AN: So the new anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood should be live in Japan today, but since I've spent the whole night writing, I haven't had a chance to check youtube for any updates. I can't wait to see it! Sorry it took a month to update, but RL can be a real bitch sometimes… Oh well, hope you enjoy! And if you don't like EdWin, hopefully you can grit your teeth and get through this chapter, it's one of the few that will be from Winry's POV.

Review replies:

Luthine: Yeah, I'm cruel to my poor Edo. Honestly, I do love angst =D There's lots of it ahead! I love Maes, too. Why, why did Arakawa kill him??? And the Maes/Roy backstory is waiting ahead for a chapter all its own… Yum. But there's a reason for Ed being here (in this other Amestris) and I'll unravel that part as I go. Glad you're enjoying it! Thanks for reviewing!

ZeeZombieX: Thanks very much for reviewing. I'm glad you're enjoying the story. I'll try to clarify the differences between worlds as I go. Sorry for the delayed update.

Funni-chan: Really truly sorry I made you guys wait for for angst-laden drama! Thanks for the wonderful encouragement.

On to the story…

Winry Rockbell was tinkering. It was something she did normally, but when she was nervous, it got noticeably worse. She looked up from the automail hand in her lap to glance out the window at the countryside passing outside the train window. Although it had been ten years since she had come to Central, she recognized the familiar landmarks and breathed a sigh of relief that she was almost there.

Her gaze wandered back to the automail hand she was working on. It was beautiful, a work of engineering masterpiece, and her latest design. Micro-sensors inside the fingertips were designed to interact with the finest of nerve bundles to give the owner not only movement and a sense of pressure, but to start to restore the fine touch that made the human hand so amazing. It also meant that once installed, it could not be removed. Nerves and sensors would grow together along the arm and down to the hand. It would be the next best thing to having a flesh and blood hand.

Almost unconsciously she ran the automail hand over her own forearm, thinking about what the owner of that hand would feel with the new design. The touch of the cold metal made her shiver and the hairs stand up on her arm. She closed her eyes and pictured Edward. Even after all these years she missed him so very much. And though she still had Al, he had become cold and distant, as though his warmth had fled with Ed's disappearance. So Winry had poured what was left of her broken heart into her work and become an automail engineer of the highest caliber. That must be part of the reason Riza had summoned her back to Central.

Winry pulled out one of the cases she had brought with her and lovingly returned the automail hand to its spot next to the arm and leg already inside. A right arm and a left leg. It didn't escape her notice that she always built her prototypes for Ed. She honestly didn't believe he was dead. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that she continued her lonely bachelorette existence while her friends all married off and started families. She'd been offered plenty of opportunities by so many men over the years to start over. But she'd given her heart to an Elric when she was still a child and didn't know how to replace him.

The train's pace slowed to a crawl as it pulled into the station. Winry was looking forward to getting off the uncomfortable seats and stretching her legs in the open air. She searched the crowd outside the window and didn't miss the beautiful blond woman waiting for her in the crowd. Riza Hawkeye – Mustang, Winry corrected herself - was still a striking woman with her smooth skin, long blond hair and unique reddish-brown eyes. She wore civilian clothes now, but her bearing was no less military than that of the two armed security guards who accompanied her. Winry was a bit surprised not to see the Colonel – no, President – at her side, but then realized that he was probably very busy in his new job.

Winry took her two cases and left the compartment with the rush of other passengers headed off the train. The human traffic flowed around Riza and her guards like the rush of water around a rock in a stream. The two blond women regarded each other for a long moment as if unsure how to proceed before Riza moved forward to hug the younger woman. Winry set the cases down right away but her arms rose slowly to return the hug. The feel of Riza's arms around her reminded Winry of the last time the woman hugged her – at Ed's funeral. Winry blinked back a hot rush of tears.

Riza pulled back slightly and touched her hand gently to Winry's face. "We can't talk here. I'll explain in the car."

Winry nodded silently, not yet trusting her voice, and followed Riza and her guards to the big black car parked right outside the station. One of the men opened the car door and closed it after Winry and Riza slipped inside.

Riza was silent and was glancing out the window with a very pensive look on her face. It gave Winry a chance to study the older woman more closely. Riza must be in her late thirties by now, fine lines graced the corners of her eyes and the space between her eyebrows. But being a president's wife must be more stressful than being a first lieutenant because Riza looked more tired and unhappy than Winry remembered ever seeing her. Riza must have felt her gaze because the russet colored eyes slid away from the view of Central's passing streets and settled on Winry's face.

A faint smile curved Riza's mouth. "You've grown into a beautiful young woman, just as I thought you would," Riza said quietly.

Winry blushed. She'd heard that so many times, but to hear it from the very person whose beauty she had long envied was a high compliment. She struggled for something to say in response. "I still can't believe you married the Colonel – I mean, the President. The two of you must have made the most beautiful children in Amestris." And Winry wished she could snatch the words back when she saw the fleeting look of pain in Riza's face and one of Riza's hands unconsciously come to rest on her abdomen.

"Roy and I never had any children." A play of emotions ran behind those warm brown eyes. "But what about you? I didn't know you were married."

Winry flushed a bright red and lowered her big blue eyes to stare at her left hand where she wore a broad gold wedding band on her ring finger. "I'm not, actually. It's my mother's ring. Granny gave it to me when I came of age."

"But if you wear it like that then you'll fool all the young men out there into thinking that you're taken," Riza advised gently.

"I'm fine with that." Winry didn't look up at Riza, but stared at the ring on her finger, the one she'd hoped Ed would put there someday.

Winry heard Riza's audible sigh before she saw the other woman reach over to pat her hand. "You must be wondering why I called you to come out to Central."

Now Winry did look up and couldn't hide the hope in her gaze.

"Two days ago, they found a young man near an abandoned church here in Central who looks –" Winry saw Riza pause to consider her words. "Amazingly like Edward."

Winry snatched at Riza's hand in her lap like a lifeline as she felt her world tip precariously. She must had heard her wrong. "Wh – say what?"

"It's true, Winry. I saw him with my own eyes."

"Ed's alive?! He's here in Central?!" Winry's voice had slid into the kind of high pitched octaves that bats might use to echo-locate things. She stopped speaking, not because she didn't have a million things she wanted to ask, but because her voice box decided she could no longer maintain that pitch and left her silently mouthing her questions.

"Winry," Riza said patiently. "We're not sure that it is Ed. He's said and done some things that are very – strange. He certainly doesn't act like the Ed we knew."

"But it's been ten years – ten years, Riza!" That was a lifetime in Elric years. Look at everything Ed had done in just the first ten years of his life! How could she think he wouldn't have changed?

"I understand. But it's ten years of experiences we can't account for. Who knows where he's been, what's happened to him or who he's been with?"

"Who?" Winry's mind was churning. It would never have taken Ed so long to come home unless something terrible had happened to him or he was being held somewhere against his will. "You think he was kidnapped in Liore? Who would do such a thing? The homunculi?" If Ed had been with those – things- all these years who knows what they might have done to him?

"Winry. We don't know. Hughes spoke with him last night and what he told him was – well, frankly, it sounded crazy, Winry."

"Crazy?" Icy cold panic threatened to drown Winry's tide of happiness.

"It's a possibility we need to consider." Riza looked away. "He attacked Roy last night."

Winry laughed in relief. "But they never got along! It was probably just ten years of Colonel Bastard Ed had to get out of his system." This was all some terrible mistake. Ed was home. Everything was going to be alright now.

"Not like that Winry. If his automail had been fully functional he might have killed Roy."

"Killed?" That didn't sound right. Strangled, maybe, but not to death… Wait, did she say – "What's the matter with his automail?!"

"We're not sure. It just doesn't seem to work. It's almost dead weight on him."

Winry flushed in anger. She hated it when Ed abused her fine craftsmanship. She wished she'd brought a wrench with her.

"I'm telling you all this so you'll be prepared when you see him, Winry. He's strapped into restraints and sedated right now. Hughes asked a psychiatrist to come by and give him an evaluation. Just –" Riza gently rubbed Winry's forearm with her free hand. "Don't get your hopes up too high. "

And suddenly the car stopped and they were outside one of the largest hospitals in Central. Winry felt numb. She'd had too much up and down on an emotional roller coaster since she got off the train. She needed to concentrate on something that would steady her. She focused her thoughts on automail. She slid out of the car and followed Riza and the guards almost mechanically.

Ten years ago she had made a completely different type of automail. She'd been experimenting on early versions of metal composites back then to try and lighten the weight Ed had to drag around. But the difference in metal strength had made those prototypes easier to damage. Riza had said they weren't functioning, not that they weren't there. Perhaps some vital screw had broken, like the time she forgot to install that screw before he fought the homunculi in lab 5. She still winced at her own stupidity for that mishap. Wait until he saw what she had in her case! The new metal matrix composites were titanium and silicon carbide for strength with aluminum for lightness where the strength wasn't needed and –

Winry almost ran into Riza when she stopped. She had been so wrapped up in her engineering that she forgot about where they were and why they were here. She glanced around at the guards who had escorted them, the nurses' station, and the familiar face outside the closed hospital door. "Oh – uh," but Winry couldn't put a name to the face.

"Major Ross," the blue-eyed, dark-haired beauty responded with a warm smile. "How are you Miss Rockbell?"

"Winry."

"Maria."

Riza's hand brushed her side just under her arm and Winry remembered that the military sometimes carried firearms in holsters there. Did Riza really think she needed a firearm to defend herself from Ed? "How is he this morning?" Riza asked cautiously.

"Tired, withdrawn, depressed," Ross supplied sadly. "He's not eating so the doctors increased his IV drip. The psychiatrist was here earlier. She prescribed him something that should keep him calmer without the need for all the sedatives."

"Any more outbursts?"

"No. He's not really saying anything. At least not to me."

Riza looked at the guards. "Miss Rockbell and I are going in alone."

The two men nodded and took up positions outside the door, but Ross raised a hand in caution. "Can I please go in with you, ma'am? I'd feel safer if someone else was in the room after last night."

Riza looked at Winry as if asking her permission for someone else to view what should have been an intimate moment between old friends.

Winry shrugged. If it was really Ed in that bed, she didn't care who saw her reaction. She'd never been shy when it came to expressing herself about her feelings for the blond alchemist.

Riza nodded to Ross who pushed open the hospital door. Winry held back, frozen with indecision. Was it Ed? What if it wasn't? What if it was and something was terribly wrong with him? Winry couldn't imagine anything more cruel than to have him finally come home but never get to enjoy that because it wasn't really him… She heard herself hyperventilating, and she felt her heart racing. A bright flush raced over her skin followed by a cold chill. She felt like she was teetering on a precipice and didn't know if she would soar away or plummet to the ground. Then Ross and Riza stepped aside and she saw him.

Loose golden hair was spread out across the pillows behind a face that was both familiar and strange, a strong jaw framed with several days' growth of beard and mustache, the small nose, the golden bangs, the cowlick and the large golden eyes that were half lidded when the others entered then widened in surprise and pleasure at the sight of her. "Winry!" It was his voice, but deeper and rougher. She thought she would never hear it again. Never see him again. Never feel the ice around her heart crack and let real feelings rush through.

She was across the room and wrapped around him with no memory of how she had gotten there and all she knew was that she never wanted to leave. She was crying, sobbing, and desperate.

"Winry, hey, it's okay. Please stop crying," Ed said in a soft, broken voice.

She wanted to feel his arms around her, but he hadn't moved from his original position when she first collapsed against him. She pulled back and saw the restraints holding him to the bed. She saw the fresh bandages around his flesh wrist and she screamed in frustration, tearing at the buckles with her hands.

"Winry, stop!" Riza commanded in a voice that sounded like a gunshot.

"Let him go! Leave him alone! I'll take him back to Resembool. He won't bother you anymore. Please stop hurting him!" Winry blurted out through sobbing breaths, her hands still frozen in the act of unbuckling the restraints. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, soaking Ed's blankets and the leather restraints. "Don't take him away again."

"Winry," Ed repeated her name over and over in a soft, soothing tone. "It's okay."

"It's not okay," she sobbed like a petulant child as she climbed up on the hospital bed next to him and curled up against his chest, unmindful of any injuries he might have, or the way his beard scratched her face when she buried it in the crook of his neck, her hand caressing the cold, lifeless automail arm over and over again because she put all her love for him into the automail she made for him. How could he not know how much she loved him and how badly she had missed him all these years?

She trembled and sobbed against him until her eyes ran hot and dry and her breathing settled to hiccupping, shuddering gasps for breath. She felt his nose brush against her earrings. "No new piercings?" he teased gently.

She blushed and pulled back to look at his strange, but familiar face. Her heart clenched at the sight of him. If she thought he was beautiful when he was younger, his adult face did things to her adult body that made her blush all over. She was acutely aware of that hard muscled chest under her hand, the powerful body she was laying against. She glanced away from those questioning golden eyes, focusing her gaze on his automail.

Automail she had memorized while she built it. Automail she had dreamed of replacing for ten years. Winry's eyes widened. She glanced at Ed, then back at the automail. "Where did you get this?"

Ed cleared his throat. "I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you." His voice sounded sullen and resentful.

"Edward, this isn't the automail I put on you ten years ago. Where did this come from?"

"Someone made it for me," he said quietly.

"Who?"

Ed shrugged. "I'd rather not say."

"Dammit, Ed. If I have to repair or replace it, you could at least tell me where it came from!"

He glared at her with that stubborn look she knew so well.

With a swift movement she reached out with both hands and twisted the upper arm in its socket, popping the whole unit loose at the shoulder.

"Ouch! Dammit, Winry, that hurts!"

Winry said nothing, staring down at the automail arm in her hands. She knew the manufacturer's mark, but this didn't make any sense at all. "This isn't mine."

Ed grunted.

"What's the matter, Winry?" Riza asked, causing Winry to start when she remembered the other women were in the room.

"Everyone who makes automail for a living puts their mark on the pieces. Like an artist signs their name to a painting," Ed said softly.

"Is there a mark?" Riza asked.

"Yes," Winry answered quietly, her fingernail scratching over the surface as if she could change what she saw, prove that it was a fake. "But this doesn't make any sense."

"Well, who made it?" Riza asked with a trace of impatience.

"I did," Winry answered. "Six years ago, according to the mark."