Brief Commentary:
Well, I have officially gotten the whole story line planned out...and just for your information, RNFYE will be having a SEQUEL. -grin- All the stuff I want to do is too long for one story, so I'll stretch it out into another one. After the second story, however, I plan to end it there (but who knows, perhaps my imagination will stretch it into a trilogy). Oh well. Seems like I'll be working on this for a while...I'm like, only one third of the way through. Not to mention that this is...CHAPTER TWENTY? Holy hell! -stares- Wow...

Reasons Not For Your Ears
Chapter Twenty

To say that the remainder of the day went smoothly for Winry was an overstatement. After being late for her next class, it was then that she discovered that she had a test and the homework she had done the night before had been left at home. For the period after that, she was forced to take a pop quiz, and had a feeling that she had failed miserably. As she closed her locker door at the end of the day, Winry wasn't too enthusiastic about going home, either. Not with an adolescent, potty-mouthed boy slouching around her apartment, and with a nosy grandmother bothering her all the time. With a sigh, she turned the dial back to '0,' and turned to walk towards the entrance, waving good bye to Alphonse as he ran ahead of her to join the retreating back of Mei Chan. Paninya grouchily brushed past her, a cloud of anger still drifting around her head as Winry stepped quickly out of the way.

At the very least, it was warm outside, she reflected as she exited the school, eyes drifting automatically over towards the direction of the bike rack. Her feet sub-consciously leading her there, Winry focused on what she would be doing upon her arrival home. Well, obviously, Edward's bandages would have to be changed, and she would have to test his left arm for the correct responsiveness. After that, homework needed to be taken care of, and she had planned to call Paninya and ask about her uncommon behavior. Although she knew better than to expect anything more than an irritated snap in response, Winry was still rather curious. Hoisting her bag up onto her shoulder, she pushed up the kick stand and hoisted herself onto her bicycle, pressing her feet to the pedals and navigating away from the bike rack.

The ride home that day was ridiculously long compared to the one she made that morning; traffic was horrible at almost every block heading towards her house.
Jeez, what the hell is up with these people? she inwardly growled, glaring as a large crowd of pedestrians stepped onto the crosswalk, moving at what seemed to be a sluggish pace. Although Winry was secretly glad that her arrival home was being delayed, this was seriously drawing the line. Riding on the road had quickly become less hazardous than the sidewalk, as people were jostling endlessly together and were quite capable of knocking her off of her bike - she wouldn't be able to avoid them, anyway.

By the time her apartment pulled into view, Winry was readily exhausted and irritable, her butt also feeling particularly sore. After her bike was almost thrown back into the storage garage, she tore her way up the stairs to open the door, which, to her surprise, was locked. Grumbling, Winry fished a spare key out of her book bag, inserting it and twisting it roughly until she heard a resounding 'click.' Pulling it out and putting it back into her bag, she groped for the knob again, turning it and stepping inside, announcing loudly,
"Baa-Chan, I'm home!"

Silence.

There was no answering grunt, no smart comment, no offer of food...nothing.

Peering around, Winry stiffened when she saw that Edward was not on the couch; nor was her grandmother within the vicinity of the kitchen, as she would normally be. It was dark inside, the light drifting in through the blinds and the open door casting long shadows on the tiles. The silence was so thick that it felt suffocating.
"Baa-chan?" she tried again, suddenly timid. Again, there was no response.

Shutting the door behind her, Winry slipped out of her shoes and ventured inside, deciding it would be best to check every room first before jumping to conclusions. Obviously there was no one in the foyer or the kitchen/living room. Padding cautiously open the bathroom, she slowly pried open the door, to reveal nothing. Licking her lips, Winry next tried the tiny extra room they generally used for personal storage. Nothing. Pinako's bedroom. No one. She even tried the hall closet, with the same results. Swallowing, she turned instead turned towards her bedroom door, the only bedroom with window directly facing the streets outside. Suddenly nervous, she twisted the knob and pulled it open. There was no one there.

There was nothing out of the ordinary, at all.

Unless you counted the shattered glass fragments littering the carpet and the traces of dried blood left behind on the jagged remains of the window.

Winry couldn't help it. Really. She couldn't stop the loud, breathy gasp accompanied with an "Oh my fucking God..." as she slumped to the floor, legs too weak to hold her up. What in the hell...? She allowed herself a few minutes to clear her mind, remembering to keep her breathing steady and her thoughts focused.
With an agonized glance at the shattered window, it was relatively easy for Winry to assume that Edward was no longer in the apartment. He had "escaped." But where was her grandmother? Had he done something to her to keep her from stopping him? According to her analysis of his nature, he could; rather easily and without remorse.

But had he ki-

"Winry?"
Her back shot ramrod straight.
"Baa-chan?" she yelped, jumping to her feet and running out towards the foyer. There her grandmother stood, with two shopping bags in her hands and a confused expression on her aged face.
"Winry? Where's the idiot?"
"I-I, oh my God, Baa-chan," she stumbled for words. "He-"
"Did he do something?" Pinako interrupted her sharply.
"He's g-gone, Baa-chan," Winry admitted finally, "He...got outside."
"What?" her grandmother growled. "Goddammit, he is a fucking moron! Isn't he aware that his wounds aren't fully healed yet?! He still is at risk for an infection! Damn it!"
She fumed for a few more minutes before she finally sighed and set the grocery bags on the narrow kitchen counter.
"Winry, help me put this stuff away," Pinako said briskly, as if intending to forget that there ever was an Edward. Complying, the younger Rockbell nodded, fishing inside the paper bags and pulling out a small container of strawberries. She shot her grandmother a puzzled look.
"He had complained about not getting strawberries himself - I figured that he should have his own damn strawberries so he wouldn't have to eat ours."
"O-oh."
Smiling weakly, Winry turned to the tiny refrigerator to open it and stuff the strawberries inside, not sure as to how all of her grandmother's groceries were going to fit in there...
As if reading her mind, her grandmother assured her,
"I just got more soup, mostly, seeing as we were nearly out and he would still have had to eat more of it."
She turned away to mutter not so quietly,
"That was a bad stomach wound he had on him, and not just from that boy beating him up."
Winry bit her lip and pulled a few cans of chicken broth from the bag, pretending she hadn't heard as she put them away.
That idiot, she thought bitterly as she reached into the bag again and pulled out two more cans, placing them accordingly on the cabinet shelf. Is he trying to kill himse-

The thought was immediately severed as she remembered the conversation she and Edward had had the day previous.
Maybe I wanted to die. Did you ever consider that?
That was what he said.
Did he mean it, though?
Winry decided to push the idea to the far reaches of her mind as she closed the cabinet door, the remainder of the soup cans having been put away.
Just don't think about it, she assured herself silently. He won't do anything too stupid...probably.
Inwardly, she smirked as random, ridiculous images of Edward 'attempting' (keyword: attempting) to commit suicide. Large clowns with water guns riding around on the backs of bears were involved. Winry couldn't stop a smile from spreading on her face before she mentally told herself to cut it out; she knew it was getting just plain stupid when marching dictionaries fresh from a boxing match had arrived to invade the scenario in her imagination.

"Anyway, Winry," her grandmother interrupted her train of thought. "Why don't you get started on your homework? Your smiling is starting to scare me."
Winry attempted to pull her face into a neutral expression, although a snort escaped her and she very nearly burst into a fit of giggles. Pinako gave her a strange look, eye brows raised, and repeated,
"Winry - homework?"
"Um, right," she covered her mouth, inwardly rolling her eyes at herself. What was with her? She had just been distraught over Edward less than a minute previous, and now she was trying to control a giggling problem.
Mood swings, much? the blonde teenager thought dryly as she ventured to the foyer where her book bag lay, discarded on the floor. Snatching it up, she nodded towards her grandmother as she passed through the kitchen/living room to reach her bedroom, where she dropped said bag on her bed and examined the glass littering the floor.

"Baa-chan?" Winry called out.
"What?" she heard her grandmother yell in response.
"I forgot to mention that he broke through...uh, my window to get out." She bit her lip as her attention focused on the pieces of glass stained with Edward's blood.
There was a loud groan in response, before she heard Pinako again.
"Next time you bump into him, tell him to fess up some cash - he is paying for that goddamn window!"
"Sure thing," she answered half-heartedly, stepping out into the hallway to get a broom and duct tape, mood fairly turned again. Rather than amused (in a frightening sort of way), she felt much more agitated, and, much to her annoyance, concerned.

Re-entering her room, Winry glanced out her shattered window, shivering as a cold breeze blew through it. The sun, already beginning to sink in the sky, glinted off of the surrounding buildings, casting an orange glow on the streets below. With a sigh, she muttered,
"What the hell are you doing out there, you idiot?"

Done! Finally...-breathy sigh- The updates will be weekly again from now on (until summer, if this continues for that long), sadly.