A/N: So DezoPenguin finally managed to poke me enough to get me to promise to begin posting my GrimGrimoire fiction to this site. As a result, I blame him entirely for all of it, especially since if it weren't for him I wouldn't get any ideas to write at all! This story came about because I wanted to give him a cute birthday gift and as he's my honorary big brother, I thought a family fic would be best to start off with all the posting. Here you go, Dezo, and happy birthday!
"Come on, Father! Please?" Her voice was approaching a whine, and although it grated her own ears, she was determined to get her way.
The man's already-arched eyebrow twitched and she could see that he was doing his best to resist a smile. "I truly don't think it would be a good idea. It doesn't seem like it would be particularly conducive to our health, Tahlea."
Tahlea Grande sighed in frustration, wondering why her father had to be so stubborn. "But it's tasty! I tried it myself and it was very good! I admit it's a bit unconventional, but aren't you the one that taught me that it was important to always experiment and try new things? That the results of our failures could be just as informative as a success because we can see what we did right, what we did wrong, and then come to learn more in that way?" She cleared her throat and did her best imitation of the senior alchemist's cultured voice, "'The extent of our current knowledge is but a mere fraction of the whole that exists all around us, Tahlea. We must always endeavor to expand toward new horizons, for it is in that way that we progress forward.' This is an expansion toward new tastes!"
Chartreuse sighed, shaking his head and wondering when was it that his daughter had become so cunning when it came to try and trick him into agreeing to one of her 'ideas'. "I did say so, but that is with regards to Alchemy, not culinary enterprises!"
"Please, Father! One bite and I won't bother you anymore. Please?" The homunculus went for the Sorcery option and pouted pitifully, widening her red eyes and cheering internally as they watered a bit from the cold air that hit them, which she knew would give her a greater edge.
This time he couldn't help but give in to her puppy-dog eyes with another sigh, resigning himself to his fate as he nodded in defeat. "Very well. I'll try your pudding."
She immediately squealed and impulsively encircled her father in a huge hug, jumping in place and making them both vibrate with her excitement. "Thank you, Father!"
"And in the end, I managed to convince you to try my Blob pudding!" Tahlea beamed as she chatted animatedly, waving her mug around and completely oblivious to the fact that she'd just spilled a quarter of her tea as a result of that. "Although now that I think about it, I really don't understand why I ever thought it was a good idea in the first place to use an acidic Blob for something sweet. The pudding was good, but overall it was a very strange dream."
Chartreuse chuckled at his daughter's enthusiasm, wondering not for the first time where exactly she had gotten that vivacious imagination from. He himself had had a number of fairly absurd dreams over the years, but he didn't recall ever having one in which Alchemy components and familiars were used as a cooking base for desserts!
It was still surprising to him to be able to be so happy just by being with someone else. Chartreuse was not a man given to sentimentality, and for most of his life he'd lived in relatively antisocial fashion out of his own free will. He'd immersed himself in the pursuit of knowledge, wanting to come to understand the laws that governed the world in depth. He had sought to pierce into Heaven itself, to come to know the mind of God and understand the Truth.
For the sake of that, he'd invested decades of his life into his research on homunculi, hoping that he'd be able to, as Tahlea had quoted him in her dream, expand on what facts they possessed, to create new theories and prove or disprove them. Either way he'd learn and so his passion would always continue to be fueled; and it had been a most sweet success when Amoretta Virgine (his very first Ultimate Homunculus)'s creation had come to fruition and she'd awoken to the world as (what he'd thought had been) a complete being. He had been truly ecstatic with this, and although she had not provided the heavenly knowledge he'd hoped to obtain from her, he'd still learned much from all his work to make her, and he could learn much more still. So many new theories had taken the place of the old ones that he scarcely had time to feel disappointed by the fact that Amoretta had been a tabula rasa, for his mind was ever-brimming with new ideas. That he could easily (for a definition of 'easy', at least) access God's secrets wouldn't particularly make sense either, and this failure did not mean he had to give up the project anyway. He would simply have to continue it in a more conventional way, and so he had turned to his research once more, eager to begin anew.
He grimaced as he recalled this, frowning at his own ignorance at the time. How a man so dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and whose entire passions revolved around the study of the natural laws of the world had been so utterly blind for so long was almost incomprehensible to him. And he'd lived it! That he had ignored and dismissed love as an irrelevancy to his studies was a most grievous oversight, and he could feel his cheeks color with a bit of shame even now.
He had come to this understanding much too late to be able to do anything for Amoretta. He had not loved her as he should have, and so she'd found someone that could do so in his stead. He was thankful to Lillet Blan for having been able to step in where he had failed disastrously, and for providing the homunculus with the kind of life he had been supposed to but had not. It was truly a wonder that –
"Are you all right, Father?" Tahlea's soft voice pulled him out of his morose thoughts, "You've been very quiet this morning, and you're looking a bit sad. Is there anything I can help you with?"
The leonine man smiled at her and nodded, taking a sip of tea before answering her query. "I'm fine, Tahlea. I…got lost in thoughts of your sister."
"Oh." The homunculus frowned slightly at this. "I know things are not completely well between the two of you, but you know she has forgiven you, right?" Her frown vanished and she gave him an encouraging smile instead, reaching across the table to take his paws in her hands. "It's not going to be easy or immediate, but I'm sure that you'll be able to repair your relationship if you give it time. She's already begun to see how much you've changed or else she wouldn't have even given you that much!"
Then her smile turned into an impish grin and she winked at him, a clear sign that she was about to make a joke he'd probably have taken too seriously if she hadn't done that. "And besides, even if your relationship with her is never quite like what yours with mine is, parents in general don't act the same with all their children right? I don't think it's presumptuous of me to say that I'm your favorite!"
At this, Chartreuse couldn't help but laugh. It was amazing to him just how much of a great comfort Tahlea was to him. Managing emotions and dealing with their spectrum was a daunting task for someone that had gone most of his life ignoring them completely, and now that he was aware of his shortcomings in this regard he tended to err a bit on the side of hesitance. He doubted himself more than he'd been used to, and it was something of a struggle to not dwell on his failures when it came to this specific field of human interaction.
But he didn't have to overcome this alone. Now he had someone that he could rely and depend on, and it was an incredible thing to be able to have that. For too long I'd prided myself on being someone that did not need anyone, he thought to himself as he continued laughing, How very foolish of me.
"It's good to see you laugh, and so early in the morning, too!" the young homunculus chirped happily, grinning at having managed to lift the alchemist's spirits. "You really should hurry, though, Father. We have a busy day ahead of us, and you promised me that you'd allow me to proceed into the next step of my studies if I managed to successfully complete the creation of the acidic Blobs from scratch." She giggled as a thought crossed her mind. "Maybe that's what prompted my dream!"
Chartreuse said nothing, merely nodded and ate as he listened intently to Tahlea when the girl once again began to talk to him animatedly as she did every morning at breakfast time. It was part of the routine that they'd established, and he was happy that she'd insisted on this when she'd been a month old. It was necessary, she'd said, 'To ensure that you eat at least once a day!' as she put her foot down with a glare. She'd rarely ever made that kind of expression at him, and he knew this was fueled by her concern for his well-being, so he had relented and it had come to be one of his favorite parts of the day.
He had been right when he'd told Lillet, during the Mage Consul's first meeting with his daughter, that Tahlea would help him get closer to holy power. But it was not in the way that he would have meant it years before, when he'd yet to realize the error of his ways. The lessons Tahlea was imparting on him were those of love, caring, compassion, and kindness, things that he'd scarcely known in their true meaning before. These were, perhaps, more important than all the lessons he'd absorbed as a boy, and that he himself had given later in the halls of a classroom to young minds eager to learn as he once had.
They were lessons in what it meant to be human. And it was with great delight that Chartreuse would delve into them, not being afraid of failure for there would undoubtedly be much of that, but with his head held high and holding firmly onto the hand of the one that he could now, still in wonder, call his family.