Chapter 15

Snare Of Thorns

Ed flexed his new arm, almost laughing aloud at the far-lighter weight and the oil-smooth movement. There really was nothing in the world like Winry's automail.

"So..." Winry drawled, leaning casually against the table and trying not to look too pleased with herself. "Passable?"

"More than passable," Ed said honestly.

The alchemist found the metal arm and leg frankly astounding – they were the first Winry had created in over five years, and yet they exceeded his old ones in such a way that there was no true comparison. If nothing else, it showed that Winry was justified in her choice of vocation; she might be a talented leader, but as far as automail went, Winry wasn't just gifted...she was the gift.

It was strange...when he and Al had first seen Winry again, he'd thought a new arm and leg were the first things he'd get from her – at her insistence, most likely – but with everything that had happened, all the stories and secrets the three of them had shared, his automail had been pushed to the back of his mind.

He and Al were currently in Winry's new apartment in Central, having been invited over for dinner and (in Ed's case) a new automail fitting. Boxes were scattered around the rooms, and though some part of Ed expected to see chairs and furniture piled high with the trappings of Winry's life, the amount of boxes was actually surprisingly small, considering Winry thought of this as a permanent move. But then, Ed supposed many of her possessions had been lost or destroyed during the war – her room in Rush Valley had boasted no superfluous items.

"I'm not fully moved in yet," Winry said, noticing the direction of Ed's gaze. "I'll set up the automail shop downstairs once I'm settled in."

Al thought it was a mark of how comfortable Winry was with them, that she didn't feel the need to have everything straight and immaculate before inviting them over. He reflected that there was something very intimate in being invited to a messy house – though the gesture seemed almost insignificant, it implied wealths of trust and confidence.

Dinner was eaten in the easy, comfortable kind of silence that accompanied family meals, only broken by quiet comments and short streams of conversation.

"You sure you guys don't want to stay the night?" Winry asked as she stacked the dishes next to the sink. "I've got a fully furnished guest room."

Ed shook his head. "Sorry – we have to be on the train really early tomorrow, with the repairs and everything."

Winry nodded, and didn't try to persuade them further. She knew going to Dublith must bring up painful memories, with Izumi and Seig now dead. They had resisted the H-Faction's occupation, and had subsequently been 'made examples of'. And Winry had a pretty good idea of what that entailed, the knowledge lying in her stomach like a heavy rock.

On the other hand, she supposed the trip to Dublith would give the brothers an opportunity for closure. A chance to visit her grave and pay their respects.

And with that thought, Winry realised that was something she wanted to do as well. But not with Izumi.

oooooooo

Winry had barely waved Ed and Al off at the station before she was boarding her own train. They had been a little surprised to see her awake so early, but when she was the Commander Winry had made a habit of rising before anyone else, so any problems could receive her immediate attention.

Leaning back against the seat cushions, Winry reflected she probably could have been drafted into the repair work because of her 'training' in alchemy, but she was glad she hadn't been. She'd caused a lot of destruction as an Angel of Death, and one of her assignments had been in Dublith. She didn't think she wanted to see the state she and the war had left the city in, even if she were repairing the destruction.

Winry sighed softly, absently rubbing the tattoo on her wrist – covered by long sleeves – and gazing out the window. She used to hate trains, feeling uncomfortable when sitting down for too long, but now...now she thought she could understand what Ed and Al saw in it. There was something soothing in the slow rocking motion of the locomotive, something relaxing in just staring out the window at the scenery flashing by, not having to think of...well, anything, except the slow progression onwards...

Winry was struck by the impulse to give into a light doze, and while she would never do it (she didn't want to miss her station) she delighted in the desire. Some part of her was still reluctant to relax her guard in public places or in the presence of people she didn't know – some deeply hidden instincts clung to her wartime-wariness even now, like a feral cat bristling at a proffered meal. Old habits were hard to break, and Winry supposed she couldn't unlearn in a few weeks those which had been formed and honed over five years.

But this sudden whim to doze on the train was different – she honestly wanted to do it. There was no snarling, questioning voice in the back of her head asking whether unseen threats were lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment of weakness.

Maybe old habits couldn't be unlearned in a week, but they could unlearned eventually. It just took time.

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Winry stepped lightly into Risembool's graveyard, moving around the marble stones with quiet respect. She weaved through the lines of markers, finally arriving before the large stone that marked her parents' resting place. But it was not their grave she knelt in front of. It was the one beside it.

Pinako Rockbell

Beloved grandmother, mother, wife and friend

Rest In Peace

In the spirit of tradition, Winry had brought a small offering for her grandmother's tomb. She didn't bring cut flowers, but instead a small seedling of a wild rose that she planted in the soil. Winry thought it was far more fitting than a bouquet – Pinako would probably prefer a living, growing plant rather than something that looked pretty for a day or so and then died.

She stared at the seedling, gently touching the small buds that promised future flowers, careful to avoid the thorns. She had never understood why people bred thornless roses – for Winry, those barbs were part of the appeal. The flowers were beautiful and elegant, exhalted as a symbol of love and desire...but the plant also had sharp thorns. Roses could cause pain, just like the emotions they represented.

Love was beautiful, but like the rose, it could make you bleed. Could cause you pain when you least expected it. You could be handling the flower as carefully as a neurosurgeon wielding a scalpel, when your finger was suddenly sliced open. Winry reflected that love's pain was like those jagged cuts; sharp and sudden, then stinging and weeping slowly for a long time.

Like when someone you loved died.

Winry didn't talk to her grandmother's grave – she didn't see the need. Instead, she just knelt and stared at the stone, as though reconciling in her mind the irrefutable fact that her grandmother – the woman who had taken her in and raised her when her parents died – was in a coffin six feet beneath the soil. Her eyes traced the letters carved into the marble, her mind replaying her memories of her grandmother as tears pricked at her eyes.

A few months ago, Winry would have sniffed them back, blinked them away, done anything and everything she could to suppress them. But now...now she remembered weeping in Ed and Al's arms, remembered the feeling of freedom that gave her...and now, Winry let herself cry.

oooooooo

Eventually, Winry had no more tears to shed. She rocked back on her heels, trying to breathe evenly through the hitch in her throat.

Winry's thoughts had turned from her grandmother to contemplate this stark reminder of mortality. She couldn't help thinking about what she would like to do now, now that the war was over and she was no longer in command of the Rush Valley Resistance. Winry realised that while she had contemplated this before, she had never truly taken the thought seriously. Some deeply buried, cynical part of her always believed she'd die before the war ended. The odds of someone in a high-ranking leadership position surviving a war weren't high – especially if they were out in the field as much as she was.

In short, Winry had always believed, deep down, that her life would end before the war did.

Winry acknowledged that maybe – far from expected – she had almost hoped she would. Winry knew she had endured levels of trauma that would have driven many people insane, both physical and psychological suffering combining to make a load of emotional baggage that she would have to work through before she really did anything. Dying would have been easier than trying to cope with something like that.

It was easy to die in a war...it was much, much harder to live through it.

After admitting to herself she needed to work through some serious issues before doing anything else, Winry's thoughts naturally turned to what that 'anything else' might be. She wanted to start her own automail business, of course, and was already well on her way to doing just that. Winry also knew she wanted to see her friends happy, though that wasn't actually a goal for herself and was one she couldn't really do much about – in the end, their happiness or sorrow was up to them, and all she could do was try to stand by them.

She dwelt on such philosophical thoughts for a moment, before moving past them and back to her considerations on what she wanted now.

Winry knew she wanted to stay close to Ed and Al. They had been apart for a very long time, and the changes they had undergone – well, the changes she had undergone – had come close to driving them apart for good. They had been separated by Ed and Al's quest, then by the war, and while they had managed to bridge those chasms – the trials only strengthening their bond in the end – Winry could still admit to the private fear that if they were ever separated like this again...it would be permanent.

What was the saying again? About the third time being the charm?

But what she really wanted...what Winry really, desperately wanted was sequestered so deeply in her heart she could barely stand to whisper it in the silence of her mind.

She wanted was a relationship with Ed. A romantic relationship. A sexual relationship.

And it was that 'sexual' part that was making her uneasy. After everything she'd been through, Winry knew she was in no way ready for anything like that. Not after...

Winry shook her head firmly to dispel the memories trying to slither into mind like shadowy serpents. She wasn't going to think about that now.

She stared at the horizon for a time, wondering what she was going to do now. But then she broke off her thoughts with an almost audible snap. She knew what she wanted...she would just see how everything played from there.

With a final sigh, Winry rose from the grass, dusting her pants off and preparing to depart the graveyard. She didn't think she'd be back here again – she wasn't the type to keep visiting graves. Winry had found her closure, and now she couldn't help but feel the Pinako's presence was far stronger in her memories than in the body rotting beneath her feet.

Winry walked out of the graveyard without looking back.

oooooooo

Winry yawned, slowly rotating her neck and wincing when she felt tendons stretch and pop. She was exhausted – nothing compared to those days when the Rush Valley Resistance was first venturing into the surrounding territory and the resulting raids and attacks kept her from sleep for days on end – but she was still very tired.

She'd taken a trip to Central's graveyard recently, visiting the tombstones of Jean Havoc and Vato Falman – while she hadn't known them particularly well, she dimly remembered them from one of her many trips to Central...they had been good men. She found herself getting a little teary-eyed as she stood in front of the three Hughes' tombstones – while Maes' passing was several years gone, Gracia and Elicia were recent casualties, a result of an attack on one of the Dissident's refugee camps.

Elicia had been so young...

Winry tried to jerk herself out of her rapidly down-turning mood as she bent back to the leg on the table – this and the business it represented being the main source of her current exhaustion.

Since setting up shop in Central over a week ago, Winry had already been inundated by the sheer numbers of customers. They were mainly from the military, but as they were the ones on the battlefields and the Dissident government were her main employers, Winry supposed that was to be expected. She wanted to expand her clientèle, but was forcing herself to be patient, knowing word of mouth was the best advertising for automail.

The doorbell rang, announcing someone's presence at her doorstep with a sharp chime. Smothering another yawn, Winry rose and cracked it open.

Ed and Al were standing on her doorstep.

oooooooo

Sitting at Winry's table with a mug of hot chocolate (Winry eschewed tea and coffee, saying they either made you too relaxed or too tense) after a week in Dublith, Ed found himself struggling just to stay awake.

He was exhausted. Partly from the work he and Al had been doing, but he could admit a lot of it was emotional exhaustion, too. It had felt so strange; walking around Dublith without Izumi, the satisfaction of repairing the city clashing with the turmoil of walking in the streets their teacher lived and died in.

"How did it go?" Winry asked quietly, the presence of her gaze unusually heavy. Not exactly pinning them, but resting on them with enough force that they couldn't escape.

"It was okay," Ed muttered, covering his white lie with a sip of the hot beverage in front of him.

Winry's eyes hardened into a glare. "Don't lie to me."

"It felt weird," Al admitted. "We kept expecting to see Teacher, or thinking we should call on her and then...and then we'd remember..."

Winry's face softened and she nodded, "I felt the same way when I went to Risembool – some part of me was convinced that Granny was about to lean out the door and call me in for dinner."

"You went to Risembool?" Ed repeated. "Why didn't you wait until we got back?"

"We would have liked to see Granny's grave, Winry," Al said softly.

"I'm sorry," Winry apologised quietly. She did feel a little guilty, but on the other hand..."I just felt...like it was something I needed to do by myself. I said goodbye to Granny, but it was more than that – I thought about what I want, where I want to go, what I want to do, that kind of thing."

She looked out the window, her eyes slightly unfocused. "I really needed that – I feel so much more focused now. As though now that I know what I want, I'm that much closer to getting it, you know?"

Ed wondered at that, before he realised he felt the same. He hadn't yet adjusted to waking up without something hanging over his head, whether it be Al's restoration or the war. He had been feeling slightly lost, adrift in a sea of possibilities, unable to decide what he truly wanted to do now that his life was his own. But then he had realised that he didn't have to decide, not yet – he had plenty of time. For the first time in a very, very long while, Ed had time. He didn't have to immediately commit himself to a course of action before his chance was lost – he had time to consider, to weigh his options, to examine if it was truly what he wanted, not just a spur of the moment decision.

It was a freeing thought. While he felt useless on occasion, almost bored, it was a feeling he could get used to, a feeling he could grow to like.

If Ed was entirely honest with himself, he knew that the one thing he was absolutely certain he wanted – wanted badly – was a relationship with Winry. But after what she'd been through, he didn't see how she could be ready for anything like that.

Assuming, of course, that she felt the same way about him, which was really assuming quite a lot. He knew Winry loved him, but there were many different kinds of love. Maybe she loved him as a friend, or a brother, or a...?

Ed blinked, hard, cutting his train of thought off at the pass. He wasn't going to delve into those doubts now, not here – and not for a while yet. Besides, if he looked at it rationally and logically (a surprisingly difficult thing for him to do when Winry was involved), there was substantial evidence for Winry having romantic feelings for him.

At least, he thought there was. He hoped there was.

Ed became aware that while he was lost in the fog of his own thoughts, Winry and Al had been carrying on an entire conversation. He tuned in just in time to catch Winry's final comment.

"But before I do anything, I've got some pretty heavy stuff to deal with," the blonde girl acknowledged. "It'll probably take a while for me to get my head screwed on straight again."

The simple honesty and courage in her voice left Ed with a glowing feeling of pride in his chest. For a moment, he wondered at the strength he saw in Winry in almost everything she did – the strength it took to try to face her demons head-on.

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AN: Thank you, LaughingAstarael, for beta-ing this chapter.