It recently came to my attention that both chapters of this story were the same chapter. Thanks for pointing this out, becauseI forgot to check for once. XD This has been fixed.
For once in her young life, Winry Rockbell found herself unable to concentrate on the automail at hand. Try as she may, she would be working intently one moment and ten seconds later her thoughts would drift elsewhere. The first time she spaced out, she managed to poke herself in the stomach with a straying wire. The second time she turned to get something off of the table behind her and tripped over a power cord stretched across the floor. The third time Aunt Pinako came in and told her she had another order. After practically leaving the ground after Pinako startled her so, Winry gave up on the automail for the night and went up to her bedroom.
As she changed from her grease-stained overalls and into her clean cotton pajamas, Winry found herself drifting off into her headspace again. What she saw herself thinking about caused her to jolt back into reality.
"I can't be thinking about him!" she told herself in disbelief, removing the elastic band keeping her flowing blond hair at bay. "Ed's clear out in Central. He's fine. He's a state alchemist and he can fend for himself."
"But still…he's been pretty far away for so long," Winry thought. "I wonder if he's managed to screw up his automail yet…" she pondered, running her hands through her hair and crawling beneath her cool bedsheets. "I kind of hope he breaks it soon. I can't believe I'd want something like that, but it always seems that he only comes home when he needs replacements." She felt a sad smile surfacing on her face. "Not that this is home to him or anything."
She rested her head on the feather pillow, watching the moonlight dance in beams across the room.
"He's made so many mistakes…he's lost so much... I wonder if this time he'll find whatever it is he's looking for. Now that I think about it, he's never really told me about this thing he and Al are risking their lives over..."
Winry tossed and turned for a few minutes before finally heaving a sigh and turning onto her stomach. "Why can't I stop thinking about him?" she yelled into her pillow. "He's been gone too long! If he cared for me the way I care for him, he wouldn't go for this long without at least sending a letter or something! It's too late for him to feel like that…isn't it?" She sat up and walked across her room and sat down in the windowseat, staring across the rolling Risembool countryside toward Central. She didn't stop herself from thinking what she thought next.
"I'm waiting for you, Ed. Do you ever think about me? Do you even remember I exist sometimes?"
At her final thought, Winry felt unwanted tears wobbling on her lower lids. She angrily wiped them away and continued staring out over the horizon, which was streaked with the slightest strips of pink, yellow, and orange. She couldn't stop the first tear from falling as she subconsciously summoned any image at all of Ed to appear in her mind. The only thing she saw was the night he and Al had attempted to bring their mother back to life. Al fallen in the doorway, Ed covered in his own blood, two of the four precious limbs gone. She remembered his cries after they had his bleeding mostly sloweed and him on a bed hooked up to a couple of machines. Winry lost it and drew her knees up to her chest, hiding her face in her arms which she hugged around her legs.
"I had so many chances to tell him how I felt and I blew every damn one…" Winry wept openly, her sobs muffled by her arms. "Ed knows I love him! He knows I loved him all along! He knows it!" she sucked in breath enough to continue. "I had so many breaths to spend saying three words and I didn't use a single damn one of them! Now I might not have the chance." Wiry forced herself to stop crying. "Just for the record," she whispered as best she could, her lungs still slightly spastic from her crying. "If I only had one breath left, I'd use it and tell Ed I love him." She groaned at herself. "Dear God, Winry. What the hell are you saying…"
Her azure eyes were filled with a sudden determination, but didn't hold it. After a few seconds her face fell again and her eyes lowered to the wood of the windowseat. One final tear glittered as it plummeted like a liquid diamond to the cedar. "I miss you," she whispered. "You've been too far away for far too long." She leaned back against the wall behind her and watched the final light fade into the darkness taking over the sky. She managed to close her eyes and keep them closed. A few more minutes and she was finally able to drift off into her slumber.
"Winry!" Aunt Pinako called, opening the door to Winry's room. "Winry! We have guests."
Winry yawned and sat up straight, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Alright, alright, I'm coming down." She opened her eyes and looked around. Sunlight streamed through the window and illuminated every corner of her room. She tiredly dragged herself out of bed and changed her shirt, leaving her pajama bottoms on. It was too early in the morning for people to expect her to be coherent enough to completely change clothes. She opened the door after putting on her slippers and trotted-half-tripped down the stairs.
She couldn't believe who she saw standing in the living room. The height was enough to give him away. Too bad she didn't have a wrench to chuck at him. Instead Winry ran straight for him and threw her arms around his vertically-challenged frame.
"You're back!" she whispered, her head locked against the side of his. Ed laughed. "No wrench this time?" he asked humorously, hugging her back. Winry's eyes opened wide when she felt Ed's arms tightening around her. She pulled away from him and took a moment to glance at his golden eyes. She then focused her attention on his nose. She normally looked at his nose so that she wouldn't be drawn in by those persuasive eyes of his. "So how long are you planning on being here?"
Ed smiled, though there was sadness in that rare, genuine smile of his. "We're here to stay, Winry. We know that what we were looking for exists, but we can't find it because a real one isn't around. We could have created one, but then I'm pretty sure I couldn't live with myself."
'He's staying. Here. In Risembool. This can't be happening."
A faraway voice echoed in her head. "Winry…Winry…"
She looked behind her where the stairs should have been. She blinked once, but when she opened her eyes after closing them for that one second, she saw the wall opposite her in the windowseat.
"Wait…what?" she murmured, sitting up abruptly, consequently falling off of the bench because she had been half-way off of it as it was. The ceiling came to a standstill above her as she lay on her back on the floor, her legs till propped up on the windowseat.
"Ow…" she whispered, hauling herself up to stand. She lost her balance momentarily, but she rested her hand on the wall beside her as her head caught up with the rest of her.
"That couldn't have been a dream," she thought. "It was too real!"
Aunt Pinako knocked twice on Winry's door and opened it a crack. "Oh, Winry, you're up!" she said. The old woman's expression softened as she walked toward the girl. "I heard you crying last night," she said, concern in her voice. Winry let her head drop, her chin coming into the slightest contact with her chest. "I was hoping you hadn't."
"What was it?" she asked as Winry sat down on her bed, tucking her knees under her chin. "You can't keep everything to yourself, Winry."
Winry sighed. She opened her mouth to speak, but her lips wouldn't form the words, nor would her lungs supply the breath necessary to speak. She closed her mouth and swallowed. A moment later she found herself able to speak. Even then, it was labored and Winry was struggling to articulate.
"I….I was thinking about Ed," she murmured, picking at a stray thread in the blanket covering her bed. Aunt Pinako smiled sadly.
"You miss him, don't you?"
"More than you know. I feel like I can't breathe when I realize that I might never see him again.
"You know Ed. He'll break his automail punching someone's lights out and he'll be back in a heartbeat."
Winry found it in herself to smile a bit. "I just wish he'd come back for something other than repairs."
"What do you mean?"
The words caught in her throat again. "...I love him."
There was a moment of stabbing silence for a moment. Pinako finally said something. "You do?"
Winry looked at her aunt and nodded vigorously. "I'm sure of it. I once wrote that I'd take on the devil himself if it was only to hold Ed's hand…" she murmured.
Pinako smiled, this time no sadness in her expression. "I knew you loved him, Winry. Anyone with any intelligence at all could see that. Even Ed knows it."
Winry looked down. "I don't think my love for him is requited, though." She looked back at Pinako. "I feel stupid for half the things I wrote in my journal…"
Pinako shook her head. "It isn't stupid. Not if you meant it, Winry."
"Is there a way I can get all of this out?" Winry asked.
"Write a letter. Don't hold anything back and just keep it going. Then when the time comes and Ed comes back, slip it into his coat pocket or something when he isn't looking. By the time he finds it he'll be too far away to come back and talk to you about it. If that doesn't bring him around I don't know what will."
Winry smiled. "I'll have to do that." Pinako squeezed Winry's hand and left the room, closing the door behind her. Winry heard it click shut and listened to two words resonating in her head like gunshots. 'Far away.'
"I have to get that letter written before I do anything else," she told herself, scrambling for the nightstand by her bed. She pulled a journal out of the drawer along with a pen and started writing down everything. Her only doubt was in herself. Would she be brave enough to actually slip it to him when he came back?
Winry pushed these thoughts from her mind as every feeling she harbored in her heart began pouring from the pen in swooping penstrokes. She would give it to him. Surely nothing absolutely terrible would happen. Hadn't she secretly loved him for long enough?
She began with two words she'd never put together before.
Dear Ed...
