iii. wear my soul and call me a liar
Rating: T for Ed's speaking role
Genre: Fluff-angst hybrid? IDK
Notes: Manga series end spoilers. I wrote this in a rush and it still needs a LOT of editing before I'm happy with it; concrit is loved like you wouldn't believe XD

.

"You idiot."

Ed grumbled something incomprehensible and probably not very nice.

"Idiot," Winry repeated with a lovetap of her wrench to his temple for emphasis. "What kind of idiot forgets his own arm? After all the trouble you two went through to get it back!"

His kind of idiot, apparently, and her kind of idiot by association. Ed grumbled some more and looked away, then mumbled something that might have been "I'm sorry" by some stretch of the imagination, though it sounded closer to "mmrrmry."

"You'd better be sorry," she spat. "You big, stupid... IDIOT." Her nostrils flared and her fingers clenched and she shook in her seat with inarticulate fury and oh yes, he was certainly in for it this time.

"I said 'msorry!" he shouted back with a full body pout, neck hunched down to his shoulders, face one big frown. "It's not like I MEANT for this to happen!"

"If your body ends up facedown in the river tomorrow I'm sure I didn't MEAN for that to happen either!" And oh damn, her lower lip wobbled and she sniffled a little and the storm in her overcast eyes threatened to spill over; he'd made her cry again.

"No, no, don't cry!" he babbled in a panic, all defensiveness forgotten in the face of OH SHIT CRYING GIRL. "I'm really really sorry, it won't happen again - "

"It BETTER not happen again, you only have so many arms!"

" – please don't cry - "

"I'M NOT CRYING. THIS IS RAIN."

"We're inside!"

And bam, that did it: the pent-up tears broke free and streamed down her cheeks, dropped onto the hospital cot to leave dark wet spots on the sterile sheets. She cried openly, not bothering to hide it, because she knew exactly how to hurt him.

She dug the knife deeper: "You could have been killed," she spoke through tears. "You almost were."

Each tear was an accusation and her pain hurt him worse even than losing his arm again (and he wasn't just being a "macho dumbass" as his lovely fiancé so kindly put it; the adrenaline had kept the pain down until after the fight, when he promptly passed out.) Something compressed painfully in his chest, like some great weight crushing his ribs, squeezing tight. The elephant in the room sitting on top of him.

"But I wasn't," he said softly, all anger gone and replaced with a sick sense of shame, and he reached out with his remaining hand and clasped onto her trembling wrist. She turned her palm over and caught his hand, linked their fingers and stroked her thumb across the simple golden band she'd chosen for him.

She half-stifled a sob with minimal success, wiped her face with the back of her free hand. "You're an idiot," she said again, "I almost lost you."

He winced. It had been close, very close – the West City Fox River Killer had taken a leaf out of Scar's book and adopted alchemic deconstruction as his preferred method of attack, and when Ed instinctively blocked what would have been a fatal attack with his right arm...well. If the WCPD backup hadn't shown up when it did, Ed would be missing a lot more than just one arm.

"I'm sick of you being shipped back to me in pieces," she said, voice shaky but resolute. She squeezed his hand. "Come home, Ed. Al already has. Isn't two years long enough?"

He squeezed her palm gently in return. He couldn't answer. Instead he tugged her down to his level on the bed and kissed her.

"Jerk," she muttered, a few stray tears escaping despite her best efforts, and kissed back.

He hated to admit it and he never would (but Winry knew anyway) but he was entirely too much like his father – had that same wanderlust in his restless blood urging him onward along the road. Hell, he thought he'd die before he hit eighteen, and now that he knew the country wasn't going to be eaten by the wayward byproduct of a failed science fair experiment, he wanted to DO something with his life.

But he won't be that dad in the study. He won't be the ghost holding onto her heart. He won't. He won't.

I will always return home to you, he promised silently, as long as I'm alive. And he wouldn't go and die on her, either. He had so much to live for.

They pulled apart. Ed separated their hands and stroked along the line of her jaw, smoothed away the last errant tears. "You'll have me home for a year, at least," he said wryly, jerking his head toward the mangled remains of his right shoulder.

"Two," she told him.

"Two?"

"Two years," she said firmly with no room for argument. "I don't want you puking up blood this time around. It's a pain to get it out of the sheets and it's definitely not sexy."

He thought of fighting her, thought better of it, and smiled.

"Deal. Two years."