After she had eaten, Chrollo had taken himself to sleep. He had done as she did, taking a pallet and layering it with trapping from around the warehouse. It seemed long abandoned, this place where the vestiges of the past had been forgotten. Pieces from past shows were kept here, from what Winry could deduce. She had found old mirrors, platform stages that some magician had dropped through the trap door of, feather boas, racks of sequined costumes and gowns. Swords and pokers, lengths of rope. There was plenty to take to cushion a pallet for a bed. Chrollo laid his out beside hers and swiftly fell asleep.
Winry changed into her night clothes then burrowed herself under her blanket to watch the stars until her eyes could stay open no longer.
Then she dreamt.
Her sleep was restless. Her nightmares were filled with the sun and the moon, the shadows and light reaching for each other. They moved in a dervish circle, seeking each other out and dancing back, to and fro until her head spun and her legs tangled in the sheets.
"What could be more beautiful," she heard Kimblee whisper in her ear, and felt the weight of his hands on her shoulders. "—than doing work that puts your soul at risk, because that's what it means to be alive!"
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her breath quickening in the wake of the approaching eclipse. Then the night and light met in an eruption of flames, and Winry bolted upright in bed.
She didn't scream.
Her hand was over her mouth, but she didn't scream. Chrollo was awake all the same, watching her from his pallet with silent interest. Winry could feel him evaluating her. She lowered her trembling hand from her lips.
"What wakes you?"
"I dreamt of a friend," she murmured, her eyes wandering to the window and the crescent sliver of moon shining through the pane.
Kimblee had been more than a friend though, hadn't he. He had been Ed and Al's enemy, and her lover. They had been conspirators. Would she have made those same decisions if Ed had told her the truth? She couldn't help but wonder, though, why she dreamt of him now after so long.
"Hisoka?" Chrollo asked.
To that Winry let out a curt laugh. "Hisoka doesn't have friends. Not even me."
"Nor us."
He meant the Troupe, and he would be correct. He'd told her what had transpired in Yorknew City — Hisoka had been largely absent for the duration, uninterested in what business they had been conducting until it had left an opening for him to confront Chrollo. Winry remembered the day she, too, had realized that Hisoka's involvement with her hadn't been about her at all. She, too, had been nothing but a means to an end. Winry couldn't even bring herself to feel hurt by it because it was so completely true to who she had learned Hisoka was. Would Hisoka have her back if she ever needed it, if there was nothing in it for him? There was a knot of doubt in her chest.
"I'd like to fight you."
Winry turned to Chrollo, brows furrowed in confusion. "Why?"
"Whether you or him deny or accept the fact, you are his protege. I think it's only natural for me to thus want to fight you."
"But you have no Nen," she objected.
"I am perfectly capable of sparring without it," he shrugged. "Although I wouldn't want you to restrain yourself from using your Nen ability because of it."
He wanted to see her ability. Illumi had warned her against letting Chrollo see her Nen ability, lest he steal it for himself. She knew some of the conditions for him to take it so she should be able to avoid that. Furthermore, if Chrollo had no Nen then he wouldn't be able to take it from her to begin with.
"This way then," she invited, rolling off her pallet. Chrollo followed suit, and let her lead the way through the warehouse.
There was a corner where the previous occupants had pushed together a line of raised stage platforms with trapdoors, and she led him up the precarious makeshift stairs she'd built from crates and boxes. Winry crossed to the far end of the stage, eight feet above the ground, as Chrollo reached the landing. Winry watched as he took a dagger from his pocket — the same dagger from Yorknew City — and set it aside. She mirrored him, lying her gun on a box nearby. He carefully undid the buttons of his vest, folding it in half and placing it near his dagger, before rolling up the sleeves on his shirt to expose his forearms.
"Now then."
The fine hair on the nape of her neck rose as he squared his shoulders, preparing for her onslaught. He'd never seen her Nen ability in person, only heard of it through Machi's report. She inhaled a slow breath, her heartbeat leveling itself as she made the first move.
Winry ducked at the last moment, dropping to the ground and sweeping Chrollo's legs out from under him as he was still raising his arms to block her. He didn't land on his back the way she'd expected — he caught himself and rolled backward, evading the heel she brought down where he had been a moment before. He was back on his feet already and she was still on the ground. Winry rolled away as Chrollo leveled a front kick on her. It bought her a moment for her to get to her hands and knees, but Chrollo was already there. He kicked her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, then brought his elbow down on her spine when the momentum of his hit sent her flying upward.
Her vision flashed white, but she reached out with a hand, dragging her fingertips across his leg.
Chrollo leapt away from her, but she saw the translucent gleam of blood on her nail. He paused to bend and touched the place she had sliced him, his grey eyes narrowing, only to widen as he drew his fingers back, covered in blood.
"Fascinating," he marveled. "And you can reverse it?"
Winry didn't answer as she got back to her feet, moving into a narrow stance with her hands raised. The very corners of his lips slipped up into a mild smile.
"Who told you about my Skill Hunter Hatsu?" he asked, straightening his back.
"Illumi," she admitted, and his eyebrows raised.
"He told you that when you called to arrange the assassination of the Ten Dons for me?"
"No." Her leg kicked upward at his face, and he deflected her with his forearm.
"When?"
"Illumi accompanied me to Amestris a few months ago," she admitted in a gasp as she launched her other leg at him. Chrollo's head jerked away, narrowly avoiding the blow. She landed solidly on her feet, careful not to give him her back. "He was surprised when I called on your behalf."
Winry jerked away as he advanced on her, deflecting each other's hits though his landed with more frequency than her own, though she peppered in hits with her ability. She grimaced when he struck her across the face once, retaliating with her Hatsu. He blocked her from hitting his face, but she heard him let out a hiss of pain as blood blossomed from a fresh gash on his forearms. She lunged forward into the opening, slamming the sole of her foot squarely into his solar plexus. Chrollo stumbled backward, not dropping his arms. Winry slid forward, ducking beneath them, and pressed her fingertips against the soft flesh under his jaw. He paused, grey eyes dropping down to look at her.
"If you used your Hatsu for every strike," he said, his breath uneven from exertion, "your opponents would be sliced to ribbons."
"That's one potential outcome," she agreed.
Chrollo let his arms fall to his sides, "The basis of your combat techniques are solid — Hisoka has taught you well. And your Hatsu allows the advantage that every strike you make will do damage, regardless of accuracy. Very useful to level the field against more skilled opponents during hand-to-hand."
Winry laid her hand over the gash on his left forearm and closed her eyes. She felt the wound stitching itself shut under her touch. Chrollo wiped the blood on his shirt then evaluated his limb. There was only a thin, silvery scar as evidence anything had happened.
"Fascinating," he repeated again quietly. "And this is the same ability you used to seal the warehouse?"
"It's harder to use in that manner," Winry admitted. "Flesh is easiest. The doors and windows are metal to metal. Once it becomes more complex, with gears and levers, it begins to falter, and I cannot make something from nothing. Equivalent exchange, in a way."
"Equivalent exchange?" Chrollo asked.
She hesitated. She could tell him...She could warn him about Hisoka's alchemy. But, if she did that, it felt as though she would be betraying the secrets of her country. That Hisoka even knew felt like treachery. Winry only shook her head.
"Something changed in you," he said as she healed his right arm, then began to address all the smaller injuries she'd scattered across him. "When Machi arranged for us to meet, you said you'd help us, even if it meant blood needed to be spilled. I could see some reservation in your eyes then — but when you arrived in Yorknew City it was gone. What changed?"
Winry brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear as she knelt, touching the wound on his leg. Silence settled over them, but he prevailed over her as it lingered on.
"When Illumi accompanied me back to Amestris, something terrible was happening in my country. We had to fight. Then, when I returned..." Her voice trailed off. Chrollo offered a hand to help her to her feet, but she ignored it, pushing herself up on her own. "I hadn't known it, but Hisoka had Illumi abduct the man responsible for killing my parents. He would have been forgiven and set free otherwise." Her eyes closed. She felt her lower lip tremble, and her heart raced at the memory of that night. "I killed him. I'd had the opportunity taken from me over and over, and doing it...spilling his blood..."
Her fingers curled, and the thought set her teeth. At last she whispered, "I felt free. Unjudged, unbridled. For the first time in my life, I felt awake."
"And that doesn't frighten you?"
Winry thought of Ed, and his morals. How many times had clinging to those morals put his life at risk? How many times had those morals put her life at risk, and everyone else around them? What about those times she had put herself in the line of danger just because of fear of hurting how Ed looked at her?
"Why should it frighten me?" she asked in a breathy whisper. "I'm not bound to what I left behind in Amestris anymore. I've been set free."
