WTF, a random F!S bunny!? And it involves Hei!?????
* * * * * * *
It was all started from the box that he found while dusting the attic of their Rizembool house. Inside the box were a pair of trousers, vest, and shirt, dirty and aged as if they had gone through quite some hardship. Rowan wondered who owned them, until he found a picture in the same box, of his father, his uncle Al and aunt Winry.
His father was dressed in the very clothing, looking quite a mess, but the grin he had was threatening to split his face. The same could be said of his uncle, looking like he was in his early teenage, clad in a red coat Rowan often saw wore by his father in his teenage photos. There were tears in his aunt's eyes, but they were obviously happy ones.
Rowan scrutinized the picture. The date written behind the picture was "8 November AD1923/CY1917" and he wondered about the meaning of 'AD1923'. It was written like it was meant to be the year, but he had never heard of year AD. His mind subconsciously racked his brain for any significant information for the date, before he realized that that was the date of the Great Invasion.
There were stories about the Great Invasion. The history teacher told the class that it was the day when a batalyon of Drachma troops managed to raid Central and nearly took over the Parliment building. Corporal Roy Mustang, the teacher had said, managed to hit the Drachmans back when every other generals in the country were defeated and saved the day, and hence there was a cry from the people for him to be cleared of all suspicion of his involvement in a coup attempt two years previously and given back his former rank.
Seven-years old Rowan had asked Granddad Roy about the Invasion the next chance he had got to see his grandfather, asking if it had been true, that he was the great hero that has saved the whole nation. He had been looking at Granddad with awe-struck eyes, he recalled, as any other kids with a hero fetish. However, the old man had merely smiled at him and given him a pat on the head. "The real hero," he had said, "Was your father."
Rowan hadn't understood what his grandfather had meant. The old man hadn't elaborate, distracting him instead with a tickle on his side, making him forget about the subject at hand for quite a long time. However, now, as Rowan looked at the picture in his hand, he couldn't help but wondered again, if his father really had been the 'real hero' or if his grandfather, bless his habit of being all cryptic, was telling his something else.
Rowan looked at the picture again. It took him quite a while before he realized what was bothering him about the picture. Uncle Al was supposed to be only a year younger than his father, but in the picture, he was obviously a lot more younger, as he could not be more than fifteen at the most. From the date, he should have been seventeen instead. Rowan gives the picture a puzzled look before he set it aside, wondering if it had anything to do with a particular story his father had told him once.
He looked into the box again. There were pieces of metal he couldn't decide what it had came from. Half of them were covered with soot as if they had been salvaged from wreckage. Along with them were pieces of rubber and a stick that looked like a navigator of some sort of a vecicle. He scrutinized them, wondering if they had come from the same source, before he set them aside as well, adding another question in his mind to ask his father.
The last thing Rowan found in the box was curiously an envelope. It was addressed to an 'Alfons Heiderich', but there was no stamp in it. Curiosity got the best of him and he opened the envelope carefully, making sure not to do any damage to the old yellowing paper. He unfolded the letter he found inside and read.
Or tried to. The writing he recognized as his father's, but the letter was written in a language he couldn't understand. It didn't look like Xingese since the Xing used an all together different set of alphabet, but he was also pretty sure that it wasn't Aerugan nor Cretan. He wondered if it was Drachman, but he knew his father couldn't speak Drachman. Or at least he thought so.
Rowan tried to read the letter again, but even after figuring out several words that were similar to Amestrisian, he gave up and set the letter aside. He went back to the envelope and fingered the name written on it, wondering who it could be. The only people he knew whose name bore any resemblance to 'Alfons' were his uncle and a classmate back before he went to high school, and he sincerely doubted that this letter was addressed to the two. So at the end, he put the envelope and letter back into the box, along with the rubbles and clothes, and brought the box back to his room.
* * *
"Who is Alfons Heiderich?"
His father looked up from the newspaper he was reading with a surprise so great that Rowan must have asked something that his father never thought he would ever ask.
He carefully put the old box on the coffee table before him and his father's eyes were instantly glued to it.
There was a long silence as his father continued to stare at the box, long enough that Rowan nearly jumped out of his skin when his father suddenly reached for it. For the longest time, Rowan watched as his father opened the box and stared at its content with a glazed eyes, as if he was remembering something from the past.
"Dad?" he tried to call, uncomfortable by the silence.
His father looked up. "Oh. Sorry, I think..." His father looked at the content of the box again, a clearly wistful expression on his face. "I was just remembering."
Rowan tilted his head and asked carefully. "Remembering Alfons Heiderich?"
"Yeah," his father said as he pat the space next to him in the sofa, beckoning at Rowan to sit there. Rowan obliged. His father put a hand around his shoulder, an act that told Rowan that he was about to hear something that otherwise his father wouldn't have mentioned at all, so Rowan put his head on his father's shoulder and waited patiently.
"Do you remember," his father said quietly. "The story I told you when you told me that you're thinking of studying alchemy further?"
Rowan nodded. "About you trying to bring grandmother Trisha back?"
"Yeah," his father said, the hand on his shoulder gave him a light squeeze. "Do you remember what I told you about the Gate of Truth?"
"The one that took your limbs as payment?" His father nodded. Rowan surpressed a shudder. "What about it?"
"At the other side of that Gate, there is a world like our own," his father said, his golden eyes looking a far. "So much like our own that you can find somebody who is just like you, basically who you would have become had you been born into that world instead of here."
"Parallel world?" Rowan perked up. He had read about the concept from a book in his father's library, the only non-alchemical subject among the other tomes, sticking out like a zit. "You mean, it's real?"
His father smiled at him. "I lived in that world for two years, in this city called Munchen. Granted, I didn't spend the whole time there, but that was where I stayed the most."
"The letter," Rowan was suddenly reminded. "I tried reading it, but it wasn't any language I know."
His father chuckled. "I may be the only Deutsch speaker in this world, so I would be surprised instead if you had understood it."
"Doitsh?"
"The language people of that country used. There was another country, Britain, which language is just like Amestrian, only with weirder accent."
"Wow," Rowan whispered in awe. "But what were you doing there?"
His father chuckled again, but he sounded rather bitter. "I was trapped there. The Gate decided to chuck me there as a payment for something I wanted."
"But you managed to come home, right?"
"Of course," his father snorted. "Or else you wouldn't have been here."
Rowan nodded. He waited for a moment before then his father, true to his prediction started to talk again.
"Alfons Heiderich," he paused, as if looking for the right word. "Was that world's version of your uncle Al."
In Rowan's mind, he started to picture Uncle Al. "Did he look like Uncle Al?"
"Yeah, he did, except that his hair had lighter color and his eyes were blue. Lanky, tall, handsome. Not as many muscle as Al, though, because Alfons couldn't even lift anything heavier than half his weight and he's very lightweighted."
Rowan grimaced. "That sounds like me."
His father laughed. "Come to think of it, you may be right." He pulled Rowan closer. "You'll probably end up as tall as him, though I sure hope not as weak. He was very prone to sickness, you know. Catching a bad cold almost every month. But he's also very stubborn. Continuing with his research even when... even when he's very sick."
Rowan looked up as his father paused. His father was looking a far again, but there was pain underlying, and Rowan just had to ask. "Why?"
"He wanted to send me home. His research... his rocket.... He wanted to send me back with it." His father chuckled humorlessly. "Well, at least he succeeded. When the Gate opened from that side of the world, he hauled and strapped me into his rocket and sent me off. I never saw him again after that."
"You never knew what happened to him later?"
His father shook his head. "I couldn't go back to that world. All the rockets were destroyed and we had no choice but to seal the Gate from this side without sending anybody to seal the other side, so...."
Rowan could feel his father's hand shaking lightly and he had to wonder. "Do you miss him?"
His father turned to him, looking rather surprised, before he gave him a thin smile. "Maybe. He was a good guy. He helped me through a lot and all I gave him back was trouble."
"He must be a very good man."
"He is."
"...Maybe one day I can find a way to open the Gate safely and go to that world to find him."
His father gave him a puzzled look. "Why would you do that?"
"Because," Rowan said, grinning widely.
His father blinked at him. Then smiled. "I think it's better if we never have to touch the Gate ever again," he said, but then he added. "But if we'd ever get it open again... yeah, it would be nice to see him again."
Maybe it was the wistful tone his father had used, but Rowan suddenly felt an urge to trying harder for alchemy. Admittedly he wasn't really talented in it, despite being the son and nephew of two genius alchemists (a fact that the media liked to jibe at him and he did his best to ignore), but maybe if he could try. Reuniting his father with his savior sounded like a good enough goal.
His father squeezed his shoulder affectionately.
Yeah, Rowan thought as he smiled back at his father. Definitely a good enough goal.
* * * * * * *
It was all started from the box that he found while dusting the attic of their Rizembool house. Inside the box were a pair of trousers, vest, and shirt, dirty and aged as if they had gone through quite some hardship. Rowan wondered who owned them, until he found a picture in the same box, of his father, his uncle Al and aunt Winry.
His father was dressed in the very clothing, looking quite a mess, but the grin he had was threatening to split his face. The same could be said of his uncle, looking like he was in his early teenage, clad in a red coat Rowan often saw wore by his father in his teenage photos. There were tears in his aunt's eyes, but they were obviously happy ones.
Rowan scrutinized the picture. The date written behind the picture was "8 November AD1923/CY1917" and he wondered about the meaning of 'AD1923'. It was written like it was meant to be the year, but he had never heard of year AD. His mind subconsciously racked his brain for any significant information for the date, before he realized that that was the date of the Great Invasion.
There were stories about the Great Invasion. The history teacher told the class that it was the day when a batalyon of Drachma troops managed to raid Central and nearly took over the Parliment building. Corporal Roy Mustang, the teacher had said, managed to hit the Drachmans back when every other generals in the country were defeated and saved the day, and hence there was a cry from the people for him to be cleared of all suspicion of his involvement in a coup attempt two years previously and given back his former rank.
Seven-years old Rowan had asked Granddad Roy about the Invasion the next chance he had got to see his grandfather, asking if it had been true, that he was the great hero that has saved the whole nation. He had been looking at Granddad with awe-struck eyes, he recalled, as any other kids with a hero fetish. However, the old man had merely smiled at him and given him a pat on the head. "The real hero," he had said, "Was your father."
Rowan hadn't understood what his grandfather had meant. The old man hadn't elaborate, distracting him instead with a tickle on his side, making him forget about the subject at hand for quite a long time. However, now, as Rowan looked at the picture in his hand, he couldn't help but wondered again, if his father really had been the 'real hero' or if his grandfather, bless his habit of being all cryptic, was telling his something else.
Rowan looked at the picture again. It took him quite a while before he realized what was bothering him about the picture. Uncle Al was supposed to be only a year younger than his father, but in the picture, he was obviously a lot more younger, as he could not be more than fifteen at the most. From the date, he should have been seventeen instead. Rowan gives the picture a puzzled look before he set it aside, wondering if it had anything to do with a particular story his father had told him once.
He looked into the box again. There were pieces of metal he couldn't decide what it had came from. Half of them were covered with soot as if they had been salvaged from wreckage. Along with them were pieces of rubber and a stick that looked like a navigator of some sort of a vecicle. He scrutinized them, wondering if they had come from the same source, before he set them aside as well, adding another question in his mind to ask his father.
The last thing Rowan found in the box was curiously an envelope. It was addressed to an 'Alfons Heiderich', but there was no stamp in it. Curiosity got the best of him and he opened the envelope carefully, making sure not to do any damage to the old yellowing paper. He unfolded the letter he found inside and read.
Or tried to. The writing he recognized as his father's, but the letter was written in a language he couldn't understand. It didn't look like Xingese since the Xing used an all together different set of alphabet, but he was also pretty sure that it wasn't Aerugan nor Cretan. He wondered if it was Drachman, but he knew his father couldn't speak Drachman. Or at least he thought so.
Rowan tried to read the letter again, but even after figuring out several words that were similar to Amestrisian, he gave up and set the letter aside. He went back to the envelope and fingered the name written on it, wondering who it could be. The only people he knew whose name bore any resemblance to 'Alfons' were his uncle and a classmate back before he went to high school, and he sincerely doubted that this letter was addressed to the two. So at the end, he put the envelope and letter back into the box, along with the rubbles and clothes, and brought the box back to his room.
* * *
"Who is Alfons Heiderich?"
His father looked up from the newspaper he was reading with a surprise so great that Rowan must have asked something that his father never thought he would ever ask.
He carefully put the old box on the coffee table before him and his father's eyes were instantly glued to it.
There was a long silence as his father continued to stare at the box, long enough that Rowan nearly jumped out of his skin when his father suddenly reached for it. For the longest time, Rowan watched as his father opened the box and stared at its content with a glazed eyes, as if he was remembering something from the past.
"Dad?" he tried to call, uncomfortable by the silence.
His father looked up. "Oh. Sorry, I think..." His father looked at the content of the box again, a clearly wistful expression on his face. "I was just remembering."
Rowan tilted his head and asked carefully. "Remembering Alfons Heiderich?"
"Yeah," his father said as he pat the space next to him in the sofa, beckoning at Rowan to sit there. Rowan obliged. His father put a hand around his shoulder, an act that told Rowan that he was about to hear something that otherwise his father wouldn't have mentioned at all, so Rowan put his head on his father's shoulder and waited patiently.
"Do you remember," his father said quietly. "The story I told you when you told me that you're thinking of studying alchemy further?"
Rowan nodded. "About you trying to bring grandmother Trisha back?"
"Yeah," his father said, the hand on his shoulder gave him a light squeeze. "Do you remember what I told you about the Gate of Truth?"
"The one that took your limbs as payment?" His father nodded. Rowan surpressed a shudder. "What about it?"
"At the other side of that Gate, there is a world like our own," his father said, his golden eyes looking a far. "So much like our own that you can find somebody who is just like you, basically who you would have become had you been born into that world instead of here."
"Parallel world?" Rowan perked up. He had read about the concept from a book in his father's library, the only non-alchemical subject among the other tomes, sticking out like a zit. "You mean, it's real?"
His father smiled at him. "I lived in that world for two years, in this city called Munchen. Granted, I didn't spend the whole time there, but that was where I stayed the most."
"The letter," Rowan was suddenly reminded. "I tried reading it, but it wasn't any language I know."
His father chuckled. "I may be the only Deutsch speaker in this world, so I would be surprised instead if you had understood it."
"Doitsh?"
"The language people of that country used. There was another country, Britain, which language is just like Amestrian, only with weirder accent."
"Wow," Rowan whispered in awe. "But what were you doing there?"
His father chuckled again, but he sounded rather bitter. "I was trapped there. The Gate decided to chuck me there as a payment for something I wanted."
"But you managed to come home, right?"
"Of course," his father snorted. "Or else you wouldn't have been here."
Rowan nodded. He waited for a moment before then his father, true to his prediction started to talk again.
"Alfons Heiderich," he paused, as if looking for the right word. "Was that world's version of your uncle Al."
In Rowan's mind, he started to picture Uncle Al. "Did he look like Uncle Al?"
"Yeah, he did, except that his hair had lighter color and his eyes were blue. Lanky, tall, handsome. Not as many muscle as Al, though, because Alfons couldn't even lift anything heavier than half his weight and he's very lightweighted."
Rowan grimaced. "That sounds like me."
His father laughed. "Come to think of it, you may be right." He pulled Rowan closer. "You'll probably end up as tall as him, though I sure hope not as weak. He was very prone to sickness, you know. Catching a bad cold almost every month. But he's also very stubborn. Continuing with his research even when... even when he's very sick."
Rowan looked up as his father paused. His father was looking a far again, but there was pain underlying, and Rowan just had to ask. "Why?"
"He wanted to send me home. His research... his rocket.... He wanted to send me back with it." His father chuckled humorlessly. "Well, at least he succeeded. When the Gate opened from that side of the world, he hauled and strapped me into his rocket and sent me off. I never saw him again after that."
"You never knew what happened to him later?"
His father shook his head. "I couldn't go back to that world. All the rockets were destroyed and we had no choice but to seal the Gate from this side without sending anybody to seal the other side, so...."
Rowan could feel his father's hand shaking lightly and he had to wonder. "Do you miss him?"
His father turned to him, looking rather surprised, before he gave him a thin smile. "Maybe. He was a good guy. He helped me through a lot and all I gave him back was trouble."
"He must be a very good man."
"He is."
"...Maybe one day I can find a way to open the Gate safely and go to that world to find him."
His father gave him a puzzled look. "Why would you do that?"
"Because," Rowan said, grinning widely.
His father blinked at him. Then smiled. "I think it's better if we never have to touch the Gate ever again," he said, but then he added. "But if we'd ever get it open again... yeah, it would be nice to see him again."
Maybe it was the wistful tone his father had used, but Rowan suddenly felt an urge to trying harder for alchemy. Admittedly he wasn't really talented in it, despite being the son and nephew of two genius alchemists (a fact that the media liked to jibe at him and he did his best to ignore), but maybe if he could try. Reuniting his father with his savior sounded like a good enough goal.
His father squeezed his shoulder affectionately.
Yeah, Rowan thought as he smiled back at his father. Definitely a good enough goal.
* * * * * * *