note: so the title was a last-minute decision and is subject to change because frankly, I'm not too fond of it. however, I love Los Campesinos! and the title fits, so why not? This is going to end up with two or three chapters and is not HeiEd. Sorry. The first chapter's pretty neutral, though.
edit: I've gone through and fixed some typos, changed the type of secondary school to a more science-geared version. Nothing too major, but little things that were bugging me.
Despite what it may have seemed to some, Alfons Heiderich was never in want of money. Funding, sure – materials for rockets were expensive and Dr Oberth's work was still theoretical at best – but never money. He was surprised that his roommate didn't wonder. He never worked, after all (aside from working on rockets, that is, but Ed knew very well that he earned no pay from that). What's more, he had a car. Had being the operative word (as Ed had wrecked it, predictably). It hadn't even been a particularly bad car, and surely that was a clue. After all, he'd heard of other Junker sons having cars whose doors were wired shut and that would stall in the middle of the street. However, they probably hadn't inherited all of their father's fortune (his father was a second son, and, as primogeniture dictated, he had had to earn most of his money, but... it was still more than any other young man his age, he was sure). For god's sake, he was seventeen and renting an apartment with a guy who was quite probably insane (due to a favour from the man's father, who reminded him too much of his own father to deny).
Perhaps it was for the best. He didn't particularly want to talk about his past, before Munich and before Edward.
It had been happy enough, at first. A manor in the countryside with his mother, father, brother, and even servants. His older brother had been somewhat condescending at times, but the two almost always got along quite well. When they didn't, Alfons would just spend more time with his friends amongst the servants (his father was more amused at his youngest son's lack of elitism than angry). His mother was doting and his father gave the boys everything that they could want. However, due to Junker tradition, he felt inclined to serve in what would become known as the Great War: the greatest tragedy to befall Germany in Alfons's opinion.
Not because of the loss of national pride and dignity, increase of national debt, and rapid inflation. While that was all rather annoying, what Alfons really loathed about the war was that his father came home in a casket.
...They were amongst the lucky ones, apparently.
The media had said that they were doing so well! Everyone was certain that Germany would win, and that the "boys" would come home within a month... but they kept enlisting more and more soldiers and more and more people Alfons knew from parties and whatnot were leaving.
His father hadn't even been a footsoldier! He had been a general! Generals weren't supposed to die in battle! Not against France of all countries!
And then... his brother had gone off. Not even to fight, but because Alfons had fallen ill, and Eduard had taken it upon himself to be the man of the family.
He never came back, and they never found his body.
His mother was absolutely distraught, and, when the Spanish Influenza outbreak occurred, Alfons knew that she wouldn't make it through it. She was young (at least, young enough to be affected by it), and, honestly, Alfons had been the only one that was keeping her going.
It was 1919. Alfons was thirteen years old.
His uncle arranged for him to attend an Oberrealschule in Munich. He'd stay with him and his family. He hadn't wanted to move, but his uncle made it quite clear: he either went to the Oberrealschule in Munich or he'd end up in an orphanage. Of course, Alfons's uncle had had no intention of actually sending his nephew off to an orphanage, but an empty threat never hurt...
Alfons had agreed on one condition: Wilhelmine could come along. Wilhelmine was the daughter of Alfons's old nurse – she had caught the influenza from his mother and died even before her. Wilhelmine's father had been a doctor who had been called off in the war and never returned (not even in a casket; it made Alfons realise that his family really was one of the lucky ones).
His uncle had been hesitant, but Alfons was adamant: Wilhelmine went with him or he didn't go at all.
There was no getting around it.
The girl was immensely grateful for Alfons's help, and promised his uncle that she could help the maids – there was no reason to have someone wait on her, when she was a common girl living in a house full of Junkers. She was quick to help, and was surprised when his uncle offered to put her into a Realgymnasium. "It'd be a shame for such a bright girl to end up a personal maid," he'd said. (It had really been due to the prompting of the man's wife, but he hadn't told the girl that). Wilhelmine studied to become a doctor, like her father. It wasn't exactly socially acceptable, but, considering all that had happened to her, it wasn't surprising – at least not to Alfons.
His uncle hadn't died in the war, though he'd fought. Alfons couldn't help but feel like that was slightly unfair; why did his father have to die while his uncle lived?
The things that his uncle had seen, however, had greatly changed the man. Granted, Alfons didn't remember much from before the war – he'd been a small child, after all – but he wasn't the same. He was distant and standoffish, and spent the majority of his time locked in his study.
Alfons's aunt, therefore, had total control of the household, which meant a tremendous amount of stress. Alfons wasn't entirely sure how she handled it – especially when she always managed to have a smile on her face.
From an early age, Alfons had been interested in space. The stars at night were beautiful from his country estate, and, sometimes, Munich was dark enough at night to get a decent look at some of the stars with a homemade telescope. A publication from a Romanian engineer caught his attention – the man claimed that rockets were the way to get to the moon! Rockets! Alfons managed to push his way through Oberrealschule early – and he passed the Abitur without any trouble. After that, he went to study in Romania with Dr. Oberth.
Oberth... wasn't quite what Alfons expected. He'd assumed, for some reason, that the doctor would be an outgoing, enthusiastic person, but he was rather pessimistic and critical. However, his intelligence was far more astounding than Alfons had bargained for.
Another person studying with Dr. Oberth proved himself to be exceedingly intelligent, and, as such, caught Alfons's attention.
His name was Edward Elric... and, if Alfons wasn't wrong, he was related to his old professor Elric. When asked, Edward's reaction left no doubt in Alfons's mind that he was right. He just wondered why the boy seemed to hate his father so much. Alfons had loved his own father, and Wilhelmine had loved hers, just as his cousins loved theirs. It was strange, he thought, that someone could hate their own father.
After speaking to Edward a few times, however, it became clear to Alfons that the other teen wasn't quite right in the head. He spoke of another world, another life. He wanted to get back to his world, as he called it, and believed that Oberth's intelligence and theories of rocket-powered space travel was the way to accomplish it. He'd often babble to Alfons about the people he knew in this world of his – what was unnerving was that the people Edward described seemed to be people that he met every day.
This Winry of his (just a friend, he said, which confused Alfons to no end – she was fictional, it didn't matter if she were just a friend) reminded him very much of Wilhelmine: smart, caring, pretty, and incredibly headstrong. He described a brigadier general (or, rather, a lieutenant colonel in his life) who reminded him of a police officer who patrolled his new neighbourhood. The brigadier general's wife seemed to be the very same flower shop keeper who rented him his apartment. And his brother... Edward's brother seemed to be very much like Alfons himself. In fact, he wondered if it wasn't merely transference at all. It was all very bizarre, and Alfons had to half-wonder if Edward were telling the truth, as he so adamantly claimed to be.
However, he found himself drawn to Edward. Perhaps it was because he was reminded of his own brother, who had been much older than he was, and not too much younger than Edward was now. It was strange; Edward was clearly not entirely mentally sound, yet... Alfons couldn't help but spend time with him. It was almost like having his brother back.
Professor Elric had asked Alfons if he'd be so kind as to take Edward in. Alfons accepted, in part because Professor Elric reminded him of his own father (although the two men did look rather different; Alfons wasn't quite sure why he saw his father in Professor Elric at all), and in part because Edward reminded him of his own brother. He was surrounding himself with ghosts of his past, it seemed, and he really didn't mind. He just made sure to keep in mind that Edward was not Eduard, and Professor Elric was not Theophil Graaf Heiderich.
Edward had no idea, of course, that Alfons was a Junker. Why would he? He didn't seem to recognise any names, and Alfons didn't have the "von" title before his surname (his family was much too new for that, but perhaps soon, if the government would just restore the Kasierreich and get rid of this ridiculous Weimar Republic.) Alfons didn't bother to tell him – what did it matter? He didn't use his name for privilege, anyway.
It was still strange that Edward hadn't picked up on it. Alfons didn't really make any attempt to hide it; he was rather apathetic toward his roommate's knowledge of his rank. He'd have thought that the car and the money that came seemingly from nowhere would have caused Edward to pose questions, but he was wrong in that. It was almost unnerving how blasé Edward was toward it; it made Alfons wonder, again, if perhaps he wasn't insane, and really had come from some other world.
He didn't act German, after all. He didn't have the sense of national pride. He felt no shame in the Treaty of Versailles. He wasn't outraged by the reparations that were so unjustly imposed. He didn't understand what the loss of German land meant. He didn't see the difference between Germans and gypsies.
Alfons considered himself a very reasonable young man. He didn't loathe gypsies like most Germans, having learnt from his mother that just because someone was different didn't mean that they weren't human, but that didn't mean that he considered them on the same level as Germans. They were fully human, of course, but they shouldn't just assimilate into German society – they weren't like the Jews, who just looked slightly different (and some of them could pass for full-blooded German) and had been wise in how they'd handled their money during the war. German Jews were just as German as he was, as far as he was concerned, but the gypsies were nomads who certainly didn't belong in the (once) great nation.
But enough of that. Introspect was only so useful. It never helped to dwell on the past, after all. Best keep his mind on the future; he'd get into space. Maybe he'd even get into this crazy world that Edward talked about where they might have a cure for him. He had to get these rockets perfected, and that meant massive funding. He was willing to get it from anywhere – well, anywhere German. He had his sense of national pride, thank you very much. If only the Weimar would learn that rockets, seemingly the only technology not banned by that ridiculous treaty, were the thing of the future. If Germany could get a man into space, then they'd certainly regain some national pride. What's more, if Alfons was one of the engineers, then his name would go down in history, and he would not have lived in vain. He'd leave a mark on the world, and maybe even go into space himself.
