A/N: Written for Aiffe for a drabble challenge on my journal. It is meant to be this short, it is finished, and I will not update it.

Enjoy:D

-Eia

Prompt: Al/Wrath, 'Eureka!' (Specifically pertaining to the exclamation of Archimedes upon discovering the theory of the displacement of water for determining the volume of irregular objects.)

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Sanctuary

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"Don't run away," said Al, holding his hand out in a gesture of peace that had been around for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years.

Wrath (what would his name have been, had he lived? This was a question Al often asked himself) looked longingly upwards at the blank summer sky. There wasn't a single cloud. It was relentless; almost cruel, that fathomless, blinding blue. One could run forever in a sky like that and never meet another living thing. That was all Wrath had wanted from the start, Al knew, if a mother's arms and a brother's smile were to be denied him.

Only that-- a sky to run into and no clouds to bar his path.

Al was a barrier, a grey bank closing in and bearing him back to the ground to smother him.

That was fine with Al. Wrath was, in a strange and painful sense, his younger brother... clinging to Sloth's legs that looked so like Trisha's legs once had, and the soul inhabiting them born from Trisha's failed rebirth. It was something that never should have happened... just like Wrath, just like Al's current state, and Ed's. Too many shouldn't-haves.

All Al wanted was to make amends for some of that wrongness, and Wrath needed the most. He was the most alone, because he was the most human out of the seven cardinal sins.

Every muscle in Wrath's small, thin body was coiled and taut, ready to spring away across the earth and wind to the closest hiding place. He was like a small wild thing, a wary dark hare with violet eyes like no others in the world. There were scars all over him, and Al knew there were scars inside him too, even more.

"Don't run," Al repeated gently, and came closer step by step until he was close enough to kneel and draw Wrath into the protective metal circle of his arms.

It took a long time-- maybe an hour, maybe six-- but eventually Wrath softened against him and began to breathe evenly. It was the nature of wild things to be able to smell a threat, and though Al did not smell alive, neither did he give off the scent of an enemy. Not anymore. Al knew that would Wrath could feel in him would only amount to this: weariness, and a desire to fix what was broken.

It was restful, not being hunted... being protected, being understood.

"I'm tired," Wrath said, simple as always. "Can I hide here?"

"Sure you can," Al told him, knowing that if he'd still had a flesh and blood heart, it would be aching. (The pain a soul feels is different from the one of nerves and racing blood.) "You can stay here as long as you like."

Wrath crawled unhesitatingly inside of him, limbs curling flexibly in on themselves, long fingers pressing against and into the curving steel walls. It was unnerving, being fused with, becoming one with another being, but at the same time, it was beautiful... like having all the emptiness pushed out of him, overflowing his edges, displaced by the mass of this new existence within him.

Eureka, though Al wryly.

This was the volume of the hole in his soul-- one lost and broken child.

Wrath was careful not to touch the blood seal. "Why?" he asked in a small voice, his voice echoing eerily within Al. "Aren't you afraid I'll kill you? It would be so easy."

"You can if you like," Al said. "But where would you hide then? You'd have to run again."

There was silence from Wrath then, a deep and gentle one.

When Al looked inwards, this was what he saw: a small, weeping child with long hair and sunken cheeks, lips pressed carefully just to the left of an intricate rust-red seal.

Giving no indication that he'd seen, he began to walk. He was going nowhere in particular.

Perhaps this would atone at least somewhat for the sins that stained Al's hands and soul.

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Then again, perhaps not.

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