Even though it's many years too late to jump on this bandwagon, I recently got on a FMA 2003 / Conqueror of Shamballa kick and came up with an entire slew of ideas I can't wait to explore.

Unfair

September 13, 2012

Sometimes Alphonse felt like yelling at Winry.

He knew it wasn't fair, knew that she didn't deserve it because she missed Ed just as much as he did. More, perhaps, because she was the one who really knew the brother he'd lost memories of best. And he saw the way her eyes watered when she thought she was alone, huddled over automail schematics in the workshop.

She threw herself into her job, keeping herself busy with more and more customers, always lugging around a suitcase full of her equipment no matter where she was going, testing out new alloys, tweaking an already perfectly functional design, giving Den one new leg after another until Pinako had to lay an arm on the girl's shoulder and remind her to set aside her work long enough to sleep.

It was obsessive behavior. To Al, it seemed like it was all she cared about. She would always have time to answer some of his questions about the years they'd spent trying to find the philosopher's stone, but she never traveled with him. Never encouraged him to find his brother. The brother who gave up his life for him regardless of the cost!

She didn't believe him when he told her about the feelings he had, the almost-dreams, where the possibility that Edward was alive and trying to come home was cemented into his brain as his ultimate reality.

He could tell from the way her eyes hardened and her hand itched as if she wanted to hit him on the head with one of her heaviest wrenches that she didn't believe him. That she would have none of it. That she would not listen to crazy theories about Ed being alive or their ever seeing him again.

That was when he wanted to yell at her most. Because how could she think that he was crazy or lying about something so important? How could she not believe that he had managed to pull off the impossible yet again?

How could she abandon his brother that way, when by all accounts, she had been one of their only anchors during that crazy time?

Sometimes it became too much for him and he would lash out at the girl, vent all of his pent up frustration at the fact that she didn't seem to care.

Her eyes would begin to glisten, but she would stand there, silent, and hear him out. Until he ran from the room, unable to take it anymore. Then she would turn to her suitcase of automail and immerse herself until her eyes blurred from fatigue instead of unshed tears.

The time Alphonse walked back into the room to apologize only to learn what was in the suitcase (a right arm and left leg always kept up to date with her latest mechanical findings) was when he realized how wrong he had been to yell. So, so wrong.

Winry couldn't get her hopes up because hope was the seed of all disappointment. She couldn't indulge in Al's certainties when they couldn't be certain.

But she could become the best automail mechanic in the history of Amestris because when his brother finally did come back, he would need to get refitted. Because he would be taller.

She didn't doubt it.

She never had given up.

I loved that Winry carried that suitcase with her to Central just on the offchance that Ed came back and needed it. :3