Genre: Angst
The Kiss between: Izumi and Sieg (her husband)
Spoilers: If you don't know who Ed and Al's teacher was, then you will be lost. You will also be lost if you don't know why Izumi can clap her hands together and transmute things like Ed.
A/N: No one ever writes about these two...
Theme 7: Grasping arms
Sieg sat in the uncomfortably small wooden chair, keeping his silent vigil over his beloved wife. She had been found the previous morning passed out on a boat that was just barely attached to the dock. No one asked where she had been, or how she had lost half of her internal organs.
Izumi's face was set in a constant frown. She groaned in her sleep and sometimes thrashed her head violently. The doctor said it was from the pain, but Sieg knew better. Izumi was a strong woman who was almost impervious to physical pain. This was something much worse. This was pain of loss, and knowledge of sin.
No one had asked where Izumi had been, or what happened to her, but Sieg knew. He had seen the dug up grave, and noticed the notes missing from his wife's research. Even if he hadn't, he still would have been able to tell from the way she would cry out and hold her arms out. She was mourning the loss of her child for a second time.
Izumi smiled as the blue light of the alchemic reaction illuminated the dark forest. It was I/workingI! She had found the loophole for human transmutation. She was going to get her child i/backi!
And then, something was different. The quality of light shifted—darkened, and became sinister. She stood before a gate, watching helplessly as arms flooded towards her, eager to collect their toll. Her body ached, and blood pooled around her legs, but she still smiled when she heard crying. Her child was crying.
But the monstrosity wailing was not her child. It was a demon from the Gate. Izumi struggled to open the Gate once more to return the thing that pretended to be her child. She heard laughing as the sea of hands swamped the mutated thing and pulled it in, but she was being pulled in as well. The arms grabbed at every part of her body—blinding her, suffocating her.
"Ah!" She shot up in bed and began to cough up blood. Sieg placed a hand gently on her back to steady her as her body racked with her rough breathing. When her breaths calmed, Sieg lowered her back onto the bed. He squeezed his wife's hand gently. She wished to kiss him once before she drifted off to sleep again, but she didn't have the right to. She knew her carelessness had cost them their child. How does one apologize for that? She looked up into her husband's eyes, and he simply looked back at her.
No words were exchanged. None were needed. Sieg would continue to sit beside Izumi while she fought off the weight of guilt. She would continue to lie there, trying to forget those grasping arms from that gate to hell.
