WHAT IS LOST
By Lady Addiction

FANDOM: FMA
PAIRINGS: None
WARNINGS: Gen, PG-13, spoilers for anime ending

DISCLAIMERS: Full Metal Alchemist is in no way mine and this fic earns no compensation other than readers' comments, but I'm having fun fiddling with its' characters.

AUTHOR NOTES: I can't remember the date of Munich—I think it was around the 1920s and that's the time for this drabble.

WWWWW

Hoenheim stepped inside his townhouse, grateful to be away from the midnight downpour that had followed him all way from the university. Slowly, he stripped away his drenched coat and hat, his wool suit having kept him mostly dry. Reaching up to massage his aching neck and temples, he felt for the nearby oil lamp by a nook beside the door and lit it. The house was thrown into shadows and gold-chased light as he made his way to the kitchens where a platter of cold meats and salad awaited him. The professor grimaced at the meagre offering and turned to the stairwell.

It was quiet inside, the sounds of the rain muffled into soft thumps and rumbles. Hoenheim frowned, wondering if Edward was already asleep. His son burned the midnight oil far more often than he did, so driven in his quest to find a way back to the world they left behind.

He climbed up the stairs, setting his feet as softly on the floor planks as to avoid the wood from creaking and moaning beneath his weight. The stairwell led to a short, narrow corridor with three closed doors. Light peeped from the bottom of the door closest to him, though he could hear nothing. Hoenheim shook his head, mildly exasperated that Edward seemed to have forgotten about his lamp again. He wondered what it was about genius that it all too often appear to replace common sense---he and Dante had each had their own idiotic episodes.

The knob turned easily underneath his hand and he peered in. His eldest son was asleep on his desk, his head buried in both arms. The older man sighed. Edward's position was awkward and undoubtedly aggravating his left shoulder and side where a metal-and-wood prothestic was connected.

As he had expected, books and papers were scattered everywhere, from tottering piles around his chair to the open volume beneath his arms. A small bed was pushed to the right side, at its feet a small wardrobe. The space between the bed and desk was occupied by a telescope borrowed from Hoenheim's colleague in the university's Physics faculty, set up to view the night skies overhead. Other curious items like a sextant and a rocket-ship model were placed against the wall underneath the window, kept away from clumsy feet and paper mountains.

Hoenheim bent to pick a couple of the papers up from the bare wooden floor. One depicted a sketch of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine—the man was truly ahead of his time, while the second was a page from Robert Goddard's "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes"—a radical treatise on rockets and rocket travel. Hoenheim turned to his son and felt something in him knot.

Was it too much to hope that Edward would decide to settle here with him? Why did his child persist in a goal too high, too impossible?

Or maybe…Hoenheim just didn't want to acknowledge that his last remaining family was driving himself to exhaustion to get away from him.

There before him was /his/ son, the last tangible evidence he had of those sweet, happy days with Trisha. One of the sons he had /abandoned/ when he had left to either find a cure or die. He knew what he had done was unforgivable, but the hope had burned quietly within.

That hope of reunion and love had driven him back to Riesenbul when all his options had been exhausted. He hadn't wanted to die without seeing Trisha, his one true wife, and their children once again. His steps had dragged as he had travelled, dreading seeing children who undoubtedly hated him for leaving them.

When he found Trisha had died, he wanted nothing more than to follow her. But his sons were there. /His/ sons!

Edward and Alphonse both took his breath away.

Alphonse, who had somehow been transmuted into a soul armour yet retaining the warm gentleness of his nature. His youngest child who smiled like sunshine, Trisha stamped in his face and behaviour. Just as Trisha would have, Alphonse had welcomed him back with hungry arms, eager to finally know this missing parent, willing to forgive and forget.

But it was Edward who caught his attention. Edward who had inherited his golden hair and golden eyes. Edward who was cocksure and bull-headed, unbending and unforgiving. Edward who reacted with unbounded fury and hatred at his arrival.

If Alphonse had all the earmarks of Trisha, Edward had all of /his/.

When he had passed from that world, Hoenheim had wished that he could have gotten to know his eldest as he had his youngest.

Then, like a misguided lightning bolt, Edward appeared at his doorstep, a naked, crumpled mass of bleeding, incomplete flesh. Expensive, revolutionary treatments had given his son back his health and his fake limbs, but it was clear that the boy had left something far more precious back in the other world.

Hoenheim couldn't count the hours he had spent by that hospital bed, elbows on his knees as he kept his eyes on his son. Here finally was an opportunity for him to learn more about Edward, here was his last chance.

But Edward was not interested in reconciliation. After awakening from a short coma, Edward had come to a world completely alien to him and he had reacted explosively. It had taken a few days of frank talk before his son could be convinced that staying with him was the best option.

It didn't take long before Hoenheim began to wish he son had chosen otherwise. In the time it had taken to construct the prostheses, Edward had been the most ludicrously demanding patient he had ever seen. The boy threw tantrums at the drop of the hat, using his remaining arm to fling food at him while screeching insults and bile. He would come to the room and constantly find Edward having managed to somehow drag his bandaged body out of the bed to curl up by the bookshelves, uncaring if his stumps bled. The younger man would often find ways to snub him, either overtly ignoring his presence or refusing to respond to his queries. By the end of it, Hoenheim had been contemplating sitting the boy on the street for a day to teach him a lesson.

He never did it though, for he saw the emotions that flickered with mercurial speed through those gold-flecked hazel eyes. There was rage and hatred there, yes, but there was also pain and frustration, embarrassment and defiance. Edward, without him, was more helpless than any child and it was clear to all that his son despised that state.

So Hoenheim watched carefully as the specialists fitted the metal braces and prostheses. He kept quiet as Edward stumbled and fell during physical therapy, determinedly using everything but his father's help to gain his feet. He did the chores, treating Edward's attempts to help with total nonchalance.

And Edward slowly acclimatized, learning German with rapid facility. With his returned mobility, he soon became Hoenheim's valued assistant, well-organized, capable, and efficient. Other young people became drawn to him, with his air of intensity and his brusque disdain of his peers.

And Hoenheim would see all this and felt /proud/. Proud of his son.

But the gulf between them remained. Edward buried himself in his research. He haunted the university library until many students took him for the assistant librarian. Bookshops, laboratories, museums, and lectures all filled up his son's schedule as Edward moved from one to another as fast as he could hobble. He talked with professors, corresponded with famous scientists, and argued with all of them.

The young daughters of other professors and Hoenheim's acquaintances were both fascinated and repelled by Edward, who was undoubtedly a well-formed, good-looking young man. But his son despised the flighty debutantes of their social circle and if his injuries weren't enough to drive them away, he purposely bored them with scientific gobbledygook, causing many a girl to eagerly switch to one of their more interested swains.

No, his son would rather spend the night fiddling at the university's Engineering workshops by himself than escort a rich, young beauty to the glittering Society balls and events.

Edward endured their presence as he endured /his/. The boy did the chores, he spoke at dinner, he worked alongside him, but Hoenheim was always aware of that accusation behind his child's eyes/Why weren't you there?/

To Edward, nothing mattered but finding a way to return, back to his friends. Hoenheim wondered whether his son would miss him if he finally succeeded.

He knew he would miss Edward.

Hoenheim cleaned up the books and papers before taking the somnolent figure in his arms. Carefully, he moved him to the small, cozy bed. Edward twitched and shifted but continued snoring, his face relaxed and free of stress and anger. The older man gently arranged him so that he lay flat on his back and took off the prosthetic arm and leg, laying them on top of the desk. Hoenheim tucked the blankets around him and bent to brush a kiss on his forehead. He took the gas lamp with him as he left and closed the door softly.

-FIN-