ambassador of the foolish
Hohenheim had thought he'd seen enough things in his day.
Apparently, that was not the case.
He blinked once his host had finished. He sat in the middle of a traditional Xingese room, wrapped in a blanket with tiny pandas on bamboo trees on it, holding a hot cup of – cocoa tea? didn't taste like tea, Xu Han had said they made it using milk – with the smiling man at the other end of the short table.
(Now, Hohenheim didn't know what the man found so funny about his entire nation having its limbs cut off and then regrown shorter with 'magic' for 50 generations while being slaves under their eastern neighbours, and that was probably what disturbed him most of all. Maybe Han just had an...unusual...sense of humour? Maybe he was secretly trying not to cry?
...Hohenheim looked suspiciously at the drink in his hands. Should he have declined it? What was it made of, again?)
"So," Han started, startling Hohenheim, "can you do something about it?"
Hohenheim blinked. Maybe the making of the Philosopher's Stone had damaged his brain after all, and he was going to have to live with only half of it until the planet hit a star and everything ended or something (which was an immensely fun future to look forward to), but he had no fucking idea what this man expected him to do.
"You're asking me if I can somehow make an entire nation taller?"
"Indeed, I am."
"...how many of you are there?"
"Currently, around twenty-five million, I think, and growing fast," Han said, puffing out his chest, proud smile on his face.
Hohenheim wanted to die.
Mostly because he really didn't have anything better to do aside from reconciling with the voices in his head (most of which had thankfully decided to give him the silent treatment so that he could use the half-brain that he had left at least somewhat effectively) and plotting an anti-conspiracy (for the dwarf had too much megalomania to be satisfied with just being immortal, the next step was probably becoming God or something) was something he could do in his spare time.
Plus, reinventing alchemy was bound to be way more fun.
"...fine, but it's going to take a while."
"I can wait, and you can stay here while you're at it; I'll help you with whatever I can."
Hohenheim suddenly realised that he now had a different definition of 'a while' than, like, every other person on the continent.
"I mean, it probably won't even be in your lifetime."
"My son's, then?"
"...Probably not even then."
"My son's son's?"
Hohenheim really didn't want to break his heart. (That, and he had already been shown the family's prized sword-collection.)
"...Yeah, I could make it work."
Han beamed at him. "Wonderful! The people of Xing shall have many gifts for you when you are done...What should I tell them? How is our saviour to be called?"
Hohenheim looked around, trying to figure out an inconspicuous enough alias. He glanced upon a trade-route map and got his answer. "...West. Tell them the Man from the West gave them their cure."
"Wonderful! Sage of the West it is!"
It was going to be a long eternity.
Hohenheim left Xing with four types of luggage:
- even more guilt and anxiety, which he didn't even think was possible for him to achieve, but there you go; guilt, because he'd finished the project two generations late, after numerous...unsuccessful...attempts and was pretty sure old Han's spirit would be cursing him until his own death (blessed be the day it cometh); anxiety, because he'd gotten drunk on a banquet and had an amicable chat with the Royal Advisor (who, surprisingly, hated his guts and thought him to be a monster because his chi was…weird) and given him a step-by-step guide to making a nation-wide Philosopher's Stone and had thus been so severely worried he'd been practically shaking all the way through the desert, until he'd remembered Jin's thoughtful pause and then definite dismissal ("Who would then take care of the land, though? Or fight for the country? Or take care of the paperwork? We really have no men to spare for such a thing. No, this is a very foolish thing to do; there must be much more practical ways to achieve immortality. You Westerners were just too simple-minded to think of them.") and sighed, because the Xingese's pride was bigger than Xing itself, so he had nothing to worry about (or so he liked to believe);
- gifts from his students/various people that had benefited from his work, including, but not limited two: two complete sets of armour (apparently, they were emptying out the royal museum and needed somewhere to dump them anyway), an abundance of Xingese texts on all matter of topics ranging from Aesthetics to Zippers (a really cool invention he was definitely taking to other lands; it had revolutionised his whole life), more cutlery and crockery than he would ever (he hoped) need, some very intricate paintings which were bound to cost a lot more 500 years from now (and he was going to need an awful lot of money if he was going to live to the end of economics itself), enough herbs and spices for all the cooking he'd probably do in the next five decades, as well as an assortment of semi-precious stones (the 'magic' properties of which he'd yet to investigate); needless to say, the procession behind him before the border towns, whose economies he'd boosted so much they'd named him a patron saint of the whole area, had been well above a kilometre long;
- half a million new friends, all hell-bent on revenge; it was good that he had them, too, since they pretty much made up for the half of a brain he was now certain he'd lost;
- some practical stuff he'd bought for his vacation to Aerugo – sunscreen, a bath towel, swimwear, and, of course, his scheming tools (a ruler, a protractor, a divider, 50 rubber pencils and more paper than one would need in a lifetime); he had an evil gas-dwarf's plans to usurp, after all.
It was going to be a fine holiday.
It was at the precise moment when he walked into his hotel room that Hohenheim admitted to himself that the intuitive part of his brain had, unfortunately, resided in the half of it he'd lost; Aerugo was definitely not like on the leaflets.
He'd known the country's economy had been failing somewhat ever since the radical democrats had taken over more than fifty years ago, but it was also said that the fairness of the new system had finally ensured ethnical peace and social prosperity, with policies benefiting not just the majority, but also the minorities.
Judging by the size of the slums, though, as well as by the general depressive air of everyone he encountered in the capital, the poor upkeep of the monuments, the litter in the streets, the numerous vandalised buildings, as well as a thousand other tiny little details (such as the pair of drug dealers beating what looked like a twelve-year-old next to the hotel), the country didn't seem to be doing too well.
The most obvious sign for Hohenheim, however, was what happened once he exited his hotel for the first time on the day after he arrived. As he was walking down the street, he sensed a multitude of people behind himself, heels clicking, determined sighs, and so he turned around to see what the problem was–
–only to be immediately surrounded by a flock of overtly painted (but too little dressed; really, it was summer, but he should not be able to glimpse the hairs up–) women who looked at him like the second coming of Leto. They started cooing and rubbing themselves into him, trying to latch on, probably hoping he was preparing to fly off and away from this hellish country and take them with him (and resolve all of their daddy issues).
What happened in the moment after that, and in the next forty-eight hours had been too fast for Hohenheim's half-brain to process correctly, but it came down to his being arrested for public indecency, being put in a cell with a couple of revolutionaries who wanted the royal line reinstated, being dragged out with them once they escaped, going to their secret meeting with their organisation where they planned how they were going to overthrow the government, unwittingly becoming engrossed in their cause, being on the infiltration frontline for the coup d'etat, having a nice, long chat with the democratic oligarchs at the top before they were offed by some of his new friends, kissing the new king's boots, and then having the time of his life at the twenty-four-hour rave fe(a)st that followed.
As he sat in the lake house which His Majesty had given him the following day, drawing up plans for stopping Homunculus, he distinctly wondered if his penchant for becoming involved in matters of national importance was genetic, hoped it was not, and then surmised that it didn't really matter, seeing as he would never have kids, under any circumstances, even if it did mean abstaining until the rest of his life.
(...on second thought, maybe he should look into alchemically stopping impregnation, because the part of him that could control these urges could have gone down the drain, too. He hadn't been tempted yet simply because he'd always managed to stay engrossed in his research /or national conspiracy/ of the moment, but who knew...)
When Hohenheim first met Pinako, he was intrigued – he'd never met someone who could cuss in three different languages with perfect enunciation while holding a wrench between their teeth before.
When Hohenheim first saw Pinako drink, he was terrified – the human body was not supposed to be able to handle such copious amounts of alcohol, not without genetic engineering (and he didn't see that coming in the next couple of hundred years – but then again, the intuitive part of his brain had fizzled out, what did he know?).
When Pinako tried to hit on him afterwards, he arched an eyebrow, eyeing the dumbstruck fellow that looked at them like someone had just stepped on his favourite plushie. "Pinako, forgive me for this, but I really do think you need more of a doormat-kind of guy. I'm not likely to stay here for very long, so I can't be your servant until the day you die."
Pinako's mouth twisted in a devilish smirk and she eyed him teasingly. "What makes you think you are going to be outliving me?"
Hohenheim opened his mouth to say he'd have reason to be worried if he didn't, but thought better of it. "Yeah, you're right. Whatever ability I possessed of predicting the future, it was probably in the half of my brain that I lost nearly a millennium ago, so..."
Pinako stared at him for a few very intense minutes and then shook her head and started laughing her ass off. "You're crazy. Probably right, too – you don't seem too much like my type."
She eyed the guy with the ruined plushie with a coy smile and started walking towards him. A few of Hohenheim's head-flatmates were betting on whether the guy was going to pass out from a heat stroke (even though it was two in the morning) due to how unhealthily red his face had become. He didn't, and Hohenheim was happy to note that his headaches following after a rise in the volume of the incessant conversation in his head were becoming less severe.
He felt something pulling on his sleeve and looked down at the small girl smiling shyly at him.
"Mister, would you come and dance with me?"
He smiled back before he could help himself.
"Sure."
Unfortunately, it appeared that the part of his brain that held most of his emotional intelligence had also resided in the half he'd lost because Hohenheim had no idea how to behave around his own kids.
(He'd checked and, thankfully, they had been born with whole brains and the appropriate amount of voices in them. However, Edward was showing signs of early puberty already – even as a three-year-old he teased his father about his weird questions and reported to him, daily, whether it was 'Ed', 'Wa', or 'Ard' /he'd once struggled to say only 'Rd' for the sake of consistency for fifteen minutes straight before Hohenheim had asked him to stop that because if he continued to be attacked with such cuteness Lord knew he would not be able to leave/ speaking to him; Alphonse, meanwhile, had apparently taken it upon himself to be the best baby on this side of the continent, which Hohenheim was sure to evolve into him being best kid, best teenager, best person, and, eventually, first pre-humously appointed angel.)
He sometimes didn't know how to behave around Trisha, either (mostly because he was still amazed that she even went for him, given his, ah, proficiency, in matters of the heart), but she seemed to have telepathic skills which far surpassed whatever supernatural abilities being a Philosopher's Stone had to offer, because she somehow always knew exactly what went on in his head.
(Or maybe the dementia had finally set in and he was losing whatever cognitive ability he had left and was simply predictable. In either case, she was extraordinary, and nothing could convince him of the opposite.)
Somehow, though, they made it work, even if he could only spare a while, because the world really needed to be saved and though he really didn't want to be the one to do it he really had to.
(All the while hoping he'd waste enough of his fuel to be able to live the end of his days with her. With the kids, of course, whenever they cared to visit /if they didn't end up hating him too much for all of this, that is/.)
Hohenheim sighed as he looked at the sleeping boys in the hospital.
(He'd really hoped it wasn't genetic, but apparently the 'saving the nation' gene was inherited along with the guilt-complex. Ah, well. Too late to do anything about it, now.)
He recognised how very much in bad taste it was to leave them /forever/ for the second time while they were sleeping, but he really didn't want to have to face them. He still thought of the cute toddlers whenever he looked at their faces (even when Edward was shouting profanities at him he couldn't help but gush inwardly; if he told him that, however, he would not reach Resembool alive) and leaving them behind, confused and saddened again would–
–actually, did he even have any heart left to be broken, at this point?
(It didn't matter, he'd always been, and would continue to be for the short period of his life left, a wuss.)
As he stood up and walked to the door, however, a low grumble (which was the polite version of what he could have received, he later reasoned, if not for Al's presence in the room) made him turn around to a tired, but unmistakably still angry (how he kept a twenty-four-hour constant supply of rage was beyond Hohenheim, but then again, he didn't have many emotions left to feel) Edward.
"What, not even going to say goodbye again?"
Hohenheim shrugged. "I honestly thought you'd rather I didn't wake you up."
Ed looked away from him, seemingly in an attempt to drill a hole in the wall. "Al might want to hear it."
"Wake him up, then."
Stubborn silence.
Hohenheim suddenly realised this was probably the closest he'd get to an 'I love you' from Edward ever again (because he was a hundred percent certain the boy didn't remember the first time he'd told him that, when he'd been two years old and still capable of smiling at him, and how he'd had to hug him instantly because he didn't want his son, at least, to think he was a wuss) and chuckled, suddenly, careful not to wake up Al (who was probably on so much medication that not even jumping on him would do so, but still, decency).
Ed switched back to drilling holes in his eyes again.
Hohenheim just smiled at him.
"Take care, both of you. I'd say for me, but you'd probably just do the opposite, so please, do it for your mother."
"Where are you going?"
"Home, to her."
Ed swallowed and Hohenheim could have sworn he was holding back tears.
"You know," he said, smiling at the boy, feeling his own eyes fill again, "it's okay to be a wuss and cry sometimes. Not while you're saving humanity, obviously, but it's okay after, and it's okay before. Really."
Ed looked at him strangely. "What, is this your idea of a father-son heart-to-heart with the inevitable 'wise counsel from the elder'?"
"Never had a father; it's mostly why I just winged it and failed horribly. The world needed saving, though. Unfortunately."
"Unfortunately," Ed replied, something like a smirk starting to appear on his lips.
(Hohenheim was sad there was nobody in his head anymore – here was his achievement of the century and there was nobody left to congratulate him.)
"Do me a favour and hug mom from me, will you?"
"Will do, if you promise to do the same to Al for me."
Ed rolled his eyes. "Deal."
"Deal," then he turned around again, but before walking out of the door, in a sudden burst of courage, took a few springing steps, reached Ed's bed (where he was totally not wiping at his eyes), ruffled his hair in a few broad strokes, and then promptly bailed.
(When Al woke up, his brother was still looking, transfixed, at the wall opposite, muttering low curses under his breath.)
A/N: Happy Orthodox Easter to whoever celebrates it; please review, it honestly makes my day. :)