9. Unknown past/Before we know each other


She knew him well where Ishbal was concerned, even better afterwards. She had the quirks, the irks, and the sarcasms mentally mapped out, clear as any transmutation array. But she often wondered about his family, his childhood. What were they like? What were his parents' names? Did he even know his mother? Or his father? She thought she remembered mention of a sibling or more, but she wasn't sure if it was that they were or weren't. Where had he lived aside from the general 'east'? Did he have a happy childhood?

Occasionally, a slight of comment sounded like a reference to that childhood, to some random memory running through that head and out in a murmur. There were times when she could see the child he might have been - the little dark-haired mischievous boy running down a dusty dirt road from his own self-induced trouble - in the smirk across from her. And there were times when that image was so clear in those slanted lips that she could easily see that same trouble in his children.

But these were just thoughts, her projections onto that which she didn't know. She resolved someday, she would know for sure.