Okay, a little random, not 'New adventures",but this has been sitting on my computer for close to a year. And I felt like wasting time tonight. Oh dearie me.

Title: Flare-up
Word Count: 1,136
Character/ship: Winry centric
Setting: Right after the movie

Enjoy!

Flare-Up

He had that warm chemical smell, the smell of cheap matches from shifty bars, and his left boot had a stain on it that looked remarkably like a smoking cigar.

Trust Winry to be storing away useless information at important times. But every time something happened that involved those two idiots, her mind would latch onto almost anything to get her attention away from the screeching pain and terror. The very night when the armor that housed Al brought to her doorstep the torn and emptied Ed, her consciousness curled in on itself and kept reminding her that the floors were dirty.

They were too dirty.

Practically grimy.

She needed to clean them. Soon.

But a small clear and smooth and all too horribly conscious part of her echoed every attempt to forget the reality.

Ed's dying.

Where's Al?

It was simply a mental defense.

So there she stood; her hammering of his chest slowing down from exhaustion, her eyes and nose dripping all over him, her voice creaking from use, and she was memorizing how his damn shoes looked. Really, she should be concentrating on screaming out curses to anything he might hold dear in an attempt to let him taste the type of desolation she was experiencing.

Winry had known as soon as she had seen the golden arc above, that Ed had done something rash and disgustingly noble again and was gone. The implications of the event hardly registered with Winry. She had long learned that a hope in a return of an Elric would likely result in crushing realization.

Sheska and she walked down the streets of the decimated city, mimicking the surrounding silence with their own. Four blocks later, they were sitting on one of the many piles of rubble, waiting to be assured what Winry had already accepted as a fact. The sounds of the soldiers murmuring and moaning around them were thick and woolen. A man shouted, breaking through the smog.

"He's here!"

Both women turned and saw the landing of a pathetic, hastily-made looking hot-air balloon touching down. Inside was that colonel that Ed had always complained about.

When Mustang had touched down in a hot-air balloon some ways away, he was instantly swarmed by fellow soldiers, most notably Hawkeye who proceeded to give the man a stern, yet teary, lecture on how much of an idiot he was. At some point the man broke away from the crowd and the woman and made his way toward Winry. She stood slowly.

She was so, so tired; mind, body, and soul, and badly wished to go back to her home.

"…Miss Rockbell." Mustang had said when he was close enough, his good eye lidded and his face thin and stretched. There was a pause, a short collection of breath and thought, and he continued. "Ed's…"

"Ed's gone." Winry finished. The corporal gave a curt nod and was silent. With the small persisting hope that harbored itself unwanted in her chest extinguished, she looked around the man and towards the small mass of soldiers, searching for the other passenger of the hot-air balloon. He was probably in a worst state than she, having been given back a brother only to have him steal himself away again. Though, it was very strange that she did not notice him in his red coat as the basket descended. All she saw now was the hazy blue of the lingering soldiers.

Wait...

Understanding seemed to tighten every organ in her body. Her breath was almost nonexistent as terror and denial had flushed through her head and thumped against her ears.

"Where's Al?" The same question with the same sharp horror shot through her like it had done years ago. She looked to Mustang, but the man refused to meet her gaze.

"Where is Alphonse Elric?!" She screamed without knowing it, her growing fear now driving her actions.

"I'm sorry, but…"

The words had hardly left his mouth when she had crossed the five feet that separated them and threw a fist into his chest. Her actions so foreign to her body, her mind retreated. The next thing she registered was his rough jacket scraping along her knuckles and palms as she continued to strike Mustang.

"No, don't you dare apologize you bastard! You were with them! You-you could've done something! … Anything!" Her word scrapped her throat painfully, but she persisted blindly.

She briefly wondered why neither Hawkeye, Sheska, nor Mustang himself made a move to stop her, but the thought passed in and out of her system without more ado. Her world now consisted only of the solid, targeted man in front of her and the high ringing in her ears. One goal and one goal only had taken up her entire reality, and that was to wring herself completely dry of emotions and thought.

Al was the reasonable one, the kind one, the gentle one. He was the boy who'd constantly bring to her either wounded animals, and beg for her to fix them, or random pictures, and in his own soft way, demand to know their context and meaning. He was so shy yet inviting, brilliant yet humble. And though years of memories between them were lost to him, and he no longer remembered everything that they shared, Winry and Al had created new memories together as a means of equivalent exchange. But all the same the girl was once more distanced from another brother.

So Winry sobbed until her eyes throbbed, screamed until her throat cracked, and pounded until her hands burned. She seemed to have emptied herself and yet still felt the clawing of emotion deep within her. In time, she had reduced herself to hiccups and shivers and was led away. She was later told that it was Riza Hawkeye that had led her. The only thing that Winry had remembered during that time was seeing a lone tree amidst the carnage of bodies and buildings. The plant was small and looked fragile, many of its branches and much of its bark had been ripped off; but it was green still and surviving.

She went through a car ride of indiscernible time, that much she could recollect, and through circumstances that were never revealed to her, she found herself in a sparse room with thin walls. Sitting alone in that room, with nothing more than a blank wall and covered windows for company, Winry remembered that after a few solid hits, Mustang had taken a step back and steadied himself. It was a strange pride Winry felt over that accomplishment and almost smiled at the thought. She wondered whether Ed would have been proud of her or even jealous that she had been able to assault the bastard Mustang in public so thoroughly.

Maybe he would have been…

Alright, once again comments are nice, ESPECIALLY if you find a cannon/grammar mistake or just a helpful comment.

Happy Wednesday.