Chapter One: A Kind Of Blessing

Hohenheim walked almost ghostly into the bedroom that night, silent and steady. He stared down at his one-year-old daughter, sleeping in her bed, he frowning in worry and sadness.

He looked - and saw someone else imprinted there. A fearsome image. He tried to stop it. But he looked.

Suddenly, Dante's beautiful sleeping face was imprinted over his daughter's image before him. Stop thinking like that.

He hated Dante. He loved Trisha. He felt guilty about Trisha.

But yes, this was best.

Hohenheim walked by the crib holding his infant son Alphonse on the other side of the rustic wood bedroom. He put a hand silently on side of the crib, saddened. He hated that it had to be this way.

Then he left the room to write his note.

No one else in the house was awake. This had been done on purpose. All was still and black and asleep except for Hohenheim in the Elric home that night.

Dear Trisha,

I am sorry to leave you like this. I am embarking on the path to try to become mortal, for you and for our children.

It seems cowardly to admit it to you in a letter, but there is another reason I'm leaving so soon.

Every time I look at our daughter, I see Dante. I cannot help it. I tried for a year to overcome it, but I could not. Every time I look into her eyes, the fear of Dante is staring right back at me.

I will try to find not only a method of mortality, but a method for eradicating the evil out of people like Dante. If this does not work, I do not know when if ever I will be back.

I am sorry for leaving Alphonse so young. Even our daughter will probably never remember me. Perhaps you can love the girl you named Greta Elric, her traditional and lovely name meaning "precious pearl," the way I cannot find it within myself to right now.

I leave my alchemy study behind me. Perhaps Alphonse will find some use in it.

Know that I will always love you,

Hohenheim

Trisha sighed and put down the letter. Alphonse was in his stroller beside her and Greta was playing before her out on the front lawn, amid the rolling green fields before the rural Resembool cottage. Turn of nineteenth century countryside dotted with farms spread out before them.

"Oh, Hohenheim," Trisha said aloud to no one. "Greta confuses me in a lot of ways. She's stubborn, brilliant, unemotional, nontraditional, an innate skeptic who questions every rule. She's not at all, in fact, what a young girl ought to be.

"But I wish I could have made you see…" Trisha's eyes went unfocused as she watched her daughter, her voice soft. "That warm, spirited, funny, brilliant girl is nothing like Dante…

"And you are right," she finished sadly, though Hohenheim still wasn't there. "Neither of our children will remember you at all."

The Gate looked down on the scene from above, invisible, as Trisha Elric went over to hug her daughter in the front yard. Her daughter shrugged away stubbornly, frowning and uncomfortable, determined to be the stoical adult. Trisha paused in her warmth, confused and dismayed.

"What do you think?" one black arm of the Gate whispered to another.

"I think the mother isn't connecting with Greta Elric," said another in smug, vicious, hissing satisfaction. "She expected a traditional, emotional daughter. And Greta Elric is careless. Does not see the consequences of a fight or a lack of connection."

"So when it happens…?"

"Yes. I see what we can take from the Greta girl besides an arm to protect with… This is a girl who, when her mother dies, is suddenly going to want her childhood back. Is suddenly going to regret her mother, going to have to become her mother.

"So what better for the Gate to take away… than the girl's childhood? We implant in her false memories of growing up to adulthood raising her brother in Resembool… and we take her youth away from her.

"Her arm and her youth… She will actually experience no more of her childhood… That will be our price, if what we see comes to pass…

"Enjoy your childhood, Greta Elric… while you can…"

Greta Elric played on in the rural village of Resembool near her mother and her baby brother, oblivious. Oblivious to not having a father. Oblivious to the invisible, plotting Gate.

Oblivion, in this case, was a kind of blessing.

Author's Notes: This is part three of a six-fandom series called Gender Changes Six. Follow me for more.