A/N: This is such a small bit, it would have been better attached to the last... but there's a very different tone and it felt better separate. I loved this scene in the manga... it shows how Hohenheim really must feel about Ed, even if he never says it...
Part IIII
Later that night after Ed had been in bed for some time, Hohenheim wandered passed his room. The door was ajar, and without really thinking, he stepped inside softly, like he had done countless times when he was child. The number of times Trisha had caught him just watching their sons sleep, as if they were the most amazing, magical things in the world.
I made those. He'd think to himself, marvelling at their small forms, their chests rising and falling, their little hands curled around each other. To think that he, in this body of a monster, had made something so pure and perfect. There was a reason, he thought, that Alchemy could not make life. No science could ever make anything so flawless and uncorrupted as a child.
It was so strange now, to watch his son sleep. No longer a child, not yet quite an adult either, but in no way pure and uncorrupted as he had been.
Edward lay on his side with his back to the door, the full extent of his mechanical limbs on show. Even in the dark, Hohenheim could see the scars and burns from where metal met flesh, where the automail was seared into his skin. He could only imagine what it must have felt like, the pain this small boy must have known. This was the boy he used to carry about on his shoulders, rock to sleep, bathe, who he used to hold in his arms like it was the safest place in the world and swear he wouldn't let anything happen to him.
I did this. I let this happen. To my own son...
He remembered a very young Edward tugging at his trouser leg to help him stand. He'd been so keen to walk, to get up on his own two legs and run about wherever he wanted to. It had been a family joke that Alphonse had had to learn quickly too, just to avoid being left behind. Ed would run, leading the way, and Al would follow.
Family jokes... they had so few of them, he and Trisha, and none that the boys could ever understand.
He stepped closer towards the bed and extended a hand. Just once... just once, I want to be able to hold my son, to stroke his hair once more...
His fingers got so far and then he stopped, drawing his reach back. He had no right to hold his son any more, no right to be a father, and Edward would hate him for it.
Still, all he could see as he stared at that bed was the tiny, helpless little boy he loved, putting on a brave face and pretending that nothing, in the whole world, could hurt him.
.o0o.
A/N: This is even more sad when you consider that Hohenheim NEVER gets to hold his sons again... the most he gets is a hand shake with Al and that brief moment where they support him in battle. It's so sad!
Oh, and there's one more chapter to go... Hohenheim returning after the events of the Promised Day. Coming home... for the last time... wahhh! Sniff-sniff...