A/N: Thanks for the reviews. I wasn't expecting any so soon. For now, bear with me.

II. Another Day, Another Siege: His Potatoes

My window was broken. Somehow, it didn't sit in the track right, so it didn't close all the way. There was a small sliver between the sill and the frame, and it was just large enough to let the chilly air in.

I thought about asking him to fix it. But then I remembered that he didn't like to fix things around the house. If it could be done by a handyman, he wouldn't lend his alchemy. I had thought he was being selfish, but it later occurred to me that he might have a decent reason. As he grew—as we grew--his reasons for doing things seemed to become more and more decent.

One day, it actually hit me that he was a good man. I wondered what that made me. I tried not to see myself in his wake, but instead on his sidelines, watching. But when I thought like that, I began to see everything from the sidelines, including myself, and that perspective just felt too powerless. So I watched myself in his wake, in my own wake—as if that were any more empowering. It was easier, though; it left me with less responsibility, feeling like a victim of all our imaginary encounters and his cruelties, amplified by my immaturity.

Whatever was left of me was left waiting. And I hated waiting.

He had come home on a Sunday. I had imagined his homecoming to be something poetic and rather romantic: I would open my door to see him standing the rain without a coat, or I would wake up one glorious morning to find him on my couch, nursing a malfunctioning arm, or he would arrive on my birthday in a flourish of flowers. But after my seventeenth birthday passed Edward-less, I gave up hope. I began to pray, instead, that someone would have the decency to send me a letter if he had died.

I had been in his garden, or what had once been his garden. Tax collectors had already repossessed the property, but they never stopped me. After Pinako's death, I had taken it upon myself to handle our finances differently; I opted to purchase less food and raise more, or more accurately, steal more. I tended to his garden and ate his potatoes. He would not miss them.

He had been a dark dot for a long time, and I wondered who would walk instead of take a carriage. Typically, my customers had the money for luxuries like taxis. If they could afford me, they could afford not to walk.

He became a dark smudge, clearly bipedal, tugged by the wind. As he drew closer, I could see a man in a brown coat. The sun reflected off his hair and his dark glasses. He did not have a suitcase that I could see; instead, he had a rucksack over his shoulder.

I could have dropped my basket and run out in the street to meet him. I could have flung myself at him, and he would have caught me awkwardly, patting my back and laughing uncomfortably at me. Because that was the way he was. He didn't hug back. He caught like he was in the way, like he was the victim of some guerilla attack.

Since my inclination to tackle him seemed absurdly inappropriate, I did what I always used to do. I yelled at him. Like somehow that was less absurd than hugging him like a normal person.

"That you, Win?" he called back.

It was him. It was me. "Yeah." I moved cautiously to the edge of the garden. He was still walking toward my house. He looked like he was about to pass me so I moved out in the middle of the road.

I was waiting for him again. Damn.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, holding my basket of his potatoes on my hip.

"That's a warm welcome," he said with a gentle sarcasm. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."

"Well, I'm a little surprised." I was amazed by my own restraint. I swayed somewhere between kissing him and beating him senseless, and it was an odd feeling—but not an alien one. "You look different."

He was taller. He was darker like he had been spending time in the sun. He looked as though he had not shaved in a week. I could have had his babies right there.

I expected him to be confident and brash and abrasive as always. Instead, he shrugged and shuffled his feet a little. "It's been a while."

"It has," I replied. I smiled because I was nervous. "You've gotten taller. I never thought it would happen!"

He frowned, and suddenly, I recognized the man to whom I was talking. "Well, it happened," he snapped. He took my basket, and I walked him back to my house.

"So what's broken this time?" I asked as I pushed open my front door. Again, I amazed myself. Where did all this self-control come from? From longweeks spent waiting, probably.

He looked rather sheepish. "What makes you think something is broken?"

"Call it women's intuition," I bit back. I took the basket from him and noticed his right arm hanging limply at his side.

The air was cold at night; I felt a fraction of the wind against my bare arms. I could ask him torepair it without alchemy. And I abruptly felt terribly helpless: one of the wimmyn, waiting for her man to come fix whatever is broken. I'm going to bake a pie, I thought. And then hit up the morphine storage.

I could hear him moving around. He was downstairs, in a guest room big enough for two. I wondered what happened to Alphonse, but I did not dare ask. I knew the subject would not come up unless I brought it up, like all subjects of conversation with Edward. So, I decided I was safe unless I mentioned it.

"I suppose I should see to my guest," I said to my reflection. In the late hour, my view from my bedroom window had faded into a black mirror illuminated by the single candle flickering on my dresser.

"Another day, another siege," my reflection replied. "Another day, another siege."

The house felt very full. I swam down the stairs and forced my way into the kitchen, pushing back the thick presence of someone else. Perhaps it would not have felt so strange if it were not for the fact that this someone was male and what I thought to be the key to the closet where all my potential and maturity and life had been stowed since he had left.

That was stupid, and I knew that immediately when I found him in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, kicking his bare feet. Bump tap bump tap went his heels as they gently struck the cabinet.

He was eating an apple, allowing the juice to drip onto his left hand and down his forearm. His right arm, quite possibly the only reason he came to see me, was sitting on my work bench, awaiting the stroke of inspiration I had to have before I could continue working on it.

"You're making a mess," I said as I walked past him.

"No, I'm not," he replied plainly. I looked back at him with a glare that challenged him to be argumentative. I then realized that that only thing of which he was making a mess was himself. And that was not my problem, I told myself.

"Fine," I spat back lamely. I felt amazingly stupid. He was not trying to fight. Why was I? "Are you hungry?"

Edward looked from me to the apple and back again. "No," he said. He then added quickly, "If I'd known you were going to be making something-"

He thought I was offended. So I decided to be. "No, that's just fine. I guess I'll just cook for myself. If you didn't like my cooking, you could have just said so." I noted that I said just a lot. What was it about just that made me think I sounded victimized? I sounded like a child. And I could tell that Edward did not like it.

"I don't have anything against your cooking," he replied, slipping off the counter and dropping the apple core into the wastebasket. "Not everything is an attack on you." With that, he left the kitchen.

I felt like an ass. I winced and looked at the floor, berating myself. I was reminded once more that the only thing about Edward that had not changed was his garden, his potatoes.

"Hey, Ed," I called, still watching the floor.

His two-toned footfalls stopped in the hall.

Should I apologize? Yes, I should. Did I? No. "The window in my bedroom…" I began. "Uh, could I ask you a favor?"

I think he heard the apology in my voice even if I did not say it. "It's gonna cost you, Win," he called back.

I laughed. "I'm not giving you a discount if that's what you're suggesting."

His chuckle drifted down the hall into the kitchen like a soft, bitter aroma. "What do you need?"

The prospects of dinner abandoned, I hurried to the mouth of the hall. With both hands on the door frame, I leaned forward slightly. "The window in my bedroom isn't closing right. You don't have to transmute anything, but… I don't know… I couldn't get the stupid thing to work right… maybe you could try?" I could have babbled on all night. He was watching me; I could have babbled on for the next week.

"Good thing I'm around," he replied. "Who else would be doing your menial tasks if I weren't here?"

"Fullmetal Alchemist," I joked, shaking my head. "Reduced to domestic handyman. How the mighty have fallen,"

Edward did not seem to think that was funny. He still smiled, thought, probably to keep me from feeling uncomfortable. I thought that was uncharacteristically magnanimous of him.

"How long has it been, Ed?" I asked as I hurried down the hall to join him. Together, we walked toward my bedroom. I could feel myself beginning to perspire.

He shrugged. "Two years?" he said. "Almost three now, probably. Why?" He opened the door for me. I had not realized that I had closed it. I walked in and he followed, leaving the door ajar at his back.

"I don't know. It's this one right here." I pointed to the window at the foot of my bed. I sat down in the chair at my desk and pretended that the bed was not there. "You've changed."

He tossed me a glance before putting his hand to the pane and pushing up. It would not budge. He pushed again. "This would be easier with two hands, you know."

I was actually relieved that he chose to overlook my last comment. Because I knew I had not changed at all. I guess he saw that and knew that I saw it, too. I felt like the blushing, bumbling fifteen-year-old who had seen him last. And here he was, a grown person who ate whenever he felt like it and still needed to shave.

I pouted. "You can't rush genius, buddy." I crossed my arms over my chest.

Edward laughed and gave the window another push. "I think you've really broken it."

"It's not like I did it on purpose," I said as I stood up. "If you can't fix it, I'll just have to call Charlie."

"Charlie?" Edward asked, stepping away from the window.

"Yeah, my real handyman. I do maintenance on his foot in trade for little fix it jobs."

"Oh," Edward glanced toward the door before looking back at me. "Whatever." He shrugged.

As he brushed past me, leaving the room, I almost clapped my hands and giggled. Immediately, I felt like a fool, but I could not deny the girlish glee. He had started when I mentioned another man. Then, he had gotten defensive.

That as more like Ed, more like my Ed, more like the Ed I wanted him to be, the one that I made up in the four years—he had miscounted—of his absence.

He complained of pain in his shoulder, in his flesh. I wondered what he wanted me to do about it. Not my problem; his flesh was not my department. I was tempted to tell him that until I realized he probably would not complain of pain unless it was serious.

I had him sit at my work bench, on a chair he had turned backwards before seating himself. He leaned forward and rested his chin on the back of the chair as I gingerly disassembled the plating around his shoulder socket. I moved my hands very slowly and deliberately, using only my most precise tools. Soon, the quarter of the table I had allotted for the project was covered in irregularly shaped steel plates and screws carefully placed around the plate according to their positions in his shoulder.

I had not seen the skin below the plating in years, and something about this encounter seemed terribly intimate to me. Edward, on the other hand, slumped casually, watching me work. He had, I found, developed a strange sort of default expression to which his face retreated when he was not thinking about it. He looked very relaxed, which was something I had not witnessed since before his mother's death. For all of his comfort, he still made me twitch. The expression he had adopted, probably an unknown defense mechanism picked up and transformed into habit over the years, looked confident without being arrogant and contented without being smug. He also looked like he could read my thoughts, like he knew something that gave him some kind of advantage over me. I was certain he did not mean to look that way, but I still could not make eye contact with him.

"Hmm," I said, trying to sound professional. I had removed the last plate. Now I was truly out of my territory. All his metal parts, the parts unknowingly infused with me, looked to be in perfect condition. I assume he had been taking care of it since I removed his arm a week ago.

But that pain was not in the metal. It was in his flesh.

Not my problem… as much as I wanted it to be. He was expecting me to think it was. But the only reason I did not wish it to be my problem was because I couldn't solve it. I didn't want to be anything to Edward if not perfect.

Perhaps that was why I always made such and ass of myself around him.

"What's your diagnosis, doctor?" he asked, watching me trying not to watch him.

How did he always look so damn nonchalant? He was shirtless and oblivious as always. I could have slapped him… and then had his babies again.

"I think you're really broken it," I said. His eyes narrowed.

"It's not like I did it on purpose," he retorted.

I smiled but decided he would probably appreciate my focus. I examined his shoulder closer. His skin around the socket was marred and puckered with scars. It always used to make me wince all those lifetimes ago before he had been wired and upgraded—or downgraded depending on your perspective. I was no doctor; I did not handle blood and guts very well, so when Alphonse, in that massive suit of armor, carried a butchered little boy into the entrance of my house, I had almost fainted. The few people on whom I had worked had been missing parts of years; they were nothing but healed stumps. They did not ooze or drip. No blood and guts, just steel and motor oil. I could handle steel and motor oil.

I did not wince anymore. After seeing the ruddy viscosity of his blood and the shiny drip of his frayed muscles, the yellowy bands of his ligaments and the white stone of his bones, scars and ragged edges were nothing.

The skin around the socket was swollen and pulling away from the metal. It was not supposed to look like that. I had expected atrophy, but strangely, there was little. He, unlike many of my other customers, continued to use his body as though nothing had changed. I remember that this was Edward, and he would probably not allow any event to me more traumatic than any other. They were all events to him. The only difference I could discern were the varying amounts of guilt he felt for everything that went on around him.

"It looks irritated," I said. I wished had the medical lingo to sound like I knew what I was doing.

"I figured," he replied, glancing at his maimed shoulder. He cocked his head to the side slightly. "What should I do about it?"

Stop looking at me that way. "I guess I could put some stuff on it."

"Stuff?" he asked as I turned away and ducked under my work bench. He leaned around the back of the chair to watch me.

"Yeah, stuff." I was on my hands and knees, pushing old blue prints and out dated tools out of my way. I knew I had a first aid kit under there somewhere, but I had apparently hidden it very well.

"Uh… Win?"

"Hang on," I snapped. "I'm looking for it."

When I came back up for air, I had the red tin box in my hands. I set it down a little too loudly on the table and popped it open. "It's this ointment stuff. Ah ha!" I declared triumphantly as I pulled the tube out.

"What's the expiration date on that thing?" Edward asked, his nose wrinkled slightly.

I checked the underside of the tube and decided not to tell him. "It's fine," I replied quickly before unscrewing the cap and squeezing a dollop onto my fingers. "Tell me if this hurts."

"Is it gonna hurt?" Edward asked, sitting back.

I did not know, so I shrugged and tried to look confident. It was not like I could do anything if it did hurt him. "Hold still," I commanded. With my free hand—I tried not to feel guilty for having one—I pulled him forward and began rubbing the cream in circles into his skin.

I felt him jerk slightly. "That hurts," he informed me.

"Too bad," I said as I continued to massage in the ointment.

"What?" he jerked away harder, but I held tight. "What kind of doctor are you?"

"I'm not a doctor," I replied. "I'm a mechanic. You know that."

"Ow! Winry!" He snatched himself back and gently touched his hand to the socket. "I've met assassins gentler than you."

I had not intended to hurt him. Because I had, I got angry, and since it was easier, I decided to be angry with him. "And I've met kittens with a higher tolerance for pain." I wiped my hand on my pant leg and left the room.

I went out onto the front porch where the midday sun was beginning to lose the battle against dusk. It looked like it was going to be another cloudy night, so I cried. It seemed like a good enough reason to cry. Not that I was upset that I had inflicted pain on him. Not that I cried because I was an idiot.