Author's Note: I love Izumi/Sig and needed to give them some fic time, especially Sig POV. Originally written for LJ comm fma_fic_contest. Placed 3rd, making me VERY happy. :3

Complicity

He didn't often give his opinion. Not in words. What needed to be communicated between them was always done without what he experienced as excess, often in questions she would ask and he would answer in words that were few yet sincere. He could always trust her questions were needful; she could always trust his answers were truthful. The rest? Murmured words of affection and intimacy when work was done and she would allow him to hold her—for moments or hours, depending on her mood: everything and nothing could be said and understood and held close to the heart. And there were other forms of communication as well, from passing nods of acknowledgment to protective grunts to a well-cooked meal shared in silence by candlelight.

Izumi didn't demand he become more expressive, just as Sig didn't demand she become less volatile. You can't change a leopard's spots. And if you could, why would you? He cherished the woman he married, the woman who married him, exactly as she was. And he felt cherished in return. What outsiders and even close friends saw as yin and yang, opposites brought together to complement one another, they experienced as like to like. Yes, he was immense and she was small, but both were strong-willed and strong-bodied. He worked with knifes on animal flesh while she trained with her hands, but both could break bones and bring down an enemy with equal ease. He was more likely to remain in the background, cool and observant, as his Izumi leapt forward, full of heat and action, but love and protectiveness fueled both equally. Perfectly.

And the child? Again, there was difference but mostly sameness. Vocal, exuberant Izumi shared the good news with all who would listen, relished her pregnancy, and planned for everything from the earliest days to the far future. "She'll be an inventor." "He'll look just like you." "He'll be a builder." "She'll be so beautiful." Quiet, mellow Sig listened, smiling, sharing her excitement in his own more passive way, entranced by Izumi's words and her glow. She spent many hours during those months sitting in his lap, his big hands around her, resting on her growing belly. He'd nuzzle her neck from behind, and she'd lose her place in her unending narrative of their lives. "Oh Sig," she'd say with a laugh.

Laughter was not entirely gone from their lives now, nor was touching, or the ways in which they were different but mostly alike. Izumi was still rash, outspoken, fiercely demanding and fiercely protective. Sig was still…Sig. They still belonged to one another. Fully. And there was the sharing of grief over the child that never was, the absence of new life in their lives, a presence that never materialized.

As for the other? It was the one place Sig had truly failed her, failed them both; the one place he knew well that she felt she had failed both him and herself. And their child. Had he known…ah, but he had known. In his passive way, he condoned her experimentation, knew entirely what she was contemplating. With the same determined energy she used to plan for their baby's life, she planned for that transmuted rebirth. And he pretended he did not know. Worked late in the butcher shop. Spent time with friends when she asked to be alone. Napped. Ignored. He was complicit.

Now, he ground his teeth in the night. He relished the feel of the knife severing sinew and bone far too much. And he hovered over his wife. Of course, he had reason: she had lost so much of herself to the fire she had walked into…alone. When she would choke and cough, vomiting blood that was wrung from within her to temper and bond their souls ever more tightly, Sig held her. When she took that last step, he did not stop her, perhaps could not have stopped her. Nor did he share the risks she took. But his love, then and now, was absolute. Was that enough? No one can keep another from risking life in the pursuit of dreams, even when one sees the nightmare take shape as if one has hammered its form with one's own hands. There was blood on both of their hands, now and forever, and he couldn't wish it any other way.