DISCLAIMER: Hm. I think it's a no.
WORDCOUNT: 1641
SUMMARY: First Step of New Fandoms: get to know your character. Because you can't warp play with their characterisations if you don't know what they're doing and why. And boy, do I look forward to playing with these pretty toys! evil grin Anyway, this is my take of Winry. If I go against canon somewhere, please say so. I haven't seen enough of the anime to be sure of the details.
THANK YOU to Sharon. I know you're busy nano'ing, sweets, otherwise you know I would have begged for help directly. SMOOCH Thank you so much!

POETRY
by Leni

She has never thought if she loved them or not. She never needed to. The love was ever-present, like the sunsets that caught them in the middle of their games, or like the stream where they'd used to bathe together. She loved them simply. She loved them strongly. She loved them with all the force of childhood friendship.

They were the brothers she'd never had, the friends she found so hard to make. She loved them because of who they were, just like that.

In return she received their smiles, their laughter and the surety that whatever future awaited them, they'd always be together. Friendship for friendship, innocence for innocence. Equivalence of trade, that's what she'd have called it if she'd thought in those terms. But they were the wanna-be alchemists, not her, so she didn't.

Now she wishes she'd appreciated that time more. Because when their future finally arrived, everything stopped being so simple. Except for the fact that one day they were there, at her side, and then they weren't.

She has never believed that absence makes the heart grow fonder. In those four years, hers didn't. She made friends who weren't the wild Elric boys and didn't need lamplights to guide them home. She laughed with other boys and girls who didn't know of grief and guilt and whose idea of tragedy was a day without dessert.

But absence doesn't lead to forgetfulness, either. They'd taken a piece of her world with them, how could she forget the void left behind? Sometimes she wishes she had been able to, just so she wouldn't have felt so abandoned. She'll never believe that there was equivalency during that time, too. That for every memory of them she unwrapped, one would also be thinking of her. Not that they'll ever tell her; partly because they're male and mostly because they're Elrics. But that doesn't really matter. The only equivalence she cares for is that she wished them to come back, and one day they did.

That's enough.

It's official; they are State Alchemists now. She is proud when she gets the news, prouder of herself that she doesn't miss them so hard this once. Maybe because they're always stopping by. They come and laugh and let her chastise them like the spoiled kids they can't afford to be. She welcomes them and touches them and makes sure that they're real, that they're complete and well.

That's enough.

So this is what their friendship has evolved into. They won't face every danger together, but they still need her and smile and laugh like they'll do with hardly anyone else. She is as special to them as they are to her; she feels it even as they stand in different corners after a particularly awry argument. Maybe because she knows they don't bother to argue with anyone else. She has heard enough stories to know they'll rather apologise than ask, and even then the apology is optional.

This time she doesn't need to wish for their return, but just to wait. She has the lamplight to guide them, the hands and tools for a perfect excuse and the character necessary to handle stubborn Elric boys. They have exciting snippets of their travels – never the whole story, never – the scratches and dents that challenge her into becoming the best in her trade and an innate stubbornness that keeps her occupied otherwise.

Equivalence.

Not in vain are they official alchemists, after all.

She hasn't forgotten that they saved her life. She'll never forget that lunatic's grin, the teeth that flashed brighter than the blade he carried. Never. Even in her dreams the scene follows her. The blood, the smells, the despair and helplessness. The sight of the brothers kneeling on the ground, trying to assimilate what'd taken place.

That afternoon is why she accepts their incomplete stories, because she hasn't been able to tell Pinako the details of that trip to Central either. Afterwards they had taken her out, shopped and laughed and talked as if nothing had happened. But something had. She was still breathing because something had happened. That day she'd looked at them with something that'd never actually stood so independent from the love and the friendship.

Respect. Admiration.

They'd stopped being the little boys she'd grown up with. They'd matured and left her so far behind she wondered what her idea of a tragedy was. When a different outcome at the slaughterhouse flashed through her mind, she knew. She knew that she was no little girl either, not anymore. One day with them and they'd pulled her into their world, into their precociously bleak understanding of reality.

That is what their company entails, what it'll always mean. In return they open their hearts a little more with every visit, finally let her attempt to heal their souls as she does with their bodies. They'll never let her fully inside, but they'll let her try. That's all the equivalency they're capable of when it's about saving themselves.

She accepts it. She will accept everything from them. They gave her her life back; this is the least she can give them: Understanding.

She cannot pinpoint when they stopped being a unity in her mind. It'd always been 'the Elric brothers', 'those boys' or simply 'they'; but one morning they suddenly introduced themselves as Edward and Alphonse, two separate entities that wouldn't accept being thrown together in her every thought.

It was probably their own fault. Those conversations that couldn't truthfully be called heart-to-hearts, but which were the closest thing. Especially if one considered they were boys who wouldn't recognise an effort to soothe them if it punched their arms – and she and her wrench take good care of that.

Yes, that was it. Those moments where she'd slowly discovered that they may be brothers, but they could also be so very different. With different points of views, different methods, different strategies and different… everything. Even the Philosopher's Stone, their common goal; it seems to take different shapes and shades through each set of eyes.

Edward.

Alphonse.

How strange to imagine them separately, to realise that they'll lead different lives when this ordeal is over. To understand that they won't necessarily return home afterwards, because they know no home but each other, and she… She has no place between them anymore. That time is so long past and she didn't notice when it got lost.

It hurts.

So she applies herself in her work. When they need no more help from her, she'll still have one of her loves. Automail is the only thing she understands as well as the brot--—

---as well as Alphonse and Edward.

There is equivalency even in painful realisations.

She has loved them like brothers, like her dearest friends. She still does. But now that they've separated in her mind, so they do in her heart. Realisations of love in trade of realisations of pain, even Edward would see the poetry in it.

Edward.

Ed.

Lately she has seen him fight so much, so hard. She has seen him defeated and she has seen him victorious. She has seen dear Alphonse during those same moments and yet her feelings respond so differently to each boy. She understood it while she was cleaning her working table, such a mundane task for such an important insight. Catching herself worrying more about Edward's safety, it dawned on her. She had always feared for both equally, because she loved them equally. If now she worried for one more than for the other, then... It couldn't be sibling love. Not friendly love. It was both of them and so much more.

Open-mouthed, she stood paralyzed as the screws escaped from her hold and fell noisily to the floor. She was in love.

In love with Edward Elric.

In love.

With Ed.

She loves him simply. She loves him strongly. She loves him with all the force of a young woman's heart. She doesn't love him because he's brave, even as a child there was courage in him. Neither does she love him for his powers; she partly controls them with a screwdriver and her favourite pair of pliers. She doesn't love the tragic hero in him. In fact, she hates that facet, wishes she could yank it out as easily as she can repair his body. She doesn't even love him for the little boy he used to be. She treasures the memories of that child deep in her heart, where not even Ed can touch him, but she doesn't love his present version because of it.

She loves him for all the things he tries so hard to achieve but can never quite grasp. That he smiles confidently a second before he's hissing in pain at a new automail, and for his eternal patience with Al when he's always been so impatient. She loves him because he has tried to harden his heart in these last years, and yet he still cares too damn much. She never pays attention to the scowls or the harsh words; she's seen his face when someone loved is in danger. She loves the boy who is racing through the way to adulthood, and she'll love the man he's striving to be. She loves him for everything he's lost, and for everything he's letting escape in his struggle to recover it.

She loves him because, after everything, he still can laugh and smile and argue with her as if they'd gone back to squabbling toddlers. That's why she loves him. That's why she worries. Because loving Edward means to fear constantly for his life. Both she and Al know that he'll never feel the fear for himself. But that's okay, she can accept it. She will accept everything from him. Not in vain has she fallen in love with an alchemist, and that's the kind of equivalence that rules mercilessly over their lives.

Pain for love. Love for fear.

Yes, there is poetry in it.

The End
16/11/05

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