Heyyou, Revolutionnaire Rouge here. I know, I know, I haven't updated Les Portes Tordues in… oh, six months? It's been a busy fall, full of AP classes and the writer's block from hell. I managed to work out this little story in late September, but hadn't posted it for, well, lack of liking it. But I fixed a few things, and think it's alright now. I decided to post it mainly because it's finals at school, and some loving reviews would make me oh-so-much happier, and maybe even get me an A in AP American History. If you liked this and haven't already, go read Les Portes Tordues… it would make me ever sooo happy. I swear I'll update it. Eventually.

This is my first real one shot, so I hope you enjoy it!!

Much Love,

RR

PS. Please forgive the lame title.

PSS. I don't own FMA.

Automail

By Revolutionnaire Rouge

Automail was a fickle mistress. When brilliant and new, she was a kind lover, smooth working and strong. But one bump, one jostle too many, and suddenly she was on a rampage, wailing and throwing dishes until she rendered herself completely useless. After that, she served only as a burden, weighing one down with her ceaseless demands. She would carry herself about in that manner until repair and reconciliation. She would then be shiny and agreeable, until the next scratch or jarred wire. It was an inescapable and brutal cycle; unlike any other lover, she was not one who could be easily rid of. She was there for life, a partner in all but holy matrimony.

On occasion, Winry wondered what had drawn her to automail. At best, she viewed herself as plain (a stark contrast to the exotic trade she mastered); when she was feeling particularly self-loathsome, she paralleled herself to broken down automail – a troublesome load, a whining and whimpering little girl who just couldn't let go. Either way she looked, Winry didn't really strike herself as the kind of person who would immerse herself, heart and mind and body and soul into the task of creating pseudo-life.

Since Winry had been conscious of the world around her, and of the concept of dreams, her life had been filled 'new dreams'. When she was a very little girl, she remembered, her first dream was to become a world-famous doctor, with the power to cure stupid boys like Edward Elric of ever-so-fatal cooties. Then her parents died in the Ishbalan war, becoming world-famous doctors in the process. Her first dream was quickly coffined and buried, deep in the cold earth right alongside her parents. Her second 'new dream' in full was short lived – to run away, join the Amestrian army, and extract her revenge on the person who murdered her parents and destroyed her life. Quickly Winry realized that that course of action, that dream, was out of her reach, at least at that moment. She abandoned the dream… or, more truthfully, secured it in the darkest abyss of her young mind, imprisoned as a silent but deadly phantom, which over time fermented and grew more vile. Winry beget the third of her 'new dreams' at almost the same time that she aborted the second. It was by far the longest lasting of her dreams. Taking her right up to the age of fifteen, Winry came the closest to completing that dream. In it, she trained for years, building her reputation as a world class automail mechanic, living in near seclusion until she married. She would marry a plain man, a simple, if not stupid man, who she would easily overrule in every way. She would make automail, pop out a baby or two, and make more automail. Her husband would die, and she would make automail. She would live to a withered old age, every year becoming more a crow. And then, she would die.

This had been the greatest of her dreams, and the least impassioned. Death had brought her to that twisted crossroad at such a young age, and Winry had decided to take the road more traveled. Already had she decided that she would live and die uneventfully.

All it took was one glitch. One wire out of place, one faulty connection, and the entire piece of automail was ruined. To create automail took precision, took art and insight. Any person could make automail, but to actually create it… to actually create a friend, a lover, and enemy… took more. Much more. Dedication, devotion, passion, obsession, those are what it took to create automail. And those were all it took to destroy it. Automail was a tin heart, all it took was one break, and everything ceased to exist.

"Granny? Winry? We're back!"

Looking up from the shoulder blade she had been tinkering with, Winry caught a glimpse of blonde hair and glittering steel through the kitchen door. Edward Elric (whom she had once desired to cure of cooties) lumbered into the kitchen, swinging a small suitcase wildly and whistling an off-key tune unknown to her. Behind him followed a large suit of armor, accompanying Ed's whistles with a chorus of creaks and squeaks.

"When was the last time you were oiled, Al?" Winry asked, monotone. She had been thinking as she tinkered – never a good combination. Thinking never did her good anymore.

"What?!?" Ed cried, throwing his arms up in the air as he plopped down in the wooden chair at the kitchen table where Winry worked," No cheerful hello? No screams of anger? No questions as to what I did to my automail this time?"

Al chuckled nervously as he gauged Winry's reaction.

"Hello Edward. Welcome home. What have you done to your automail this time?"

The kitchen was silent. Ed frowned – even he had noticed Winry's odd behavior. Holding up his automail, he replied," Nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong with my automail."

Blinking, Winry stood up and moved over to Ed, examining his automail silently. After a moment or two, she looked Ed straight in the eyes.

"If nothing is wrong, why are you two back?"

Ed's frown turned into a scowl," What, would you like us to go? Are we no longer welcome?"

His burning sun eyes scorched her own liquid blue in challenge. A jolt of panic caused her entire body to tingle, and she backpedaled.

"No, of course not," she replied in a nearly strangled cry," Nothing of the sort! It's just that, well, you never come unless something is wrong so-"

Winry was cut off by Ed's rich laughter. He had become even more of a man since she had been fifteen. Two years would do such things. They were both seventeen, she realized, and while Ed was a man, she was just a child. Still playing with dolls and dreams.

"Edward Elric, what in the wor-"

Ed caught his breath, and rapped on Alphonse's steel armor with his human hand. The sound reverberated around the room.

"Al was getting skinny – we had to come home so he didn't starve," the man joked. Al sighed, looking as embarrassed as a featureless suit of armor could.

"But honestly Win – aren't we allowed to drop by and visit just for the sake of visiting?"

"Of course you are," Winry replied sourly," You just never do."

Again, Edward burned her with his eyes, but this time, his flames swept across her entire body. He smirked. "Well, it's never too late to start, huh? Now, where's Granny at?"

Winry prided herself in being methodical, predictable. For as much as Ed screamed at her for being wild and vicious, he always knew to expect her attacks and her scolding. Maybe that was why she had been drawn to automail – it was sturdy and predictable, a stark contrast to Edward Elric. The only thing she could predict about Edward Elric was that he would somehow manage to get himself in trouble, and in the process, wreck his automail. Which would mean that he would return to Resembol to get it repaired. After his repairs, he and Al would be on their way again, only to return with the newest injury. Even her 'new dreams' were predictable – while they tended to vary, she had always had them, and they always encompassed some unsatisfying future. So when Edward Elric showed up in her kitchen, his brother in tow, with no broken automail or new discovery, Winry was thrown even more off kilter than she had previously been. This only added to her already existing confusion.

Winry prided herself in being methodical, predictable. She always had a plan, always had a dream. Until she turned fifteen.

It was then, when she was fifteen, that she abandoned her longest and most realistic dream.

It was then, when she was fifteen, that she fell in love with Edward Elric.

For two years, Winry had lived without a 'new dream'. She had lived in bewilderment, barely managing to blunder her way through each day. It was to her advantage that she and Granny often lived uninterrupted – had more people been around, her strange behavior would have been detected much earlier. Although she had no dream, Winry did have a feeling as to how she would live her life – alone, her only love her work. In no way had she the strength to tell Edward what she felt; she knew alchemy was as much his mistress as automail was her master. Ed came and went only when he needed repairs, and as soon as he had been fixed, he would leave her to return to alchemy. Winry knew she had no chance in ever gaining more from Ed than a mechanic – customer relationship, stiff and professional. Winry had never felt further from her desires, but there was nothing to be done. Down the path of her life she would continue, always stumbling and with no one to catch her if, one day, she fell. She would live and die alone.

Maybe it had been those gloomy prospects that had changed her so drastically. She was resigned to her fate, and she did little to cover that resignation.

"Winry? Are you alright?"

Winry jumped, startled by the voice that had arisen behind her. Turning, she saw that it was Ed. He closed the door out to the balcony, and then moved to stand beside her, leaning his back against the railing and titling his head up to stare at the black sky above. Sounds drifted up from the kitchen window on the floor below, sounds of Alphonse chatting with Granny Pinako as they cleaned up the dinner table and kitchen.

"Yea, I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

The man shrugged, his gaze still fixated on the dark nighttime sky. "You've been out of it the entire day," he stated simply.

Leaning over the rail, Winry stared at the ground below – the exact opposite of Edward Elric. She wasn't exactly sure when it was she had fallen in love with the man, but she knew that it had been when she was fifteen, and she knew that since then she had been at a loss.

"You can't judge that Ed. You and Al are never around. I could be acting perfectly normal, and you two would never know."

Ed chuckled, but it sounded forced," Ah, but you aren't, and we do. Something's been bothering you – that fact is obvious even to me, and you know I have a tendency to be a bit dense."

"A tendency?" Winry snorted, still staring down at the hard ground.

"Ouch, Win, that hurt. Al noticed something was amiss immediately; he told me that as soon as he stepped foot in the house, he could feel that something had changed. It didn't take me much longer to realize the same thing. What puzzles me though, is the lack of fluctuating variables. Granny is still around, Den too, Resembol is still small and isolated, people still need automail and you still make it. Nothing of that sort has changed. But then Winry, there's you. Something has happened, or is happening. And it's not just tonight that I've noticed it. Over the past two years, you've transformed; only this afternoon and tonight was it the most visible."

"Since when did you become so astute, Ed?" Winry replied acridly as she struggled against rising panic. Why did this always seem to happen when Ed was around?

"Well, you know, a couple of blows to the head will do that to a person." Ed laughed at his own joke, and even Winry couldn't keep herself from smiling.

"Ah-ha – there's that grin I know so well. I knew it was still there, just hidden. "

A sudden warmth suddenly filled the space around her, and Winry tore her gaze away from the ground. She found herself nearly nose to nose with Ed. He now leaned over her, staring at her with the full intensity of his golden-hawk eyes. Underneath her, Winry's knees buckled, and she grabbed at the railing to keep her balance.

"Tell me," Ed whispered, his voice low and heavy," what's wrong Winry. I need to know."

Winry took a deep breath. No, she thought desperately, You're overreacting. Ed loves alchemy. It's his focus, his passion, his lover. This isn't your path, and it never will be. This isn't your dream, this isn't your future, this is all just –

"Was it something I did?" he continued, his voice lighter but his face no further from hers," I know that Al and I never stay for very long," at this, he stopped and let out a sigh, moving away from her leaning back on the balcony railing," It's not the path we've wanted to follow. We chose to take it, but we're not walking willingly – "

What was he saying?

" – I know that if Al and I had the choice, we would stay here. I don't think either of us would ever leave. We go only because we've got to. But I understand if you're angry at me. I would be angry at myself too – Hell, I am angry at myself. Everything that has happened has all been my fault. If I hadn't wanted Mom back so badly, we would all be here, living, maybe even happily. Alphonse, Granny, and Den… and me and you.

"I don't know what's bothering you, but that's my best guess. That we're always leaving you and Granny. " Ed took a deep breath," I'm sorry Winry, if we've ever hurt you – if I've ever hurt you. I never meant to. I never wanted to."

Even though Ed had opened the distance between them, his eyes had never once left her face. She could read his eyes like a book – a book written in a foreign language.

Of course you idiot! Winry screamed in her mind It was you! It was ALWAYS you! It will ALWAYS BE you!

He was going against everything. Winry's mind reeled and spun, all while she stood there frozen and staring. Winry was going to be predictable. Winry was going to live dreams that went nowhere. Winry was going to live and die alone. But no, no, Edward Elric was going against everything.

Winry's mental world was collapsing around her.

"Winry, please." Now Ed's voice sounded desperate, his eyes, concerned," Just say something. Anything. You don't have to give me an answer, or tell me what's wrong. You can hit me on the head and scream at me, or you can blow me off and tell me I'm being ridiculous. Just talk to me. You've been silent all this time. Just say something, please."

'It's not very manly to beg, Edward Elric,' Winry said. Or had meant to say. She had heard the words in her head, but for some reason, they didn't seem to make it to her mouth.

"I love you."

The words echoed through her mind. Who had said that? Had it been her? Had it been Ed? Surely, she couldn't have said that. She had already decided that she would keep her feelings suppressed, buried. Winry had believed that it would be easier that way. Surely, nothing would ever change, so she had kept silent. No, she couldn't have possibly told Ed that she loved him. She had been imagining it. She would live and die alone.

But suddenly, Winry wasn't so sure. Ed's eyes widened, and she saw his hands grasp the railing tightly, as if he feared he were about to fall over the edge. His mouth opened slightly, but only silence escaped.

"Winry." he breathed, his voice a mix of disbelief and something else," Winry I-"

She blinked, and as she reopened her eyes, his face was again looming in front of hers. Red streaked across Ed's face, and his eyes seemed to paralyze her and melt her at the same time.

"I love you too."

All it took was one glitch. A single mistake and the entire piece of automail was done for, all of the plans and preparations and training, all for nothing. An accident was enough, a slip up or a change in plans. Maybe it would all be ruined. Maybe it would all be worthless, and one would be forced to start all over again. Glitches weren't supposed to happen, but they did. But if it weren't for that mistake, there would be no change. No advancement. One learns from one's mistakes, and builds, and lives, and becomes better. Automail is a fickle mistress, and unpredictable at best. But to break old is to build anew.

Edward Elric pressed his lips against hers.

It was all a glitch, really.

She was not going to live and die alone.