I have no idea why but I think this fic is the most I've had trouble writing. I don't get it. But anyway, I felt like writing some cute ultra-pre-series fluff with Father and Pride, to go along with a commission I got done for Father's day last year :) I like to think Father did care about his children at the start, back when he had some of his emotions left.

Pride is really young in this, between 5 and 10, but he's only just got his container made for him.

Thanks to Nabhalim for the art~

We are One

All is silent.

Upon his throne, Father watches the small shape of his creation stepping uncertain steps into the light, inching by degrees into more confident movements. His white robe sweeps the floor and from beneath it pours the absolute darkness of his True Form, impervious to the shade surrounding it, swelling in its new freedom.

Hidden sandals scarcely break the silence in those slow, muted steps, gliding close. Despite the distance, Father need not strain his own container's eyes towards his creation, every part designed to perfection, far beyond any human method. At the edge of the watery light he still seems so distant, severed as surely from him as the Sin he embodied.

Time slows, and slows in its endless stretches, until at last the boy reaches him. Sharp flashes of a mix of awe and curiosity flicker across Pride's bright eyes and for once, for the only time, his true and visible age coalesce. Father observes, perhaps through flashes of his own curiosity, as his creation clambers onto his lap, wriggling when he stumbles, and as he rights himself he smoothes out the robe, smiling faintly at the falling folds in the cloth, or perhaps the texture under his new fingers. A delighted shiver flows down and uncoils out into the shadow, the pointed hands flicking idly.

"How is your container, child?" Father accords the familial term to him, all Pride has ever known.

"Perfect, you made it perfectly, Father!" The younger homunculus's hollow voice echoes from everywhere and nowhere, filled with the expected, wholly desired appreciation Hohenheim had denied him. Father smiles to himself.

"Very good, you have adjusted well." He says, trying not to think on his own adjusting those decades before, walking and standing on feet of his own, so dizzyingly high up compared to his stuffy sphere of a dwelling.

A gentle, barely there pressure on him. Father blinks out of his musing to see the container's pale hand reach out and stream down his golden strands of hair, weaving between them.

"Though, I did not expect otherwise. You are the First, my finest creation. You shall never age or wither as humans do, and the energy of their souls will sustain you. Do you feel them?"

"I can feel everything, Father… Thank you…" The boy lifts Father's hair with both hands, blinking hard and squinting as if to focus, watching the gold slip through his fingers, only to grasp them again. "Soft…"

Father allows the simple play. No doubt the motions Pride already seems capable of will serve him well soon enough. Even so, the faint, unfamiliar sensations on his artificial flesh send flares through the dark within him. How peculiar.

Pride's arm slows after a time, and he leans against him, content. Father senses the strong, cadenced pulse of the Stone as it floods his little body and the infinite blackness of his insides with rejuvenating energy. Father flinches at the contact. Nothing has ever been so close, never such a delicate weight upon him. The foolish creatures above maintain a reverent distance to their Sage, of course, but no foolish creature is this. The perfect, pitch-black substance quivers beneath Pride's skin, close enough to feel, and Father's own pulses at the familiarity. At last, another like him…another Homunculus in existence, equally free in his new container. A strange warmth swells inside at the thought, not the uncomfortable heat of the flask, or the desert. A pure, tender warmth.

Despite himself, Father's arms enfold his creation, and the motion eases a sigh from him, a slow, contented sound, his first breath. More superfluous respirations follow, his small chest rising and falling against his own while he tastes the soft lit air. With a wistful smile Father recalls the stifling and frigid air of the Xerxian desert. Perhaps he will tell Pride of those distant memories, too. He would teach this one better.

"Father..." Pride sighs once more, his casing's dark and innocent eyes gleaming with a vivid, inner light, hidden only as he nuzzles and the glitter bleeds into his true eyes, his Father's eyes.

Father.

The word lingers in the minute radiance within Father's sanctum. For the near decade since Pride's creation he has been accustomed to the title, but now, with Pride nestled beside him, beaming, yawning, the relaxed shifting of his darkness under his skin, without the barrier of the glass, it has never felt so palpable. Time stops, Father's vast accomplishments flit through his mind, the destruction of Xerxes, his far off ambitions, and for the briefest moment the sight of his… child eclipses them all.

"I feel…something…" Another quiet yawn escapes him, his drooped eyelids fluttering as he snuggles closer, grasping tiny bunches of his robe.

"It is exhaustion. You must rest, child." The word sounds different on his tongue somehow, imbued with true meaning. "Come now." Father squeezes him gently, and with more deep, nurturing whispers the darkness recedes, leaving no trace of their existence.

"Z…Zzuu…" He mewls solely from his container, as if hearing the undulation of his shadows as he retracts them. Behind the glass, Pride's confined shade had been crushed into silence and now, pooled within the container Father perceives the ripples shivering across it, the hushed sounds of such. His child deprived so long of rest, incapable of sleep, stares up through drowsy, shimmering eyes, welled with nothing but wonder and devotion. A final stubborn flicker glows dimly in their depths, a longing to remain awake with his Father, to be a dutiful child above all else.

"O, child, my Pride, you are perfect." Father smiles a sincere smile. "Sleep now, I shall be here when you wake."

Pride nods, flashing his human teeth with another tired grin, huddling deeper into their identical clothing. At the centre of all things, they bask in the warmth of their similarities, and Father cradles him, stroking his perfect hair as black as shadow, until they both slip into a blissful sleep.

All is silent.