A/N: Wow. Thanks for the reviews, guys. I'm sure there
were questions I intended to answer here, but I've forgotten them all.
So sorry. Oh by the way, we have officially achieved "M" status. Lots of good ol' fashioned profanity in this chapter.
XX. The Votary
I don't know why she's still standing. She's looking out at the street, probably straining to hear the last of metal feet clanking away on the sidewalk. I wish she'd just sit down already. Not that I'm particularly interested in having her sit next to me, but at least it would make me feel less like shit for a brother for not standing, too.
I steal a glance at up her face; she's crying. Yeah, like she has any right to be crying. It's not her brother. It's not her problem. Who is she to be getting all misty? I look back down at my feet and wonder if thinking really selfish things is any less selfish than doing really selfish things.
"What would make him think that?" she asks before squatting down next to me, her hands still on the railing.
I'm torn between telling her that I'm the cause and being silent. "I don't know," I lie because I don't feel like explaining to Winry just how terrible a person I am. I also don't think she'd want to hear about a seven foot tall, bear-human-thing lumbering around in the underbelly of a conspiracy, who conveniently shared his plans for cooking up another sentient being from his own memories just when Alphonse was beginning to question.
She's looking at me, and I'm making a point not to look back. "You're bleeding," she says.
"I know," I say. I've been swallowing it for the past five minutes, and my stomach is not happy about it.
"Edward," she begins.
I really don't want her to say anything. I don't want her to apologize or question or comfort. If she starts, she will expect me to finish, and I honestly have nothing to say.
"Why don't we go inside?" she suggests.
I feel a flash of something defensive. Why didn't she try to apologize or question or comfort me like I don't want her to?
"Fine," I say. She helps me up, and that makes me defensive, too. She leads the way back down to my room, where she says she's going to find a nurse or something to look at my face. She leaves just in time for me to run to the bathroom next door and vomit up all the dry, insipid hospital food I had eaten for lunch.
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I wish I had a book. The silent movies playing in my head are particularly loud now, and I need something to distract me. Usually conversation works, but no one is in my room, and I don't want to talk anyway. A good, innocuous book won't seek replies, won't stare at me blankly when I don't give them, won't attempt to keep me company.
Won't accuse me of atrocities I could never commit. Won't look at me with a frozen face filled with pleas. Won't remind me why I didn't lay down in front of murderer – I know I had a reason. I know I did. Won't tell me again and again that it is worth it, that resignation is not an option.
I grab the bottle of milk on my tray with breakfast and heave it across the room. It hits the wall and shatters, and by the time the nurse hurries in, I've already laid down with my back to the door.
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Denny Bloche, possibly the last person I wanted to talk to, struts into my room as Winry is storming out. She's pissed at me because I wouldn't talk to her. She should be grateful.
He gets this stupid look on his face as his eyes follow her out and down the hall. Then he looks back at me with an even more stupid grin like he's just cracked some inside joke. Like a girl in a short skirt is ubiquitous guy-solidarity. I can't help but snort and look out the window.
"Cheer up, sir," Bloche says. I'm glad he's posing in the doorway – I'd hate to have to pay for his dental repairs if he got any closer. I'm hoping my silence is dropping enough hints. Apparently, it's not. "With a mechanic like that, it can't be all that bad." He pokes a thumb in her direction over his shoulder.
If I were feeling like talking, I would tell him to go lose his limbs somewhere and have her as a mechanic himself. See how he likes it. Yeah, try growing up with her. Try having her nag you and berate you and worry about you all the fucking time. I'd give up my other arm just to get her to leave sometimes. Try having her know every button you have, every scar you ever put on yourself.
"I tell you what," Bloche goes on. "When I was sixteen—"
"I don't care, Bloche," I say sharply.
He blinks at me owlishly. "What? Are you still hung up about your brother, sir?"
Am I hung up? Am I hung up?
"He probably just needs some time to think, sir. My brother and I fought like this all the time, but we're still friends."
Yeah, well, you didn't condemn your brother to a potential lifetime in entirely sensory-interrupted incarceration. I did. So, shut up. We're nothing alike.
"Al doesn't have it that great, though, does he?" Bloche says, obviously intent on digging his own grave.
"No, he doesn't," I reply sardonically. "Do you think you could possibly take your mindless babble somewhere else?"
He grins that idiot grin, and I can tell he's thinking of finding and inflicting himself on Winry.
I have this instinctive response when it comes to just about all things Winry. I've had it since I was a kid, and it fires right now. It's not protective or territorial or anything like that. It's just a flicker of regret, I guess. It's quick, like a trick knee, then it's gone, but in that second, I want to tell him to back the fuck off her. But not in a protective, territorial way.
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I've transmuted the bedspread and sheets into a rope. My swollen cheek hasn't gone down enough for me to really see out of one eye, and I stop, straddling the windowsill, wondering how much I want to try the climb without my depth perception.
Winry picks right then to walk in, and I almost kick myself for hesitating.
"What do you think you're doing?" she asks, putting her hands on her hips.
I look up toward the ceiling. "I'll give you three guesses."
"Your doctor hasn't discharged you yet, Edward," Winry informs me sternly.
"You think I'd be climbing out the window if I thought he had?" I ask. Most of the time, I don't really intend to make her angry. It just sort of happens. Of course, I do know I'm being an asshole. But, what is she honestly expecting?
"Quit being stupid, Ed," she says. "You can't leave; you're not well enough yet. And how did you get your clothes back?"
I pulled rank on a nurse, but I don't want to tell her that. "I've got more important things to do then lay around all day," I snap.
"More important than healing?"
"I can walk and heal at the same time."
She rolls her eyes dramatically and stomps over to the window. She looks over the sill, eyeing my makeshift rope, while I willfully ignore that her hip just brushed my knee. Fucking guy-solidarity.
"I bet you think you're really clever, don't you?" she asks tartly, tugging the rope. It's tied to the leg of the hospital bed I've transmuted to the floor.
I kind of do until she says that. "You're wasting my time, Winry."
"You just don't get it, do you Edward?" she snaps.
"What is there to get? Alphonse is wandering around Central all by himself, thinking he's not real. There's nothing else to fucking get than that!" I don't usually use profanity with her. I can tell it frightens her, and I sigh brusquely.
"Edward!" she barks before grabbing my arm and pulling me back inside. "You don't see," she growls as I fight against her. She eventually wins because I am still bandaged up under my clothes and I haven't eaten since the lunch I lost the day before.
I fight all the way down, and with not much dignity, pull my arm away from her once we're both sitting on the floor. She glares hard, and I see she's starting to cry. "If you keep wearing yourself down, you won't have anything left to give Alphonse!"
"By then I'll have reached my goal!" I yell at her face.
"Not if you fall out a stupid window and break your neck! Not if you run out before you can do anything! You're not invincible!" She gets on her knees so she is taller than me.
I've already heard this from Ross. That speech was easier to tolerate; this one just insults me.
"You think I'd give up before I got Al back?" I say, getting on my knees too.
She throws her hands up and stands. "I'm not talking about giving up." She's crying now. She knows I can't stand it when she does that, but she does it anyway just to be oppositional. She stands absolutely still in the middle of the floor, scowling at me.
I snort. "You think I'm going to die?" I ask mockingly. I see her seethe.
"Yes!" she cries. "That's what people do when they get hurt badly enough! You used to know that. You're not immortal." I want her to stop right there because I know what she's going to ask next. I glare back at her, thinking that might be enough to shut her up. "When did you start thinking you were indestructible?"
I stand up loudly, trying not to wince. "When I figured out there was something more important than me."
"And what is that? Alphonse?" she asks shrilly. She says his name so severely, almost resentfully, and I give her my most appalled expression.
She turns away and heads toward the door before pivoting and rounding on me again. "When did you stop giving a shit about anything but Alphonse?"
I fire back, "How about I just quit now? Move back to Rizembul. Live a happy little life with you and Pinako and my tin can brother?" I can't believe I've said it until it's already out.
She's quiet for a second. "That's not what I'm saying at all."
I don't give her the chance to continue. "You don't get it, Winry. He's not your brother."
I should have been expecting it. My impulsivity and Winry's violence mix too well. Before I know it, she slaps me so hard I almost lose my balance. It's a full-armed swing across the same cheek Alphonse had hit.
"Edward Elric!" she says through clenched teeth. Her breathing is strangled. I look up at her, too proud to admit that I deserved that. "I hate you with every ounce of me."
That is such a stupid, trite thing to say. I want to tell her that, but she storms out before the bright white pain can fade. So banal is her insult that I stagger over to the bed and sit down heavily, where I linger over it until a nurse ambles by and orders me back into bed.
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I don't bother pretending to sleep anymore. The nurse patrol meanders by, looking through the window in the door unsympathetically. I look back at her, and she hurries along.
It was just the right time of night for the moon to hang in my window. The room is almost as bright as day. But this light is cold. I feel somehow affirmed.
I hear the hinges on the door squeak. I look over and catch Winry halfway in the room, cringing at the sound. I don't want to admit it, even to myself, but I already know we've silently established an armistice. That was about as close to trading apologies as we ever got.
She's got in her hand a plate with what appears to be a slice of my day old birthday cake on it. I look out the window to ignore her, so she comes around the creaky hospital bed and sits between the window and me. I keep on ignoring her, so she makes herself cozy, elbowing me aside so she can lean back against the pillow.
"Here," she whispers, pushing a fork into my hand.
"What makes you think I wanna eat old cake?" I hiss at her. It's a façade now. She knows it, too. I can tell because she gives me that stupid I-know-that's-a-façade smile.
"How did you get in here, anyway?" I ask quietly as I resignedly poke at the cake she's holding between us.
Winry shovels a piece into her mouth and says, "I snuck in."
I don't ask how she got into a military hospital after visiting hours; that way I won't have to lie when they ask me later.
"The nurse isn't going to swing back for another forty-five minutes or so. I've got plenty of time."
We polish off the one piece quickly and silently. Even aged, Gracia's cake is the best. Winry takes the forks and plate and sets them aside. I know she's going to start talking to me about things I don't want to talk about, but I've nowhere to run.
"I've been thinking," she begins as predicted. "Well… I don't know what impression I've given you, but… I really want Alphonse back, too. I never meant to make it sound like I didn't."
There's a good reply for that, but I don't have it. "I don't think that." I don't mean half the stuff I say to her, especially the insults. I thought she knew that.
"You don't?" she asks, suddenly higher pitched and hopeful.
"No." I watch my feet.
"I'm glad," she replies. "I mean, I don't know how siblings really are. The closest I have is you. You and Alphonse. And I…" She looks out the window, and I know she's getting ready to drop some emotional girl-bomb on me. "I understand that I'm not in danger, and I'm not really suffering. Not like Alphonse is. No one's in it like Al is, so he really deserves it. Your determination, I mean. He deserves your devotion."
I think she's telling me that she was jealous. And it makes some sense. A little. We, the three of us, we always were a little trichotomy growing up. It wasn't until Al and I picked up the serious alchemy and the subsequent arrogance that she really took a step back.
Maybe, I'd feel better about it if I had missed her. I think about that reflex and how it wasn't really about missing her as much as it was missing what she used to mean. Winry sort of represented a life with all my limbs and Al in the flesh. She took me back every time. That also meant she went against pretty much everything I'd been training myself to believe about moving forward. There wasn't anything left of then but her.
I feel a dull weight on my automail hand. I look down and see her hand on top of mine. I sort of pretend she's not doing it, but it doesn't help. She picks up my hand and holds it against her solar plexus.
My chest tightens, and I feel this humiliating, nervous squeak creeping up my throat. I swallow it down hard. It's just Winry, after all.
"We'll all be together in the end, don't you think?" she asks ruefully.
I've never been good at lying to her. "I'm not sure."
"Hmm," she mutters before dropping her head on my shoulder. I have to swallow really hard this time.
I don't look at her face, and that somehow makes me look at her legs instead. She's got these sugar cube legs in this light, sort of bent up and leaning together and looking exponentially closer than they had just a second ago.
Look at all the supremely more important things I should be thinking about, and I feel like shit because Al deserves to be more than a distraction from some girl, even if it is this girl. And despite that, she's sighing and breathing so damn loud. I think her perfume is too strong until I remember that Winry doesn't wear perfume.
There's something I should be doing right now. I know there is.
"They're gonna find me soon," she says.
And I will spend every minute until then in self-deprecating silence.
"I talked to Mr. Hughes, you know? He's getting you discharged in the morning. We'll look then," she says. "I'll help you."
Part of me wants to yell at her for interfering. Yeah, like my out-the-window plan was going to get me far. But this other part wants to grab her hand back and keep her here, maybe hide her under the bed until the nurse has passed. But, still, all of me knows that if Al deserves better than my distraction – which he does – then she certainly does, too.
I kind of squeeze her hand to get her attention and tell her she should leave before she gets us both in trouble. She agrees without argument, probably because she's tired. She promises to meet me outside after all the paperwork is done and I'm free to go, says goodnight, and slips out with the same loud, squeaky hinges she had when she slipped in.