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Van Hohenheim would tell anyone that would listen that his son, Edward Elric, was a being seemingly born of pure spite. Of course, no one took him too seriously, everybody knows that’s just how the terrible twos worked. And if it took Ed a bit longer than most to come out of this phase, well that was just bad luck. But the Elrics and Rockbells knew better. Edward Elric was indeed an unusually spiteful and grumpy child. His first word? No. His first phrase? Fuck no. Needless to say, his mother was not very happy (Pinako weezed with laughter over this vindication, after how Von had taught her children every swear they knew, she figured his comeuppance would have to come about this way). Unfortunately, even at 18 months old Ed was smart enough to realize the trouble his talking had caused, and displeased with the result of his talking steadfastly refused to say anything other than “no”, and people’s names for a full year after that. It was growing into a source of some worry for his parents, who would often try to coax him into saying new words or stringing ‘no’ with any of the names he knew. Until one morning while eating breakfast, after throwing his bottle across the room Ed stared straight into his dad’s eyes with a scowl and spoke.
“I do not like milk.”
Hohenheim could never quite decide if he was more relieved that Ed started talking more or baffled how the circumstances made Ed’s first full sentence even more spiteful than the benchmarks that preceded it.
As much as everyone tried to reassure the parents that Ed would grow out of it he never quite got past his tendency to drive those around him to distraction with irritation. Now this cannot be entirely blamed on Ed, he was only a child. In fact, once you examined the situation it was really quite simple. Ed was not very good with emotions or desires, his or anybody else’s. When faced with a situation where he had to verbalize, interpret, or otherwise acknowledge the existence of complicated emotional issues Ed got frustrated, because he didn’t know what to do. Ed was not very used to not knowing what to do. And when Ed got frustrated, he only knew of a few ways to express and release his frustration. Yelling, violence and spite. The first was the most common, since it both helped work out the tension involved, and got his frustration across. The second, was very rare since it always got him trouble or more frustration, seeing as there isn’t very many things a small child is capable of doing with violence. The last, was the one that Ed viewed as foolproof. While not nearly effective in solving whatever the initial issue was, it without fail seemed to make Ed feel better. Plus, it was sometimes funny. Someone makes his mom sad? Get dirt all over their clothes. Someone is unimpressed with his yelling and treats him like he’s stupid? Have an ‘accident’ and make them clean up the waste. Of course this is all a bit more verbose than three-year-old Ed’s thought process, no matter how smart he was. From Ed’s point of view things are a bit more unexplainable, and tend to happen in a hard to explain, not very linear manner.
All of this to say, when Edward Elric, consummate momma’s boy and spite incarnate realizes that his father left his mother to raise them all on her own, he has some emotions he’s just waiting to work out in an appropriate act of retaliation.
He gets his chance much sooner that he expected. At five years old, holding the beginning of a life long grudge, Ed discovers a book on alchemy in his father’s study. After reading through a little bit and working on one of the arrays, he and Al run out to show their mom. She smiles, and says path changing words to those young Elric brothers.
“You boys are so smart. Your dad used to show me this all the time and I never could understand hide nor tail of it. Now I just know you are going to grow up to be alchemists just like him.”
She perhaps couldn’t have chosen her words more poorly. For all that Ed loved to make his mom happy, he couldn’t help but hold just one thing against her. Her refusal to blame Ed’s father for leaving them would always bother Ed. So, just this once, he’d do something that would make her sad, because Edward Elric would never let himself be like his father.
“No! I don't want to be an alchemist!”