A/N: After many a message regarding my long absence, I thought I should say something to answer questions, assuage some-seemingly-angry readers, and, I guess, vindicate myself? I was, four weeks ago, in a multi-car wreck where I was in the physical middle of the pile up. I was hit three times on the interstate. It destroyed my car, and when I say destroyed, I mean I had to kick my door out in order to crawl out of the car. I was told by the firemen, the doctor, and the insurance claims adjuster(s) that I am lucky to be alive and even luckier to have my legs. That being said, I am perfectly fine. I do not use the word miraculously lightly, but I use it in this situation. Now if I could just find a reasonably priced, fuel-efficient car, it would be like it never happened. Anyway, long story short, here's the next chapter!

XII. The Boundary

The damp from the storm had come in through the windows during the day when Mustang had them open to battle back the summer's heat. Now, with the chill as decidedly present as a spoiled house cat, Mustang opened his flue and sparked a fire in his hearth. It had been months since he had used the thing, particularly with his newly updated furnace in the basement. But the charm of a fire in the hearth did as much to push back the cold as the flames did. And with his windows remaining just cracked, the soft percussion of rain on the street was a very pleasant soundtrack to that evening's newspaper.

Mustang pushed his fingers under his eyepatch and rubbed his skin, now almost permanently grooved where the rigid edge of the patch dug in. The angry, red lacerations across his cheekbone were now just pale craters and chasms, the results of getting shot in the face. The episodes of vertigo and dementia from having a bullet lodged in his brain had faded to only the occasional spell of disorientation as well. All things considered, over the six or so years since he had lost his eye, he was making a remarkable recovery. He recalled the notes that Hawkeye used to leave in his desk and coat pockets, in his wallet, things like to-do lists or walking directions from Central headquarters to his house. The office number, emergency contacts, her home phone. On a few humiliating occasions, Mustang recalled looking around him and realizing that he did not know what street he was on, how he got there, or how to get back. And it was all he could do to find a payphone.

But that had not happened in years. With time, the pervasive instability that once characterized his days had faded without his knowing it.

He wondered if it were, perhaps, time to downsize his eyepatch. Not to something too reminiscent of the Fuhrer, but something that wasn't so bulky it made smiling difficult. The recalcitrant tautness of his scar tissue was hinderance enough.

A loud, fast rapping on his front door roused Mustang from his reverie. He set his newspaper down on the coffee table, folded back on itself to keep his place.

He was not sure what to expect when he opened his door. It was decidedly late, and that fact alone typically put any visitor in one of two categories: a friend in trouble or a woman in trouble.

Turns out, it was both.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mustang asked when saw Winry on his stoop, hugging herself and shivering. She didn't bother to press herself forward toward the door and, instead, stood in the run off the from the short awning overhead. He threw open his screen door, seized her upper arm, and dragged her inside. "Are you out of your mind? Where's your coat?" His first thought, of course, was of the precariousness of the first term of a pregnancy.

Winry's teeth were clattering so hard she could barely get out, "I'm sorry, General. I was trying to get to Mrs. Hughes's house."

"You couldn't call a damn cab?" he asked as he left Winry dripping in his foyer and went to the linen closet in the hall. His housekeeper had left a stack of thick, white towels folded neatly on a shelf, and he seized one off the top.

He heard her voice, strained to mitigate the trembling. "I left in a hurry."

Oh. Mustang returned and unfolded the towel with a snap. He draped it over Winry's shoulders and rubbed her upper arms through the material. "Is everything all right?" he asked, although he had a strong inkling of what would send Winry stomping precipitously away from Edward's company at ten o'clock at night.

She dropped her eyes, her lips thin and tight. "I couldn't stay at that house tonight."

"I see," he said.

She looked rather like a stray cat right then. Dripping and too desperate to be spitting mad but too proud to show her desperation. She wore nothing more than a pair of brown slacks—now almost black from the rain—and what looked like a man's sleeveless undershirt. Mustang just barely allowed himself to notice that she was braless under the wet, clingy fabric, now only an afterthought of modesty. Her skin looked pale and thin; her hair was plastered to her face and neck and shoulders.

"I can call you a cab," he offered. But Winry was already stepping out of her shoes and seating herself in a wooden chair in the foyer. "Or you're welcome to stay here."

Winry looked up at him through the limp, dripping sheet of her bangs. And he knew her answer already. She must have walked quite a few blocks in the rain. It was ten o'clock at night. The kid was just looking for a place to sleep.

Mustang sighed. "Go sit in front of the fire," he directed. "I'll try to find you something dry to put on."

When she looked at him, she was frowning so hard he could tell she was trying to close her face to tears. "Thank you, General," she said. "I know it was stupid, but—"

Mustang held up a hand. "You don't have to vindicate yourself to me. You forget that I work with Edward."

Winry wiped her hair away from her eyes and smiled at him a sweet, sad smile.

"And I pity the man whose first name is General."

With that, Mustang turned and headed up his stairs, and Winry stood up and shuffled into his parlor. She felt a little self-conscious about the wet footprints she left on his floorboards or the damp buttprint she knew she'd leave on his carpet. But the fire felt so nice on her cold-stung face and hands. Sometimes, in the mornings, Edward would put his automail hand on her back or shoulder or hip, and the chilly metal would send creeping shivers through her skin; tromping through the rain with no coat had felt like that, only she could feel a cold automail hand around her lungs, her stomach, her fingers and toes. But the fire felt so nice. Winry scooted closer, moved the towel off her shoulders and up onto her head.

Her fingernails were purple, she noticed, her fingers pale and puckered.

She looked around the General's parlor—or rather, Roy's parlor. That just felt odd. But she tried it again in her head. Roy's parlor. Roy's house. Ten o'clock at night, sitting in front of Roy's fire. She had been to his house twice before, accompanying Edward and Alphonse to a New Years party and later to a celebration of the fourth anniversary of the creation of the Double-A.

It felt so different now. There was no pre-approved, neutral reason for her presence. She did not have Roy's permission to be there, only his forgiveness for showing up, his resignation at her company. She was an interloper now. The man was in his pajama pants and a bathrobe, for crying out loud. Winry rewrapped the towel around her.

What the hell had she been thinking? She only had an idea of how to get to Gracia's house from Edward's, and she'd been so mad when she had marched out that she hadn't noticed that she couldn't see stars through the storm clouds, that the air was heavy and ominous. In her mind, it was a fifteen, maybe twenty minute walk to Gracia's, and she could get there, spill herself through the front door, and tell her everything. I'm pregnant and twenty-three and haven't gotten any kind of commitment from Edward except the simple fact that he isn't sleeping with anyone else and puts up with me sharing his bed. And then Gracia would do that caring-parent thing that she and Maes had been so good at, and in the morning, Winry would leave with a set of resolutions to match her corresponding set of problems.

But instead, she was sitting in front of the General—er, Roy's hearth, looking half like she just walked in from a wet t-shirt contest and half like a cat someone had tried to drown.

She dropped her face into her hands and rubbed hard at her stinging eyes.

What the hell had she been thinking? What the hell was she going to do now?

x

x

x

Mustang had tried to think of any articles of clothing Riza had left at his house when she had moved out, but all he could recall were a few provocative numbers stowed in a box in the back of his closet. And while the thought of bringing Winry a negligee and telling her to make herself at home made him laugh out loud, he thought she would do better with a clean set of his flannel pajamas.

When he came down the stairs, Winry was a bundle of white towel and blonde hair, her slender arms projecting from the folds toward the grate.

"Here," he said, handed her a folded stack of pale blue flannel. "They'll be huge on you, but they're dry." Winry took his pajamas and looked at them with a quizzical expression as she unfolded the button down shirt and held it up. It must have looked like a tent to her. Mustang laughed at the uncertainty on her face. "Don't worry. I removed the Letoist Revival from them first."

Winry laughed and dropped her hands to her lap. "I'm sorry, Roy," she added his name a beat too late to be casual. "I'm just a little overwhelmed."

He chuckled. "There's a bathroom down the hall where you can change and get cleaned up."

She nodded and stood, clutching her towel around her shoulders as she went. Mustang could hear the sopping cuffs of her pants dragging over his floor as she shuffled down the hall toward the bathroom.

Once she was gone, Mustang went into the kitchen and put on a kettle of water. In the incandescent lamp over his stove, he stood, his arms crossed, and looked at his bare feet on the slate tiles. The phone was mounted on the wall by his fridge, and his first instinct was to pick it up. As a matter of probity, he should call Edward and let him know that his pregnant girlfriend was there. Before he could be accused of any indecencies, before he became implicated in Winry's imprudence, before he was put in a position where he had to take sides, he should call Edward and clear his name.

But as he turned toward his phone and took the receiver from the wall, he heard quiet, squeaking breaths from the hall bathroom, which shared a wall with the phone. At first he did not recognize it—it had been so long since there had been a crying woman in his bathroom, five months perhaps—but once he did, he set the phone back on the wall.

Mustang knew what an asshole Ed could be. He also had some degree of understanding regarding Edward's perspective right then and how easy it is to be an asshole when in his place. But the strength of his empathy for Edward was only as strong as his sympathy for the girl crying in his bathroom.

And, at any given moment, he owed Winry exponentially more than he could ever owe Edward.

He heard the bathroom door open and damp, bare feet padding back toward the fireplace. The kettle then began to whistle on the stove, and Mustang switched the pot to a cool burner.

"Can I offer you a hot toddy?" Mustang called down the hall.

Winry was quiet for a moment. "Um, no thanks," she said from the hearth.

Mustang could have smacked himself on the forehead. Instead, he poured both Winry's shot and his into his mug of tea, leaving hers booze-free. "Of course," he said, "That was awfully insensitive of me."

When he came into the parlor, Winry was seated on the carpet before the hearth. Mustang's pajamas looked absurd on her. He might as well have given her a pillowcase with a hole cut in the top for her neck. She had the sleeves and cuffs rolled up like lumpy knots around her wrists and ankles. The shoulders slumped off her frame, and the top button of the shirt was dangerously low on her sternum. What Mustang noticed first, however, was the look on her face when he handed her a mug of tea and took a seat on his couch.

"What did you mean by that?" she asked.

Mustang furrowed his brow slightly, uncertain how to interpret her. He decided though, judging by the irresolute look in her eyes, that she didn't know he knew. And, more importantly, she did not want him to know. "I spoke with Edward this afternoon, shortly before he left the office." Mustang considered himself a rather generous man, but he was not so generous as to lie to her.

At first, she was silent. Then, "He told you?" she asked, the whites of her eyes standing out stark.

Mustang wanted to back away. "Yes, he told me."

He watched her set her mug of tea down on the coffee table behind her and cover her face with both her hands. The rolled cuffs of her sleeves slid down to her elbows. "I can't believe he told you," she said, her voice muffled by her palms.

Mustang sighed. "Neither can I." He drank a big gulp of his too hot tea down. He could feel the warm sizzle of liquor mingled with the scalding in his stomach. "I think his indiscretion was provoked by a lot of factors."

"I can't believe he told you," she repeated into her hands. "This is humiliating."

Mustang sat forward and set his mug down. He cleared his throat as though the gesture might provide a better introduction to his unearned sincerity. "I can't help how you feel about it, Winry, but I can tell you that I don't see it in that light."

She looked through her fingers at him. "I don't know how I feel about it just yet," she said. She dropped her hands and her eyes. "But I do know that it's very personal."

And that meant, of course, that she never would have told him. "It is that, yes," Mustang conceded.

She didn't seem like the same girl he had spun around Edward's kitchen only a couple days prior. Even her face seemed different, more drawn, her skin paler, or perhaps that was just the effect of the shifting orange light from the fireplace. She looked smaller, too, disappearing into the folds of her borrowed pajamas and hunkered down on the floor by the coffee table. She stared downward, somewhere beyond Mustang's feet. She had fit then, it seemed, in Edward's bright, sunlit kitchen, paddling through thick blueberry-scented air. And she fit now in Mustang's chilly, shadowy parlor.

"I'll make you a deal," Mustang said as he leaned back and set his feet up on the coffee table. "You may ask me something personal. Perhaps that will even the score."

He had asked it mostly to fill the silence, as present as the barometric pressure outside, and as soon as it came out, he braced himself for all manner of terrible things. He remembered only a moment too late that, oh, yes, this was Winry to whom he was speaking, and she would have a list of questions exclusive to her, questions that he would never have to answer if he had not volunteered to.

While there was a time he never thought such a thing was possible, Mustang was catching himself forgetting who she was to him, what he must be to her. And for a moment in Edward's kitchen and again just now, she was simply a pretty young woman, simply a friend in trouble.

She looked at him for a long time, waiting for him to rescind the offer. Certainly someone as slick as Roy would be able to think of a graceful way to back out, some glib circle to talk around her that would leave her dizzy enough to forget the offer. But he didn't. He just stared back.

In the last few days, as their interactions had begun to take big, loping strides down the spectrum from tense to comfortable, Winry had started to wonder something. It was something she never anticipated getting the opportunity to ask, but here it was. The opportunity. And she hoped that she was not about to damage their rapport. She was growing to like it.

"When did you first realize who I was?"

Who she was? The more important issue, Mustang thought, was where she came from. He knew were she had come from long before he had any understanding of who she was. In fact, for quite some time, he didn't really give damn who she was; the matter of his relationship to her origins had long overshadowed anything personal about the pretty blonde child he once knew. But he understood what she meant. Mustang drained the last of his hot toddy and set the empty mug on the table. He cleared his throat. While he knew the big issue was going to make an appearance, he did not expect something so non-accusatory.

"The first night I saw you," he said.

Winry sat forward and folded her arms on the coffee table. "When you came to Risembool?" she asked. "When Ed and I were nine?"

"Yes," he answered. "I couldn't walk into Rockbell Automail without knowing what to expect." Even as he said it, it didn't feel entirely honest. What compelled him to honesty with her, he wasn't certain nor would he be for quite some time. "I would say it truly sunk in when you came to Central."

"After Ed got certified?" Winry asked, although she already knew what he was talking about. He meant when she was kidnapped.

Mustang nodded. "The MP's were escorting you out of that God-forsaken warehouse."

"Why then?"

This was more than one personal question, Mustang thought. But he owed her at least that. "You're the spitting image of your mother."

Her face lit up, and if that did not make it almost worth it, it certainly helped. "Really?"

"Oh, yes," Mustang said, nodding. "Your mother was distractingly beautiful. I imagine the most common condition she saw in that clinic was loneliness."

Had he truly said that? Had he had the audacity to speak of Sara Rockbell as though they had been acquaintances? Though, they had been, to an extent. She had known his name, his birthday, and blood type. She had treated him for a nasty case of giardia, the gruesome details of which he would never disclose to anyone, let alone Winry.

It would have been within reason for her to be offended by his candor. But she was not. Instead, Winry giggled into her hand. And when she looked up at Mustang, her warm smile remained. "Thank you, Roy," she said with ease this time. "And thanks for putting me up for the night. I owe you one."

"That's for damn sure. You're wearing my pajamas."

She laughed at that, a true, deep laugh. She then stood up and came around the coffee table. She sat to Mustang's right, turned to face him, her feet pulled up on the couch under her. Winry knew Roy was being more generous with her than simply giving her a room for the night. She felt him watching her, waiting to see what she'd do.

Perhaps it was the way her knee brushed this thigh. Perhaps it was how small and vulnerable she looked in his pajamas. Perhaps it was because this was the first time they were not just acquaintances having a conversation nor were they just a couple of victims wondering why they were hurting each other. They were both at once. Whatever it was, Winry didn't flinch as she observed him, his lined, guarded face. And Mustang, who was astute enough to know how much a long, frank stare could reveal, did not avert his gaze.

"I'm in your debt, Roy," she said plainly.

She heard him breathe. "There is no favor you could ask that would put you in my debt."

She studied his face, watched the firelight make his features deeper and sharper, all except for that patch, which looked like an abyss concealing half his face. She could have remained there, examining him, but a wide yawn burst out of her just then. Winry put the backs of her fingers to her mouth.

"I'll show you the guestroom," Mustang said.

Winry nodded and yawned again. She climbed the stairs, a few steps behind Mustang, and he took her down the hall. Her room was at one end of the hall, his on the opposite end. He showed her the bathroom, got her a glass of water, and asked if she needed anything.

"Just a good way to explain to Edward where I've been," she answered, looking at her feet.

Mustang laughed a dark laugh that petered out into a long, resigned sigh. "Let me know if you come up with anything." He turned toward his bedroom and gave her a wave. "Good night, Winry."

"Um, Roy," she chirped, snatching back his attention.

It would have been wonderful to retreat behind a closed door, to leave her in one single location where she would do predictable things like go to sleep. It would have been so nice to close the night with the provisional resolution they'd come to, but somehow, Mustang did not feel entirely resolved anyway. Nor did he feel prepared to spend more time in her presence. In that conflict, though, he paused and turned back to her.

"Yes?"

"Can I," she began, her fingers woven together and held down. "Can I ask you another personal question?"

Mustang knew better than to hope that he had exhausted Winry's curiosity surrounding her parents' deaths, and, honestly, he knew he should have predicted that once the door was open, the storm would not allow him to batten it. "You may," he surrendered and leaned back against the wall opposite the guestroom. He sunk his hands into the pockets on his bathrobe.

She studied her feet a moment longer but had the courage to look him in the eye when she asked, "Have you ever been married?"

"I have not."

"Then," she paused, counted to three, and spilled, "have you ever been in Edward's position?"

He did not see that coming. Mustang blinked, and it was far too late to back down now. If there was one hint he could get from Winry's face it was that she knew she had him cornered. That and she was frightened.

She already knew more about him than he would voluntarily allow. While plenty of people knew he had been the soldier to execute the Rockbells, only Winry could know it in the way she did, know it from her perspective. As his only surviving victim. "I have," he said, and once it was out, it felt like pulling the cork off a bottle.

"Did it work out in the end?"

That was a very good question, he thought. He wasn't married. He had no children. He was, it seemed, decidedly single now. Is that working out? "It did. They did, I should say."

Winry furrowed her brow in confusion.

"It's happened twice that I know of. Once, when I was younger than you are," he began. Mustang pulled his hands from his pockets, rested them on the wall behind him, and leaned back against them. He crossed his ankles, and Winry felt a flicker of envy for his repose. Whether it was a facade or not, she couldn't tell. "But that resolved itself."

Winry did not push him for details.

He pulled in a deep breath and pushed it out. "And again perhaps six months ago."

"What?" Winry would not have thought that these sorts of things happened to adults, let alone someone who seemed quite as savvy as Roy.

"You knew Lieutenant Hawkeye, didn't you?"

Her eyes widened before she could stop them. She nodded.

"She was determined, I suppose, to sort it out on her own. I know the doctor at the university who saw her if you decide to go that direction."

"That direction?"

This felt oddly reminiscent of his conversation with Edward earlier that day, and while he could have just as easily cracked a joke about Winry's growing up without some feminine guidance, he was, of course, the cause of Winry's naivete.

"To terminate your pregnancy."

The look on her face let Mustang know that that direction had not occurred to her, which meant it would either be the most straightforward solution or a pure anathema. Winry began to shake her head, her mouth slack, and Mustang held up a hand.

"It's something to consider, but if I may make one suggestion," he said, "talk to Edward before you do anything." He felt he could not impress this upon her enough.

Winry slumped against the doorframe, her head buzzing and manifestly awake. She sighed loudly and searched the floor for an answer. When she didn't find one there, she pulled her eyes up to Roy. "What do you think I should do?"

Mustang shook his head. "I don't get a vote."

"I'll give you mine, then."

Whether she was trying to be funny or not, Mustang did not know. He didn't restrain a laugh, however, at her open, unrepentant innocence, at her unwitting reductionism. "As much as I'd like to make this easier on the both of you, I would not wish for that responsibility." He laughed again. "And I imagine Edward would not appreciate my weighing in."

He watched her bring a hand up her face, rest the heel of her palm against her forehead.

"You're not deciding anything tonight," he told her.

"I certainly won't be sleeping tonight, either." She pushed her hand back into her damp hair. "I was sort of hoping you would pressure me to do one thing or the other."

Like a parent? Mustang thought. "Perhaps if I were in a position to know what is right, I would," he offered. "Unfortunately for both of us, I rarely am."

"What am I going to say to Edward?"

Mustang stood up straight then, adjusted his bathrobe. "I think starting by telling him that you're unequivocally, inexorably in love with him is a good technique."

Winry hummed a moment and rubbed her chin. "I should write down those big words. I bet they'll help."

Mustang chuckled. "Alchemists are suckers for big words."

She sucked her teeth and sighed. "It's a start, at least." Winry pushed herself off the door frame and repositioned Roy's pajamas across her shoulders. "Good night, Roy." Reaching out to her right, Winry set her hand on the edge of the door and pulled it toward her.

"Good night, Winry."

x

x

x

The awkwardness forecast that morning, Mustang figured, was probably about seventy percent. About as great as the prediction for rain. He bathed and dressed that morning, wondering what he would find when he went downstairs. He thought he heard her leave the guestroom earlier, meaning she was loose in his house. She could sneak up on him at any moment.

He was, however, wrong. Mustang found Winry in his kitchen, a fresh mug of coffee waiting for him. She looked even more absurd in his pajamas with the morning light seeping through the clouds and into the windows. Her sleeves were rolled up higher now, making her arms look even skinnier, and she appeared to be disassembling his coffee pot.

"Oh, Roy," she said brightly when he came in. "Do you have a tiny phillips head screwdriver around? I was able to get two of these screws out with a spoon, but this last one is sticking."

Mustang picked up the coffee she had set aside. He gave it an unassuming sip and had to keep a grimace off his face. "Will I be receiving an invoice later if I tell you?"

Winry smiled. "That depends on how many things I find working poorly in your kitchen."

"I see," he said, nodding sagely and rubbed his chin. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could pick up a second mortgage at this time of morning, would you?"

She waved at him dismissively. "Don't be silly. I know a charity case when I see one."

He set down his coffee and went for the eggs in the refrigerator. "That's funny coming from the woman who showed up on my stoop last night, looking for a place to stay," he teased. He didn't look at her, but he knew Winry was scowling. "I don't imagine I can write you off on my taxes," he mused.

She seethed a moment. "You know what? Fix your own damn coffee pot," she snapped, slamming down a rather mangled spoon on the countertop.

Mustang picked up his spoon and gave it a dismayed look. "If it will save the rest of my silverware, there's a screwdriver in the drawer next to the sink."

"Alchemize it or something! And while you're at it, give me back the coffee I made for you!"

"Coffee?" Mustang asked as he brought a skillet down from a hanging rack over the sink. "Oh, you mean the cup of engine oil you gave me? And here I was starting to feel initiated into the mechanic's inner circle. Although, I always pictured your kind taking libations from a ceremonial Leaky Head Gasket."

Winry open her mouth to bark something at him when the phone rang. Mustang, who was rather enjoying some morning sparing, held up his hand. He went to the phone and answered.

Before he could say anything, the voice on the other end took off.

"Mustang!" Edward's voice burst through the receiver, "Have you seen or talked to Winry since last night? Did she call you or come by or anything? She stormed out of the house last night like an idiot, and I haven't heard from her. I called Gracia, and she hasn't seen her. I'm getting ready to file a report or something because that genius hasn't come back yet or called or fucking anything!"

Mustang smiled. "She's here."

"She's what?" Edward yelped. "What the hell is she doing there? Did she show up last night? If you put one grubby finger on her, I swear by that little black book you call a set of morals that you're gonna get a big, pneumatic fist in your face. What the hell is she doing there?"

Mustang gave Edward a moment to catch his breath before he answered, "Right now, I think she's dismantling my percolator." He looked over his shoulder and saw Winry, screwdriver in hand, installing what looked to be his egg-timer on the front of the pot. She was looking at him now, though, with the anger washed out of her face. She appeared a little frightened.

"Well, put her on the phone!" Edward commanded.

Winry's eyes went wide when Mustang held the receiver out toward her. She put up her hands and mouthed No!

"She's a little preoccupied, it seems," Mustang said when he brought the phone back to his ear.

"Then tell her I—"

"I'm not going to be your mediator, Fullmetal."

"I was going to say, tell her that she scared the hell out of me."

The tone in Ed's voice, the sudden diffusion of wrath into concern, like ink into water, made Mustang smirk. "I'll do that." He hung up. When he turned back to Winry, she was slowly twisting a screw back into the base of the coffee pot.

"I'll talk to him when I'm ready," she said without looking up. "Face to face. Not over your phone."

"Fair enough," Mustang replied and went about making his breakfast.

She tinkered with the coffee pot a few minutes longer, and when she was done, Winry pushed it back and out of the way on the countertop. "I should get dressed," she said. "And I put a timer on your percolator. Now you can set it the night before so there's coffee waiting when you wake up."

When he smiled at her, Winry took a moment to interpret it. It wasn't one of those big thankful smiles, not that she could imagine Roy making one of those ever. There was, perhaps, a touch of gratitude to it but in a different sort of way. Perhaps he was grateful that she had resolved to herself when she got up that morning to put the night before into a file in her mind, one called Points in Roy's Favor, one that she could up open up later and peruse when she was alone. Perhaps he was grateful that she willed herself happy right before he came into the kitchen—and she would not doubt that he could sense that she had. Or perhaps he was grateful that she had swallowed all those other emotions she had surrounding him and greeted him with some appreciation of her own still fresh on her tongue.

After breakfast—ultimately, Mustang made scrambled eggs for the both of them—he asked if she needed a ride home.

"I live in the opposite direction," she said, waving at him dismissively. "I'll take your advice and call a cab." As soon as she said it, though, Winry remembered that in her theatrical display of tromping out of Edward's house the night before, she had not had the foresight to grab her purse. Without money and with no desire to take a detour to Ed's to get some, Winry looked down at herself in her loaned pajamas, her borrowed cup of coffee on the table in front of her, and her feet on someone else's kitchen floor.

Mustang watched this realization dawn upon her. "I can loan you cab fare, Winry," he assured her.

Oh, God, really? "Oh, no, I can't," she said, putting up her palms. "Showing up here, staying for the night, eating your food. I couldn't take your money."

"If you insist," he said with a shrug. "You'll never make it as call girl that way, though."

It got awfully quiet after that.

Winry blinked at him.

Oh, if Mustang ever wished he could reel back the tape, drive over it with his car, and incinerate it, this was the time for it to work. While things between them had certainly progressed, they were nowhere near the kind of chumminess that would allow a crass comment like that to fly. It sounded like something he'd say to Havoc—perhaps not exactly, but the horrible little heart of it was in the right place.

He expected to see wide eyes and a firm mouth, the openly stunned face of a woman mortified. He braced himself to hear the feet of her chair screeching across the tiles as she stood and stormed away. He tightened his jaw in anticipation of a full-palm slap across his face. Instead, when Mustang looked at her, she was still there. She glared at him for only a moment before her face split into a big, contrived smile. "Maybe," she began hopefully, "if I keep practicing, you can get me an interview," she then added darkly, "at the Honeypot."

Touche. For so many reasons, he was not prepared for that. Mustang rubbed his eye with a crooked index finger. "Damn." He made a note to twist Edward's tiny blonde head off his skinny little shoulders.

Winry snickered smugly as she stood and took their empty plates and silverware. As she set them in the sink, she asked good-naturedly, "Out of curiosity, how does an asshole like you sleep at night?"

"A very powerful prescription narcotic," he answered, still reeling a little bit from Winry's well-placed and unexpected barb.

"Oh, I know your type, Roy," Winry continued as she rinsed and scrubbed down their plates. "You've got this cold, hard exterior, but underneath, you're just a big softie." She set the dishes in the drying rack with a conclusive clink. "And underneath that, you're a big, old asshole."

Mustang began to chuckle. He stood up and put up his hands in surrender. "You've got me pegged," he said as he came up to the sink and leaned against the counter. "I apologize, Winry. That was a hugely inappropriate thing to say."

Winry waved him off. "Oh, please. I'm a mechanic for crying out loud. I've heard things that would make your mother blush."

He shook his head, knowing when he was defeated. Perhaps, he thought, next time, he would be better prepared for her. Mustang prided himself, of course, in being quick on his feet, but he never would have anticipated how well she could dish 'em out. Or take them for that matter.

Mustang reached into his back pocket and produced his wallet. "How much do you need for cab fare?"

Winry shrugged. "I don't know. I've never taken a cab this far."

He produced a few bills and set them on the counter. "I'll collect next time I see you."

Just then, Mustang noticed the clock over his stove. He was, perhaps, ten minutes behind his usual morning schedule, which was already leisurely enough. It had not, however, accommodated a woman's company in quite some time. "Damn," he muttered. "You've made me late."

"I made you late?" Winry barked as she set her fists against her hips. She would have harped at him more, but Mustang was already out of the kitchen. As she listened to his feet thudding over the stairs, Winry poked through his cabinets until she found a phone book.

Once Mustang was collecting and donning his uniform coat by the front door, Winry stood at the stairs and leaned forward on the newel cap. She watched him put on his coat, adjust the cuffs, straighten the lapels, and she struggled not to think of the Roy she gave hell to that morning disappearing under the uniform.

"My cab should be here any minute," Winry said, feeling her chin moving against the backs of her hands where they were folded on the railing.

"Good," he said. "I don't imagine you can get into too much trouble while I'm gone."

"Oh, you would be amazed how quickly I can make long distance phone calls."

Mustang snorted. "Lock the door when you leave."

"Okay."

x

x

x

When Mustang came home that evening, after an infuriatingly long day filled with dinky little cases that skittered in and across his desk like mice, he was more than a little grateful to have his home to himself. Though it felt awfully big to him. Upon first moving into the place, all the empty space he could not occupy had struck him. That began to fade after the first few weeks—particularly as Hawkeye became a regular installment in it—but the feeling was back now.

His housekeeper would not be by until the next day, and Mustang took it upon himself to glance into his guestroom to see the damage.

Winry, as he should have expected, had been a very responsible houseguest. The sheets and pillowcases were folded up on the bed, ready to be laundered, and next to them was a sheet of paper. He came in and lifted it up to his eye.

Roy,

I've got your pajamas. If you ever want to see them alive again, you'll meet me at a neutral location—my apartment—and let me make you dinner. Or else.

W

He resolved to change out of his uniform and give her a call.

x

x

x

Winry heard the buzzer at the door below as she was stirring a big, black pot of leek and lentil stew on her stove. The carrots were about ten minutes away from being the perfect texture, and Winry was starting to get anxious. Why she was getting anxious, she could not determine. Why should she be getting anxious? No reason! No reason at all.

Perhaps it was simply the fact that Brigadier General Roy Mustang was coming over to her house, and there were so, so many sources of apprehension when it was reduced to that: he was, lest she forget it, the man who executed her parents—she thought of their picture on her mantel, and part of her knew they would be proud of her for being big enough for that magnitude of forgiveness. But nothing, she had learned, was ever that simple. Also, Roy was her boyfriend's boss; that was just questionable enough for Winry to screw up her mouth when she thought of it. And, of course, he was a man coming into her apartment, and judging from some of the older stories that still occasionally floated around the office, Winry knew what sort of man he was. Or at least, what sort of man he had been.

Still, with those stories in mind, Winry imagined it could be easy to approach the situation she had been in the night before—soaked to the bone, on his doorstep, all manner of things that Winry thought only occurred in the novels they sell at the back of the drug store—with an entirely inaccurate set of expectations. She looked at Roy's pajamas, freshly washed and dried, folded up on the arm of her couch. No, The Time I Crashed at Brigadier General Mustang's House for the Night, and He Was a Complete Gentleman About It was not a story she heard on the lips of young secretaries.

And knowing that just made her feel a little bit odd. She was grateful, certainly, that she could honestly claim to be in a small minority of women who interacted with Roy Mustang as human beings. But it did make her wonder: if he hadn't shot her parents, would they still be friends?

The buzzer sounded again, and she turned the heat low under the stew. She took a last look around her apartment—no underwear on the floor, no dishes laying around, no towels draped over chairs. With that, Winry opened her front door and left it ajar as she jogged down the stairs, past the break room, and through the waiting room. The big pane of glass in the door revealed Roy in his overcoat, holding a brown paper grocery bag in one arm. Sullivan and Rockbell's logo was etched into the window and superimposed over him at about chest-level. It was vacillating between drizzle and rain outside, and Winry watched Roy run a hand through his hair, slicking it back off his pale forehead.

Winry unlatched the three locks on the door and opened it wide.

"Hi there," she said, gesturing him in.

"Winry," he greeted with a nod. He stepped in through the door and set his grocery bag down on a semi-circular table against the wall. As he removed his overcoat, he looked around. "I don't think I've ever been to your office under ordinary circumstances," he said amusedly.

She thought for a moment. "It's true," she answered, "You're either dropping off or picking up."

Mustang had the wherewithal to refrain from mentioning adding something about dinner dates to his list of Sullivan and Rockbell Prosthetic Outfitters activities. Winry offered to take his coat, and he divested of it readily. Winry felt a twinkle of relief that he was not in uniform, although, she had noted when he called, he must have left work, found her note, and decided to come directly over. He wore plain slacks, suspenders, and a white, button-down shirt, the sleeves of which he immediately began rolling up. He gathered up his grocery bag, and Winry led him through the building toward the narrow stairway leading up to her apartment.

"Is it ever challenging living above your own office?" Mustang asked as Winry approached her front door.

"Sometimes when I want to sleep in," she answered. "But, really, it's more convenient than anything else. I can roll out of bed twenty minutes before my first appointment."

Winry entered her apartment and went immediately to the stove to give their dinner a stir. Mustang entered more slowly, reservedly. But there he was, Winry noted when she looked over her shoulder and told him to put his bag down on the kitchen table. He, of course, looked like he belonged. His posture was eased, and he looked around at her place with an appraising expression.

"I wish I had had an apartment this nice when I was twenty-three," he said, his hands resting on the sides of his brown paper bag.

Winry snorted. "Ed's house must make you seethe, then."

"Yes, well, he got the salary when he was twelve that I didn't get until my twenties. Little bastard."

Winry turned, rested her hands on the oven handle, and leaned back against the stove. "So what's in the bag?" she asked.

"I assumed I would have to ransom my pajamas," he explained as he reached into the bag. "My intention was to pick up a bottle of wine, but it occurred to me that you wouldn't appreciate that." Winry smiled. "Instead, you get early pregnancy essentials."

That was one of the sweetest things Winry had ever seen.

Mustang produced a purple cabbage, a wicker quart of strawberries, a jar of pickles, and a small glass bottle with a white powder inside. Winry approached her kitchen table to inspect his offerings. She held up the cabbage. "For iron," Mustang said. Winry traded the cabbage for a strawberry, which she sank her teeth into with relish. "Vitamin C," the General added. When Winry gestured to the pickles skeptically, Mustang said, "You will crave the strangest things." She lifted the glass bottle to her eyes and began to read the label. "It's a tonic for nausea, which I'm sure you're familiarizing yourself with."

Winry gave him a weary, wide-eyed look that said, Am I ever. After setting down the bottle, Winry put her hands on her hips and evaluated the loot. She narrowed her eyes and nodded. "I think this is close to a fair trade for your PJ's."

"Oh?"

"Mmm-hmm," Winry said. "First you've got to eat my cooking and convince me you like it."

"If your cooking is anything like your coffee..."

Winry scowled and pointed a finger at him. "The preggers gift basket was a good start, but you're fading fast, buddy."

Mustang laughed.

x

x

x

They talked like normal people over dinner. Winry paused a few times, took a figurative step back, and marveled at it. She could picture her emotional doppelganger standing behind them, her hands planted on her hips, her head cocked to the side, and her mouth hanging open in a long Huh? But it wasn't even something Winry could think long about because she kept forgetting that it was odd, kept forgetting to notice it. And then she would blink and think, Holy cow, it just happened again.

It helped that Mustang was funny. Really freaking funny. Winry caught herself once or twice, a hand over her solar plexus, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open and guffawing. It had been a very long time since her gut had hurt like that. After the doozy the last seventy-two hours had been, Winry thought she had more than enough pressure built up in her to keep her bursting like that all night.

He told her about getting his doctorate. "There's nothing like a panel of wealthy geniuses twice your age who are actively trying to undermine you and your research to remind you that you are, in fact, their bitch." He talked some about the fringe benefits of being in the military. "I was typically guaranteed at least a phone number when I'd mention something about being the youngest state alchemist in history. It's not nearly so flattering now to explain that I used to be the youngest until I was showed up by a twelve-year-old." He even touched on having a Madam for a mom. "Yes, well, birthdays are always a gamble for me."

He wasn't always funny, though.

"What do you think it is about alchemy that makes alchemists so crazy?" Winry asked before slurping a slice of leek off her spoon.

"Certified or not?" Mustang said.

"Doesn't matter. All of them. What's the deal with them?"

Mustang began to laugh so hard he had to set down his spoon and cover his eye.

"What?" Winry snapped. She could tell when she was being laughed at, and with someone like Roy, that was most of the time.

He gave himself time to finish and then breathe a little before he looked at her and asked, "What is the deal with them?"

"No! I'm serious. I've always wondered, and I don't think Edward can be objective enough to answer."

"I'm flattered you think I can," Mustang began and then thoughtfully cast his gaze off to the side. He sighed. "I think alchemy is for men who need more control than they can have naturally. Perhaps it is not alchemy that makes alchemists crazy but the reverse."

Winry paused a pensive moment. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Alchemy's first principle is equivalent exchange, correct?"

"You get what you give. That's about the extent of my grasp of alchemy," Winry admitted.

"Well, you can stop there because equivalent exchange is fallacious. It's not meant to be a binding law but a jumping-off point, and too many alchemists take it to heart."

Winry furrowed her brow. "Equivalent exchange makes sense to me."

Mustang considered for a moment an example to use. He then sat up straight in his chair and rested his elbows on the table. "Take, for instance," he began, "My left eye."

She hesitated before saying, "Okay."

"Do you know how I lost it?"

Winry nodded. "Al and I went to your decoration ceremony." The ceremony had drawn a bigger crowd than the Central Symphony Orchestra. Alphonse and Winry had received invitations that set them in reserved seating on a platform right next to the stage. Mustang, who, at the time, was still leaning heavily on a cane, had awarded a shining medallion on a purple ribbon, which he did not look elated to receive.

"Does that strike you as equivalent?" Mustang asked in a tone that let Winry know that it certainly did not strike him as such.

In the past, it had. But now when she thought of it with Roy sitting at her table and staring at her with his one remaining eye and that rigid black patch secreting the rest, she realized how absurd that notion had been. "No, it doesn't."

"Perhaps, for what I gave, I received the courtesy of not being tried for treason."

Then something occurred to Winry, and she blurted, "But, wait." Mustang waited, and Winry realized that she was about to step into something that was not her business, an abandoned battlefield still littered with landmines. "Maybe you personally didn't get anything, but everyone else did. You deposed the Fuhrer. You started the process that would reinstate the Senate and representation of the people, and you ended the war. You know that, right? You didn't exchange anything. You sacrificed it." Winry swallowed hard. She could get away with that sort of speech with Edward, but she wasn't sure if Mustang would be as generous.

"Perhaps," Mustang said as he kept his gaze leveled on Winry. She couldn't tell if he was offended or not. "But it's a bitter comfort."

Winry chewed her lip a moment. "I don't suppose anyone ever thanked you, did they?"

"Other than the ceremony that shut down the parade grounds?" Mustang did not make it sound like that was much.

"No, I mean, did anyone ever say it to you?"

His stare was starting to unnerve her, and Winry knew that either she was affecting him or she was digging herself in deeper and deeper.

Mustang thought for a long moment. While much of his recovery was an opiated blur, he imagined he might remember it if someone had. He certainly would have remembered it if Riza had. "Not to my knowledge. I'm certain it was implied, however."

"Well, thinking it is nice and all, but unless you've learned to read minds with alchemy, thinking it isn't the same."

Mustang did not particularly want to consider it. He did not want to consider that perhaps, in all those long weeks of arduous convalescence, no one had given him that simple yet profound courtesy. And if so, why the hell had that never bothered him? Was it possible that he simply did not expect anyone to? Mustang suddenly felt rather like he might vomit up all the soup Winry had just fed him.

Winry knew when he stood up from her table without saying anything that she had pushed him too hard. She couldn't get away with it. Not yet, and after that evening, perhaps not ever. As he sank down onto her couch, Winry could have slapped her hand hard against her forehead. She wondered if perhaps this was how he felt when he compared her to a call-girl earlier that day. Like sometimes they could fool each other into thinking they could associate like friends. And the weight of their history, when lifted, made them feel closer than they were.

"I'm sorry, Roy," she hazarded as she followed him to the couch and sat down with some distance between them.

She wanted to tell him she was an idiot. She wanted to explain how confused he made her. She wanted to lay it out right there and tell him that she was pretty much invested in trying to be his friend now and that she wondered if he was the same and that she would feel so much better if this was as difficult for him as it was for her.

He didn't accept her apology. And, at that point, Winry realized that he had probably making up his mind as to whether her friendship was worth putting up with her.

"I'm pushy and nosy and about as tactful as a three-year-old," Winry went on. "And Edward lets me get away with being overbearing too much, I guess. I've gotten too used to it."

He still said nothing but continued to look at her, his face blank. When it started to seem that he wasn't even trying, Winry got a little frustrated. "You really confuse me, you know, because sometimes it seems like we're friends enough for me to... to," Winry paused to brace herself, "I just don't know where the boundary lies."

"You're being overbearing," Mustang intoned. When she looked at him, she could see the mockery deep in his well of an eye.

"I know that! But sometimes that's the only way you can get stuff done when you're dealing with alchemists."

That made Mustang smile.

"And now you're laughing at me!" Winry threw her hands up in the air. "You know, when you said I had you pegged this morning, I thought you were joking." Winry meant it, perhaps, sixty percent good-naturedly. Mustang took it that way, though. Or, at least, he chose to.

Scowling, Winry grumbled, "Thanks for sacrificing your eye for the greater good, asshole."

"You're welcome," Mustang replied, silent laughter still lacing his words.

And then, right then, when the veil between them seemed thinnest, Winry felt emboldened. And she thought, if there ever were a time when she could get away with telling him what she wanted to tell him, it was now. She'd been carrying something around for him for weeks now, and before Winry could really think about it, it was spilling out of her mouth: "I've got something I've been meaning to say to you ever since you helped me get Edward home from my office." Mustang watched her and waited. And there was no backing out. "I've realized that the," Winry paused and willed the words out, "the order to execute my parents came from a commanding officer. Someone above you. The order could have been passed down to anyone. Why it," she had wanted so badly to get through her piece without getting emotional, but Winry could feel the restriction in her throat, the stinging in her eyes. She breathed deep. "Why it was given to you, I don't know."

"It was a test," Mustang explained. "And I passed."

"It was cruel," Winry snapped, her voice growing wet and thin. "It was cruel and... and senseless. And it shouldn't have come to you." Winry could feel the eyes of that photograph on her mantel, and she hoped to God that this was what they wanted. "And," she hesitated to breathe, "and I'm sorry that it came to you. I'm so sorry that you had to be the one to do it. I've tried to imagine—"

She felt choked, like she was drowning.

"I've tried to imagine what it was like, and I couldn't. It was too overwhelming to... to think of how hard it must have been."

Mustang just stared at her.

Winry put a hand on her sternum as though to press her heart back into her body. "And I'm so sorry," she managed, "that grief is easier to bear than guilt."

Before Winry could think to react, Mustang pulled her into a fierce embrace. He cinched his arms tight around her shoulders, and Winry could only rest her hands on his ribs, feeling the crisp fabric of his shirt under her fingers. She wept freely now, for both of them.

When he released her, Mustang held her at arm's distance and lowered his face so that he was looking her hard in the eyes. Winry could see his beetle-black eye searching her face, boring in deep.

"Don't ever apologize to me again," he demanded and gave her a firm shake. "I don't deserve your empathy."

Winry shook her head. She put her hands on his cheeks, one coarse with a day's worth of stubble, the other hidden behind his patch. "Of course you deserve my empathy."

The impulse struck them both simultaneously. When they would look back, neither could completely take responsibility for it, but both were to blame, along with the smiling eyes of Winry's parents, watching from the mantel, long dead but ever influential. They met half-way, Winry clinging to Roy's face as he kissed her desperately. And she reciprocated. He buried his hands in her hair and held her like a man holds a precipice.

The only sources of awareness Winry felt, as Mustang seized her waist and dragged her into his lap, were their points of intersection. Winry was viscerally aware of the feeling of his mouth on hers, his hands under her skirt, his erection pressing against her inner-thigh. Soon, when he was trailing kisses down her throat and Winry felt her head rock back on her neck like the joint was fatigued, she closed her eyes, listened to her breath, and tried to distinguish the boundary between them. But, once more, she could not. She felt she was blurring into him, through her fingers in his shirtfront, her knees against his hips. Whose hands were on her face, her shoulders, her sides? Whose skin was on whose? She felt dizzy, the blood in her head thin and fast. She felt her stomach high in her body, her heart in her throat like someone had turned off the gravity in her, and if not for Mustang's hands gripping her hips, she might float away like a balloon aching for the sky. She felt him slip his hands under her shirt, his palms splayed over her ribs. He gripped her hard now, pulled her severely to his chest.

Winry heard him breathing hard, felt his exhalations on her cheek. His hair between her fingers, thin and soft—not thick like Ed's. His hand on her chest, palming her left breast fervently—Edward was always so careful with his right hand. His eyepatch under her fingers where his skin should be.

Edward had never thrilled her like that, had never strummed her like an over-tight instrument. Each touch was another pluck, and she was ready to sing under Mustang's virtuoso hands.

But Edward—he materialized behind her eyelids where, only a moment before, darkness had enveloped her—Edward. Edward. Edward?

Winry put her hands on Mustang's shoulders and pushed back harshly. She held her head back, her chin titled up, and looked at Mustang with petrified eyes, her mouth frozen and slack and still thrumming with circulation.

"What are we doing?" Winry breathed.

Mustang blinked and reality rushed in like a tide. He became aware of her under his hands, her weight against him.

She flipped off his lap in an instant and sat with her feet flat on the floor, her hands bunched between her knees, and stared at her coffee table. Too many thoughts fired simultaneously for Winry to snatch on to one. She had kissed Edward's boss, the executioner of her parents, Brigadier General Roy Mustang. She had let another man touch her. She had never felt like that before. She had betrayed Edward, even cheated on him. Was that cheating, a kiss? Granted it was a very premonitory kiss. Roy certainly seemed to know what his intentions were.

Winry looked at him. What were his intentions?

The girl looked terrified, and while Mustang had done worse than to take advantage of a young, pregnant girlfriend of a subordinate, at the moment, he couldn't think of when. He swallowed, schooled his expression, his breathing. "I apologize," he said, watching her watch him. "A momentary lapse in judgment."

She didn't look convinced.

Mustang leaned to his right and put his elbow against the armrest of the couch. He pressed his mouth to the crook between his thumb and forefinger briefly before turning back to Winry. "I haven't many phenomena in my life," he said. "But I consider your friendship one of them."

She was waiting for him to fix it, looking to him to explain to her what had just happened, and Mustang was hard-pressed to figure it out himself.

"If I've jeopardized that—"

"No, no," Winry interrupted, shaking her head and putting up her hands. The urge to lay a hand on his knee, to roll back into his embrace was powerful, like a sort of gravity pulled her closer. She willed herself to look away, keep her distance. "That was," she began. It was what? The most galvanized by a man she had ever felt, as though he had touched her not with his hands but with live wires? The first time someone had made her head spin? A mistake? Yes, that's it. A mistake. "I shouldn't have done that."

Mustang saw her stare hard at her knees, saw the color washed out of her face. And he began to laugh at her austerity. She flicked her eyes up to him. "You look like you're requesting a stay of execution."

Winry glared. Mustang climbed to his feet, still chuckling.

"I don't think it's funny," she snapped.

"I can tell."

Winry punched at the cushions of her couch and stood as well. She felt like she had been sitting there, her heart in her lap, trying to interpret the inscription around the outside. And for a moment there, he had seemed equally unsettled. But that was gone now. Like smoke through a cracked window. And she wondered how he could be so okay.

Winry watched him head for the door, and she was not certain what to say. She wanted to be grateful to see him go, to put him in a room away from her. But was that the resolution? Or was it just his resolution?

"General," Winry said, and only after she said it did she realize that it was her own way of punishing him. Mustang turned to her, and Winry could see that he sensed it, too. She marched up to him, stared at him hard, her head tilted up farther than she was used to. "You don't want to jeopardized anything? Then don't blow me off."

He set a hand on her upper arm, his fingers applying just enough pressure for Winry to know that she had gotten his attention. "I apologize," he intoned.

So that's how he did it, Winry thought. He wasn't better at taking it all in stride than she was. He was just a better faker.

"So what now?" she asked because Winry was never good at pretending. She was good at laying it all out on a platter between them, at wringing answers out of people, at making someone uncomfortable enough to take her seriously.

A little part of her was ready to be strummed again, wanted it, and that part sang so loudly. She knew that if Mustang even inched his fingers toward those strings, she couldn't resist.

"Are we," Winry began. She sighed and shrugged. "Could we be friends like normal people? You know, you just be Edward's boss, and I just be Edward's girlfriend, and that's that?"

She watched her words run through him, his mind processing it. "I think it would be quixotic to try."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Winry didn't realize that she was stealing quick, expectant glances at his mouth until he had realized it, too.

Then Mustang laughed at her, kissed her forehead through her bangs, and clapped her on the shoulder again. "I'll see you around," he said, one hand on the doorknob. "Thanks for dinner."

Winry nodded and understood. "Good night, General," she said. "I'll lock up behind you."

Once she had heard him leave through the front door, Winry gave it a few minutes and then went downstairs to do as she had said.