Winry was pulled out of her dim half sleep by an odd mewling noise. For a second, she thought it was a cat Al had dragged in, but then she heard the squeaks turn to gurgling coughs, and she remembered where she was and who she was looking after. She jumped up, panicked. The cold cloth had slipped off his forehead while she slept and he probably needed water…
She readjusted the cloth and bought the glad up to his lips. He drank clumsily, dribbling water all over. She mopped it up. His eyes opened a little, dull and unfocused. It was like looking into a gold haze. "Win…ry?"
She was glad he at least recognized her this time. Sometimes he didn't when he was in the throes of high fever, and this caused him to say very un-Ed like things such as "W…ow, you're pretty…" and "your hands are soft" and once, infuriatingly, "You're nice…you're such a nice doctor…you make me feel good…you remind me…of my friend….except she's really mean…"
"I'm here, Ed. Do you need anything?"
He blinked several times as his eyes watered and sweat dribbled into them. She gently wiped his face.
"Where's….Mom?"
She froze. Her throat dried up. "Oh, Ed…" She couldn't bring herself to say it. "She's with Al right now". She'd just have to hope he wouldn't remember this.
"Go get her. Needta tell her somethin'."
"She's too busy. If you tell me, I'll pass it on."
Ed was silent for a moment as Winry peeled his matted and sweaty hair away from his face. It was really getting long.
Ed coughed again and this time some blood bubbled out of this mouth. Winry had to cover her own mouth with her hand to stifle the noise of disgust. Even after all the blood she'd seen, that particular type of coughing still bothered her for some reason. She leaned forward to mop it up, but Ed wiped at it himself with shaking fingers, and then held the two fingers up, staring at the stuff like it was a foreign liquid to him.
"Mom coughed like this yesterday," he murmured. "She tried to hide it, but I saw."
Winry's chest contracted and she clenched the rag she was holding, nearly tearing it.
"'Kay fine then. Winry, just tell her…I-I know she's sad about Dad, but I promise…I promise me and Al, we'll be enough for her. We'll help, we'll do anything…" his eyelids drooped a bit but he kept talking. "We don't need him. We don't. She's enough for us, and we'll be enough for her, okay? Tell her…I'll be better…soon…"
"Okay," Winry wiped her eyes. "Don't worry. She already knows all of that."
Ed gave a faint smile, but then his mouth slackened and his eyes drifted closed. She finished wiping his face and then she stepped out of the room. She needed the air.
"Are you okay?" a high voice startled her.
"Oh, Al," she looked at the hulking suit of armor hunched in the corner of the hall like a golem in the night. "Yeah no, I'm fine. Ed's just got a fever again."
"Do you want me to take over? I mean you must be getting tired and I don't get tired and it's not like there's anything else to do…"
"I…" she hesitated. "Well, it's just that…he's really out of it, so…he might not recognize you as…you…and how you look, I mean…you might…scare him…a little."
"Oh," Al said flatly.
Winry ducked her head so her hair shielded her shame, twisting up the fabric of her dress in her hands. "I'm sorry…"
"It's okay, it's not your fault."
"Thanks for offering, though," she sank down to sit beside him. She wanted to cry so badly, just for a few seconds of release. The tears she held in were like a swollen water balloon blocking her throat. But how could she cry in front of Al right now, when he couldn't shed a tear anymore?
As if he had sensed her thoughts, Al bought down his huge hand to rest on her shoulder with a small clanking sound. It was cold and heavy, but Winry didn't let herself flinch away.
"Sorry we bought this on you."
Winry shook her head. "Don't say that when you're the one who's hurting the most. I just…wish you'd just let me know…that you guys planned to do something like that."
"Would you have stopped us?"
"I don't know." She honestly didn't. She had no way of guessing how the Winry from before would have reacted. It was a separate world she couldn't reenter, like the world where her parents were alive.
"We didn't want to drag you into it if we didn't have to."
"Ha! You just didn't trust me with your secrets."
"No! It's just…it was different…after your parents..we didn't want to get your hopes up about it if we didn't know whether it would work."
"Oh…" Winry let out a breath. "So you actually thought about them…"
It had been something she'd wondered in the very back of her mind- if they had been entirely in their own world, single-mindedly focusing on their own happiness, not remembering that she'd lost her parents too. She wouldn't have blamed them if they had been, but it made her feel warm inside to know that even if she hadn't been in on their plan, she'd been in their thoughts once in a while.
"Yeah, Ed said to me once that once we bring Mom back, we should bring Aunt and Uncle Rockbell back next."
She gave a bitter little laugh. She could picture Ed saying it, proudly, like it would be a neat surprise to wow her with. The idea of someone giving her them back did take her breath away. Granny did say Ed and Al had bought back something- barely alive, not even human, but something. But it wasn't worth it. Pulling back the people you lost wasn't worth it if the people who were still alive to love you got hurt in the process.
"When did he say that, Al? Was it after I…you know, broke that…?"
"Yeah," Al said softly.
She had figured.
After learning her parents had died, she'd shut herself up in her room for a while. She had been afraid Ed and Al would take their revenge and scold and worry over her like she had with them when their Mom had died. She couldn't stand being reminded of the Winry before, the Winry who hadn't understood, not really. She'd screamed into her pillow, echoing the emptiness she felt, the disbelief any of this could really be happening to her. Maybe when she came out again it would all be a joke. She had allowed that hope to exist, knowing it would be dashed the moment she really did come out.
Eventually she couldn't stand the weight of doing nothing, the pain of being alone with her thoughts. She wandered out, and there was her work table, untouched. Ed and Al were reading in the corner of the room, and they froze when they saw her.
"Winry…" Al started, but Ed stopped him with a nudge. Winry wandered numbly to her table, staring at the nearly finished prosthetic that still lay there. She'd been working on it when she'd gotten the news.
The thing seemed so stupid now. What had she been trying to fix? She could give people fake arms and legs, substitutes, but she couldn't give them back what they'd lost, not really. They'd always feel that missing part, that aching hole. Her parents…her parents had tried to fill those holes and look where that had gotten them. She felt a quiet rage beginning to build inside her. What had her parents been doing, tearing their own family into pieces so they could pretend to patch up complete strangers? And what right did the girl who couldn't keep her own family alive have to try and fix others? She hated it, this shallow imitation of life before her.
She took up her wrench, gripping it with both hands and hoisting it above her head…and she bought it down on the fake leg's most vulnerable joint- and then again and again, faster and faster, punctuating each of her ragged sobs with downward smash.
The brothers cried out and Al lunged forward with a gasp of "Winry, stop!" but Ed grabbed him and pulled him back. That was for the best. If Al had tried to restrain her, she wasn't sure she would have been able to stop herself from hitting him.
She smashed and she smashed, enjoying how easy it was to reduce her handiwork to scattered pieces with a few wide swings. Why had any of them even bothered? When their work could be undone so easily, what good was any of it? She dropped the wrench from her shaking hands and stared at the pile of broken parts and scrap metal. It had taken her so many hours to create it, and now she'd undone it all in a few minutes. Was this how whoever had killed her parents had felt? Had they looked at the clinic her parents had built, the refuge they had created, and gotten so angry at their arrogance, that they had decided to show them, show them that one person could undo it all with two stabs of a knife?
Her stomach heaved and her throat burned. No longer able to stand, she fell to her knees and started gathering all the scattered parts on the floor with clumsy sweeps of her hand. No, no, don't, stop it, I swear, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, please come back, please let everything be the way it was…
Ed knelt down beside her. Al was crying, she was crying, but he wasn't. Damn him, why didn't he cry, it was like he was mocking her.
"Winry," he said softly. "Winry, it's okay. I'll fix it for you in less than a second, look…" he got out the chalk and began to draw a transmutation circle on the floor.
"You CAN'T!" She slammed her hand down on the floor, smudging the careful lines, she grabbed his chalk from him and broke it. "You don't even know how it works, what goes into making it, you arrogant little jerk! You think you can just bring it back like nothing ever happened? What, do you think you're better than me? Better than…" she took a ragged breath. "You're NOT. You have no idea, you just make things worse."
She thought for a second Ed was going to hit her. She hoped she would. She wanted to feel pain and give it right back. She always won their fights, though admittedly that was before they'd trained with that teacher of theirs…but it didn't matter, she just needed this.
But instead, Ed closed his eyes, inhaled deeply through his nose and let the breath out his mouth. Then he opened his eyes up and looked at her calmly.
"Okay then. Show me how you'd do it. I'll help. We'll see if your way's better."
"What? What…you'd…actually do that? And listen to me?" Winry was caught so off guard she forgot her desire to fight.
"Sure. Gotta try it once."
Winry didn't know what to say, but Al grinned and wiped his eyes at this. "I'll help! I'll get your tools, Winry."
He jumped up and came back tottering and carrying the overflowing tool box. "This is kind of a mess-"
Some of the tools fell out, and they bounced of the seated Ed's shoulders and clipped his ear. Winry couldn't help snorting at Ed's high pitched little yelp, and Al laughed too. Ed huffed and scowled.
Al sat down cross-legged; Winry leaned forward and spread the tools out before her. They began connecting the scattered parts together, piece by piece. Al listened as Winry explained how to do it, Ed only seemed to listen long enough to come up with the next question in his barrage. It would have annoyed Winry if she didn't love talking mechanics so much. For now, all that existed for her was the interlocking metal, the tightening, the screwing- just this moment existed for her. Everything else was shoved far away, in the past.
"You know, it's a lot easier the second time around," she said after a while.
It was a slow process, taking them two whole days. She did what she had to do, not allowing herself to think beyond that. She could tell the slowness of the construction made Ed impatient, but he kept a lid on it. That impressed her; she hadn't even known he was capable of such a thing.
"Wow! It looks exactly the same as before," Al said after they finally finished.
Winry shook her head. "No, it's actually pretty much a whole new leg. New part, new process…"
"Was the other one…better?" Ed asked.
Winry frowned, picking the leg up and feeling its weight. "I don't think that's fair to say. I'd be comparing it to the memory of the first one. When I made the first one, it was a completely original thing for me and I couldn't even imagine it breaking. But now I know, and everything's changed. So I can't really compare. Maybe this new work should just stand on its own."
She set it down. The other two stared at her apprehensively. She looked from them to the leg and back. "Well, I made this one with you guys, and that's good enough for me." She forced herself to smile a little, and it hurt, like swallowing something so sweet it sickened her. Al took her hand. Ed held out his hand, looking pointedly away from her and she took it, squeezing it a little. It felt like she should cry again, release the heaviness inside her a little, but she couldn't. She could only think of one thing.
"How's Granny been?"
"Well, she's keeping to her room," Al said hesitantly.
"I think she has a hangover," Ed said.
"Ed!" Al scolded.
Winry snorted. "Have you tried talking to her?"
"Hell no," Ed shook his head.
"Yeah, well, um…"
"I'll do it, don't worry," she stood up, dusting off her dress.
"Are you sure?" Al asked.
"It's fine, wait here." She reached down to the sitting brothers and ruffled their hair.
Ed scowled. "Keep it up and you'll lose that hand."
"Try and take me on any time, shorty."
"Don't call me-!"
"Thanks, both of you."
Ed stopped short at this. Al grinned. "No problem. Go get Granny. We'll be waiting here."
"So don't take forever," Ed added.
"I won't," she said, and she made the trek to her grandma's room.
"Granny?" she opened the door a crack, and then all the way. Her grandmother was hunched up on the bed. Winry knew objectively her grandmother wasn't very tall. Heck, she was even shorter than Ed. But Winry never thought of her as small. But she looked small right now. And fragile. It scared Winry, but she dug her fingernails into her palms and pushed herself past it.
"Hey. Come on out. Let's work a little. Ed and Al will make dinner. And then we can eat together, too." She didn't need to ask the brothers to know they'd agree. She knew Al would doo it with no problem, and Ed would help, after a lot of grumbling.
"I don't want to work," Pinako mumbled. She did sound hungover, Ed was probably right.
"I'm only saying it because it helped me, just now. I think it will help you too."
Her grandmother didn't reply.
"Remember when you told me that crying over people who die just makes them sad?"
"I'm not crying."
Winry considered giving up and leaving. But she had to be brave. She pushed the words out. "I don't think they would have wanted us to be like this over them. They'd have wanted us to keep working, keep helping people, not to just…stop."
"Yeah? And where did helping people get them?" Pinako said harshly. It was like Winry was hearing her own thoughts bounced back at her.
"I don't know. I mean, do you think they would have regretted it? Do you think they died for nothing?" Her words echoed into the darkness, pleading. She really wanted the answer to this, because she didn't know it. She waited.
Eventually, her grandmother spoke. "Well…I expect they wouldn't regret a thing, fools that they were…and as for that other question…" She let out a sigh, long and tired. "I hope not."
Her grandmother got out of bed and turned on the light. Winry saw that her eyes were red. What a liar.
"Come here," Pinako said, and Winry fell into her arms. "You kids are growing up too fast. I can't have you lecturing me when I'm your guardian."
Her only guardian, now. Granny was all she had left of her family. "Don't leave me, okay."
"Only if you promise the same. Or that it'll only be the that kind of leaving me where you send cash home."
"Deal."
"Now let's go get those boys to make us some grub. And if they try to use that alchemy nonsense, we'll tan their hides."
"Yech, just the thought of whatchamacallit, mutated food…" Winry shuddered as they walked out of the bedroom together.
"My thoughts exactly, but try telling that to the shrimp…"
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING A MICRO-MINI-SHRIMP?" Ed's voice shook the walls.
"Huh, good hearing as always…"
It was to Ed's credit that he had never retaliated by bringing up this moment when she yelled at him for breaking things.
Ed could be petty, thoughtless and deliberately obnoxious, but never cruel. Winry didn't even think he was capable of deliberate cruelty. That was one of the reasons she loved him.
Was she capable of cruelty? She'd asked Ed once, and been sure she'd receive a flippant answer. But he responded, sincerely, no. "Winry, you looked your parents killer in the face and stopped him from bleeding to death. You're everything that's good in the world to me. Why would you even ask that?"
It wasn't true though. Scar had told her she could kill him. It's not that it hadn't been tempting. She'd looked at Scar and she'd remembered that moment back then, when she'd wanted to hurt and destroy because everything had been taken from her. How she'd wondered at that time if that was how it felt to be him. It was possible that she, in some small sliver of herself, under the right circumstances, had the same potential for cruelty as this man did. It wasn't enough to forgive him, as she'd said. But she'd seen before her either the choice to follow that path he'd taken or the path of her parents. Objectively, both options were really stupid decisions. But one was easier than the other. It was so much easier to break things than to build him. And Winry Rockbell always did things the hard way.