Author's Note: When I got this request, I immediately thought it would make a great contribution for Father's Day ^_^ As is usual for this AU, I've sort of blended the first anime and Brotherhood for this, but am leaning more towards the first anime because it gave us so much more interaction between the Elric brothers and Hughes.
requested by Alchemeister on AO3
When Maes Hughes first met Elaine Elric, she was in the middle of falling off a moving train. Not the most auspicious introduction, but a characteristic one, as he would learn in the years to come.
Maes was creeping around the outside of the train, stealthily investigating Bald and his band of hooligans who had hijacked it, and trying to locate the two alchemists Roy had told him would be making their way to Central. Truth be told, the only description Roy had given him was 'one is in a suit of armor and the other has blonde hair,' so Maes had been picturing someone more like Olivier Armstrong. At the very least, an adult.
But when he caught sight of someone's leg disappearing over the top of the train and then poked his head up after them, it wasn't a scary and self-assured woman who caught his eye, but a scrawny girl with a blonde braid that whipped about behind her in the wind.
Before he could process his surprise, a tree branch came out of nowhere and smacked the girl in the face, sending her bouncing dangerously close to the edge. Maes snagged her shirt collar before she could fall to her death, then hoisted her up so she could grab onto a rung of the ladder he clung to.
"That was quite the tumble, missy!" he cried over the rattle of the train and the wind howling in their ears. He flashed a reassuring grin at her look of pure astonishment. "Roy told me to keep an eye out for you, but that man sure needs to work on his descriptive skills."
"Roy..." Her jaw dropped. "Roy Mustang? You're with the military?"
Maes would normally have given her a jaunty salute, but since they were both clinging to the outside of a moving train, he settled for a wink instead. "Major Maes Hughes, at your service."
"I'm El. Um...Elaine Elric."
"All right, we'll get acquainted later. For now, whaddya say we stop these guys?"
With a squared jaw and eyebrows angling sharply down to her golden eyes, El looked slightly less like a cute kid in over her head. "Right!"
Once Bald and his men had been apprehended, tied up, and shoved into a private compartment under armed guard for the rest of the trip, Maes finally let his medic administer first aid to his shoulder. Falman headed to the communications compartment to report in.
A huge shadow in the doorway made Maes look up swiftly, but it was only Addie. She peered around the doorway timidly, her body language that of a little girl though her body was anything but. On the other side of the doorway, El tried to look nonchalant as she peered in as well.
"Um...Mr. Hughes?" Addie asked timidly. "Are you...okay?"
"What, this?" Maes asked with a reassuring grin, gesturing to the bandages wrapped around his shoulder. "Don't worry about me; I'll be right as rain in no time." Gracia would fuss over him, but he'd survived much worse before.
"What about you two?" he asked, gingerly shrugging into his uniform jacket, since his shirt was now ruined. "Any injuries we need to see to?"
"Not a scratch!" El said with a confident grin. "Those bozos didn't stand a chance against us, did they, Addie?"
As the two girls chattered away about how they'd stopped Bald and his men, Maes eyed them thoughtfully. It was clear from Addie's voice and mannerisms that she was a young girl—younger even than El, it seemed. And El's automail hand gleamed in the sunlight, so heavy and fierce, incongruous with her preteen body.
"Hey," Maes said to the medic in a low voice as he fumbled one-handed with the buttons on his jacket, "go check on General Hakuro again, would you? Then go down the train and make sure no one else needs assistance."
"Yes, sir." The medic gathered up his supplies and slipped past the Elric sisters, who hastily stepped out of the way.
"Step inside for a minute, girls." Maes beckoned to the two of them, quickly checked to make sure no one was hanging around in the hallway, then slid the door closed behind them.
Addie folded herself into one corner of the compartment as best she could, while El sat beside her, frowning warily at him.
Maes smiled, hoping to put them at their ease. "You two are something else! Taking down all those guys on your own? Pretty impressive."
"We were just doing what anyone would have done," Addie said, ducking her head shyly.
"Oh, I don't think just anyone could have done what you did. There's definitely more to you than meets the eye."
El bristled at that, hands curling into fists on her knees. "What is this, an interrogation? What, do you think we're on their side or something?"
"Not at all," Maes said calmly. "I know Roy just recruited a State Alchemist candidate from the east, and I know he's the one who made sure you got on this train. I was surprised at first when I saw how young you are, but now I understand. If today's any indication, I think you'll make an excellent State Alchemist."
El relaxed at that, the color rising in her cheeks.
"The only mystery that remains," Maes continued, turning his gaze from El to the hulking suit of armor, "is you. Are you planning to try for a State Alchemist Certification too?"
Addie jumped slightly, then fidgeted nervously in her seat. "Um...no, not...not really. I'm just...to help Sister, you know..."
He could see El tensing up as his questions danced around the elephant in the room, so he decided to back off for now. One way or another, he would find out why the younger sister was so incredibly tall for her age, and why she was the one wearing armor. "Well, I think that's very admirable. Say," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "you should come to my house for dinner tonight! My wife makes a mean quiche."
El's eyes brightened at that, but after a glance at Addie, she said, "Oh, we couldn't..."
"Sure you could!" Maes said, grinning wider as he steamrolled over every protest. "Say, why don't you spend the night? We've got plenty of space, and you don't want to spend your money on the hotels in Central! You should just stay with us until you're on your feet! I know Gracia would love to have you—oh, Gracia's my wife, by the way, just the most beautiful angel you've ever seen in your life, just you wait, you'll agree with me! We're expecting, you know, still got four months or so to go, but hey—this way, you'll give us some practice at being parents, right? This is our first kid, and who knows? Maybe it'll be a girl, so it'd be nice to know what to expect down the road..."
Gaping and spluttering in surprise (why was that so often the response Maes got to his ingenious ideas?), El and Addie feebly tried to protest, but it was no use. The plan was perfect, so there was no way Maes would accept no for an answer.
In the end, the Elric sisters only stayed with Maes's family for one night. Roy sent them to Shou Tucker, who could put them up and help tutor them while they prepared for the State Alchemist Certification Exam. Maes didn't mind; it made perfect sense for them to stay with a State Alchemist, rather than someone like him, who could barely tell a transmutation circle from a child's chalk drawing on the sidewalk.
Still, it had been nice having two girls in the house. Addie was a dear, always the first to jump up and help Gracia in the kitchen, her hands so gentle and careful despite being encased in unwieldy gauntlets. And El was fun to have around, so easy to tease but also a great conversationalist for an eleven-year-old. She also had a voracious appetite and ate everything Gracia put in front of her, praising her cooking to the skies. As someone who had enjoyed Gracia's culinary talents for years, Maes heartily agreed.
Was this a sample of what their home would be like a decade from now? Seeing the way the Elric sisters got along so well, talking and laughing together like the best of friends, Maes was already starting to think about giving the baby a brother or sister in the next couple of years. He and Gracia had agreed early on that they wanted a big, happy family anyway. He hoped his children would get along as well as El and Addie did.
But maybe that intense closeness he could see in every look and every word that passed between the two sisters only came as a result of the intense trauma they'd been through. Maes finally weaseled the story out of them, once it became clear that Addie had no intention of eating any of Gracia's food, and they couldn't think of a good excuse. And once he understood what was driving these two so hard, his heart only ached for them even more.
Maes sat alone in the living room on the night after the Elric sisters had left, staring into space and fiddling with a loose string hanging from the sling he had to keep his wounded arm in. He kept trying to imagine what it must have been like, that horrible night when those two girls lost everything. The terror, the pain...
"Can't sleep?"
Maes looked up, then smiled when he saw Gracia crossing the room towards him, tugging her cardigan closed around the bulge of her belly. "Nah, not really."
"Is it your shoulder?" Gracia sat on the couch next to him, placing a gentle hand on his back. "It should almost be time to take another one of those pills."
"Oh, it's not that," Maes said, wrapping his good arm around Gracia's shoulders to pull her closer. "I just keep thinking about those girls. Addie, not able to eat or feel the warmth of a hug...and El, losing an arm and a leg, almost losing her sister...and now, she carries so much weight on those shoulders. I wish...I could have been there. I wish I could've helped." He laughed at himself. "I know that's stupid."
"It's not stupid." Gracia reached up to kiss him on the cheek, then rested her head on his shoulder. "That's always how you are. You see someone in need, and immediately you want to help them."
Maes chuckled, kissing the top of her head. "Roy would say that makes me a meddler."
"I say it makes you a good man." She patted him on the chest, right over his heart.
Looking down at her, at the space where his little son or daughter grew in warmth and safety inside of her, he thought of the mother El and Addie had talked about. The mother who had carried them, who had raised them, who had sadly passed away and left them behind to navigate this cruel world on their own. They hadn't really talked about their father, so Maes wasn't sure what the situation was there, but they'd mentioned their neighbors taking them under their wing, so clearly he wasn't in the picture anymore.
If only...
"What are you thinking, dear?" Gracia asked gently. "I can practically hear those gears turning."
Maes sighed, resting his cheek against the top of her head. "El and Addie seem so self-sufficient, don't they? They're brilliant alchemists, they brought down a whole gang of rebels on the train yesterday, they're getting by on their own and working towards the State Alchemist Exam. But...when I look at them, all I can see are two little girls. Two kids who need parents more than they even realize."
Gracia chuckled. "Don't tell me you're thinking of trying to adopt them, are you? I'm not sure what they would think of that from someone they just met. Besides, they're so independent already; I'm not sure how well they'd take to settling down."
Maes's cheeks warmed as Gracia hit closer to the mark than she probably realized. But, as usual, she made some very good points. "Okay, maybe not officially," he conceded. "If anyone was going to adopt them, it should probably be their friends back home. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything."
Gracia leaned back to look him in the eye. Absently rubbing her hand back and forth over her belly, she asked, "What did you have in mind?"
She was so beautiful. The very picture of motherhood. Maes beamed at her. "We'll have them over for dinner as often as we can get away with it. I'll find out when their birthdays are, and we'll have a party for each of them—even Addie, even if she can't eat her cake. When the baby comes, we'll have them over. It'll be good for our baby to have big sisters."
Gracia ducked out from under his arm and placed his good hand on her belly. After a moment, he felt a slight thump against his palm. Lacing her fingers through his, Gracia smiled up at him. "And when they need advice, they'll come to you, and you'll know just what to say. And I'll mend their clothes and pack a lunch for them. At least they'll know that if they're ever in trouble or don't know what to do, they can always come here."
He leaned in and kissed her. "Something tells me those two might end up being a handful."
"Then it's a good thing we've got four hands between us, isn't it?"