Author's Notes: First of all, I've been thinking about this for months. I talked about it a little with but-i-am-hellbound on tumblr and ever since then it's been on my mind since. This is like the sweetest song ever in the musical and it makes me cry every time. And then I started thinking about Roy and Aidan and, well, it's all downhill from there. It's a prequel to Drabble 100 ("Until the Day") from my 100 Royai Drabbles series, "you pull me through time", and a prequel to the last chapter here, among others, but I think the sentiment of this one really ties in with that fic in particular. This is so cheesy and it's more about Roy being a dad than Royai, but you all know how I operate by now.

"You will come of age with our young nation
We'll bleed and fight for you; we'll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We'll pass it on to you; we'll give the world to you"
- Dear Theodosia

Setting the pen down, Roy ran his hands down his face. Finally after a week of not bothering to shave, scruff was beginning to show. He'd have to get rid of that in the morning, lest he wanted Riza to glower at him all day in the office. He grimaced at that thought, rubbing at his upper lip for a second. She was coming back to work tomorrow and that meant there would be no more excuses for him slacking. He figured the only reason she hadn't said anything about it sooner was because she'd been too tired.

Newborns didn't exactly go together with a good night's sleep.

With his brain too foggy to think clearly, Roy put the paperwork back into a folder and turned off the light at the desk. Hers was so much more immaculate than his, which admittedly was strewn with books and loose leaf papers with all sorts of notes, codes, and ramblings written on them. After yawning and stretching, Roy started back for the bedroom. They had moved her desk and most of her office things into the living room area when they had transformed her small office into a second bedroom.

Upon slipping into the bedroom, Roy spotted Riza's prone, sleeping body. She was curled up underneath the blanket on the edge of the bed, as if anticipating his arrival even in her sleep. The sight of her caused him to sigh quietly. It would probably be a while before he would be able to stay the night again. His heart skipped a beat at the thought. Her being off work for maternity leave had given them some leeway, allowing them a little more freedom. She still helped out with paperwork and other things while not at the office, which meant he had genuine excuses to stop by her place. And he'd learned a long time ago how to sneak around. With her back at work though, there would simply be too much attention on her. They would need to put space between them again to be safe.

A weak noise that sounded like a whimper distracted Roy from his disgruntled thoughts. He looked back into the hallway, but it was quiet once more. Just as he was about to dismiss it as his imagination, he heard the noise again, this time much more distinct and louder. When he heard Riza rustling in the bed and groaning in her sleep, he glanced back at her quickly. She went still again, letting him know that she was still asleep, but likely would wake up any second if the noise came again. Though he was still relatively unsure and even insecure about his role, Roy knew what he needed to do.

Quietly shutting the bedroom door, Roy tiptoed to the second bedroom and slipped inside. Considering that it hadn't originally been meant to be a bedroom, the room was small and sparsely decorated. Riza didn't have a mind for interior decoration anymore than he did. Catalina had done most of it, having had practice since she'd had her son with Havoc a little under a year before Riza had hers, along with Fuery, who had been all too eager to help out and chip in. Honestly, nearly everything in the room had been bought by their colleagues and friends. Roy wasn't sure that Riza had had to buy anything with everyone doting on her when she was expecting.

The crib in the corner of the room held the most precious thing in the world. Roy thought that he would never love anything more than he did alchemy - and then Riza had steadily wiggled her way into his heart, like she had always been meant to be there. He thought that nothing would hold his passion like her, alchemy, or his ever growing desire to make it to the top. Those had been his sole focuses for so long that considering anything else had been strange.

When Riza had told him that she was pregnant, his entire world had been rocked. He felt like he was standing on the shakiest ground and could fall at any minute. Him, a father? No, no way, he couldn't be a father. That life wasn't meant for him. He couldn't be what Hughes had been. He couldn't imagine reading bedtime stories or trying to force a fussy child to eat mushy food or changing diapers or anything like that. He tried imagining PTA meetings with his child's teacher or dropping them off at school. Kissing Riza in the morning while she made breakfast before work. Cuddling on the couch together as a family. Domestic life had never been his style. Where in his life would he fit those things?

Even stranger though, the moment he'd started to think about all those things, he couldn't stop. Scenarios that had once felt so foreign to him unless he was playing uncle to Elicia suddenly found their way to the forefront of his mind, except instead of Elicia, he began to picture a daughter that looked like him or a son that looked like Riza. Without any warning, one day while he was at work, he looked out of his interior office at Riza, who was just beginning to show, and he realized how much he wanted those things. No, he more than wanted them - he needed them. He wanted desperately to be a father who could beam with pride at his kid's first steps, a father who would sit at the table and help his child with math so simple that it would feel like a relief.

A father who would be there for his child every step of the way.

Roy's stomach twisted as he looked down at his son. He couldn't be there for Aidan in the way that he wanted, at least not right now. Both he and Riza had come to the conclusion of what they would have to do. Roy had other promises to live up to first. He had other and older goals that needed to be fulfilled. He swore in his heart that he would be there for his son, even if it wasn't in the way that he wanted, but he wouldn't abandon his son. He would never leave him behind.

His father hadn't been around for him, having died so long ago that Roy could only vaguely remember the man's face. Roy hadn't looked like the man at all, from what he'd seen in old, faded pictures, having taken after his mother's distinct Xingese looks. Aidan was the same way. He looked nearly identical to the one baby picture Madam Christmas had of Roy. Only a few months old, the baby boy already had a mop of unruly black hair on top of his soft head, a pale complexion that would burn in the summer sun if not careful, dark slanted eyes, and thin mouth. He did have a chubbier face and belly, but that was only excepted of a baby that seemed to drink all the milk that Fullmetal had refused growing up.

In the crib, Aidan was wiggling about, still half asleep and fighting with himself. Since he'd started to move more and roll onto his belly on his own, Riza had stopped swaddling him, but that meant that he tended to wake himself up by inadvertently smacking himself in the face. It was kind of funny, except when it happened at three in the morning. Of course, since he was Roy's son, he also had a bad habit of staying awake at odd hours of the night as well and taking random naps throughout the day. They would be cursed with a child that had Roy's same sleeping habits. Lucky for Riza, she was already used to it, but it didn't make things much easier.

Knowing that his son was a ticking time bomb, ready to cry the second he fully woke up, Roy awkwardly reached down into the crib and pulled the baby up into his arms. He seemed to like it more when he woke up to someone already holding him than alone in his crib. "Sh, sh, it's alright, Bug," Roy whispered as he positioned the wiggling baby in his arms and against his chest. Aidan did squirm about like a little bug whenever anyone but Riza held him, which was why Roy had started calling him that in the first place. It just felt…right. They both knew that Aidan would not be able to call Roy "Dad" for a while, and so it gave him peace to have something that was just theirs, father and son's.

Aidan whimpered a few more times, sniffing horribly like he was about to cry. His dark eyes spun around the room as he tried to get his bearings straight until he was able to latch onto Roy's face. Slowly but surely, as Roy bounced him around in his arms and paced the small room, Aidan began to calm down. Roy breathed in a sigh of relief when Aidan laid his face against the collar of Roy's shirt, even if a bit of dribble did get on it. At least he slobbered less than Black Hayate had when the dog was a puppy.

Carefully, Roy lowered himself into the chair in the corner of the room. It was where Riza usually sat down to feed Aidan if he woke up in the middle of the night. Aidan didn't seem to be hungry though, just more in need of a comforting presence. Roy could understand that. He wondered if Aidan was ever scared when he woke up alone in the dark or if he was too young to understand such concepts yet. At only a few months old, he already seemed extremely attached to Riza, preferring her over everyone else, including him, but that was probably normal. After all, Riza was the center of his world right now.

Roy smiled. You and me both, kid.

More awake now, Aidan started to make unintelligible noises. It would be a while before he could speak, as all the books that Roy had read during Riza's pregnancy had told him, but that still didn't make Roy any less excited. He liked the imagine that Aidan was talking to him in his own language. For the most part, he was a very quiet baby - he didn't cry anywhere near as much as Havoc's son Brandon or Elicia had - but with a few people and Black Hayate, he would babble about excitedly. Roy considered himself privileged to be one of them. It filled his heart with pride every time Aidan would look at him and begin to make noises when he was normally so quiet and shy.

When Aidan leaned back, trying to gain his balance with Roy holding his head carefully, he reached out to place a chubby hand on Roy's face and made another noise. Roy grimaced a little. "Yes, I know. I've got to shave or your Mommy will do it for me when I'm asleep. I hope you never want to grow a beard because it will be impossible."

One day, in the far future, he and Aidan would cram into a bathroom as Roy taught him how to shave his face. He could just picture Aidan slathering shaving cream all over his face in imitation of Roy. Better than what he had done. When he was eight, he'd shaved his legs because that was what all his sisters did. He couldn't remember his aunt laughing so hard when she'd caught him. He hadn't known any better, seeing as how he'd lived in a bar with a bunch of women. He'd teach Aidan though; he'd be there for him.

"I promise you, Aidan; I'll be the father to you that I never had," Roy said firmly. Sure, Aidan couldn't understand a lick of what he was saying, but it made Roy feel better to say it out loud. The way Aidan looked him in the eyes though, he could only hope that his son could feel the strength of his words or could somehow hear the love in them at least. "I know it won't seem like it at times and it's going to be strange. I know that it might seem like I'm not here or that I'm gone, but I swear, everything I do, everything that I'm going to do, will be for you. I'm going to make things right. I'm going to build this country into something better. I thought I was just fighting to protect others and fix the past, but… It's time I work to brighten the future, for you, for your generation."

He saw it so clearly now. The sins of his past, the wrong done by his alchemy, the blood on his hands. All of it had been necessary. Who knows what would have happened to Amestris had he not done those things? If the guilt and shame had never threatened to crush him, would he have fought so hard to make things right again? He would bear the weight of every awful thing he had done, he would bleed and fight, he would break himself again and again, if it meant that his son would never have to do the same. He destroyed and he would rebuild the nation until it became the bright world that his son could live peacefully in. He would carry the world so that his son would not have to do so in the future.

Roy would reach his goals so that Aidan would not be left with the burdens of his parents' pasts. It would be wrong of him to leave his son to clean the mess that he had made. Everything he had to do made so much more sense. It wasn't just him and Riza anymore. It was them, it was Aidan, it was their family. It was Fullmetal's kids and Havoc's. It was this generation that would one day replace them, and Roy would be damned if he didn't leave something good behind. He had been given the frayed edges of a rope ready to snap to work with and had nearly died for it, lost the love of his life, had his sight taken away from him. He would not leave his son that.

"I'll do it," Roy promised, "I'll make it all right for you. Everything I did wrong, every sin I made, I'll do whatever I can to fix things." He smiled weakly as his son silently watched him. "Although I can't promise that I won't make any mistakes along the way. You've unfortunately got an idiot for a father."

Aidan suddenly smiled brightly, one of those open-mouthed gummy smiles that seemed uncontrollable, and let out a giggling sound as he pawed at Roy's face again with his chubby hand. It blew him away, taking the breath right out of his lungs. Aidan may have looked like a mirror image of Roy, but whenever he smiled so openly like this, it reminded Roy only of Riza. She was so reserved, but whenever she smiled with nothing holding her back, it was like looking into the sun on a clear day. It was brighter than any transmutation and Roy knew in his heart that he would do everything in his power to ensure that his son's future was just as bright.