![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
mjules.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
whiskeycoffeeTitle: Childish Things
Author: m.jules
Summary: “When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spake as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Pairing: Alphonse Elric x Izumi Curtis. Manga-verse. Future.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I sincerely hope that Arakawa does not do the things to her universe that I do.
Warnings: Oh, this is full of them. Speculation. Character death. The potential for squick. Eep.
Author’s Notes: Oh. My. God. Shoot me now. Yes? Also, I have noticed something. Want Megan to write a crack pairing that is nearly impossible to finagle? No problem! Just kill people. *facepalm*
For my Alphonse Elric claim at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ten_cliche_fics, prompt, “Save me from myself.”
Kudos tocornerofmadness and evil_little_dog who not only didn't disown me for this, they beta'd it.
Alphonse Elric was a man grown when he returned to Dublith, brown coat tattered and trailing him in the merciless heat of a late summer wind. There was no one by his side and when she opened the door to let him in, there was no one to ruffle his hair with a meaty hand and tell him how much he’d grown. The war had been indiscriminate in its devastation. There were gaping holes in his life now where once there had been friends… family. He was the last to bear the Elric name and he’d never imagined how hard it would be to bear it alone.
He did not know how she would react. He expected anything from a fist that would relieve him of a few teeth to shouts of how she’d told him not to join the military – wasn’t it enough that his idiot brother had? What he wasn’t expecting was the way her arms went around him without a word and the way she tucked her face into his neck.
He held her instinctively, thinking that she was smaller than he remembered and somehow more fragile. Still, her arms were as strong as ever and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying without success to stave off tears. She’d always been able to crack their facades, his and his brother’s, with unexpected tenderness when they were children and she was their teacher. He had been neither a child nor her apprentice for many years, but her embrace still broke down his walls. He’d never learned to build his as thick as his brother’s and even Ed had been no match for her.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped through a throat thick with salt. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t – I should have –”
He deserved punishment, he thought, not comfort. She held him more tightly and made a soft shushing noise, and if he hadn’t seen Envy die at his own hands he might have been suspicious. Al’s breath hitched with the memory of being one moment too late, of seeing his brother collapse in front of the monster, bleeding and battered nearly beyond recognition. Envy had found the same fate only moments later, Al’s scream of rage the last thing the homunculus would ever hear. Voice upon voice had sighed their thanks, like an echo of slithers, to the younger Elric who finished what the elder had started, releasing the last of them from their prison in the beast’s form.
Alphonse could still hear the words rustling through his soul and he shuddered again as he clung to the woman in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said again, choking. “I tried.”
“Shut up, you idiot,” she said without rancor, her voice muffled against his neck. He thought he heard a sniffle, thought he felt a hint of moisture on his skin. “I didn’t do any better.”
The first tremble of her body startled him but he tightened his hold on her as she clung to him, both of them mourning the ones they hadn’t been able to save – a husband, a brother, a childhood friend, a commanding officer and comrade.
Alphonse wasn’t sure, even afterwards, who kissed whom, only that he was absurdly grateful, even in that surreal moment, that he’d been so intent on resurrecting his mother during his training that he had never put Izumi in that place. Teacher, certainly, but never mother.
Everything after that was a blur, one he was content to leave unclear in his memory as he lay awake, sweat pooling on his skin in the oppressive humidity of the summer night, riddled with guilt that he couldn’t muster up enough energy to care about. He wondered at his apathy for a moment before deciding that he was just so used to losing battles that he’d stopped trying to win them altogether.
He realized then that he’d returned to Izumi in the childish hope that she would save him from his despair only to find that she couldn’t. He was a man now and the time had come to put away childish things. He looked over at her, her body tense and restless even in sleep, and thought that perhaps this had been the last lesson she had to teach him.
He wondered if they would both regret that he’d learned it well.
Author: m.jules
Summary: “When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spake as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Pairing: Alphonse Elric x Izumi Curtis. Manga-verse. Future.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I sincerely hope that Arakawa does not do the things to her universe that I do.
Warnings: Oh, this is full of them. Speculation. Character death. The potential for squick. Eep.
Author’s Notes: Oh. My. God. Shoot me now. Yes? Also, I have noticed something. Want Megan to write a crack pairing that is nearly impossible to finagle? No problem! Just kill people. *facepalm*
For my Alphonse Elric claim at
ten_cliche_fics, prompt, “Save me from myself.”Kudos to
cornerofmadness and evil_little_dog who not only didn't disown me for this, they beta'd it.Alphonse Elric was a man grown when he returned to Dublith, brown coat tattered and trailing him in the merciless heat of a late summer wind. There was no one by his side and when she opened the door to let him in, there was no one to ruffle his hair with a meaty hand and tell him how much he’d grown. The war had been indiscriminate in its devastation. There were gaping holes in his life now where once there had been friends… family. He was the last to bear the Elric name and he’d never imagined how hard it would be to bear it alone.
He did not know how she would react. He expected anything from a fist that would relieve him of a few teeth to shouts of how she’d told him not to join the military – wasn’t it enough that his idiot brother had? What he wasn’t expecting was the way her arms went around him without a word and the way she tucked her face into his neck.
He held her instinctively, thinking that she was smaller than he remembered and somehow more fragile. Still, her arms were as strong as ever and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying without success to stave off tears. She’d always been able to crack their facades, his and his brother’s, with unexpected tenderness when they were children and she was their teacher. He had been neither a child nor her apprentice for many years, but her embrace still broke down his walls. He’d never learned to build his as thick as his brother’s and even Ed had been no match for her.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped through a throat thick with salt. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t – I should have –”
He deserved punishment, he thought, not comfort. She held him more tightly and made a soft shushing noise, and if he hadn’t seen Envy die at his own hands he might have been suspicious. Al’s breath hitched with the memory of being one moment too late, of seeing his brother collapse in front of the monster, bleeding and battered nearly beyond recognition. Envy had found the same fate only moments later, Al’s scream of rage the last thing the homunculus would ever hear. Voice upon voice had sighed their thanks, like an echo of slithers, to the younger Elric who finished what the elder had started, releasing the last of them from their prison in the beast’s form.
Alphonse could still hear the words rustling through his soul and he shuddered again as he clung to the woman in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said again, choking. “I tried.”
“Shut up, you idiot,” she said without rancor, her voice muffled against his neck. He thought he heard a sniffle, thought he felt a hint of moisture on his skin. “I didn’t do any better.”
The first tremble of her body startled him but he tightened his hold on her as she clung to him, both of them mourning the ones they hadn’t been able to save – a husband, a brother, a childhood friend, a commanding officer and comrade.
Alphonse wasn’t sure, even afterwards, who kissed whom, only that he was absurdly grateful, even in that surreal moment, that he’d been so intent on resurrecting his mother during his training that he had never put Izumi in that place. Teacher, certainly, but never mother.
Everything after that was a blur, one he was content to leave unclear in his memory as he lay awake, sweat pooling on his skin in the oppressive humidity of the summer night, riddled with guilt that he couldn’t muster up enough energy to care about. He wondered at his apathy for a moment before deciding that he was just so used to losing battles that he’d stopped trying to win them altogether.
He realized then that he’d returned to Izumi in the childish hope that she would save him from his despair only to find that she couldn’t. He was a man now and the time had come to put away childish things. He looked over at her, her body tense and restless even in sleep, and thought that perhaps this had been the last lesson she had to teach him.
He wondered if they would both regret that he’d learned it well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 07:25 pm (UTC)*whimpers*
no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 07:59 pm (UTC)