This chapter is, for all intents and purposes, late. I'm sorry! ^^' I'm having a crappy Monday, okay, don't hate me! I'll try not to make next chapter as late as this one was, but no promises. Also, I'm sorry if there are any typos. Point them out to me if you find them so I can fix it; I didn't have time to really proofread.

"Are you sure you want to do this? We don't have to go right now. We could come here later, when things have... cooled down a little."

Winry shook her head stubbornly. "No, no, no. I'm going to do this now. Now is as good a time as any. So stop asking me to second-guess myself, Ed."

"Pinako had wanted to be near her son," Luna said softly, interrupting Ed's fretting. (There was really no other word for it. It wasn't entirely his fault, of course—Ed had never been able to cope well with an emotional Winry, and the fact that tears had been silently tracking down her cheeks for the duration of their somber walk to the graveyard didn't help matters.)

Luna stopped at one of the rows of headstones and looked down the line so Winry would know which way to go, but she went no further than that. This wasn't her family, and she felt intrusive even coming as far as she had.

Winry understood Luna's hesitation and went ahead down the row. Ed clapped Luna on the shoulder and muttered his gratitude, then followed Winry and held her hand as she stopped in front of the freshest one in the row.

Winry knelt, letting his fingers slip through hers, and reached out to trace the letters with her fingertips, ever so lightly as if stroking a flower petal. She sighed wistfully. "It was coming eventually, right...?" she mumbled almost to herself. "She wasn't young."

Ed didn't kneel next to the headstone like she did, merely jammed his hands in his pockets and looked around, a casual stance to mask a serious moment. "You shouldn't justify it to yourself like that. No one deserves to die just because they're not young."

Winry was quiet, ignoring him, because as long as she told herself this had been inevitable, it didn't hurt as much. "It feels like losing my mom and dad all over again, you know?" She glanced to her left, where grass grew over two more Rockbells.

"Not a fun feeling," Ed agreed. His eyes traveled to another pair of gravestones in the near distance: Hohenheim and Trisha. Grass had already grown over the former. How long ago was it that he kicked the bucket, anyway? Feels like yesterday. "How long... did you plan on staying here?"

Winry didn't respond right away.

"Is that an 'I don't know'?"

Still nothing.

Ed sat down cross-legged on the grass in the three feet or so of space between Pinako's and someone else's grave. "If you're ignoring me, then I guess I'll just make myself comfortable and you can let me know when I'm no longer invisible." He glanced back at the end of the row. Knowing that she was superfluous, Luna had already gone.

Finally Winry found her voice, trembling in a floating octave that stuck higher than Edward could ever have dreamt of reaching in falsetto:

"I don't understand... if she's really in a better place... why does it have to hurt so much?"

There is no pain that poetry cannot comprehend. This was something that Luna knew to be fact, true as the staring fields of her tiny hometown, alone but never lonely.

However, there is such thing as pain that I cannot comprehend, she admitted to herself. This was also something Luna knew to be fact, true as the gold of Alphonse's eyes when she caught him at exactly the wrong moment, just as sadness beyond his years would dull that vibrant hue.

Luna's eyes were silver-gray, ice-blue in the sun, and despite the piercing shade of her irises Luna knew she was not and never would be able to look into someone's eyes and watch them suffocate on her pain. It was simply beyond her. And hopefully always will be.

After experiencing that exact sensation of breathless death when hearing Edward mutter that lifeless thank-you in the graveyard, Luna had taken her leave, to no one's notice.

She wasn't going back to her mother's house, and she wasn't going to the Moon, but when Luna visualized the place where she was going, her first thought was, home. Luna's home was not the place where her relatives were. It was the place where her family was.

Even if that family was broken and nigh unfixable, even if that family was little more than a bunch of hapless teenagers doing their best to care for a couple of little children who had lost everything, even if that family was so tied up in the thread of insanity and unhealthy romance of the hidden and unhidden varieties, even if that family was hanging on by the threads that tore them apart, it was still her family. Sometimes she felt as if she didn't belong. Sometimes she felt as if a day would never come when she would be unneeded. Sometimes she felt helpless. Sometimes she felt alone. Always she felt fatigued.

Maybe I'll just sit down by the road and nap a little like I always did.

No, wait, this road is too busy. I'll hop the fence and sleep in this field... no one will mind.

Oh, this field is on someone's property. Well, no matter, I'll just cut through it and sleep in the uncleared land behind ther-

...

Hours passed like tired but persistent horses, foaming and sweating and dragging on.

Ed had lain down and was staring at the sky unseeingly. At some point he seemed to notice the clouds. "It's going to rain," he warned.

"Good. This humidity is killing me," said Winry without interest.

"We'll get wet."

"Likely."

"Wanna go home?"

She sighed tiredly, then forced her legs to move and pull her body into a standing position. "I guess home is no worse than here."

"Hm," Ed grunted noncommittally, and they lapsed into a reflective silence as they retreated from sight of the graveyard.

"... Ed?" Winry said hesitantly after a minute.

"What?"

"I just wanted to say..." She trailed off and looked away.

"What? What did you want to say?" he asked, his interest piqued.

"Just that... well, what happened yesterday..."

There was only one thing she could mean, but Ed had no idea what she meant. "What about it?"

"It shouldn't have happened and... I'm sorry."

Ed gave her a blank look. "What for?"

"I was being stupid. It's my fault what happened. And I'm sorry."

"... I don't understand," he said finally.

"I was just using you. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it."

"You think I'm mad at you... because you kissed me?"

"It was a lot more than kissing," she mumbled, defensive at his tone.

"Okay, look." Ed stopped and grabbed her elbow to pull them both to a stop. Winry was looking down at her feet. "Look at me."

"Why can't you just accept my apology and move on?" she said sourly, refusing to look up.

"Look at me. Please." He grabbed her chin and tilted her head up to meet his eyes. "If you had done anything that I didn't want one hundred percent, I would have stopped you. So don't beat yourself up about nonissues, okay?"

"But you kept saying 'no' and 'stop' and I..." Winry bit her lip. "I forced you to." She looked down again.

"No, you didn't!" Ed said, laughing a little and kissing her hair. "You'd be hard pressed to find a man anywhere who would say no to a girl like you."

"You're trying to make me feel better," she accused.

"Well, of course I am. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm lying, now, does it?"

"Let's get going, I feel rain drops on my face." Winry turned away so they could start walking again. "You're just a suck up, that's all I'm saying," she continued.

"Eh, well, you're easy to please," Edward said nonchalantly.

When Ed and Winry got home it was raining pretty hard and their hair was plastered to their faces so that they looked like a pair of drowned rats... blond ones.

"I was worried you three would never make it home," Al joked. "It's almost eight o'clock, so dinner's already cold, but you're big kids so you'll deal. Better go get changed though."

"Us three?" Winry repeated.

"Sheesh, little bro, learn to count," Ed joked as he went to the sink, unbraided his hair, and literally started wringing it out. "Luna came home hours ago."

Winry went over and slapped his hands away from his hair. "You can't do that, stupid, it's terrible for your hair. You'll break the strands." She made a 'wait right here and don't move!' gesture, then left to go get a towel.

"What?" Al asked. "... You mean she isn't with you?"

"You mean she's not here?" Ed stopped messing with his hair and looked at Al with wide eyes.

"No..." said Al slowly. "Look, don't be alarmed yet. She might have just gone somewhere else and got caught in the rain."

"Where else would she have gone?" Winry asked as she came back into the kitchen with a towel in hand.

"I'm not sure, but I know where to look." Al grabbed an umbrella from the stand by the door and threw a jacket over his shoulders for good measure. "Guys, this might take a while. If I don't come back in... oh, let's say... three hours, then and only then should you start to worry. Okay?"

"Sure," said Ed, who was distracted by trying to swat Winry away as she fussed over his hair. "Three hours, got it."

Al left in a rush.

"Oh, come on, let me dry it. It's going to get all frizzy if you don't do something," Winry warned.

"My hair doesn't need this much fuss, leave me alone," Ed protested.

"Don't be so thick-skulled," said Winry as she finally got her towel close enough to his head to dry his hair.

"Hey, hey, hey!" He reached back and grabbed her wrists to stop her, then hesitated. "... That feels weird."

Winry grinned. "Does it really?" She had figured this out long ago, in elementary school, when the girls would braid and play with each others' hair: Having someone play with your hair is a very comforting and intimate thing.

"It feels... nice," said Ed slowly, struggling to articulate.

"My hairbrush is upstairs in my room, I think," she said to herself. "Should I go and get it?"

"No..." Ed mumbled. "Let's just both go up there, mm?"

Winry laughed. "You're really liking that, aren't you?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, turning a little bit pink. "No one's ever done that to me before," he said simply.

"Hmm, I wonder how long Al will really be gone," Winry mumbled with vague concern as they headed upstairs.