Title: Souls That Stand Create
Author: Tiamat's Child
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist Manga
Word Count: 545
Rating: K+
Characters/Pairing: Homunculus, Hohenheim
Summary: The Homunculus spends an afternoon alone.
Warnings: Spoilers for manga chapters 74 & 75. The Homunculus - meaning, Content some readers may find disturbing.
A/N: Written for fma_fic_contest at Livejournal, Prompt 34, "Homunculus PoV". It took first place.
Souls That Stand Create
If the warm yellow of the light slanting into the workshop was anything to go by, it was a beautiful day outside. A beautiful day. The Homunculus let himself swirl in his glass, shift and reform and settle, for no other reason than wanting the movement.
Too too tedious. Even his calculations were tedious today. He'd wanted to go with Van Hohenheim to the market, absurd wish for the present but the present was fleeting, nonetheless, he'd wanted it now. He didn't want to do calculations, even interesting ones. He wanted to be at the market with Hohenheim, and he wanted to make Hohenheim laugh with some witticism inspired by the price of eggplant (or possibly just the eggplant of eggplant, it was an excellent plant for wit), and he wanted hands.
He was feeling very keen on the prospect of hands today. He was going to have big hands, like Hohenheim's. Hohenheim had very broad, capable hands with pleasantly blunt fingertips. The Homunculus thought they created an aesthetic affect that was well worth cultivating. Strong, large hands, yes, he'd have those.
And he'd use them. He'd make full of use of them. It would be so interesting to have hands to touch. He was looking forward to it extremely. He wouldn't always be the one taken hold of then. He would be able to reach out, to pick up a glass pipette, to turn it about in his fingers, run the very tip of the fleshy pad of his fingertip around the edge, find out what Hohenheim found so fascinating about them. He could tug Hohenheim's hair, and make him turn to look.
Not that he wasn't perfectly capable of acquiring Hohenheim's attention now. He was better at it than anyone else. Hohenheim paid attention to him. Hohenheim did what he said. Hohenheim turned to him when he said his name, the name he'd given him. Hohenheim never found ways around the edges of what the Homunculus asked of him, because Hohenheim didn't want to. Hohenheim behaved better for him than he did for his supposed master, that old fool of an alchemist, who still thought that the Homunculus was nothing more than a tamed oracle in a flask, governed entirely by the alchemist's convenience and will.
Hohenheim knew better. Hohenheim knew that the Homunculus was a person, with a will and goals of his own. Hohenheim knew they were family.
Hohenheim knew, and when the Homunculus had hands he would turn him about, make him look, draw him closer and closer and closer still because Hohenheim was his blood and that meant they were family, and Hohenheim didn't have a spouse, or a home, or any other family at all. No parents, no brothers, no sisters, just the Homunculus. That was important. It would be more important by and by.
By and by was so frustrating. Homunculus wanted now.
He swirled, rotated, settled into a new shape within his flask. Patience might be a virtue to people like the alchemist, but to people like him and Hohenheim it was a necessity. Patience. Patience. Patience. Just a little longer, and he wouldn't need the flask. Just a little longer and he'd reach out to Hohenheim, take him by the hand, and raise him up.