Destruction
AN: Spoilers for chapter 104!
Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.
He wasn't sure when he started realizing his feelings for her.
He'd been so intent on moving – go here, go there – that he'd almost forgotten what it was that he was leaving behind. And even though he'd burned down their house in order to erase the last traces of their past, he found that he just kept going back.
He could have found another auto-mail engineer. It would have hurt her, and no other mechanic would be able to make auto-mail of her caliber, but he could have. If he'd only been strong enough... he could have left her out of the entire mess.
Instead, he stubbornly held onto her, refusing to let go – like a child, like he hadn't grown up at all. He just kept going back to her, and she kept welcoming him back with open arms.
And eventually, the sight of her warm smile and her blazing eyes became so comforting that he went to unnatural lengths to keep the shine in her gaze. He rubbed salt into the wounds of a woman he barely knew, and yet he hid the secret of her parents' death from her, all to keep away the tears.
It was a gradual process, so slow that he was barely aware of it happening – he could feign ignorance, protest that she was just a childhood friend, like a sister. And she was – she was his pillar of strength, and she was the reason he even bothered to go home. She and his brother were the only reason why he hadn't given up yet.
But she was so much more, too. She made him ashamed of himself for worrying her, but she wasn't afraid to admit how hard it was to keep people from worrying about you, either. She was never afraid – he'd always thought of her as courageous, but when her true character shone through, her strength almost blinded him. She was never afraid to take him back home.
Which was why he hated himself for being such a selfish bastard. She'd propped him up, kept him going when he'd felt like giving him, and he just dragged her down. He'd forced her out of her home, first so that she could become a better engineer for him, and then later because the enemy had become far too adept at manipulating him.
He didn't deserve her. Her unflinching devotion sometimes made him wish in despair that she'd just give up on them and make a proper life for herself. He knew what love did to a person, and although he was always grateful for the love he and his brother shared, he couldn't help but remember that it was love that had driven them to commit the greatest sin. Love did terrible things to a person, and love might just destroy Winry Rockbell.
He'd thought of fending her off from time to time, thought of pretending to not reciprocate feelings for her. But in the end, it was beyond him, because it would mean he'd never seen her again. And even though that would have been so much safer for her, he refused to do it.
"You bastard! Did you turn everyone in the country into a Philosopher's Stone?!"
"Yes."
That single word pierced Edward Elric more deeply than anything else because it meant he'd been right – his love had destroyed her after all.
AN: Ah, EdWinry angst. It's weirdly satisfying. 563 words. (And technically, Ed's love didn't destroy Winry, it would've happened to her anyway... but... it sounded cooler this way.)