Oh gosh it's been forever since I updated! D: I think people still read Edwin fanfic, I know I do! Here is the next chapter where we find out a little more of the mystery, but more questions are raised :p haha! Hope you enjoy reading!

-Gabunny


Twice I turn my back on you

I fell flat on my face but didn't lose

Tell me where would I go

Tell me what lead you on I'd love to know

-Twice, Little Dragon


It was freezing cold in the early morning and Winry woke up before the birds had started chirping. Her right arm felt like it was going to fall off from the cold. She sat up and then moaned painfully very quickly.

"Oh, my god" she muttered under her breath, holding her head and gingerly touching a huge egg that had formed on her forehead. It was coming back to her in flashes and she was trying to get the truth straight in her nauseated mind. Granny: still dead. Fish: still too expensive to buy for dinner. Paninya: still not talking to you. God, the land of dreams was much more enticing than reality.

Something moved behind Winry and she fell off the bed with a yell. "Harry?" Winry said, pushing herself off the floor - slowly, so she wouldn't tempt her nausea to make her faint again and give her another bruise.

"Well, there's a conversation starter for today," the person who was sleeping next to her groaned, and when the room stopped spinning Winry saw the golden hair and realised it was Ed.

"Oh, Ed, I'm sorry," Winry apologized. Then she laughed - not the horrible manic cackle she had unleashed before being violently ill last night, but a genuine giggle that sounded more like Winry than…well, it was hypocritical of him to think "whoever this stranger is", Ed realized, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind and grabbed at the opportunity to smile at her.

"This sort of mistake doesn't happen often," Winry stated, looking a little embarrassed anyway.

"I should hope not," Ed teased, stretching, his bad automail fingers spasming uselessly. "A lesser person might have been upset."

Winry bit her lip and sat back down on her bed, looking out the wide-open windows at the frost-covered lawns. "No wonder I woke up from the cold. I hope I don't get sick."

There was a silence where everyone else, it seemed, in the whole world was asleep, and Winry felt content for the first time in a long time to just stay in it, and enjoy the quiet. This was why she'd come back home: the peace could be suffocating at times, of course, but sometimes Rizembool seemed like it was perfectly still in time and Winry could relax.

Of course, Ed could never be happy with anything.

"Winry, I don't know if a cold is your greatest health concern at the moment," he stated after a few seconds. She sighed heavily and swiveled round to face him.

"Why were you sleeping next to me?" she asked, trying to change the subject. It couldn't be 4 o'clock in the morning yet, the sun was barely starting to light up the sky - why was he so intent on ruining the day before it even began?

Ed stared at her. "Don't you remember what happened last night?"

"…I've been trying. In case you haven't noticed, I have a bruise the size of my fist on the side of my face, so thinking is a little painful."

"Well, yeah, you hit your head. That's about the most of it"

Winry looked at the boy in her bed pleadingly. "Ed, can we please just try to get through some of today without you…criticizing me?"

"For god's sake Winry, you passing out is not even the star-"

"We yelled all of last night," the mechanic interrupted, trying her hardest to keep her temper, "and it didn't achieve anything."

Ed looked incredibly angry but, to her relief, he just scowled horribly at her rather than continuing his tirade of complaints.

"Ok. I'll do my best, if you try your hardest today too." Winry narrowed her eyes at him. He clearly had no faith in her ability to function as a healthy human being…but maybe after her performance last night that was understandable.

Asking to abandon argument felt like the biggest failure of all though - which is saying a lot for me, Winry thought bitterly. Bickering was the cornerstone of her friendship with Ed, it was their special way of communicating and handling each other, and now she couldn't stomach it. I really lost him, Winry thought, and she felt tears start to burn under her eyes. She'd lost just about everyone else in her life too, but forgetting how to be friends with Ed hurt the most, it seemed. I have nothing left. Family, friends, boys, job, money, health, sanity…and now Ed.

Maybe she wasn't managing to suppress her tears as well as she thought, because the alchemist sighed and reached out with his good hand to hold hers, looking at her with a face full of pity. That was the only way anyone looked at Winry these days, but she focused on the hand in her own. For some reason…this was different to when other people tried to comfort Winry when she'd been upset. Depending on her mood, other people's sympathy made her enraged or manic. Now, though…it felt like a fog in her mind was lifting. She could think more clearly – at least, she felt more focused on the present for the first time in months. And she wasn't lost in bad memories from the past so long as Winry focused on the alchemist holding her hand, holding her together. Plainly, Ed hadn't gone. He's still here.

Winry knew it was probably a combination of a decent sleep (due to being knocked out), a random change in her hormones or mood, and general social, human contact that was making her feel better, making her bother to think about anything other than regrets and watching the days and nights go in a depressed, unwell haze.

But in her heart she knew it was more than that. She'd spent some weeks only ever sleeping and never leaving her bed - at some point during those lows she must have managed enough proper sleep. There had been many days before when her mood was good, but it spiked instead of plateaued, and lead her into a manic madness of automail theory, assorted pain killers and other illegal or dangerous decisions. As for socialising with other people…well, some people tried. But nobody understood what was wrong with Winry, least of all herself, and as her life turned more and more into a trainwreck people lost their patience and avoided her altogether.

His life and health might be nearly as broken down as her's, but Ed was here, holding her when her mania took over and sleeping next to her because he was worried about her injury – and truthfully there was comfort to be found in his failures; it meant there was no judgment in his eyes. The flashy alchemist who could clap his hands like a god was here in her broken home, holding her hand as she cried pathetically, trying to find the strength to face the day like a normal person.

It hurt, and it was going to be much harder than Ed could possibly imagine, but she knew she could do the job. I have to try, Winry thought. If I can do this job… Ed had stacks of money to pay for repairs and to help out an old friend, and most importantly, he didn't know anything that had happened in the past 18 months since he last came in for repairs. If Winry was lucky, she could only answer the patently obvious questions and he would never know the whole, shameful story.

She had helped a mother give birth in isolation and chaos, she had buried the last member of her family. Winry squeezed Ed's hand and then let it go, wiping her eyes forcefully and making herself smile at him. Managing a moderate repair for the boy that soothed her sanity would be child's play.