Title: Trisha's Boys
Rating: PG
Summary: What if Trisha Elric had been Ishbalan?
Etc: ~1300 words, AU, gen. Notes at the end.
Sometimes they go stay in the Rockbells' basement, often for days at a time. It doesn't seem so strange when they're young, that they have to play quietly, that they all have to stay out of sight, and that they can never, ever talk to anyone who comes to the door.
There is one time when someone comes suddenly, while Ed is playing behind the house with Winry, and doesn't have any time to go downstairs. Peering around the side of the house, they see Granny Pinako talking to a tall, grim man in a military uniform.
"Tricia Elric hasn't lived in this town for years," she says angrily. "And she wasn't even Ishbalan, anyway. You people need to get better information!"
"Your grandma lied to that man," Ed says. "About us."
Winry shrugs. "That's what she always says."
Their mother always looks so sad, sitting in the dark basement with automail parts piled around them in untidy heaps. That's how it starts, really. They just want to make her smile.
-o-
For Ed, it isn't so bad. He's inherited his father's golden hair and eyes, and if his skin is darker than many Amestrians', it's hardly unusual. He isn't sure exactly who knows about his mother—he doesn't want to ask, really—but he can go to school and go to the general store and answer the door himself when he gets old enough.
Al, though—Al takes after their mother.
-o-
It's risky, sure. But the rain is coming down hard, and they did need all the help they can get with the sandbags. No one notices another kid running around, especially with everyone's faces blurred by the rain.
"Please, master, make us your students!" But only one shows up at the train station.
"Weren't there two of you?" Izumi asks.
Ed looks away. "My brother couldn't come."
He creeps to the hall phone every night he can, whispering the lessons he's learned down the lines to his brother. He doesn't know if Izumi's noticed—she seems to know everything else about him—but she doesn't stop him, and that's enough.
-o-
They find it when they're making the final preparations to bring their mother back, hidden in a seldom-opened book. The return address on the envelope is from East City, but the envelope inside it comes from a town called Upamana, in Ishbal. It's the first time they've heard of it.
…And I know I have made many mistakes, and I ask you to forgive me for them, and I have asked Ishbala for forgiveness as well … I don't know if this letter will reach you through the blockade, but things are very bad here … in the end I wanted you to know that I am sorry, and I never should have said what I did…
"Do you think she ever replied?" Al asks.
"Who knows," Ed says, tracing the words with his finger. There are many unfamiliar names, news about family and friends, most of it bad. He stuffs the letter back into its envelope. "They're probably all dead anyway."
But when they torch their house, it's the only thing they save.
-o-
There is always an underlying anxiety when they interact with the military. It feels like one of them could slip up at any time, do or say something that irretrievably marks them as Ishbalan without even realizing it. At first, Ed tries to avoid all the officers who've been in Ishbal, but then he thinks that might be suspicious, so he tries to act friendly toward them.
The worst part isn't how hard it is, but how easy—talking and laughing and joking with people who would kill them without a second thought if they knew, who had tried to kill his mother. People who might have killed their relatives.
"It's disgusting," Al says sometimes, and Ed agrees. But what else can they do?
-o-
It isn't until Hawkeye shoots off the man's sunglasses that Ed realizes that he's facing the first Ishbalan he's met outside his own family. There isn't time to think about it until much later, though, after Ed and Al are fixed and Armstrong is otherwise occupied.
"Doesn't seem fair that the first Ishbalan we meet tries to kill us," he says, flexing his arm.
Al's eyes flicker. "It's good, though, right?"
"What? How is it good?"
"Well, if he's still alive, then there must be others too."
"Yeah, maybe," Ed says. "I don't think they'd like us much more than Scar did, though."
"We might still have family," Al says, and while Ed is still chewing on that, Winry calls them in for dinner.
-o-
"When I get my body back, I'll eat Winry's pie." And I'll buy a pair of sunglasses.
"I'll be able to enjoy the sun again." And always worry that someone will see me.
"I'll probably sleep for days." But I'll continue to hide my true self.
There are many things Al does not say.
-o-
"You know, I thought we'd have to leave after your parents died."
"Why? Because—oh."
"We'd even packed up all our stuff. We were writing a note when Granny Pinako found us."
"And what did she say?"
"She said that you didn't blame us, and neither did she. She said she'd still protect us, no matter—ouch!"
"Stop squirming. Yup, that sounds like my grandmother."
"I don't know what we would've done if she hadn't been here."
"But she was, right? Okay, adjustments finished! How does it feel now?"
-o-
The next time he meets Ishbalans is at the Xerxes ruins, and he decides that he will tell them.
It isn't difficult for him to understand their hatred, but it makes him wary. The habit of secrecy is so deeply ingrained in him that he can't say it until he's almost leaving.
"My mother was from Upamana."
Their response—shocked silence-is not at all encouraging. Dog of the military, he hears someone whisper. The old man's expression does not waver.
"I'm sorry. Not many people got out of Upamana."
-o-
Al asks Scar question after question about Ishbal—about the culture, what the people were like, how it had been before the war. He tries to be subtle and sound disinterested, but it's difficult, and even he can hear the intense hunger in his voice.
"Why do you want to know, anyway?" Scar asks him sometimes, with his characteristic bluntness. Al tells him eventually, and though it doesn't make Scar any warmer, he does start answering more of Al's questions, and in more detail.
"I'd almost forgotten about that," he says sometimes, wonderingly. "It's something I never thought I would forget."
"I'll remember all of it," Al promises, and he does.
-o-
In the future, they will travel all around the world, learning enough to lay the foundations for an entirely new form of alchemy. But the first place they go, after Resembool, is a dusty town in the east, full of sand and construction and more Ishbalans than either of them have seen in their entire lives.
It is here, while contributing to the rebuilding and after talking to people for hours, that they finally find someone who knows one of the names from the letter.
"I didn't know your mother, but I knew Pat Elric, I guess she would've been your mother's aunt. We were scientists in the same lab, back before the war. I remember she was from Upamana. I think she said one of her brothers was a priest; don't know if that was your grandfather or not."
"And did she—" but the woman simply shakes her head.
"She died back when things weren't so bad. I think it was some kind of sickness, but… it was such a long time ago. And so many people have died."
"Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything at all?" Al tries not to sigh. He shouldn't be discouraged, it's more of a lead than they've found yet.
"Well, um—oh yes, I think she had children," the woman says. "Hm, let me see if I can remember their names…"
It's not much, but it's more than they had before. They write down what she tells them, and continue their search.
Notes: I got the idea for this when I saw the dark_agenda racebending challenge. I don't think it's appropriate for that challenge—I actually started to ask them about it, but the question "Does fictional oppression qualify?" really answers itself, y'know—but I still wanted to write the fic.
In Advaita Vedanta, one of the schools of Hinduism which posits a Supreme Lord ("Ishvara", in Sanskrit), upamāna is knowledge gained by means of analogy.