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The first sign came when Adelaide was young, when her younger brother was still learning how to pronounce her name. Adelaide was just a little too hard for someone who barely had a grasp of language to begin with, and so of course Alphonse ended up giving up halfway through the name and calling his older sister "Ad" instead.
What no one expected was for the name for stick, and even less for Adelaide to insist people call her that instead of her full name. Not even Addie. Ad.
It's because she's so attached to her younger brother, everyone said. She just likes using the name he gave her. No one bothered to point out that even Al was corrected when he got old enough to pronounce her full name. Her name was Ad, and everyone decided to leave it at that.
It was easier that way.
The second sign came shortly after their mother's funeral, when she stood glaring at her reflection and gripping the sink until her knuckles turned white.
She looked like her mother and it hurt.
She couldn't bear the thought of cutting it off, not when her mom had always said how much she loved Ad's pretty long hair. But even with her golden eyes, every time she caught the sight of herself in the mirror, her heart leaped in hope for a second. Because it was that shade of brown hair, maybe—
Only to be heartbroken again every time Ad realized it was only her own reflection. Again.
So instead of cutting it, she opted for a box of bleach in the late hours of the night, the best time to make drastic changes to one's hair, of course. She sat and let Al comb it through her hair and told herself that when she got up and looked in the mirror, she'd be a different person. A person at least a few steps further away from the pain that felt like it was ripping her apart.
And when she washed the remnants of bleach out of her hair and looked in the mirror, she was someone new. Someone stronger. Someone who looked a little more like they were related to Al. Someone who looked a little more like Hohenheim. And she found herself thinking that as much as she hated That Man, she preferred to look a little more like him than like her mom.
She couldn't explain why.
The third sign came when Ad and Al met Izumi and she asked the innocuous question, "What happened to your boys' parents?"
It was an ordinary question. A question that normally would have left Ad feeling like she had been slammed against the ground, but for once, it left her feeling giddy and breathless, even as Pinako corrected the woman. She had been mistaken for a boy. A stranger had looked at her and thought she was the same as Al.
Something about that was downright exciting, like she had managed to win at a game she hadn't realized she was playing.
She still couldn't explain why.
The fourth sign came screamed out in a dark night.
Why the hell did Truth need to take another toll from Ad when she had already been paying her entire life? What more did she have to give when the entire world somehow felt wrong? Why did she have to give up a mother, a brother, a leg when she had already given all of herself and never gotten anything in return for it?
There was no such thing as equivalence in a world where people were forced to be someone they weren't, Ad decided.
The fifth sign came in the middle of a different dark night. Ad was lying awake, trying to figure out when everything had somehow gone so horribly wrong.
Al was also awake, but for different reasons. Reasons neither of them entirely wanted to face.
"Hey, Al?"
"Hm?"
"Are you still a boy?"
There was a pause and a metallic creaking like Al was readjusting. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Ad sighed and frowned. She wanted to roll over, but it was hard with half the limbs she was used to. She wanted to look over at her brother, but it was hard when she knew she wouldn't see the face she had always seen. "I mean, now you don't have... you know... The boy parts. And that's what people say makes a boy a... boy. So. Are you still a boy?"
"Oh, that," Al said, and he sounded almost relieved. "I don't know. I don't really care, I guess."
"You don't care?" Ad hissed, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
"Not really. Why, would you?"
Ad took a moment to think about what it would be like if their roles were reversed, if she had been the one to wake up and realize there was just an empty gaping hole where her body was supposed to be. If she had woken up in a body that was metallic and hard and sharp lines and basically the opposite of what everyone expected of her. And it hurt to think that this thing she saw as a curse for Al would be a relief for her. Why couldn't she have been the one in Al's place instead?
"I think I'd be relieved," Ad whispered. "Being a girl is hard."
"I'd trade if I could," Al said, as if he could sense her thoughts. "I don't think I'd mind being a girl that much."
"How?"
"I don't know. It's like... It's like what we learned on Yock Island, I guess," Al said, working his way through the words slowly. "All is one and one is all. I have everything inside me, girl and boy. My soul isn't bound by those limitations, only my body is. Once, a really long time ago, the atoms that make up my body were the atoms of a girl's body. I'm a soul of limitless potential. I'm just... me. Not boy or girl. Just... Al."
Ad sat and thought on that, Al's words rattling through her head.
Once, a really long time ago, the atoms that make up my body were the atoms of a boy's body.
There was something comforting to that, but she couldn't explain why it was comforting in the first place. Why did it matter if the atoms in her body could still remember what it had been like to be a boy once?
"Right, Ad?" Al said, suddenly unsure in the silence. "Don't you feel like you're equally part boy and part girl?"
She sat with the question for a long minute, staring up at the ceiling. How did one even know what their soul was supposed to feel like, anyway? She had never really taken the time to think about what she felt like, only what everyone had told her she was supposed to be. And how that felt wrong somehow.
Ad pictured herself growing up, becoming an adult woman and marrying a man, being a mom and wearing a dress around the house like her mom had, and... Something about the image couldn't form. She couldn't see what she would look like. She couldn't picture herself in this future that everyone said she should be reaching for.
Then (just out of scientific curiosity, she told herself), she pictured herself as an adult man.
And it was almost startlingly easy how quickly the image came to her, how she could picture herself with a scruffy chin sitting in a study of books like her dad and pouring over alchemy notes. She could suddenly picture herself as a dad where she couldn't as a mom, throwing kids over his shoulders and laughing with the deep laugh of a man. The image was so real and clear that she found herself almost reaching out to touch it, as if this adult man could somehow rip her out of her life and save her from this destiny she'd never asked for.
Don't you feel like you're equally part boy and part girl?
"...No," Ad breathed. "No, I'm not." And it's an epiphany for her.
No, it's an epiphany for him.
The sixth sign came when Ad felt completely hopeless. He knew he was more boy than girl, that his soul did have some sort of identity tied to it, unlike Al, but he didn't know what to do about that. Somehow, he and his brother were both in the wrong bodies and it was all his fault and he didn't know how to fix it and the world was a giant cage and there was no way out, no way out, no way out—
And then the man with dark hair showed up.
"Ed, huh?" the man said, mishearing the nickname, and there was suddenly a spark in the pit of Ad's belly that he hadn't felt before. "What's that short for, Edward?"
"Yes," Ed breathed, looking up with a fire he had thought died long ago.