Witches and Alchemists
Chapter One
Sarah Rockbell was pulled often to the orphanage in Reole during her time there as a missionary of sorts - albeit an unorthodox, nonreligious one.
The orphanage matron was a round old woman with leathery brown skin and an apron, her hair pulled back in a bun and always smelling strongly of soap. She squinted; she could not see well but couldn't afford glasses. She led Sarah around on the first day. The orphanage had used to be a pigsty, but was cleaned and built up into a tiny building. Mattresses lined the walls and children ran around screeching and barefoot inside the single room in its center. Through the open doorways beyond them on either end of the room, desert wind blew by and the tiny, sleepy, poverty-stricken town of Reole seemed to be in a constant state of numb, shuffling sleeplessness.
The people there looked… defeated. Sarah hated to see it.
"It's really amazing, what you're doing here," said the orphanage matron as she led a concerned Sarah through the squabbles of kids. "You and your husband, two accomplished doctors and surgeons, going around the country doing charity work. But with the state you're in…" The matron eyed with uncertainty Sarah's swelling, pregnant belly. "Are you… sure living in a place as hot as this is for the best right now?"
Sarah smiled. "Rockbell women are strong," she said cheerfully. "I married into the family, but it's still true even for me. We have to be."
"Ah, so you're having a girl?" said the matron curiously.
"Oh, I've got a good feeling." Sarah winked. "We're going to name her Winry!"
"Winry and Sarah…" the matron mused fondly.
"And Pinako. That's their grandmother. She runs an automail shop back at home."
"Ah, a female mechanic installing synthetic limbs. Very interesting. And where is home?"
"Resembool. It's a small town - a tiny green countryside sort of place. Farm country."
"A far cry from here. So that's where you get your skin," said the matron curiously. "Everyone in Reole has a coffee sort of skin color, but yours is just like cream. Very pretty."
"Oh - thank you." Sarah laughed sheepishly, slightly uneasy. "I think both are beautiful."
She looked up, and paused, growing somber. They had reached close to the other side of the room, and by the doorway was a little wooden cradle. It held a baby inside. Sarah slowly walked over, looking sadly down into the little face.
"That's Rosé Thomas," said the matron, shuffling over with her usual hunched shoulders to stand beside Sarah. "A newborn - she'll be your daughter's age. Her parents are desert people, from here. The Thomas father died during pregnancy; the Thomas mother lived just long enough to name her daughter Rosé, after the wine. Then she died. Her opening was too small -"
"And there was no one to perform a caesarean, so a tear in perineum became infected," Sarah guessed sadly.
"Well, I don't know anything about that, but I suppose so," the matron drawled slowly. "She was born looking like that, so you can see why the name was chosen. Rosé is our youngest."
Rosé had the same coffee skin tone as every native of Reole. She had a full head of shiny dark hair, but deep pinkish-purple bangs, the color of the wine. When she blinked open sleepy eyes, they were a brilliant shade of violet.
Sarah's eyes met that gaze and she instantly fell in love, looking down at Rosé sympathetically and tenderly.
"Yes," she whispered. "It's a very pretty name. It makes sense. And the poor girl… poor and an orphan from birth."
"Every child here is a tragedy," said the matron, her sagging face peering around the orphanage with bleary eyes, and Sarah was unsure anymore if she was talking about the orphanage or Reole. "She's just another one."
Sarah thought about that a lot after leaving.
Every day, after her shifts in the hot white tent the Rockbell doctors had set up in market center, Sarah went to visit Rosé in her cradle. She talked to her, played with her, nudged her little hands and waved toys above her laughing.
At some point Sarah realized what she had already decided.
In the quiet white tent on their pallet cots that evening, the stars so clear above them in the center town square through the clear dusty sheets in the white top, Sarah sat on her own pallet across from her husband and told him what she had been doing all those afternoons.
"I thought it was something like that." Yuriy sighed and ran a hand over his face, looking tired. "You want to adopt her."
"Yuriy, we could take her back with us. Winry could have a twin," said Sarah earnestly, leaning forward. "We can afford one other child, and she'll be better off with our family, in Resembool. Think about it."
"She will," Yuriy agreed skeptically. "And I want to help. But Sarah… we're going to meet lots of children in terrible circumstances during our travels, and… I hate to put it like this but we can't adopt all of them."
"... It's special with this one," said Sarah in a hushed, quiet voice, looking somberly downward. "I promise."
"Well… just as long as that's true… it's alright. We'll do it," said Yuriy, nodding.
Sarah squealed and threw her arms around him; he smiled reflexively despite himself as he hugged her.
And so they signed the adoption paperwork and the name change paperwork. The wording stamped across the top of the document read:
New Name: Rosé Rockbell
Birthplace: Reole, Amestris
Standing in the little town courthouse, Yuriy and the pregnant Sarah both smiled and signed, one after the other. The judge, a sleepy old man with a white receding hairline in black robes, smiled and slid a copy of the birth certificate across to them while taking one for himself and his Reole town records.
"Well, Rosé," said Sarah, beaming and smiling down at the baby girl in her arms, "you'll have to get ready to meet your sister! Yeah, that's right!" She smiled in delight, bouncing Rosé up and down in her arms as her new baby girl giggled. "And I've already said Rockbell women have to be strong. Strong, and compassionate.
"So the same thing will just have to be true to you."
Little did they know then, Rosé would not be the only Rockbell girl whose birth certificate said she was registered and born in Reole…
They had planned the mission so that they would be back home in Resembool in time for the birth. Winry decided she was unwilling to wait, and came in the little desert town of Reole on their medical charity mission instead.
Yuriy birthed his own daughter. He had a screaming Sarah lie down in a hospital bed inside the tent, gave her as much pain relief as he could, and delivered his own child.
He had to hand it to the people of Reole - they all came out and stood around inside the tent for the birth of the doctors who had sacrificed so much for them. One mother, a big woman with three children clinging to her skirts herself, expertly bounced Rosé up and down in her arms off to the side. She looked remarkably matter of fact about the whole thing, much more so than an amazed and frantic Yuriy was.
Sarah screamed. "Almost there!" Yuriy called to her from the bottom of the bed. "Almost there! And… she's out! It's a she," he breathed in realization, staring down at his wailing little newborn baby girl. An awed smile came over his face. "It's a she! She's out!" he suddenly cheered, raising his hands high.
Sarah laughed, sweaty and exhausted but exultant, as all the Reolians in the tent cheered.
The eager judge off to the side immediately began scribbling down paperwork.
Name: Winry Rockbell
Birthplace: Reole, Amestris
A little while later, Sarah had one girl in each arm, sitting upright peacefully in the tent's hospital bed. Yuriy stood behind her, smiling softly down at the babies. Beyond them, tables had been set up stocked with wine in the town square and a raucous party had started.
"The whole village is celebrating," said Yuriy, smiling. "Just think. A feast just for them."
Sarah chuckled. "Look at these two. They're so beautiful…" she smiled. Winry had her mother Sarah's creamy skin tone, a headful of blonde hair, and bright blue eyes. "Winry. Winry, this is your sister Rosé. Rosé, this is Winry. You two are twins. Yeah, that's right. Born only a few months apart."
"An orphan taken from desert poverty and the daughter of doctors and surgeons born on a medical charity mission. What do you think?"
"I think it sounds perfect," said Sarah firmly.
"... Yeah," Yuriy realized, a funny little smile on his face. "Yeah, I do too."
"You'd better telegraph Pinako and tell her we're coming home to the automail shop," said Sarah firmly. "Back to Resembool to be local doctors. For a while, at least, the missions are over."
Sarah stepped off the train, the two baby girls in slings across her shoulders, and walked quietly out of the little station. She stopped just outside - and breathed in the fresh air of Resembool.
Long, rolling, brilliantly green hills and swathes of farmland spread out below and around them from the tiny train station. Little houses dotted here and there, with a tiny town in the center. The place was bathed in sunlight.
The sun smiled on Resembool.
Yuriy walked out beside Sarah, put an arm around her shoulders smiling, and breathed in deep. "I missed this place," he admitted quietly. "It's nice here."
Sarah and Yuriy Rockbell smiled at each other.
They took a long, strolling walk through the little dirt pathways and streets, across the hills and the soft breeze and the clean air, past the Elric home… and to the little home with the Rockbell Automail Shop sign in front. Pinako walked out to greet them, down the steps and into the grass before the house, a tiny but fierce woman with glasses and a stern bun of iron-grey hair. She was smiling unusually softly.
"There you two are," she said. "Having a child and adopting another all the way out there! It's idealistic, good-hearted, reckless, and silly - in other words, all the things you two are."
"Good to see you, too, Mom," said Yuriy wryly, and Sarah chuckled.
"... Well! Let me see them!" Pinako demanded suddenly, as if this were extremely obvious and they were being rather dense. Sarah laughed and handed the two girls over awkwardly. Pinako immediately tucked each girl firmly but gently into her grasp, a veritable expert. "... Yes," she said gently, sounding unusually gruff, her eyes a bit damp. "Yes, they're both beautiful little girls. And so different looking, too, it will be easy to tell them apart."
Then she turned around and walked right back toward the house still holding them.
"Hey! Where are you going with my daughters?" Yuriy asked indignantly, his hands spread wide.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm taking my two granddaughters inside," said Pinako with the utmost dignity. "I have no idea what you people are doing," she added scathingly.
"Get back here with my children!" Yuriy suddenly charged toward Pinako.
"No!" she barked, and sprinted toward the house with the two girls still in her grasp.
Sarah just stood there and laughed. She'd been worried about reception to the two girls. She shouldn't have. Rockbells were… naturally protective, she thought wryly.
She smiled, shook her head, and followed shouting, crashing mother and son back inside the home.
They walked through the shop full of medical chairs and mechanical parts, to the back of the house where the home was. It was a rustic sort of place with embroidered white and yellow cushions. Checkered blue and white curtains framed a kitchen window looking out to vast greenery beyond.
It was so peaceful. So quiet.
They all sat down in the kitchen with cups of tea and told Pinako the twin stories of the adoption and the birth. She listened and nodded along patiently. "Well, it will certainly be an interesting story to be able to tell them when they're older," she admitted. "It is obvious you two love these girls very much."
"They're wonderful," said Sarah warmly, looking fondly over at her two children, who had been tucked into a tiny cradle Pinako had bought and set up. It was even mechanized so that everyone could wheel the children after them in the cradle about the house. The cradle was currently beside them in the little tiled kitchen.
"You should know," said Pinako next, "our neighbors, the Elrics - they had a boy while you were gone. Same year as these two. And they're pregnant with another. Trisha insists she has a good feeling about it also being a boy. Van Hohenheim insists that's a load of nonsense."
"Van Hohenheim is a load of nonsense," said Sarah fiercely.
"Here, here," Pinako added, raising her glass.
"Let's not get into village politics and beautiful young local Trisha Elric's horrible taste in mysterious alchemist men," said Yuriy uneasily. "Let's just - try to be happy for them. Two sons. It's good."
"Oh, so you believe in that motherly instinct now?" said Sarah playfully.
"Well, you turned out right," said Yuriy fondly.
Sarah laughed. "It's true, I did," she admitted. "But… really? Two children back to back? Only one year apart?" she said worriedly. "That's… a little dangerous."
"That's what I said to the Elrics," Pinako sighed. "But they're young, reckless, impulsive, and in love. Good names for the boys, though - Edward and Alphonse. Edward is the elder, the one already born. For some inane reason, Trisha has taken to calling them Ed and Al."
Sarah laughed at Pinako's exasperation.
"Well, it's not the end of the world, Pinako," she said in amusement. "They could be calling them Hubert and Humphrey."
"Don't give them any ideas," said Pinako flatly, and Sarah laughed louder. Yuriy looked down, obviously trying to bite back a smile.
"I did miss these village gossip talks," he said wryly.
"Just imagine, you'll be surrounded by all girls now," said Sarah slyly. "Four of them."
"He can handle it," said Pinako firmly, standing and heading out to the automail shop. "My son is tough."
"For once, she's right," said Yuriy wryly, looking fond and unfazed.
"For once?!" Pinako suddenly shrieked from the front of the house. "Is that what I just heard?!"
Sarah looked down, hand over her mouth and shoulders shaking with silent laughter, as Yuriy called in blind panic, "No, mother!"
Beside each other in the cradle, Rosé and Winry cooed and waved their arms and legs about, happy with the beautiful clean countryside air, happy with all the warm, cheerful energy in the house around them.
Author's Notes: So this fic will be more of a slow burn.
I will take my time and really try to tell this story well. There will be lots of childhood and witch training chapters before we really get into the start of canon - but it will all be relevant and hopefully very interesting! My imagination went crazy with this one. I am going to make this first section of the story its own plot. Lots of childhood antics between the four main children will frequently ensue.
So just sit back and enjoy.
(Oh, and this fic will be mangaverse simply and solely because I refuse to battle in my head over Brotherhood vs 03.)
