A/N: A while ago, there were pictures of Ishvalan Ed and Al circulating the internet. I began writing some drabbles based on 'what if Trisha's father had married an Ishvalan,' and rediscovered this document after several months of it sitting dusty in a corner, and have decided to open it up to the internet.

This is essentially a collection of snippets, grouped together as deemed logical (the snippets vary in length).

The first time Van Hohenheim met Trisha Elric, her father had welcomed him into their humble home, noting casually that he hadn't changed at all since Richard Elric had seen him last. It had been nine years. Pinako had assured him that Rick wasn't one to judge and true to her word, he didn't call for the people of Ishval to drive him out with pitchforks or torches. Instead, Richard had introduced him to his Ishvalan wife, Sasha, and his daughter, Trisha. The girl had just turned seven, and was an oddity in and of herself; a foot in each world, raised on a strange mix of belief in both Ishval and good old Resembool values.

As they finished dinner, Richard roaring with laughter and Sasha quiet but rather sly at all the right moments, Trisha tugged his sleeve. He stared down into her wide red eyes, and she'd said, "You have funny eyes."

"Trisha!"

"It's no harm," Van Hohenheim said. It was no use being offended; golden eyes weren't exactly commonplace these days. So he smiled down at her, and said, "Yes, I do."

"Why?"

He smiled again, but it was just a little tired, just a little bitter. "My parents had these eyes." Well, he guessed; even not having known them, he knew that nobody else in Xerxes was anything other than golden-eyed, golden-haired. The voices inside him stirred and whispered.

"You mean their eyes looked that old too? Just because?" She wrinkled her nose. "That's weird."

And for the first time in a long while, Van Hohenheim was struck a little dumb.

The second time Trisha and Van Hohenheim crossed paths was when she was sixteen. It was quite by accident; he'd been staying with her parents again the past week, but hadn't seen hide nor hair of the girl. She had been busy going to school, learning the word of Ishval, and he'd been holed up in the study. Richard and Sasha had dragged him out to a small gathering, and were dancing (Resembool-style, and Pinako would have laughed at the sight of her friend kicking his legs like that in traditional Ishvalan wear). Van Hohenheim wasn't really one for dancing—he had his little journal in his lap and a bottle of Ishvalan spirits at his side. The spirits were really for Jeremiah, but he himself didn't mind the burn as it went down.

He was only barely aware of warmth at his side before a voice asked, "Is that alchemy?"

When he turned his head to look, he was suddenly nose-to-cheek with one Trisha Elric, her eyes focused on the circles and scribbles in his journal. She couldn't read any of them—they were Xerxesian, nobody alive could read them—but she was curious nonetheless.

Blushing from proximity, Hohenheim set down his bottle. "Y-yes, it is. Your people don't much like it, but I've heard fascinating talk about the theory in the area."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her smile. "Only a few talk about it. Most say that Ishval created the earth, and it is not ours to meddle with."

He nodded. "I respect that. Does it bother you?"

Shaking her head, she glanced at him sideways with a look that he was startled to recognize from Richard's face. "I think that if Ishval did not mean for us to do such a thing, She would not have given us the tools to do so in the first place. Alchemy is a gift for the brave to do Her good will. That's what Mother says."

"And what of sin?" he asked before he could stop himself. "Is Alchemy not a sin? Why would Ishval allow you the ability to manipulate the world she created? Isn't that taking what She has already shaped and distorting it?"

Trisha shrugged, straightened. Her hair glistened gold and orange in the firelight. "Why were we given hands? They do both bad and good. They create and destroy just as much as Alchemy, from what I understand. Why is Alchemy any different? Ishval gives us the means and the way; that does not mean that we always follow the right path."

He smiled, and looked at her eyes—soft, accepting. Without meaning to, Van Hohenheim said, "You might be the strangest Ishvalan I've had the pleasure to meet."

"And you're undoubtedly the strangest man I've had the pleasure to meet," she replied, and extended a hand to him. "Would you dance with me?"

Still caught up in the fire reflected off her white hair and the unconditional acceptance in her eyes, Hohenheim lifted his sin-stained hand and let her pull him up.

"Most men would ask for a daughter's hand in marriage by this point, Hohenheim," Rick said, grinning. Van Hohenheim sighed and stared out the window, watching an eighteen-year-old Trisha and her mother hang up the laundry. The cotton billowed in the wind, and the sun was bright and warm. There had been more mounting anger at Amestris lately, and there were a few soldiers hanging around in town.

"Most men aren't as old or wrong as I am, Rick," Hohenheim leaned back in his chair. "It's dangerous for me. I don't know that I would ever be able to provide Trisha with a normal life, a normal family. I don't know if it's possible for me to have a family."

Rick paused before answering. "Pinako's right, you really are a self-depreciative bastard."

If he were younger, Hohenheim would have bristled at that, would have burst out into angry rebuttal. Now, he just hummed. "Wouldn't you be?"

"Well, I don't have to find out, do I? And that's not the point."

"What is?" Hohenheim thought of the latest transfer of land to Amestris, how odd it was for a reason he couldn't put his finger on.

Richard Elric rapped the table and leaned down to catch the other man's eyes. "Trisha loves you, Van. Sasha likes you, even though you're an alchemist. I like you. You're a good man, Van, you just haven't let yourself see that."

Hohenheim shook his head. "Let Trisha find somebody else, somebody who can give her a good life and age with her. I wouldn't damn somebody to be at my side."

"And if she wanted to be?" The sunlight filtered in, the back door swung open, then shut. Rick kept talking. "Trisha knows that you're…well, that you haven't aged since she was seven. She doesn't care."

"She should," Hohenheim muttered, stared back out the window at the thick, adobe-tile roofs and the colorful cloth awnings over windows. Only Sasha remained, gathering up a basket, headscarf vibrant in the midday light.

"Father's right," Trisha spoke behind him. "I don't care."

He turned to look at her, but she was closer than he thought, and she slid a warm, dark hand over his cheek. He froze at the contact, his eyes lost in hers.

"And I wish that you could see that. Please."

He could never say no to her. But he also couldn't say yes.

Hohenheim had always been very careful touching Trisha. Sometimes, when fondness (love) took away his control, he would slide a hand over her shoulder, brush her white hair from her red eyes, and sometimes even hug her. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, and yes, he found himself waking in the morning from some very unrealistic dreams, but he never dared kiss her.

So when Trisha Elric was nineteen and very purposefully trapped him against the wall of the common room before pressing her lips against his, he was startled at first. When she moved them, he couldn't stop himself from responding. Not responding to Trisha was something he found more difficult as of late.

Sasha, upon entering from the kitchen and finding a very red-faced Hohenheim and a very satisfied, ruffled Trisha, merely blinked and said, "I see."

"I know you don't want to marry me," Trisha said very suddenly one night, as Hohenheim poured over his research. He looked up at her as she reached over and slid a hand across his back, then up and over his left shoulder.

"I also know," Trisha said, quiet, kneeling down beside him, her hand leaving lingering warmth as it withdrew, "that it's not because you don't love me, because I am rather certain that you do."

He turned to face her, took her hands in his. She was wearing a simple dress today—one he'd never seen before. It was thinner than the ones she usually wore, shorter.

"I do," he said. It was odd, how easily it came out.

She simply nodded, swept her thumbs over the backs of his hands. He'd cut one yesterday, helping out with fixing the house, and it had healed over in a blaze of soul-red lightning. Trisha had watched it fizzle and pop, then took his hand and wrapped it in a spare cloth. It was still there, white and clean and absolutely unnecessary. "I know," she said again. "And so do Mother and Father. They both know. They both understand that you're scared. But I…"

In the silence, she lifted her eyes to meet his. He remained quiet.

"I think it's more than not aging," she said, twining her fingers between his. "I think it may be something else. Something dangerous."

The souls inside him stirred at the mention of the dwarf in the flask. "Trisha, I—"

She shushed him, pressed the back of his hand against her cheek. Looked him in the eye. "You don't need to tell me. But I need to tell you that I am with you, all the way."

"Trisha, it's," he glanced to the side, "much more than dangerous."

"Hey, silly." Gently, she pulled her left hand out of his right and reached up, turned his head back to meet her gaze. "If it is dangerous, or much more than dangerous, I understand. However, that doesn't change my decision; I will be by your side for as long as I can be."

Hohenheim felt his heart thudding more acutely than he had for a long, long time.

Trisha stood, took his face in both of her hands. "Thick and thin," she whispered. "I trust you, Van—with everything that I am, and everything that I will be. I trust you as much as I trust Ishvala. Do you trust me?"

As he looked up at her, dumbfounded at the idea of this wonderful, beautiful woman placing her life in his hands, his first thought was, But I will destroy you if I hold you any closer. Why would you trust me? Run, Trisha. Run.

But his second thought was, Yes. I trust you.

So he lifted his hands and slid them over hers. He opened his mouth to say what he felt, but his throat tightened and he couldn't. He shut his eyes, and took that metaphorical step away from his fear.

He nodded.

Trisha was quiet a heartbeat, and then another heartbeat. A rustle of clothing later, and her forehead was against the crown of his skull, her hands still on his cheeks, sliding under his glasses. "Thank you," she whispered.

Van Hohenheim gripped her hands a little tighter, felt the tears slide around her fingers, and thought that he was the one who should be saying those words.

It was common knowledge that Ishval and Amestris, a little over a year before the turn of the century, were not on good terms. It was as common knowledge that Trisha Elric and Van Hohenheim, while not married, were very much in a committed, marital-esque relationship. Seeing as they were living together in the house of Trisha's parents, it was assumed that this relationship was accepted, and not much was said about it.

This assumption was taken as fact when Sasha, full of renewed vigor, went out with her barely-showing daughter to find clothes for a newborn child. It was cemented as such at Richard Elric's crows of delight at having 'that damn wonderful bastard Hohenheim' as an honorary family member. And when Trisha and Van took walks through town together, his hand curled around hers, her head against his shoulder, it put the naysayers in their place.

He let Trisha choose their son's name. She chose Edward, her grandfather's name, and said that she'd always heard such wonderful stories about his gentle character and kind nature. She wanted Edward to inherit that, and Hohenheim thought that was a wonderful sentiment.

He wondered, though. He hoped, yes, that Edward would grow to be a far better man than he. He hoped it with all his heart. But when he looked down at Edward's still-red, still-wrinkly face and felt as though he was suffocating of love and wonder, he noted Edward's golden eyes and saw traces of himself in the bone structure, the set of the nose, the ears…and he feared for Edward. His son.

(it was such an odd idea, after centuries of self-imposed isolation. it didn't seem real, even though Edward was surprisingly heavy in his arms, solid and real and it scared Hohenheim that he was waiting for his son to twist into nothing in front of his eyes because it would be his fault and Edward, in his grasp, would come to nothing but harm)

"Ishvala has given us such a gift," Trisha breathed, reaching for her son again. Hohenheim let her take the child with no small sense of relief washing over him. She pressed her lips against Edward's forehead, and murmured something in Ishvalan, just a decibel too low for Hohenheim to distinguish.

He reached forward, a little hesitantly, to brush a strand of limp white hair out of her face. Child still cradled to her chest with one hand, she reached up with the other and twined her fingers between his. Smiled. Looked down.

"My little protector," she spoke again, this time in Amestrian. "So rich in hope."