Just a little 1000 word piece that I wrote for a contest on LJ. It's late now, and a school night, so I'm going to give more extensive updates on my profile later.

In the meantime, those of you waiting for drabbles, just know that they're coming, but I'm very busy, as my AP European History Test (you know, the GIANT one for college credit?) is next Friday. I'm really nervous, and hoping that I can pull off a four like I have been on the practice tests. Cross your fingers for me.

I'm not especially proud of this story -- I don't even LIKE it especially because-COUGHIdon'tlikeanythingwithoutEdangstingCOUGH- Izumi isn't my favorite character. Plus it feels rushed because I had a time limit and it feels cramped because I had a word limit.

Anyway, I don't own FMA!

Reviews are very much appreciated.

Enjoy!

They planned a trip around Amestris a little while after the incident, just to get away.

To get away from the stares that the townspeople gave her when she limped dejectedly around Dublith, clinging to her husband's elbow like a lifeline, to get away from the whispered murmurs of suspicious neighbors that she may or may not have been imagining, and to get away from that island. For it was that godforsaken island that called her silently in the night as she clutched painfully at the aching cavity she called a body and wept softly enough that Seig wouldn't wake.

And on those nights, she couldn't help but think about the way she felt now and compare it to the way she had felt when she first told her husband the wonderful news. It had been as if everything was new, as if everything in her life before that point was some sort of preliminary preparation for the precious being she was now responsible for. She had loved it, cherished it – feeling the weight grow and grow, kick and respond to her voice and her husband's gentle caresses. Knowing that she had created it and that she would be the one that it would look to had given her such and incredible sense of burning pride. And she was new, like a phoenix risen from the ashes and reborn again.

But the end of her cherished dreams and happiness came all too soon. After nine months of beautiful, growing life, everything within her was light – too light – cold, and deathly still. It was a downward spiral from there, a deepening pit of maddening depression that she couldn't quite find it in herself to crawl out of. Where before there had been hope, now there was only sadness, and her brilliant spark and majestic feather fell, cold and hard, to the unyielding earth below.

Setting out wasn't hard to do. It was, after all, just the two of them, and it seemed so, so easy to leave the sea of memories in her wake. Everything now reminded her of something from the past, from a time when she had lived and loved from day to day, rather than let the world pass her by in a flurry of broken dreams and heartaches. And as she saw the scenery fly by her through a train window, she could almost (almost) convince herself that a few organs were the only things missing in her life.

Rizembool was one of the last stops on their long journey, and by the time they reached it, she had grown rather weary. Seig had taken to hovering rather worriedly behind her, offering his arms should she ever need a rest. He didn't realize, he couldn't really, that this tiredness she was feeling wasn't precisely the physical sort. It was more of a weariness that she had never liked to show the world. It was a weakness of mind and heart that was dragging at her shredded body like lead weight, threatening to throw her to the ground and leave her there like an unwanted rag doll.

But these people were in danger, as had been people in so many other villages they passed through, and they were in need of an alchemist of her (artificial) genius and skill. So she helped, just as she had so many times before. She clapped her hands together and felt the power crackling and coursing there between her palms. And as she lay her hands to the sodden earth and saw her vision being speckled with spots of black and gray and white, she couldn't help but think that this transmutation would be her last.

Waking to a blinding pain in her belly was not an unfamiliar feeling. Neither was exchanging words of gratitude and the obligatory niceties, though this was never her favorite part of saving lives. She did so willingly, however, and without complaint, nearly finding comfort in the hopeful faces of the people. Nearly.

And then there was a gap in the crowd, separating to make room for two little boys. Two little boys. Two little boys that could not have been so different from her own son had he lived long enough to see the tender age of ten.

She said no to their request of apprenticeship. She turned them down and saw their faces fall with a heavy heart.

They were beautiful, golden, alive, and breathing. She vaguely wondered where their mother was and why she would let such precious things out of her sight. Why would she take two beautiful little boys for granted?

She asked as much, and the answer, when it came, was enough to drive the air from her lungs and punch a hole in her hammering heart.

I'm afraid they have no parents.

The irony was almost too much. So soon after she had lost her own child, these hopeful apparitions came to haunt her. They requested her skills and talents and, inadvertently, requested that a void be filled in each of their lives, as well.

So, like a love-struck fool, she took them. And it was hard for her to hear the quiet, underlying "mother" even when they were all but shouting "sensei." It was hard to see their young faces and compare them to the mutilated face of her own sin. It was hard to imagine that these determined, sweet, naive boys had suffered losses as great as her own – because she knew how enormous the void must be, and she knew that she wanted, more than anything, to fill it.

And in the beginning, it was too hard – too soon. Like a coward, she left them where she left all of her problems – on that same tiny island. The very island that had already consumed one of her children.

But it would be different this time, because she found within herself some semblance of courage and returned. She gathered two living, breathing boys into her arms like broken pieces of a shattered past and slowly, so slowly, they began to reassemble the fragments of their lives.

And from the ashes, the phoenix would rise again.

WHAAAAT? Ed wasn't sick/dying/in PAAIN? What is the world coming to?

I know. D:

But don't worry. I won't disappoint you next time.

Please, please, please review! Thank you.