DISCLAIMER: Arakawa leads; I follow.
SUMMARY: Alternate telling of Night of the Chimera's Cry (first anime!). Another major event in the lives of Edward and Winry.
WORDCOUNT: ~1800
THANK YOU: To Sharon, for the beta!

Written for fireandice2009. prompt: cold as ice.


(UN)FREEZE
by Leni


Central is so cold, this close to sundown.

Edward has wandered through the city for hours, a lost confused soul among so many. He can trace his life through the losses that have shaped it. When his mother died, his mind was swallowed into flames, bursting through his waking hours and fueling him into action. When Grandma Pinako followed suit, he hid from his brother and their best friend and cried until he thought he could measure the moisture of a small human body by the amount of his tears. When Al vanished…. When Al vanished, Edward spent weeks in bed, wishing his heart could become stone just so it wouldn't hurt so damn much.

He hasn't lost anyone this time (he doesn't think so). Those drones would have let him know, wouldn't they? At least Armstrong would have told him if there'd been any change in Nina's condition... Such a small body. No sign of the sweet beaming girl had been in that body when he'd picked her up. How could anyone hurt all that innocence?

It was such a close call. And this time it would have been his own fault, for not being more observant, for not noticing that the man he and Winry had trusted was a monster in disguise. There is no fire anymore, the fight has fled his body. No chance to escape his emotions, he's learned at least that much about himself.

Now Edward only feels the silence, a coating of ice enveloping his heart and reaching into its depths as he forces one leg after the other.

He should have known better than to trust someone else - anyone. No matter how smart, or how kind, or how a father's face softened at the sight of his child.

He should have known better than to trust Winry to anyone else. What if it'd been her on that floor? What if....?

He should have known better. Period.

But he didn't. And if he had lost Winry…. Edward looks around, at the strangers passing by him, at the buildings and the cars, and he knows: Come dawn, either the city or the Fullmetal Alchemist would have been obliterated.

He would have brought her back, damn the consequences.

"Ed?"

Edward looks up at the sound of his name. He's been wandering around Central ever since he escaped the military questioning. Even Armstrong looked troubled when he came back from checking the remains in the basement study. The others were worse; they may have heard stories, tales about his alchemy that most think absurdly exaggerated until they witness it, but now that they'd seen and retched over what the Fullmetal Alchemist could do, they grew afraid. Back in Headquarters, he was given him such a wide berth that in other circumstances, Edward would have laughed at trained soldiers being intimidated by a fifteen-year-old boy. "Boo," he'd growled at the gate guard, and a part of him had enjoyed the man's effort not to jump away.

The rest of him has prowled around the city for hours. He's walked past unknown stores and down countless alleys, trying to shrug off those men's reaction.

His lips abandon their scowl, even when they can't be pulled into a smile. It's all right; she isn't smiling either, Edward thinks as he discovers a familiar blue gaze waiting for him at the porch. Winry is sitting on the top step, her clothes the same as when he last saw her.

No reproach, no fear. No questions.

Except one.

"Did you kill him?"

This isn't a conversation to have in such a public venue. Even the soldiers who arrived at the scene took him away to the guest room to escape curious scrutiny. No, a porch where last weekend he made a fumbling attempt at carrying a baby and then dumped the squealing bundle into Winry's lap, is no place for this conversation.

And yet the alternative is worse.

From his position, Edward can see the light peeking down the Hughes' front door. They'd have accepted that Winry preferred to wait for him outside, away from other people's eyes; she wouldn't have given them a choice. Because people shake their heads, tut in disapproval and try to hide a smile when they think that Edward Elric is being stubborn; but they throw their arms to the heavens and pray for patience when Winry Rockbell digs in her heels.

Winry is never more adamant about getting things her way than when she is trying to protect him - even from himself (he has the bruises to prove that). She would have known better than to force witnesses on him today. Gracia would have fluttered around him, offered a warm meal after such a beastly ordeal; Hughes would have sworn to take his side before their superiors.

The Hughes are smart, kind people who love their child.

He wonders how Winry can stomach to think of what might lay under the façade. But then, she wasn't there for the worst of it. He never let her into that sick plateau at the studio, never let her see more than a glimpse before he had hauled the little girl's body out of the circle, shoved Nina at Winry and raised a wall between them. She hadn't seen Tucker's clear-eyed insanity, hadn't listened to words that Edward had half-thought to himself over many a sleepless night.

Winry hadn't understood that the man - the murderer - they'd walked in on, was nothing but a reflection of the future any alchemist could face if… if…. Tucker had thrown the first hit before Ed could work out what was stopping him from following the man's path. Winry hadn't seen any of it. Winry hadn't felt the cold invade her soul, hadn't had her heart freeze in her chest as she discovered the scary similarity between the enemy and herself.

"I killed him," Edward answers, watching her carefully. He and Tucker are not the same. Despite what every officer and soldier thought of him at the scene, despite the suspicion in their eyes and the deep-seated anxiety that all alchemists are the same, he and Tucker are not.

Right?

If he thought his heart could move, it would be racing into his ribcage. But Winry's gaze doesn't flit away from him, doesn't avoid the weight of his golden eyes. His shoulders relax even as the scene flashes through his mind again.

The bruises hadn't had time to flourish before it was done…. What a mess he'd made.

She gives a small nod, and Edward has to work not to fall on his knees to thank her. They are still Ed and Winry. Life made them fit each other, in part because nobody else would take them, but mostly because they'd been halfway there since the moment they met. Edward doesn't care about the whispers, or about Havoc's taunts, or the grins when she walks with him in Central Headquarters. His one care is that, no matter how much they change from the kids who left Resembool so many months ago, they change together.

As long as Winry is with him, he cannot be following the path into madness.

Winry hugs the half finished stuffed toy she and her little helper have been working on for the last week. A big white dog, still without ears or eyes. "I'm glad." Her eyes close, and Ed wonders if she's reliving their last moments in Tucker's house.

Had she heard the man's ramblings? The happy skip in his voice as he revealed he'd have taken Winry, if Tucker had thought he could have stolen her from under Edward? That Tucker had tried and failed?

That had been the moment when Ed stopped pulling his punches.

"How's Nina?"

Winry lets out a small sigh. "They wouldn't release her into the Hughes' custody. Gracia tried."

Maybe smart, kind people do exist.

"Did she wake up at all?"

Winry shakes her head. Bites her lip. Scraps of fluff escape the toy as she squeezes it. "Mr. Hughes wouldn't tell me, but I know. They're keeping her to see if anything happened. They asked how far the transmutation had gone, Ed; I said I didn't know. That you'd closed me away. That I didn't understand alchemy." Any other time, they'd have chuckled at the understatement. Now she pulls her knees to her chest and lifts her eyes to him. "But it was bright in that room, Ed. The circle was active. He was already…." He hasn't seen her burst into tears since Pinako's passing. "That fucking bastard."

Any other time, Edward would have teased that she was picking his bad habits. Now he takes a second to mourn the loss of an epithet against Mustang, and starts walking toward her. "He won't hurt Nina again." He sits next to her, loops his arm around her shoulder to bring her closer. He's learned the hard way that girls need so much more physical contact than boys. "I won't let anyone hurt Nina again," Ed promises with that edge that the foolish call bravado, and every opponent has recognized as determination.

"They'll use her," Winry says, her voice as cold as he feels inside. "If it was even partially done, they'll use her."

"They won't," he answers, a reflex. Later, he'll mull over the possibility that he still wants to trust people. "She's just a little girl."

"Like we're just teenagers?" Winry takes a deep breath at the end of her question, but even then he feels tears drop onto his bare arm. "What are we doing, Ed?"

"We're getting Al back." A mission statement as simple as the day they boarded the train to Central. "And now we are adding Nina to the list."

Not so simple anymore. Not if Winry is right (and she always is).

Doesn't matter. They've managed impossible odds before; they always do.

"Whatever happens." Her half of an oath. Because nothing would stop her from walking at his side, and he needs to hear it.

His part comes next, "We stick together." Because Edward's forbidden to leave Winry behind, and he doesn't dare contemplate the consequences were he to disobey. So he's learned to watch where his next step will land them, and the tendency to recklessness has been smothered in order to keep her safe.

"I don't want to go in yet," she murmurs when they hear the front door opening.

Edward brings her closer, so close that he can feel his heart being thawed by her warmth, and shakes his head at the woman at the door.

Gracia nods in understanding, doesn't press. "There'll be something in the oven for you."

He doesn't even need Winry to nudge him. "Thank you." Then he turns and buries his nose into her blond head. She smells like hospital corridors and hours at the porch, waiting for him. "Thank you."

The lock makes a sound as it slips into place, but Ed wants to believe it's the crack of ice starting to melt.


The End
25/12/10