Chapter 12

AN: Sorry for the delay, but this is a fairly long chapter and took some serious work (didn't help that my assignments are piling up, either). And thanks to all my reviewers, sorry I haven't had the time to reply to you, just know that I appreciate the feedback. And if there are any questions regarding some of the events in this chapter – hang in there, they'll be answered in the next.

oooooooo

Roy screamed, a horrific wail of loss and horror that would have made the damned cringe, staring at Riza.

The battle ground to a halt, everyone looking around, wondering what could have wrested a noise like that from someone's throat. Then they saw the blood that had sprayed across the floor and walls, saw Riza...and they knew.

Riza's eyes rolled back in her head, and her body went limp, suspended only by the sharp appendage impaling her. Envy smirked, and spun, hurling her across the room.

At Winry.

Envy grinned as the dying Riza impacted Winry in the back, the fall tearing her from Wrath's hands. The lieutenant's weight would tackle her down, and then the other homunculi could...

But he had forgotten Winry and Wrath were in the center of the transmutation circle. Winry fell, her arms outstretched to try and break her fall, her left hand landing squarely on Riza's bloodied chest with a horrific crunching sound...but her right hand tipped the bowl of Red Water. The crimson liquid spilled onto the floor, pooling around her hand.

And as the cut on her palm contacted the fluid, the Red Water mingling with her blood, Winry went rigid. The Red Water blazed with light, reacting to the energy in her blood. Winry tried to pull her hand away, but the liquid seemed to be sucked up into the cut like milk through a straw, entering her body.

And Winry screamed. Agony seared along every nerve, her very blood warping and changing within her. She felt a pulse pass through her, from right palm to left palm, a red light snapping briefly over Riza's body before fading, the pain leaving with it.

And when it vanished, Riza was unconscious. Not dead, not dying, just unconscious. A tattered hole in her clothes revealed smooth, unmarked skin.

'What the hell did I do?' Winry thought, panicking as she stared the woman beside her. 'She...she was dying, and now...she's fine. Did I...? But how...?'

But then Wrath grabbed her hand, and she felt it again. The blinding pain passing through her body like a electric shock, flowing into the homunculus. Wrath screamed and fell away, writhing on the ground. His left leg and right arm vanished in motes of drifting golden light.

Winry wanted to tell him she was sorry, she didn't mean to be doing...whatever she was doing...but she couldn't speak. Couldn't even get enough breath to scream. She rolled away on the floor, agony seeping from every pore of her body – she felt like her blood was boiling!

Battle was abandoned as everyone ran for Winry.

"Stop Dante!" Hohenheim bellowed.

Ed clapped his hands, transmuting the floor in front of the woman to rise before her in a barricade. Dante crumbled it with a touch of her hand, lunging for Winry.

"I think it's time to take my new body!" she hissed, seizing Winry's hand in her own, pushing her fingers into the gash, trying to draw upon the power that had regenerated Riza and felled Wrath.

"NO!" Ed yelled.

Dante closed her eyes, alchemical power beginning to swirl around her, attempting to transfer her soul into Winry's body. Winry let out a sound that could only be described as a howl, her back arching so violently it looked like her spine would snap.

Winry's mind went blank. She felt as though her skin was bubbling, her flesh trying to house something too small for it. Her head whipped from side to side, her screams becoming choked gasps. What has happening to her?

Then something exploded from her body. There was no other way to describe it. A red haze rushed out from her skin, permeating the room like a cloud of light.

Winry slipped into unconsciousness.

oooooooo

Ed nearly screamed when what looked like red light poured from Winry's body. Winry slumped like a broken doll, and Dante...

When the light touched Dante, she disintegrated. Her body broke apart like a leaf pile in the wind, drifting to dust, to smoke, then to nothing.

Envy shouted, though Ed suspected it was driven more by shock than sentiment, but then the light engulfed him...and in a few seconds, Envy was no more.

Red light bathed the hall, and one after another, the homunculi's bodies scattered like sand in a hurricane.

oooooooo

For several seconds, no one moved. The silence was eerie. Ed couldn't believe that the ferocious battle waging only minutes before was suddenly, abruptly...over. Just like that.

It actually seemed rather anticlimactic.

But then he heard someone calling Winry's name. Crying out for her help in what sounded suspiciously like a sob.

"Winry? Winry...you have to wake up. Winry, please...Mum's gone, and so is everyone else, and I feel funny, and I don't know what's going on..."

Wrath was kneeling beside Winry, shaking her shoulder lightly, looking hideously distressed. Only it didn't look precisely like the Wrath Ed remembered. His skin had lost it's unnatural pallor, his eyes were blue instead of purple, and with his bare feet stretched out behind him, Ed could see no trace of the Oroborus mark.

But those observations were quickly cast aside as Ed realised that Winry wasn't moving.

"Winry!"

He practically flew to her, dropping to his knees by her side. Wrath looked up at him with tearful eyes, seemingly on the verge of bursting out crying.

"She won't wake up..." he whimpered. "Why won't she wake up?"

Izumi's hand hovered over Wrath's shoulder, but her fingers curled away before she touched him.

"It may not be Winry in there," Hohenheim said grimly. "We saw Dante's body destroyed, but that doesn't mean Dante was in there at the time."

"You mean...?" Al sounded horrified at the very thought.

"Winry..." Ed pleaded, not knowing if he was pleading for her to wake up, or for it to be Winry who was lying there. "Winry..."

The girl's form shifted, a soft moan issuing forth. Apparently still caught in the dreamy world between waking and sleeping, she tossed a hand at Ed, dislodging his grip on her shoulder.

"Go away, Ed," she groaned. "I'll fix your automail later, let me sleep."

A few people chuckled, and the tension leaked out of Ed, replaced with a bone-deep relief. That phrase told him, as nothing else could have, that it was Winry speaking. Winry, not Dante.

"You have to wake up, Winry," he told her, feeling almost giddy with relief. She was okay! "We have to get out of here, remember?"

Winry's eyes blinked open, confusion clouding them, then remembrance returned in a rush, sharpening their blue depths like water freezing to ice. "What happened to the other guys?"

"I'll tell you later," Ed said, helping her to her feet. The story of the strange red light that had burst from her body and won the fight in moments could wait until another time.

"Are you okay?" Wrath asked, one hand slipping into hers.

In spite of the weariness eating at every bone in her body, Winry smiled at him. "Just fine...are we going now?"

"Be only too glad to," Ed grinned.

He looked around at the others...and spotted Roy some distance away, crouched over Riza, his fingers wiping the blood from her lips. His expression was filled with wondering incredulity, as though hardly daring to believe this was possible.

"I don't think she's going to wake up," he murmured. "Not anytime soon, anyway. I've been shaking...and calling...but I think she needs to go to the hospital."

Armstrong offered to carry her, but Roy declined, gathering Riza into his own arms and beginning the long trek back to the world above.

oooooooo

The journey took longer than expected – Winry wanted to go back to the room she'd been kept in. Whatever had happened in the hall had apparently wiped the drug from her blood, and she was no longer feeling the unnatural exhaustion. She was still exhausted, of course she was, but it felt real now.

Wrath was leading her, Ed and Al to the room she had been held in. The others had opted for getting Riza to medical attention as soon as possible, and Winry was still very confused. She remembered watching Riza's bloody wound closing before her eyes, but she couldn't figure out how it had happened.

All she knew was that the day she'd just had was setting a new standard in the bizarre and inexplicable.

"So what do you want in that room again?" Ed asked as they made their way down the corridor.

"I told you, my boots are in there. And I have some unfinished business with that room..."

Ed wanted to question her further, but the expression on her face – that combination of resolve and secret glee – told him that he probably shouldn't ask. Her walk was a little awkward – both arms encircled the boy at her side.

Wrath was clinging to Winry's arm like a burr, gripping so tightly Ed was surprised Winry wasn't wincing. But he could hardly blame the kid for wanting some comfort. He'd just lost what he considered his family, spontaneous and mysterious alchemy had made him human, and Winry was probably the one thing he felt he could still trust. He kept looking at her fearfully, as though afraid that she might disappear at any moment.

"Here it is," Winry smiled, kicking the door open.

Ed wondered if he should be surprised at such a violent action when it wouldn't have taken much effort to open it. He was certainly surprised by the small pile of paper planes and origami in one corner.

Winry pulled her socks and boots on, and then stood and, quite calmly, tipped the bookcase over.

"What are you doing?" Al yelped.

"I promised myself that I'd demolish this room as soon as I was free," Winry said, grinning slightly as she heaved the desk over. It crashed into the bed, and the over-worn springs finally gave out, the mattress rupturing as the desk crashed through it and the bed frame to demolish itself against the floor.

Winry beamed, and mimed dusting her hands off as she walked out.

"By the way," she said as she passed the flabbergasted Elric brothers, "I found this – thought you might be able to use it."

She reached into her top (an image that made Ed feel as though he'd swallowed his tongue), and produced a a thin book. She thrust it into his hand. Ed took it automatically, flipping it open, finding it full of information on the Philosopher's Stone.

And he found himself touched. Winry had been abducted, held prisoner...and she'd still taken the trouble to steal a book she thought she could help him in his quest.

"What're we going to do now?" Wrath asked, still clutching to Winry's arm.

"We're going to look for my toolbox," Winry nodded down at him. "I'm sure I remember Envy kicking it in the elevator."

Ed grimaced at the mention of Envy, remembering what the homunculus had said to him. He was sure the images of Winry's rape that Envy had planted in his head were fictional, but that made them no less sickening.

"Okay," Wrath mumbled. "But I feel kinda weird...like I just want to lie real still and close my eyes..."

Winry smiled gently. "That's called being sleepy. And who wouldn't be, after a day like ours? I'll carry you...if you want?"

Wrath nodded, and Winry picked him up, one arm under the back of his legs, the other around his back so he sat upright in her grasp, his head resting on her shoulder. He murmured something unintelligible and closed his eyes, his arms around her neck.

Ed was struck by how maternal Winry looked.

She turned back to them. "Now, about my toolbox..."

oooooooo

In the end, the toolbox was discovered in a small cupboard, almost right next to the elevator. Once above ground again, they headed straight for the hospital.

All four risked a peek into the room that housed Riza Hawkeye. The blonde sharpshooter was clearly still dead to the world (that fact that she wasn't dead, period, was what still puzzled Winry) and Roy was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand and stroking her cheek. He seemed to be talking to her, they could see his lips moving, but no words could be discerned.

Ordinarily, Ed would have leapt at the chance to taunt his superior, but he didn't have the heart to say anything. Catching him and Riza in a passionate liplock would have been different, but this seemed almost...sacred.

They closed the door.

oooooooo

"I just need some tests," Winry said, emerging from behind the screen in a baggy hospital gown, her clothes neatly folded and resting on a chair. "They say it won't take long, but if you guys don't want to stay..."

"We'll stay," Ed said, slouching in a nearby chair.

Truthfully, he didn't want to leave Winry alone. She'd already been seen to by the nurses – he had too – and now sported bandages wrapped around both wrists and her right hand, in addition to a small square of gauze taped to her neck. The bandages seemed to emphasise her injuries, making the prominent bruises on either side of her face and the faint line around her throat stand out all the more. Ed couldn't help but wonder what other injuries were concealed beneath the gown.

Winry smiled, though she felt more than a little nervous. The test she was about to undergo would be deeply uncomfortable, but necessary. She needed to know if Envy had...done anything to her while she was unconscious.

"Just lie on the table and put your feet in the stirrups, honey," the nurse told her when she entered the examination room.

Winry did as requested, her fists bunching in the fabric of the gown to try to hide her anxiety as the nurse eased the hem of cloth up to her hips.

"This may feel a little uncomfortable, but just try to relax or your muscles will tense inward."

Winry took a deep breath, and attempted to follow the nurse's instructions.

oooooooo

Ed jiggled his foot against the chair leg, trying to block out Wrath's questions.

"Is Winry coming back soon?"

"Of course she is," Al soothed, and Ed silently thanked him for taking on the task of dealing with the child.

Ed was left alone with his thoughts. The most prominent of which was why Winry needed tests. He knew she needed medical attention, but tests?

And he had no idea how to tell her what happened in that underground amphitheater. How could he even begin to explain it? 'As for how we won, Winry...Dante tried to invade your body, and then this red light exploded from you and vaporised her and the homunculi.'

Even in his head, it didn't make sense.

He sighed, idly kicking the chair that Winry's clothes rested on. Her pants shifted, and a small piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

Ed picked it up.

A sketch of Wrath sat in one corner, opposite a less professional-looking one of Winry. Random lines and shaped skated across the edges of the page, and in the center, several lines ran through a title; 'Examining Electrical Alchemy' , and another was scrawled below it in what looked like Winry's handwriting.

'What I'm Going To Do When I Get Out Of Here.'

Ed smiled. Even after several hours as a prisoner, it seemed that Winry's spirit had still remained intact.

Giving in to his curiosity, Ed began to read.