(no subject)
Title: Outset
Genre: Gen, before series
Characters:Tringham, mostly Russel-centric
Rating/Warnings: PG for some fighting, mild curses
Summary: What had been the catalyst for the Tringhams' journey to Xenotime?
Comments: Yes, Ketsu. I robbed that theory from you. It was too delicious to pass up. ♥ And the Tringham timeline is my bitch.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s gone on a trip, he’ll be gone for a while.”
“He’s been gone for months! He hasn’t even written back!”
“Russel, your father has very important alchemy work to d-“
“What about us? We’re his family! Aren’t we supposed to be the most important?” The boy turned and ran. The door slammed.
“Brother!” his younger brother called.
“Fletcher, be a good boy and stay here. I’ll send your cousin to look for Russel,” Auntie Gretchen said. “Now where is that boy? Jacob!”
Russel rammed his hands into his pockets as he walked quickly through the quiet residential streets of Central. It was early evening, and nearly time for the shift rotation at HQ to begin. That meant the city was about to come alive for the evening. But that’s not what the tall, lanky 13 year old was thinking about.
“If he’s not going to be here to watch out for us, I’m gonna have to do it. But I need to be strong, like Da- like that bastard,” he grumbled to himself. He rounded a corner, spotting the usual group of delinquents on the corner. He started to cross to go around them, but stopped. Today, he’d go through them.
“Hey, look, it’s that kid Russel!”
“Whatsamatter, Rusty? Realize your dad left because he doesn’t love you anymore?”
“No, actually,” Russel smirked. “Just kinda noticed how ugly you guys were and I had to come up close to see if it were humanly possible to be that ugly. Looks like I’m right.”
“What the hell did you just say?”
“I’ve got a girlfriend, you know!”
Russel laughed. “A girlfriend? The girls in the magazines don’t count, yaknow.”
“Who the hell do you think you are talking to our boss that way?”
“Get ‘im, guys!”
And two swooped in on him. He backpedaled and tried to duck, but one got him square in the gut. Another crossclocked him in the temple, and he was down.
“Russel!” his cousin Jacob shouted as he ran down the street toward him.
“Crap! It’s Jake! Run!” the boys all turned and ran.
“Russel, you alright?” Jacob said, crouching beside him, and starting to help him up.
Russel pushed him off. “I’m fine,” he coughed. He started to get up under his own power.
“Why’d you go and pick a fight with them? You know they’re older and bigger than you.”
“Felt like it,” he replied. He didn’t want to try explaining. These people that seemed to be convinced that Nash Tringham would be coming back wouldn’t understand.
“You felt like it? C’mon, you’re smarter than that. Don’t let all this get you down.”
“Just shut up,” Russel snapped angrily. He got himself to his feet and started back toward the house.
When he got home, he was pulled in by the suspenders. “Russel! What happened, you poor boy? Did those hoodlums catch you by surprise? I keep telling the police about them but they do nothing! Useless, all those soldiers are useless!” Gretchen prattled as she rushed Russel into the house. “Nevermind that, let’s get you cleaned up, boy.”
“I can do it myself,” Russel said, pushing her away with an arm.
“You keep pushing people away, boy, they might actually stay away. Then where’ll you be?”
“Happier!” Russel growled as he started up the stairs.
But a whimper caught his attention. At the top of the stairs stood Fletcher, worry in his eyes, clutching the unfinished green hat. Their mother had started it when she had become bedridden during her illness. She didn’t have a chance to finish. Fletcher carried the hat like some kids carry a teddybear or a blanket. Its band and earflaps were too large for him right now.
“Brother….” He said quietly.
“I’m fine,” Russel replied, patting him on his head as he passed him on the way to the bathroom.
Once he entered, he left the door open, and the space was soon partially filled with Fletcher. As Russel unbuttoned his shirt, they looked to each other.
“Does that hurt?” Fletcher asked, eyes glued to the angry red and blue bruise developing over and around one eye.
“Not too much,” he replied, pushing his suspenders off his shoulders and removing his shirt. He heard the gasp that escaped his younger brother’s lips as his bruised stomach was revealed. “I’m fine, Fletcher. Really.”
“A-alright…” he nodded.
It went like this for months, with Russel coming home every few days with new bruises and cuts and scrapes. Eventually, Gretchen had had enough.
“That’s it! I’ve had enough of you coming home like this. What kind of example are you setting for Fletcher? From now on, Jacob is walking you to and from school, and you’re not leaving this house!”
“Aunt Gretch-“
“I won’t hear any different! Your father would be disappointed in you!”
At that, Russel stomped up to his room. “We don’t know what he’d be disappointed in, because he’s not here!” he growled.
Fletcher was in his bed, the one nearest the window. He sat there, clutching the hat.
“When you’re big enough to wear that, we’re leaving,” Russel said, pointing at it.
“Where would we go?”
“We’re gonna find Dad,” he said, pulling out a couple alchemy books and a notebook. He turned on the bedside lamp and got to work. He tuned out Jacob’s protests of his mother’s new policy.
Russel let the status quo continue for a few months. However, he neglected his schoolwork in favor of alchemy, with the exception of the relevant science assignments. More than once Gretchen had to come retrieve confiscated alchemy texts that Russel read in his lap when he was supposed to be reading history or literature. “You’re too young for these things, I always told Nash that. But he insisted that you should learn it. Then in the next breath say that Fletcher shouldn’t. That brother of mine never could make up his mind!” she rambled on. “But you! You’re smarter than this!” she waved the book in his face. “If he’s gotten you started down this path, I won’t pull you off of it, it’s not my place. But there’s a time for everything! Work on your schoolwork at school, come home do your homework, and then crack these open if you want. From now on, I’m checking your homework before I hand these over. Understand?”
That night, Russel snuck into his aunt’s room and grabbed the books. He transmuted a box that looked like other books to keep them in.
As the months marched on, he sought out those boys again, now that his cousin Jacob was too wrapped up in his military academy studies to tail him. “Hey guys, he’s back!” one of them chided, and they all stepped up to surround him.
Russel smirked. “If I knew you guys would miss me this much, I would have come around sooner.” His hands were in his pants pockets.
“You’ve got some nerve running your mouth, Tringham.”
“I’m sorry, did I puncture your ego?”
“Shut up!” shouted a skinny boy. He had dirty, stringy hair and he sweated. The other boys stood back, looking surprised. Russel raised an eyebrow but wouldn’t let himself look fazed.
“I can’t take this anymore! I’m tired of people hassling us!”
“Chill out, man. It’s alri-“
“It’s not! This is our neighborhood, people have no right to come in here and tell us what to do!” He reached into his pocket.
“You look like a nervous one,” Russel smirked at him.
There was a glint of metal, followed quickly by a click of a blade. “He’s got a knife!” one of the boys shouted. But Russel dropped to one knee as he pulled one of his hands out of his pocket. At the same time, the kid slashed out with it. Russel planted a handkerchief on the ground, bearing a transmutation circle. But he wasn’t quite fast enough. He leaned to one side, away from the slash. Wood grew up from between the cracks in the sidewalk, and wrapped around the slashing arm, as well as shoving the rest of the boys some 5 feet away from him.
When the dust settled, the boy with the knife looked even more frightened, due to the fact that he couldn’t move, and suddenly the boy they’d picked on all this time was stronger. That same boy now looked up at him, eyes steady and cold, watching his next move. Blood trickled down his face where the knife had grazed his forehead over his right eye.
After a moment, Russel released him, and set the ground right again. The boys turned and ran. Russel sat down on the pavement and pressed a hand to his head. “Can’t go home bloody like this…” he said to himself. He transmuted some of the nearby grass into cloth, and pressed it to his forehead. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and scabbed over. He moved his hair to cover it, and went on his way after checking his shirt for blood.
That night, Russel was helping Fletcher get ready for bed, when the cut accidentally revealed itself. “Ah! What happened?”
“I beat ‘em, that’s what happened. And if you tell Gretchen or Jacob I got in a fight I’ll hide that hat. You’ll never find it.”
“I won’t tell.” Fletcher shook his head and clutched the hat closer to himself.
The cut healed, but left a scar. Enough time had passed that the scar would go unnoticed, but he kept it hidden by his hair nonetheless. Even he had forgotten about it, and had just fallen into the habit of doing his hair that way.
Two years passed, it was shortly after Russel’s 15th birthday. He’d shot up a few inches, and filled out quite nicely. Russel sat at the breakfast table, his nose in the newspaper, a cup of orange juice on the table, long forgotten as he read. It was yet another story about the Alchemist of the People, Edward Elric. He went to a drawer and got a pair of scissors, and clipped the story out, folding it and putting it in his shirt pocket. There was another, shorter one further in. That one met the same fate.
Jacob came down as he clipped the second one. “Ah, so the mystery of the missing newspaper articles in solved,” he said as he fastened his uniform jacket closed.
“I only cut ‘em out because Fletcher wants to keep ‘em,” he lied. He’d gotten good at that. He’d gotten enough swats on the bottom from Gretchen to know how to not get caught. “I’m glad Investigations has such a crack officer on staff now.” He smirked.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Let’s see how long it takes me to be head of the department.”
Fletcher came down then. “Brother, guess what? It fits now!” he smiled. “Mom’s hat fits!”
“That’s great. Now there’s less of a chance that you’ll lose it,” Russel said, patting his brother on the head.
“I don’t see why you think so much of that hat,” Gretchen said as she breezed in, her skirts swaying. “It’s old and ratty and it’s not even finished!”
Russel narrowed his eyes at her. “Let’s go, Fletcher.” Russel escorted his younger brother out of the house.
“Are we really going to go look for Dad now?” Fletcher asked as they reached the end of the block.
“Yeah, we are. I’ve been doing research on where Dad’s been seen last. There’s an old mining town out east. That’s where we’re headed.”
“When?”
“Today’s your last day at school, Fletcher. But don’t tell anyone. We’re just going to leave. That woman we live with doesn’t get it. Neither does Jacob. I’ve had enough of this. You’re smart enough that you’ll be able to study the rest of what you’ll learn in school on your own. And I can help you if you get stuck. I’ll take care of you. I’m strong enough now.”
“Is that why you…”
“Yeah. I’ll protect you now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“A-alright,” Fletcher nodded.
After Russel dropped Fletcher off at school, he went back home, went in his room and locked the door, as he’d always done. But instead of studying, he packed. His teachers had agreed that he was done, so he needed no longer to sit and be bored in the classroom. A couple extra pairs of pants, a couple shirts, a few changes of clothes for Fletcher. Notebooks, alchemy texts, pencils, money he’d saved from doing odd jobs around the neighborhood, enough for train fare for two, and a few frugal meals. The portfolio of articles was the last thing to go in. He’d mostly committed it all to memory, but he brought it anyway. He’d add the latest two on the train.
Then he wrote a note:
Dear Aunt Gretchen and Cousin Jacob,
I know you only took care of us because Mom and Dad asked you to. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Fletcher and I will be okay. I’ll take care of him. Don’t look for us, and no, I’m not in trouble with any of the people on the street. I’ve been planning this for a while. Maybe we’ll see each other again, and when you do, maybe we’ll be with Dad. In the meantime, keep your eye on the papers. You might see my name in there as the latest State Alchemist. -Russel
Then he went to his bedroom door. Jacob was gone at work, and Gretchen was hanging laundry in back. He walked out the front door, stopping in the pantry for some more food. The last thing he grabbed was a picture. It was himself, Fletcher, and their father. He took it out of the frame and stowed it.
He lingered outside of school for Fletcher to get out. He leaned against the wall, the bag over his shoulder. When the kids came out, Russel watched the crowd for the blond head in the green hat that more resembled a headband.
When he appeared, he smiled, but Russel could tell he was sad to be leaving his friends. But he pretended to not notice. “Any second thoughts?” Russel asked him as they rounded the corner to head to the train station.
Fletcher looked down, hugging his schoolbag close to him. Then he looked back up at his brother. He shook his head. “I want to see Dad again.”
Russel nodded. “That’s the spirit.” He put his hand on Fletcher’s opposite shoulder.
When they reached the station, Russel stepped up to the ticket window. “Two to Xenotime, please,” he said, pulling out his money.
“Not too many people headed out there, especially kids your age,” the elderly man smiled kindly on them.
Russel smirked, and replied, “We’ve got family there. Now how much do I owe you?”
Genre: Gen, before series
Characters:Tringham, mostly Russel-centric
Rating/Warnings: PG for some fighting, mild curses
Summary: What had been the catalyst for the Tringhams' journey to Xenotime?
Comments: Yes, Ketsu. I robbed that theory from you. It was too delicious to pass up. ♥ And the Tringham timeline is my bitch.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s gone on a trip, he’ll be gone for a while.”
“He’s been gone for months! He hasn’t even written back!”
“Russel, your father has very important alchemy work to d-“
“What about us? We’re his family! Aren’t we supposed to be the most important?” The boy turned and ran. The door slammed.
“Brother!” his younger brother called.
“Fletcher, be a good boy and stay here. I’ll send your cousin to look for Russel,” Auntie Gretchen said. “Now where is that boy? Jacob!”
Russel rammed his hands into his pockets as he walked quickly through the quiet residential streets of Central. It was early evening, and nearly time for the shift rotation at HQ to begin. That meant the city was about to come alive for the evening. But that’s not what the tall, lanky 13 year old was thinking about.
“If he’s not going to be here to watch out for us, I’m gonna have to do it. But I need to be strong, like Da- like that bastard,” he grumbled to himself. He rounded a corner, spotting the usual group of delinquents on the corner. He started to cross to go around them, but stopped. Today, he’d go through them.
“Hey, look, it’s that kid Russel!”
“Whatsamatter, Rusty? Realize your dad left because he doesn’t love you anymore?”
“No, actually,” Russel smirked. “Just kinda noticed how ugly you guys were and I had to come up close to see if it were humanly possible to be that ugly. Looks like I’m right.”
“What the hell did you just say?”
“I’ve got a girlfriend, you know!”
Russel laughed. “A girlfriend? The girls in the magazines don’t count, yaknow.”
“Who the hell do you think you are talking to our boss that way?”
“Get ‘im, guys!”
And two swooped in on him. He backpedaled and tried to duck, but one got him square in the gut. Another crossclocked him in the temple, and he was down.
“Russel!” his cousin Jacob shouted as he ran down the street toward him.
“Crap! It’s Jake! Run!” the boys all turned and ran.
“Russel, you alright?” Jacob said, crouching beside him, and starting to help him up.
Russel pushed him off. “I’m fine,” he coughed. He started to get up under his own power.
“Why’d you go and pick a fight with them? You know they’re older and bigger than you.”
“Felt like it,” he replied. He didn’t want to try explaining. These people that seemed to be convinced that Nash Tringham would be coming back wouldn’t understand.
“You felt like it? C’mon, you’re smarter than that. Don’t let all this get you down.”
“Just shut up,” Russel snapped angrily. He got himself to his feet and started back toward the house.
When he got home, he was pulled in by the suspenders. “Russel! What happened, you poor boy? Did those hoodlums catch you by surprise? I keep telling the police about them but they do nothing! Useless, all those soldiers are useless!” Gretchen prattled as she rushed Russel into the house. “Nevermind that, let’s get you cleaned up, boy.”
“I can do it myself,” Russel said, pushing her away with an arm.
“You keep pushing people away, boy, they might actually stay away. Then where’ll you be?”
“Happier!” Russel growled as he started up the stairs.
But a whimper caught his attention. At the top of the stairs stood Fletcher, worry in his eyes, clutching the unfinished green hat. Their mother had started it when she had become bedridden during her illness. She didn’t have a chance to finish. Fletcher carried the hat like some kids carry a teddybear or a blanket. Its band and earflaps were too large for him right now.
“Brother….” He said quietly.
“I’m fine,” Russel replied, patting him on his head as he passed him on the way to the bathroom.
Once he entered, he left the door open, and the space was soon partially filled with Fletcher. As Russel unbuttoned his shirt, they looked to each other.
“Does that hurt?” Fletcher asked, eyes glued to the angry red and blue bruise developing over and around one eye.
“Not too much,” he replied, pushing his suspenders off his shoulders and removing his shirt. He heard the gasp that escaped his younger brother’s lips as his bruised stomach was revealed. “I’m fine, Fletcher. Really.”
“A-alright…” he nodded.
It went like this for months, with Russel coming home every few days with new bruises and cuts and scrapes. Eventually, Gretchen had had enough.
“That’s it! I’ve had enough of you coming home like this. What kind of example are you setting for Fletcher? From now on, Jacob is walking you to and from school, and you’re not leaving this house!”
“Aunt Gretch-“
“I won’t hear any different! Your father would be disappointed in you!”
At that, Russel stomped up to his room. “We don’t know what he’d be disappointed in, because he’s not here!” he growled.
Fletcher was in his bed, the one nearest the window. He sat there, clutching the hat.
“When you’re big enough to wear that, we’re leaving,” Russel said, pointing at it.
“Where would we go?”
“We’re gonna find Dad,” he said, pulling out a couple alchemy books and a notebook. He turned on the bedside lamp and got to work. He tuned out Jacob’s protests of his mother’s new policy.
Russel let the status quo continue for a few months. However, he neglected his schoolwork in favor of alchemy, with the exception of the relevant science assignments. More than once Gretchen had to come retrieve confiscated alchemy texts that Russel read in his lap when he was supposed to be reading history or literature. “You’re too young for these things, I always told Nash that. But he insisted that you should learn it. Then in the next breath say that Fletcher shouldn’t. That brother of mine never could make up his mind!” she rambled on. “But you! You’re smarter than this!” she waved the book in his face. “If he’s gotten you started down this path, I won’t pull you off of it, it’s not my place. But there’s a time for everything! Work on your schoolwork at school, come home do your homework, and then crack these open if you want. From now on, I’m checking your homework before I hand these over. Understand?”
That night, Russel snuck into his aunt’s room and grabbed the books. He transmuted a box that looked like other books to keep them in.
As the months marched on, he sought out those boys again, now that his cousin Jacob was too wrapped up in his military academy studies to tail him. “Hey guys, he’s back!” one of them chided, and they all stepped up to surround him.
Russel smirked. “If I knew you guys would miss me this much, I would have come around sooner.” His hands were in his pants pockets.
“You’ve got some nerve running your mouth, Tringham.”
“I’m sorry, did I puncture your ego?”
“Shut up!” shouted a skinny boy. He had dirty, stringy hair and he sweated. The other boys stood back, looking surprised. Russel raised an eyebrow but wouldn’t let himself look fazed.
“I can’t take this anymore! I’m tired of people hassling us!”
“Chill out, man. It’s alri-“
“It’s not! This is our neighborhood, people have no right to come in here and tell us what to do!” He reached into his pocket.
“You look like a nervous one,” Russel smirked at him.
There was a glint of metal, followed quickly by a click of a blade. “He’s got a knife!” one of the boys shouted. But Russel dropped to one knee as he pulled one of his hands out of his pocket. At the same time, the kid slashed out with it. Russel planted a handkerchief on the ground, bearing a transmutation circle. But he wasn’t quite fast enough. He leaned to one side, away from the slash. Wood grew up from between the cracks in the sidewalk, and wrapped around the slashing arm, as well as shoving the rest of the boys some 5 feet away from him.
When the dust settled, the boy with the knife looked even more frightened, due to the fact that he couldn’t move, and suddenly the boy they’d picked on all this time was stronger. That same boy now looked up at him, eyes steady and cold, watching his next move. Blood trickled down his face where the knife had grazed his forehead over his right eye.
After a moment, Russel released him, and set the ground right again. The boys turned and ran. Russel sat down on the pavement and pressed a hand to his head. “Can’t go home bloody like this…” he said to himself. He transmuted some of the nearby grass into cloth, and pressed it to his forehead. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and scabbed over. He moved his hair to cover it, and went on his way after checking his shirt for blood.
That night, Russel was helping Fletcher get ready for bed, when the cut accidentally revealed itself. “Ah! What happened?”
“I beat ‘em, that’s what happened. And if you tell Gretchen or Jacob I got in a fight I’ll hide that hat. You’ll never find it.”
“I won’t tell.” Fletcher shook his head and clutched the hat closer to himself.
The cut healed, but left a scar. Enough time had passed that the scar would go unnoticed, but he kept it hidden by his hair nonetheless. Even he had forgotten about it, and had just fallen into the habit of doing his hair that way.
Two years passed, it was shortly after Russel’s 15th birthday. He’d shot up a few inches, and filled out quite nicely. Russel sat at the breakfast table, his nose in the newspaper, a cup of orange juice on the table, long forgotten as he read. It was yet another story about the Alchemist of the People, Edward Elric. He went to a drawer and got a pair of scissors, and clipped the story out, folding it and putting it in his shirt pocket. There was another, shorter one further in. That one met the same fate.
Jacob came down as he clipped the second one. “Ah, so the mystery of the missing newspaper articles in solved,” he said as he fastened his uniform jacket closed.
“I only cut ‘em out because Fletcher wants to keep ‘em,” he lied. He’d gotten good at that. He’d gotten enough swats on the bottom from Gretchen to know how to not get caught. “I’m glad Investigations has such a crack officer on staff now.” He smirked.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Let’s see how long it takes me to be head of the department.”
Fletcher came down then. “Brother, guess what? It fits now!” he smiled. “Mom’s hat fits!”
“That’s great. Now there’s less of a chance that you’ll lose it,” Russel said, patting his brother on the head.
“I don’t see why you think so much of that hat,” Gretchen said as she breezed in, her skirts swaying. “It’s old and ratty and it’s not even finished!”
Russel narrowed his eyes at her. “Let’s go, Fletcher.” Russel escorted his younger brother out of the house.
“Are we really going to go look for Dad now?” Fletcher asked as they reached the end of the block.
“Yeah, we are. I’ve been doing research on where Dad’s been seen last. There’s an old mining town out east. That’s where we’re headed.”
“When?”
“Today’s your last day at school, Fletcher. But don’t tell anyone. We’re just going to leave. That woman we live with doesn’t get it. Neither does Jacob. I’ve had enough of this. You’re smart enough that you’ll be able to study the rest of what you’ll learn in school on your own. And I can help you if you get stuck. I’ll take care of you. I’m strong enough now.”
“Is that why you…”
“Yeah. I’ll protect you now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“A-alright,” Fletcher nodded.
After Russel dropped Fletcher off at school, he went back home, went in his room and locked the door, as he’d always done. But instead of studying, he packed. His teachers had agreed that he was done, so he needed no longer to sit and be bored in the classroom. A couple extra pairs of pants, a couple shirts, a few changes of clothes for Fletcher. Notebooks, alchemy texts, pencils, money he’d saved from doing odd jobs around the neighborhood, enough for train fare for two, and a few frugal meals. The portfolio of articles was the last thing to go in. He’d mostly committed it all to memory, but he brought it anyway. He’d add the latest two on the train.
Then he wrote a note:
Dear Aunt Gretchen and Cousin Jacob,
I know you only took care of us because Mom and Dad asked you to. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Fletcher and I will be okay. I’ll take care of him. Don’t look for us, and no, I’m not in trouble with any of the people on the street. I’ve been planning this for a while. Maybe we’ll see each other again, and when you do, maybe we’ll be with Dad. In the meantime, keep your eye on the papers. You might see my name in there as the latest State Alchemist. -Russel
Then he went to his bedroom door. Jacob was gone at work, and Gretchen was hanging laundry in back. He walked out the front door, stopping in the pantry for some more food. The last thing he grabbed was a picture. It was himself, Fletcher, and their father. He took it out of the frame and stowed it.
He lingered outside of school for Fletcher to get out. He leaned against the wall, the bag over his shoulder. When the kids came out, Russel watched the crowd for the blond head in the green hat that more resembled a headband.
When he appeared, he smiled, but Russel could tell he was sad to be leaving his friends. But he pretended to not notice. “Any second thoughts?” Russel asked him as they rounded the corner to head to the train station.
Fletcher looked down, hugging his schoolbag close to him. Then he looked back up at his brother. He shook his head. “I want to see Dad again.”
Russel nodded. “That’s the spirit.” He put his hand on Fletcher’s opposite shoulder.
When they reached the station, Russel stepped up to the ticket window. “Two to Xenotime, please,” he said, pulling out his money.
“Not too many people headed out there, especially kids your age,” the elderly man smiled kindly on them.
Russel smirked, and replied, “We’ve got family there. Now how much do I owe you?”