#fma gluttony

Wrath spent the latter half of the series reviling Izumi for turning him into a Homunculus and leaving him in the Gate, outright disowning her as his mother and growing attached to Sloth to claim the other Homunculus as his true mother. He even openly weeps in devastation over Sloth as he attacks Ed for killing her, an emotionally charged response that significantly differs from the way he spits in Izumi's direction for calling him her child the moment she arrives to stop their fighting. He doesn't attack Izumi like he did the last time they crossed paths though; he runs past her, all the way back to Dante to desperately plead with the woman to let him use Al so he can bring Sloth back to life. Of course, she never planned on letting any of the Homunculi use Al for their own gain, and, in one of this series' most painful forms of verbal irony, she tells Wrath to stop behaving like a human.

The very thing that drove Lust and Wrath to pull strings and spill blood for Dante is what she refuses to grant them, both literally and figuratively, and it isn't until she summons the Gate to rip Ed's limbs off of Wrath for trying to interfere with her plans that the kid finally understands she never had his best interests in mind. He lost an arm and a leg, he lost the ability to use alchemy, he lost his only chance of becoming human, and he lost the woman he chose to be his mother.

And he can do nothing but watch helplessly as the Elrics sacrifice themselves to breath life back into each other.

Losing to gain, yet still losing.

Wrath lives to see another day of the world without darkness, but his reward is undeniably disproportionate to everything and everyone that was lost in the process, and this continues to be proven true as three listless years of relative quietude pass before his eyes.

And end with Izumi dying.

From the moment he regained his memories, Wrath had been nothing but antagonistic towards Izumi; he made a mockery of her inability to kill him back on Yock Island before trying to kill her, berated her and the Elrics for creating him and Sloth at the expense of their own bodies, and repeatedly repudiated their relation to each other. She failed him as a parent by committing that irreversible act with his corpse, and she left him trapped in the Gate as though the misshapen body he awoke in was neither her doing nor her responsibility.

In a pathetic attempt to hide her shame, she rejected him, and Wrath rightfully rejected her in return.

But then he thinks back to when she saw him again on Yock Island, immediately knowing who he is and what he is from the moment she recognized the scar on Ed's right arm. He thinks of the way she took him in without complaint, giving him food he doesn't have to fight for, clothes that will give him the warmth and modesty he needs, and a bed to replace the rough dirt and sand of the island he'd grown up on. He recalls her hiding his true identity from everyone as she dodged suspicions and left questions unanswered. He remembers the way she calmed him when he lost control of his alchemy, telling him to remember his original form and patiently waiting for him to free himself from the bed.

She stormed a military command center and tore the place apart with the combined strength of an alchemically enhanced hurricane and tornado to find him. She held him like he were the most precious thing in her life at that moment, fighting off multiple soldiers on her own with her hands full, including Ed as she shut down his attempt to aid her escape. She continued to hold onto Wrath, even when she saw that he was becoming a full-fledged Homunculus and witnessed Envy's staged murder of the Fuhrer. Even when she at last decides to take responsibility for him, she's unable to do so in the way she planned; her hands never squeeze hard enough to bring him harm, and not once does she ever fight him or defend herself from him.

She was confronted by her guilt again, in a much more fierce and physical manner than ever, but she accepted it this time rather than running away from it again. She accepted him, and forgave him, and she decided that trying to put an end to his incomplete life isn't how she wants to take responsibility for him, as it's no different from shoving him behind a pair of double doors and hoping the darkness will continue to hide him.

Needless to say, Wrath couldn't find it in himself to forgive and accept her in return, because he couldn't understand why she didn't simply let go of a monster like him when she'd done so before. So he spent that small window of time Izumi had left avoiding her and Sig, hiding from them and himself, and they let him go out of respect.

It's unknown how or when exactly Wrath would've discovered that Izumi passed away since he kept his distance from everyone, but her death evidently took its toll on him once he found out, and his reaction is vastly different this time, quieter and heavier than the way he reacted to Sloth's death. His first appearance in the movie is when Winry finds him by Izumi's grave, and though he isn't in as bad of a condition as when Dante left him on the floor of her ballroom, he evidently isn't in a remotely good condition either. His shirt is tattered at the edges, his skin is littered with scuffs and scratches, screws and wires lie about from his automail, and his shadowed eyes stare off into nothing as his sullen expression remains facing downward.

It's hard to tell if he's even conscious of Winry's presence before she calls out to him.

He looks defeated.

When he cried to Dante and Envy to let him bring Sloth back, he'd been too caught up in his emotions to remember that she simply couldn't be brought back. She was a Homunculus, one that could only be made by Ed and Al at that, and they certainly weren't intent to going for a second try with their mom. Furthermore, just like in BH and the manga, the dead cannot be brought back to life, so any attempt to bring Sloth back would only leave him with someone who isn't her. And this is true for humans as well, as none of the Homunculi are truly the people who their creators tried to revive, only being physical copies with a myriad of memories from a life they never lived.

Wrath lost his second chance at being loved when he lost Sloth.

And now he lost his last chance with Izumi passing away.

When he returns to the Rockbell's home with Winry for some much needed maintenance, he finds Al there as well, sleeping, and once again dreaming of Ed, of being by his side in a different world without alchemy, of being a 17 year old scientist obsessed with rocketry and reaching for the stars above. Even without having heard Al call Ed's name in his sleep, or hearing him declare for the hundredth time that he's so certain Ed is still out there somewhere, Wrath knows the Elrics well enough to know that Al continues to search for his brother after all of this time, searching for a way to prove he's alive and searching for a way to bring him back home. It's a great feat of love that Wrath is incapable of performing for Izumi when he lacks alchemy and a body full of life, and he's unwilling to perform it when the desired outcome will never come to be, even without its share of dangerous consequences.

But Al's desperation, mirroring his own as he grieves the loss of his mother, gives him an idea.

Not granting the young Elric with an explanation beyond telling him to follow his lead, Wrath guides Al underground to the Grand Arcanum array Dante and Hohenheim left behind, and Al immediately understands why he was brought down there once he recognizes the transmutation circle as the same one that appeared in Liore. Predictably, Al moves to decorate the floor with a human transmutation circle, unknowingly using the same one he created when he last brought Ed back to life, and he's momentarily stumped as he thinks of what he'll need to use to open the Gate again.

This kid seriously needs help, he can't get the array to work and his first thought is to use himself as the catalyst

To Al's horror, it doesn't take long for Wrath to give him an answer and show him why exactly he was brought down there.

Again, Wrath knows the Elrics, and he knows they'll go as far as they need to save each other. He saw it for himself in Dante's ballroom, when Al used the Philosopher's Stone keeping him alive to not only ressurect Ed, but give him back his missing limbs. And he saw it a second time, when Ed turned around and put himself back on the other side to finally fulfill his promise and bring Al out of the Gate. Wrath knew Al would decide on the spot to use himself as material to open the Gate, and he vowed to himself that there would never be a third time of those two sacrificing too much for each other again.

He's tired of seeing someone lose just to never gain, and he already lost the last thing he had left.

Escaping from the Gate was supposed to mean that Wrath would be free, free from a world of endless darkness, free from the sounds of his own cries, and free from that deep-rooted, overgrown anguish Izumi planted in him the moment she let him go. His entire existence is defined by darkness, cries, and anguish though; it's all he knew for so long, and his yearning for maternal and familial love is what motivated him to escape. He doesn't crave every tangible and intangible object in the world like Greed, he doesn't wish for humanity like Lust, he isn't enraged by the sight of his parental figure's new life like Envy, and he doesn't desire to kill the source of his memories like Sloth.

He just wants to be with his mom.

Logitstically, he isn't really her child, but she still called and accepted him as such, and it's too late for him to tell her he'd accepted and forgiven her during those three years of loneliness and rumination. He still wants to go back to the Gate though, to the place he knew as his home, where the person he calls "Mama" awaits.

Once Al stops hesitating and ushers himself forward to perform the transmutation, Wrath's expression relaxes, and he welcomes the sensation of the alchemic reaction enveloping his body. He awakens in the familiar situation of him standing before the Gate, this time without the usual fear and dread he'd previously exhibit, and he too entranced to revel in the return of his arm and leg.

The doors open, and instead of a pitch black void full of hands thrusting outward to drag him in, he's greeted with a comforting light and open arms asking for an embrace.

The roots of anguish have receded at the sight, and in its place is the all-encompassing freedom he always wanted.

He's at peace.