When they're six, he follows her into a meadow.

The grass is tall and swishy, soaring above his head, and clusters of flowers dot the serene landscape. He can't remember the context of abandoning his dignity like this—a game of tag, maybe, or some form of avenging his wounded pride. He rushes blindly through the field and towards the dwindling sound of Winry's voice, ignoring the sharp slices of coarse grass on his tender palms. A bird shrieks a reprimand at his brashness as he tears by, heart beating furiously.

"Come on, Ed," she taunts him, running backwards and cupping her small hands over her mouth. The spring breeze catches her hair in its fingers and pulls the blonde strands with it. "You can do better than—"

In slow motion, it seems, the back of her right foot hits a rock suddenly, and Ed knows from the way her center of gravity has shifted that she's going to fall. He briefly entertains the idea that she's flying, and the wind has carried her off to some cloudy domain, but she lands quickly with a hard grunt of pain, and then a gasp. Her hands move to her right hip, cradling something gently.

"Winry! What is it?" he calls out to her, panting slightly and shaking his soft hair out of his eyes. Her legs are tucked to the side underneath a pink corduroy dress-overall combination, and she pays no attention to the smear of grass running across the seams, but instead to the thing she has in her palms.

"Don't yell," she scolds him loudly, big blue eyes berating him as much as her mouth is. She opens her hands, and in the center of a sunflower is a butterfly, a Monarch, by the looks of its speckled orange and black wings. "It's hurt. We have to try and make it better." The tiny creature's wing flutters pathetically, and it droops under its own weight, struggling to stand in the valley Winry's palms form.

Ed shrugs, sitting down on the rock Winry tripped over. "What do you want me to do? Build it a new wing?" Winry scowls, and it genuinely scares him for a moment, a rather impressive feat considering her soft, round cheeks and downy blonde hair.

She brings the butterfly closer to her face, lifting her hand so she's eye level with the insect's delicate wings. "It's too small for automail," Winry says softly. She peers at it from different angles—directly above the butterfly and from the side. Realizing its attempts to fly are futile, it stops trying to flap its wings and allows Winry to gently move the wing with her index finger.

"A splint," she says suddenly. Ed looks at her in bewilderment. "If you do your weird magic science stuff to make me a splint, I can fix it."

"It's called alchemy and transmutation," Ed grumbles, kneeling next to Winry and tracing a crude circle in the dirt with his finger. He tries not to imagine what Al or Mom would say if they saw the grime thickly caked underneath his nails.

"Whatever," Winry says, "just hurry up!" Ed adds the lines required to his transmutation circle and claps his hands, the circumference lighting up in electrifying blue. When the light clears away, he holds a tiny piece of wood (more like a large splinter) in his hand, and offers it to Winry.

Gently, Winry sets the butterfly down on the rock, where it gives a weak shudder. Ed watches as she yanks a stray thread from her sock and carefully splints the butterfly's wing. Her hands are remarkably steady the entire time, even though fat, cold droplets of rain have started to fall, and the only indication of her concentration is the slight narrowing of her eyes.

"It should hold until I can give it something to eat," Winry says, apparently satisfied with her handiwork. Ed personally thinks it was too much time to spend on just one tiny butterfly, but that's Winry. She gets up slowly from the ground, and winces. "Ow!" Her knee is skinned—badly, too. Fat drops of blood ooze from the long scratches, and one drips down her shin in a long, red line.

Ed sighs. "Stupid."

But he still lets her throw her arm around his shoulders, and together, they hobble home through the mud with a butterfly in their palms.

[fin]

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