She does not mean to memorize him, but somehow, she has. She knows every millimeter of his automail inside and out, of course, but she begins to realize she knows other things—the muscles in his shoulder and neck that would tense and knot when she connected the nerves, the little curved edges of his dark scar where it fades into his chest. She knows the tilt of his nose, the slant of his mouth, the angle of his eyebrows. She knows the exact shade of his clear golden eyes and the spun gold threads of his hair, pulled back into a braid that falls between his shoulder blades. It takes her two years without him to realize how well she has memorized him.
When he finally comes back, she wants to study him for hours, to make sure he hasn't changed.
He has. His hair is paler, pulled back into a simple ponytail now instead of a braid. His eyes are duller—they have lost their shine and cast shadows onto pale skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. He is taller, leaner, less alive than she has ever seen him.
Winry wants to take him in her arms, fold him back into her memorized version of him, make him himself again. She wants to smooth away the darkness beneath his eyes, shake his hair loose and then braid it up again, kiss his mouth until it smiles. She even wants to yell at him, scold him, provoke him so that his eyes will snap and blaze again.
But she doesn't. She allows herself one brief embrace, the first and last time she will hold him like that, and then she fits him with a new arm and leg and lets him go.
And when Winry watches the sky catch on fire, she knows that her memorization will have to last her the rest of her life.