Theme 49 – Untouchable

Everything seems slower now that she's pregnant. Her body, always predictable before, has become more solid, thicker, her center of gravity lowered so that she moves as if the air had been transmuted to heavy oil. Her movements these days are deliberate. She doesn't feel heavy, really; just full, like an overinflated tire.

She gets weird flashes of inspiration, as if whoever is being assembled inside her is tossing her new ideas, little thank-yous that pop up at two in the morning without warning.

Amongst all this fascinating newness, it takes Winry a while to realize that Edward has stopped touching her.

She ignores it at first, assuming that he's simply as confused by these changes as she is. But after the first kick startles her, she tries to get Ed to rest his hand on her stomach, to feel these fragile new flutters with her. He declines.

"I don't want to hurt it," he says, when she presses the issue. Winry laughs at that, rolling her eyes.

"Ed, you goose," she scolds. "Babies don't get hurt just because someone touches them." She reaches for his hand again, and he pulls away.

"Maybe other people's babies don't," he mutters, staring at the floor with a grim expression of buried dread.

She looks at him, and frowns.

And this is when they sit down—she pulls him to the sofa, really—and have a long, involved talk. They discuss the traumas of their shared childhood. Their mutual insecurities, fears of loss and death and betrayal. His own lasting issues with his father and uneasiness about becoming one himself.

His irrational semi-conscious belief that everyone he touches will wither. His mother, Alphonse, the people of Ishbal and Reole.

Her. Their child.

She alternately teases, coaxes, and beats some common sense back into him. He admits, under her stern gaze, that he has no intention of abandoning their fledgling family the way his father did; that death comes when it will, and there's no point living in fear of it. They're all lessons he learned years ago, but it never hurts to learn them again. She smiles at his secret fears, and he holds her close, and sighs his relief.

Evening falls on the two of them curled on the sofa, dozing off in the twilight since neither of them bothered to switch on the lights. She's nestled in his arms, her back against his chest, his arms snug around the rising curve of her vanished waist.

It wakes him just as he would have fallen asleep, the faintest of movements, barely tangible against the pulse in his wrist where it touches her skin.

Life, in a single tiny kick.

Winry stirs slightly, murmurs, "Feel that?" against his shoulder where her cheek is pillowed.

A wondering smile steals across his face. "Yeah," he whispers. "I felt it."

And they fall asleep, the three of them in one warm tangle, at peace together.