A/N: 1. Thanks yet again to the long-suffering Sapidus for enduring yet another one of my spur-of-the-moment requests for beta guidance (and for being the only other person I know currently working through Brotherhood for the first time). Hooray for living behind the curve!
2. Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed Repairs. I'm very quickly realizing what a wonderful fanfic community FMA has. This time, I'll try and be a good author and respond to all comments. Promise!
"I said you can't do that!"
Trisha Elric stopped dead in her tracks. A squeeze of fingers against leather binding and a deep breath later followed as she struggled to maintain her composure. Her bedroom, and its high shelf bolted to the wall - unreachable even by two industrious troublemakers - was only a few steps away. If she made a break for it, she might reach it before Edward's mouth found an opportunity to dig him even deeper into trouble.
Having to pick him up early from school for misbehaving was enough for one day. Granted, it had taken all her self-restraint not to smile when the book Edward had been caught reading under his desk turned out to be a high school level alchemy primer, filched from the bottom shelf of his father's study. Trisha's good humor vanished quickly, however, when the teacher produced a classroom report and began reading, verbatim, the string of invectives that Ed had unleashed upon being discovered.
His smirk had not helped.
The histrionics that came at the loss of his reading privileges for a week were, she knew, inevitable. It was a small comfort that he hadn't yet made it worse for himself by saying something truly egregious. All things considered, it had been a slow morning for the tornado of trouble that was Edward Elric.
But the tornado was now shouting at her, and the day was still young.
She took a deep breath and counted to three before turning, with a well-honed air of warning, to her eldest son.
"Edward." Her voice was quiet and calm, and laced with a firm reminder of her authority.
For a moment, at least, it had its intended effect; Edward's head was down, his tiny hands balled into fists that shook at his sides. And then something in the air shifted, and Trisha tensed for the backlash.
"No!" he shouted, and his face snapped toward hers, defiant.
Trisha suddenly felt as if the air had been sucked from the room. Pools of liquid gold flashed blindingly up at her. Memories surged over her, and she nearly staggered backwards: yellow orbs shining through the moonlight with unmistakable intent; awash with sudden emotion at the sound of a newborn's cry; burning with unnatural comprehension in the widening glow of an alchemical reaction.
Hohenheim.
Her body froze, rendered immobile by the overwhelming weight of memory. Edward's eyes flashed dangerously, rooting her to the spot. They were not the eyes of a child in a tantrum. Every aspect of Edward echoed his father – his hair, his laugh, his lightning intellect – but those golden eyes were more than some passing inheritance. They were not his own. They taunted her, achingly familiar and suddenly frightening. It was not the gentle and content gaze of her husband the father, but the wild, burning eyes of the man she'd met in her youth, years of happiness stripped away until the only thing that remained was intensity backlit in hellfire.
Trisha felt the book slip from her fingers. Edward's eyes remained on her, screaming his birthright: Hohenheim, Hohenheim.
"Mom?"
The question, and the quietly worried tone behind it, snapped her from her trance. She blinked, and suddenly those golden eyes were soft, and wide with panic as they flitted between her face and the book on the floor. Edward's fingers were now splayed into the air, as if he had unclenched his fists only by force. His brow was creased with worry. "Mom? Are you okay? Did I… do something bad?"
The air rushed back into the room, and Trisha sighed. With a small smile of relief, she extended her hand. "Not at all, sweetheart. Now come on; I'll put this away, and we'll have dinner."
Edward eyed her nervously for a moment before taking her hand. "You looked sad, Mom."
She squeezed his hand, and felt her son's fingers tighten protectively around hers. She smiled to herself, and glanced away as golden irises sought hers.
"Just remembering, that's all."