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“Varian?” Eugene knocked on the door of the young alchemist, his fingers rapping against the hard, wooden door. He held his baby girl in one arm, shifting her weight to the other side as he knocked again, this time with the other hand. “You’re getting heavy,” he muttered to her. Little Elise gurgled happily at her father, smiling up at him with the beautiful smile she inherited from her mother.
“Come in,” the young man yelled, and Eugene could tell he was in the middle of a project. He entered to find Varian surrounded in a mass of alchemy supplies and notebooks filled with hurriedly scribbled notes. His face was a mess of blue and green, from some chemical reaction that had gone awry. Eugene chuckled to himself. Although Varian was technically an adult now, a few months past the benchmark age of eighteen, he still acted like the naive child he’d been when they first met.
Varian pushed his goggles up onto his head and smiled at Eugene, rubbing off his face. “Hey, Eugene!” His gaze drifted down to the baby girl in Eugene’s arms, and the young man’s smile only grew. “Hi, Elise.” He walked over to the father and daughter and put his gloved finger out to the little girl. She happily grabbed onto it, squeezing with more force than Varian would have expected from a person who’d only been in the world for a few months.
“Can I… can I hold her?” Varian asked hopefully.
“Is she going to explode?”
With a chuckle, Varian shook his head. “I save that for inanimate objects.”
Eugene handed the little girl over, and she settled down happily into Varian’s arms. Varian held her closely, fearing that he’d drop her. She was so small and delicate, it seemed like anything he did would break her.
“So, what are you doing here?” Varian asked, sitting down on his desk chair and gesturing for Eugene to pull up another chair. “I thought you were visiting with those royals from Nasurdnia.”
“I was,” Eugene explained, pulling over the only chair that wasn’t covered in chemicals. “But Rapunzel wants to have a one-on-one conversation with the Queen, to discuss the relationship between the kingdoms, or something like that.” He shook his head, already getting sidetracked. Eugene didn’t even attempt to understand the mechanics behind everything his wife did for the kingdom. “She asked me to watch Elise while she did.”
Varian nodded, not fully listening. He had something else on his mind, and Eugene could see that.
“We stopped by here to check on you.” Eugene rested his elbows on his knees so he could look straight into Varian’s eyes. “How are you doing, buddy? You’ve been spending so much time in your work that I’ve barely seen you since the letter came, and I think you’re doing it on purpose.”
Varian’s eyes misted over as he looked at the floor. He gulped as he looked at the door where his father’s room was, where he used to be able to always go in and talk when he needed to, or just share a laugh.
“I miss him,” he whispered, directing the answer more to Elise than Eugene.
Over a month ago, Quirin had left for the Dark Kingdom, to pay a visit to his fellow members of the Brotherhood and check on the renovations to the kingdom. It had been intended to be a short trip, less than a month, which was why Varian hadn’t come along. But just a couple of weeks ago, Varian had received a letter from his father saying that he was going to be staying for longer than he had intended. A lot longer. In fact, he predicted that he wouldn’t come back until the beginning of the new year, which was over two months away.
He hadn’t specified in his letter the specific reason for his elongated stay, but Varian predicted that the Brotherhood was having trouble agreeing on a lot of elements. Typical Brotherhood. His dad was always the peacemaker of the bunch, never one to run and hide from a fight, and Varian knew that he wouldn’t leave until the matter was settled.
Eugene nodded at the alchemist’s confession, and cleared his throat. “Hey, we all miss your dad. His apple crops were delicious! Oh, man, do you remember those mixture of a honeycrisp and a red delicious that he bred? Those were incredible!” Varian let out a half-hearted chuckle, but his smile quickly dropped as he looked at the floor.
C’mon, Eugene, he scolded himself. Wrong tactic.
“I miss my dad, too,” he began. Varian looked up.
“R-really?” He’d never thought that Eugene would be the type to miss his father. He was so practical, such an in-the-moment type guy that he didn’t picture him thinking about someone he couldn’t see.
“Yeah, I do,” Eugene continued. “True, I didn’t really like him at first, but now I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Varian smiled, looking up at Eugene. Elise had nearly fallen asleep in his arms, and he felt her breathing steady as she cradled her head in the pit of his elbow. Her wispy hair tickled his arms, but he didn’t dare move it away.
“Does your dad ever like to embarrass you?” Varian suddenly asked, remembering when his father had called him out about his former crush on Cassandra right as Kiera and Catalina walked in through the door. They still hadn’t stopped teasing him about it.
With a chuckle, Eugene nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Oh, yes, he does. Before Rapunzel and I were engaged, he kept asking me -in front of her- when I was going to propose!”
“But didn’t you try to propose, like, three times?”
“It was two, actually,” Eugene corrected. “I was going to before Cass an dra crashed my party, but I didn’t actually try. And the second time was technically just Rapunzel interrupting my practice proposal. But you know dads, they can’t take anything with a grain of salt.”
“You know who else I miss?” Varian asked, looking down at the ground as his voice grew quiet.
“Who?” Eugene’s voice softened to match the volume of the younger man’s.
“My mom.”
Both of them sat in silence, thinking of the mothers they had never really gotten to know. Eugene had never met his mom outside of a portrait, but Varian’s mom had passed when he was only three years old. He had a few, fleeting memories of her, but he wasn’t sure how much of that had actually happened and how much was merely his imagination.
“Me too,” Eugene replied, moving his chair to sit by Varian’s as he put a comforting hand on his shoulder. Varian smiled a sad smile, and absentmindedly began playing with the ruffles on Elise’s tiny dress, handmade for her by her mother.
“Hey, I knew something that might cheer you up!” Eugene suddenly said, remembering one of the only pieces of good news he’d gotten recently.
Varian looked up, curious. What could possibly cheer him up when his dad was gone?
“Rapunzel got a letter from Cass today. In a few months, she’s coming for a visit!”
“Really?” Varian exclaimed, his face breaking into a smile. Although he didn’t have the little childish crush on Cassandra that he used to, she was still his friend and he couldn’t wait to see her again. It had been so long since she’d left, over two years. He’d grown a lot taller in that time. In fact, he thought that he was probably taller than Cass herself now. Varian grinned, imagining the look on her face when she first saw his height.
“Cass certainly has a lot of good parent stories,” Eugene commented, chuckling to himself. “With both Gothel and her father. Hey, at least both of our mothers didn’t abandon us when we were four, right?”
Varian nodded. Even though his life hadn’t been the easiest, he had a lot to be thankful for. He had friends, no, family, everywhere he looked. There were his two goofy big brothers who were always there for him, his two older sisters, two polar opposites who complimented each other nicely, and his two rambunctious little sisters who he could always count on for a good time. But most of all, Varian had his dad. He would be back soon, and Varian knew that when he did get back, he would have a lot of fun stories for him.
“You’re a good friend, Eugene,” he said, looking shyly at the man who’d gone from a legend to an acquaintance to a friend.
Eugene wrapped his arm around Varian’s shoulders, pulling him in close. “Brother.”
Varian beamed, his face hurting from smiling so wide. “Brother.”
Elise gurgled as if to give her approval, and both men laughed. She was truly a little ball of sunshine, just like her mother, and it was impossible to be sad and gloomy any longer when you were looking at her.
“How about you have dinner in the castle with us tonight?” Eugene invited, giving Varian a smile.
“Really?” Varian was more thrilled than he let on, being completely sick of leftovers for dinner. But most of all, he wouldn’t have to eat with only Ruddiger for company.
“Really.”
Varian handed Elise off to her father and stood up, beginning to pace in the way he did when he was excited. Or nervous. In this case, possibly both. “Oh, boy, what should I wear? I have some formal clothes, but I haven’t worn them since before my growth spurt, so they’re probably really small on me now-”
Eugene cut him off, chuckling as he placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just come as yourself. That’s how we want you, anyways.”
Before he could think, Varian’s arms were wrapped around him, squeezing him so tight he could barely breathe.
Setting Elise down safely in the middle of the large table, Eugene hugged Varian back, practically feeling the alchemist’s loneliness in the way he didn’t let go. Varian had grown taller, but he was still a good two or three inches shorter than Eugene, and he was still as scrawny as he’d been as a kid. Eugene smiled, knowing that, although Varian was technically an adult now, he was still growing. And as his brother, Eugene knew he would be an instrumental factor in that growth.
Eugene broke away first, ruffling Varian’s hair before he picked up Elise, who had discovered a piece of paper that she was happily chewing. He mentally scolded himself. It was never a good idea to leave a baby unsupervised in a laboratory like this, with chemicals and whatnot strewn about everywhere. Eugene was still getting used to this whole parenting thing.
“See you at 6:00?” Eugene asked, walking out the door.
Varian nodded, not even trying to hide his excitement anymore, shown in the wide, toothy grin that Eugene recognized so well. “I wouldn’t miss it.”