Title: Between the Shadow and the Soul

Author: Sofipitch

Disclaimer: When the said pairing marries.

Claim: Anti-ship table Envy/Winry

Prompt: 15, Time

Characters: Winry/Envy

Word Count: 675

Rating: PG

Summary/Warning: The quotes explain it.

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe."

-"The Bluest Eye", Toni Morrison

"I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz

Or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain dark things,

Secretly, between the shadow and the soul."

-Pablo Neruda

"I did not think that I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or power of motion in his presence."

-"Jane Eyre", Charlotte Bronte

Winry should've been more concerned. Her romance, her affair with this monster, would be discovered. And what would people think of her then? They would think that his hugs, his kisses, his caresses, would've rubbed off on her. She too would be seen as a monster, no better than him.

She didn't quite know when it, her love for him, began, but she did know that it was bound to end. Abruptly. Sadly. But he was addicting, and a part of her wanted to believe that he wasn't a monster, that he could change.

Then another part of her didn't want him to change. She wanted him to whisper in her ear how much he hated humans as he whispered he loved her. It was sick and twisted, and nothing she had ever experienced before. She was intoxicated, and just like a drug addict, it would ruin her life down the road.

But it felt nice to break her confines. Winry didn't want to wait, she wanted her prince charming to come to her, try and woo her. She didn't want to wait on Edward, so Envy's fervent love became her solution. Envy didn't believe in waiting, if he wanted to kiss her he did. In comparison with his life span, her youth was too short to waste. He didn't have time to wait and she didn't have the patience to do so.

Envy wasn't the romantic type though. He came when he wanted to see her, and didn't plan anything. She didn't trust him. He didn't expect her too. Yet he was more than just a teenage romance. She felt something dark and secret opening inside of her, making her, despite all warning, love him with a passion that would've made great novelists swoon and poets cry. Edward and his brash manner was pushed from her mind and laying way to Envy's directness.

Envy was possessive. Winry was his, she knew this. She didn't share herself with anyone, and her love for Edward—hidden and boiling somewhere in the back of her mind—was kept from him. His smoldering kisses made sure that she would never be able to kiss anyone else with those lips.

And as he touched her skin, sparking fire as he dragged his fingers along, wrote on her body that he was her first. She gave to him the two things she could never get back, for his to hold and to cherish, or to forget or discard, her first kiss and her virginity. He knew when he was taking them away, and he took them as greedily as possible.

Her first love was Edward's though, and he knew it. So he tried to erase it by taking the rest of her, the part of her that hadn't been given to Edward, with him. Dragging her deep under the murky depths of his jealousy.

The uncertainty is what drives her. Will her remember her once she has passed on? Will he consider her another human imbecile for trusting him? She can't see much when she looks into his eyes. He has carefully clouded them so that she may only see her own reflection. But he holds her at night, as she is fast asleep and he wide awake, and she takes that gesture as proof that he loves her.

It will all end soon though. This monster whom she has given nearly everything in her being too, will leave as soon as discovered. She shouldn't love him. Winry can't even tell what makes his monster appealing, what makes her crave him. It may be the danger itself. She can make the choice to stay and she does. Winry doesn't know what exactly will happen and she knows the reason she loves him is evil. She's not supposed to. Winry loves Edward. Not Envy. Edward. Both? She is free to make her decision for the time being though, so she runs her hands through Envy's hair.

And as she dives deeper into her own demise, she cannot go back and regret.