A/N: Note that the title and summary are entirely silly and not serious in the slightest; I see Winry's wrenchings as a visual gag and I do not condone concussion via wrench as a means of flirting in real life any more than I endorse burning down your house and joining the military (I don't.) Haters gonna hate, but I ain't one of them.
This collection was written for the fantastic Amythista in a gift exchange. She is awesome and you should read her EdWin fics like right now.
i. blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun
Rating: K+
Genre: Um. Introspective or something? Stream of consciousness?
Notes: Vaguely mangaverse, but no spoilers.
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He held an intensity in his eyes that burned him from the inside out. When he came to her, battered, broken, burning, she held him gently (with hands meant to save people) like he was a fading ember, so careful and caring but bitterly restrained, afraid of being burned herself.
And he'd always had that fire but not like this, never like this, only after his mother's death had all that passion and drive been tempered into something dangerous and unpredictable, self-destructive. She's afraid that someday it will consume him, that he'll just keep burning until he burns himself out, until there's nothing left of him.
But he's so strong. So much strength in such a small body. She saw it during his automail surgery, when she stripped him down to his base components, sinew and bone and blood, so much blood, she'll never have that blood (his blood) off her hands and she feels it four years later still caked beneath her fingernails and in the grooves of the callused skin of her palms; when she cut into his flesh with surgical steel (and he never screamed) she felt the strength flowing from him as hot and tangible as the dark red blood flowing onto the sheets like the tears he wouldn't let himself cry.
Never screamed, only burned. He was eleven.
...they are much too young to be dying this way.