DISCLAIMER: I do not own FMA. I only own my own OCs. Oh, didn't I say once that I didn't want to write these anymore? I forget.

Fifteen

Ridel guessed that Dominic wouldn't be back until dawn, so he tasked Paninya with showing the guests to the cot room where automail patients stayed. There was enough room in there for all of them to sleep. And after the excitement of the day, Winry and Paninya merely crawled into the closest beds and fell asleep. Delilah was a bit slower to move; she was tired, but at the same time her mind was buzzing from what she had learned.

"Goodnight," Al wished as he followed Ed to the other end of the room. Ed was too busy yawning to say anything.

Delilah replied in kind and got into the empty bed beside Winry's. She put her head down on the pillow, but she simply stared up at the ceiling instead of closing her eyes. She could hardly hear the others snore over the sound of the storm outside. While Satera had been giving birth there had been claps of thunder, but now the only sounds were of the downpour and the wind, which was still nigh-on deafening.

She was unaware of how much time went by before she realized that she wasn't sleeping, and that there was a very specific reason for why she wasn't: she hadn't taken her medicine. And she hadn't taken her medicine because she had left it in her briefcase, which was back at the hotel.

Another reason was that she had to pee rather badly.

Quietly, she stood and took little time to exit the room and close the door behind her before she journeyed to find the bathroom. When she was done relieving herself, she happened to glance in the mirror and notice that she had neglected to clean up her own body after Satera had given birth. Her face was grimy with sweat and she had a smear of blood on her cheek. She took the time to wash her face in the sink and then emerged out into the hallway. She was about to go back to the patient room—though she highly doubted she would be able to fall asleep—when she heard a sound coming from Satera's room down the hall. Curious, Delilah padded to the doorway and peeked in through the crack in the door.

Satera was fast asleep in her bed, looking exhausted but peaceful all the same. Ridel was still awake, apparently, and was holding the baby carefully in his arms. The man was smiling at the soft noises that the baby emitted.

For a brief moment, Delilah was jealous of the child, but then she smiled, happy that these people were obviously elated at having brought life into the world. She couldn't help but feel proud that she, along with Winry, had been a help to them. Seeing the baby being so well-cared-for already instilled a warm, mothering instinct in her, and she remembered Satera's words about how the woman had once never thought a man would want to create a child with her. Delilah doubted that she would ever bear children, but all the same, the thought remained that perhaps, at some point, there was the smallest chance some man would want to have a child with her.

Once, she had hardly ever even considered the possibility of such a thing happening, but in a sense, she was free now, and perhaps a day would come when a boy would look at her twice instead of pretending not to have noticed her at all.

Delilah drifted away from the door, lost in her own thought, only to nearly run face-first into Winry at the entrance to the bathroom.

"Be careful, silly." Winry chuckled and reached out a hand to steady the younger girl, though she herself seemed a bit unsteady and tired. "If I were Al, you could've gotten a concussion."

"Sorry," Delilah apologized.

"Al was a bit worried that you were up, actually," Winry went on. "He asked me to check on you while I went to the bathroom; he doesn't want to accidentally wake anyone up with all his clanking. Though…he did seem to be worried. Did something happen in Central or something?" she asked seriously.

"Please. As if I'd want to do something unspeakable to someone disgusting and small like you."

Delilah shook her head to dispel her memory. She didn't want to worry Winry. "I left my medicine back at the hotel; it is hard for me to sleep without it." She felt guilty for not telling the mechanic the truth—admittedly, she hadn't lied, but then again, she hadn't answered Winry's question.

"Ah, I see." Winry scrunched up her face in thought. "Count sheep? I'm not sure what'll help. But if you don't mind, I'd like to go to the bathroom now. I want to get back to bed so I can be up early to ask Dominic to apprentice me again." With that, she disappeared into the bathroom.

Delilah would have had to be blind to not notice that Winry was doing everything she could to become apprenticed to the old mechanic, but it suddenly hit her that Winry could very well stay in Rush Valley. Of course, Winry would have to go back to Resembool, but Delilah had grown accustomed to the girl's friendship. If Winry was going to be away for whoever knew how long, then Delilah wanted to do something for her.

Delilah slipped away down the hall, intent on finding a place where she could perform a transmutation. She considered going outside, but then she remembered how hard it was raining; she didn't think she would mind getting wet as much as she would mind the fact that she wouldn't be able to draw a circle with all the water washing it away. She would have to settle for finding a quiet spot where she could make something, somewhere she wouldn't be found so that her gift to Winry would remain a surprise.

She wandered the bottom floor of the house until she found a spot that suited her needs: Dominic's private workspace. Silently, she entered the room and made to close the door, but she found that there was none. She wasn't bothered, since the room was in a far corner of the house and far away from where the others were sleeping. She drew a small, simple circle on the ground, taking care to keep the edges round and even. At this point, she hesitated.

She wanted to make something that Winry would use, not just some object to look at. She also didn't want to use the floor to make something, since she didn't own the house. In fact, the only things she had at the moment were her hat (which she had left in the patient room) and the clothes she was wearing—

Suddenly struck with a solution, Delilah moved from her crossed-legged position so that she was sitting on her knees, and she grabbed at the hem of her dress, making to pull it up over her legs, over her hips, over her—

A clanking sound alerted her to the arrival of Alphonse, and she paused, looking over her shoulder just in time to see the armor-boy enter her view through the doorframe. He was looking around the hall, but he glanced into the room and saw her.

He saw her.

Sitting there on the floor, her bare legs exposed, her plain underwear clearly shown, her still-wide-but-slimming waist uncovered. Nothing else but her startled face could be seen, and once he registered that, he spun around, sputtering apologies.

He was so flustered that he actually fell over onto the floor with a crash; luckily, the sound of the storm outside was too loud for the commotion to carry far. Still, the racket startled Delilah out of her stupor, and she had the decency to blush; her face darkened to a color reminiscent of a tomato. She dropped the hem of her dress and stood, hurrying to Alphonse's side and discovering that his head had fallen off and landed a few feet away. As he sat up, still yammering away, she hurried to retrieve it and put it back in the space between his shoulders.

"I-I was just worried that you were still up," he stammered, adjusting his head so that it would stay on better. He wasn't looking at her. "I d-didn't see anything," he lied. "I-I'm really sorry."

Delilah didn't really know what to do, so she just stood there; her usually quiet face was still a bit scrunched up in embarrassment. "It is okay. I was trying to transmute something for Winry," she explained quietly.

He glanced at her on and off for a couple moments before he seemed to (mostly) regain himself. "Oh. Uh, you were transmuting your dress?"

The blush was thankfully beginning to fade from her face. "Just a little bit of it. Transmuting the cloth—just changing its shape—is not hard; I made my own clothes."

Alphonse seemed intrigued. "Brother does that, too. What're you making?"

She hesitated. "It is a surprise."

"I won't tell anyone."

So she told him, and he agreed that it was a good idea. Then there was an awkward pause.

"Um…"

Alphonse realized himself. "U-uh, I'll go, uh, wait for you. Over there. Yeah." He rose from the floor and shuffled down the hall. Delilah watched him for a moment before she hurried back into the room. She hesitated again as she knelt beside her circle. She checked over her shoulder to make sure no one was there (not that she actually thought Alphonse would try to peek at her on purpose), and then she pulled off her dress and put it in the middle of the circle. She transmuted a small amount of the hem off her dress before putting it back on. She then transmuted the thread into Winry's present before slipping the item into her pocket and wiping up the chalk on the floor with her hands before dusting them on her dress.

"Did you make it?" Alphonse asked when she stepped out of the room and walked over to him. She nodded in response, and after a second he said, "Winry told me you were still up because you forgot your medicine."

It sounded a bit like he was chastising her, whether he meant to say it that way or not. "Well, I did not know that we were going to be spending the night here," she pointed out softly, feeling a bit put-off at herself at giving Alphonse cause to worry when he didn't need to. "If I had known, I would have brought my things."

Alphonse made to scratch his head. "Well, you should be tired after everything we did today. Can't you at least…try? I mean…" He paused, somehow seeming to grow smaller even though he was a hulking figure. "I-if you want to, uh, sleep inside me again, I wouldn't mind."

Delilah remembered how nice it had been to be surrounded and safe while she slept, but she shook her head and politely declined. "I do not think I will be able to get any sleep at all. I do not want to trouble you. Thank you, though. Besides, you are supposed to be wearing the armor for 'alchemy training,' are you not? What if they saw me get out of you?"

"You have a point," he said. "But please try your hardest to sleep, okay? I don't want you passing out again."

"I will."

()()()()()

True to her word, Delilah had tried her hardest to quiet her thoughts and fall asleep. She had managed to slip into a light doze for an hour or two, but when everyone else had started getting up, so had she. And currently, everyone was crowded into Satera's room to see the baby. Dominic had come back with the doctor not long ago; it was interesting to see the old man's soft side when faced with his grandchild.

"Both mother and child are in good physical condition," the doctor was saying. He turned to face Winry and Delilah. "The post-delivery process was handled well, too. Even adults get scared over being in charge of delivering a baby. You two're really something else."

Winry waved her arms, embarrassed at the praise. "W-what? Delilah here did most of the work."

The younger girl was shocked. "I would not have been able to do this all by myself, Winry! You helped a lot!"

Winry was still a bit red in the face at the praise, but she accepted it. "But if the little guy had come out on the day that he was supposed to, none of this trouble would have happened," she said, a little teasingly as she glanced at the newborn.

Alphonse chuckled. "He was probably born early because Brother touched her tummy. He's so impatient it rubbed off."

"So it's my fault now?!"

The doctor laughed. "Well, the baby was delivered without any problems, so everything turned out okay."

Dominic turned serious. "Everyone—especially you two young ladies—really helped us out. Now, I don't say this often, but…you earned it. Thank you."

Winry and Delilah exchanged a look, both embarrassed at the thanks and unused to the idea that the stern man would thank them.

Ed was suddenly giving Dominic a sly look. "So, how about it, boss? Now that you're in such a good mood, why don't you consider taking on an apprentice?"

"No." Dominic's tone sent Ed flying. "I'm grateful that you helped us be delivering the baby, but this is another matter altogether. I don't take on apprentices. Besides, you have a family waiting for you back home, missy," he continued, turning to Winry again. "A young girl shouldn't make her family worry."

As polite as he was being even though he was such a stern man, Winry's disappointment was as plain as day. Ed muttered something that Delilah didn't catch, and Al pointed out, "But he's right. Granny Pinako will be all alone in Resembool."

Thunk! Dominic fell off his stool and landed on the floor. At first, Delilah thought something was physically wrong with him, but when she tried to ask if he was okay, he spoke directly over her.

"P-Pinako from...Resembool?"

Winry was perplexed (unsurprisingly; everyone else in the room was, too). "Yes. Pinako Rockbell is my grandmother."

Dominic immediately scooted away until his back was against the far wall. His eyes were wide with terror. "Pinako Rockbell's grandchild..."

Winry was the first to be able to find it within herself to speak. "Um... Did something happen between Granny and you?"

"Don't ask! You're gonna reopen my old wounds!" Dominic's response was immediate. He then put his face in his hands. "The memories are too awful! The wild woman! The Pantheress of Resembool!"

"THE WHAT?" Ed and Al exclaimed.

"'Panthress of Resembool,'" Delilah supplied, thinking they hadn't heard the old man clearly.

"I know what he said," Ed nearly screeched, "but I really don't wanna know what he means!"

"In any case," Dominic went on, seeming to have calmed down for the most part, "I don't accept apprentices, and now that I know you're that woman's grandchild, it makes me want to take you on even less! What I mean is…"

He let out a sigh and stood, patting Winry on the head. "Well, if you must be trained, then I suppose I can introduce you to a good engineer at the bottom of the mountain who might take you on."

"Can I come here once in a while to watch you work?" Winry asked eagerly.

Dominic was already walking away. "Hmph. If you're going to get in my way, don't bother coming." He stopped. "But… If you wanna come here occasionally to visit my grandchild, then I guess I couldn't stop you. And the little pickpocket can come, too, if she changes her ways." And then he left the room.

Ed grinned. "He's a softie inside."

a/n: I AM SO SORRY FOR THE LATENESS. Really, really sorry. But school has hit me, and hit me hard, and school has to come first, I'm afraid. (It sucks.) And this chapter was supposed to be more Del and Winry-centric but ugh that didn't happen. I feel like this chapter was a bit crappy but I was tired of not updating. Thank you to those of you who're reviewing, you guys are as awesome as...alchemists. Yes that's a good thing very good. Anyway, I have work in the morning, so bye for now, I'll try to get writing again as soon as I can, okay? *huggus for everyone*