Someone touched her shoulder, and Winry slammed her head against the wall as she violently startled awake. Her hands went to the fresh, tender spot and moaned softly. Now that she was awake, she could feeling the bite on her arm again.

"Be careful," Hisoka's voice whispered. "It took hours for me to calm down without you enticing me again so soon. What are you doing here?"

Her eyes fluttered opened, and it took her a moment to find his silhouette in the dark hallway. She should be scared — a few weeks ago, she would have been. A few weeks ago she had lived in perpetual fear of his mere presence. It was exhausting, however, to maintain a state of sustained panic. Fright came in waves now instead, and she was aware the worst had passed. What had transpired downstairs had been the wave breaking on the rocks, and now the water had receded back out to sea, leaving her sore and unhappy.

"I expected you to come back."

"Hmh. This isn't where I told you to go."

"I was more concerned about you reconsidering my opinion on whether you should kill Izumi, rather than you reconsidering if you wanted to kill me."

Hisoka took her hand and drew Winry up to her feet. His skin was cool, and his hands were calloused and rough. The black surrounding them was complete, and she hastily drew her fingers out of his grasp and instead put her hand against the wall to find her bearings. She felt the frame of Izumi's doorway, and knew where she was then. Winry took a blind step in the direction of her room, not even hearing her own feet she was so quiet, while keeping her hand against the wall and guarding her injured arm with her body.

"You shouldn't put so much faith in me." She flinched when he brushed a lock of her hair back behind her ear — and immediately decided that she did not prefer the dark if it meant that he could see her, but she couldn't see him in return. She sensed, rather than saw, him loom over her. "This is the second time in a matter of days that we've been in that predicament. "

"Stop instigating situations," Winry hissed, jabbing her finger against his chest.

"Come to my room," Hisoka invited solemnly, and Winry's face immediately puckered, "so I can make amends for my behavior."

"Absolutely not!"

"Your room instead?"

Before Winry could object, he put a hand on her shoulder and steered her down the hallway. He opened the door and nudged her in, where she found the oil lamp was already burning. There was a pitcher of steaming water waiting on the desk beside a bowl, a square of soap, and cloth.

"Sit."

That was not an invitation. Winry hesitated anyway until he put his hands on the back of the chair and pulled it out for her. He wasn't smiling. His face was drawn tight and serious, but there was something off. He tapped his hand against the chair, and all at once she saw this for what it really was. So Winry sat. She didn't resist as he drew her arm toward him to survey the bite mark he'd left.

"Hmh."

She winced as he cleaned the wound, but didn't pull away. His face stayed serious while he worked, his form of apology. The bite was deep — she could see where each tooth had punctured her skin. When he was done cleaning it, however, he didn't cover it with bandages. Instead he took a kerchief from his pocket and held it up.

"Watch," he whispered. Winry locked her eyes on it, feeling like she was waiting for a magic trick. Hisoka sighed and poked her head. "No. Watch."

Ah. He meant Gyo. So Winry focused her aura in her eyes and watched as he tossed the kerchief in the air.

It flew upward, then began to gently float down. She watched as he attached strands of bungee gum to each of its four corners, then realized that the bungee gum originated from her own arm. The cloth softly descended to land flush over her skin. How…odd. She could see his bungee gum, but couldn't feel it. Only the cloth.

Hisoka covered her arm with his palm, sliding his hand across the kerchief. Winry bolted upright out of her chair with a curse that made him chuckle throatily.

"Bungee gum is one of my Nen abilities — a Hatsu. This is my other." Winry touched her arm with trepidation, and found it to be smooth and unmarred, though it was still sore and tender to the touch. "This is texture surprise."

"How?"

"There are six aura types — enhancers, transmuters, emitters, conjurers, manipulators, and specialists."

"Conjuration is one of the six disciplines of Nen, wherein the user can manifest objects from their aura," he had told her.

"Which are you?"

"I'm a transmuter. I can change my aura to mimic something else."

"Like the chewing gum, and…skin." He nodded, closing his eyes and smiling. "How do you decide what aura type to become?"

"You don't. Your aura type is predestined — but there is a simple test to determine it, when a Nen user is ready."

"When will I be?" Winry asked, despite herself. Her own inconsistency on the matter of Nen was unsettling, a constant cycle of hot and cold. She felt like she continued to stumbled forward into it despite swearing up and down she had no interest. It simply happened. Naturally.

Hisoka unceremoniously crossed to her window and unlocked it, then dumped the water he'd used to clean her wound out. He set the empty bowl on the desk again, and poured fresh water from the pitcher to fill it again.

He turned to her then with a smile on his face that made her frown. But he paid no mind to that, instead pushing his sleeves up to expose his forearms then making a show of displaying his empty hands.

"Nothing to see here," he whispered before touching the collar of her shirt.

"Hey!" Winry batted his hand away as his fingertips slipped a knuckle-length beneath the material, but when he drew his hand back a single green leaf came with it. She watched, lips parted, as he laid the leaf on the surface of the water.

"Now." He gestured at the bowl. "Put your hands on either side without touching then perform Ren. How the leaf reacts to you will tell us which aura type you are."

She cast a long, skeptical glance in his direction before putting her hands on either side of the bowl and focusing. Then she focused her Nen onto it.

The leaf floated briskly across the bowl, as though it were a ship with a propeller. Hisoka made a sound of satisfaction, and Winry looked up at him.

"You're a manipulator."

"You…You've said that before," she said, laying her hands palms down on the desk. "At Heavens Arena. You said then that you predicted I would be a manipulator. How?"

"Magicians never share their secrets."

"What happened to your water?" Winry asked. "What happens when a transmuter uses Ren for the test?"

Hisoka leaned past her to put his hands around the bowl, and she felt his Ren. Just a whisper of it. At first she wasn't sure why he was dampening it, then she realized if he did anything too aggressive it might wake Izumi by proxy. She waited, holding her breath, to see what would happen—

Nothing did.

Winry glanced up at him, raising a brow.

"Taste it."

She cautiously dipped her finger into the water, then touched it to her tongue. Her face immediately shriveled — lips pressing into a rosebud, forehead creasing, cheeks sucking in.

"Oh gosh, that's so sour."

"Tomorrow I will spend time with you before I work with Izumi, to discuss more about what a manipulator's abilities are," Hisoka said, lowering himself into a squat so that he was closer to her eye level. She sensed his silent demand for him to meet his gaze, but Winry averted her eyes to the window. She could see the pinkening of dawn beginning to creep across the world. "Unless you intend to return to Rush Valley tomorrow, in which case this will be my final farewell."

"I need your word," Winry whispered. He waited for her to continue. "What happened tonight…It can't happen again, Hisoka. You made decisions on my behalf that you had no right to make. You kept secrets from me. You frightened me. You hurt me." Winry swallowed hard, closing her eyes as a shudder ran down her spine, remembering his hand around her throat and feeling him against her back. "I need your word that this won't happen again."

"How foolish. You should know I cannot promise any of that, mink."

"I need—"

"I will keep secrets from you. I will make decisions for you when I deem necessary, and I will undoubtedly frighten you — there is no question about that. But I assure you if I do it would be for your own good, whether you realize it or not. Now as for hurting you, you're very quick but you aren't worldly, so allow me to enlighten you."

Winry opened her mouth to argue, but Hisoka laid his palm across her lips, silencing her. His voice dropped to a whisper.

"I derive pleasure when I am challenged by worthwhile opponents. So every time you strike me, it's as though you are taking my hand—" The fingers of his free hand laced between hers, and he tightened his grip until she gasped. "—and leading me to a place that I don't enjoy leaving." Hisoka warned, "What you need is to keep your hands to yourself. Perhaps your alchemist allows you to lay hands with no repercussions, but every time you push me it becomes harder and harder to bring myself back from that place because the idea of you struggling..." His eyes closed in bliss, and Winry bit her lip, looking away. "Be enraged with me, but the next time you raise your hands to me, Winry, I will take it as an invitation."

His hand left her mouth to slide down over her throat, then lower to touch the top of her sternum before falling away. Hisoka's amber eyes were sharp and bright, and his meaning was perfectly clear.

"So do you accept my terms and agree to stay?" Hisoka asked. "Or shall I say goodbye?"