See disclaimer in Chapter One

It was a long walk from the train station to the house in Resembool. The dry summer dust from the road swirled around our feet in the light breeze as Al and I made our way to the Rockbell house. "Good thing Teacher let us know when she did. Otherwise we might have walked in on someone else in Winry's room." Al mused.

I shook my head. "You have the strangest kind of positivity sometimes, you know that? But I agree with you this time." Teacher had intercepted us at the hospital to tell us that Winry had been discharged and had headed back to Resembool only four hours before we had arrived. We stayed the night in the Curtis house, waiting until morning to catch the first train out to our hometown. The late afternoon sun shone down on us, casting our shadows far behind us as we walked.

"Have you figured out how to break the news to Winry?" Al asked curiously. "You know, about your arm?" I felt a chill sweep over me as I shook my head despondently. I had spent almost the whole train ride thinking of something to say to lessen the shock, but I couldn't manage to get anything that didn't sound like an excuse.

I watched it dangle at my side, only budging when I put all my concentration on lifting my shoulder. It shifted about three inches outward, the lower arm and hand still flopping as my upper arm shook with the effort. I eventually gave up, sighing in defeat. Whatever damaged the automail's artificial nerves, it certainly must have been pretty big. Wait a minute… I glanced at Al. "Hey, did you see any of the transmutation I did to take out Envy?"

He laughed. "How could I not? The light from the reaction almost blinded us through the cracks in the walls! Even Major Armstrong couldn't believe it. You must have put all of your energy into that one." I stared into the distance, my face reddening at the blatant compliment.

"Well, I mean, I wouldn't say all of my energy…" I thought about how quickly my anger dissipated after that attack, and began to wonder just how big a part those feelings must have played in the transmutation. "Only around fifty percent...ish."

Al glanced at me quizzically. "If that was fifty percent, where did the other seventy five come from? You weren't that tired after the battle, and you even fought another homunculus immediately. It doesn't add up, brother. You should have collapsed."

I hesitated, not sure I was willing or even able to explain. As we approached the front steps of the Rockbell house, the faded green door opened, and Gracia Hughes walked out with little Elicia in her arms. "Mommy, is she really all better? Is she?" The toddler was tugging on her mother's short-sleeved dress, staring back at the house with wide eyes.

The patient mother smiled, saying lightly, "No, not yet, but she's getting there, sweetie. Don't you worry, she'll be all ready to play the very next time we see her." Elicia let out a loud burst of cheerful laughter, turning forward and noticing us.

"Hello, big brother!" she said waving to Al. She turned to me as I tried not to scowl. "Hello, little brother!" she giggled.

My eye twitched as I put on a fake smile, forcing the enraged shouting I desperately wanted to unleash back into my throat before it got loose. "Hi there, Elicia," I grumbled instead.

"Hiya, Elicia!" Al bubbled. "Have you gotten bigger again? If only my brother would follow your example." He looked at Gracia, his mood sobering. "Hello, Mrs. Hughes. How are you?"

"It's nice to see you boys, but don't you think there are more important people to talk to?" She nudged her head back toward the house where Granny stood at the doorway.

Al waved goodbye to the Hughes family as I stared Granny Rockbell down. "You busted it up again, didn't you?" she asked, shaking her head as if she already knew the answer. Her gaze wandered upward as Al approached behind me. Her long, thin eyebrow rose higher than I'd ever seen it go, and she actually hesitated before asking, "What in the blazes happened to you two scoundrels?"

Al sheepishly rubbed the back of his plated neck with the crumpled remainder of his own right arm. "We, uh...we found the one who hurt Winry."

Her eyes softened, and she stepped aside. "You'd better give me a bigger explanation later, you hear?"

"Sure thing, Granny," I mutter, almost by reflex. "Where is Winry, anyway?"

The old lady chuckled. "Where else would she be? She hasn't touched her tools for more than a month."

I shook my head, a knowing smile spreading across my face. "Workshop?"

Al nodded. "Workshop."

**FMAB**

As we approached the doorway to Winry's workshop, we heard… something slightly concerning from within.

A clang of metal repeatedly echoed out of the room as Winry hit something; most likely, it was one of her less graceful automail designs. "That crazy, hard-headed, reckless, stubborn little idiot! Running around doing God knows what, God knows where, constantly trying to do everything at once! 'I'm a dog of the military,' he says, 'I need to find a way to get our bodies back,' he says, but does he ever say see you later? How about we promise we won't die? Honestly, sometimes I need the reassurance." The crashing and chaos continued, and Al and I flinched out of compassion for her poor tools.

"Don't even get me started on the way he influences Al! I swear to God, even though Alphonse didn't become a state alchemist, it doesn't mean that he isn't becoming a soldier like his older idiot brother. Do you understand me, Amber? Sometimes, these boys drive me crazy!"

Carefully, I opened the door, not wanting to startle her. The last thing I needed was a wrench to the face before she even noticed my arm. "Uh," I mumble awkwardly, "H-hi, Winry."

I felt something slam into my leg, and saw a orange and white furball zipping past us out of the corner of my eye. "Bye, Amber!" Al said, and waved at the cat. At least Amber knows which direction to run… that's one smart cat. Maybe I should let Al get one after all…

Seconds later, a blonde-haired blur smashed into Al and I, tackling us to the floor in a huge hug. "You guys came back! You're safe!" Winry exclaimed.

"Yeah, I guess we are, Winry," I replied. I silently begged for a random burst of inattention. Please don't notice, please don't notice...

"...Ed?" Winry roughly pushed off of Al, and stood tall, looming at her maximum height. I instantly cringed, knowing exactly what was coming next. "What the hell did you do to my automail?!"

The chromium-plated wrench glinted menacingly as she brought it back behind her, a vein pulsing angrily in her forehead. I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact, the burst of cold pain, the spots in my vision. But...none of it happened. I slowly cracked one eye open to see Winry holding the wrench just above her right shoulder, staring at me as I slowly unfurled from the floor. Her eyes seemed to look through me, clouded and sad. She sighed, dropping the wrench down to her side. "I still want to know what you did to it," she muttered quietly. Her gaze dropped to the floor. "I was so worried you'd come back hurt, if at all, and now… here you both are. Hurt."

I shook my head, still confused. "Who are you, and what have you done to my wrench-hurling friend?" I joked, and saw a faint smile flicker over her face before being replaced by the same melancholy mask. A bit discouraged at the lack of reaction, I decided to try and sugarcoat the matter. "If you've gotta know, I think I burned it out from too much alchemy at once. It still moves, but only the upper arm."

"You should have seen it, Winry. It was huge! And he took on Envy all by himself!" I winced, and glared at my brother as his embellishment made Winry's face go ghost pale.

"Ed…" She trailed off, and looked me directly in the eye. "Didn't you say that the homunculi are extremely dangerous? Didn't you say that you and Al together had trouble fighting just one and getting out alive?"

Panako cleared her throat, dispelling the tension from the room. I was grateful for her excellent timing. "I just wanted to let all of you know that the stew is ready." She exited the room heading back downstairs to the kitchen.

Al slumped. "Granny's stew is still on my list of things to eat once I get my body back," he said, as he gloomily made his way downstairs. I attempted to quickly follow Al, in an effort to avoid Winry's glare. However, just before my foot entered the doorway, she cut me off, blocking the exit from her workshop.

"Don't think that this is over, Edward," she whispered harshly.

"I never said it was," I replied, and allowed her to go first. As I watched Winry descend after my brother, I shuddered at the thought of trying to explain what I had done for her sake. What will she think of me, if I do?

**FMAB**

As we cleared the table after dinner, Winry glared at Al's heavily damaged armor. "I couldn't help but notice that you aren't exactly in pristine shape yourself, Al. Just what kind of fight did you two have to go through to get ahead of that homunculus thing?"

He shrugged, saying, "It was tough, but it didn't last long. We immobilized them both fairly quickly."

Winry stopped in her tracks, almost dropping her plate. "...Both?" Al stiffened in surprise, and began to back slowly away. "I thought you were only up against one of those things. You fought two of them?"

"It's not like we wanted to!" I stepped in, concerned for my little brother's safety. "The other one followed us and tried to set the one who attacked you loose! We had no choice but to fight!"

Al gestured to his functional limbs, saying nervously, "At least it's not as bad as the first time we fought Scar! I still have everything attached!"

Winry scowled. "You're missing huge chunks of yourself. How can you say that everything's attached?"

"Well...the other bits are...kinda swallowed. Like, well...the homunculus ate them."

Winry stalked off, muttering angrily under her breath. The dishes clattered, and she shouted from the kitchen, "Where is Amber?! I need to vent!"

Panako pointed an idle thumb out the doorway. "Last I saw, Den was chasing her out in the field. She ran downstairs like she was shot out of a gun, and it startled the old boy."

"No! Poor Amber!" Al wailed, his arms waving frantically near his face.

I took a long sideways glance at my brother's emotional breakdown. On second thought, letting him get a cat of his own would be a huge mistake...

I felt a tug on my left arm, and a pang of discomfort passed up my wrist as Winry's hand clamped down on it. "You need to be fixed right away so you can mend Al. I will not have him chasing my cat while covered in bite marks."

She dragged me forcibly upstairs, and I had to work pretty hard for most of the way just to keep myself from falling over, on top of everything else.

I looked to Al for a chance at rescue, but he was too busy staring hopefully out the window for signs of Amber or Den. Yep. A mistake of epic proportions.

The dragging suddenly stopped, and I looked up to find myself sitting in the doorway leading to Winry's workshop. I moved my gaze to Winry, who glared, and imperiously pointed in the direction of her work bench. "Go. Sit," she commanded.

I wasted no time after hearing her authoritative command, and quickly entered her workshop, choosing to avoid voicing a comeback that would undoubtedly get me in more trouble than I'm already in. And I didn't even know that was possible, I thought. My gaze shifted to Winry, who was gathering the automail supplies from her other work table so that she could make the necessary repairs to my arm.

Al trudged through the doorway, and crossed the room to stand next to me. He shook his head despondently. "There's no sign of either of them…" He sounded pretty upset about it.

"Don't worry, Al." Winry said as she carefully disconnected her automail from my unworthy body. "Once I fix your brother, he will mend you so that you can go cat hunting without scaring the neighbors." She sounded more cheerful than she looked. I wonder if she's still upset that we didn't fully explain to her what exactly happened when we went up against the homunculi…

I took a deep breath. Despite not wanting to readdress the topic of Envy and Gluttony, I felt that Winry needed to hear it. If she didn't know the truth, how could she be expected to trust us?

Winry began unthreading the long cable that ran through the frazzled prosthetic as I began to rock back and forth on the bench. "So… the two homunculi." Winry paused, her back and shoulders stiffening. Her head turned slightly over her left shoulder, so she could look at me out of the corner of her eye, but she said nothing. I cleared my throat, and tried to cover what Al and I had intentionally skipped last time. Maybe she'll show mercy with the wrench again. Who knows? "The two that attacked us were called Envy and Gluttony. Envy was the one who went after you, and Gluttony was there as Envy's backup." I sighed, knowing that wrench or no wrench, this wasn't going to be an easy conversation. "The thing is, Winry, the reason Al and I

are so beat up...it's because… homunculi can regenerate their wounds. While we were fighting them, they were always recovering from our last attack."

I somehow mustered up the courage to move my nervous gaze from my kicking feet to Winry. She looked at us dumbfoundedly, and a look of fear and panic flashed across her face before it quickly disappeared. She remained speechless, and the room was cloaked with a heavy feeling of shock and unease. "You...you did beat them, right? They won't be chasing after any of us anymore?"

I shrugged. "As far as we know, I managed to kill Envy, but Gluttony got away." Al glanced at me, eye lights flashing slightly. He wanted to say something, I could tell. I continued regardless, not wanting him to reveal more than he needed to yet again. "They didn't fall down easy, obviously. I had to use a lot of power to keep Envy out of commission, and the only reason I did it alone was because Al and Major Armstrong were keeping Gluttony busy."

Al nodded, interjecting. "Which is what caused all this damage. He's pretty fast despite how fat he is, and I was trying to fight him and keep track of how you were doing at the same time, brother. It was pretty difficult."

Winry sighed. "So you were fighting them both at once? And only had help from one other alchemist?" I nodded, and she shook her head in exasperation, retrieving some more cable from a cardboard box in the corner of the room before returning to my arm. She picked up the chromium-plated wrench, preparing to loosen the joints and reinsert the artificial nerves before a thought occurred to her.

"Ed...do you know why I didn't hit you for breaking my automail this time?" I shook my head, and Al and I both stared awkwardly at the wrench, waiting for it to fly suddenly across the room and take me by surprise. Winry just turned around, still fiddling with the tightness of some screws near the shoulder. "It was because of your reaction. The way you looked when I was about to throw the wrench, the way I always did...I saw myself. The way I had felt before Envy started beating me. You were cringing, but you seemed to expect it, like it was normal to be this scared of me...I suddenly realized that what Envy did to me at first, I had been doing to you for years. I couldn't take the guilt. I-I didn't even want to think about it." Her eyes welled up, and she barely managed to keep from breaking down all over again, after all the time she'd had to recover from everything. I forced myself to look at her, made myself see just how much Envy's actions still affected her, no matter how normal she appeared. "Ed… I'm so, so sorry!"

I gritted my teeth, almost laughing despite how humorless I felt. "Winry, I can't say that I've particularly enjoyed getting whacked every other time I see you, but that doesn't give you the right to compare yourself with that inhuman monster. Do you hear me?" She nodded, her gaze locked to the floor. "Look at me, Winry. Please." My voice started to break as she blinked back her tears and bravely looked into my eyes. "You have no right to think of yourself as anything less than how Al and I see you, and how you should see yourself. Winry, you're so much more than the one who threw wrenches at my head. You're the one who picked up the wrench in the first place, who gave me my arm and leg and cared enough about me to protect and take care of them for me. You've always been there for us, even when we couldn't be there for you, and you do everything out of care for other people. You...you are so much more. Winry, you are better than anything Envy could hope to even mimic." I was thrown sharply against the back of the lightly cushioned bench as Winry crushed me in a tight hug. I reached over and put my left hand on her back, patting her shoulder gently and trying to calm her down.

A huge jolt of pain buzzed through me as Winry reconnected my arm. "Gaaah! Aw, come on, why did you have to do it without warning me?"

She sat down next to me, wiping tears from her eyes that were all too real. "I had to pay you back somehow from breaking your promise."

"What do you mean, Winry?" Al asked.

"You promised that you wouldn't make me cry again. But I can't help it, not after all of this." She smiled, her mouth still wobbling slightly. "I owe you a surprise or two for all the ones I've had to endure from you both."

I blinked, thinking about what had happened. After everything she's been through, all the crying and hurting she's been put through, she can still smile at me. I guess... I should take my own advice here. She doesn't see me as the guy who killed for her. She sees me. Just me, not a dog of the military or a monster under the bed. Just...me.

We heard a light cough, and turn around to see Al waving at us from the door. "Uh, I'm pretty sure I heard Granny calling. Bye, guys." He sounded almost bashful, as if being in the same room as us made him uncomfortable.

I felt bad for him, making him feel so awkward whenever tensions ran high like this. Back at the hospital, he was like this too. At least twice. "Hey, Al." He paused, leaning back on the staircase so his head poked through the doorway. "How about you help Granny with whatever she's doing while we go and find Amber for you? And Den, too, of course."

"That's my puppy you're talking about, mister," Winry scolded playfully, jabbing me in my left side. "He'd better be more than just an afterthought."

Al's eyelights glowed with excitement. "Really?!" he gushed. "Thank you, brother!" Now it sounded as if Al wanted to cry. "I knew there was a little bit of animal-lover left in you!"

Winry started giggling uncontrollably, managing to stand up and start putting away her tools despite the constant tremors of laughter. "What am I gonna do with you two?" she mumbled in a calm break between outbursts.

"Real funny, guys," I groaned. "Just because I'm being nice this one time does not mean you can adopt strays right and left now, okay Al?"

Al sagged a little. "Okay, brother."

I smirked, my small victory complete. "Come on, Winry. We've got a cat to find."

Please visit my friend and co-author, DarksteelRebelhawk, out on Wattpad! His stories are so amazing!

-warehouseluver13