Author's Note: This is the sequel to my fics "Metal, Jealousy, and Human Transmutation" and "Rules and Reasons." It makes a lot more sense if you've read "Rules and Reasons," at least, but the main gist of it is that Nina and Trisha, Ed's daughters, tried to bring their baby sister, Sara, back to life after she died. This is the story about the repercussions of the event that shaped their lives ever after. Enjoy!
Trisha Elric had always heard that children took on roles depending on which one was born first. The youngest usually fit comfortably into the center of attention, the eldest possessed a natural affinity for leadership, and those in the middle generally sought to keep the peace. She had also heard that the second-born usually wanted to be different from the firstborn, and would rebel against the precedents the firstborn set. Trisha had heard all these things, but she never really believed them until she experienced them firsthand.
"You don't know what you've got till it's gone." Those were Edward Elric's bitter words on the day of his youngest daughter's funeral. Trisha only later understood that he was referring, with those few words, to all the losses he had suffered throughout his life: his mother, his brother, his limbs, and now his daughter on top of all that.
And Trisha soon discovered what he meant. It was astonishing how much she missed her little sister. She hadn't even noticed most of the things she found herself missing – the way little Sara banged her spoon on the table, or the aura of quiet silence that came over the house while she was sleeping, so she wouldn't be disturbed. But now Sara was gone, and there was no more bright-eyed toddler waddling around the house, no more giggling or smelly diapers. She would never again hear Sara call her, 'Ish,' or their older sister, 'Na.'
Trisha had never imagined she could cry as much as she did at Sara's funeral. In hindsight, she realized this was the only reason she ever agreed to her older sister's suggestion that they bring Sara back. She had wanted to bring her little sister back, because their whole family was crippled without her. Her only wish had been to see everyone happy again; she had never guessed what damage their plan would actually do.
Thankfully, Nina and Trisha's father had been able to stop them before they could actually start the human transmutation, and had saved their family from even more grief. Still, the impact of what they had nearly done left its marks on them. Trisha first noticed this in herself. For months after the almost-transmutation, she had nightmares brought on by her father's explanation of why human transmutation was forbidden. She dreamed about what could have happened: either she or Nina sucked into the Gate, the other left drained and bloody on the floor, a mangled body nearby that was supposed to be Sara. Trisha would wake from these dreams, first screaming, then crying, then only shivering, as more and more time elapsed since the incident.
At first Trisha was much too preoccupied with her own problems to notice anyone else's. Yet gradually, she began to realize that her older sister was just as damaged as she was. She first noticed it when her nightmares had mostly subsided, none of them half as frightening as before, and she only occasionally suffered from them. But some nights, she would wake up and realize someone else was in her bed. Looking over, she would see that it was Nina, fast asleep at her side. More often than not, Trisha would find her hand in a vice-like grip that she couldn't remove, even though it was sweaty and uncomfortable. Eventually, she would drift off to sleep again, and when she woke the next morning, Nina would already be awake. Nina never spoke of these nights, so Trisha followed her lead and remained silent. But the memory of the tight grip on Trisha's hand spoke volumes of her sister's nightmares.
Three months from the Day they had tried to bring Sara back, Trisha felt she was back to normal again. Something had changed inside her, and she knew she would never be quite the same again, but she found that she could still smile and laugh, and her family still loved her, and she decided that was good enough. But Nina's attitude made her uncomfortable. It was as though something had died inside her, leaving only a husk, like a cicada that sheds its exoskeleton and leaves it behind. And Trisha wished she could bring that cicada back, but she didn't know how.
Not many people noticed this change in Nina. She still did well in school; without fail, she was the top of her class. But Trisha watched the way she worked, and what she saw filled her with sorrow: Nina's intelligence was still intact, but the old brilliance was gone. She aced every test and completed her work to near-perfection, but it seemed to be more of an instinctual response than anything else. Before, she would tear through a textbook impatiently, eager to soak up all the knowledge she could, and would often conduct her own experiments or research that had nothing to do with schoolwork, simply because she was curious about the world around her. After the Day, she only did what her teachers required of her.
And Trisha hated this.
Every time Trisha asked her a question, Nina would either shrug wordlessly or give a short reply. Every time Trisha lashed out at her in anger, Nina would take it in without flinching or retaliating. Every time Trisha looked into her empty golden eyes, Nina would look away after a moment or two. And every time Nina did these things, anger bordering on hatred rose up in Trisha's chest.
Several times, Trisha asked herself in shock if she hated her sister. But every time she asked this, the answer always had to be no. I love my sister, she would tell herself. I want her to be happy. But when she does those things...it makes me angry. I don't hate my sister; I hate what she's become. When she realized this, Trisha vowed she would never become that. She was going to be different from her older sister, even if it hurt.
One thing that Trisha had noticed was that Nina hadn't touched alchemy since the Day. Not once. Trisha could understand this; alchemy could be a heinous curse as well as a heaven-sent blessing, and they had come within an inch of realizing this first-hand. But always before, Nina had been enthusiastic about learning, studying, and performing alchemy. It had been the sole passion of her life. Gathering all this information, Trisha formulated a theory: Nina had lived and breathed for alchemy, and now that she had denied herself alchemy it was as though she forcibly kept herself from breathing, and this was what made her dead inside. And Trisha was a logical person, so it only followed that if Nina was given alchemy again, her life would be restored.
At first, horror filled Trisha's mind, nearly incapacitating her, for she realized a gruesome similarity between what she wanted to do with Nina and what the two of them had attempted with Sara. In a way, she was trying to bring Nina back from the dead with alchemy. Trisha realized this in the dead of night towards the end of June. She lay in her bed, staring around at the shadows of her room in terror. Her thoughts and dreams had plunged her into a child's fear of darkness, an adult's fear of the unknown, and she felt very small under her covers.
This night, Nina was fast asleep in her own bed on the other side of the room, but Trisha suddenly felt a pressing need to be close to her sister. So she slipped out of bed and tiptoed softly across the room, kneeling down at the side of her sister's bed. Nina's sleep was troubled; she mumbled incoherently in her sleep and fidgeted around under the covers. One hand lay on top of the covers, and Trisha grasped this with both of hers, stilling her frightened thoughts with the touch of skin. Nina stirred, blearily opening her eyes. "Trish…?" she half-moaned, half-whispered.
"I love you," Trisha whispered back.
"Love you too," Nina mumbled groggily, falling back to sleep as her fingers tightened around Trisha's.
Trisha rested her head against the edge of Nina's pillow, which smelled like Nina's hair, and sat like that for a while. She kept on thinking she would gently release herself from Nina's grip and return to her own bed, but the next thing she knew it was morning and she was curled up on Nina's bed, the covers tucked around her snugly. And when she woke up thus, she knew that Nina would not end up like Sara would have.
That day, Trisha hopefully asked her sister, "Do you want to do some alchemy?"
Her hopes were dashed, however, when Nina shook her head expressionlessly, her eyes blank as ever.
Trisha continued to urge Nina to do a little alchemy, but Nina would always reply, "I don't really feel like it," or "Not now, Trish." Trisha even tried transmuting in her sister's presence, hoping to get some kind of response, but Nina always ignored her. Trisha began to lose hope again, and her concentration flagged when it came to figuring out the formulas and equations needed in transmutation circles. One day, as she half-heartedly tried to puzzle out an equation she could have done easily once upon a time, Nina wandered into the room. Trisha didn't realize it, but Nina came up behind her, looking over her shoulder at the many scribbles on Trisha's paper. Abruptly, she snatched the pencil from Trisha's fingers and scrawled out the equation at the bottom of the page. As Trisha looked at it, she couldn't believe she hadn't seen the solution at once. She hastily looked up at Nina, who only tossed the pencil back and strode from the room. Perhaps Trisha was only imagining things, but she thought there was a slight swagger to Nina's gait.
In the next few weeks, Trisha began to wonder if Nina was playing some kind of game. One moment, she would make a comment that would raise Trisha's hopes, but then seemed to lose all interest in alchemy the next moment. And one hot summer day, Trisha decided she had had enough. The two of them were sitting underneath the shady tree in the backyard, Trisha trying yet again to coax her sister to use just a little alchemy. Nina came up with the excuse, "It's too hot to do that now."
All the anger Trisha had been trying so hard to suppress boiled over in her already-overheated chest; she leapt to her feet and threw the book to the ground. Before she could stop herself, her hand sailed through the air, smacking across Nina's cheek. "You idiot!" she shrieked. "Don't you realize how hard I've been trying to help you?! You're so stupid, you jerk!"
Nina looked stunned, slowly raising a hand to touch the red mark where Trisha had slapped her. "Wh-What?"
"Alchemy!" Trisha cried in answer, slamming her foot down on the papers scattered on the ground and grinding them into the ground with her heel. "Alchemy, that's what! It's what you love the most in the entire world, but you keep pushing it away because you're scared of what you're capable of! This isn't you, Nina! My big sister isn't supposed to be afraid of what she loves most!"
"You're wrong," Nina said softly.
Trisha's gesturing hands came to a stop. "What?" she asked, feeling like a slowly-deflating balloon.
Nina took her hand away from her cheek, which was still a painful shade of red, and smiled slightly. "Alchemy isn't what I love most in the entire world."
Trisha slowly sank to the ground, looking at her sister's stubborn, serene smile, and all hope of ever seeing the Nina she had once known faded away. Her lip began to tremble, but she tried to hide it by looking away. She had never been very good at keeping her tears in check, however, and soon they spilled down her cheeks. She hung her head, letting her hair fall down and hide her tears, and hoped that Nina would just go away and leave her to cry in peace.
Nina was a better big sister than that, and she stayed. Trisha couldn't see what her older sister was doing, so busy was she in pretending that she wasn't crying, but she thought she saw a sudden blue flash, as of lightning. Maybe it would rain soon. Good; that would fit the mood perfectly. And then Trisha felt something settling onto her head. She lifted a hand to see what it was, and her fingers met some kind of plant. Her hand froze as she guessed what it was, and her eyes filled with even more tears.
The first transmutation that Nina and Trisha had ever attempted had brought flowers up from the earth. Trisha, four years old at the time, had clapped her hands with delight. Nina had been just as happy, so she had made crowns for the two of them by intertwining the flowers together, and the two of them had danced about, singing, "We're the queens of alchemy!". Now, when Trisha looked over at her sister in surprise, she saw a crown of flowers on Nina's head and knew that a matching one was on her own. Words failed her, and all she could do was throw her arms around Nina, who clung tightly to her as if she never intended to let go.
Nina Elric lived again.
After a while, Trisha realized that nothing could return to the way it was before the Day. She and Nina studied alchemy together again, and Nina began to show more of the enthusiastic spirit that had been all but smothered, but something had changed between them. It had been Trisha's urging and insistence that had convinced Nina to pursue alchemy again, and even after that Trisha was the one to suggest new projects. Before, Nina had always been the leader. "Hey, Trisha!" she would say. "Check out what I just read!" It had been her idea to investigate human transmutation, to bring Sara back. But now, Trisha was the one who came rushing to Nina full to bursting with a new kind of transmutation she had just read about. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was afraid that Nina would lapse back into apathy unless she was properly stimulated, so she was always on the lookout for a new project for them.
Sometimes Trisha wondered if anyone had noticed the role switch of the two sisters. Nina never seemed to notice, and none of the adults made any comment either. But it was blatantly obvious to Trisha that she had unwittingly become the leader. It was Trisha who suggested their next project, Trisha who first came up with the theory that was key to their complementary alchemy techniques. She felt somewhat saddened by this; she hadn't expected such a dramatic change to come about. Nina was back, but...this was a different Nina from the one Trisha remembered. Still, it was better than the dead shell she had been before.
And then came the day at the close of the summer, when Nina came running into the house, soaking wet from the first rain they had had in weeks. Hardly listening to her mother's demands that she take off her muddy shoes at the door, Nina rushed up the stairs and into the room she shared with her sister.
Trisha looked up from her diary, surprised to see the huge, excited smile on Nina's face.
"I've got it, Trish!" Nina cried, grabbing her little sister's hands and dancing around with her in the middle of the room. "Let's become State Alchemists!"
"What? State...why?"
"Because!" Nina laughed. "Because we can! Look, I've got it all figured out!" She slowed down and excitedly filled her sister in on the plan for exactly how they would achieve this highest goal of every alchemist.
Trisha listened to her sister's excited voice, saw the golden beams that seemed to shine from her eyes, and thought her heart might break with joy. Nina was taking the lead again, and finally – after six months of frustration and disappointment – the cicada had returned to her shell once again.