Gah. At long last, the next chapter has been posted. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, considering just how much has been written about these two. I actually had to put it down and walk away for a while.

I didn't want this to be the usual thing of Hughes gushing about his daughter. I tried to capture the little moments between a father and daughter, but I'm not sure how well I did. Let me know.

As always, the FMA characters aren't mine, and if you want to drop me a review, feel free. I will respond if I can.

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Maes and Elysia Hughes

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001. Angel

She had wanted to dress up like an angel for Samhain, but when Gracia went to make it, she insisted that the dress be army blue, like what her daddy wore.

002. Reason

Elysia had her own reasons for wanting to join the military, but the people who didn't know her thought it was her way of honoring her father's memory.

003. Prank

Their first real father-daughter project was to steal Roy Mustang's ignition gloves, and was actually what caused the legendary prank war of Eastern Headquarters.

004. Caught

The light came on and they both instinctively froze as Gracia caught them both literally with their hands in the cookie jar.

005. Anxiety

He'd never told Gracia, but he'd worried about both her and the baby all through the pregnancy.

006. Rock

The first time he tried to rock her to sleep, she screamed bloody murder, and he was terrified that he'd broken her.

007. Hire

Gracia couldn't help but be annoyed as she watched him give the new babysitter the third degree, complete with the hot lights and vaguely threatening line of questioning.

008. I can't make you mine

Roy knew that if his old friend had lived long enough, he'd have wreaked havoc on his daughter's love life; he'd have been pleased to know that Roy was picking up the slack.

009. Race

Whenever she raced him somewhere when she was little, she always won; it wasn't until many years later that she realized he let her.

010. Heartbreaker

He knew that she would be a heartbreaker when she grew up, but god help any boy who tried to break hers, because nobody else would.

011. Language

She had never heard the words Daddy used when the bucket of water landed on his head, but she was willing to bet Mommy could tell her what they meant.

012. Wait

It had taken a solid month of her waiting for him to return home at his usual time for her to realize that he wasn't coming back.

013. Tongue-Tied

For one of the few times in his life he didn't know what to say when Gracia told him she wanted to name the baby after his sister, Elysia.

014. Crystal Clear

Gracia knew that the worst cases were usually the ones he couldn't talk about, but she could always tell by how he would hold her and Elysia close so they couldn't see the haunted look in his eyes.

015. Fraud

He was honestly proud of his wife and daughter, so it wasn't like he wouldn't have bragged about them anyway, but it did make it easier to play the fool when he had to.

016. Search

He spent an hour looking for her during the game of hide and go seek, and finally found her sleeping under an end table.

017. Apart

When her mother died, the last thing that went through her head before the grief hit her was that her parents were together again after so many years apart.

018. Personality

She was her own person and had her own way of looking at the world, even as young as she was, but he could still see shades of himself and Gracia there if he looked.

019. Orange

Her husband and daughter were covered with orange finger paint and grinning like fools, and when she wanted to know what had happened, they took one look at each other and burst out laughing.

020. Crawl

When she learned to crawl, it was a strangely bittersweet moment for him; it was the first step toward his little girl growing up and away from him and Gracia.

021. Alternate Reality

As he watched her exchange her wedding vows with her new husband, he couldn't help but wonder how his daughter could have grown up so fast without his noticing.

022. Downstairs

He hadn't had a problem watching her as she climbed upstairs by herself for the first time, but the ten minutes she spent climbing down the stairs were the most nerve-wracking he'd ever had in his life.

023. Pop

He was going to kill Roy Mustang for having introduced his child to bubble wrap, assuming Gracia didn't get him first.

024. Cliché

If she had been a boy, following in her father's footsteps would have been a cliche, but as it was, people did nothing but talk.

025. Memory

As she got older, she had to wonder how much of what she remembered about her father was her actual memories, and how much was stories that people had told her about him.

026. Bed

The nightly war over bedtime usually ended when he'd promise her an extra story before he turned the light off, though she was never awake to hear the end.

027. Needle In A Haystack

He would have thought that picking Elysia's voice out of the sea of people would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but Gracia was able to do it without a problem.

028. Shave

Gracia had remarked on it and off about it for weeks, but it was only after Elysia complained that he finally got the hint and shaved the beginnings of his beard off.

029. Whatever

Whatever it was Daddy was putting on the floors, it smelled like coffee, but it sure didn't look like it.

030. Guardian

He and Gracia had talked it over several times, and decided that if anything happened to them, Roy would be the one to take care of Elysia.

031. Infidelity

She knew intellectually that her mother might eventually meet somebody else and remarry, but when it finally happened, she couldn't help but feel like her mother was somehow betraying her father.

032. Fiction

The good guys always won and walked away unscathed, the bad guys were always left in smoking ruins, and the good people never died; it was a nice story, but she learned early on in life that it didn't really happen that way.

033. A New World

Entire worlds had opened for her when she started school, and she just wished he was there so she could tell him all about them.

034. Accuracy

As Roy Mustang watched her throw the knives at the center of the target, it occurred to him that she was at least as good with them as her father had been.

035. Fallen

The first time Elysia fell down and skinned her knee, Gracia wasn't sure who was more upset - Elysia, who was yelling her head off, or Maes, who had only witnessed the trauma.

036. Original

She never found out until she grew up that the fairy tales her father told her when she was little were actually based on things that had happened to him, her mother, and her Uncle Roy when they were in school and before the war.

037. Abstract

He had known for seven and a half months that he was going to be a father, but when Gracia's labor started, everything he'd read and everything they'd talked about vanished as panic set in.

038. Imperfection

She and her mother were the closest thing to perfection he had found in this imperfect world.

039. Let's Go

He hadn't been quite sure how she'd take to the tricycle when they'd first brought it home and put it together, but once she figured it out, she started following him everywhere on it.

040. Left Behind

Years later, she read her father's obituary, and it said that he left behind a wife and four-year-old daughter, but it didn't come anywhere near close to describing what she and her mother went through after his death.

041. Potential

She had the potential to be anything in the world she wanted to be, and he hoped he'd be there to see her do it.

042. Demon

Envy had taken the wife's form because he knew that she was one of the only people the Lieutenant Colonel couldn't raise a hand against, and because the girl child was too little to hold the gun steady.

043. Jump

Her afternoon jumping rope with the Elrics ended abruptly when he had to come and untie Edward from the tree in the back yard.

044. Punish

She listened in amazement as her mommy yelled at her daddy and Uncle Roy; she hadn't known that grown-ups could get into that kind of trouble.

045. Over

"Over, under, around, and through" may have made perfect sense to Daddy, but it still didn't tell her how to tie her shoes.

046. Deception

Her assignments for the Investigations division eventually took her into undercover work, and she was pleased and surprised when her commanding officer told her she was as good at it as her father had been.

047. Thunder

She thought the lightning was pretty, but when the sky started making those scary noises a few minutes later, she latched onto her daddy so fast his head spun.

048. Welcome

Though Alphonse had no memory of the brigadier general, Mrs. Hughes and her daughter had made it clear he was always welcome in their house.

049. Stop

She tried to stop them from putting Daddy in that hole in the ground, because he had too much to do and it was making Mommy cry.

050. Writers' Choice: Camera

She'd found the old camera in the front hall closet while she'd been helping her mother clean, and though she eventually acquired better and more modern equipment, she always treasured it because it belonged to her father.

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A/N: There are more than a few references to things from my other story, Supplemental Rules and Regulations.