Braided

It had happened because of his stubbornness.

Ed had always been proud and wilful, almost to a fault. But nobody had realised quite how extreme it was; not until he was bedridden, recovering from automail surgery, and he refused to be helped to sit up.

The first time he sat up was special.

It wasn't supposed to be. Normally automail patients would sit up, with assistance, a thousand times during the healing process. But not Ed. He would not let them help him, insisting that when he sat up, he would do so by himself and of his own volition. Until he could sit up alone, he said, gesturing them away for the tenth time, he didn't need to sit up.

He wouldn't even let them lift his head for a brief moment, to replace the pillows or change the sheets. They had to do that, with infinite care, while he was sleeping. (He would, however, let Pinako place an extra pillow under his head so he could eat and drink more easily.) After a fortnight it had made Winry so frustrated that she threatened, carefully out of earshot, to grab his one human arm and yank him bodily out of the bed, whether he liked it or not.

Once she had calmed down a little, she appealed to Al. "Is there nothing you can do? This is driving me crazy. Recovery can sometimes take months."

Al had shrugged plaintively, helplessly, and the subject had been dropped.

So Ed lay still, refusing their help, even when sweating or shivering in the depths of a fever. He slept much of the time, except when the pain grew strong enough to keep him awake, crying out and gritting his teeth as muscles twisted and nerves shifted, merging flesh with metal. On those days, Winry thought that maybe he had been right not to push himself, that it could surely only have caused him still greater pain. They did as much as they could for him, laying damp cloths over his burning brow, holding his tense hands with gentle fingers, smoothing back his hair.

His hair. Yes, that was a problem.

His bangs could be cut as he lay there; so they were, carefully but skill-lessly, with a pair of kitchen scissors and clumsy hands, while he slept. Winry couldn't just let it grow, after all. He would never notice the difference. She swept the loose, chopped strands of gold off the pillow and into the dustpan, and threw them swiftly away. He couldn't see his own head, and the evidence had been removed. The perfect crime.

Al noticed, though, coming into the room whilst she admired her handiwork. "Aaaah! Brother! He's bald!"

"Don't be stupid, Al," she snapped, hiding the scissors quickly in case he woke Ed up. "I just trimmed his hair a bit, that's all."

Al stared in horror. "He'll kill you."

Winry looked at it again. She hadn't meant to cut off quite that much. "He won't be sitting up for a good few months or so, that's for sure. It'll have grown out a bit by then."

The back of his head, however, was a different matter. Winry simply couldn't cut the hair that grew there. She had taken the matter into her own hands where his bangs were concerned, but could only watch as the rest of his hair, previously cut close to the nape of his neck, grew and spread out from his head. Her fingers were itching to lift his head and chop it off by feel- there seemed to be no other options- but Al had been keeping a watchful eye on her ever since the first time she played hairdressers, and besides, she admitted, that would never work. You just couldn't cut someone's hair if they were lying down.

So the time passed as Ed became one with his automail, gradually building up the strength and courage to attempt to move it. When he tried for the first time, it was a tiny achievement, lifting a finger oh-so-briefly, but they laughed in delight and applauded while Ed, flushed with success, grinned triumphantly. More excitement came a few weeks later when he managed to grasp hold of something. Pinako was very proud.

Eventually the big day came. Ed lay still, eyes narrowed in concentration, bracing himself and gripping the sheets tightly in his hands. Then he slowly began to lift his head and raise himself up, wincing as the movement travelled down his spine and along the still-tender nerves, shaking and panting with pain and effort. Once he made it up onto his elbows, however, the pressure on his shoulder was enough to make him force himself into an upright position.

He gasped with exertion.

But he had done it.

Pinako seized the moment, swinging his legs around and bending his knees so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Ed hissed with pain. "Sorry," Pinako said brusquely. "I know you didn't plan to do that, but you haven't practised using your leg much yet, and as long as we're making progress. . ."

They manoeuvred him onto a chair nearby, Ed careful to hold his new limbs close to his body. He sat in relief, turned, and looked over his shoulder at the bed. "I'm not going back there in a hurry."

Then he caught sight of the sunlight glinting off Winry's eyes and the large scissors she held in her hand. "Whoah."

"Whoah," he said again when she gave him a mirror, examining his reflection- more specifically, as she had ordered him, his hair. His bangs had grown out since Winry's experiment, and were now level with his chin again. The rest of his hair hung long and unkempt over his shoulders and a short distance down his back.

"See?" Winry said.

"Huh."

She raised the scissors.

"Wait a minute."

Winry paused, scissors poised and ready to hack off a chunk or several. "What?"

"It's just. . ." Ed said slowly, turning his head as he examined it, "I kind of like it like this."

She stared at him. His hair hung, greasy and tangled, straggling raggedly down over his neck. "Like that?"

Ed looked in the mirror again. "Well," he amended, "maybe not like this. Long, I mean."

She pursed her lips. "Really?"

"I'm not sure. . ."

And, until it was washed and dried and carefully combed through so it was free from tangles, and fanned out in a golden stream down the arch of his neck, neither was she.

Author's notes: Nine. Almost there. Commissions given out after the next story.

I really like this story. It's one of my favourites so far. Nobody that I know of has ever explained why Ed decided to grow his hair when he got automail. So I thought about it a bit, or a lot, and eventually came up with this idea. It has Pinako in it too. I like her; she's awesome. The story also contains some short snippets of humour and eloquence that I'm really pleased with. Well, I hope you enjoy it too!

This story is dedicated to my sister and her own hair-related misadventures.