So this is a story I started a few years ago, but never finished. If you started reading it back then, I am now changing it. Why? Well, I got back into the Brotherhood series recently, so this story is more based off the plot of that. Also, 'Katie' no longer exists. She is now known as 'Rin', because her name is no longer Kaitlynn—it's Catherine. She is also Ed and Al's biological sister, rather than being adopted, but she's still eleven.
That being said, rather than starting with the Isaac MacDougal incident, I instead decided to start at the beginning: Trisha's pregnancy, Rin's birth, and the failed transmutation.
Enough of that.
OWTF!
A baby.
Trisha Elric bit her lip as she placed a hand on her abdomen. It had only been a couple weeks since Hohenheim had left Resembool, and apparently, he'd gotten her pregnant for the third time before he'd left.
I'm sorry, sweetheart.
Ed and Al had both been lucky enough to meet their father, and he'd been present at both of their births. This third child wouldn't have any kind of father at all. They would only have their mother and brothers, but she knew that would be enough.
I have to tell Pinako, then I'll tell the boys.
"Another baby?" Pinako Rockbell asked, pouring Trisha a cup of tea. "Well, that's certainly a surprise."
"I'm a little worried," Trish confessed, taking the teacup. "I've had Hohenheim for the other two pregnancies, but he's gone now. I have no idea where he is." Her hand shook a little. "Ed and Al are both fairly mature for their age, but I'm not sure how either of them would handle a new baby in the house. They keep asking me when their father's coming back, but I don't know how to answer."
"Well, I'm always right down the road, and if you need a break, just send them my way."
"Thank you, Pinako." Trisha smiled, but a tear rolled down her cheek. "Oh, dear. The pregnancy's making me more emotional already."
"Grandma?" asked a little voice. Both women turned towards the doorway to see Pinako's three-year-old granddaughter, Winry.
"Oh, hello, Winry!" Pinako greeted her.
"Grandma, what does 'pregnancy' mean?" Winry inquired, walking up to the table.
"It means I'm having a baby," Trisha replied, smiling at the little girl. Winry's bright blue eyes widened.
"Wow, really?!"
"Yes. Ed and Al are going to have a new little brother or sister."
"I hope it's a girl."
"I'll be happy either way." Trisha set down the empty teacup. "I need to get going now. Thank you for the tea, Pinako."
"Good luck with the boys!" Pinako called as Trisha walked out of the house. Ed and Al had been asleep when she'd left home, so she was happy to see they were awake by the time she got back.
"Where were you, Mom?" Ed asked.
"I was at the Rockbells," she replied with her warm smile. "I needed to talk to Pinako about something."
"What was it?" Al inquired.
"Well…" She knelt down so she was face-to-face with her sons. "I'm having another baby. You two are going to have a new brother or sister." Al's face lit up, while Ed looked confused.
"I'm going to be a good big brother!" Al promised.
"Where's the baby coming from?" Ed added. "And when?"
"Well, the baby… will be here in about eight months. They're coming from me."
That led to a whole round of questions from the boys, but she managed to answer them without giving 'the birds and bees' talk. Ed seemed just as excited as Al once those questions were answered, and Trisha felt confident that things would be all right.
As time went by, Trisha's belly expanded, which both boys marveled at, especially once the baby started kicking. Al repeatedly wanted to know if they were getting another brother or a sister, but of course, Trisha had no clue. Sarah and Yuri Rockbell, Winry's parents, arrived in Resembool a few weeks before the baby was due, one cool winter day, and it was just in time, since Trisha went into labor a few days later.
"AAAH!" she screamed as the pain hit. She dropped the dish she was cleaning and it shattered into a million pieces. Ed and Al ran into the room to find their mother gripping her belly.
"Mom, what's wrong?!" Ed asked.
"Your brother or sister is ready to come out," she replied, gritting her teeth from the pain. "I need you to go get the Rockbells, okay, Ed?"
"Okay!" Ed turned to Al. "You stay with Mom!" Al nodded and took their mother's hand.
By the time Ed had come back, Trisha was lying in bed, breathing heavily. Sarah and Yuri were right behind him, along with Pinako and Winry.
"We'll take good care of her, Al," Yuri told the younger Elric brother. "You go wait with Granny, Winry, and Ed, okay?"
"Okay," Al replied, nodding.
Over the next several hours, the boys waited with Pinako and Winry, both looking more concerned with every scream that came out of their mother's room. Towards the end, Sarah kept encouraging Trisha to push, and the loudest screams of all came out of that. Just a minute later, though, a baby's cry filled the room. The screaming from Trisha had stopped, and Yuri came out a couple minutes after that.
"You can see them, now," he told the boys. Ed and Al rushed into the room to see their mother holding something wrapped in a blanket.
"Mom!" Ed cheered, hopping up on the bed beside her. Al was on her other side.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Al asked.
"I'd like you both to meet your new baby sister," Trisha replied, tilting the bundle so the boys could see. The baby was asleep, her chest slightly rising and falling with each breath. There was a light dusting of gold on her head where hair would eventually grow.
"She's amazing," Al whispered. He smiled. "Hi, baby. I'm your older brother, Alphonse."
"And I'm Edward," Ed added, smiling just as wide.
"I was thinking of calling her Catherine," Trisha told the boys.
"That's a good name!" Al agreed.
"It's too long for such a tiny baby!" Ed pointed out. "Maybe we can call her Rin for short."
"Catherine it is," Trisha laughed. "And yes, Ed, we can call her Rin for short."
And so, they welcomed Catherine 'Rin' Elric into the world.
Rin, it turned out, took after her father and brothers. She had golden hair and golden eyes, with a sunny disposition. She rarely cried, unless she was hurt or someone (Edward) was too loud. As she got older and learned to walk, she followed her brothers everywhere. When her brothers began teaching themselves how to do alchemy, she watched from the corner until she started to try to learn it too. The family of four was happy until the summer after Rin turned two.
That year, an epidemic took Trisha's life.
"It's cold out here," Al told Ed as Rin clung to him. "And I'm hungry. Once Dad comes back—"
"Shut up about that bastard," Ed snapped. "He's not coming back. He wasn't here when Rin was born, and he didn't even show up for Mom's funeral!"
"How are we going to get along without her?" Al asked.
"We're not. We're going to bring her back."
A year later, the three Elric siblings met Izumi Curtis, who begrudgingly took them in as her students. They spent four years with her, learning all they could about alchemy. When they returned to Resembool, Ed was eleven, Al was ten, and Rin was seven. Ed created a transmutation circle that they could use to resurrect their mother. On that fateful day, Ed drew the circle as they combined the ingridients.
"Water, 35 liters," Ed recited. "Carbon, 20 kilograms. Ammonia, 4 liters. Lime, 1.5 kilograms. Phosphorus, 800 grams. Salt, 250 grams. Saltpeter, 100 grams. Sulfur, 80 grams. Fluorine, 7.5 grams. Iron, 5 grams. Silicon, 3 grams. And fifteen traces of other elements." He picked up a knife and his two siblings followed suit. "And now, some soul data."
All three of them cut their fingers and dripped some blood into the pan. Once that was done, each of them sat by a different part of the circle and began doing alchemy. The blue lightning crackled around them as the circle glowed, before it turned red and shadowy hands began rising from the edges.
"I don't like this," Al whispered.
Before Ed could reply, a giant eye opened in the center. The shadowy hands grabbed at Ed's leg, making it vanish. Al completely disappeared, while the hands grabbed at Rin's face.
What followed was a weird vision, of the Truth and a giant door. When Ed came to, he saw his little sister clutching the left side of her face, screaming in pain with blood dripping down. All that remained of Alphonse was his clothes.
"NO! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!" he wailed, crawling over to a suit of armor. Rin crawled over, too, still clutching the bloody side of her face, and helped him knock it over. "GIVE HIM BACK! HE'S MY LITTLE BROTHER! GIVE HIM BACK! THEY'RE ALL I HAVE LEFT! TAKE MY ARM! TAKE MY LEG! TAKE MY HEART! TAKE WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST GIVE HIM BACK!"
He'd drawn a seal in his own blood and transmuted it before his arm disappeared. Rin sobbed on the floor as the suit of armor sat up.
"Brother! Rin!" it gasped in Al's voice. The armor (Al) looked down at Rin and Ed. "What happened?!"
"It failed," Ed croaked. "Al, it failed."
Al looked at the center before picking up his older brother and younger sister.
"I'm taking you guys to Granny!" he declared, rushing out the door.
"What did those boys do now?" Pinako sighed, looking at the Elric house from the window. "Always troublemakers…"
Suddenly, there was loud knocking at the door. Winry ran to answer it and screamed.
"Granny! Winry! It's me!" the armored person declared in Al's voice. "I need help!"
Pinako went over and let out a gasp when she saw Rin and Ed.
"Winry, we need bandages! Stop the bleeding!" she instructed her granddaughter.
"Okay!" Winry's hands were shaking slightly, but she ran off and came back with bandages. Unfortunately, while Rin's injuries were simpler to treat, they ended up taking Ed into the operating room. He kept crying out, blaming himself for Al and Rin's states.
"Are you feeling okay, Rin?" Al asked his sister once she was all bandaged up.
"Yeah… the painkiller Granny gave me helps," she replied, looking up at him.
"How bad is it?"
"Granny said I'm missing my entire eye, and that I'll have some scarring around where it was."
"So you're half-blind?"
"Yeah."
Al knelt down and hugged his little sister.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
She hugged him back.
"I'm sorry, too," she whispered.
"HEY!" Pinako barked as the door banged open. A man and a woman, both in military uniform, came in. The man had a certain look on his face as he went up to Edward, who was sitting dejectedly in a wheelchair, and picked him up by the front of his shirt.
"We went to your house!" the man growled. "We saw the floor! What the hell did you do?!"
Ed stared at the floor. Al was standing behind the wheelchair, with Rin hiding the bandaged part of her face behind her brother's armor.
"We're sorry," Al whimpered. "We're sorry."
The military man looked at Al in shock, then shifted his gaze to Rin.
"I'm sorry," he said, clearing his throat and setting Ed back in the chair. "My name is Major Roy Mustang, from East City. We came to speak to the Elrics."
"Well, you won't leave until you do, so let's bring this into the kitchen," Pinako sighed.
When the armored boy began pushing his brother away, I saw the little girl's face clearly for the first time. The left side of her face was almost entirely covered by bandages, her right eye just as golden as those of the boy in the wheelchair. I guessed she was the Catherine Elric referred to in the report. I gave her a sympathetic look as I headed into the living room. She looked from the Major to me, evidently trying to decide who to follow.
"You can go with your brothers, if you like," I offered. "I'm just here to keep an eye on the Major."
"I'm scared of him," she said, staring at the ground for a moment before looking at me. "Who are you?"
"My name is Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye."
"I'm Catherine Elric, but everybody calls me Rin. Are you here to arrest my brothers?"
"I'm not sure. It all depends on what the Major says."
"We didn't mean for any of this to happen. It wasn't what we were trying to do." Her right eye brimmed with tears.
"Are you okay? It couldn't have been easy seeing that sort of thing happen."
"I only half-saw it. I… lost my left eye."
I gasped a little. She couldn't have been older than eight, and she already had made a mistake that had scarred her for life. Not only that, but she cared more about the fates of her brothers than herself. Suddenly, I could see the type of person she was.
"I better go listen to what that Major Mustang guy wanted to talk to Ed about," Rin told me. "It was nice to meet you, Miss Hawkeye."
"It was nice to meet you, too, Rin," I replied.
"…I'd say he's more than qualified to become a State Alchemist."
I smiled as I heard Mustang say that. State Alchemists were the best of the best when it came to alchemy. Ed, out of the three of us, was the best at alchemy and the best candidate to become a State Alchemist. I was too young and I didn't really have any experience compared to him. He was the one who'd come up with the (failed) formula for human transmutation. He was the one who'd bound Al's soul to the armor. He'd been the first of us to do alchemy in the first place. It just made sense.
"After they came to my door, covered in blood, I went to see what happened," Granny told Mustang. "That thing… it wasn't human! Alchemy created that abomination and nearly killed the three of them! And now you want him to pursue it as a career?!"
"There may be a way of fixing the three of them. As a State Alchemist, he'd be given access to areas and materials he wouldn't otherwise have." Mustang stood up and I slid over to Ed, where I put my right hand into his left to try and comfort him. "Just think about it."
He left and I looked at Ed. His eyes had changed since Mustang had arrived. Instead of self-loathing and guilt, there was now a fire in his eyes. I smiled again.
"Are you gonna do it?" I asked.
"Of course. I'm gonna get you and me and Al our bodies back. I don't care how long it takes." He glanced at his missing appendages. "Of course, I'll need an arm and a leg first."
"True."
Pinako tapped her pipe against her ashtray.
"We can do that," she informed us. "We'll get started right away."
While Ed was healing from the surgery and Winry was making his automail, Al and Rin stayed outside most of the time. The bandages on Rin came off within a few weeks, but she decided to train herself to depend on her other senses—hearing, smell, touch, taste. She tied a blindfold around her eyes and walked around the yard to try and navigate it without tripping over everything. Al made sure she didn't hurt herself. Later, Ed came into the yard, his new limbs firmly attached.
"It looks great!" Rin complimented.
"Thanks!" Ed replied.
"Can you still do alchemy?" Al asked.
"Oh, yeah. It's been a while since I used it, huh?"
"Not since the night we tried to bring Mom back, right?"
Ed put his hands together and transformed part of his automail into a blade. Rin and Al gasped.
"Yeah, I'd say that's right on the money!"
"Brother!" Al said. "You perform alchemy the same way Teacher does!"
"Can't you two do it?" Ed inquired.
"I can try," Rin replied, picking up a rock. She put her hands together the same way Ed had and touched the rock. It turned into a little statue of a bird. A big smile spread across her face before she frowned and looked at Al. "What about you, Al?"
"Me?! No way!"
"So you didn't see it," Ed remarked.
"See what?"
"Never mind."
A wrench flew out of nowhere and hit Ed squarely in the forehead. He yelped in pain.
"Hey! Don't mess up my automail! Do you know how hard I worked on that?!" Winry yelled.
"If it's half as hard as you throw a wrench, I'd be surprised!" Ed whimpered. He stood up, rubbing his head. "Seriously. You might try acting more like a girl and less like a gearhead."
"If you think I'm a gearhead, that's fine, but you better get used to it! As long as you're wearing my automail, you're stuck with this gearhead whether you like it or not!" Ed stared at her, dumbfounded, while Rin and Al exchanged looks. Winry let out a huff and went back inside.
"Hey, with any luck, maybe she'll marry you one day and do your automail for free!" Rin joked.
"Oh, come on!" Ed snapped. "Shut up!"
Naturally, Ed passed his State Alchemist exam and was granted the title 'Fullmetal'. He, Rin, and Al all left home not long after, burning down their house before they left. They had no idea what lay ahead, but they sure as hell weren't going back.
Rewrite of chapter 1, done!
I'm going to try to write chapter 2 for the first time, so bear with me.
So long and thanks for all the fish!