A/N: Sorry for the wait. Computer viruses. Moving. Work. Life. You know.

X. Sturdy Ribbons

So many memories were made here. Glimpses of moments glinted off the water; waves murmured words that had gathered in the back of her mind where she had once intended to sweep them under the rug laid over the cold linoleum of her childhood. In shifting, swaying instances, recollections ebbed and flowed, swelled at the edge of the water and then drifted back out. For once, though it ached like an old wound, Winry was grateful that she had not taken out the trash, the detritus of notions and anamnesis scattered around. Instead, she stooped and carefully picked up each one, held them tightly in her damp hands, pressed them to her chest.

This was a bittersweet, beautiful place for her, vilified and treasured at once. Edward was lounging in the shallows blissfully, ladling cold water onto the metal of his arm and leg to fight back the summer heat. Alphonse was reclined under a tree. The light from his eyes was dimmed, presumably from sleep. From their picnic basket, Winry fished out an apple and a pear and held them carefully as she stepped into the water.

Edward did not look back though Winry knew he heard her approaching.

"Which do you want?" Winry asked as she knelt in the mud next to him. Edward looked thoughtful for a moment before plucking the apple from her hand.

"Thanks," he said around a juicy mouthful.

"Sure," Winry replied.

Edward put his left hand behind him and leaned back, munching contentedly. "I'd forgotten how damn hot it got out here in the summer."

"You have no idea. It's only June." Winry quickly remembered that he did have an idea. He had a very good idea. He had lived there once. "It's doesn't get like this in East City?"

"Nowhere near. We don't start taking off our coats 'til May."

The conversation sounded asinine to both of them. The weather? They were discussing the weather? Winry felt like he was making small talk with a customer. She took a large bite from her pear, hoping that would incapacitate her mouth enough that she would stop babbling.

Edward scooped up a handful of water and dumped it over his right shoulder with a long sigh.

"Is it bad?" Winry heard herself ask.

He shrugged. "Sometimes. Most the time, no. Only in the extremes really."

"Hmm," Winry said. This was a complaint she had heard before, never from Edward, but from other clients. Edward did not talk to her about his pain. "They say pain is in the excess."

"Or the deficiency."

"The excessive deficiency," Winry corrected, raising her index finger as though to make a point. Edward chuckled.

"You can't have an excessive deficiency," he countered, giving her an unimpressed expression.

"Sure you can. You, for instance, have an excessive deficiency of hei—"

"Say it Winry, and you won't live to regret it," Edward growled, closing his fingers so tightly around the apple that it bruised.

Winry laughed out loud. "I swear, you have a complex, Ed. I was going to say limbs."

He glared at the water. "I have two left, thank you very much. That doesn't constitute—if there were such a thing—an excessive deficiency."

This was much better, Winry thought. This banter was friendly and familiar, intimate enough to expose the sturdy ribbons that tied them together but not intimate enough to slacken them. Winry thought she could see their ties reflecting in the water.

Again, Edward splashed water over his shoulder. "It is hot as hell out here."

"It's not that bad," Winry said, just to be antagonistic.

"Are you kidding me?" Edward asked. "You could fry an egg on my freakin' forehead."

Winry guffawed in the most unfeminine of manners. "You're so dramatic. Fry an egg?"

He frowned. "I was being facetious, you ditz."

"What did you call me!" she snapped, ignoring the fact that she did not know what facetious meant. Winry punched the water's surface, splashing them both.

Edward grinned. "A ditz. I can say it again if you want."

"I'd be nicer if I were you," growled Winry, chucking her pear out into the lake.

"And why is that?"

"I'll throw you into the middle of the pond and you'll sink right to the bottom. I wouldn't even have to take you to the middle. A few more feet out, and you'll be in over your head!"

His glare became positively bellicose. Winry started laughing until Edward threw his apple away as well. "You're gonna get it for that one!"

Winry leapt to her feet and took a few steps back. She staggered from laughing so hard. Edward lunged at her, but she avoided him in a flurry of movement that kicked up water around them.

"I didn't know they let people as slow as you in the military!" Winry goaded, moving out into thigh-high water. "Bring it on, bean boy!"

"What did you call me!" Edward barked as he righted himself and readied to pounce.

Winry cupped her hands around her mouth. "Beeeean Boy!" she shouted.

Edward looked much like he was going for the jugular. Winry yelped and turned to run out deeper, but she forgot to account for the resistance of water. Her retreat was slow and awkward and cut short by a hot, hard, unrelenting arm around her waist. She shrieked as she was hoisted out of the water and unceremoniously flung back in.

When she floundered back up, sputtering and flailing, Edward was standing over her, sneering.

"Ha!" he barked triumphantly before turning and storming away.

Winry sat dumbstruck for a moment, water lapping at mid-chest. She glared at his back, bitter at her defeat. Before she could pout for long, though, the opportunity arose for retribution, and Winry could not resist.

Jumping to her feet, she charged Edward. He must have been too enveloped in his victory to think to avoid her because he only just began to glance over his shoulder when she was upon him. With a battle cry, Winry slammed into his back. She tackled him to the mud and pinned him face down for as long as she could.

Edward recovered with renewed vengeance. He shoved Winry back as he came to sit up, spitting mud and pond water out of his mouth while wiping his face.

"Ha, yourself!" cried Winry. She gave him a hard push back under the water, but he sprang up quickly. "I'm the champion!" she yelled, waving her arms over her head. "I am victorious!"

"I ain't dead yet," snarled Edward, grabbing her by the shoulders, preparing to dunk and hold. Winry squeaked and began to struggle.

The sound of tinny laughter made them both freeze, their glares vanishing. They both turned to see a now awakened Alphonse hitting the grass with a large hand as he guffawed.

"The battle royal! Bean Boy versus the Ditz! If you two could see your faces…" he gasped.

As though physical awareness grabbed them both by their shirtfronts, Edward and Winry realized what they had been doing and the rather compromising position they were now in: he clutching her shoulders with her kneeling between his knees. Blushing simultaneously, they both shoved the other away.

"You may have won the battle!" Edward snapped, covering his embarrassment with indignation.

Winry did the same. She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll take that to mean you're forfeiting."

"What? That's not—" He stopped when he heard both his brother and Winry laughing at his expense. "You're all against me!" he cried, throwing his hands up into the air. Edward climbed up to his feet and trudged to the shore. "You fight like a girl," Edward shouted over his shoulder before collapsing next to the picnic basket in the grass.

"So do you!" Winry shouted back. "And I'm the only one here who actually is a girl!" She humphed and turned her back to him, opting to look out over the lake instead.

Even in the chilly water, she could still feel her heated blush and the unmistakable belly-tingles of closeness. Her hands were twitching so she buried in them it the muddy, soft pond bottom. Behind her, she could hear Edward muttering something to himself. Undoubtedly, he was reassuring himself of his own victory.

Her heart began to slow in her ears. Winry could feel the blood receding from her cheeks. When sitting in the water, out in the open for scrutiny, seemed too embarrassing, Winry stood and washed the mud off her hands and shins. She then turned and made her way back to the shore where Edward was pouting in the grass, his dichromatic legs sprawled out.

Winry sat, positioning herself so that the picnic basket was between them. Both she and Edward were silent for a moment, frowning at the lake because they were too timid to glare at each other. Then, from the same place in her gut where the tingles had just faded, an odd kind of tightening built. Before Winry knew it, she was picturing the absurdity and giggling.

Hesitant at first, Edward began to laugh with her.

"Do you remember that time," Winry asked, "When we came out here before Christmas service, and I pushed you into the water? Your mom was so angry." Winry did not think until after she spoke that perhaps she should not mention his mother.

Edward did not flinch. "I was thinking about when Al and I got all those frogs and put them in your bed. I thought you'd never forgive us for that one."

Winry cringed. "I never did."

"You're still angry about the frogs?"

"Seething." She folded her arms across her chest. Edward chuckled smugly, earning himself a blunt punch in the arm. He muttered a quiet ow but continued snickering. When he put his metal hand over the growing welt on his arm, he hissed and jerked away.

"Wimp," Winry muttered.

Edward scoffed. "You didn't hit that hard," he retorted. "My hand it hot again."

"Frying eggs, right?"

"Something like that."

"Sit tight," Winry said, snatching up the folded towel she had brought for herself. Edward gave her a quizzical expression as she bounded back to the shore and crouched down; he could not see what she was doing. Winry returned quickly, holding a now sopping towel in her hands.

"Here you go," she said as she sat down at his right and wrung the towel out over his shoulder. She watched his shoulders rise and fall in a long sigh. He slumped forward slightly.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

And there were the ribbons, the bonds, the binds, knotted so tightly around her heart and looped so loosely around his. She thought she could feel them tugging when she shifted. Actually, Winry did not expect that their ties ended at his heart; that was a trick of the light, of the sun reflecting off the recollections. Upon closer examination, Winry could see knots at his ankle and wrist, at his knee and elbow, at his shoulder but not his hip.

Then it would seem, since she was not tethered there, that his heart was out her jurisdiction. That was all right, though. She had an arm and a leg on which he relied, in which he trusted, and if that was not just as good as a heart, she did not know what was. It was her responsibility to take care of that much, so Winry stood up and went to the water's edge to resoak her towel.