A/N: Your patience is much appreciated. Between two jobs and enough laziness for at least three other people, it's a wonder I get around to feeding myself. However, I do, and fanfiction comes in at a very close fourth on my list of priorities, just after bathing daily.

XXI. The Alchemologist I:
The Art of Stasis

For the most part, I think I'm a good person. I think I am. I'm sure I subconsciously picture myself as some kind of martyr, making sacrifice after sacrifice, giving all me and more for the good of someone else. That's the only rational I have for feeling victimized when I don't get my way. Like I've given so much, when do I get to cash in and receive that reward?

And either there is no reward, or I'm not the philanthropist I think I am. Or both.

I pressed the train ticket between my fingers, feeling my pulse thudding through my hand and my chest. I could have torn it up and gone about my business, pretended like I never saw it.

Why wasn't I good at it yet? At letting go? Wasn't I practiced enough, versed enough? I should be a pro. I've been doing for years. Nobody knew the back end of a train, the Doppler Effect, the home remedy for removing dust and tears like I did.

I wanted to start crying right there. I probably would have been better off if I had. Instead, I sucked it up, pressed my lips tight, and walked rigidly toward the kitchen where Edward was waiting over a kettle.

He was leaning against the counter leisurely, arms and ankles crossed, nice and concise. He reminded me a rope, tied and wrapped up around it's itself, and I remembered reading this article about piles of rope and hay catching fire all by themselves. The article said the weight of the pile heats up the inside so much that is eventually explodes. For the first time in a while, I decided to ignore the weight that Edward carried around, and I didn't care that he was probably burning up inside all the time.

That didn't give him the right.

I thought I would be subtler, more effective if I were quiet and controlled. But since I'm never that schooled, Edward knew immediately. I knew he knew. Of course he would know! I'm a book and he's a genius who could read backwards, forwards, or in Ishballan. He didn't look apprehensive, though, and that made me even angrier.

"Were you going to mention leaving or just—"

"Winry," he began.

"Were you going to tell me or were you just going to sneak out?" I asked. I noticed how I articulated everything; my t's were sharp, my s's hissed.

"You're making sneaking out sound really appealing right now," he replied lazily, watching my olive colored kettle on the stove.

"How about you burn down my house, too, before you go? You know, for tradition's sake?"

That got a reaction out of him. Edward glared at me, a ropey muscle in his jaw standing out. He was holding himself still, coiled tight and smoldering.

He hardily moved his mouth at all when he replied. "I don't know what you were expecting me to do, Winry."

"Have the decency to tell me, maybe?"

"You figured it out, didn't you?"

I slammed my open hand down on the kitchen table between us. The train ticket felt damp and hot under my palm, and it only got hotter when I pushed it across the table toward him. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist, Edward."

He stared at the ticket for a moment before giving the most appalled expression I'd seen in a while. "You went through my pockets?" he barked, charging toward me and snatching the ticket off the table. "You've got a lot of nerve!"

I should have been ashamed. If I had any decency, I would have been ashamed. "You don't think I have a right to know?"

"You don't have the right to go through my shit!" And since we were pulling up issues that should have been expunged, he added, "But it's never stopped you before, has it?"

I ground my teeth together. "Oh, am I exposing another dirty, little secret of yours? Are you that ashamed of leaving me? Of running away? I'm surprised." I was using this high-pitched, girlish voice that I used to pull out when we were kids, when I was teasing him.

As if we weren't already proving it, I remember and ignored that I… that things never really change.

Ed shoved the ticket into his pocket, his face starting to redden. "In case you haven't noticed, Winry, you're not all that high on my list of priorities. Keeping you company out here in East Bumblefuck isn't my responsibility. Give me one a good reason to stay."

Even if I had one to given, I wouldn't have been able to. I was frozen. My heart beat hard against my ribs, but the rest of me was still. I'm not high on his list. That shouldn't have surprised me.

The kettle on the stove was emitting a thin stream of steam through the spout. Edward cut a rigid path around the table and came to stand directly in front of me. I was eye-to-eye with his nose for a moment before glaring up into his eyes.

I'm not high on his list. It felt like a catchy radio jingle stuck in my head.

"Al's out there somewhere, human and probably trying to get me back," Edward explained firmly. "Do you understand that this is what I've been trying to do since I was ten?"

"Yes," I said, trying to sound angry and solid.

"Do you understand that the only thing I've thought about for the last decade is in my reach?"

"Yes," I said. The steam pouring out of the kettle was steadier than I was.

"Then why can't you wrap your little mind around why I have to leave?"

My little mind.

I'm not high on his list.

The only thing he'd thought about…

I felt muscles all over my body tightening, twisting taut. In the background, a faint whistle was building louder, signaling teatime.

"Edward," I began, but all I actually said was the w and last d.

Deep in my chest, a muscle was clenching tight, folding in on itself like a charred scrap of paper. I thought I could feel my edges starting to crinkle, to curl. The kettle began to scream.

I made myself look at him, watch his eyes. He was looking back at me unrelentingly.

And the muscle behind my sternum – pulled so taut – snapped, burst, broke.

I heard myself gasp. "I don't want you to go," I sobbed. I didn't realize I had thrown myself against him until I was breathing in his shirt and, inadvertently, his smell. "I know I've been a nightmare this whole time."

I felt him sigh more than I heard it. "You haven't been a nightmare," he said resignedly.

This was what I was afraid of. I would start crying and never stop. "I have been a nightmare. I've been stupid and childish and I wasted all this time." I felt like something was pressing behind my face, pushing to get out with the snot and tears.

"Only a little," Edward reassured in his clumsy style, trying to be comforting and detached at the same time. "You got my arm done eventually."

I pulled away and wiped my leaky nose with the back of my wrist as I sniffed wetly. "That's not what I'm talking about," I said. My vocal cords felt thin and sinewy, and my voice sounded distant and strangled. Not like me. "I was too busy being miserable. I wasted what I really wanted."

He took a sudden step back. I felt myself suck in a breath and looked up quickly, but he was only going to take the kettle off the burner. I hadn't even noticed the shrieking until then.

"Look, Winry," Edward said as he came back toward me. I felt him put his hands on my upper arms awkwardly. He pinned me under those damn eyes again. "I shouldn't have said what I said."

"It's true though." I watched his eyes again; watching anywhere else felt embarrassing, like I was trying to hide. "Everything you said is true."

He opened his mouth to argue, but I continued.

"Maybe being together, all three of us, maybe that's important. Going back to the way we used to be is a priority." Where did all this clarity come from? "And I thought I was the only one full of regret."

Edward furrowed his brow slightly. "What made you think that?"

I laughed quietly. "I don't know. I guess I forgot that you're just one big ball of remorse. For as much as you used to preach about moving forward," I said, "you're the most paralyzed person I know." He was starting to look angry again. "Next to me, that is."

I didn't know what I had been waiting for. Edward, maybe. For him to remind me that, as painful as regret is, it can be a wonderful incentive. He hadn't grown up at all. He was bigger, yes, but he was still Edward, stretched a little taller, spread a little thinner. He was back now, to let me know, once more, that it's okay to be on the wrong track. Or to be off track entirely. As long as you don't stay there.

There was something waiting on my tongue, wanting to be said. I didn't know why I needed to say it, but I had an inkling that I would know once it was out. "I love you," I said.

Edward's eyes widened a fraction. "Uh… I…"

I started to laugh at myself, at us. "I've felt stunted this whole time, and it's because I'm in love with you, and I know I'm never going to get over it unless I tell you about it!" Edward was getting more embarrassed by the moment, but it didn't bother me.

I felt lighter already. My head was pounding from crying, and I was still covered in snot. But, for the first time since Edward had arrived, I felt like I could breath, like all the coils of rope were lifted off and my center could finally cool. Like deliverance. Or liberation. Or resolution.

Only, I was still in love with Edward; I felt it like you feel a coat you're wearing. Somehow, I was expecting that to go away, too. In fact, I was hoping it would.

"Y-you," Edward began, his cheeks a little red. He obviously didn't know what to say, and it made me feel even better to know I could still stump him. "You want to get over it?" How he went from being so angry and heavy to this was beyond me.

I smiled. "You're not an easy person to love."

He swallowed. "Sorry."

There must have been someone else in the room with us, someone I didn't notice until just then. Someone's hands closed tight around my arms. Someone's hair tickled my nose. Someone breathed against my mouth for a moment and then kissed me. It wasn't Edward. It was my imagination. My imagination tasted a little like apples, more like warmth, but mostly like something entirely individual and alien, and it had to be pheromones or something because I'd been kissed like that before, but I'd never been kissed like that before.

My imagination put a hand on my cheek, brushed a metal thumb over my cheekbone.

Then it was over. I opened my eyes and saw reality. Edward took a couple of unsteady steps away from me, giving me the look he'd been wearing for weeks. Collected and detached like he wanted me to believe that he was. He even, beneath that, looked a little wary of me.

That irked me a little. He had kissed me.

He turned and went upstairs, barely making a sound. I would have thought he was being casual if he hadn't been so quiet.

And once he was gone, like I had been leaning on him, I sank into a chair at the kitchen table.

My mouth felt hot and exerted. I still felt damp and fluttery, my nerves vibrating and standing on end. The confusion and uncertainty was beginning to edge in around my conviction, and in the silence Edward left behind, I heard my resolve flicker. My pulse thumped through my lips gently, and I realized that it was going to take a lot more than outing myself to get back up and dust off the love I'd fallen into.