Winry Rockbell was seven years old when her parents went to Ishval. She considered this to be very grown-up, but it wasn't grown up enough to understand war and it wasn't enough to understand leaving (and it definitely wasn't old enough to understand never coming back . But she wouldn't know that until two years later).

She got into fights at school. Grandma looked disappointed but didn't punish her, which Ed always thought was supremely unfair because when he got into fights with Al, Granny didn't stop yelling for what felt like hours. Even when Al started it.

Winry took care of things around the house: she made sure her father's books got read, she watered her mother's garden (and then planted it again, the next spring, when they were still gone and she was still left). She cuddled Den and tried to fix his leg (but Pinako had to fix her fixes. She was seven. And then eight).

Whenever they got a letter from Urey and Sarah, Grandma would read it, over and over again, with tears in her eyes while she sat at the table with a mug full of tea. Winry would go somewhere else instead (like her parents were somewhere else), and the next day the letter would be on her bedside table and she'd study it carefully, trying to make sense of it. Her father sent her drawings. Her mother sent her pressed desert flowers. They never talked about their reasons for being in Ishval, which made it feel to Winry like they were there for no reason at all.

They said "hopefully not much longer" (but then it was another month, another summer, another year). They said "we love you, we miss you, be good."

Winry didn't say "I love you" (although Grandma usually said something like "Winry sends her love" when she wrote back), because "I love you" felt like something you should say to someone real. Someone you could touch, and kiss, and hug. Winry didn't say "I miss you" because she didn't, really. She couldn't quite remember what life had been like when they were here.

She sat next to Ed at his mother's grave and he muttered "At least your parents aren't dead," and she shrugged and said "They might as well be."

And when the soldier came to their door in the middle of dinner on her ninth birthday, she remembered saying that, and it was her own furious horror at her own words that made her cry, more than the realization of what he was saying. It actually took her a long time, too long, days, maybe even weeks, to understand never coming back . Because, from watching Ed and Al, she knew that dead parents had gravestones, and hers didn't. Wherever they were buried, if they were buried, it wasn't in Resembool ( never coming back ).

Pinako hugged her fiercely (love you), and Al cried and Ed stomped off because he had had enough of dead parents to last a thousand lifetimes (miss you), and Den chewed up the letters Winry left thrown on her bedroom floor (be good).

She ripped up the garden. She ripped up her father's anatomy textbooks. She made herself so furious and miserable that even Den shied away.

When she finally cried (for real cried. Understanding cried), it was like a dam breaking. She sat there among her own wreckage with her arms wrapped around her knees, and sobbed. Ed and Al looked up from the kitchen table and Grandma hummed softly. And then Ed was on his knees in front of her. Not talking. Just being. She bit her lip and glared at him, and he just shrugged. "It sucks they're dead," he said, very softly. He understood.