tears as he glanced from Ed to Alex and back again. "I never thought – "
He couldn't go on, and since Ed wasn't saying anything, Alex's curiosity got the better of her. "Sister?" She whispered, tugging on the sleeve of Ed's red sweater. She'd been wearing long-sleeved shirts she'd find at shelters a lot, despite the fact that it was summer time. "Who is he?"
"You're confused." Ed said tonelessly, outwardly composed, though Alex could feel her sister shaking. "You must think I'm someone else."
"No, I – Eddie, come on, don't do this to me, we thought you were dead!"
"You're confused." Ed said again, stronger this time, and Alex remembers glancing up at her sister's face, seeing the ferocity in her expression. "You're scaring my sister."
Alex wasn't scared, not really, though she shied behind her sister slightly when the boy shifted his gaze to her again. She knew that this boy and her sister were connected, somehow, but Alex didn't know him at all. She thought about that name – Hoenheim – and felt nothing. Did that mean something to Ed?
The boy frowned and opened his mouth to speak again, but Ed jerked forward, shaking off Alex's hand to stand face to face with the stranger, whispering to him fiercely. Alex couldn't hear what was being said, though the boy's face grew grave, the same face Ed always made whenever she came back in the mornings. He nodded slightly and started to turn, probably to leave, but he gave Ed a quick hug before walking away, gone almost as quickly as he'd appeared.
"Sister?" Alex said after a few moments. "That boy knew who you were, but… he called you Edith Hoenheim. Isn't our last name Elric?"
"Yes." Ed snapped, whipping around so quickly her blonde ponytail smacked her in the face. Alex was afraid then, because she'd never seen her sister so angry before. All it took was that name. Hoenheim. "He was confused. Some people want something so desperately that they project their feelings onto others. That's all it was, Al, a misunderstanding."
It was such a blatant lie, and Alex knew it. She wanted to say something, because she was eleven at that point and was tired of all the secrets, but Ed looked so tired, and she was limping back to Alex's side, so the young girl stayed quiet and allowed her sister to lead her down the sidewalk once more.
Alex never saw the boy again, though his sudden appearance changed her life in more ways than she could've ever imagined. Ed grew distant after that, started disappearing during the day as well as the night, and Alex felt as if she were losing her sister, though she couldn't fathom why. Ed grew snappish with her, told her to stay put more often, and one night, Alex had had enough.
She followed Ed when she tried to leave Alex next to their dumpster, and she was hiding behind a payphone, watching her sister when a red car pulled up at the curb in front of Ed. Alex thought nothing of it until Ed moved forward, and she watched with bated breath as the window rolled down, and Ed leaned over, almost too far, speaking to the driver with a small smirk on her face.
Alex had seen enough.
When Ed returned in the morning, Alex was awake, staring listlessly at the pavement and hugging her knees tightly to her chest. "You all right?" Ed asked, and Alex noticed a bruise on her sister's neck. "You don't look so good."
"My stomach hurts." Alex said, and it wasn't a lie. At eleven, she understood the concept of prostitutes and what they did, and the knowledge that her sister was one, just to keep Alex alive and fed…
"You want me to go to the drug store and get you some medicine?"
"No, I – "
"You know what, I'm gonna go anyway. Sit tight, Al, I'll be right back."
Alex didn't say anything. She allowed her sister to walk the streets at night because she didn't know what else to do, was too afraid to tell her sister that she knew how she made her living. She didn't want Ed to feel ashamed, because she was so brave, the bravest person Alex knew, and Ed shouldn't have had to feel guilty for surviving. Something had forced them out on the streets, something Alex couldn't remember, but if Ed thought being a prostitute was preferable to going back to their previous life, Alex wasn't going to question her.
But the knowledge of what her sister was doing and why ate away at Alex, and it quickly became too much for her to keep bottled up.
About a year after they saw that boy, when Alex was twelve and Ed was seventeen, Alex followed her sister after sundown again, though this time she made her presence known before Ed could disappear.
"Sister." Ed had gasped so loudly it was almost comical, though the look on her face, the look of a criminal caught in the act, was anything but. "I want to help you."
All color had drained from Ed's face, and that expression of complete horror is still with Alex to this day. "You – "
"You weren't much older than me when you started, right?" Alex mumbled, clutching at her elbow and watching the streets nervously for any slowing cars. "I mean, maybe, if it were the two of us – "
Ed had seen her fair share of fights on the streets. She had faded scars on her face and hands from quarreling with other street dwellers over clothes, money, and food, and Alex couldn't count on her hands how many times she'd had to bandage her sister's wounds. Growing up, Ed did all the fighting while Alex was forced to stay back – she even carried a box-cutter with her everywhere they went – so when Ed descended upon her that night, slapping her with all she had, Alex wasn't sure how to react.
But Ed was horrified enough for the both of them, staring at Alex in absolute shock, holding her probably stinging hand tightly to her chest. Alex had never seen her sister so vulnerable before, and to be honest, it scared her far more than the scathing blow had been. Ed regained her wits eventually, turning away from her younger sister with a devastated look on her face, the blonde wisps of her bangs obscuring most of her face from view. "Go home, Alexandra."
Ed came back earlier than usual that night, sporting bruised knuckles and a busted lip, her blonde hair falling in disarray around her bony shoulders. Alex didn't say a word as Ed settled down beside her, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes and smearing her cheap mascara over her cheeks. "I could've helped you if I'd been there."
"I don't want you seeing me like that." Ed said miserably, drawing her knees to her chest slowly and wrapping her arms around them, swallowing thickly. "I'm so sorry I hit you, Alex, but I couldn't just… let you make that decision. You wouldn't want to do what I do. Men are absolutely vile."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Because I promised Mom I'd take care of you." Ed said. It was the first and last time she spoke of their mother. "She'd roll over in her grave if I let her baby give herself up to some sleazy businessman."
Alex never tried to follow after her sister again, though her desire to know what had happened in their past grew with each passing day.
Everything seemed to be at a standstill for a while after that. Ed continued to work at night, her earnings piling up until she and Alex could afford to actually live in one of the motels they frequented. She started to get more tired the older she got, and the better part of Alex's days were spent watching television while Ed slept soundly in bed beside her.
Alex was just as exhausted as her sister back in those days, despite the fact that she finally had a real bed to sleep in for the first time in, well... ever. Sometimes she worried about Ed, about who she was being exposed to and whether or not she would make it back to her in one piece at the end of the night, though Ed never failed to burst through the door every morning, hands in the pockets of her jeans and singing off-key to some song she'd heard, seventeen years old, dying on the inside and a master at hiding it.
On the first morning Ed didn't show up, Alex thought nothing of it. Her sister had warned her that some wanted her company long after the sun rose in the morning, but that she would never be gone longer than a day. Alex had never known her older sister to break a promise, so she took a little of the money Ed left with her, locked the door of their motel room behind her, and walked to a diner to eat lunch by herself.
She stayed until a group of teenage boys took notice of her, whispering amongst themselves as they observed the blonde girl sitting alone in a booth. Alex knew she wasn't beautiful, but she wasn't exactly hard to look at either, and since it had only been a few hours since her last shower, not a few days, the boys were probably looking past her plain clothes and trying to determine if they'd seen her around before. Alex left the diner before someone worked up the nerve to approach her, expecting to find Ed waiting for her, but was instead greeted with silence and an empty motel room.
Alex watched television for hours, a pastime she usually enjoyed, though she kept glancing at the door every five minutes. People walked past the windows, none of them being Ed, and by the time the sun set that night, Alex was sick to her stomach with worry. There was no way to contact her sister and no one Alex could go to for help. She was completely and utterly alone.
She slept fitfully, waking up at odd intervals throughout the night, and when she did finally rouse in the morning, it was to the sound of the door being opened. She frowned sleepily, eyes fluttering open as she prepared to give Ed a piece of her mind, but froze. It wasn't her sister who had just walked in, but a man, a man with black hair and impossibly dark eyes that chased any ounce of sleep out of Alex's body.
"Hey, hold on a second." The man said when Alex flailed in the bed, reaching underneath her pillow to pull out the knife Ed insisted she keep, gripping the hilt in both of her trembling hands to point it at the intruder. "There's no need for that."
"Get out!" Alex screeched, scrambling back against the headboard as the man took a step closer. "I'll call the police!"
"I'm not here to harm you, Alexandra." The man said slowly, holding up a card key that Alex recognized. She'd seen it in Ed's hand just the other day. "My name is Roy Mustang. Your sister Edith sent me."
Alex's jaw slackened, but her grip on the knife only tightened. There was no way her sister had sent this man. Ed always told her to be wary of everyone, to never trust a person unless Ed herself was there to tell her it was all right. Ed wouldn't just give someone direct access to Alex unless…
"Where is she?" Alex demanded, her voice cracking with effort. "Where is my sister?"
The man didn't say anything, and the knife slipped from Alex's hands.
The slaughter of the Hoenheim family was a well known story within the community.
The patriarch, Van Hoenheim, had been away on a business trip when someone broke into his home and killed his wife Trisha and their two daughters, eight-year-old Edith and three-year-old Alexandra. A neighbor had reported the crime, a school friend of Edith's named Wes Rockbell, who'd stopped by to invite the young girl to play only to find the front door open, the stench of blood thick in the air.
Everyone knew how gruesome a scene the young boy had walked in on, how Trisha had been laying on the floor outside Alexandra's nursery, holding a phone in one hand, the number of her brother's cell phone dialed, though the call never made it through. It was a grotesque, unnecessary crime with no obvious motive, though many suspected that Hoenheim, a business tycoon known for his company's cutthroat methods, had acquired a few enemies in the many years he'd been in the business, enemies that wouldn't hesitate to hurt his family.
The bodies of the girls were never recovered – some speculated that they were killed shortly after they were kidnapped, the bodies dumped – but what they didn't know was that Edith and Alexandra Hoenheim were still very much alive.
Alex doesn't know how they survived. Roy only knew what the investigations unit and media had told him, and Ed wasn't around to fill in the missing pieces. Maybe she'd always be in the dark about what had happened to them when they were children.
What she does know is this: Ed left the motel on that last night, and instead of going to work, she went to the house of their mom's brother, Roy Mustang. Ed had remembered him, looked up his address, and took a bus to a town nearly two hours away, though when Roy's wife Riza answered the door when she heard the knocking, the only thing the woman found was an envelope containing a card key, an address, a room number, and two small letters, one addressed to Roy and the other to Alex.
Roy explained the situation in the motel that day, that Ed had told him in her short letter to find Alex and take care of her, to make sure she got off the streets and had a chance for the bright future their mother had always wanted for her, a future that, apparently, didn't involve Edith.
In her letter to Alex, less detailed but more heartfelt than the one to Roy, Ed had expressed how sorry she was for having to leave, that she wanted Alex off the streets and would come back whenever she could. "I realized I wasn't a good influence on you." Her sister had written. "You were willing to become a prostitute because I was too scared to go back to how things used to be." Alex doesn't know why Ed was so scared, what their old home life was like, though she does know that Roy doesn't speak very highly of Van Hoenheim. "You always followed after me, even when we were kids and you could barely walk on your own, and that terrified me. I've always been getting us into trouble. You mean everything to me, Alexandra, and even if you hate me for this, I know you'll be better off with Roy. I love you, little sister, more than you'll ever know."
Alex didn't understand, couldn't even process her thoughts as Roy gathered what little she had and hustled her to his car, driving two hours to his home where his wife was waiting, her eyes sad and mouth set in a firm line as she watched her husband guide the terrified girl into their home in the suburbs.
It's kind of funny how quickly things can change. One day Alex was a street rat and the next she was living with her somewhat uncle and his wife. She quickly learned they were very nice, smart, and capable people, both police officers with no children and a dog called Black Hayate, but it took her a while to become comfortable with them.
She took walks with Hayate while Roy and Riza were at work and stayed in her bedroom when they got home, unsure of where she stood with them, how they felt about her. Even with Ed, the thought of being a burden was something that bothered Alex the most. Roy and his wife had taken her in because Ed asked them to, but did they even want her?
Alex didn't know the answer to that until a few weeks after she'd started living with the Mustangs, when she caught Roy looking through an old photo album.
She walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water, thinking that Roy and Riza had gone to bed, but she'd heard a voice. "You want to see a picture of your mom?"
Alex, to her credit, didn't jump and shriek like she'd wanted to, only turned to curiously regard her uncle. "Really?"
The man nodded, smiling slightly as he pulled out the chair at the table next to him, gesturing for Alex to take a seat. Once she had, Roy pointed at what looked to be a family portrait. Alex assumed the woman in the back to be the mother, a tall, thick woman with wrinkles and a somewhat forced smile on her face, like she hadn't even wanted to be in the picture in the first place. The boy in front of her was obviously Roy, smiling in a way Alex hadn't seen him do in all the weeks she'd spent living with him. His hair was dark and unruly, his cheeks were tinted red, and there were band aids littered over his bony knees and elbows.
When Alex finally shifted her gaze to the girl standing tall next to Roy, it took her a moment to recognize her as her mother. She wasn't really sure what she'd been expecting. Her mom didn't have blonde hair or unusually golden eyes, so she and Ed must have gotten it from their dad. No, this little girl was a brunette with forest green eyes and a warm smile. She was beautiful, and Alex studied the girl's face, trying to see any bit of herself in her mom. She honed in on the girl's mouth, and Alex caught herself relaxing at she looked at the soft, enticing grin, could imagine this person being a loving mother; but then she jolted in her seat when she realized she'd seen that smile before.
"You okay?" Roy said as tears slid down Alex's cheeks, landing on the photos that were thankfully protected by a layer of plastic.
Alex sniffed, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her sweater, given to her by Riza. "Edith has Mom's smile."
"There wasn't a moment when Trisha wasn't smiling." Roy said, looking as if he wanted to comfort Alex somehow but not sure how to go about it. "She had that way about her."
"You guys don't look much alike."
"Both of us lost our parents when we were kids. We lived in a foster home together for a few years before our mom, Chris Mustang, adopted the both of us. She really only came to get me, but I wouldn't leave without Trisha." Roy paused to laugh for a moment, and when Alex sneaked a peak at him, his eyes were sad.
Alex couldn't help herself. "Were you there when Ed and I were born?"
"With Edith, yes." Roy said, and he turned to the next page of the photo album. Alex noticed a cake, her mom's shining eyes as she blew out the candles. "I never cared much for your father, but he made Trisha happy, so what could I say? Your sister was definitely a handful. She was fussy with anyone who wasn't Mom, Trisha, or Riza." So, her sister had never liked men, then. "But when Edith was three, Trisha and Van moved and we never heard from them again. We didn't even know Trisha had another daughter until I responded to the call Wes Rockbell had made to the police about the murder."
Alex always wondered why no one had ever looked for them, and after Ed disappeared, her questions only multiplied, as well as her feelings of anger. She and Ed never had to hide. They walked the streets and no one even looked twice at the two of them. Alex now knew that the boy she and Ed had run into so many years ago had been Wes Rockbell. Why hadn't Wes told anyone that he'd seen them, and what had her sister whispered to him to get him to stay quiet? If their mother's murder had been covered in such detail, hadn't their pictures been displayed over the television? Why hadn't anyone recognized them?
"Did you ever look?" She asked quietly, noting that Hayate had joined them and was lying at her feet. "Or did everyone just assume we'd died?"
"We caught the man who took you." Roy admitted, and Alex stiffened, because while she'd heard the story, no one had ever mentioned that the killer had been found. "His name was Shou Tucker, and he admitted to killing Trisha and the two of you when he was questioned. He was an old employee of your father's, and after he was fired, he somehow convinced himself that if he killed Van's family, he would get his wife and daughter back, who left after he was no longer able to support them. We found your hair fibers and a little of Edith's blood in the back of his car, and we had no reason to believe you and Edith were alive, but… I always wondered. He knew every single detail about the crime scene and was always willing to repeat everything to us, but when it came to you two, he never had anything to say."
"Sister must remember." Alex said. "She has to, but she never said anything."
"Maybe it was to protect you." Roy commented, almost to himself. He was staring at the photo album again. It was her mom in the hospital, exhausted but still smiling as she held a screaming baby in her arms. "Tucker was… a demented man. I don't want to imagine the things you two might have seen while in his company."
Her miraculous return didn't go unnoticed, and Roy and Riza couldn't just hide their supposedly dead niece forever. The media had a field day with it – One of two heirs to the Hoenheim fortune has been found! – but no one dared to approach the Mustang household to interview her, especially when Riza was home. Alex knew Roy was waiting for the day when Van Hoenheim came to collect her, though he never showed, and Alex wasn't sure if she was grateful or not.
They placed her in school once it became clear that Alex wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Thanks to Ed and the public libraries they'd frequented, Alex was exactly where she was supposed to be education wise. Alex loved to learn and had been taught to read and write by Ed when she was younger, but school was anything but fun. To the other kids, she was the girl who'd died and come back to life, and everyone was weary of her. She was teased, didn't know how to interact with other kids her age, was used to it being just she and Ed.
Truthfully, she felt too old for her classmates. She'd lived on the streets all her life, and when the kids in her class complained about taking notes or doing a project, it made her blood boil, because they had no idea how lucky they were. Her silence came off as "bitchiness", and no one really liked her. Not that she minded any. She had Roy, Riza, Black Hayate, and her grandma, as well as an older sister who Alex still loved, despite the fact that she'd left.
She spent her free time wondering when Ed was going to come back. She'd promised she would, someday, but Alex wasn't sure how soon someday was. She didn't understand why Ed was staying away, why she couldn't just live with Roy and Riza as well. Riza told her once that Edith was trying to "better herself," though Alex didn't think her sister needed to do that. So what if she'd turned to prostitution when things got tough? It didn't make her a bad person.
Maybe Alex was just too young to understand, though she felt like an adult most days. Roy teased her for being so serious all the time, and Alex would just stare out the window, watching for a person she didn't know if she'd ever see again.
On Alex's fourteenth birthday, there was a knock at the front door.
She was up in her room doing homework, and she didn't bother to get up, having heard Riza go downstairs to answer it; but when she called for Roy, and then Roy started raising his voice, Alex was drawn out of her room.
Alex descended the stairs slowly, running her hand over the railing as she ducked her head down, trying to see who it was before she reached the last step. "You have some nerve showing up here." Roy was saying. His voice was stone cold. "She's been back for almost a year and you haven't tried to contact her, not even once. What kind of father – "
Hayate alerted everyone to Alex's presence, dashing to meet the girl once she hit the bottom step. Alex recognized the man from all the pictures Roy had shown her, though the man standing in the doorway looked older and more weathered than the one in the photographs.
Their eyes met, and Alex was struck by how much that man resembled her sister. They made the same face when they were trying to be stoic, when they were in pain. Roy and Riza said nothing as Van Hoenheim took a step toward his daughter, though Roy tensed, as if prepared to step in should the man try to take the girl, but he didn't have to worry.
Her father reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled forth a paper, which Alex realized was a photo when the man offered it to her. She took it hesitantly, lifting her chin slightly as she observed the family portrait in her hand. They appeared to be a wealthy family. Even Ed, who looked… absolutely happy to be alive, was wearing a pink, ruffled dress that Alex knew her sister wouldn't be caught dead in today. Their mother was as beautiful as ever, poised and elegant as she held a baby Alex in her arms, who was sucking away at a pacifier, staring at the camera as if she wasn't quite sure what it was.
And Hoenheim. He was holding Ed, hands underneath her armpits, looking positively awkward and out of place, and he was crying. Crying in a family portrait.
Alex stared at the photograph, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she had what she wanted, proof that they'd been happy once, a family. She knew who they'd been before, Edith Rose and Alexandra Marie, but she didn't feel any different. There was an ache in her chest, one that had been there since Ed left, and staring at her older sister's childish face, so innocent and joyful, made her physically sick.
"It was the only one we had taken of all four of us." Her father said, and when Alex finally looked up at him, he was watching her intently. "I want you to have it."
"… Why does Edith hate you?"
Her father blinked, eyes glazing over as if recalling a memory. "I suppose it's because I put you all in danger."
Alex didn't think that was it, and from the look on Roy's face, he didn't believe it either. Hoenheim looked sad as he gazed at her, regretful, and Alex suddenly remembered how Edith had looked the night she slapped Alex – horrified, as if her worst nightmare had come true. Alex glanced at the photograph again, took a closer look, and could see the pain in her parents' expressions. Their home life hadn't been perfect. If Alex had to guess, she'd say that Hoenheim was crying because Trisha still loved him enough to want to take a family photo, even after everything.
"Thank you." Alex said quietly, eyes glued to the picture. "This means a lot to me."
Hoenheim nodded, his eyes stable again. "Happy birthday, Alexandra."
"He left after that, and while I saw his picture in newspapers or heard his name in passing many times, I haven't seen my father in person since then." Alex says, glancing up from her paper to look out at the faces of her classmates. Some look horrified, some subdued and others nonchalant, but Alex doesn't care. The assignment was to write an autobiography, and since she'd missed last week's assignment of writing about her hero, she decided to combine both papers into one.
Riza thought it was a good idea, Roy a bit more hesitant, and Alex is completely okay with this. As the daughter of a Hoenheim, her life has never really been private anyway. She may get in trouble for this – the subject matter isn't necessarily appropriate and it's a wonder the professor hasn't tried to stop her – but it will be worth it. Life isn't pretty most of the time.
"All in all, I have lived a difficult life thus far, but I also have many things to be grateful for, and many people that I'm blessed to have known." Alex continues, thankful that her speech is almost finished. "The store keepers who would give my sister and me free candy when we were kids, the librarians who allowed us to stay and read books even though we obviously hadn't bathed in weeks, and my uncle and his wife, who didn't have to take me in, yet did so out of the kindness of their own hearts. I'll never forget any of them or anything they did for me, but the fact still remains that I'm alive today because of a single person, someone who got me off the streets, taught me how to read and write, pick pockets, and effectively smile through the pain."
Alex smiles then, almost subconsciously, and the kids in the front row straighten up, as if they're expecting something from her. "My sister, Edith Rose Elric, will forevermore be my hero, and even if I never see her again, I love her more than I could ever love a single person.
"That is my story."
