This is my little tribute to Father's Day. I love my daddy :D
Golbique also gets it's name directly from the map shown at the end of the series.
Al knew things were not going to go well in Golbique when they asked about his father.
Before then, he already hadn't been having a very good day. He and Mei had been on the road the day before and as such had slept on the ground outside. It was threatening to rain and they hadn't brought any tents and only had two blankets for bedding. So he, like the gentleman he was, offered his blanket as their makeshift shelter (one blanket, an armful of wood and some alchemy made a wonderful tent) and used extra clothing for warmth.
It had been hard to fall asleep with the bulky clothing and as soon as he was sure that he was about to fall off to sleep, it had started to rain which had effectively kept him up for another hour or so.
Mei slept like a log throughout the whole thing.
"You'd think I'd be able to sleep through anything, living with Ed," he grumbled to himself as he shifted position again.
Eventually he had been able to drift off to sleep, but it was a fitful sleep full of images of blond men that could destroy whole towns without moving a finger. There was also a short piece about a man in a ridiculous spangled outfit, but he couldn't remember for the life of him what that was about.
Both of them were wet in the morning and they couldn't find anyone on the roads in either direction (qi was a large help in that aspect), so they, sopping wet, set out down the road. Fourteen miles later they ran into a man who had detained them by trying to make them buy supposed "magical beans". Both had politely refused, but the man had been insistent and they finally had to threaten him to let them pass.
If that had not been enough, they had continued to walk on foot until a small town had come into view. Once it did however, they had run into a block in the road which consisted of a number of large boulders and debris. It had taken another hour of alchemy and alkahestry to clear the way.
Then they had finally gotten to the town and spent the next hour or so just trying to find a place to sleep for the night. True to form, everyone time someone caught sight of Al's blond hair they started staring and a) avoiding them like the plague or b) falling over themselves to help out.
To top it all off, the man managing the inn hadn't seemed to trust him from the moment he walked in the door. This mistrust seemed to deepen when Al hesitated in telling the man about his father.
"I repeat," the man said, glaring daggers. "Who's your father?"
"Is this always the way you greet people?" Al answered uncertainly. If anything that made the man angrier.
"I don't treat the spawn of filth. Only those of the highest birth are allowed to stay here. Anyone less can sleep outside with the pigs."
This was one of those moments when he had to love Mei even more than he already did. They were both tired. Their feet were sore, Xiao Mei was very tired and irritated which meant the flow of angry chatter barely stopped, and their backs were hurting from sleeping on the ground the night before.
"Well then I don't think we have an issue here," she said sharply, drawing her spirit from some unknown well. "My name is Mei Chang. My mother was the eldest daughter of Xun-ye Chang, leader of the Chang clan. My father was Feng Xing, Son of the Morning and Emperor of Xing. I come here for—"
"I might have a room for you. But what about him. Is he your slave? A bit exotic, isn't he?"
"No," Mei said sharply, "his ancestry is even more royal than my own."
"Mei," he muttered, trying to stop her.
"His father hailed from the extinct country of Xerxes, where he was the only survivor. Hohenheim was an immortal being who spread the knowledge of alchemy and alkahestry to both the Western and Eastern countries."
The man laughed.
Long and hard.
"That's a good one. I haven't heard someone claiming something that big since… I don't think anyone's ever pulled something that big. Now, in all seriousness, what's your parentage? Yours too, girly."
"I already told you!" Mei said angrily.
"And I'll believe you when you march the Emperor down here and make him tell me himself."
"He'd dead."
"Well, how convenient."
Mei crossed her arms and glared at the man, looking quite impressive for her stature. Al had to smile a little to himself before stepping forward. He clapped his hands and touched them to a nearby table, morphing it into a large model horse. The man's jaw dropped.
"Do you believe me now?" He looked at Al in something close to awe, a reaction which Al was long accustomed to. Even in Amestris, people's jaws dropped at the sight of alchemy, clapping or drawn.
"Are you immortal too?" he whispered.
"No, I'm not," he answered. "Just as mortal as you."
"Well in that case," the man said, closing his mouth and nodding. "I do think I have a room. You're welcome to it."
"It seems funny, them putting so much emphasize on patriarchal ancestry, don't you think?" Mei asked later as he was pulling out her braids. After further investigation they had found that almost everyone asked about their parentage. It had taken forever, but they had finally found someone to explain to them why.
Golbique was very heavily patriarchal society. The people considered the father to not only be the head of the family and the most important member, but the entire welfare of the family was based on that man. A man whose father was a farmer could only become a farmer in their life. If your father didn't have a good living, you couldn't get a roof over your head if you were visiting.
"How so? I think we've run into a lot weirder out here."
"Well, no it's not weird in itself," she corrected. "It's just that… well neither of us exactly had the model father, did we? I only met my father once in my whole life and that was shortly after I was born. It was traditional for the Emperor to attend a celebration in the clan's providence to celebrate their heir. He attended, kissed my forehead, left, and I didn't see him from that time forward. I was supposed to see him while he was dying, but I got news about Ling leaving for Amestris and decided that was more important. Then when we got back, I went directly to the Chang Providence before heading to the Capital. By the time I got there he was dead."
He unwove the last braid and picked up the brush. Despite his attitude at the beginning of the exercise, he had grown to love the time they spent doing this. It was quite relaxing.
"That's unfortunate," he said, not wanting to say 'I'm sorry'. He knew Mei wasn't the type of person who would want to hear it. She didn't carry much affection for her father. Not knowing him wasn't much of a devastation.
"He was the Emperor. It isn't that unexpected," she shrugged. "But I don't have much respect for my father as a father. I know you love Hohenheim, but you can't deny that he wasn't exactly father of the year."
"No, he wasn't," Al agreed, slightly uncomfortable about the topic. He did love his father; there was no doubt in his mind or heart about that. However he wasn't around for most of Al's life. Al didn't even have any solid memories, just fuzzy pictures. "But he still made the sacrifices where they count. He was willing to sacrifice himself to bring me back."
"Yeah. Ed threatened to knock him out if he ever made a suggestion as stupid as that."
"Yeah." Ed hadn't been the one to tell him that, he had gotten the story from Mustang a few weeks after. He had told serious stories to Al about his brother, but most of those were done while Ed was close to death in the hospital. It was probably the first time the newly promoted Brigadier General had talked about Ed in a serious tone when his brother wasn't close to death or seriously injured.
"He did try to be a good dad to you guys," Mei conceded. "But no one can deny that he still wasn't exactly Father of the Year. I just think it's ironic that the people here put so much stock in something neither of us had much investment in. That's all."
They didn't talk for a while and the only sound in the room was the brush running through Mei's hair. The first few times Al had brushed her hair she had complained about him being too rough. To be honest Al couldn't tell that much of a difference, but of course he didn't have anywhere near as much hair as she did. He had finally gotten the hang of how much pressure to add to the instrument now and could probably get it done much faster than he did. But of course he liked playing with her hair.
"What do you think you'll be like as a father?" Mei asked, breaking the silence.
"What?"
"You. When you get married and have kids of your own. How do you think you'll be?"
"As a father?" he clarified, lifting a lock of hair into his lap so that he could brush out a particularly strong snarl. "I don't know…"
"You have to give me more than that. It's not that complicated of a question."
"Well how do you think you'll be as a mother?" he questioned in return. She didn't answer. "See, it's a more complicated question than you think."
"Well for me it's different. I'm a Princess. Not only a Princess, I'm the Emperor's most favored sister. My life is very different than most people's. When I get married it will probably be to either a foreign Prince or a rich citizen. My children will most likely be given to maids to raise."
"… if you could choose, would you want that life?"
Mei turned around to look at him, raising and eyebrow.
"Al, to be blunt, I spent two or three years dreaming and fantasying about either you or your brother carrying me off on a while horse into the horizon where we could live happily ever after in a castle with twenty-four kids. While I now do not want twenty-four kids, nor have many dreams about white horses or castles, I do not want to be shackled into going to boring tea parties and balls."
"Ling would probably respect that if you told him…" Al said, trying to control his emotions. He wasn't even quite sure what they were himself. He liked the fact that she didn't want to get married to some rich dignitary that Ling would most likely be obligated to marry her off to. That made him happy. Of course he always wasn't sure what she was trying to say at the beginning. Did she no longer fantasize about them eventually falling in love or had she merely given up on being carried into the sunset on a white horse?
Why couldn't feelings be as simple as an equation or an alchemic code? Those were complicated but at least there was solid research to be done.
"I'm sure he would want to, but he has been a rather radicle Emperor so far. He might not want to risk making anyone else angrier. If he did… I would like to think I'd be a good mother. I want kids. I want to be able to raise them the way I never was. Give them a stable family, education, friends… things like that."
"Same here," Al agreed. "You know that Brother promised himself that he would never walk out on Benjamin like Hohenheim did on us. I made the same promise myself. I never want to abandon any child if I can help it. No kid should have to live the way Ed and I did. Of course it is an advantage to the world that we did live the way we did, but still. No one should have to."
He finished brushing the rest of her hair and threw most of it over her shoulder, finger lightly brushing the back of her neck. Mei smiled and stood up, giving him a quick hug before walking to the door.
"We both need to get sleep tonight. Didn't get enough of it last night, and I know you didn't get as much as I did. We've got a lot of exploring to do and a lot of repetition. I'm certain most of the people we're going to run into are going to be just as insistent on knowing our ancestry as the inn keeper was."
Al nodded and she walked out, closing the door behind him. He quickly changed into an old tee-shirt and some more comfortable pants before pulling out the old and still slightly damp blanket. He draped it over the bed and the other blankets before crawling under them himself. He was about to close his eyes and fall asleep when there was a knock on the door.
"Come in?" he answered confusedly.
Mei poked her head inside.
"For what it's worth, Al, I think you'll make a great father."
