Van did not expect to be spoken to again that night. He would deny, later, that he had jumped when the homunculus melted out of the shadows. He was four hundred years old. He did not jump. He did not do startled. Not even when a homunculus successfully snuck up on him and announced its presence by stating, "So you're Ed's rotten, no good, runaway, cowardly bastard of a father?"

"That's rather harsh," Van replied.

"Edward said it first. Still, I'd call it as I see it." The creature shrugged.

"Oh? And why should a homunculus know or care about such things."

"Because I care about Ed."

How dare this homunculus accuse him of not caring about Edward? Van frowned. "While I admit I'm grateful to you for looking after my son," he stressed the statement that Edward was his, a warning to the creature. "I see no reason to trust that you have his best interests at heart." It was an understatement. He still felt shock that Edward was traveling with the creature in the first place. He knew what they were, Alphonse had confirmed that, and what they planned for him, yet still he was willingly in the company of one, and trusted it enough to turn his back on it.

"Same here, old man," Had the creature's voice changed? "We've run together for four months and Ed's still in one piece." Its tone certainly had, casually disdainful. "I don't see you doing anything to make up for leaving him. He's mine now. "

Van frowned. "You need him alive until the Day of Reckoning. Just because he isn't dead, doesn't mean you have good intentions for him." After what the dwarf had done under the guise of care he knew that all too well.

The creature sighed, and something about it changed drastically. "You seem," it said in a language that he had not heard in three centuries. He would have fallen back if he weren't sitting down, and the surprise of his companions swept him like a tidal wave. "To be under the mistaken impression that I serve the father of the homunculi." How did a homunculus speak Xingese? Why did a homunculus speak Xingese? Why call the dwarf by that, rather than Father, as Pride had done? And an earlier question came back to him, why did it look Xingese? What use was there in that?

"You speak—" he blurted in shock, but the creature interrupted.

"I am not one of them." Impossible, and yet—"I am Ed's friend. Greed cares for him as I do," as if there were two beings within that body? "And we stand on the side of the world remaining alive. We have no desire to see him dead."

It looked Xingese. It spoke what seemed —to his long out of practice ear— a variant of High Court Xingese, but how? Why? How could a homunculus and a human exist in one form? Even if the monsters were capable of it, why Xingese? And how could the dwarf have laid hold of a Xingese courtier? Most of all, why? What purpose did this serve?

The thing smirked. "It seems something has disturbed your inner peace and tranquility. Might this royal one inquire as to the cause of this discomfort?"

And now use of the royal self-reference? Unless it was simply the changes in the language, but though that was possibility, Van didn't think so. What was going on here?

He drew a breath, and hoped his skills weren't too rusty. "You may. This one does not desire to burden another with his selfish wants, but a father cannot help but worry for his children when they are in the company of those who have been his enemies." And that was something of an understatement. He felt guilt at the thought of his son, snared in the web of a homunculus as he had once been, though from Alphonse's words, Edward should know better.

He could not but remember when he had seen his elder son again. Heard a step behind him, turned from the terrible gray stone-

And saw Gold.

Rage, and hate, loathing accusation staring back at him through eyes of molten gold.

Xerxesian.

In that moment, a certainty he had known for four centuries fell away, for there was another Xerxesian standing there.

He had been lost, lost in time, and before him stood his son, a terrible, vengeful embodiment of all he had lost to the Dwarf, a ghost from his past, his long lost race, brighter than anyone had ever been, judging him.

His every failure, the judgement of taboo, accusing him with blinding gaze.

He loves both his sons, in his way, but he cannot deny his preference for Alphonse, and not merely because the younger welcomes him.

Edward burns so brightly, embodiment of the desert heat, fierce as a sandstorm of the great desert to the East, where he had first learned he could not die. A sandstorm given thought and mind, and Van cannot bear his presence.

"One could say the same about one's friends, in the company of a man who refused to return to his home, even when it caused the death of his beloved." The homunculus replied. "How might one tell if that refusal would be enacted once again, harming one's friend?"

Anger flared. "I would never–" he spat, reverting to the language of his birth unthinkingly "—harm my sons! I would die first!"

"As this one's imperial grandfather," what? "Emperor Wan, once said: one who causes harm is not given the right to decide what harm is. And how might one trust the words of the man who fled his kin before? Or is it not the case that you were gone for ten years?"

The words of accusation slammed into him like a thunderbolt, sending him reeling. Remorselessly, the homunculus continued, "Then, when you did return, you spoke to harm him and departed with the dawn, never once showing remorse for the harm you caused." He could not bear the words, for there was truth in them. He had not spoken to his son, his eldest, golden son. The sight of him was blinding, deadly as the desert, longed for as water in the drought, but to stay in his unbearable presence had been like drinking poison, or the self-same water in too large quantity after such a drought. "As to death? We know the meaning of such a promise from one to whom death is but an inconvenience. We shall not harm our friend. We have yet to judge if we believe you shall. But you, who were foolish enough to run from what one of us left to seek, you who do not hear his answer, you may yet harm him, by intent or mishap."

"We will not forgive that," the creature's voice doubled, "whoever or whatever may harm what is ours."

Van stared into the night after the homunculus for a long time, mind stinging as a few voices commented thoughtfully, you know, he had a point.

Remember Greed/Ling threatening Hohenheim back in Greed and Ling, on Fathers? Here's the other side of that scene. I think this one is finished too.