4
Pride closed the door to the storage compartment they had snuck into. They were headed north. Winry didn't ask any questions, she just looked at him.
"Let me see your wounds." She said remembering that he was still bleeding. His blood staining both of their clothes.
"They've already closed." He said not looking at her. They already healed on their own. He was after all just an artificial body. An empty shell.
"I'm not him you know." Pride said sitting in front of her as the train started to move. "I'm not Edward."
"Did what Roy say really happen?" she asked.
"Look away for a while." He asked.
"Why?"
"Please." He pleaded. Winry turned her back to him and heard the sound of a transmutation taking place. She turned around to see him holding a lantern in his hand, he touched the wick with his hands and a small flame started filling the car with a soft yellow glow. She had seen Roy do that once but she could not remember Ed being able to.
He looked at her as her eyes widened at his display of power. How could he explain that everytime he would use his alchemy the gate would open? How could he explain that he wielded all the alchemy every performed in their world? How could he explain what he had become?
He slowly took his shirt off, her eyes shot toward his shoulder, seeing his would already healed. She then started to notice the web of intricate tattoos ingrained in his back, snaking their way down his arms. Swirls of red masking his nakedness. They looked like a transmutation circle circle, but this last truth she kept to herself.
She reached up tentatively, tracing the patterns with her fingers, not understanding what they were for.
"What have they done to you?" she asked quietly.
"I was born one year ago. A mind a body but no soul." He answered looking at his mark. The mark of a humonculi. "Some time ago I started having dreams. I thought they were just that, illusions of something I did not understand."
Winry stopped and looked at him. The sadness in his voice filling her up inside as well.
"But then I started feeling things too. These illusions, were bringing with them this unbearable sadness, this longing that I could not place and this aching feeling that I was supposed to remember." He said sounding lost. "When I saw you on that market place, something in me remembered who you were. My heart remembered who you were to me."
"Ed?" she asked looking up at him. Was it really him? Had he really come back for her.
"I am the humonculus Pride. That is my name. I don't know what part of me is Ed, but I did those things." He said quietly suddenly ashamed. "I killed those people. Whatever part of me that is still human, must've died with them."
He looked at her, raising her face to his so she would look him in the eye. "I am not Edward."
Her tears started, it welled up in the corner of her eyes and Pride's heart broke. He never wanted to see her crying.
"But how can you remember those things you said?" she asked confused. "Were they lies?"
"No." he said quietly looking into her eyes. They were asking him to lie.
"So Al is really…" she couldn't say it.
He nodded.
Winry was swimming, how could he remember such things? How could he feel so much like Ed and not be him? How could he come back to her and still not be him?
Pride looked at her, she seemed so lost. And he recognized something in her eyes, something he had always seen in his own and he felt afraid. Afraid of her sorrow, of her despair. Afraid they would always stain her heart. Pride brought his hand to the lamp and created a shadow puppet of a dog. He barked a little to make her smile.
Winry laughed at the memory, they had always made shadow puppets when they were young when Pinako had already told them to go to bed. They would steal the lamp and hide under the covers and make shadow puppets. The dog was always Al. It was the only one he knew how to make.
"Was he happy there?" she asked a distant look upon her face as she watched the dog barking.
"Yes." He said unable to continue, it hurt to think of Al. And this confused Pride even more. Suddenly Winry started crying. She tried to hold it in, putting her hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing. But as the pain built up in her heart, all she could do was lose herself in the deluge of her pain.
She leaned on Pride's back, placing her head on the back of his shoulders as if ashamed to let him see her in tears.
Al was gone.
And Pride's heart broke. He started shaking, the reality of it filling him up inside. Al who had lost everything, who had given everything. How unfair it seemed. How cruel fate was.
Pride's tears began then. He began mourning for the life his brother could not live, for the life he left behind to be with him, for the girl he would never see again.
"Please…" he pleaded facing her. Placing his forehead on hers, like he used to. He could not bear it. "Please don't cry…" he whispered.
Winry could feel her heart stop, refusing to beat again, refusing to believe that one third of her life was gone. They were after all, three together. All three of them made one whole. Without Al she would never be whole, she would never be complete.
She kissed him then. In her need to fill up the emptiness of losing one third of herself. She held on to him as if he would be taken away too.
"Winry…" Pride turned away. "I'm not…" she placed her hands on his lips.
"Please, just for tonight be mine. Be Edward." She whispered her tears refusing to stop falling. "Don't let me feel like I've lost everything that mattered." She said holding on to him.
Pride laid her down then. He looked at her deep blue eyes lost in their grief and touched her face with his hands. He would've given his soul just to make her stop crying. Given up everything to take away her pain.
She pulled him to her, taking his lips again. She closed her eyes as she felt his hands on her, feeling her, needing her as much as she needed him.
I'm sorry…I'm so sorry.
She whispered over and over, apologizing for her betrayal.
Roy was driving. He knew there was only one place they would go. He had missed the train and the next one in the morning would be too late.
He was so afraid. He needed to know she was safe.
He needed her to be safe.
He could not lose her. She was the only thing in his life that made sense now.
Edward won't take her away, he would not let him.
Pride watched as she lay sleeping in his arms. He brought his hand to his eyes. He remembered how his automail felt like. It was suddenly strange to find his body whole again.
He wanted so desperately to be him. He wanted to be the one she wanted him to be. He wanted her to love him too.
"Winry…" he whispered waking her. "We have to get off in the next station."
Winry woke up feeling him shift beside her. She looked at him and smiled, feeling his face with her hands, reminding herself it wasn't him. Her heart felt like breaking then.
She felt the blanket he had transmuted on her and saw her clothes were no longer blood stained and torn. She looked at him get dressed, his shirt whole again. He had transmuted them while she was asleep.
He opened the door to the car and the familiar country side greeted them. He took her in his arms and jumped off as the train started losing speed entering the station. They started walking towards the yellow house in the distance.
Winry laughed a little and Pride turned to look at her.
"You're taller than me now." She stuck her tongue out at him, placing her hand on top of his head. He was after all a good four inches taller than her now. He smiled then.
He looked on the grave stone marking her name. He traced the writing with his fingers. Twenty years.
He thought about bringing Al back, back in the other world, in his desperation just before he died, he remembered going through the recipe book in his mind again: 250 g of sulfur, 4000 ml of water, 6000g carbon…
What he would give just to have him back. He would give all of it. Exchange all of it. But he knew Al wouldn't want that. He was at peace now wherever he was. Waiting for him.
Twenty years. It seemed like a lifetime.
Winry came up next to him; she had picked flowers in the field. She smiled at him and placed the flowers on Trisha's grave.
He looked at her wishing he could take everything back. Change that night twenty years ago. Maybe Al would still be alive, maybe he would still be Edward, maybe Winry could finally stop crying. Maybe.
He whispered a farewell to his mother then. Cradled beneath the earth silent to everything.
"Ed?" she said after some time. He started, why would she still call him that?
"I don't think I have the right to that name anymore." He said quietly.
"I know you and Al have seen things I would never understand. Things that have changed you permanently." She started. "But I know the real Ed. And I feel him in you. If some part of him still exists in you, if some part of him is still alive in you then that is all I need." She said taking his hands in hers.
"You came back to me…" she whispered smiling at him.
"Winry? Oh my god Winry-chan is that you?"
They were walking along beside the main road, heading towards the house when a woman with three children called out to them.
"Maya?" Winry laughed going over to her.
"Edward is that you?" she called waiving to him.
"Oh my gosh are these your children?" Winry asked picking up the youngest one. "You got busy." She laughed.
Pride watched them. He did not recognize the woman but he didn't say anything anymore. The two women started talking, he watched her laugh and smile and thought how stunningly beautiful she looked with a child on her hip.
"They must be beautiful." A voice said beside him. He turned to see an old woman standing next to him, her wrinkled face smiling.
"I'm sorry?" he asked.
"You and Winry-chan's children." She commented.
He looked at her then, she was making faces at the baby, the baby laughing at her, holding on to the strap of her dress. She looked so perfect then. As if she was meant to be carrying that baby. Pride felt ashamed.
That was the one thing he could not give her. In trying to fix their past, they had forgotten about their future. In going to the other world he had turned his back on Winry and the future they could've had together. He had given her up to save a world that wasn't even his. And now it was too late.
"Come on Mama." Maya called to the old lady.
Winry kept waving at them. Overjoyed at the idea of her friend being so happy. She turned to look at Pride, he was heading towards a different direction.
"Ed?" she called. He just turned to look at her, a smile on his face, the setting sun filtering through his hair. It was then Winry realized how handsome Ed was and how lonely he seemed. She watched him climb up the hill, his hands in his pockets. He looked like Hohenheim then. He walked the hill with no urgency with a melancholy that came from people who have seen too much in their lifetime.
They stood before the ruins of the old house. The debris was all but covered by grass now; even flowers were starting to grow. The old tree was alive again. It almost seemed peaceful.
"I'm thinking of rebuilding it." Pride said as she stood next to him.
"Really?" Winry beamed. She had always wanted to rebuild the old house. It didn't seem right to leave it there abandoned. They had spent so many wonderful years in that house, leaving it in shambles was like forgetting about those years, like they never existed. Finally Ed was coming home.
"We can't bury what we did in the past." He said looking thoughtfully at the ruins. "Burying it under the ground does not erase what we did. We can however learn from. Build again from it."
"I'm so happy to hear you say that." She smiled wrapping her arms around his left arm and placing her head on his shoulder.
"Do you love him?" he asked quietly. Winry stopped.
"I do." She said suddenly remembering what she had left behind.
"Do you not love me anymore?" Pride asked not looking at her. Winry drew her head away, looking at the ruins, wishing their lives could be as resilient. Even through fire and ash the flowers found life. Why couldn't they be same? Why couldn't they leave the past behind? Why does it have to hurt them so much every time?
"I don't think I ever stopped." She whispered quietly.
"I don't know what I am. I don't know what's left in me to give. But if you can forgive me for being away for so long, if you choose to love me, I promise I won't ever leave you again." He said.
Winry's heart knew then what it meant to really despair. She no longer knew what she wanted.
She fell asleep in his arms, curled up against him. Pride wanted to stop the time. Make the world stop turning. What he would give just to keep her in his arms. All those years he had put Al ahead of him, making sure of his happiness first even at the expense of his own. Perhaps now he could be allowed to have happiness of his own. He covered her with the blanket and went outside.
He went to her grave again and started carving Al's name on the tomb stone. When he finished he thought about leaving. A thought crossed his mind, of his father dying on the other side, of how lonely he seemed staying away from the woman he loved to save his sons from finding the truth about him. He thought of him, of his blood staining the ground. He started carving Hohenheim then, next to his mother's name. The closest he'll ever be to her now. And he felt sorry for him.
He stopped as he realized a familiar smell pervaded the air.
"What are you doing here?" he asked anger rising in his voice.
"I offered you the world. And you return to this?" she said coming closer to him. "Ruins in an unknown town? Nothing but graves and a silly little girl." She laughed.
"Pathetic aren't you?" she asked. "So like your father."
"I am not like him!" he seethed.
"I gave him an eternity. What did she give him?" she said leaning against the tree. The conversation evidently tiring her.
"What did you do to me?" he said standing up. "What have I become?"
"I did nothing but finish what you started." She said her voice cold.
"Why did you bring me back? For what purpose?" he sighed afraid of what he would hear.
"You really do not know?" she asked amused. "You opened that gate of your own" she said laughing. "I did not think it possible but you did."
"What?"
"You opened that gate and came through, more dead than alive. I fused your body to another humonculus and bound your soul to that vessel."
"Then I am a humonculus." He said dread filling him up inside.
"I can offer you another choice." She continued, malice creeping into her smile.
"What can you do now?" he said turning away from her. "You have wilted away to almost nothing."
"I am centuries ahead of you boy." She said laughing. "Centuries worth of alchemy in my hands. I can give you anything. Even a future with your silly little girl."
"If I make you the philosopher's stone?" he finished for her.
"Think of it child. Before you lose her again." She laughed.
Pride started, he suddenly realized what she was saying and started running back towards the house. He burst open the door afraid of what he already knew. They had already taken her.
He had been driving almost all day. Stopping only to get fuel. He was tired and he needed to get some rest but he would not stop. Not until he sees her again.
He was nearing Rizembool, the night train had already started its way back to Central. He was about to take the turn into Rizembool when something caught his eye. At the back of the train stood a humonculi carrying a girl and another young girl dressed in black. His hear stopped as he realize the young girl the humonculi was carrying was Winry.
He slammed on the breaks of the car and sent it careening on its side. Another second later he was already outside taking aim at the two people. He put down the gun.
"It's too far." Pride noted standing next to him. Roy didn't even hear him approach.
"How could you let them take her?" he asked anger rising in his voice.
"I will get her back." He said his expression not changing. "There is only one place they can go…"