The Golden Sun: Chapter Eighteen: The Glacier Alchemist
AN: At last, the truth about Trisha! Everyone collectively losing their shit about Trish being half-Ishvalan and an alchemist is the single greatest thing I've ever seen.
Sorry for the long wait, but I'm officially done with classes and I did a poll on tumblr for when to update this fic, so you guys are getting this chapter and then the next one will probably be on Christmas Day.
There was a file in Ed's hands, thicker than his, sitting before him. His fingers twitched, aching to open it, but caution steadied his hands.
He'd seen his own file before, he'd been in the personnel files in Eastern Command, but he'd never looked past his own, he'd never had a need to.
Ed should've, though, but his curiosity was what led to him becoming half-metal and losing his brother's body in the first place.
He steeled himself and opened the file to an image of his mother. She was younger than he remembered, maybe late teens early twenties. Her long brown hair wound into an intricate braid that put his to shame, skin faintly tanned, eyes blood red, contrasting with the blue military uniform.
'Glacier Alchemist' it read, 'specializing in ice and water-based attacks, assigned to Northern Command at Fort Briggs.'
Elemental-based alchemy was fairly common, though most alchemists limited their alchemy to offensive and defensive, since that was the most useful in a fight. But if his mother used ice-based alchemy, then it wasn't very surprising that she would've been assigned to North City; there was nothing but snow and ice up there.
Ed didn't know if he could force himself to read to the file.
Did he even really know his mother? Ed wouldn't have hesitated yesterday, but today…today he was completely and utterly lost.
His mother was the daughter of a Drachman immigrant and an Ishvalan woman, his father probably wasn't even from Amestris, not with his (Ed's) coloring. Was Amestris even his home?
Retrospectively, the Ishvalan thing should've been fairly obvious, red eyes were their trademark, but red eyes weren't uncommon in Resembool, and Ishvalans were fairly well known for having red eyes and pure white hair; it was easy to disregard the red eyes when they were paired with brown hair.
Ed flipped through to pages detailing his mother's life that he'd never expected to learn about. About how -until his entrance into the military- she had been the youngest State Alchemist, entering the military at age seventeen, rising up to a lieutenant colonel and transferring to North City, where she'd grown up before her family had moved to Resembool. It seemed she was a very successful deterrent for Amestris against Drachma. Ed had to wonder how she'd felt about that, being half-Drachman.
There was an image of her, hair whipped by the wind, her uniform thick to combat the cold weather, a set of gauntlets over her gloved hands with a transmutation circles carved into them, and a serious mask etched into her face. She was standing beside a woman with long blonde hair and a positively icy disposition in appearance alone, with a sword at her hip.
Why did Ed get the feeling that the more he found out about his mother, the less he felt he knew?
Ed shut the folder, tucking it under his arm and heading off in the direction of the Colonel's office. He didn't bother knocking on the door, just throwing it open, per usual.
"Is the Colonel in?" he asked Hawkeye bluntly when the other men looked up, hardly surprised that it was him, more surprised in the manner in which he asked and how he looked, he was sure.
Havoc opened his mouth to say something, but Hawkeye beat him to it.
"I'm afraid not," she said smoothly, without any trace of a lie, and she would've gotten away with it, if not for Havoc and Breda sharing a startled look. "He was called away to an important meeting."
Ed's jaw tightened as he looked at into her sherry eyes. They were flat and blank. Those were the eyes that had looked through a scope of a rifle that had shot down Ishvalan after Ishvalan in the war, that was why she was still called 'the Hawk's Eye' with the same reverence that Mustang was called the 'Hero of Ishval'. Ed had a lot of words that were rising up in his throat, but he silenced them, burning them away into ash on his tongue.
"Give him a message, then," Ed said, full of fire and wrath, "tell him, this isn't something he can hide from, I deserve an explanation."
Then he slammed the door shut behind him hard enough to crack the frame. Ed felt like he was burning, like fire was consuming him from the inside out and he didn't -couldn't- cool it. It was like wildfire in dry heat.
They always seemed separate in his head: Roy Mustang, his superior officer, the Flame Alchemist, the narcissistic colonel with a god complex, and the Hero of Ishval, the one that had burned so many Ishvalans to death in the war.
It hurt, Ed realized, more than he thought it would. Knowing his mom was one thing, he still loved her and always would, but Mustang…Ed didn't know why, but it cut deeper. Mom was dead, twice over because of him, and Ed couldn't shy away from that, but what would she think of the man who decimated her people being in charge of her children.
She must hate Ed so much wherever she was, and Ed deserved it.
Ed, who had been starting to look up to Mustang a bit more, who patted his and Al's heads, who gave Al books to read to keep him preoccupied during the night, who poked and prodded to get them to open up, who had killed his mother's people with a snap of his fingers.
He thought about Mom's gleaming smile and her beautiful crimson eyes, full of warmth and love.
What could she even say to him about all this? About the choices he'd made, about what he'd done to Al?
Ed had never felt so keenly like a failure of a human being, of being his mother's son, than in that moment.
Dublith hadn't changed much, just Al's height. One of the only upsides to being a suit of armor that was over seven feet tall was that he didn't have to jump in order to see clearly.
It made it very easy to see Sig, even if he hadn't been a very tall man to start with.
"Al," the massive man said, raising a hand to rub the top of his helmet that warmed Al's intangible heart more than he could ever convey. "Didn't believe you when you said you were coming alone, but I would've heard Ed by now."
Al couldn't help but laugh at that. "You're not wrong," he giggled. Ed had a certain volume that he tended to exude, even when being subtle, some of it seeped out. "How's Teacher?"
Sig's smile faltered slightly as they moved away from the train station. "It's a bad day. Not terrible, but far from her best."
"Oh," Al's metaphorical heart dropped into his metal chest.
"She's just taking it easy, so, hopefully, tomorrow she'll be a bit more lively."
Al had a lot of books on Alkahestry from Xing, courtesy of a very grateful Lanfan, and he kept thinking that if he could just master the healing side of alchemy then he could make Teacher's condition so much more manageable…but then he had to weigh it against getting their bodies back and Al felt so lost. Was it selfish to want to feel the warmth of the sun? Was it selfish to want to sleep at night? Was it selfish to want to smile? Al wasn't sure.
"Why didn't Ed come?" Sig asked him curiously, frowning up at him as they walked down the street. "Not still scared after last time, is he?"
Al giggled again. It was very true that Teacher inspired true fear into his and Ed's hearts -Ed's more so than Al's- but, obviously, that wasn't it. "No, Brother was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and is helping with the State Alchemist Exam…I'm actually pretty sure he's trying to make it harder."
"That does sound like him," Sig conceded with a grunt. Al knew that neither he nor Teacher liked the military, and some days Ed really didn't, but he wasn't wrong about it giving him access to information and tools that were off limits to others. Teacher and Ed had practically agreed not to bring up him being in the military if at all possible. "So, what brings you back to Dublith? Not the usual reason, I'm guessing."
"No," Al admitted, "we think we might have a lead, but I wanted to pick Teacher's brain about it because we're not really sure about it…think Teacher will be up to it?"
"Anything that distracts her from being in bed," Sig chuckled as they walked past a bar with the emblazoned name 'Devil's Nest'. Al remembered it from the last time they'd been to visit, but now it looked like a pale imitation of what it once was; rundown, bullet holes, cracked windows, and something that might've been a smear of blood.
"What happened to the Devil's Nest?" he asked curiously. It hadn't ever looked like a place Al would willingly spend his time in the first place, and now that feeling had simply been amplified.
Sig's mouth thinned, his bushy eyebrows drawing together as he scowled. "Ah, that," he said. "No one's really sure what happened, a for some reason the military came out here two months ago and practically had a shootout with the owner of the bar, a strange guy called Greed, killed his bodyguards and dragged him away."
"What?" Al asked, startled. "What for?"
"Not sure, but best keep Ed being in the military on the down low for a while…tensions are a bit high right now," Sig warned and Al bobbed his head in agreement. Ed already ran into enough trouble as it was with being in the military.
Al garnered a few odd looks on the street, but people were a bit more used to the suit of armor that accompanied one of those boys that Izumi Curtis took in for six months a few years back. It wasn't something he wanted to get used to, but here he was. And Al knew they were on the brink of something, something that could lead to them getting their bodies back. He could almost touch it.
They entered the house quietly and Al waved at Mason where he was packaging up meat where it opened up into the butcher shop. He waved back with his cleaver and Al couldn't help but tense uneasily, remembering the cleaver that Barry the Chopper had hefted when he'd tried to kill Ed, Ed who had clung to Al after the incident, eyes hollow and filled with terror. Al didn't realize how much they tended to avoid butcher shops until he realized that it was half of the reason Ed never wanted to visit the Curtises; trauma, Colonel Mustang had said, manifested in different ways.
He followed Sig back to the bedroom he and Teacher shared, waiting in the hall a brief moment before Sig opened the door further. "She's sleeping," he murmured, "but why don't you keep her company?"
"Of course," Al said quickly and quietly, moving slowly into the room so that the metal that made up his body didn't clang together quite so much. Teacher was fast asleep, her cheeks paler than usual, and Al could see a dark smudge at the edge of her mouth, undoubtedly blood that she had coughed up before falling asleep.
At least she looked peaceful. Al would give her the time to rest, it wasn't like he needed the answers in the next five minutes, and if there was one thing that Teacher deserved, it was peace and quiet.
So, he settled into the chair pulled close to the bed, grabbing up a nearby book and began to read.
There was a box of Mom's things that they hadn't really touched, not since they moved house. Al had shoved about everything he could think of that was important into that large crate, but even he hadn't felt comfortable with touching Mom's things, so they'd stayed in the crate in one of the spare bedrooms.
But Ed couldn't sate his curiosity anymore, or his pain. He didn't realize how many people in the military actually knew his mother. They were all transfers from North City, and that's where she had been documented stationed, so he supposed that it made sense for them to be a little familiar with her. But having to explain over and over again that she was dead, that she'd been ill and had just gotten worse and worse until she passed away (until Ed forced her back to life and killed her again) was just emotionally draining. Those soldiers had been disappointed and saddened by the news, so Ed had to presume that Mom was well-liked.
His fingers paused on the lid of the crate and Ed steeled his nerves before pulling it off to get a good look within.
There was a box full of pictures that he almost skated over, but he decided to pull it out first, sitting on the bed and opening it up. In the back there were pictures of when his mother was younger.
One of her kneeling on the floor, hands pressed over a transmutation circle that made a small figure like a horse, like Ed and Al had once made her…no wonder her eyes had gleamed so much when she'd seen them, with her father by her side looking very impressed. His hair was as brown as hers, but it was clear that she had taken after Grandma Binah the most; there was another of her older, completely surrounded by sand, standing in front of some temple of a sort, it was beautiful and far more impressive than any building Ed had seen in Amestris; then there was one of her at seventeen, wearing the Amestrian military uniform, with her arms around her mother, and Grandma Binah was smiling with identical red eyes that crinkled in the corners; and the next one gave Ed pause, because Mom was in a hospital bed, smiling, with a bundle in her arms with a tuft of golden hair and dark skin to match the crying man at her side. Ed didn't think he'd ever seen Hohenheim cry, even over him, so it was strange to see. There was a woman at her side, the same woman that had been in the picture in Mom's file, still in the military uniform and still wearing a sword.
There were some of him and Al when they were smaller. Ed was guessing that was where Al had gotten the picture to give Mustang. He smoothed a finger over Al's bright smile; one day soon he'd be able to see it in person.
There were a lot of books in the crate, Ed realized, that they hadn't touched. They were all in a language that Ed and Al didn't know, but now he was beginning to think that it could be Ishvalan. He flipped through one of the books aimlessly until he came across a few folded-up papers that looked like drafts of some kind, written in his mother's hand.
Ed had to pause suddenly, staring at the words on the pages, scribbled out and replaced with similar words, words that Ed was familiar with. That couldn't be right… he practically leapt to his feet, racing back to his room, and nearly yanking open the lowest cabinet of his bedside table, where he'd shoved the note Hohenheim had written that Al had found. It had been a source of pain for him when he'd first read it, knowing that Hohenheim couldn't think of his children as being good (it hurt as much as when Ed realized that he was right).
When he compared them he had to stare.
It's difficult for me to look at (both of) them, knowing they (were created) came from something so dark, so evil(, something that should've stayed buried). They'll never be (safe) clean of me. I look at them and I see my Xerxian line (alive and thriving) continued, I see the golden hair and eyes, the skin that (is sun-kissed) absorbs the sun best, I see (their) potential for greatness. But those are thoughts of the man I (used to be) once was, the man who grew from a slave without a name to a revered (and beloved alchemist).
Nothing good has ever come from me(, from my wishes and dreams), not even my love for Trisha, not even my boys are free spared of that. And one day they'll need to have to understand that what I've done has been to keep them safe, despite what I am, despite what (I've done) they are. (This is the price of equivalent exchange.)
Mom had no reason to refer to herself in the third person when Hohenheim was clearly the one meant to be the writer of the words on the page. It was like they'd been toying around with the right words to make it work. It wasn't like they were trying to come up with a hurtful note, he realized, more like they needed specific words and letters, like they needed to be in the right order. Ed had a lot of notes like that when he was still figuring out how to write his code, though now Ed could do it from memory.
The note was written in code, one that Ed wasn't familiar with, and honestly, he couldn't help but be relieved by that. To know that it wasn't that there was something terrible about him and Al (Al could never be terrible, Al was too good and too kind for the world, but Ed was certainly far from) but that they were the words needed to make the code work eased him more than he'd like to admit.
He'd tell Al when he got back from Dublith, he decided, returning all the papers to the drawer and going back to the crate. There were a few little trinkets that belonged to Mom, and a box that she'd always kept at her bedside and whenever Ed had tried to open it, she'd winked and pressed a finger to her lips, like it was a secret. It was locked, but alchemizing the lock took very little effort.
Mom's State Alchemist watch looked a lot like Ed's, just a bit more worn and dustier; it was nowhere near as pristine as Ed's. Under it, Ed noticed, was a folder.
In the event of the premature death of Trisha Tahlia Elric, was written in her curved handwriting and Ed could feel his heart freeze in his chest and then sink down into his stomach, like lead.
"Are you feeling better, Teacher?" Al's voice was colored with concern and Teacher's eyes softened.
"A bit," she said and Al couldn't for the life of him tell if she was lying or not. Teacher was very skilled in hiding how terrible she was feeling…until she started vomiting up blood, then Ed and Al tended to freak out about what they needed to do. "So, what're you doing here, Al? Its not just to see me, is it?"
"Well, I mean, kinda," Al chuckled nervously, rubbing at the back of his helmet awkwardly. "How're you doing, Teacher?" He didn't know why he was feeling so evasive, but it didn't seem right to just straight up ply her with questions without seeing how she'd been first.
Teacher, as sharp as ever, saw right through him. "Spit it out, Al."
Al nearly huffed. "Fine," he replied just that side of petulant, "I wanted to know if you knew anything about Xerxes."
Teacher's eyes bulged and she choked briefly on her cup of water. She coughed powerfully and Al watched just a little bit of blood spray into the tissue she'd used to cover her mouth. "That," she rasped when she could finally breathe, "is a dangerous thing to be asking about, Al…shut the window, won't you?"
She definitely knew something and Al rose quickly to comply, locking the window shut and settling down into his chair once again.
"What do you know?" she asked him tersely if a bit tiredly.
"We know that according to myth, the Eastern Sage that brought alchemy to Amestris was supposedly from Xerxes, that supposedly the Philosopher's Stone was used to destroy the kingdom in a single night, something about there being a Mad Prince of Xerxes, a place called Persepolis being the true center of Xerxes, and that's about it." It was just bits and pieces, unfortunately; they were mostly operating by word of mouth.
Teacher pushed a few boxbraids over her shoulder. "Not much you've got on it," she conceded, "but that makes sense since the military did a soft purge of Xerxes-related books some years ago."
"Wait, they did?" Al leaned forward startled. "I mean, we thought it was weird that there didn't seem to be any books on the subject…"
Teacher's lips twisted into a faint smile. "You were on the right path, you two must get your persistence from your mother."
Al froze, staring at her. "I-what?"
Teacher took another drink of her water. "Most, if not all, of the alchemists in Amestris know her name…the ones in North City admired and feared her the most, but she was the Glacier Alchemist then, so that would make sense."
"What?" his voice floundered and weakened and even though Al couldn't and didn't need to breathe, he was sure that if he had his body, he would've stopped breathing right then.
Teacher arched an eyebrow. "I thought it was strange that her sons never brought up their infamous alchemist mother…did you not know about that?"
Al's silence was enough of an answer and Teacher grimaced, reaching a hand out to pat Al's armored gauntlet. "No," Al said finally, "we um—" He thought about Mom, sitting on the floor with them, smiling brightly as she showed them how to draw transmutation circles, clapping her hands in delight when the transmutations worked and assuring them they'd work next time when they didn't. "She never mentioned it," he acquiesced finally.
"Your mother knew the most about Xerxes," Teacher told him seriously, "but the next thing any of us alchemists knew, she was dead."
"She got sick," Al said quickly, his words surprisingly hollow. "A lot of people got sick in Resembool then."
"But I'm guessing she was the only one who died, wasn't she?" Teacher questioned, dark eyes persistent and Al froze up again. "Trust me on this, Al, it was no coincidence that your mother died when she did."
AN: The Trisha Elric Alchemist bombshell is being dropped on both sides, which is great :) I think Ed's getting more of a complete picture than Al, but they'll share notes when they come back together. The note Hohenheim wrote is important, maybe not in book 2, but definitely in book 3, so don't forget about it! Eventually, we're going to see Ling again, I promise. He might show up in the next chapter, who knows, but don't worry, very soon the Xing Trio and the Elric brothers will be having a lot of interactions.
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
