Winry woke with a smile on her face. Today was the day. After two whole years of waiting on phone calls and telegrams, today was the day he was coming back home. She mentally went through the list of things to do while dressing. She'd wear her hair down today, the way he liked it.
The whole of Resembool seemed to be bustling with excitement today. Their Hero was coming back; the kid who saved the country at the age of sixteen and brought back his younger brother's body by sacrificing his alchemy for it. He was now a man of twenty, and he was possibly dozing in his seat on the train back from the West. He was coming nonetheless. Winry heard his name at almost every alley and turn, and at every shop she entered at the market.
"Edward Elric. Yes! That's Trisha's kid!"
"He used to be my best buddy at school!"
"Sir Edward is the greatest gentleman ever!"
Winry smiled at the last one. Gentleman? More like the most obnoxious brat ever. Even now she wondered how he managed to out-tall her with his passionate hatred for milk. He was as tall as Fuhrer Mustang.
She looked through her list of groceries and realized she hadn't bought two of the most important things. Milk for the stew and apples for the pie. She went on ahead to the store that sold them best. However, on reaching said shop she hesitated. Someone she did not want to cross paths with was standing just outside.
Jerrico Rio.
He was studying to become a doctor at the city, and was here on vacation as far as she knew. She ignored him to the best of her ability. He had approached her a few weeks after Ed left for the West, saying he wanted to get to know her. Saying only doctors could understand their own kind.
Shaking the memory off, she entered the shop.
"Oh, hello, Winry! Apples again?" asked the kind elderly shopkeeper.
"Yes, please," Winry replied with a smile. "Also, a couple of cartons of milk."
The old lady smiled knowingly and packed her order. Winry had hoped to get away just as she came into the shop, by ignoring Jerrico. He, however, had other plans. He approached her as soon as she stepped out of the cozy grocery store.
"Winry," he said. "There is something I need to talk to you about."
She stopped, rather annoyed. "I'd appreciate it if you called me 'Miss Rockbell', Mr. Rio." They used to be on first name basis, when he did not think medicine was the only noble profession in the world. He looked down on almost every other profession; the military, engineering, and alchemy especially. Automail made out of the black list merely because of its connection to medicine.
All of this, he said when he tried to make a move on her, two years ago. And every second he spoke after that she wished throwing a wrench at somebody's head was not a criminal offence.
His onyx eyes seemed to freeze for a moment before he recomposed himself.
"Miss Winry, please. Don't take this as something inappropriate-"
"What do I take this as, then? I think I made it quite clear the last time we met that I don't want to interact with you," she replied coldly.
"Miss Winry," he began again, "please, don't misunderstand me. I only want you to see that the world is not limited to Resembool and your small neighborhood…"
"And you are implying? That I live cooped up in a cage?" She was getting more and more annoyed by the second.
"That is the essence of it, since you refuse to look beyond a childhood crush," he finished flippantly.
He did not know that this woman that he was supposedly trying to woo carried a wrench heavy enough to crack a skull. Where she carried it was a mystery, but the contact it made with his head made him wish he was still in East City Medical School, fantasizing about a confession gone right for change.
Edward stepped out of the train expecting to see blond hair and blue eyes. He was greeted by thinning gray hair and squinty eyes behind spectacles instead.
"Hey, runt," Pinako said in greeting. "Welcome back."
"Tch. You're still going to call me runt, hag?" he said pulling his suitcase in behind him.
"Oh, you'll always be a runt, kid. If you didn't already know that. You're just a milli-runt now instead of a micro one," the old woman replied with a playful smirk on her face. At this, Ed smiled and hugged her.
"It's good to be back, Granny." He held the suitcase away so Pinako would not attempt to take it from him. She was getting old after all. Her hair looked grayer than he remembered it. "Where's Winry?" he asked peering around, expecting her to jump out any moment.
"Win got caught up in something at the market. She ended up hitting some guy over the head with her wrench. She's busy talking care of that mess."
"Oh," he mumbled, something deflating inside him. He'd had time to slowly build on what he'd said on the day he left. 85%. That was a lot. She would kill him for the grime his automail leg collected on the way back. Nothing less than a smack in the head with the biggest wrench in her possession. As disappointing as her absence was, on the bright side he'd get a bit more time to prepare. What would it be like to talk her face to face? The only thing he'd said to her after his confession was, "I'll be going now."
If one could even call that a confession.
"Yo, milli-runt!" Pinako called from the end of the platform. "You going to stand there gawking at the pavement all day?"
"Coming!"
They went to the graveyard first. A pair of tombstones greeted them with names as familiar as themselves. Trisha Elric and Van Hohenheim.
"You really are good for nothing," Ed said standing over his father's tombstone. "Leaving us to fend for ourselves again and again." He remembered how Hohenheim had offered to sacrifice himself for Al on the promised day. Four years. It did not feel like that long. He remembered he'd cried that day, possibly the only time he called Hohenheim 'dad' and meant it. Even though it was preceded by a 'good-for-nothing'. Ed smiled at the memory. "Good-for-nothing dad."
"Did I tell you about the day we found him?" Pinako said, coming up beside Ed.
"Yeah. You've told me about a couple o' billion times already," he said with a scoff in his voice. He'd turned away, but Pinako knew he was smiling and trying not to cry at the same time. "Let's go home, granny."
Winry frowned at the rust stains on the metal limb. "I thought I told you to keep it oiled and dry all the time." She stood at the side of her bed with her arms akimbo. Ed sat reclined on her bed, legs spread out on the bedspread.
"I did!" he said defensively. "It's the just that the last couple of days I haven't gotten the time. I've been on the move, see?" There was a sheepish edge to his word. He did not dare utter that he got stuck in the rain and was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as he got on the train. Ed watched as Winry huffed, then sighed, and finally retrieved a bottle of oil from her work table.
"At least you didn't break it this time," she said while rubbing the rust off slowly. The smell of grease pervaded the room, mixing with the aroma of apple pie and then taking over.
She had rushed to the door the moment he arrived, and her frazzled posture was instantly replaced with a bright smile. Now, it was just after lunch, and Pinako had gone off to the station once again, along with Den. Al was coming in from the East. They'd barely managed to date their arrivals on the same day.
"So, Winry," Edward started.
"Hmm?" she mumbled not looking up.
Ed felt overly conspicuous, even though she was facing his leg and no one else was in the room. His heart rate accelerated despite his protests. "About t-that day…"
At this she paused and looked up. "What about it?"
Ed was pretty sure his face resembled a tomato. "Are you sure it's not too much? 85%?" he blurted. She blinked a couple of times, and he mentally face-palmed. This was so much better in my head.
"How many times have we had this conversation?" she asked, exasperated. "Really, Ed. I'm not going to go and leave you in the middle of the rain, you know?"
It was a metaphor. They both knew that rain made the Flame Alchemist as useless as a doormat. But that was not the point here. They also knew that bad weather was a con for automail.
"What happened at the market today?" Ed asked after a while. "I was under the impression that the wrench was only meant for me to get hit by." There was a playful note in his voice, despite the slight blush lingering on his face. Over the years, as his height was no longer subject to ridicule, he'd developed a habit of teasing her from time to time. It was fun, imagining her face turning a bright shade of red as she stuttered.
Her reaction this time did not disappoint.
"N-nothing serious. Just a guy being obnoxious." She went back to tending his leg.
"What do you find more obnoxious than my height?" he replied with a smirk.
"When someone calls you 'just a childhood crush'!" she snapped, her fiery eyes shooting up to meet his. They stared at each other for one full minute before her cheeks reddened and eyes widened. Abruptly, she shot up from the bed, upending the oil container by mistake. Ed would have laughed if it were not for the huge blotch of grease now smearing her pristine white sheets.
Winry stared at the splotch with her mouth agape. "Ugh!" she said slumping. And Ed finally burst out laughing uncontrollably. "This isn't funny, Ed!" She fumbled to soak up the oil before it seeped into the mattress.
"S-sorry," he said between barks of laughter. "You just look too cute!"
Winry winced. "Never on the bed. Never again," she mumbled. "Come on. We're going to the living room."
"What happened to the room you usually use for maintenance?"
Winry sighed. "Well, let's just say the guy at the market has a much thinner skull than you, and this is the closest place for first aid." She gathered her tools and headed downstairs. Ed followed like a loyal puppy.
"So, you ended up taking care of a guy whose skull you cracked? Man. That is irony on so many levels," he lamented while sitting on the couch with his automail extended on the length of it and the other leg dangling. She drew up a stool and began to inspect the individual screws. "What exactly did he say that got you so mad?" Ed said in a serious tone.
Winry stopped again. "How many times are you going to interrupt this, Ed? Can't we talk about this later?" she said through clenched teeth. A vein had popped up on her temple.
"I don't think so, Win. Later, you'll be busy in the kitchen or most probably with a new piece of automail." Casting a knowing glance, he added with a fond tone under his breath, "machine junkie."
"Fine," she drew out the word in an exasperated manner. "I guess you deserve to know."
He arched an eyebrow. "Oh, you've been keeping secrets now?"
"Cut the teasing if you want to hear it," she said with a glare, then continued. "So you remember the Rios?"
"I think so?" he said uncertainly.
"Their son, Jerrico. He's studying to become a doctor at East City. He showed up at our doorstep a couple of months after you left. I don't know how he managed to get me alone, but once he did he said he wanted to 'have me', in the sense." At this point she had to stop to gently prod his metal kneecap with the wrench in her hand. Ed had practically frozen in place. "You with me?"
He blinked a couple of times before nodding slowly.
"So, I turned him down. I've already promised you 85%. But then he starts to spew all this nonsense about medicine being the only profession with any values in it. What I got from there was that he despises the military and pretty much every other profession. And for some reason, he thinks alchemy is the worst. He is under the impression that between you and me it's just infatuation and that you can never make me happy because only the same kinds of people can really understand each other and all that shit." She took a deep breath. "I told him to get lost and never show his face to me as politely as I could."
"Then?"
"And he did. But he shows up at the market place today and says that I 'refuse to look beyond a childhood crush'." She sighed again. "I regret hitting him with the wrench. I really do. But it's not those words that pissed me off. It was the implication that he knows what's good for me better than I do."
The room was quiet for a few minutes except for the soft metallic swish of Winry's wrench tightening or loosening some screw. When she looked up Ed was obviously deep in thought. The pensive expression caused dread to seep into her system. Over all these years, she had never once seen a look quite like this one on his face, and it worried her.
Al's lively laugh broke the thickening silence. Granted, it came to them through two separate brick walls, but it still managed to bring warmth with it.
Winry put her tools away, declaring Ed's automail back on optimal "Ed-durable" shape, and Ed went to put on a longer pair of pants before heading to the door to greet his brother back from the Xingese land of love and alkahestry.
A mischievous grin made its way to Edward's face as Al finished showing and explaining an intricate transmutation circle constructed with the help of his newfound alkahestric knowledge. The younger Elric was saying as much about his Xingese master as he was about the theory behind the array spread out on the table between of them.
"May was really adamant about me doing the entire thing by myself. I have to say she is one feisty teacher," Al finished with an accomplished smile. "Did I tell you she's just a head shorter than me now?"
"Well," Ed started, his voice dripping with every bit of mischief he could muster. "You have been talking about her a lot, Alphonse Elric."
Al's cheeks tinted a light shade of pink at Ed's suggestive smile. "S-she is a very generous host. And, remember Shao May? She's actually a panda. There a tons of pandas in Xing, though most of them are a lot larger-"
"Nice try changing the subject, Al," Winry interjected. "Honestly, though. It's obvious who is head-over-heels for whom." She and Ed shared a knowing look before bursting into fits of giggles and howling laughter respectively. Al's blush only deepened.
He had a comeback right at the tip of his tongue when Pinako's voice sounded from a room down the hall.
"Winry, the Rio kid's awake!" she called. This stopped both laughing parties. Al felt an invisible tension crawling into the space between his brother and Winry.
"C-coming, Granny," she replied nervously. There it was again. That look on Ed's face that made her dread every move she made toward the door separating the kitchen and the hall. The moment she turned the knob, though, she heard a chair being scraped across the wooden floor. Ed stomped out of the room right past her, and strode rather noisily to the room he and Alphonse were supposed to share.
"What's going on?" Al asked uncertainly, making her face him.
For the first time in years, Winry did not know what to say.
Ed was in the room, but he had no idea what to do now. The moment Pinako had uttered that name he felt the uncertainty flooding back in. He did not know how to meet Winry's eye, or even Al's for that matter. He'd wanted to storm into the room they were using as the makeshift emergency room and demand an explanation. But what would he demand the explanation for?
The guy probably had a point. Because, really, she promised him 85%, but he hadn't stepped one foot beyond 50.
Ed paced the room, sat on the bed, pulled out his diary to take a look at his notes, opened the window and then closed it again, all in an attempt to calm the dread. What reason did Winry have to choose him? He was battered and beaten. Nightmares from almost a decade ago still haunted him. He'd committed taboo. He was still considered a dog of the military by some people. And he was nowhere near proving the 10+1 rule.
The other guy, on the other hand. What was his name again? Jerrio?
"Ed," Winry's voice came slicing through all the noise in his head. "Could you keep the pacing down a bit? I'm trying to treat someone with a cracked skull here!"
That was it. He couldn't stay in here anymore. Ed barged out of the room, flinging the door open with force that tested its hinges, and rushed past a very confused Al out of the house. However, at the bottom step, right next to the wooden sign saying "Rockbell Automail", he found himself unable to move. He realized he had practically not seen a thing after the flinging the door open. His breath came in pants, and he knew he had been momentarily blinded by some sort of anger.
"Brother," Al said a step behind him. One of Al's hands was on his shoulder. His voice mildly masked concern, and managed to blend confidence in it as well somehow. "I know something's wrong. You want to talk about it?"
Ed exhaled slowly, the tension around his shoulders dissipating a little. The cool breeze of the night helped as well. He nodded.
They sat down a little to the side of the path within earshot of the house facing away. Al had offered to go to the graveyard, but Ed refused, saying Mom didn't need to worry about something like this. So, that is where they sat while Ed filled him in about Jertico Rio or whatever his name was.
"I see where this is coming from," Al said once Ed seemed to be done with the filling in. "After all these years, a competition you didn't expect. No wonder you're so cranky." He shook his head in a way that said, "Why am I not surprised?"
Ed sighed in a way that said, "No, you don't get it at all."
At this, his younger brother frowned. "Really? What am I missing, then?"
"What bothers me isn't that he had the guts to approach her. She is an amazing person. I wouldn't be surprised if tons of these guys came up to this porch every week." He paused, gathering his thoughts before putting them into words. Then, he lowered his voice involuntarily. "It's the possibility that I'm holding her back."
Alphonse stared at his older brother, trying to read the more subtle parts of his reasoning. He had on almost the same expression that he did after the failed transmutation over eight years ago. Except now, he did not look like he would give up on life. He just looked lost.
"So," Al began warily, "you're saying that Win probably deserves Mr. Rio. That he deserves her more than you do?"
Ed was looking at his hands. At times, he felt like he could still clap his hands together and change the shape of any material he wanted to. At times, when he felt the screws in his shoulder digging in, it almost seemed as if the automail arm was still there. He could move his hand, but could not feel anything. "I don't know, Alphonse," he finally said in a small voice, the breeze snatching it away from his mouth before he knew it. "Sometimes it feels like nothing's changed, like I'm back in that wheelchair, with no idea about what's going to happen next. And today it's worse than ever." He looked up, the lost expression never leaving his face. "Everything we've been through seems so useless right now. I haven't felt like this since that day."
Al did not have to be told which day he was talking about. He contemplated what to say in order to make his brother see the stupidity of the whole situation, and Ed's perspective to be precise.
The silence was broken by a faint whoosh coming their way. Al saw an object gaining a metal gleam from the lights inside the house before hitting the older Elric on the head with a very audible thunk! The object, which he now isolated as ridiculously huge wrench, bounced off the golden locks and into the grass.
"OWW!" Edward all but screamed, throwing both his hands up to the spot where the wrench had made contact and turning around simultaneously. "WHAT THE HELL WOMAN! YOU WANT TO KILL ME?!"
"BETTER THAN HEARING YOU SAY YOUR WHOLE LIFE WAS A WASTE!" came a shrill reply from the second floor balcony of the house they called home. Alphonse was not at all surprised to find a fuming Winry standing at the balcony. He was, however surprised to see tears streaming down her face.
Edward stared incredulously for a moment, entranced by the way tear drops glistened in the light filtering out from inside. He found his voice when Winry began to hiccup.
"H-hey," Ed croaked. "D-don't cry dammit. I'm sorry!" He was up and running toward the house now, hands waving in front of him in a defensive manner. Another wrench flung out from the balcony and hit him squarely on the forehead. He caught this one as it bounced off, rubbing at the spot absently with his free hand.
"Like hell, am I listening to you!" she replied equally heatedly. "I don't have to abide by your promise if you're so intent on breaking it, pipsqueak!"
Al, who watched with a mix of surprise and nostalgia at their antics, noted how Ed's posture stiffened at the insult. He let a smile make its way to his face. Sighing, he told himself, "Well, as long as it gets him back on track."
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE CAN ROLL DOWN THE HILL ON A BUTTON?!" Ed screamed in a fit of induced insecurity. Then, regaining his composure just a little, he added, "In case you haven't noticed, Miss Automail Princess, I'm HALF A HEAD taller than you are!"
"Oh yeah? Prove it!" she declared in a challenge before turning to go inside with a flourish. "And bring my wrenches in with you while you're at it."
Once he was inside, Ed was forced to keep his voice down, consequently dousing the anger at the insult. The two wrenches to the head had made him see sense. And he actually went and spoke to Jerrico, albeit getting his name wrong at least ten times.
The crack was minor, but the next day the Rockbells insisted that he go see a professional doctor at the city.
"I apologize," Jerrico said turning to Winry before leaving. "For angering you. I honestly didn't think things through." Alphonse had alchemized a crutch for him, seeing as he could easily lose his balance. He leaned on it to cast a wary glance toward Edward, who was standing near the back of the room, arms crossed over his chest. "I've always had my academics speak for me. This, as far as I thought, wouldn't be any different. But that is obviously not the case."
"Whatever, kid. Just make sure the next girl you set eyes on isn't taken," said a smirking Pinako. This sent Al into a fit of good-humored laughter while Jerrico scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. The other two could barely contain the color rising to their cheeks.
"I'll keep that in mind, Mrs Rockbell," Jerrico said. "Again, I'm sorry for causing so much trouble."
"I'm sorry, too. For hitting you out of the blue," Winry said, and was about to continue when Jerrico cut her off.
"From your point of view, I think it was justified."
Ed nodded slowly from his leaning position against the wall. The talk was working.
"I'll be taking my leave now," Jerrico announced. "Mrs Rockbell, Miss Winry, Alphonse. And I better not have to call her 'Miss' next time, Mr Fullmetal."
Since Alphonse could only stay for a month before returning to Xing to continue his studies, it was only a matter of convenience to visit every person he could in the duration of his home-coming. They sat in living room of the apartment that served as the Hughes residence. A seven year-old Elicia jumped about excited as she showed them her schoolwork; assignments that detailed on the happenings of the promised day. At least the details that made it out to the public.
"Everyone in my class was really excited when I told them I knew you two, Uncle Ed!" she declared just as Gracia brought in the tea on a tray. "They wanted to know if it's true you were a shorty."
Everyone chuckled at the face Ed made at the comment. "I guess it's hard to get off the past, huh?" he said at least, exasperated.
They fell into a comfortable conversation, Al doing most of the filling in and Ed adding overly personalized commentary. Even though Gracia had little understanding in the ways of alchemy, she listened intently as one of them explained some aspect of it.
As they began to run dry on Xingese animals to talk about, Al pulled a string Ed had no idea he could pull, especially in that way.
"Did you know that Brother proposed to Winry before setting off for the West?" he quipped suddenly, eyes darting to his older brother with a mischievous glint.
Gracia's eyebrows shot upward. "Oh, my. Did you, now?"
"N-no!" Ed said defiantly. "It wasn't a proposal, Alphonse. I'm surprised you would put it like that," he added through gritted teeth.
"Really, Brother?" he said with a faux innocent smile which made his intentions glaringly obvious. "Then, what was it? Care to elaborate?"
"W-well," Ed began, his throat feeling as dry as sand. "I'd say it was more of a confession. Or a commitment, now that I think about it." In reality, he had thought about that day a lot, especially after the Rio incident. He kept telling himself that it wouldn't matter how many guys came and asked Winry for her hand. She would turn them all down; that was as much as she'd told him herself. However, when he thought about it, he realized that Rio was the only guy she had told him about. The others, he'd heard about from Pinako or Garfiel. And every time he heard about their extravagant endeavors he felt something clawing at his insides.
He didn't need a psychiatrist to tell him what this feeling was because he'd seen his face in the mirror. It looked alarmingly like the face the May had made when she saw Winry crawling out from inside Al.
He had to stop feeling that way, and the long-term solution was-
"So, when will you ask her?" Elicia inquired, drawing him away from the introspection.
"I was planning to pick up a ring while we're here," he said evenly, despite the blush threatening to take over his face. "Since I can't alchemize one anymore. That would have been very convenient."
"I could do it for you," Al offered.
"No, Al." Ed said, his eyes flitting to the clock on the wall. Winry had insisted on meeting Captain Hawkeye before heading to the Hughes' later for lunch. It was almost time for her to show up. "This is something I have to do by myself."
Using her earrings as inspiration, the ring he bought was a plain metal band. He hoped it would fit. Man, he hoped. Ed did not want to have it alchemized to fit. The question now, was how and when.
The End