Title: An Epilogue

Summary: It's normal for some to have regrets on their wedding day.
Pairings: Winry Ed

Rating: G

Warnings: Unrequited love, but maybe not quite in the way you're thinking.

Notes: This fic was actually inspired after a long evening of playing Music Catch and hearing the song played in it, "Before Dawn" by Isaac Shepard, on repeat for several hours and trying to figure out just what the bunny it had spawned was trying to make me write. In the end, I came out with this. It's the first time I've written from Winry's perspective, and the first time I've tried to sync up a fic to a piece of music, for that matter. It can certainly stand on its own, of course, but I think the background music adds just a little something extra.

Or I could just be insane. Either way, it's a gorgeous piece ("Before Dawn" I mean), so I suggest you listen to it anyway.

It's her wedding day.

She's about to marry the man of her dreams.

To be tied together forever to the only man who'd ever come close to her mechanical skills and could still take a wrench or two to the head.

She should be happy, the happiest she's ever been.

So then why can she only sit here at her workbench and stare at the pictures of days gone by and . . . try her hardest not to let the tears fall?

Her family and friends are all gathered for the celebration, ready to toast to the new couple, but that's not even as true as she wants it to be. As she looks at the pictures she sees the faces of the two missing members of the wedding party. The two that had been at the wedding in her dreams since she'd been a little girl. And that she'll never see again.

She's knows that they're out there somewhere. She knows that they're living their lives the way they'd fought so hard to do. That maybe, wherever they are, they're even thinking about her too.

But not even that knowledge can make the pain go away.

They're happy now, together at last, but where does that leave her?

The forgotten sister to her most precious brothers left behind once again, like always.

She'd thought, when she'd been a child, that when she finally married, the one waiting for her at the altar would be him.

But something went horribly wrong, they drifted so far apart until he could only see one thing.

And she'd been left behind waiting. Waiting for the day when he'd finally return home to her but that day just never came, no matter how hard she'd wished for it. No matter how hard she prayed and yearned and wanted and pleaded for him to come back to her, they were never granted. He was never there even when he was there, not for her, never for her, and he could never see just how much it hurt her that he couldn't let her in, that he couldn't trust her, that he couldn't love her.

So what was she supposed to do? Wait her whole life for a man that would never come?

Count on a dream that would never come true?

Waste her life away on a fantasy that had never had any hope to begin with?

She'd wanted so much to believe that he would stay in the end.

That somehow his loyalty to his home and to her would finally turn him around. Make him come back.

But it just wasn't meant to be. She realizes that now.

She has to go on with her own life, just like they're doing wherever they are.

She'll never forget them as long as she lives, but it's past time that she moves on.

Now there's someone waiting for her, and she won't let him down.

Because she loves him.

-End