"..." is speech.

Italics is thoughts.

Key-word: Silly
Rating: T
Genre: General
Verse: Conquest of Shambala
Warnings: Uh, tears?
Summary: A heart of automail. Can you make one?

ººº Heart of Automail ººº

A heart of automail.

Can you make one?

Would it also repair any defect as heart murmurs and failure in valves in the ventricles? In theory, yes.

Would it also work like an extended limb? Would the artificial cardiac myocytes work in a perfect sync with each other to generate the electrical impulses that control the heart rate, the movements of diastole and systole? After all, a perfect artificial pacemaker has been done and successfully implanted, it would just be some more tissue to be replaced around it working as a steady, never-stopping pump with four chambers and valves.

However, could the metal be strong enough to serve as the aorta, withhold the astounding pressure and still being flexible enough as the strongest artery in the human body should be? Perhaps. It was a matter of finding the perfect alloy that would combine all those characteristics and still be viable to work in vivo.

Would the body truly accept the metal inside it? Would the immune system find it as a foreign object and attack it? They shouldn't, that part was the biggest secret automail engineers held, the fact that the rejection response of a client was rather low, for the most part.

All in all, Winry wondered if it would erase the feeling of heartache.

Not a real ache. That painless ache. That pain that is not real pain, almost like a ghost limb. It is still there, you feel it, you must acknowledge it, but there is nothing you can do to stop it. It's so deep, so raw that it makes you cry out and want to lash out and yell and go up to your room and trash the place, because then, your hands are occupied and your mind is blank, your eyes are only assessing the damage and your nerves are ordering your limbs to do more and more and it feels good.

Even for a short little while.

Wishful thinking, that it would last, Winry. Silly, silly girl.

Now, in her mostly destroyed room, the blond late teenaged young woman lied on her back, arms and legs spread-eagled. Her breathing was harsh, followed by one or two coughs because of the dust flying around. Her eyes were staring at the ceiling, following the thin lines of the cracking stone underneath, proof the house wasn't as young as it looked sometimes. It was a customary activity, one she did many times when a victim of insomnia.

Which wasn't as rare for her as one might think.

That is also why her clients were so pleased with her, with her ability to stay up indefinitely until a project was finished. She was determined like that. She just didn't tell them that sometimes, even if she wished to rest, she spent hours just turning in her own sheets.

Suddenly, a memory assaulted her. Of her, in just this position, but several years younger. It was cold back then, very cold, it had just snowed. There was an Elric brother on each side of her, Al on her left and Ed on her right. Their heads had been positioned so that they converged, in order to be close enough, but have enough space to do what they were about to do.

"Ready, Winry, nii-san?" Al's young and excited voice piped up.

"Of course!" came the reply from the other boy, still young and innocent, careless. Like a child, a true child.

Winry giggled at the time. "Yes!" and the three of them moved arms and legs to create perfect snow angels.

"HA! Mine's better!"

"No, mine is!"

"No, wait!" Edward's blazing golden eyes suddenly locked with hers and she started. Her younger self blushed prettily then. She knew not of her feelings for him at such a naive age, but his eyes had always startled her with their exotic nature ever since she could remember. "Nah. Actually, I think Win's is the best."

"Oh! You're right!"

The three young laughing voices faded from her mind as Winry slowly returned to the present as if she was waking up from a dream. Her eyes reopened. It was with little surprise that she felt tears in them. Absently, as if to retain the happy, warm feeling of that precious, important memory, her own arms and legs moved, pushing away clothes and sheets and tools and spare parts all around.

And she laughed. And she cried at the same time.

Winry, aged 19 and with a brilliant future as an automail engineer, was making invisible snow angels in her demolished room and wishing one Edward Elric had not been foolish enough to give up on his own existence – his life, his body, his alchemy, his everything – to return his little brother's body.

He also gave up on you, you know. A little voice also whispered, one who awfully reminded her of Scar and it made her shudder, pulling her knees up to her chest. Means to an end. That's all the limbs you made him were. All so he could still perform alchemy and become a State Alchemist. So he could search for that dreadful stone. So that Alphonse could have a body again. That and only that. Don't elude yourself.

Yes. Yes, that was right. She smiled a smile that didn't reach her eyes while sitting up, her legs tucked underneath her. She ironically called it her automail smile. Her soft blue eyes, more of a slate colour than the brilliant sapphire they usually were now, took in the mess all around her.

It was the second time just this week.

Winry liked doing it. While she did it, she could channel her anger and sadness and frustration all in simple motions: kick, smash, throw, crumple, break, scream. Primal and nearly automatic reactions her body could perform without her brain needing to give complex orders. There was no need to think and remind herself of what she had lost.

It was how she rested nowadays, without the proper satisfaction of sleep.

Not without his face – those eyes of his, how they haunted her... – appearing in her dreams at least.

Then, after she tired herself out, Winry would pick it all up, like a ritual. She would salvage what she could, place everything back in order and in its rightful place. It soothed her. Like she was cleaning up her messy, messy mind and understanding everything.

Except that she didn't understand.

There was only one single rule she followed: before everything, every single photo frame or random picture would be put face-down. While in her blind fury, she did not wish to see happy smiles and good times. Yet, she could not bring herself to ruin the frames and stain those elated times with sharp glass shards.

But still, Winry did not understand.

Didn't understand why or how he could have left them all behind. She didn't understand how Ed – her Ed – expected her to live like this. How he expected Al to live like this.

She never was talented for alchemy either, couldn't understand it all. But even worse than that, Winry could never understand the concept of equivalent trade.

Was her and Al's suffering equivalent to Ed's leaving? Then shouldn't he return to make it right? You paid a toll and gained something, right? What did they gain? Sadness, numbness? This emptiness?

How could someone call it equivalent?

As much as it shamed her to admit, she believed the short visits the Elric brothers to Resembool were happier times than this, even if young Al was only a soul trapped in a large, dysfunctional metal armour, even if Ed was drowning in his own guilt and obsessed with his self-appointed quest. At least then, she was a bit happier.

Shame on you, Rockbell.

Deep within her, she felt another dull ache. Her right hand came up and clutched the skin just above her unsteady heartbeat. It was shaking.

Another piece broke, she knew.

With great effort, she managed to control the frenetic rhythm, to calm herself down enough to allow for rational thought. Her hands reached out with a mind of their own, and restarted organizing clothes and tools and everything thrown into the wooden floor once again.

Not on their rightful places though. All around her. In a circle. A familiar one. One of the most simple ones. A circle within a circle. Then a triangle within the smallest. And another, larger one.

Placing another one of her lifeless smiles, she rested her hands on the items making up the 'transmutation circle'. Of course that nothing happened. Still, she imagined that she was a strong enough alchemist and that she had enough knowledge to bring him back.

Back home.

Back to Al.

Back to her.

A tear fell on top of a random spare part, landing right on a screw's head. It stayed there, like a perfect droplet. Yes. I'd be the Automail Alchemist. Wouldn't that sound cool? Everyone would expect some burly guy with several automail parts and not a beautiful, genius engineer like me. Like when they confuse Al with-

Winry gasped, bringing both her hands to her mouth, eyes wide.

No.

Wake up. Welcome to reality, silly girl.

No, it was no longer like that. Al's soul was no longer within a suit of empty metal. And Edward was no longer in their world.

And Al.

How could she be so selfish?

He's taking it the hardest, you know, that voice came back once again. Ed is his older brother. They went through a lot of things together. And they had always been close. You are just his mechanic. He wouldn't even have told you a thing of his wandering if he hadn't needed his automail in perfect shape for his dangerous missions. Just as Al was everything to Ed, Ed is everything to Al as well. You're the third wheel here, remember that.

Silly, silly girl.