Not a part of your world
"So I guess this is good-bye…"
Winry could do nothing but watch as she saw a piece of the broken aircraft heading back towards where it had first appeared. She knew Ed was on it, she knew that he was going back to wherever he had been for the past two years and she knew that he wasn't coming back.
When the news of Alphonse's choice to follow his brother reached her she was sad, but not surprised. She had always known, somewhere deep down, that she would loose them some day. It was just how it would turn out in the end and although Winry accepted this, she didn't like it.
There had been no good-byes. Well, there had never been any opportunities for that but even if there had been, the good-byes wouldn't have been anything tearful, it just wasn't their style. They had always left pretty quietly, as if there wasn't really anyone to say good-bye to.
She had always known. That's how it felt, but when she looked back she would find that the first inkling had just crept up to her when she was too young to understand what it was.
When they were little they had been best friends. There had been no secrets between them, except for what they'd give her for birthday present. They had been young and happy. Oh, how she wished that it could have stayed like that.
But it didn't.
After their mother died they started to keep secrets. That's when she'd known, though she was too young to understand what that tiny feeling was, so, like the little girl she was, she had pushed it away, choosing to ignore it.
After their attempt at human transmutation she still didn't understand, but only because she didn't want too. She didn't want to understand, to know, because she was afraid. And so she told herself that if she didn't know then it wouldn't happen.
When they left, she cried. Not only for their loss, but for hers as well. She cried, because then she had been forced to realize. Then she knew. Later, she pushed it away, banished it to the deepest, darkest space in her mind where she wouldn't be aware of it. Once she had done that, she could smile again and forget, at least for the time being, that she was slowly loosing them. She could pretend that in the end they would come back home and everything would be fine.
When Ed had told her that he and Al wouldn't be coming back to Rizembool, even after they had regained their bodies, something in her broke. It had been undeniable then, but some small part of her still held on to the hope that they'd come around, that they'd return.
When Ed had disappeared and was presumed dead she had been devastated. Al gave her some hope. His firm conviction that his brother was still alive somewhere made her convinced as well. At the very least he would come back to get his brother. So she started working on a new automail arm and leg for him, because surely he would have outgrown his old ones when he returned. She had a pretty good estimation of his growth-rate to work from and that made the work slightly easier.
Then he came back, bringing a whole lot of trouble with him. But still… Just for a few short minutes, he came back. And he did need the automail she had constructed for him. Then he was gone again, this time his brother had gone with him.
Winry didn't cry. No somewhere along the way she had found out that she had always known that it would end up like this. She looked out at the rain outside the kitchen window and sighed.
"I guess it just wasn't meant to be," she said. "No matter how much I want to, I wasn't meant to be a part of your world."