Chapter Three
First Diary
"I think I'm in love with your hair."
"What?"
"Seriously it's not like mine. It's soft and long. I just like to play with it."
"Can we talk about something else."
"Fine do you think you'll be able to find the journal?"
Ed shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't look good. Pinako said she would look into it."
His answer bothered her. He could tell by the way her back stiffened that she was worried about something.
"Will you read it, if you find it?"
He shrugged. "Don't much care to. No good can come of it."
"I was thinking . . . do you suppose she wrote it for you? That she knew that she might not be able to tell you things that you should know?"
"It could be, she did know she'd die." He stood up and headed for the door. Winry had an uncanny way of putting things into words that he'd already wondered, himself.
Winry stood and grabbed his arm gently, stopping him before he could leave. "No, not that . . . I'll bet she had no intention of dying and leaving you alone. A mother wouldn't do that." She sighed and let go of him.
"I don't want to talk about this," he remarked, struggling to keep his tone from escalating.
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the bed without seeing the bed at all. She wasn't finished. He braced himself for the rest of her assessment. "Granny told me once that sometimes there are things that a mother wants to say that she just can't articulate to her child because she knows it's painful. Maybe . . . Maybe that's what's in the journal."
"Maybe," he agreed. He shook his head slowly and lifted his gaze to the ceiling.
With a deep breath, Ed turned and walked over to her bed.
'Do I even want to know what's in that journal?' He winced. Why was it that the memories of his mother's tears were the only ones he could bring to mind when he thought of her? 'Just . . . painful things . . . .'
'They're just words! Words can't hurt me! Words can't break me or change me . . . words can't do a damn thing, and words can't change the past.'
A sudden loneliness swept through him, and he shivered despite the mild night air. Winry looked up. He was sure that she couldn't see him yet she seemed to be looking right at him, too. She smiled shyly and ducked her head. Ed suddenly felt warm again, as though the sun was shining on him despite it being the middle of the night. How did she do that?
He cocked his head to the side and leaned forward, squinting as he watched her fish another book out of her bag. Her Diary. She leafed through the pages and chewed on the end of her pen as she stared thoughtfully at the pages. Then she hunched over and started to write.
Winry recapped her pen and dropped it on her diary with a sigh. Her neck hurt from bending over the book, but it was good therapy to keep a journal.
A shadow fell over the pages, and Winry lifted her chin to gaze at Ed, who had been way too quiet in his approach. Her expression turned suspicious at the knowing look he gave her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked slowly.
He didn't smile but she could tell he wanted to. That worried her even more. He knelt down and reached over, plucking her diary off her desk. Winry stared at the blue book. "I want to read this," Ed remarked but didn't open it.
"Give it back," she said, willing her voice to remain calm.
He relented and handed her back the diary. She clutched it against her chest as if she was trying to protect it. "We could trade," he remarked casually-a little too casually.
"Trade what?"
She was positive now. She really didn't like that glint in Ed's eyes.
The glint brightened. He leaned forward for good measure. "Hair for journal."
Her eyes widened and she leaned back. Her mouth fell open in shock, and it took a few moments before she could make her voice work. "No! I can't believe you-No" He blinked at her. "Stop that! No!"
He blinked again. "Stop what?"
Winry snapped her mouth closed so hard her teeth rattled. He really didn't know what he had just done, but there was a very good chance he did now. His gaze suddenly grew brighter, and he blinked-again. She stifled a groan. "No."
He seemed to think that over. Finally he frowned and sat back. "All right, Winry. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but you're forcing me to."
For a moment, she thought he meant to take the diary by force. Her arms tightened. There were things in there that he didn't need to see; things about him, and about her feelings. He wasn't getting it without a fight. Her gaze narrowed. 'I'll mess with his automail if he even thanks about touching this with out my consent. He'll be walking limp for the next year he's here…'
"Do you want to read my mother's journal, if I find it?"
Winry frowned. "I thought you didn't know if you'd read it or not."
He shook his head slowly. "I don't know if I will."
"But you'd let me read it?"
He nodded and sighed. "I always thought it was weird, but I feel like . . . . I don't know how to explain it, but yeah I'll let you read it."
Winry digested his offer a moment. Hard enough to pass up the idea of being able to play with his hair, she thought with an inward giggle. 'Yeah . . . I'm addicted to his hair . . . .' Then he had offered to let her read his mother's journal . . . that was huge. 'He really does trust me, doesn't he?'
Her gaze dropped to the diary she still held against her chest. Sure it was full of personal things, but his mother's journal was bound to be, too, and she trusted him. Just to clarify the deal, though, she sighed. "If I let you read my diary, then I get to mess with your hair and read your mother's journal when you find it?"
Ed looked up as he thought it over. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
Winry made a face. "I have a condition of my own."
He blinked at her again. She nearly growled in frustration. She really shouldn't have let that slip . . . . 'You've let a lot more than just that slip, if you're really going to let him read your diary, baka!' She wrinkled her nose. "You have to start at the beginning and read straight through. No skipping around."
He considered that then held out his hand.
Winry hesitantly held out the diary but didn't let go. Ed got the hint and lay down on his side, facing the computer as Winry sat behind him on the bed, then held out his hand for the book. With one last sigh, Winry handed it over before turning her attention to his hair.
'Maybe,' she allowed as his silence came to her ears, 'this wasn't such a bad trade, after all.'
o0o0()0o0o
Al stood up from his bed hearing the muffling noise from next door. "What are they doing in there?" Al shook his head as he headed for the door to his room. Throwing it open he stepped out into the hall and walked down stairs.
"Where you going, Al?"
He turned to see Pinako sitting at the kitchen table washing a piece of Automail. He smiled at the old woman and stepped into the kitchen. "I was going to ask Ed if he wanted to go do something but he was busy. So I decided to go for a walk."
"Well be back soon. It's almost late."
Al nodded and headed for the door. He smiled when he got out and saw the light on in Winry's room. He shook his head and excited through the gate of the fence. He began to kick the dirt as he hedged on not really going anywhere in particularly. He heard noises of the teens still out screwing around. He finally smiled. It had been a while that he could really enjoy being human. Now he understood why Ed wasn't happy being full human. He still had the worries of the people around him. "Oh." Al stood up and began to rub the back of his head as he looked at her. "Well it was nice talking to you, Siren."
"You to Al." Ad with that she walked off the bleachers turning back to smile at him when she reached the bottom. "Do you want a ride home?"
Al smiled and ran down the bleachers like he never ran before and she giggled again. man did he like the sound of that. "Sure."
"Okay let's go then." She turned and walked away.
Al looked at the sky praying and thanking whatever was up there that he gave him this chance to be with this beautiful girl.
"You coming Al!" "Yeah!" he smiled and ran after Siren.
Al shook his head and stepped through a get that looked familiar. He looked up to see the school a head of him. He cocked an eyebrow but blew it off and walked over to the bleachers. He sat there starring at the stars. "You know I wouldn't change my life for anything."
"Well that's good."
Al jumped and turned to see Siren sitting down the bleachers looking at the stars as well. She turned to him when she felt his gaze on her. She smiled at him and stood and walked over to sit by him. "Hi."
"Hey, Alphonse isn't it?"
"You can call me Al."
"Okay Al."
He turned back to the sky not knowing what else to say to the beauty next to him. He shook his head with a smile still on his face.
"Well, I got to go."
"Hmm." Al said looking back at her.
She giggled at him then stood. "I have to go, my mom needs my help."
o0o0()0o0o
Ed sighed loudly as he tapped his new fingers on the ruffled blue bedspread.
"Shh!"
He wrinkled his nose and frowned. "Aren't you almost done?"
"Nope."
"Why?"
"Shh!"
He rolled off Winry's bed and stomped out of the room. With a sigh of relief, Winry continued checking her grades on the computer.
She clicked the mouse button and leaned back in the chair to stretch. She had exams in all her classes this week, and though Ed wasn't happy about it, he had offered to help her study for them. It had surprised her. Then again, he'd been acting a little different toward her since he'd started reading her diary. Not for the first time, Winry wondered if she had made a huge mistake in allowing him to read the book, but she'd given her word. She couldn't go back on it now.
What did surprise her is that he actually hadn't read much of it. He seemed to be reading only one entry at a time, and while she was glad because it put off the inevitable, he didn't say what he thought of her entries, either.
She grinned. She couldn't complain too much about him, though. As frustrating as he could be, she had to admit that she felt a lot closer to him since the last time she had been home.
Her gaze fell on her diary. Ed had read up through her first entry after him and Al had made her a doll through alchemy for her birthday. She grimaced. She had been so sad that they were both leaving again so soon 'Right after senior year. A year and a half is still not enough time'.
"Are you done checking your grades yet?"
Winry shifted her eyes to the side as Ed re-entered the room with a bottle of water. He flopped across the bed again. The bed groaned under the impact. Winry stabbed him with a dark look. "If you break that, Ed—"
"Yeah, yeah, you'll hit me with a wrench, I know. Hurry up and check your grades, will you?"
Winry turned in the chair and hung onto the back, resting her chin on her hands. "Why are you so anxious?"
"I'm not anxious."
She knew better. Lying on his side with his left knee bent, he tapped his right foot as his as he played with a stray string sticking out of her comforter. Winry couldn't help the smile that surfaced on her face. He caught her gaze and blinked. She felt her cheeks growing warm and whipped around to stare at her textbook. She just knew he was grinning.
After twenty minutes, she turned off the computer with a sigh.
"Finally!" he remarked with a loud snort.
She stood up and pulled her list off the stack of notes. "Come on."
"Where?"
"I've got to get a few things for granny, and since you're not happy to stay here, then we might as well go to the store."
"Fine." He said not to happy.
"Is something wrong, Ed?" Pinako asked as she breezed into Winry's bedroom with a stack of clean laundry.
"Ask Winry," he grumbled.
Pinako shot Winry a questioning look. Winry shrugged and dragged Ed out of the room. She let go at the bottom of the stairs to struggle into her jacket. Ed rolled his eyes, holding the back of her collar as she glanced up at him.
"Thanks." He didn't respond. She sighed and opened the front door. "Come on, grumpy"
o0o0()0o0o
"What do you mean."
"Well she was Great."
"Al, you mean your falling for that secretary?"
"Oh, no she's a Senior assistant, a teacher's aid." Al said with a smile as they walked through the halls of school.
"Al you can't be serious."
"Why not?" Al looked at Ed who had a scowl on his face. "Brother?"
"I just heard that Siren likes to use people and manipulate people that's just all." Ed said stuffing his hands in his jacket and not looking at Al.
"That's just a rumor, brother."
"Hey it's the cripple." Ed and Al stopped as two boys walked by them laughing as they two stopped.
"Yeah, I heard he gets really mad when you call him a shorty."
"WHO YOU CALLING A SHORTY SO SMALL THAT HE DOESN'T EVEN COMPARE TO A ANT IN SIZE!" Ed said well yelled getting in the boy's face.
"You. What are you gonna do about it."
Ed was gonna pulled his fist back but a fist flew by the side of his head and hit the kid in the nose. The kid fell to the floor clutching his nose and yelling in pain. Ed turned to see that the fist belonged to Al. Al? He couldn't remember Al punching someone unless he really had to. He smiled at Al and watched as Al pulled him to the side and took a punch to the face.
Ed watched Al fall to the floor cupping his right eye. He turned to the other boy who had just hit his younger brother. Ed shot forward punching the kid and sending him smashing into a locker across the hall. The other kid was on his feet and ready to attack Ed again until he was lifted into the air.
"I think you should stop." The person said as he turned the kid to look at him in the face. "I would hate for you to attack someone who helped gave birth to my daughter." His voice was menacing.
"Hughes?"
"By the way." He dropped the kid and reached into his pocket. "Would you like to see pictures of her." He said bringing a pack of pictures of his daughter.
Ed shook his head as he helped Al to his feet. The other boy that was knocked into the locker tried to sneak away but ran strait into someone else.
"I think you need to apologize." The tall man said. "Or this 'beautiful body' will have to do some damage!" he said throwing off his shirt and flexing his muscles.
"Armstrong?" Ed really was confused.
Hughes turned to Ed and smiled. "Hey Ed." He looked at the kid. "You can go now." The two kids ran off.
"What are you two doing here?"
"Well Hawkeye, Mustang, and Havoc seemed to think that there was a lot more to this school then we are being told so we were called in."
"And to accommodate for us coming school is being canceled or let out early."
"That sounds good. When will that happen?"
Hughes looked at his watch. "Right about . . . . now." And at that moment an announcement turned on excusing the school.
"Well this should be interesting." Ed said to Al as they said their goodbyes to the two they just ran into.
"Why is that, brother?"
"That means I have all day to read."
Al looked at Ed confused but didn't say anything about it.
"Before we go you should go see the nurse about your eye."
"Yeah maybe your right."
o0o0()0o0o
"What happened to you!" Al's head lifted as he entered the nurses office.
"You're a nurse too."
Siren's cheeks pinkened a little. "For now, I help out a lot at school. It helps with my scholarships for college." She walked over to the bed and had him sit down. "Now tell me what happened.
"I got into a fight."
"Really?" she said putting a wet cloth to his eye. "I always heard that Edward was the one that always got into fights."
"Where'd you hear that from."
"Winry."
"You know Winry?"
"Yeah we met last year."
"That's cool." He watched as she grabbed a cotton ball and soaked it. "So are you guys pretty good friends?"
"We used to be…." She said sitting back down next to him. "Well I guess you can say we still are. Rose, Chris, Winry, and me used to hang out a lot. But, when senior year came along I picked up a lot of extra work to do and you and Ed came along so I didn't get that much time to spend with her."
"I'm sorry." Al spoke. "Owe."
"Don't be." She said pushing the cotton ball against his swollen eye. "He didn't get you very good. Your eye should be perfectly fine in the morning." He nodded and stood up. "And don't worry about me and Winry we still have lunch on the weekends every once and a while."
"Okay."
"Here." She grabbed his hand and a pen and began to write. "This is my number. Call me if you ever have free time or nothing to do."
"Okay." Al said with a smile. End left.
o0o0()0o0o
Ed forced his eyes open as he tried to read Winry's diary. He'd re-read the same passage about a dozen times as she gently scratched around the base of his ears. 'She's getting a little too good at that,' he thought absently. He leaned back, closer to her hands and forced his waning attention back onto the journal.
So far there hadn't been much about him, other than her initial impression of him doing things with out thinking, or not telling her things, hadn't been very flattering. He made a face. He'd be the first to admit that the two of them hadn't had the greatest of beginnings. Still, to see her so eloquently state his 'faults' was a humbling experience, and since he'd read those first few entries, he'd tried to be a little less . . . well, any of them. 'Baka had been used more than once, as had 'jerk', 'stubborn', 'unbearable', 'arrogant', 'condescending' . . . had he mentioned 'baka'? That had actually been the title of one of her entries: Ed the baka—complete with about twenty exclamation points after the sentence.
He sighed. This entry wasn't quite so bad. It was actually a little more interesting. 'The first time I went to central.'
She talked of his battles with Barry the Butcher. He couldn't help but feel a little proud of himself and the way she described him. In this entry, she called him 'brave' and 'heroic'. He didn't realize that she thought he was any of those things. She never said that to him before . . ..
'I was so frightened, when Ed got stabbed by Barry the Butcher. I thought I would lose him, not that he is mine. But after Al left him to go explain what happened to Hughes, I cradled his head in my lap, he said some things. He said that he liked how I smelled, even though he had always said he didn't. That's got to be something, right . . . .'
Ed stared at that passage for a few moments, tracing the words with his index finger.
'His voice was so awestruck when he asked why I'd cried for him. I knew his life hadn't been easy, but that . . . well, I suppose that drove it home for me. Poor guy . . . .'
Ed closed the book and swallowed hard. He'd never known . . . . She cared that much back then? He'd never given her any reason to. Her previous entries had proven that. 'Ed the baka!' Why?
Winry stopped rubbing and leaned forward to peek over Ed's shoulder. "You're done?" she asked, surprised that he had already closed the diary.
"Yeah."
She stood up and walked out of the room with a smile.
With a sigh, Ed got up and headed out of the room to see what Winry was doing. He glanced back at the diary with a frown. Maybe he would read more of it later.
Winry was in the kitchen puttering around while Pinako was reading the newspaper. "Hungry?" Winry asked as Ed sank down at the table.
He blinked at her. She flushed. He ducked his head to hide his smile. 'Blinking works,' he mused. 'I'll have to remember that . . . .'
o0o0()0o0o
Al laid down in his bed thinking about what tomorrow would bring him hoping it would be something good. Or someone good. He couldn't seem to get Siren out of his head and he prayed that Ed was wrong about her, because he couldn't stand people like that and he wanted to be able to stand her. He turned to his side to look out the window. Seeing the stars swarm in a group made him smile. Now he couldn't wait until tomorrow to see her.
A/N:
Okay this is my first fan fic of Full metal and my first high school fic of full metal. So tell me what you think of it please. I am begging you. To please help me by sending reviews. That purple button that say submit review at the bottom of the screen is my only means of survival.
Reviews:
Bob's Castle: (CC)
Final Wish and Warslayer
FFNetFinal Thought From Ed:
Blinking Huh.
Blanket Disclaimer for this fanfic (Will apply to this and all other chapters in A thin Silver Strand): I do not claim any rights to The Full Metal Alchemist or the characters associated with the anime, video game, manga. etc. Those rights belong to whoever created it, I don't know who that is right now but I will find out. I do offer my gratitude to whomever for creating characters that I can torment and make cry like babies.
War Slayer Dev