Yay! I have another fic for you guys... and two more reviews!

SoulErrorArwitch: I know, right? When I first had the idea of a fix where Envy is basically babysitting Gluttony, it came with the assumption that Envy wouldn't have much patience for someone who not only has the mentality of, like, a five year old, but also eats...and eats...and eats...and eats...and you basically get the idea.

I'm also glad you like my other pieces, and hope you enjoy this next one as well.

marchellv: Thanks! I certainly try my best :)

Anyway, here's my next fic:

Al felt frustrated, confused, still unable to understand as much as he was trying to.

"I still don't get it," he stated dully, hanging his head.

"It isn't that difficult," May tried to reassure him, but to no avail. Al just put his head in his hands and groaned.

"That's easy for you to say," he mumbled. "Eastern Alchemy is what you grew up with. For me, on the other hand, it's like trying to learn another language." He sighed. "If Brother were here, he probably would have figured it out by now."

"He would have, wouldn't he?" Winry asked, speaking up for the first time in a while. She sat in a corner, hugging her knees to her chest, soft blue eyes staring at everything and nothing at the same time.

"I hope he's okay," Al murmured softly, thinking of his brother now. Ed was one of the strongest people he'd ever known, and that was why, Al kept telling himself, he would almost certainly make it—with the intelligence and determination that his brother had, he could get through anything.

"Of course he'll be okay," Winry quickly replied, as if there were no possible way that it couldn't be true. "He has to be." Winry didn't want to think about that not being the case—Ed had, in all the time that she'd known him, become such an important part of her life, and no matter how much distance lay between them, it wasn't nearly enough to quell the feelings stirring deep within her heart. It was too painful to bear, the thought of something bad happening to him, so she refused to consider the possibility.

Just then a voice spoke up, though no one so much as looked in the direction it was coming from. Even in the position that Envy was in right now, reduced to a tiny lizard-thing and stuck in a glass jar, it was clear he was still determined to play mind games with the humans surrounding him in any way he could.

"Are you serious?" he scoffed. "Did you not listen to a word that I said? The pipsqueak was stuck in a mine when it collapsed! It's not likely he's still alive after that! If you humans are really so stupid as to believe that—"

"Shut up! Just shut up already!"

Envy wasn't the only one who was startled by the outburst. Everyone else in the room stared at Winry, who was now breathing heavily, clearly struggling not to cry. She refused to cry now, not when it would mean that Ed couldn't keep his promise to her, especially since it wasn't his fault at all.

"You don't know him," she insisted, hands tightening into fists. "If you think he's going to let something like that stop him, then you don't know him at all."

Surprisingly, Envy did exactly that—in fact, it was silent for a few minutes, because no one was quite sure what to say after that. Eventually Winry stood up, mumbling, "I'll just be outside for a little while," and went outside, picking a spot on the ground to sit before staring out at the expanse of white before her.

It was cold, of course, though perhaps cold was a little bit of an understatement, The icy winds bit into her skin furiously, mercilessly, and within mere minutes she felt frozen to her very core. But that wasn't what was bothering her—in fact, she was far too worried about Ed to pay any real attention to the cold.

He'll be okay, Winry repeated to herself. He has to be.

After some time, May came outside and sat down next to her. She didn't say anything right away, and when she did, she asked, "How long have you known them?"

Winry didn't have to ask what she meant. "Pretty much my entire life," she admitted. "I can't remember a time when I didn't know them. We pretty much grew up together."

"Really?" May asked, eyes wide.

Winry nodded. "They were pretty much like brothers to me. And Al still is, honestly. Ed, on the other hand…" she trailed off. She still had no clue at all when exactly their close friendship transformed into something beyond that, something deeper and more intimate than a person felt for someone who was "like a brother" to them. She was only sure of the exact day that she had realized that their relationship wasn't the same, at least not on her side.

"You love him?"

Winry nodded, and May said, "If it weren't for how temperamental he is, I might be able to say the same thing, too."

Winry smiled. Inwardly she felt glad, not wanting any sort of competition. She didn't like the idea of Ed choosing some other girl over her, as selfish as that may have been.

"Well, it's kind of part of who he is. And he wasn't always this bad." She tilted her head back, gazing at the stars above her, starting to come out now that the sun had set. "Though after al he's been through, I suppose he has every right to be mad at the world."

May shrugged. "Well, he is still gorgeous, I'll give you that." Though the Fullmetal Alchemist had been much shorter than she had expected, it was clear that some of the things that May had heard about him weren't exaggerations. Ed really did look like the gods had crafted him out of pure gold—with a perfect eye for detail, of course, leaving almost no room for flaws. If Al looked anything like his brother, then May certainly couldn't wait to see what his body looked like.

Winry, on the other hand, continued to stare up at the sky, still deep in thought. She thought about every last detail of the boy she fell in love with, from the things that made him clearly desirable, such as his brilliant mind, his lean, hard physique, and his kind heart, to the things about him that seemed rather dorky, such as his intense hatred for milk and being called short, and especially his odd tendency to recite the Periodic Table from memory when he was trying to calm himself down (in fact, Winry had overheard him doing just that when she had been hooking up his automail, though she couldn't quite figure out what it was that he was so freaked out about). She thought about the boy she grew up with, who not only endured pain that sent most adults wailing in agony without so much as a peep, but also managed to recover from automail surgery in only a third of the time it normally took to do so, just as he said he would. She thought about the boy who was driven to right the wrongs of his past, who carved the date he burned his house down on the inside of his pocketwatch, who swore to her that the next time he made her cry, it would be from tears of joy.

And it was in that time that she suddenly felt a sense that everything was going to be all right. He was going to be all right, and they would see each other again, no matter what other people might think.

May stood up suddenly, stretching, and said, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm already freezing," she said. She went inside the house, and Winry followed her in, more than ready to deal with whatever came her way, if that's what it took to reunite with the love of her life.

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