[FMAB] Ripple Effect

Prologue

According to Reyes, the only proper way to start a story was with once upon a time. Jarring first lines and quirky introductions to characters had the possibility of making a story interesting, but it was the classic beginning that made a story feel like a second home. That was ultimately why people read: they wanted a comfortable escape from their hectic lives, and any other sort of beginning would make the story feel alienated.

Reyes was not a writer. He knew nothing of the necessity of hooks to make a story sell, nor how the writers praised above all others were the ones who told something different. But he was a reader, and he believed that it made him quite knowledgeable about the subject. If he was asked how his story began a story that would eventually come to include countless others he would have started it with the most cliché line of all. It would be easy to start this story at any other point than Reyes – in Central, in Dublith or even near Briggs – but it is clear to everyone involved that he was the catalyst.

So let us begin, in the way that he would have wanted us to.

xXx

Once upon a time, there was a traveler named Reyes Eberhardt.

Reyes was a simple man with simple tastes. Those who met him tended to forget him days later, due to his apparent ordinariness. The few who would recall him afterwards would realize they knew little about the stranger who had passed through their town, as he had never given more than a name to the people there. It would be impossible to learn more about him. One could theoretically trace his life by going in the opposite direction to determine what town he had originally come from, but anyone who attempted such a feat would discover that Reyes Eberhardt had never truly had a home to call his own. They would also discover another curious fact: Reyes Eberhardt had been traveling for a handful of years, and this was the only time that his location could be pinpointed.

Reyes Eberhardt was the type of man who gave everything the world gave him back tenfold. A passionate yet somehow dull man, Reyes should have easily made friends with anyone he met. His opinions were not too jarring, and his interests – though no one could ever remember what they were afterwards – were well-loved by the traveler. Yet it took Reyes nearly a decade to make someone he would come to call a friend, and this person was perhaps just as odd as he was.

This man was named Van Hohenheim, and they bonded over something that I will not yet disclose. All that you, the reader, need to know is that this bond became quite strong as they traveled together. They each had their own motivations for their travels, and those motivations frequently aligned. They learned more about themselves through each other than they had ever hoped to learn from another person. They would have like spent an eternity basking in their friendship, but then they happened upon a little farm town with an automail mechanic, Pinako, that Van had met several times in the past.

They ended up staying with this mechanic, her son and her daughter-in-law. The young couple thought that both of the travelers were quite odd, but they accepted the two during their brief time in the household. While on one of their trips out into town, Van met a woman he would marry years later. Her name was Trisha Elric. Reyes did not have the same fate as Van, but this was something he was not upset about. He was happy to be a part of their family. He was the best man at their wedding. He lived in a house only a short walk from theirs that he had built himself. And when their first son, Edward, it was decided that Reyes would be both his guardian and honorary uncle. The same decision was made when their second and final son, Alphonse, was born. Reyes had always been determined to find a home, and he found one in the family Trisha and Hohenheim had built for themselves. A family picture was never taken with Reyes present. Every birthday that the boys had was celebrated with Reyes in attendance. He was there when Edward had his first day of school, and was there when Alphonse took his first steps.

But then Van had to leave his family.

It was never officially decided, but Reyes became the father figure in Edward and Alphonse's lives. He would spoil them rotten with treats and gifts, and was known to frequently fall for their attempts to persuade him into buying them candy on ventures out into the local market. As Trisha became ill and war struck nearby Ishval, Reyes spent increasingly more time in their lives. When Trisha was having an especially terrible night, he would bring the boys to his home and leave her in the care of the town doctor.

It was a responsibility he had never asked for, but Reyes was not the type of man to lament this unfortunate turn of events. He did everything he could for the boys. When their mother passed, he came to a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life: he would leave the boys to find their father. He left them in the care of Pinako, believing that the only troubles that the boys would face would be the hardship of grief.

If he had known how wrong he was, he would have never left.

He spent countless days searching for Van Hohenheim, but it was impossible to track down his closest friend. He eventually returned – alone – to Resembool. It had felt like an eternity since he had seen the boys, and his heart ached at all of the milestones in their lives that he had missed. As mentioned before, Reyes was a simple man. He tended to believe in the good of humanity, because it had treated him kindly and he wished to do the same. He never suspected that Edward and Alphonse would become quite talented in alchemy, something they were already skilled at it, for the sole reason of bringing back their mother from beyond the gates of Truth.

He returned to find two empty shells of the boys he had once known.

And that is where our story begins.