“Oh...” He would have retrieved his father’s glasses if some instinct hadn’t told him he’d better do otherwise. It wasn’t like... alarm bells flickering in the head, like some claimed they would. It was only experience that told him that he probably said something he shouldn’t have. If only judging by the frozen actions of his father.
It wasn’t too far of a stretch, really. Sometimes he took things a bit far. Not to be cruel, but because the thoughts in his head were so vast, and so immense without pause, that he just had to spout them off for fear of them festering on the inside. For one who could simply lay down and sleep, it may pose one level of danger.
For one who couldn’t sleep and couldn’t escape from it all, perhaps it offered something else entirely.
He would have nibbled on the thumb of his glove if he could, at that moment, eyes watching his father’s gradual approach. Not that he expected his father to say anything particular. It was just one of those instances where a son didn’t quite mesh well with the parents vision of how they should act? Maybe? He wasn’t sure if that was a thing or not, actually. Was that how a father/son relationship worked?
He was dissecting the situation.
That was a habit of his he wished not to so often employ. It was better to speak it out loud. Wasn’t it? Not everything had to be rendered to its tiniest molecule. It wasn’t even a requirement to understand everything.
.... but the unfamiliar was scary. He faced the unfamiliar every day.
In truth, there was something else he shared with his father: Who would wish to know the thoughts freely circulating in his mind? In both their minds. It was a complicated mess somewhere behind that cranium, chaos erupting to resembling something of a universe? Or perhaps the beginning of the end.
Sometimes, it was a frightening thing to see. How still Alphonse could be. Even if he were without his body, there was a soul attached to that armor and a soul should never be so still as he displayed right then, watching his father, not flinching even a little bit with the touch he splayed against his armor.
.... he wasn’t prepared for the abrupt shift in tone. Even if he were on guard, his father was a strong guy. Al was hollow on the inside. It took some creative liberties and some real thinking for that body to perform adequately. He teetered over with a squeak, garnering plenty of attention from those around them then. It was an unavoidable reaction, with so much armor crumbling to the ground.
He was sort of embarrassed, though he wasn’t sure why.
He was happy to be leaning just so, able to grab the helmet and attach it before anyone truly noticed something amiss.
He listened to what he had to say. It was about all he could do, awkward body collapsed to the ground as he was. He didn’t say much when he finished, bringing himself to his knees, crawling a few paces until he was able to reach for the glasses too dusty for a fair wipe with a cloth. It was a process to get that body standing again, both hands - or one fist in that case - as a stabilizer against the ground, butt in the air, joints rotating all that weight back upwards. He held the glasses like they were some sacred thing, eventually holding them back out to his father.
“Okay.” He responded lamely.
It might have seemed almost mocking if one didn’t know Alphonse. The gentleness of his heart regardless of the rough edges he sometimes displayed. He was most certainly the most sensitive of the bunch. Perhaps that was why it was so painful for him not to be able to feel all that sentiment cradled on the inside.
That singular word made him sound every bit as young as he was. His mentality might be older than that small voice suggested, but his experience rendered him.... so much more naive than he should be.
Sometimes people forgot how vitally important it was to communicate to others feelings and emotions. How they felt about particular situations. How they viewed the world. Any number of different things. It was so easy to go about the mundane that people began to take for granted the little things that went by without acknowledgement. Maybe that was why there always seemed to be such strong reactions when someone did pause and express thoughts like the one he did with his father.
A decision had been made long ago, to put his life on hold in favor of what seemed almost to become an eternal search for answers. Eyes buried deep into wordy texts, content much more complex than anyone his age should be able to progressively study all on their own. With any real interest attached!
For him, the act of research extended far beyond feeding simple curiosities niggling at the back of his mind, urging him to continue, to fill the void in his mind with as much knowledge as he could gather. It became necessity. As important a daily function as sleeping and the addition of nutrients to a wanting body to others.
That had been the question to circulate his mind during the last year of travels.
“That’s why I came to you first. I want you to help me to learn more about life, not just what resides on the surface level either. And maybe, in return, I can help you too. I know it seems I should have thought of a better source for those things. I know that you have a hard time with that stuff too. But you’re my dad. And I want you to be the one to help me.”
