A/N: I don't know why I'm going here and writing on Ed and Winry having marriage troubles and topic of domestic violence. It came as a brief thought that crossed my mind and bugged me for a while. Both Edward and Winry are such volatile people that only bring out the best AND the worst in each other. I couldn't help thinking, what if Ed didn't hold back? What if in an instant, he lost control and made a terrible mistake? I do not condone violence as an answer at all in a marriage or any type of relationship. I only know that humans are capable of bad things-even good humans like Ed and Winry. This story is just an exploration of this and how these two came to terms with it, eventually enlisting the help of Ed and Al's Teacher.
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Chapter 1: For Better or Worse
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This very moment, Winry questioned her sanity for marrying Edward Elric. Burning hot rage coursed through her veins making it impossible to restrain herself from cocking her arm back and flinging the heavy wrench. The steel tool soared through the kitchen and struck her husband squarely between the eyes, sending his head backwards.
Clunk.
Ed recovered from the blow as the wrench hit the wooden floor. His yellow eyes narrowed and he transversed the short distance to his enraged wife in a split second.
Pinako Rockbell sighed. It seemed the lovers quarreled as much after marriage as they did as children. This particular spat happened because Ed was leaving again for week long trip to South headquarters for research and he had just arrived from a previous trip two days prior. She filled her pipe with tobacco and motioned to Den to follow her on the porch and let the two hotheads work this out alone. The old lady hoped they'd make up with as much passion as they fought and fill her house with great grandchildren soon. Perhaps that would calm them down, but she doubted it.
"Oi!" Ed hovered only a few inches from his wife. He motioned to the red spot between his eyes from the wrench. "Do you keep these things on you at all times?"
"That's for me to know!" She huffed. "Just HOW can you leave so soon?"
"Winry!" Edward tried to contain his anger. "We talked about this. Until Alphonse returns, I'm running information reconnaissance, and until there's a magical way of getting information instantly, I have to physically go to the library there and research. I don't like it either! But Al's on to something, something that may help restore our chimera friends and I need to look at some documents down there I never thought to view before."
"I don't care!" She screamed, knowing she sounded like a child.
"What?"
"You heard me! I. Don't. Care."
"Are you insane?" He couldn't restrain his anger any longer and let it flow like a foul river full of expletives rushing from his lips. This didn't phase Winry one bit. "This is what I do! Al and I have to amass this knowledge to save people harmed by alchemy!"
"That stuff will still be there even if you leave in a week instead of a day. I don't understand why you are so intent on leaving just as soon as you arrived. You seem determined on leaving ME!"
"Now you're just being stupid."
Smack!
Edward palmed his red cheek where her small but strong hand struck him. He eyed her face as she stood there stoic and strong in her own resolve to face him and to defy his wish to leave.
"Stupid woman!" He came closer. "You can't just start flailing wrenches or your little hands at me every time you can't win an argument!" He knew this would enrage her but he didn't care. Something within Edward pushed him to strike his wife with his words, make her hurt just as physical as any punch. Winry growled, proving her husband correct, and launched herself at him.
Edward Elric had his ass kicked a hundred times or so as a teenager and as a young man. Most of the "kickers of his ass" were bad guys, homunculi, rogue alchemists and a few times his little brother in armor. Twice, his ass was clobbered by a little girl. When they were nine, he teased Winry for something or the other-he had forgotten why. She launched herself on him and pummeled his face until he got a black eye and Al had to separate them. Another time, when they were ten, he remembered telling her she was too flat-chested because she carried automail around and that he was sure, somewhere out there, someone like flat-chested women, but he never would. Ed's scrotum curled up every time he thought about THAT fight because that is exactly where Winry's knee hit him. Now, as his wife's hands came in contact with his face in a barrage of smacks and attempts to punch, the former alchemist made a conscious effort to keep his "tenders" out of the reach of her knees. However, his own anger steamed past the boiling point.
Something was about to give. Something had to end this madness!
"Winry! Stop this RIGHT NOW!"
SLAP!
Somewhere in Resembool the birds tweeted and the breeze blew curtains dreamily to and fro over a windowsill laden with cooling apple pies. A housewife pulled a roast out of the oven and the family gathered, drawn in by the alluring smell. Somewhere kids poked their bare feet in the cool river right before taking a jump and submerging their bodies to ward off the early summer heat. However, right here, right now, a gloomy cloud fell over the Rockbell-Elric house but the temporary shade couldn't hide the fact that Edward had struck his wife.
"Win?" He jumped back in awe of himself. His anger now hung just as a fleeting sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as Edward's wide eyes took in the sight of her, the love of his life holding her face. "I'm, I'm so sorry…" He moved to comfort her and she leapt from his grasp, turning away and leaning on the kitchen counter.
"Get out." She muttered so softly, he almost didn't hear.
"Winry." He came close enough to see her hands clenching on the counter, her right one marred with a drop of blood from her busted lip.
"Edward. I said. Leave."
He panicked. Never, ever, thinking himself capable of losing it in front of Winry, he bolted. Edward ran from the kitchen and only stopped to catch his breath on the front porch. Granny sat puffing away on her pipe, oblivious to what just happened. Den sat obediently by her side, wagging her tail.
"She kick you out short stuff?"
"Granny…" He knew Pinako wouldn't be a gentle as Winry. "I'm sorry. Please tell her I'm sorry." Ed left her stumped and confused by his parting comment. He knew she'd figure it out soon enough and he'd never be welcome back. So, he ran. His strong legs carried him past the gate and down the dirt road rimmed by the strong stone wall. Ed didn't really know where he was running but knew that he had to leave this place, he had to figure out how to fix this.
"How to fix this?" He muttered. How to fix his marriage? Was it really this bad? Had a lifetime already spent with each other sullied their future? Could two people with equally strong tempers survive each other? He didn't know.
"What'll it be, Elric?"
Ed looked up into the face of the bartender at Resembool's only watering hole, how he wound up here, he didn't know.
"Um, don't really care, Merv, just something." He plopped down on the barstool as a small glass of brown liquor was placed before him. Edward took a drink to be the first of many that night.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Hard thumping on the front door in the middle of the night woke the old woman from her sound sleep. Den started barking so loud, Pinako was sure she'd wake the dead.
"Winry?" She tied her bathrobe around her waist and turned the knob on her granddaughter's bedroom door. The old lady didn't know what happened between Winry and Ed, the girl wouldn't say, she just marched upstairs and shut herself up in her room. "There's someone knocking on the door, come with me." In her younger days, the Panthress wouldn't be scared of strangers at the door in the middle of the night, but now elderly, she wasn't taking any chances. Not that a skinny mechanic and an old dog would do any good, but at least it may even their odds a bit. "How'd you bust your lip?" She saw the telltale puffiness on Winry's lower lip which raised the short hairs on the back of her neck. Pinako couldn't help but wonder if this had anything to do with her grandson-in-law.
"I bit it when I was mad at Ed last night." She rubbed her eyes and followed her grandma and dog down to the front door. At least, that WAS a plausible answer, it COULD have happened that way. Only, it didn't.
"Really." The old lady raised her eyebrow at that remark. She'd have to interrogate the girl further, but right now, the door.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Who is it?" She steadied her small hand on the knob and lock, waiting for an answer.
"Doctor Rockbell! Need your help here! It's Merv from the saloon."
"Merv?" She knew the name of the purveyor of Resembool's only spirits and beer house. Unfortunately, Pinako knew it all too well. "Come in." She opened the door.
Not since THAT night so long ago had the two Rockbell women seen such a pitiful sight in this doorway. Edward hung to Merv like a limp dishrag and his face was a bloody mess.
"Edward?" Winry ran to his side and scooped up his right shoulder, wrapping it around her neck as she tried to take some of her husband's weight off the bartender. Ed was too heavy for her to manage on her own, so Merv followed her into the house and deposited the former alchemist on the long, leather bench in the sitting room.
"What happened?" Pinako ran her hand under her chin as her granddaughter tended to Ed's wounds.
"He had too much to drink and started a fight…well, he started a few fights." He slowly retreated out of the doorway. "I should have called you. I'm sorry."
"No, thank you for bringing him home safely." Pinako smiled as she ushered the barkeep outside and shut the door behind him. She then regarded Winry.
"Pew, you stink, Ed." Winry pinched her nose. "Is that bourbon?"
"He reeks of it…among other things." Granny winced at the stiff aroma wafting off of the young man. "We've got to clean him off. Help me walk him over to the back door."
"Granny?" Winry had an idea where her grandmother was going with this, but didn't think she was serious. "The outside faucet?"
"Unless you want to drag him upstairs to the bathroom?"
"God no." She smiled for a minute. Then hoisted the majority of her husband's weight on her shoulders as Pinako took his other side. "C'mon you big idiot, let's walk."
"Notta night?" Edward muttered.
"No, right now. One foot in front of the other. One. Two. One. Two." Winry tried to guide them toward the back door.
"Kinda sick." Ed leered to one side and then vomited on Winry's feet. "Yuck." He grinned at his handiwork.
"Good job, hotshot." Granny chuckled as Winry's left eye twitched as she sloshed in puke-soaked slippers to the door and opened it.
They managed to get Edward outside and leaned him against the back wall of the house while Winry hooked up the bucket to the garden hose and hung it up on the high rung of the pole. Ed used this make-shift shower to clean off after he and Alphonse fought each other and now it seemed a great solution to rinse the muck off the former alchemist instead of slinging it throughout the house.
"Lean him up, you'll probably have to get wet." Granny motioned to Winry to hold Ed around his waist as the old woman twisted the ancient iron fittings of the faucet and water poured into the old metal bucket, then showering out of the nail holes in the bottom.
"Cold!" Ed squealed as the water hit his face. It shook Winry as well when the icy water started to soak through her night clothes.
"Wake up, moron." She groaned trying to keep her husband upright as the cold garden hose water poured down on both of them, washing away the muck and mire Ed managed to get all over himself. Winry shook off her puke covered house slippers, hoping the water would rinse some of the yuck off of them as well.
"I think that'll do it. Hang on, I'll get you some towels." After turning off the faucet, Pinako retreated quickly, and quite spryly for a lady of her advanced age, into the house leaving Winry struggling to hold up her husband from behind.
"Hurry. He's heavy…for a little guy." She didn't care if he heard that last part.
"Hey!" Ed struggled in her arms. "Notso small anymore!"
"No, you're not small anymore." She mocked him. "But just as big of a dumb-ass."
"Win?' He turned to face his wife, his wet clothing letting him swirl around while she still held him tightly around his waist. "I'm so sorry…" He touched her swollen lip as gently as he could.
"Yeah, yeah." She looked away.
"No. Ima big oaf. Don't deserve to be happy." He let his wet head fall on her shoulders and started to press all his weight down making it harder for her to hold him upright.
"Ed! You of all people deserve happiness! Don't lean on me, you'll make me fall!"
"Sorry." He started carrying more of his own weight. "Cold."
"Yeah, Gran's bringing towels. You're gonna have to get your wet clothes off, can you do that?"
"Dunno."
"You better, or Granny's gonna have to help and she'll see you naked." Her puffy lip curled in a half smile.
"Micro Granny's not seeing MY junk…" Ed started to squirm in her arms as he struggled to unbutton his black shirt. Winry assisted with fingers trembling from the cold water. With great luck and effort, the former alchemist had stripped down to his boxers just in time for the old woman to show up holding a tower of fluffy towels.
"Here!" She shoved a towel in Edward's face and he wrapped it around his waist, then leaned on the side of the house while his wife got out of her wet clothes and into a few towels. "Now march!" Pinako ordered both her wards into the house, Winry still supporting Edward as they entered the structure.
"Think you can make the stairs?" The mechanic raised her eyebrow at her husband as they both faced the mountain of steps leading to the second floor.
"Yeah, just wanna get in bed." He groaned, but made each step without causing them to fall down.
"Just a few more…" She pulled him toward their bedroom and ushered him inside. Seeing their bed renewed Ed's strength and he made a last valiant push toward it and fell face down, out cold. "…feet." Winry finished her sentence.
"He's going to feel horrible tomorrow." Pinako smirked. She carried a large glass pitcher of water and a cup as she made her way over to the bed. "He'll need this to stave off the dehydration." The old woman quickly poured a glass and set both down on the bedside table.
"Yeah, and serves him right." Winry felt her lip. "I'll get the trash basin from the bathroom in case he vomits some more." She quickly left the room and returned with the small trashcan.
"Winry?"
"Yeah, Granny?" She pulled Ed as best she could into correct position in the bed and covered him up, all the while trying not to lose the towel wrapped around her body.
"Does his drunkenness have more to do with your busted lip than you biting it?"
"Huh?" Winry thought, "Damn, that old woman is wise."
"C'mon, girl. I've lived a long life and picked up a few things here and there about human nature. Did that bag of vomit smack you?" She went over to the dresser, pulled open the top drawer and picked out a nightshirt then handed it to her granddaughter. The girl before her stood gaping in awe.
"I can't say that I blame him. I hit HIM all the time…" Winry's voice died down to a whisper.
"What have I always told you, girl?" Pinako stood as Winry pulled the nightshirt over her towel and then let the towel drop to the floor as she walked over to another dresser to retrieve some clean underpants.
"You've always said, A man has to sleep sometime, and remember THAT if a man ever strikes you." She finished putting on her underwear and turned to face her grandmother. "Well, here HE is. He's sleeping. What should I do to him?" Her voice carried condescension.
"That's your burden, child." She frowned and turned to leave. "But one thing's for sure," Pinako stood at the door frame and took hold of the handle. "I think there should be a whole lot less hitting in THIS house." She closed the door, leaving Winry to sulk at her unconscious husband.
"Ed." She sat next to him and untied his messed up ponytail, her fingers deftly working some of the knots out of his damp hair as best she could. "I think we're going to have a REAL talk when you are able."
Winry wondered yet at the same time, HOPED they would be able to figure this out. This the first of their trials as a married couple. She remembered part of her vows, for better or for worse and hoped that it would soon be for the better.