"Do you love her?" Al asked him once, during one of his and Winry's rare visits to Dublith. Ed choked on his bite of fish, coughing spasmodically, and it took several good whacks on the back and a swig of water out of a contritely offered canteen to get him breathing again.
When things had calmed down, the brothers sat gazing out across the lake again, dangling their legs over the edge of the cliff, while Ed thought over the question carefully. If Winry had been there with them, he might have answered differently; but she understood her old friends and their close bond very well, and had stayed behind at Izumi's to make herself useful at the butcher shop, while the brothers caught up on things with a few days' trip to Jack Island.
So it was just Al and him, and he could afford to be perfectly honest without causing himself any trouble. For that matter, ten years ago the question would have been much more loaded; but Al's childhood crush on Winry had mellowed into a simpler, fiercely loyal affection. The worst he could expect if Al didn't like his answer was a punch in the face, and that was normal, and quite tolerable compared to the guilt of possibly breaking his brother's far-too-tender heart.
The sun sank toward the horizon and the waves beat a slow, soft rhythm against the shore as they sat in companionable silence, gnawing their roasted fish down to the bones. Ed thought over the last twenty-something years, from childhood play, to the searing pain and absolute trust of automail surgery, to the uncountable hours of teasing and talking over repairs, to the years of loneliness in another world, missing her smile as much as the limbs she'd given him. He weighed her bossiness and selfishness and eccentricity and occasional bouts of violence, against her cheerfulness and natural empathy and mechanical genius and the way her fingers lingered in his hair when she kissed him. And he thought of the utter contentment of knowing that, when this trip was over and they paddled their boat back to the shore, she would be waiting for him, ready to set out on their travels again. Together.
"Yeah," he said at last, tossing the stick that held the remains of his dinner into the lakewater that moved sunset-red below them, and turned to his brother with a smile. "You know, I think I do."