A/N: In which Alphonse is born, and the situation in Ishval gets worse.

"And you were worried about being able to start a family!" Richard crowed. Only two months after Edward's birth and Trisha had been pregnant for a month already; they had just found out earlier that day. She sat nursing Edward at the table, turned away from all windows and a shawl covering her breast from view.

Hohenheim shrugged a little. "I hope that it doesn't hurt you," he said to Trisha. The last thing he wanted was for his actions to put her in harm's way; the fact that she'd promised to be by his side forever only strengthened that desire. Childbirth, he knew, was often life-threatening and he didn't think he could forgive himself if he was the reason she was taken away. (it would never be his child's fault, never, because they were hers)

"Women are tough, silly man," Sasha said, leaning over to put another serving of Ishvalan-style stuffed chicken on Trisha's plate. "They deal with more pain and hardship than even you could imagine. My daughter is strong, she will be fine. Also, I am a midwife—I would never let my daughter die."

In her eyes, however, Hohenheim saw last week's dead mother and child, the result of a too-short pregnancy and not enough nutrition. He saw the fear and the conviction warring as she pushed the food off the serving fork with a knife and left no grain of rice behind.

"There's also the matter of how things are shaping up around here…" Richard said. The mood at the table became solemn. He turned to Trisha, took her hand in his. "If the situation between Ishval and Amestris goes sour, I want you to leave."

Trisha frowned. "Leave? My homeland?"

"Yes," Rick said. Hohenheim remained quiet; they all knew that he would do anything to keep Trisha and their children safe. "I've arranged with Pinako Rockbell to take you in if need be—you will be sheltered there."

Swaying a little from side to side to calm Edward, Trisha set down her fork and pulled her hand from under Rick's. "Father, you keep saying 'you.' What does that mean? That you're staying?"

"Child," Sasha said, and leaned across the table, hand reaching for Trisha's. Trisha flinched away, and Sasha halted her motions. "I am a midwife. I can help people. But I don't want you to stay here if it comes to fighting—you are too precious for that."

"And you're not?" Trisha was quite visibly on the verge of tears.

"Not as much as you are," Rick said. Sasha glared at him, hissed 'not now!', but the damage was already done; Trisha's eyes had gone wide in shock.

Hohenheim reached a hand out to soothe her—she batted it away. Edward, pulled from his mother's teat, began to wail. Trisha stood, chair scraping back and falling over as she handed Edward to Hohenheim. He did not fumble, but set his son against one shoulder and bounced in his seat, staring up at his wife. Edward screamed in his ear and waved a hand around, hiccupping and burping up strings of milk. It was not the most pleasant sensation, Hohenheim thought. He patted his child's back, but was afraid he might break Edward like the most fragile blown glass.

"You're my parents!" Trisha cried in Ishvalan. "The ones who brought me into the world by the grace of Ishvala herself! How could I simply abandon you?"

"You cannot think of it that way!" Sasha yelled back, also in her native tongue. "We are your parents, we do not want to see you die. But our duty is here, to our people!"

"They're my people too!" Trisha slammed a hand on the table, tongue forming syllables so sharp, Hohenheim could feel their edges. Edward howled, but this did not distract Trisha.

Rick stood. "But they are not your duty!"

"Then what is my duty, if not to my parents or my people?" She screamed, fists clenched at her sides, and the silence after rang loud enough that it stunned Edward into whimpers.

"Your children," Sasha whispered, head down, hands in her lap. "Your children. Your man. Your future."

"But…" Trisha looked as though she might wobble, her eyes wide. Hohenheim braced himself to catch her. It would be hard, with Edward in hand, but he would do it.

"Listen, Trish," Rick said, taking a step over and cradling his daughter's face in his hands. "My daughter. My beautiful daughter. You are grown, and Ishvala dictates fidelity to one's parents. But before that fidelity should come dedication to one's own family."

Tears fell down Trisha's cheek, and Hohenheim stood as well, slow and careful in his actions. He glanced over at Rick, who nodded.

"We have lived far longer than you or your children, daughter," Sasha said, still glancing down at her hands, "and their lives should be your priority. You, and Hohenheim, and your children—I have seen too many fatherless or motherless children grow, and I have no desire for that to happen to my grandchildren."

Hohenheim stepped forward, opened his left arm up to Trisha. He said nothing, just stared into her eyes, one hand wrapped around a whimpering Edward.

She looked back at her parents, went to take comfort from her father, but Rick stepped back. "We will always be here for you, Trisha," he said. "But you cannot choose to stay with us if the fighting breaks out. I'm sorry."

Van Hohenheim watched her half-reach a hand out to her parents before it dropped down to cradle her stomach, not yet showing from their unborn child. She whirled suddenly and buried her face in Van's chest, teeth gritted and arms wrapped tight around his torso. He met her parents' eyes over her head. They were both crying, but resolute.

He nodded at them. Trisha would be safe.

By the time their second child was born, both Hohenheim and Trisha rarely left the house; Hohenheim because of his odd coloring, Trisha because of both her pregnancy and her parents' unwillingness to expose her to the delicate situation outside. Amestrian troops had been stationed in Ishval for ages, and tensions had skyrocketed.

This birth, to say the least, was not easy. Trisha's screams were hoarse and harsh, and Edward's cries made nothing easier. Hohenheim had been trying to soothe him for the past thirty minutes without any avail, and the noise generated did not go unnoticed. The soldiers started pounding on the door (that he'd been meaning to fix for the past two weeks, but had been distracted by his research and a growing unease with something horribly naggingly familiar in the bloodshed common to countries founded as Amestris had been) and yelling.

"Hey! What's going on in there!" There's a tang in the accent that Hohenheim hesitantly placed as Western. He hadn't spent much time there.

Rick, of course, answered the door, tan and going grey at the temples but undoubtedly Amestrian himself. "I apologize for the commotion. My daughter is currently giving birth, and her son is distressed."

"Are you sure everything's all right?" The voice was smooth, more Southern than Western. It was, Honhenheim noted, also calmer than her companion's. "She sounds to be in unusual pain."

As Richard answered—excuses about the situation and stress causing complications in the pregnancy—Hohenheim stroked Ed's back again, bent his head down by his son's ear, and tried to hum one of the little ditties that Trisha liked to sing to her children. Amazingly, despite Hohenheim's admittably off rendition, Edward began to quiet. One of his hands fisted around Van's vest, and the Xerxesian brushed a kiss on top of Edward's white-fuzzed scalp.

"That sounds awful, I'm so sorry," the Southern woman said. "Jackson, don't be so wound up; she can't help it. It's not like they're torturing anybody in there."

Edward whimpered at Trisha's next cry, and Hohenheim started tracing a circle around the edge of the living room rug, bouncing and taking small steps.

"You'd know better than I would, I suppose," the Western man—Jackson—said. "Being a woman and all."

The Southern woman snorted. "Do I look like I've given birth? Sorry to disturb you mister…"

"Elric," Rick replied, and Ed's eyelids—though drooping—remained at half-mast. Trisha let out another awful cry, and Hohenheim cursed with all his being that he had been banned from helping his wife because of Ishvalan tradition.

"Good day to you, Mr. Elric. May this peace last."

"May this peace last," Rick echoed.

From upstairs, Trisha sobbed out a scream, and Hohenheim thought that if this was peace, then war would truly be hideous.

Trisha loved her second son, but she insisted that it was only fair that Van be allowed to name the second child. He was, at first, at a loss—how could he attach meaning and name to a beautiful, wonderful boy that, though he too has Van's golden eyes, is more Trisha around the shape of them?—until one of the souls, Annalise, whispered up the name of her own unborn child.

"Alphonse," he echoed, soft and solemn. "Alphonse, of noble heart and soul."

There were thick, dark shadows under Trisha's eyes. The red should have been striking against such a contrast, but they were watery and tired, and he's afraid for her. "Alphonse," she whispered, and smiled. "It is fitting."

Hohenheim did not fear for the child in Trisha's arms as much as he did the child in his own, but even that slowly faded as he stared at the white shock of hair on Alphonse's head. His child. His second child. And Trisha, holding him, tired and exhausted but alive.

He'd never been so happy to be alive.

Sasha told him that a third child might cause even more complications for Trisha, especially one so soon. Van Hohenheim was reminded that his wife, that his children would one day die.

As Trisha lay in the spare room, Edward and Alphonse finally asleep, Van Hohenheim burned the candle in the study into a pile of tallow on the wood desk, choking back tears and trying desperately to think of some way, of any way to become mortal again.

Dinner that November night was the usual affair; a bit of rice, a spoonful of beans, and some chicken for Trisha, bartered with Sasha's heirloom headscarf. "It is not like I wore it anyways," she'd said as she cooked the rather sad bird in oil and the last of her spices. "Too fancy; where will I find an occasion for it?"

Trisha ate quietly, eyes dry of tears but still raw from that morning, when she'd begged and pleaded with her parents to just come with them. Hohenheim bounced Ed on his knee as three-month-old Al slept in the basket by Rick's legs. Rick was eating left-handed, as Al had a firm grip on his grandfather's thumb.

"The northwest border is still rather relaxed," Richard spoke up. "You should head there, and then further east. Pinako knows you're coming."

Trisha nodded, heavy bags under her eyes. She didn't say anything. She'd already said enough when Richard had shown her the passes he'd obtained for the four of them.

Hohenheim hummed, and slid his mostly-full bowl towards Trisha. She accepted with a thin hand, and he pressed his lips together. He felt as though he was forgetting the sound of her laughter. "How is Pinako?"

"Well. She's received another shipment of automail parts, and her son and daughter-in-law have been keeping busy, what with her granddaughter and the local practice…"

But he couldn't stop thinking of Trisha and her tired eyes and the way her hands were hesitant and limp. He glanced at her, the way her hair was unkempt, and felt like she was coming undone and he had no way to help her.

They made it through the border quickly and without fanfare; the moment the border guard had seen the two children Trisha and Hohenheim held, and the small cart Hohenheim dragged after him, Hohenheim saw a flicker of understanding cross the man's face.

"Welcome to Amestris," he said, stamping their passes. Hohenheim smiled, and it felt tight on his face. He glanced at Trisha next to him, but she was looking behind them, her pashmina drawn up above her head and Alphonse cradled at her breast. The exposed wrist was thin and Hohenheim had to forcibly keep the smile on his face.

"Thank you," he said over Ed's head, accepting the passes and tucking them into the inside pocket of his coat. He hefted the handles to the cart in his hands, and took a few steps forward.

The border guard stepped with him. "Resembool, right?"

Hohenheim stopped and nodded. "Yes, we have friends there."

"I…" the border guard nodded to himself, and stepped back. "That's good. Just be careful."

Hohenheim studied the border guard. He committed the round face to memory, the stubble running up the sides of his chin, the dark brown eyes and dirty blonde hair. "If you don't mind me asking, what's your name?"

"Private Schiller, sir." The border guard smiled. He couldn't be more than eighteen with a smile like that, Hohenheim thought. He was practically a child. And with war brewing on the distant horizon behind them…

Hohenheim closed his eyes. When he opened them, he took one last look at the young man and said, "Nice to meet you, Private Schiller. Thank you for the advice."

"Of course, sir!" Private Schiller said, and he turned to the people behind Hohenheim's family. "Next please!"

Hohenheim hefted the handles of the cart again and moved forward, Ed strapped to his chest and Trisha following quietly, too quietly, beside him.

He tried not to think about how kind Private Schiller would fare in the war to come.

They were almost to Resembool when Trisha stopped in the middle of the path, dropped to her knees, and started howling at the ground.

Hohenheim didn't think twice about setting down the cart and dropping down next to her. He cradled her in his arms, drew her head to his shoulder. He smoothed down her pashmina, but didn't say a word.

Trisha howled and screamed, hands fisted in his coat collar and tugging at it. She screamed herself until she was hoarse and continued to cry even after that, great hiccupping noises that filled the fields around them for miles and miles.

Alphonse woke in her arms, and so did Edward, and they joined in the cacophony, their high-pitched wailing layering over hers, and Hohenheim simply tried to hold his family together.

"They love you Trisha," Hohenheim murmured, eons later when Trisha was reduced to a series of dry, staccato croaks. "They love you, they love Edward and Alphonse, and to them you are more than the sun, more than the moon, more than the earth."

"I am a horrible daughter," Trisha moaned into his shoulder, but she'd begun to rock Alphonse back and forth. He began to quiet, though Ed insisted on proving how capable his lungs were. "What daughter leaves her mother, her father, behind to die? O Ishvala, the light on the sand and the halo upon the stars, I have wronged, I have sinned. Punish me. Punish me."

"No, you have done no wrong," Hohenheim said. He pulled back from Trisha, cupped his hand around her cheek. "Look at me, dearest to my heart."

At the clunky Ishvalan syllables on his tongue, Trisha looked up. Her eyes were raw and glistening in the mid-afternoon sun, face tracked with tears and snot and he hurt to see her like this.

"This was the choice of your parents," Hohenheim said. He cupped her other cheek, wiped away the tears with his thumbs. "You are at no fault."

"I should have begged them harder," Trisha murmured.

Hohenheim shook his head. "No. You have Alphonse. You have Edward. Is a war zone any place for a child?"

"It's no place for my elders, either." Trisha was quieter than before. She wasn't looking into his eyes and Hohenheim worried.

"No," Hohenheim said. "But you must respect their wishes. They may yet get out, they may yet survive, the war might not even occur. But in the meantime please—for them, for your children, for yourself most of all, live."

Trisha looked back at him. Her gaze travelled down from his to the child strapped to his chest, a swatch of shockingly white hair and a pair of wide golden eyes. He was still crying.

She reached her free hand out, slowly, and then stroked Edward's hair and face as though she were seeing him anew. Her eyebrows tilted up, and she let out a small oh. "Hush, dear. Hush. Everything is all right."

Edward began to calm. One hand reached up and latched onto her finger, and for the first time in forever, Hohenheim saw Trisha smile. It was tired and sorrowful, but there was a hint of Trisha in it that made Hohenheim hope.

He set the wagon down at the bottom of the stairs. Edward and Alphonse had fallen asleep, the former more stubbornly than the latter, and the sun was dipping down into the horizon. The golden light spread across the landscape, turning everything it touched into reds and oranges and yellows. It was easy to pretend that the hills were dunes out in the desert; the dunes surrounding Trisha's home, the dunes surrounding Xerxes, the dunes he'd woken up to every morning of the best part of his life.

Hohenheim stretched, hands on his back. "That was heavier than I thought it would be," he said, looking at Trisha. Her profile was illuminated by the low sunlight before she turned, visibly exhausted but more alive than she'd been the past few days.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have helped."

"Aaah, don't be," Hohenheim said. "Your mother would kill me if I'd let a woman still recovering from a difficult pregnancy pull a cart even a quarter of the distance we travelled."

Up at the porch, the inside door opened and there was Pinako. She was shorter and older than he remembered, though Hohenheim figured that was to be expected.

"Ah! There you are! We've been expecting you for ages!" Pinako opened the screen door as well and set down the steps, wiping her greasy hands on a grungy apron. She looked up at the both of them, then socked Hohenheim in the leg.

"Ow!" He stepped away, one hand cradling Edward so that he wasn't jostled so much. "What was that for?"

"Good to see you again, you old geezer," Pinako said, grinning wide. She turned to Trisha, looked her up and down, and extended her right hand. "Nice to finally meet Richard's precious daughter! Name's Pinako Rockbell, Automail."

Trisha hefted Alphonse and returned the greeting, sliding down to her knees so that she was on eye-level with Pinako. "Good to meet you, Pinako Rockbell. I am Trisha Elric; my father sends his greetings."

Pinako laughed. "Man, his daughter turned out better mannered than he ever was! Let's get you settled; it's been a long trip, I'm sure."

"That it has," Trisha murmured. She stood and bowed. "Thank you for your hospitality."

"So what're their names?" Pinako asked Hohenheim and Trisha, the children set up in small cribs with Pinako's grandchild, Winry.

"Edward, protector rich in hope," Trisha said, leaning against Hohenheim. "Alphonse, of noble heart and soul."

Urey, Pinako's son, nodded. "They sound like strong names. We just chose Winry because it sounds nice."

Trisha smiled. "Winry. It sounds beautiful."

Sarah leaned across the table and slid her hands around Trisha's free one. She looked into Trisha's eyes, and said, "Feel free to stay as long as you need—we'll help you find a home and get you settled in, never fear."

"Thank you," Hohenheim said. "It means the world to us that you were willing to do this."

Pinako scoffed. "No thanks necessary! Old man like you, finally settling down and having kids? I want you where I can keep an eye on you! This is just so I can do that."

"Mom!" Urey hissed, but his eyes were filled with mirth. He opened his mouth to say more, but Trisha let out a sharp burst of laughter.

"My everlasting thanks for your assistance," she said. "I will keep you in mind, just in case he wanders off and I cannot find him."

Hohenheim couldn't even protest, not when Trisha was smiling and laughing. He hates himself for thinking it, but he couldn't help but believe right then that they had made the right choice; for their future, for Trisha's future, for their children's future. Things would—things would be okay.

They would be okay.