Disclaimers: I don't own FMA.

A/N: Edward's POV. (Any typos, please excuse.)

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Never Underestimate Culpability

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My jaw ached horribly. I gave up on eating dinner for the night, merely pushing the food from side to side of my plate. Everyone, I guess, had noticed the difference, because both Alphonse and Winry were sneaking worried glances at me, and Granny had made more coffee than she did in the morning – I think I even saw her ease a few drops of her whiskey into it. Not that it tasted any different; and it stung either way on the inside of my left cheek.

Winry sat beside me, her hand, under the table, touching my hip or my knee or my free hand, hidden near my lap, secretly. She locked fingers with mine and squeezed gently. I flicked a grain of rice in the direction of her plate. Alphonse speared some salmon and ate it, watching Winry and I carefully as he chewed.

The room was abnormally quiet. Maybe it was because I was always the loud one, and when I wasn't being loud no one else had anything to say or do. Granny was sitting at the head of the table, smoking her pipe and toying with a slender bone she'd extracted from her salmon. I wiggled my fingers around within Winry's and forced another forkful of rice, but only had to switch everything to my right cheek. Why could I eat an apple so easily, but not salmon and rice? Fucked up logic if you ask me.

I glanced to Winry and frowned deeply, looking back to my plate. My head was hung a little as I stabbed the salmon over and over. I pulled my hand away from hers and fell still; slumped a bit to make sure that my hair hid my face. I could feel my brother watching me with that tender concern he always held, and I swallowed the lumps of rice with a clenched throat.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get over the fact that I felt Winry was deeply hurt. I mean, I was fucking embarrassed, but I didn't want to upset her. She'd told me she wanted me to touch her, and I have to admit, after her messing around with my ear, I'd wanted to feel her hands too. Were we doing something wrong? Was she scared of me? Why were we so nervous? Did I do something wrong? Did I not react enough? Did she think I was forcing her to touch me?

I snuck another glimpse in her direction and found her biting her lip as she picked up her glass of water. Her hand was curled into a fist on her thigh. She looked like she was about to cry again.

"Winry," I muttered, feeling my brows furrow with a troubled expression, and I lifted my head halfway. My face burned as I felt the powerful gazes of both Alphonse and Granny as Winry looked at me, all three waiting for my answer.

She peered at me sadly for a minute, and then smiled. I knew she was forcing it. That only made me slump down further, my heart sinking down lower and lower into my stomach. Suddenly, I was actually not hungry. I swallowed nothing, my mouth and throat dry.

Then I did the only thing that I could think of that would tell her more than I could through my words right now. I looked back to my plate, but under the table, I slipped my hand up her knee and under her dress, my fingers brushing the panties that guarded her crotch. I shifted. I could feel myself getting kind of happy down there. Again. Like she had made me feel earlier. My stomach knotted up and I wanted to just look at her and yell, "Goddammit, Winry, I wanna have sex with you but do you think we're just way too young?"

I'm very impatient.

So either way, I'm determined to do what I can to her.

And I know she wants it.

I felt her leg muscles tense beneath my palm. I sensed her nervousness just as much as I did my own. Her fork clinked as she went silent. I saw her stare down at her dish of food with wide eyes and scarlet cheeks.

Then she moved her position around, spreading her legs slightly, beneath her dress. I poked her in her thin-cotton-covered crotch, and then I started to laugh. She giggled anxiously in turn, and Al and the old bat stared at us like we were completely loony.

Dinner was finished with a less tense air. Alphonse and I opted (well, I did; who knows what I might have done if we stayed longer, and besides that I wanted to work on our studies) to go home directly afterwards. Granny took her pipe into the kitchen, cackling and throwing jests back at mine. I grabbed Alphonse's arm and snapped, "Fine, we'll leave the dishes for you hags. Besides, we have research to do."

I caught a look in Granny's eyes I couldn't define, but I brushed it off. I looked at Winry and grinned, waving slightly.

"See you at school," I said slowly, and then Alphonse dragged me out the door.

The night was cooler than usual as August slowed into September. I hunched my shoulders and growled at the fireflies. Al was more quiet than usual. Finally, I looked to him in the dying dusk and said, "What's up?"

"Things just seemed very…uneasy. Do you know what I mean?"

I peered at him through the corner of my eye, before tossing hair out of my face and breaking into a toothy grin. "Nah." I crossed my arms and rubbed at my bare skin, prickled in the crisp evening with goose-bumps. "I guess it was just a slow night, hunh?"
"Are you and Winry fighting?"

"No." I looked at him like he was crazy. "Why…?"

"I…never mind." Alphonse shook his head rapidly.

I watched him, my grin fading. After a moment I nodded and slowed down my pace, trudging through the grass as we started into our front yard. "Okay," I mumbled, opening the door for him. He walked in silently, and I closed it, locking it after me.

It was nearly completely dark in the kitchen. I fumbled for the lamp in the corner and flicked it on, casting myself and my brother in a glow of light that seemed almost ethereal. I offered him a tiny smile and he smiled wide in return.

"Time to wade deeper into sin?" I murmured. He gave a curt responsive nod, and disappeared into the shadowy hall.

I followed.

By the den was a proverbial work station supplies: there were two folded quilts outside the door, two pillows, and one thin, large blanket. There was a candle in its holder, some matches, three extra thirteen inch white candles, and our designated books. They were stacked in two piles: one for me and one for Al. Al picked up the pile of bedding and entered the den. I gingerly gathered up the material for lighting, my eyes drifting up and down the stacks of books.

My pile consisted of, at the top, one book on human biology, two books on transmutations, the former going into deep concentration on their works, their arrays, and anything that had to do with them; under the said three books were two more books on alchemy, one a big thick one with the history of nearly every alchemist known to Amestris, and the bottom being a rather large and bulky (about five inches thick, and a little over a foot tall), dusty old book. That one interested me the most, but it also made me angry every time I read it.

It was my father's.

There were diagrams sporadically throughout the book that he himself had drawn, notes he had taken in chicken-scratch I got migraines trying to decipher, arrays and charts he had written; at least one third of the book was on human transmutation and anything related to it, another third in a completely different language, and another third on any other type of transmutation and anything needed for the former and latter.

I never let Alphonse see that book. I always kept it with my pile. If he knew that I'd found writings that were so close to step-by-step directions on the exact thing we wanted to proceed with…I don't know. But I wasn't going to let him see it until I understood it completely myself.

Everything we read, everything we shared, everything in those books all mentioned the same thing: the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe that was what we needed. But until I'd grasped everything that book said, every minute detail, about human transmutation, until I knew precisely what we were doing – I wouldn't bring that up. After all, you didn't necessarily need the legendary stone for biological alchemy, from what I'd read.

I'd assigned my younger brother about eight books on biology and the make-up and form of humans, two of which had to do to with human alchemy and transmutation, but not in the detail and exactness of the ones I read. I wasn't trying to hog the studies, I swear – I just didn't want to make my brother as guilty as I was, if that made sense.

After all, his eyes were getting deeper and deeper, until I didn't know how old the boy sleeping on the den floor beside me was. I didn't want to ruin his innocence, take away his childhood; I didn't want to make him miserable with knowledge.

If I did that…I don't know how I'd ever make up for it. It made me uneasy to think about it.

So I had him memorize every ingredient we needed and made sure he relayed it to me every day, three times a day, until we both knew it perfectly. We created the Teratomas Code – the recitation that was secret so that we could say it during school and no one would know.

"Brother?"

I jumped and dropped a candle. It hit the floor and rolled into the den. I looked from it to Alphonse, who was standing in the middle of the cluttered, dusty, dismal room with a bright smile and slit eyes, arms behind his back.

"Ah, dammit," I grunted, shuffling over and picking it up. I set the items in my arms down beside the blankets and glanced back to my brother. "What?"
"Nothing." He giggled. "I was making sure you didn't space again."

"Oh, hahah, very funny, Al," I grumbled, sitting down with another loud grunt and striking the match to light the first candle. "Hurry up and bring the books in. I feel like I've been slacking again and my head is really ready for all this tonight."

In other words, Edward Elric needs to get his mind off of a certain girl or else he might go insane with yearning.

Al nodded brusquely and hurried out into the hallway. I turned my head around the room with cat-slit eyes. The candle made everything bounce with shadows that gave them immense deformities. There were tall bookshelves (about seven) that were loaded with books, most in different languages, and otherwise ones we'd both already read at least twice. I could spout anything from any book in that room, with perfect clarity.

Alphonse brought his wavering stack of books in and set them down on his side of the room. I put the candle in the middle of our little work station as he pattered back out to the hall to get my tower of texts.

My father is an odd bastard. There's a suit of armor, about eight to ten feet tall, standing beside his desk. His desk having been cleared off by our hungry hands and minds, all articles or books read through thoroughly. The whole room was cluttered with arrays and posters and papers and books and strange things that Al and I had found very useful in our biological transmutation studies – jars of things you'd never suppose you'd find in a house of two young orphans.

It made me wonder what happened to my mother, for real.

I shook my head rapidly as Al set my books down beside me. I tossed the pillow to him and he yelped as he tried to catch it before it hit the flame of the candle. I grinned and kicked his quilt over. "There you go, you baby. Let's go."

There was no window in this room, making it incredibly dark. I closed the study door and then Alphonse and I were alone in the den with a few candles and a brain-murdering amount of books. I sat down and took out the big book from the bottom of my stack as my brother took out his notebook and started to do his normal routine: jotting down the formulas he'd memorized, before he started to memorize even more.

I couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt as I watched Al. He was so innocent. He still looked like a cherub, still childishly angelic. I wondered if I'd ever look that way again, and I voted against it before I even had time to finish the thought. After all, what was I now? Temper, hunger, impulse, intellect, Winry-based, determination, and perhaps one of the youngest alchemists in Amestris, other than Al anyway. That was the furthest from child I could get at the age I was. Eleven, nearly twelve. Maybe fifteen mentally.

Al looked at me and blinked. "What?" he asked, his pencil poised above his neat handwriting momentarily.

I shook my head and pushed my nose into the book. It smelled old. I frowned at the words. I'd opened up to the part that was written in a different dialect.

My goal for tonight was probably going to be extremely difficult to obtain.