Chapter 5

Whispers In The Night

Winry slept through the day and most of the night. Ed was not so fortunate. The discussion from earlier kept turning over and over in his mind, leaving him restless and edgy. Even the peaceful darkness of the night did little to ease him.

Eventually, two hours after he slipped between the sheets of his bed, Ed accepted he wasn't going to sleep any time soon. Careful not to wake Al, he slipped into the corridor, with some idea that a walk might clear his head.

But then he saw Scar in the corridor, apparently standing guard outside the door to the room holding the members of the Resistance.

"Still 'protecting' her?" Ed asked. He didn't know why he didn't just walk past – maybe he just wanted to try to connect with this man he'd always seen as just another enemy, this man who had suddenly become such a part of Winry's world.

Scar nodded. "She is the Resistance Commander. As long as the H-Faction exists, there will be assassins."

"Assassins?" Ed realised he hadn't thought of that. But as the Commander, of course Winry would be a target.

Scar stared levelly at Ed, as though trying to decide something. Ed shifted his weight, uncomfortable under the Ishbalan's scrutiny. He waited a few moments, trying to determine if the man would speak again. When it seemed he wouldn't, Ed started to turn away.

But then Scar finally spoke, in a low, quiet voice as though trying not to wake the people in the room.

"She's not as strong as she seems."

Ed whipped around. The shadowed light in Scar's eyes suggested he was letting Ed into his confidence – telling him a secret few knew.

Ed, however, was unable to manage anything besides an ineloquent, "What?"

"Vharla is a leader at heart...and she is one of the best," Scar continued quietly. "But she has been forced to shoulder those responsibilities before her wounds healed."

"Wounds?"

"They have not been allowed to heal." This time, there was a warning note in Scar's voice. "She buried them before they could truly be buried. She has been stone for far too long. But those wounds fester; like a plant's seed, spreading its roots throughout the rock, forcing the stone to crack. At first, the cracks are tiny, minuscule, barely noticeable...but they will widen. The seed must be rooted out before the stone crumbles entirely."

Ed reflected that was probably the most words Scar had ever said to him at any one time. But it was like sand through a sieve – the words registered, but the actual weight to them, their meaning, was elusive.

"What are you saying?"

Scar's eyes pinned him to the spot. "Vharla has been through more than you think...more than any of us can possibly imagine."

Ed opened his mouth, hardly certain of what he was going to say, but he was cut off when the door opened behind Scar. A small head peered around the jamb, covered with tousled blonde hair.

"What's going on?" Winry asked, and Ed noticed she was holding a sharp, wickedly curved blade. "I heard voices."

"Nothing to be concerned about, Vharla," Scar said.

Winry looked from the Ishbalan, to Ed and back again. "Scar," she began, her tone sharp as glass, "What I said to Envy? That applies to you, too."

Scar nodded. "Understood, Vharla."

"How long have you been 'on watch', so to speak?"

"Only six hours."

"Six...?" Winry sounded as though she wasn't sure whether to laugh at Scar or hit him. "You idiot! Watches are no more than four hours at a time! If you're so convinced that someone's going to assassinate me, at least switch the watches on occasion!"

Winry sighed, shook her head, and turned back into the darkened room. Light spilled in from the corridor, and as it pierced the gloom Ed could vaguely make out the shapes of people tangled in blankets, sprawled on mattresses on the floor.

"At least let me wake Breda or Pan," Winry muttered as she stepped back inside. "And they can take over for a while."

Her soft words faded away as the darkness within the room swallowed her. But Ed barely paid attention to the rustling and shifting sounds drifting into the corridor – he was more intrigued by something Winry had said...

"What did she mean by, 'what she said to Envy'?"

Scar regarded him levelly. It occurred to Ed that Scar probably said far more with his eyes than with his words, if you could only understand it. He had a feeling Winry was one of the few who had learned the language.

"Before we left, Vharla warned Envy," Scar spoke at last. "It was nothing out of the ordinary. She just told him that if he 'messed with you', she'd kill him."

Ed still couldn't believe how casually the word 'kill' dropped from the lips of Winry and everyone under her command.

The door opened, and Winry emerged once more. She touched Scar on the shoulder, and flicked her head in the direction of the darkened room.

"You. Bed. Now."

Ed almost smiled at the image of Winry ordering Scar to go to bed like a mother with a misbehaving toddler.

Scar's crimson eyes narrowed. "Who will stand watch?"

"I will," Winry sighed, "Just to humour you."

"You did not wake any of the others?"

The blonde woman shook her head. "I didn't have the heart to – they looked so peaceful. And this is the first real chance they've had to rest since...Gods knows how long. And before you say something about me needing rest just as much as them," Winry cut Scar off as he opened his mouth again. "I have slept all through the day, and am now feeling very rested, thank you. Although," she mused. "This is probably really screwing up my internal clock."

Scar hesitated, and Winry gave him a glare that could crack concrete. "Bed. Now."

Scar acquiesced without a murmur, but Ed saw the tell-tale twitch at the side of his mouth that said he was more amused by Winry's concern for him than anything else.

Winry leaned against the wall and blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. She had discarded the headband, and she ran her fingers though the tangled strands to try and restore some order to them. At first glance, she looked relaxed, at ease, even peaceful. Only when Ed looked closer did he notice the way her hand rested close to the gun and knife at her waist, the way her weight was on the balls of her feet so she could move hard and fast in an instant if she needed to.

As though sensing his gaze, Winry's eyes met Ed's. "So, Ed, what are you doing up at this hour?"

"Couldn't sleep," he confessed.

Winry smiled, but it wasn't the smile Ed was used to. It was still cheerful, still bright and sunny, still Winry...but there was something guarded about it at the same time. Cautious and not as innocent as it used to be.

"So...what have you been doing with yourself these past years?" Winry prompted. "Besides restoring Al, I mean."

"Not much," Ed confessed. "We were sent to guard this guy up in the North. We didn't really see much fighting."

Some part of him found it strange to be telling Winry this. Winry, from whom he had tried to hide every wound, from whom he had tried to keep every dirty secret about his mission. But at the same time, it seemed natural to be telling her this now – perhaps because she'd been through so much on her own, without he or Al to help her, that he owed her this honesty now.

And somewhere, in the back of his mind, Scar's words rang clear. "Vharla has been through more than you think...more than any of us can possibly imagine."

"If you didn't see much fighting, then how did you get that scar?" Winry asked, gesturing at the line of darkened flesh on his neck.

Ed found himself thinking that, before the war, Winry wouldn't have hesitated to touch the object of their discussion. Now, she seemed reluctant to encroach upon his personal space without permission. Winry's near-complete lack of social boundaries when it came to him and his automail had been the cause of more than one argument, but now that she had apparently finally learned to be tactful with him, he found himself wishing she would show some of her old confidence, her old ease with him.

"We ran into an Angel of Death," Ed admitted.

It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that for a second, Winry went very stiff. "Oh? I heard they were almost impossible to defeat."

"Pretty much. We needed a whole squad, plus me and Al just to take down one." Ed suppressed a shiver, remembering the dying man's eyes suddenly clearing as the alchemical brainwashing he had been subjected to was broken. Freed, only to die in the next instant.

"I hate to think what it would have been like here in Central," Ed continued, "With seventeen – well, sixteen after the one that attacked us was killed – Angels running around."

"They sent an entire battalion of alchemists in to raze them to the ground from a distance, didn't they?" Winry said quietly.

Ed nodded, feeling slightly uncomfortable. "Yeah. There was just no other way to stop them."

There were several seconds of silence as each pondered the fate of those men and women forced into service for the H-Faction. Feeling the heavy mood settle in the corridor like a cloak, Ed tried to dispel the gloom with a more light-hearted comment.

"Hey, did you hear the rumours? About there being an eighteenth Angel of Death?"

Ed expected Winry to express surprise, or at least curiosity. But instead, she sucked in a harsh breath, and the look he glimpsed in her eyes startled him. Fear...apprehension?

"Winry?"

She looked up at him again, but this time her smile seemed forced. "Sorry, I wasn't quite paying attention. What were you saying about an eighteenth Angel of Death?"

Ed knew she had heard every word, and couldn't figure out why she would lie about something like that. But he let it slide. "Just some rumours the brass have been dealing with. Something about eighteen Angels of Death being trained in the H-Faction's facility and only seventeen accounted for. I don't put much stock by it, though. I mean, if an Angel of Death was still around, surely there would be some signs, right? Squads of men mysteriously disappearing, unexplained assassinations...that kind of thing?"

"I guess you're right," Winry shrugged. But she still seemed uncomfortable – her right hand was nervously fiddling with the cloth that covered her left forearm.

Then she turned and there was a strange light in her eyes. "It's strange, isn't it? That it's finally over. The war...your quest...we thought these things would consume our lives, and now...they're over. Just like that."

Ed could admit that it did, indeed, feel strange. For most of his life, he'd been focused avidly on a single goal, to the exclusion of all else. First, bringing his mother back, then restoring Al's body, then there was the war...

And now...now all that was ahead of him was the rest of his life. Empty of impossible, life-consuming quests, empty of everything save what he wanted to do with it. He knew how keenly he'd desired such a life, but it came as a surprise to him how unprepared he was for it. He'd been so driven for so long...what if he couldn't live normally after so many years of that?

He wondered if Winry feared the same thing. After five years of leading an army, could she go back to being just a mechanic? And before Ed's brain could catch up with his mouth, he found himself blurting out that very question.

"Do you think you can go back?"

Winry looked at him in confusion. "Go back to what?"

"Back to...to living a normal life," Ed clarified. "Before the war, before...everything. Do you think you can go back?"

There was a pause.

"There's no normal life, Ed," Winry said softly. "There's just life. And no, I don't think I can ever go back. Can you?"

"I don't think so," he admitted, then found himself asking, "What do you think you're going to do when everything's over?"

Winry's eyes grew distant, and she seemed to be considering his question. "I really haven't thought about it – there's so many things still left to be done. We still need to erase the last remnants of the H-Faction, though these negotiations should help us with that. Once the Resistance and the Dissidents start cooperating, H-Faction won't stand a chance."

She exhaled sharply. "And another reason I need these negotiations to go through is so my people can be looked after. When I disband the Resistance, I want to be sure everyone has somewhere to go – that I won't just be abandoning them to the whims of fate, you know?"

Ed found he couldn't be surprised at that. Winry seemed to have some sort of strange instinct that compelled her to take care of everyone around her.

"And after that..." Winry shrugged. "I'd like to go back to being an automail mechanic...if I can."

"You still want to be a mechanic?"

"Of course, Ed," Winry chided, looking at him as though he were crazy for even suggesting her devotion to machines would ever waver. "Being Commander...that was what I had to do. But automail is my passion – it's what I want to do."

"Some things never change," Ed chuckled, then suddenly remembered something. "But why did you say 'if I can'?"

Winry bit her lip and looked down at her hands. "Do you remember what you said to me five years ago? When I was going to shoot Scar?"

She hadn't really thought he would remember, certain it was just another battle in his long list of fights, and so was surprised when he nodded.

"You really remember?"

"I thought he was going to kill you, Winry," Ed snapped. "That kind of terror you don't just forget."

His very bones shuddered with the remembrance of the fear he'd felt that day. It was a long time ago, but the memory was still fresh, with the clarity only sheer terror and rage could bring. For the first time in his life, he'd been truly prepared, even willing, to kill another human being.

All because that human being had threatened Winry. Ed remembered it as a very sobering realisation of just how much his mechanic had come to mean to him.

"I think the only thing that ever scared me that much was when Al and I tried to revive Mum," Ed confessed.

For a moment, Winry's breath caught. The Ed of five years ago would never have admitted such a thing to her. She resisted the urge to hug him and steered the conversation back on track.

"Well, then you remember what you told me when you took the gun off me."

'Your hands are not those that kill people...they're hands that let people live.'

"I remember," Ed said hoarsely.

"I thought about that later," Winry admitted. "When you think about it, that's actually a good description of automail mechanics in general. Their hands heal, they don't kill." Winry's hands knotted into fists. "And that's just it. I've killed. Dozens of people...maybe even hundreds. Thousands if you take into account all those who were killed by my people, on my orders."

Ed didn't so much as flinch. He took her hands in his, gently easing her fists open, loosening the tense muscles. He was surprised she allowed him to do so – he'd seen firsthand how she seemed to consider any physical contact a potential threat – but after an initial shiver when he touched her, she didn't react.

"Winry..." he began, "Why did you become the Commander of the Rush Valley Resistance? Why did you start the Resistance in the first place?"

"I..."

"It wasn't to kill people, was it?"

Winry bit her lip, and shook her head. "Everything was going to hell in a handbasket. The H-Faction was taking over everywhere, and the Dissidents couldn't fight them alone. Someone needed to stand up for the people the H-Faction was oppressing. Someone needed to try and make things right again. And since no one else was going to..."

She trailed off, shrugging helplessly. As though what she'd done was the natural course of action to follow. As though anyone else would have done what she did.

Winry didn't seem to realise that was exactly what made her so special. That inherent compassion that made – in her view, at least – the right choice the only choice. No matter how difficult.

"Don't you see, Winry?" Ed asked gently, still cradling her hands in his. "You didn't kill out of a desire to, or out of vengeance or anything so selfish. You killed to protect those that depended on you. You killed in your effort to make the world a better place...in your effort to make things right again."

He knew it was true. Winry had held a gun on Scar, the man who had killed her parents...and found herself unable to pull the trigger. Because she couldn't kill selfishly – the only way she could bring herself to take a life was in the name of the greater good.

It was an unorthodox kind of healing, a brutal and bloody type of healing...but it was healing nonetheless.

"But that doesn't condone it!" Winry burst out. "So what if my intentions were good and noble and righteous? I still killed – my motives don't matter!"

"That's where you're wrong. Your motives are probably the only things that do matter," Ed went on, trying to explain what he knew in his heart. "Winry...everyone killed. We did, the Resistance did, the H-Faction did...but what separates us from them is the reason we killed."

Winry huffed a small, unintelligible sound, but she didn't so sad anymore, so Ed decided that was progress. Then she laughed, a sudden, short burst, like a machine gun's bullets.

"What's so funny?"

"Just that I didn't really understand what you said, but it made me feel better anyway," she said, still chuckling. "Taking lessons from Scar behind my back?"

The mention of the Ishbalan brought another nasty thought to the forefront of Ed's mind. Emboldened by their easy conversation, he voiced it.

"How can you trust Scar and Envy, when you know what they've done? Have you forgiven them, or something?"

Winry's eyes went dark, her muscles tightened under her skin, and Ed cursed himself for bringing it up.

"'Forgiven' isn't really the right word," she said at last. "I've let it be. Yes, Scar killed my parents, but he was half-crazy with grief at the time and not truly aware of what he was doing. Yes, Envy started the Ishbalan war, but that was on the orders of his 'alpha wolf', when he was still a homunculus without true human emotions. I don't forgive them, but I've decided to let it go. It's in the past...so I leave it in the past."

"And now...?" Ed prompted tentatively.

"And now...now they're my people," Winry said simply. "Now that Scar has actually fought beside those who were once part of the military, I think he's realising that not all of them are bad people. His crusade to wipe out all State Alchemists...might not be his crusade anymore. He's hard to read, but after this war...I don't think he could ever go back to that."

She thinned her lips, mulling it over for a few moments before speaking again. "And I almost feel sorry for Envy, you know? Homunculi don't have the same kinds of emotions that humans have, and since he's more human than homunculus these days...he's suddenly got a whole boatload of these feelings he's never felt before and doesn't know how to deal with."

"So what you're saying is...?"

"Father created the homunculi, and he created Envy himself very specifically. Even down to his emotions. Do you get it? Envy couldn't feel regret, or remorse, or compassion, or anything along those lines...because he was what Father had made him to be."

In spite of himself, Ed felt a flash of pity. And he began to understand what Winry was saying; she couldn't forgive Envy...but she wasn't going to condemn him either.

Winry shook her head slightly, only barely making her short locks of hair swish over her shoulders. "You don't need to tell me how screwed up it is, Ed, to rely on two people like that. To entrust my life to killers. I know how screwed up it sounds, to forge a bond with the two people in the world who are most accountable for my parent's and hundreds of other deaths."

Her laugh was slightly bitter. "But if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't taken a chance with them...none of us would be here now. Yes, they owe me their lives...but I also owe them mine. Most of the people in the Resistance owe them their lives, because that's how things worked. You did some screwed up things, crazy things, things you wouldn't ever have dreamed of doing otherwise...but because you did them, you stayed alive."

Ed couldn't think of anything to say. What could he say, after that? But he was spared from replying when Winry sighed again, fiddling with a scrap of cloth in her pocket that Ed recognised as her headband. She pulled it out and tied it around her head, pulling the strands of her fringe away from her face, the scar standing in stark relief against her otherwise unmarked features.

Winry blinked several times and seemed to physically pull herself from the contemplative mood they had both sunk into. "Hey, Ed, I'm hungry – when does the kitchen open?"

oooooooo

AN: LaughingAstarael is, as always, my magnificent beta.