"Make a wish, Ed."
The boy remembered that day, they were seven years old when he looked at that dandelion that was waved in front of his golden eyes. He raised an eyebrow, making the girl sitting next to him giggling and looked at her. Winry seemed to shine like the autumn sun.
Her blond hair caught the glow and sparkled like long, marvelous golden threads. The few freckles on her nose and under her big blue eyes created a contrast with her pale skin and he simply stood there, enraptured.
Even now he'd like to kiss them one by one, slowly. As a child, he couldn't give a name to that overwhelming feeling but felt like his heart was about to explode.
It was a desire that he didn't understand, he couldn't decode. He just knew that it was very strong but…can you talk about love when you're a child? If so, then Edward was madly in love.
Anyway, he didn't know it, and maybe, even if he had known, he would never have told her, he wouldn't have had the courage as he hadn't now and, deep in his heart, he knew he would never have the courage to tell her.
She was perfect, thoughtful and intelligent, even if short-tempered. But he wouldn't have known what to do without her combative vehemence.
She had always tried to fill his silences, she wore a smile in his lonely and gray life, she tried to make him laugh even though he was left alone with his brother and he was so angry and uncontrollable that sometimes it was impossible to deal with him.
Winry remained close to him, she was a certainty in a life of uncertainties and doubts.
She gave him her friendship and he held on to that affection that made him smile even if everything collapsed to pieces, just like him, who couldn't physically have been able to do even a step if it wasn't for her.
This was Winry.
For him and Alphonse, she was a family.
"Why?" With a faint voice the child had answered her in the shade of a tree.
It was still not too cold to enjoy the outdoors, they could stay on the banks of the lake until the damp weather made them shiver.
Winry stared at him widening her eyes.
"But how…don't you know?"
"Know what?"
The little girl snorted playfully, lifting her fringe, slightly longer than usual, in a slight blonde cloud. Little Edward felt like time had stopped, he could swear he saw every single hair rise to her breath, every single strand capture a ray of sunshine and glow like incandescent metal.
It was pure alchemy.
An alchemy called Winry Rockbell.
"Make a wish, Ed. Then blow on the dandelion. If you can make all the white petals fly with a single breath, your wish will come true. "
"That's stupid."
"Come on, Ed, it's just a game," the dandelion was again placed under his nose, "Make a wish."
A wish.
He only had one. But he didn't believe that a stupid flower could ever fulfill his request. Alchemy could. And he was working hard to use alchemy to bring his mother back. One day, he knew, he would have had the skills and he would have succeeded.
But apart from that, he had another wish – he didn't remember how long…and it was about Winry.
Maybe since he had met her. When everything in his life had always wavered like an unsteady ground, he kept in his heart the wish to never lose her.
He wanted her always close to him, wanted to grow together, learn together, forever.
This was the wish he wanted to express at that very moment while he was looking at her deep blue eyes.
He concentrated, under her amused gaze and a smile on her red lips. He looked at her sideways, feigning skepticism, and then blew on the flower.
He blew as if his life depended on it.
He blew out his desire, confiding his love to that white flower.
Stay with her.
He wanted to see that stem completely bare and then, peering with a semi-open eye, blew even louder.
He stopped only when the last stubborn petal fell. At that point he stopped with no more air in his lungs, red like a pepper.
He remembered that afternoon perfectly even though it seemed like a lifetime had passed.
It was autumn again. Edward was sixteen and was sitting enjoying the last rays of autumn sunlight. Life had become more uncomfortable and difficult than it already was and he had become uncomfortable too, more angry and aloof.
Under that same tree.
Physically away from her, from her daily life.
Winry's crystalline laughter came to his ears and suddenly a thought wounded him: the awareness of losing 70% of every smile and every look on her face was stabbing his heart. It'was a tear in his now gray soul that just yearned that everything was finally as peaceful as it should have been, without chasing impossible desires or having to fix the irreparable. A happy life, next to her.
Now a look from Winry had that effect: it illuminated him and at the same time it was lethal.
He stared at her from a distance, knowing she wouldn't notice.
He stared at her and the hatred of that life he had chosen grew inside him, a life that engulfed him, fascinated him but in the meantime took him away from her.
There was a growing hatred of Hohenheim who had abandoned them.
Self-hatred, guilt, because he knew that what had happened to him and his brother was his fault.
And that Winry waited for him, all the time. Maybe one day she would run away from his torn heart and his sad soul.
Maybe he was a shadow and had to stay in the shadows.
Edward saw her live far from him. He watched her work hard and find her own role in the world. She had her life, it didn't depend on him, he knew it. And those words that she had once said, that he wouldn't have easily got rid of her because of his automails, would have always been valid? Perhaps one day, when he and Al would have regained their bodies, Winry would have no reason to be close to him.
Maybe one day he would have seen her fall in love with another.
A boy able to make her laugh to tears. The perfect one, the right one.
Not uncomfortable, angry or aloof.
With him she wouldn't have quarreled every day; she wouldn't have to cry for him or wait for him.
But this guy, any silly and undeserving dude, couldn't have his Winry. Winry was his, she always had been.
He saw her picking up a dandelion from the ground and bringing it close to her lips.
He couldn't hear her thoughts but he knew the question she was asking.
Make a wish.
He saw her melancholy gaze staring at the flower and then she blew on it.
It wasn't a long breath, she didn't make much effort, the petals all flew away, leaving an empty stalk between the young mechanic's fingers.
Then Winry smiled and threw it to the ground.
Edward looked down when he should have stretched to kiss the girl he loved.
He saw the dandelion near his foot.
If you can let all the petals fly away with a single breath, your wish will come true.
Jaw tightened, hands clenched into tight fists, knuckles getting whiter.
Make a wish, Ed.
"Daddy, when mum gets back?"
"Tonight, Faye"
"How much longer?"
"Same answer I gave you five minutes ago," Edward smiled staring at the still waters of the lake.
Another autumn had arrived. Another autumn of his new life. A life he had never even imagined.
Never.
Not when he was just a child and even less on the threshold of the Promise Day.
The alchemist looked down at his children.
William was six years old. He had started attending Resembool elementary school, the same one he had once attended, with Alphonse and Winry. Faye instead, was five and spent her days playing with the kids of the neighbors and her older brother.
The girl took his hand. She was even-tempered and was a great observer for her young age.
"Do you miss mum too?" Ed asked her.
"Yes, it's been a long time," replied Faye.
"It's just a week."
"So many days, dad."
Edward didn't object. The little girl was absolutely right.
Since the children were born, they had both preferred to avoid traveling too long.
But now that an opportunity had arisen, he had almost forced Winry to leave, promising that, on her return, the house would have been in order and the children safe and sound.
He would never have admitted it, but it had been an endless week. On the third day alone at home with the children, he wondered how she could do everything when it was him who walked away…and then she made it look so easy!
Faye laughed, distracting him from his thoughts. That Saturday morning they were taking a walk enjoying the last rays of the warm autumn sun. Soon, it would be cold and those little, adorable rascals couldn't have come out so much.
William called his little sister who immediately left Ed's hand and ran towards him; they both threw themselves on a pile of accumulated dry leaves.
The alchemist shook his head. And the kids laughs filled the air.
When he reached them, they were both lying on the ground, legs and arms open and a huge smile on the heated faces.
"Come on," he said, "Just sit for a while. Take a breath. "
They sat in the shade of a tree. It took just a second for Edward to recognize that place.
It was the same tree where he, Winry and Al were going to sit down for their usual break, exhausted from running.
It was the same tree where he went to sleep with an open book resting on his face with the excuse of a little tranquility.
The same under which they sat in silence and he looked at Winry without being noticed.
"Look, Dad!" shouted his daughter "A dandelion!"
Edward looked at the ground and smiled. He took two of them and gave them to his sons.
"Do you want to play a game?"
The looks of William and Faye brightened with curiosity.
"Make a wish and then blow on the flower. If all the white petals are blown away, the wish will come true."
The youngest one, stunned, shook her head vehemently, waving her blonde hair.
"Go ahead, focus and think about your desire."
Faye closed her eyes and squeezed them hard, William just stared at the flower with a serious look.
Both blew on the flower with all the breath they had in their bodies.
Both rejoiced seeing the stems completely bare and proudly showed the result. The alchemist was smiling, he couldn't help himself.
"You don't make a wish, Daddy?"
Make a wish, Ed.
He had once wished to be with a certain girl with corn silk hair. He wouldn't be satisfied to have her friendship, her closeness, her touch.
It was true, he had learned not to be greedy. But hadn't she encouraged him to be? "Sounds like she wants everything. Things that people want, things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good but it's not so bad either," he remembered Greed's words as if they had come out of his own mouth. Everything revolved around what he and Winry always wanted. They were cut from the same clothes. "My kind of girl."
Winry once wanted to fill his silences, now she accepted them and shared them with him.
Winry once wanted to cheer him up, now she was smiling withhim.
Winry wanted to bring light, but now she had entered his darkness without fear. She had seen his soul without running away.
She had never gave up or tried to change what he wanted. She had simply loved him the way he was because she wanted to.
Now he knew that Winry was much more than he believed. She was the only one with whom he would have liked to share life, raise children, grow old…
She was his life, his reality. Not just a wish.
"Daddy?" William called him dubiously, "Will this flower really make my wish come true?"
"Let's say it's a bet," Ed replied smiling.
"What's a bet, dad?"
"It's a game," he explained, "Remember, there are three things that really make your wishes come true. Hope because without that, even the strongest hero is lost at the start. Determination, because even things destined to happen need you to struggle bravely. And the third is the people who love you, because when you're feeling down, they will rekindle the lights of hope and determination in you. "
"Wow Dad!" the little boy exclaimed, "And how do you know these things?"
The alchemist laughed at the naivety of the question and at the same time the sincerity of his son. Ed could have answered life but found it more correct to say: "Mum. Your mother taught me."