He was practically running and Winry struggled to keep up. She would have trailed behind, but his fingers tightly clasped her wrists and forced her to practically skip up the hill. It was chilly out and the wind bit at her exposed cheeks and she regretted not grabbing a scarf on her way out the door.
"Are we going to your old house?" she wondered aloud, as they began climbing the hill just north of the Rockbell Auto Mail shop. She had crossed this path many times, but could not imagine now why Edward seemed such in a hurry to get there.
"Yes! I have something I want to show you." He was panting with excitement and his eyes were brighter than she had seen since the proposal at the train station. He wasn't wearing a coat – he should have been in this November chill, but it seemed that he did not have time to think of practical things such as apparel.
He had spent the whole morning out of the house. Winry had actually been grateful, because his presence had made concentrating on her orders difficult. He would watch her sometimes as she worked, and somehow each time he did this – the afternoon consisted of sex and pillow talk instead of the production of automail. This kept Winry in a constant state of work overload plus he was no help with the wedding plans either. Suddenly, however, he had come bursting through the doors of the house and demanded she grab a coat and follow him to an unknown destination. It was rare to see him so frazzled without good reason. Winry had initially been frightened.
She tried to pick up her pace to keep up more comfortable, they had nearly reached the summit and Winry could just make out the skeletal remains of the old burned up Elric house. There was very little left now, just the charred tree and a few blackened stones of the home's foundation.
"Will you tell me what's going on." She gasped. He finally dropped her hand and halted right at the spot where his old doorstep had been. He turned and looked out down the hill. He was grinning like a child, his hair whipping frantically in the wind. He seemed overwhelmed with joy.
Winry was confused. This was a place of sorrow. She scanned the area and saw the more recent tombstone erected in the back yard. She felt sick. She knew what was buried there – the remains of the creature Edward and Alphonse brought back, and then Edward dug back up only 4 years before. She watched him with anticipation and felt warm inside against the cold when she saw how tender and exuberant his expression was. She really, really was falling more in love with him than she ever could have imagined all those years ago on the train from central. Her heart is full.
"What is going through that head?" she asked, coming to stand next to him and looked out over the summit of the hill. From that view point you could see most of Rizembool including her own home. You could see the town, the station, the pastures, and even the small dip and mass of trees that blocked the watering hole.
"Alphonse and I will build our school here." He said quietly. If the wind had been blowing any harder, she may not have heard him. He looked down at her, his eyes golden tender and shone with a gloss of what could have been tears. "Dad…and Mom…would like that, I think."
She was taken a back at first. But the pure emotion and the profundity of his statement made her feel so many emotions. Yes. That would be perfect. She would do anything to help make his dream happen.
"This would be a great place for a school." She said warmly, taking his hand in hers.
"He turned slightly towards the plateau of the summit. He pointed towards the western end. "There, on the other side of the tree will be the classrooms and the dormitory right behind it. Over here, where we are standing, I'll build our own house. Just like the one we lived in with Mom – maybe just a few changes. You, and I, and Al and Mei can all live here together with our families, and walk over to the school to teach. And – if you want to, you can walk down the hill during the day to meet your automail customers. It's perfect."
Yes. Yes, it was.
/
Al and Mei arrived on December 1st. It was quite cold, but no snow in Rizembool and Mei seemed chilled to the bone. Her nose was pink and her fingers jammed into the warm pockets of a furry muff. Alphonse kept one arm around her and pressed her close to himself to help block her from the wind as they hurriedly walked down the dirt road that lead to the Rockbell house.
Since Edward and Winry had ditched his own welcome home party, the sparkling white wine had never been used and still sat in the ice box. As the five members of the newly forming Rockbell and Elric families sat at the table after dinner, Winry brought the bottle out and pour five healthy servings of a tonic her parents had been saving for the end of the war. It was very nostalgic and poignant to be drinking it now. Edward seemed to know how emotional it was for her as he reached over and took her left hand in his.
"Cheers to Al and Mei, to the Elric Academy of Civic Alchemy, and to a long, happy life together." He said stoutly.
"Cheers to that!" Alphonse seconded, and the whole family drank merrily together.
As the night grew more rowdy, and a second bottle of wine as opened, Winry went back into the kitchen to grab a fudge cake she had prepared for a late desert. She hoped that Mei liked chocolate! She leaned over the ice box and pulled out the cake, looking up briefly, she was startled and gasped…nearly dropping the cake on the wood floor.
In the black reflection of the window against the night sky, she thought she had seen faces…
But…maybe she was imagining things. She went back to the table and brushed it off as a trick of the eye.
In bed later that evening, as she was drifiting off to sleep, Edwards head resting gently against her belly, Winry realized what she had seen. She had seen a vision of her parents looking at her from the gloss of the window.
They had been smiling.