Author's Note: This one is anime-focused on the night the child Wrath sleeps in Izumi and Sig's home. Though I generally prefer the manga to the anime, the child Wrath character is a heartwrencher for me, and I wanted to give him, and Izumi, air. Originally written for the LJ Community FMA_fic_contest; placed second (yay!).
Dedication: To any mother who has lost a child, for any reason. I cannot envision surviving it, and yet women must, and do.
Empty Embrace
Where does responsibility begin and end? Child and not-child, you belong to me and yet do not. I created you with all of the best and worst of myself, the highest and the most base of motives. You are no more a monster than I am, and if I teach others that accountability is one of the most important traits for those who would learn alchemy—or simply live in harmony with the world and oneself—then I must be held accountable. I must take responsibility for you.
The first moment I held your shaggy, shaking form in my arms as you sobbed the tears of the gravely wronged and the wrongly born, I felt the terrible emptiness of our connection. I longed to be filled, even for a fraction of a second, filled as I was when I first held my babe after giving him birth. He was a tiny, perfect product of so much love, so much confidence, so much faith. He had a scent I will never forget, a fragrance of innocence and idealism. Selfishly, I wanted to recapture that aroma I have never forgotten, fall into and live within it. I wanted the memory made flesh, to fill the hole inside me that runs so much deeper that lost organs and broken promises.
But this is not, could never be about what I want. Such self-indulgence and self-delusion simply deepen the hollowness and bring me to truths that are humankind's unmaking. As I inhaled the cool tang of your creation, I knew that I had infused you with the seeds of egotism and barrenness and dissolution. And such longing that it howls its name deafeningly.
As I should be, I am undone by you, wild boy who does and does not belong to me. How best am I to bear the bittersweet awfulness of your presence? Like everything else in life, it must simply be done.
Sig—he who is far less your father than I am your mother and yet bears the terrible truths as a better partner than a transgressor like me deserves—holds me close as my thoughts tangle and spin. You sleep in the spare room that should have belonged to that other you, and already I am aware of what must be done. Sig murmurs absolute trust into my ear in his words of affection, and I embrace him, both physically and emotionally, as the one real proof of good in the world. "I love you," I whisper into the darkness.