A/N: Chapter 3! And we have a few special guests in this chapter, ohoho! Enjoy :)


* ~ 4 weeks later ~ *

A rope of saliva, glinting sheens of diluted rainbow beneath the sun's pale morning glow, clung to Winry's mouth, swinging in a drunkishly elliptical manner until its bulbous end marred the toilet water in sticky reunion. It looked like a dollop of syrupy crystal, gently dotting the surface of the swamp below her with its semi-purity before melting into its vulgar contents, forever lost. Having a staring contest with a toilet full of vomit proved to be a very trying task, particularly when one's stomach felt like it was resting on a vibrating waterbed.

The convulsion came again, this time with a vicious assault to her throat; Winry's muscles flexed then contracted, contorting into a paralyzed, immobilized heap as the contents of her stomach traveled up her throat and erupted from her mouth. Glimmering jewels of vomit accessorized the toilet rim, and the water below her had undergone a complete facelift—what had just a moment ago looked like the birthplace for a mushy rainforest now resembled something like a rotten swamp, rich in diversity from the half-digested food chunks puncturing its surface to the swirls of stomach bile adding an artistic, beauteous touch of refinement.

Her stomach shivered again, clenching onto every muscle within clenchable distance and writhing in agonized anticipation for yet another reverse. Minutes turned to hours, hours turned to minutes—her body clock was completely fucked. All night she'd been there, sprawled across the bathroom floor, waiting. Waiting for her body to reject first the food she had eaten for dinner, then the water she had drank before bed, and then, when there was nothing left to reject, no foreign masses of food and liquid waiting to be eaten and deprived of nutritional value by the acids of the body, her stomach went on to reject its own bile, an ally in this upchucking mess, forcing it up her throat like an acidic tongue that licked everything into a world of chaotically raw raw vulnerability. The tiled floor had proven to be very productive in leaching warmth from everything it touched, leaving Winry cold, miserable, and feeling like her stomach was being mindlessly stirred, round and around and around, over and over and over, like rice pudding slowly simmering on the stove, just keep it moving and twirling and swirling…

Another failed firework display of bile spewed from her mouth, landing in the toilet with a fizzling plop. Tiny fragments of the stomach juice was caught in her throat, captured by its rough, skin-stripped surface till it formed sticky cobwebs, perfect for capturing air and turning it into an ample choking mechanism. Winry, with the pitifully minute amount of strength she had left, attempted to hack through the bile's strong web, but instead only felt it sway within her throat, mimicking a slime-coated pendulum.

The door beside her creaked open. Great, someone was going to see her in this weak, crippled state, hair tips crusted in vomit and arms feebly hugging the toilet-bowl as if she'd puked her heart right into it and was now left with nothing to do but sit there and babysit it in its playground of puke. Just fucking great.

There was a moment of silence, one of those moments where you excruciatingly wished there was something there to break it, but there just wasn't, and you have to sit there suffering the consequences that come with all deafeningly heavy silences. Without even looking (she didn't have the strength to anyways), Winry knew who it was. Womanly instinct.

"Again?" his voice scraped the air, a faint tone of worry, hardly distinguishable by the human ear unaccustomed to his voice, making it sound that much blunter. Winry let his question echo on answerlessly.

She could hear his footsteps approaching her, slowly drawing closer and closer, their warmth flickering off vaguely into the tiles' cold greedy hands—

Her entire body suddenly heaved inwards, her hands gripping the toilet seat with despairing conviction as she contracted into a spiny ball, the rejection fluid bubbling up her throat and tormenting her insides till they grimaced and clenched, fighting with all they had to push the puke back, stop it from making its dramatic exit…

Giving a hard, bone-jerking cough, Winry succeeded in emptying her stomach for about the fifty billionth time that night. Oh wait, it was morning now. Or was it? Fuck, who knew anymore. She watched, emotionlessly, as the bile became engulfed by the quicksand of vomit warming her face below. How long had she been doing this…

"You should've woke me up," Ed's hands brushed delicately past her shoulders, his fingers collecting all her scraggly hair and pulling it back away from her face. She could feel him dividing it into three segments, gentle tugs pulling at her scalp as he started wrapping and winding it into one long, softly pleated braid. The air, despite reeking of bodily acids and reject mush, felt almost relaxed… peaceful.

"It wasn't a big deal," Winry rasped, her voice meagre and quivery. "I was fine… I'm fine…"

"Winry."

He'd completely seen through her lie.

"This has been going on for three days now," he muttered the words softly, yet, despite the low volume, they were thickly coated in seriousness, a seriousness Winry hadn't seen a lot but would often replay in her mind during times of stress, times of need, times of laying on the bathroom floor wishing she'd just puke her guts out and die…

"It's probably just something I ate." That's right… it was something she ate. Obviously.

"Whatever," Ed stood up, his voice adopting that familiar tone of his where he tried to act like he hadn't just been consoling someone, that it had all just been a mirage, a figment of the imagination. "I gotta go pick up Al."

"No!" Winry's voice was a groggy screech, her vocal cords unable to vibrate quickly enough amidst the swarm of bile stretched across her throat like an over-chewed wad of gum. "No Ed…"

"You're not coming like this Winry," he uttered the very words she hadn't wanted to hear but knew were coming anyways. "I…" his voice stuttered slightly, as if he wasn't sure he should be channelling his thoughts into audible words. "I won't let you."

"But," hot, sticky tears began leaking from her eyes, slinking down her face in vivid zigzags and sticking to her cheeks like little dots of stray adhesive, orphaned by her eyes and left with no place to fall and dissipate, no oblivion to call home. "B-But I want to be there when he comes. I want to be there Ed! I don't wanna be like this!"

"Here."

She looked up at him with dewy, magnified eyes, her face stiff with tear scars; he was offering her his hand, his face contorted into a sort of sideways frown that almost made it look like he was doing this simply out of habitual, well-mannered kindness, but that Winry knew was nothing but an immature cover instilled for the sake of protecting his 'masculinity'. Weakly, she placed her hand into his, and almost immediately felt her butt levitate off the floor as he pulled her right into his chest, the swelling and collapsing of it like a physical lullaby of instantaneous relaxation.

"You okay?" the words tickled her ear warmly, somehow managing to elicit a fresh batch of tears. They skated right down her face, its surface a skating rink of wet slippery skin, burrowing into the cracks of her mouth, assaulting her taste buds with the blunt, poignant taste of somatic salt, sloshing all over Ed's shirt till it darkened with damp shadows. She let go of her neck, allowing her face to fall right into his chest, forcing herself to be blind of all surroundings, of all images of reality and of all reminders of her sickness, she wanted to muffle it all, dispose of it, hide it away in the protective embrace of Ed forever…

"I hate waiting Ed," her voice was dry and gravelly, blurred by the proximity of Ed's body to her mouth. "I hate it."

His arms wrapped around her, rubbing her back with a soothing sort of reassurance that she had lost during the night's cold lapse of greed; he pulled her closer, making the space that had been between them nothing but a fictionalized past. "I know."

His scent overpowered her, completely imperialized her nose, then her body, then her mind, just flooding her with this merciless overload of never-ending, soul-comforting Ed, forcing her to overdose on something that at that moment would make her feel like a blissful little mass of highly loving mist, but, once she'd been withdrawn from his scent, forced to smell the bland, normal, scentless air, she would feel hollow again, empty and hollow and miserably alone, alone, alone…

"Listen," Ed whispered gently, his voice hardly audible, like a personal dialogue that she and she only could hear, could devour, could audibly hold onto and replay again and again and again. "I'm gonna go pick up Al, okay? And you're gonna—"

"But Ed—" a violent cough ripped apart her words, sending tears cascading down her cheeks and her body convulsing against Ed's as she tried to recompose herself. The taste of bile was peeking up her throat, ready to launch its way into the world at any time.

"Just listen to me, would you?" his finger swept across her cheek, collecting her tears and making them collapse into nearly forgotten watery scrapes as he looked deep into her magnified blue eyes. "Your job is to get better for us, not wait. Al will understand."

For the first time that day, that long long never-ending relentless day of uncountable hours and minutes and seconds, Winry looked Ed right in the eyes. She pierced his golden orbs with her own watery blues, and she pierced them till she was sure they understood, till she was absolutely positive that she had sucked all the strength right out of them and adopted it for herself. "Okay."

With Ed's help, Winry was able to escape the torturous confines of the bathroom, the room that had been her sickly prison cell for three nights straight and reeked of the dirtiest parts of her body. Her insides felt as if they'd been flipped inside out, left to perform their duties with a complete handicap, one that left them dazed and confused, blind and unable, yet she ignored the feeling and instead revelled in the way Ed placed his arm around her and ever so gently led her in the right direction, cautiously making sure she had managed every step on the stairs as they went down and continually assuring that she was fine and perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet once he left. It was kinda funny, seeing Ed act outwardly worried like that. His inexperience at it was blaringly obvious.

"You sure you're gonna be okay?" there was no hiding the concern in his voice now.

Winry gave a weak smile, her body secretly screaming out to the non-listening world as Ed stood in the doorway, about to leave her enduring another waiting game. "Who do you think I am?"

Despite the eye roll, Winry couldn't help but tingle inwardly as she saw a tiny smile chisel away at his frowning expression. "Whatever. Just make sure you're serving us tea in a maid outfit when we get back!"

"EXCUSE ME?"

"Just kidding!" he gave a sinister laugh as he opened the door, his devilish side having apparently returned to him in full swing. But just as Winry prepared herself to watch him off, he turned back around, that sudden, familiar look of frowny shyness plastered across his face. He was glaring right at Winry, in a way that made her want to strangle the very life out of him yet at the same time made her want to run away and go shove her face in a pillow, where she could safely access the girly sanctuary of fantastical daydreams.

Before she could even ask, Ed had stepped back in and kissed her on the cheek. It had been the quickest, most despicable thing, yet had somehow managed to leave Winry completely and utterly flabbergasted, standing in the doorway with her mouth hanging open like he had just stolen every sac of air her lungs contained. Redness blotted her cheeks with rapid vividness, looking ten times worse thanks to her pale complexion.

And then he was off, before she could even retaliate back. She watched, with a sort of blank fulfillment, as Ed strode towards the station, a mist of parched dirt floating behind him as he shuffled across the chapped ground. She had hardly even realized that her hand was sprawled across her face, fixatedly touching the vicinity of skin that had been graced with the pathetically hasty contact of his lips. Somehow, the wait didn't seem like a wait at all; the game was over before it had even begun.


Cinnamon buns. She was gonna make some homemade, ooey-gooey cinnamon buns, the kind that made people jealously drool as they walked past your house and captured a waft of that buttery, nostalgia-eliciting aroma. Al would surely be half starved by the time he got home. Winry was sure he'd appreciate some good old home-style Resembool baking.

"Okay, let's see here…" she swung open the pantry door, eyes partaking on a rigorous safari as she scanned the savannah of ingredients assiduously. Her stomach gave a displeased stomp, obviously on the verge of throwing yet another projectile tantrum; however, Winry was not going to let her ever so minor sickness stop her from making something nice. Ignoring its queasy pleas, she began to gather her ingredients, a stubborn grimace etched across her face as she swallowed back a mouthful of bile.

Despite the brutality her opponent was showing her, Winry continued to gather her supplies, the genuine desire to bake something of extreme homey deliciousness giving birth to a sort of strength she had previously been dehydrated of, that she had had to watch be thrown into the toilet about ten million times last night as her body purged itself of all purgable contents. She dumped the first mound of ingredients into her bowl, a grimy plume of powder puffing into the air like chalky mist.

Shit. Something was wrong. The powdery mound of ingredients… it just didn't look right. No… no… it just didn't seem right. But she'd followed the recipe exactly as she always did…

A twinge sliced her stomach, forcing her to keel over and push into the sharp features of the countertop till she could hardly distinguish that pain from the pain of her insides. Her organs felt like they were somersaulting about in agonized celebration, like they were being fed a mixture of sparkling blood that just powered them into this state of hyperactive festivity, they just couldn't stop moving, couldn't stop pumping out the epinephrine, couldn't stop jabbing her insides and partaking in a seemingly never-ending twinge-fest—

It was all she could do to sprint to the sink in time. The vomit just gushed out, coating the sink and the countertops in its sickly brown glimmer, dripping from her lips like a leaky tap unable to quit wetting itself. Fuck, she didn't even know she had anything left to puke up. Apparently her stomach had performed a mutiny, declaring to her body that it was no longer under autoimmune control, that from now on it worked under its own fascist regime of purgatory, until every last liquid had been juiced out of each organ and removed with a painful cough of expulsion. Shaking profusely, Winry's arms gave out on her, her chin slamming against the bile-coated sink with a painful smack.

She didn't even have the strength to sigh. She didn't have the strength to do anything anymore. She clung there, incredibly helpless, as her body fought the urge to just give out completely. What was wrong with her... what the fuck was wrong with her….

"I-I'm… not… a… alone…" the words protruded from her mouth unconsciously, hardly a hair of conviction behind them. "I'm n-not… alone…"

What the fuck was she doing? Here she was, clinging to the edge of a puke-spewed sink, hardly able to breathe without nearly losing all support from her skeletal system, and she was spewing nonsensical shit like this. Fucking—

"Winry? You home?"

The shock from hearing another human voice sent her hurtling to the ground, every bone and muscle located in her body officially surrendering to gravity and flaunting their newly achieved handicap status with idiotic pride. Well

Looked like Granny Pinako was home.

"Winry?" her gruff voice graduated an octave, the vibration of her footsteps growing harsher against Winry's face as it lied deadly still atop the ground, unable to move, unable to mouth even a breath of a word, a syllable, a syllable of a syllable…

"Why does this house smell like a damned sewage plant—" her voice trailed off as she spotted Winry, pale and shaking on the ground, with her limbs uselessly splayed beside her. She could just barely make out her grandma's face as she knelt down before her, wrinkles of thick worry adding to its already wrinkly features. "Good lord…!"

"Gra… nny…" a violent convulsion sent her spine rippling chaotically against the floorboards, her body forcing out another spurt of bile that splattered lazily across Winry's mouth. Her skin gave a fierce twinge.

"You need bed, child," she spoke bluntly, a tinge of worry making her sound nastier than usual. "Can you stand up?"

Doubt made her feel nauseous all over again; her muscles seemed pretty comfortable in their new roles as worthless ropes of sinewy insignificance.

"Well?"

"Yes," defiance bubbled up inside her, unexpectedly fuelling her body into some state of emergency, spanking it into wakefulness and reminding it of some secret store of strength and mobility. Somehow, Winry was able to stand herself up (with significant help from the counter's reliable solidness, of course), the weight of the world and reality doing their best to keep her pinned pathetically to the ground. She was thankful when Granny Pinako put a supportive hand around her.

"I'm sorry," tears trickled sporadically down her face. "I'm so sorry."

"Stop yer 'pologizing child," Granny Pinako crowed, her hand plucking a trapped strand of hair out of a sticky glob of bile maiming the side of her face. "I've cleaned up much worse."

The old automail mechanic led Winry to a nearby chair, her age leaving her unable to support her any farther. Winry plopped into the chair clumsily, her muscles jumping at the chance to repossess their roles of supreme laziness before she had even properly positioned her ass on the seat. Her stomach reared in mild retaliation.

"Well?" Granny Pinako was eyeing the mess of ingredients on the counter, their powder-crusted coverings now plastered with an additional layer of puke. "I go on a trip fer several weeks, and you end up sick as a dog."

"Ed came back," Winry blurted the statement as if every answer in the world was crammed within it. She couldn't help it… it just seemed… she just had to…

She watched as Granny Pinako's eyebrow shot up. "Did he?"

Winry gave a bashfully half-ass 'mhm', her eyes swerving to a spot on the floor far away from the old woman's (seemingly) all-seeing eyes. There was a moment of silence, a moment in which Winry could've sworn she heard the gears crustily turning in Granny Pinako's highly-experienced mind, creaking round and around…

"And fer how long've you been pukin' like this?" the question, so innocently structured, so masterfully crafted, managed to strike a nerve in Winry's body, making her heart thump faster than it probably should've been thumping at that moment.

"It… it started about three days ago."

Silence. Mortifying, gear-crunching silence.

"I think I might've just ate something—"

"When's it s'posed to come?" her question yanked Winry's eyes back onto her sternly creased face.

She had no idea how to answer her. "What do you…"

"Yer period."

Oh. That.

"… um… fairly soon…"

"Failry soon as in…"

"This week kinda soon," Winry swallowed a pillow of non-existent air. Did she dare? Did she dare ask the one-worded question, it was just Granny Pinako after all, it wasn't like her entire life would be yanked around and then flipped inside out by uttering that one simple, painfully simple question or anything…

"Why?" She did it. She said it.

But the stare down Granny Pinako was now giving her, eyes tiny slits of thoughtful speculation, bottom lip protruding out at a solicitous, pretentious angle… she wished she'd have just kept her big mouth shut.

"If somethin' weird about it happens," her glasses gave an impeccably timed glint. "You lemme know, you hear me?"

Winry was unable to nod in agreement.

"You understand me Winry?"

"Uhh, yes, yes Granny! I swear to you I will be sure to provide you with heavily detailed updates on the intricacies of my soon-to-be striking period!"

Why did she just say that? Why the fuck did she just say something so incredibly stupid—

"I have to pee."

Winry was sprinting out of her seat in a matter of seconds, her feet propelling her to the bathroom at top-speed. Apparently her sickness had decided to act dormant, seeing as she suddenly had a lot more energy than she did a few seconds ago. Or maybe the epinephrine injected into her circulatory system after the 'interrogation of extreme awkwardness' was making her feel like a drugged track star. Either way, she wasn't about to start complaining.

But her eyes, they just couldn't help themselves. The mirror was calling out to them, toiling with their sensibility, manipulating them into rotating orbs of betrayal until they had absolutely no choice in the matter, they simply insisted, implored, begged Winry to turn her head, just enough so that she could get a crystal clear view of that god-forsaken, sleep-deprived, puke-dimpled face.

She wouldn't allow it. Closing her eyes with an authoritative hmph, Winry snatched up the nearest towel and began the meticulous process of washing her face. After all, she couldn't possibly allow herself to greet Ed with a revolting face full of chaffing, dehydrated puke blotches—

Al. She meant Al. Not Ed. Why would it matter if Ed saw her like that? It was Al who hadn't seen her in forever, so obviously she had to put on her best, glowing face for him and most definitely not that jerk of a… of a…

She yanked down her shorts, underwear pulled right along with them, and ogled at their fluffy, perfectly unblemished lining with eyes dilated in panic. Nothing. No goopy ribbons of discharge. No bloody ovary tears waving up at her. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Clean as clean could be.

This most definitely had to be the first time she had EVER wanted her period to come. It just had to. She wouldn't allow it not to. She'd go so far as to chug back a pint of beet juice while simultaneously punching herself in the stomach if that's what it took to give her damn ovaries the right idea. Because… if it didn't come…

If her period did decide to not rear its big ugly head of underwear glazing blood, that would mean… that would surely mean… that she… Winry Rockbell, would be… would be…

"WINRYYYY!"

Would be… would be… with his

"GET YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE AND SAY 'ELLO!"

"They're here?" Somewhere, a plug was popped out of place, draining every ounce of color from Winry's face. Fuck.

She went for the door, but instead nearly face planted as her shorts and underwear hung around her ankles. She pulled them up with a huff, her feet partaking on a noisy rampage towards the front door before she could even allow herself to finish her previous flood of highly dangerous, mind-blowing thoughts. Thank god she had at least had the decency to wipe off her face…

Peering around the corner with ridiculous ninja-like caution, Winry caught sight of Al, smiling and blabbering away as if the entire cheerfulness contained in the sun had been stuffed into him. Ooh, she just couldn't take it, the water show was already bubbling into its opening positions around the rims of her eyes, the stage fright dribbling to a point of uncontainable proportions, it was only a matter of moments before the curtains would go up and the tears would be released in a huge, sporadic chorus of face-reddening, cheek-soaking performance—

"AL!" Winry's voice cracked out in happiness, her throat still tender from her morning of purgatory, as she rushed up to the younger Elric brother and attacked him with a vicious glomp. "It's so good to see yo—"

A pair of insanely huge, super round black eyes were staring at her from behind Al's shoulder. Female eyes. And judging by the exotic flip of her lashes, the strikingly youthful glow of her porcelain skin…

A Xingese girl. Al was dating a Xingese girl.

"It's good to see you too Winry," a shockingly deep manly voice came from the boy she had always known to be young and pure. What had the world done to the sweet, chubby little Al?

"You might not remember her, but this is May," Al continued, the low throaty tone to his voice disturbingly foreign. "She wanted to come and see you guys too, so I figured you wouldn't mind…"

"It's cause she's Al's girlfriend!" Ed hollered at an unacceptably rude volume. He gave Al a hearty slap on the back, an action which, combined with the abrupt insolence of his comment, resulted in an offended Xiao Mei chomping down with murderous intentions on his hand, a relentless glint of pursuit in her eyes as she attempted to gnaw Ed's hand off once and for all.

Winry simply blinked, a few stray tears losing their balance and toppling from her eyes. "Al… May…" she locked the two of them within her gaze, their newly matured features a hazy blur as Winry blinked back mobs of tears. Her lips began to tremble, on the verge of bursting open and releasing wails of shrieking happiness. "You guys look so… mature."

"That's exactly what I said," Ed piped up, a scowl stretched across his face as he competed in a haughty staring contest with the thoroughly pissed panda. "And then I was ever so rudely attacked—"

"YOU CALLED ME AN OLD HAG!" May snapped, her and Xiao Mei both producing visible strands of electricity from their eyes as they glared Ed down.

"I SAID YOU LOOKED OLD DAMMIT!"

"THAT'S NOT WHAT XIAO MEI AND I HEARD!"

"I DON'T TRUST THAT FLEA-BITTEN THING'S JUDGEMENT!"

May gave an ear-deafening gasp, Xiao Mei copying her body language with silent perfection. "How… HOW COULD YOU?"

The doorway had suddenly been converted into a wrestling pen as the two (plus Xiao Mei) began a heated brawl; Winry and Al were quick to evacuate.

"They've been like this almost the whole way home," Al muttered apologetically. "I tried to stop them, but—"

"Your… your voice…" Winry could hardly remember how to use her vocal cords, they were being drowned out by the continuous flow of tears dribbling into the confines of her mouth. "Al, you've gotten so big! What happened to you? What happened to the little old Al I used to always play with and yell at and chase after?"

The blonde haired alchemist simply rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "You look a lot different too Winry." He chuckled a little before leaning in, his voice dropping to a low murmur (not that the brawlers in the background would've heard anyways). "Nii-san told me you'd gotten a lot prettier."

The tears literally evaporated right off her face as it heated up with blush. "I... he... AREYOUANDMAYGOINGOUT?" The words toppled out in a desperate attempt to divert his attention. She figured she had succeeded when she saw a speckle of blush begin to eat away at the whites of his cheeks.

"Well… I dunno…"

"Oh come on Al, you can tell Big Sister Winry!" she wiggled her eyebrows playfully, making sure to shoot Al a little wink of encouragement as she did so. "Just say yes or no…"

"Well…."

"YES OR NO AL. YES OR NO."

"H-How are you feeling… Winry?" his voice cracked under the heavy pressure of her stare; he was obviously trying to use the same tactic she had. What an amateur.

"Alphonse…" Winry's voice dropped to an incredibly sinister volume.

Al fidgeted a little before regaining the courage to look her in the eye. "No honestly Winry, how are you feeling?"

For a moment, Winry actually did tune into the feelings of her body, and, surprisingly, nothing felt too wonky. "I'm perfectly fine now."

"That's not what Nii-san seemed to think," his eyes scoured her face with the analytical care of a concerned parent. "So May said she'd take a look at you. She's actually really good at helping people when they're sick."

A huge crash came from behind them. Hardly wanting to look, Winry glanced back to see Ed being squished to death under a pile of suitcases, May and Xiao Mei perched victoriously on the top.

"Honestly Ed," she rolled her eyes liberally. "You think you'd know how to treat a lady by now!" She went to kneel down, but instead felt her feet collapse beneath her, causing her to crumple to the ground in an unexpected bout of dizziness.

The sound of her name filling the room in a flourish of panicky wavelengths smacked against her skull, multiplying her dizziness and making it reproduce its nauseating grasp on her head as the world became blotted in shadow. It began eating her surroundings, moving on to devouring it as soon as it discovered the taste sensation of reality, the juicy, delectable goodness of ingesting it and replacing it with the soft, fuzzy appearance of black black nothingness, deep dark unconsciousness…

The last thing she could remember feeling was Ed's arms wrapping around her, supporting her head, her back, providing her with a warm, soft place to collapse as she escaped into the world of nothingness, a world swirling and brimming with the ethereal goodness of misty black blankness and painfully empty, beautifully vast isolation. She didn't even know what was real anymore. For all she knew, none of this was real, it had all been a dream, a dreadful attempt at dissociating from the pains of her sickness, of her secret, the secret that she knew she had but didn't want to ever ever admit to actually having, it would remain a secret forever and ever and ever and never pass the barrier of her lips. All she could do now was question. Question the world around her, the insanely crowded world of unconsciousness, what was real and what was simply a made up sensation. Questioning, after all, was the easiest way of forging obliviousness.


A/N: So... I guess this makes me an AlxMay supporter? They are cute together... I dunno, their relationship just kinda seems natural. So are they together in this story? hmmm... I'LL LET YOU DECIDE! :3 And I've decided that writing about puking is a very fun task. Yes, I'm a freak, I know. And it was really fun to tease Al, he's just the perfect target for that kinda stuff! So anyways, what's up with Winry? Any guesses? I've had one so far... well, stay tuned for chapter 4, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter :D

As always I love to hear your thoughts on what's happening and what might happen next! All reviews/faves/watches/reads are greatly appreciated!`