There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief…
and unspeakable love.
-Washington Irving
Edward stood on the stone stoop outside the building's main entrance and gazed down Wooster St, waiting for Winry to appear. She tried to feign indifference on the phone when she realized the flowers were from her ex, but Ed knew she was scared and insisted she sleep at Alchemy that night. Winry was accustomed to being somewhat tough in her line of work, but she didn't need to pretend with Edward and it would do her no good anyway -he was far too perceptive. His phone rang in his hand and he answered on the first ring.
"Where are you?" He demanded.
*I just got off the subway, I'll be there in about 15 minutes.* Winry responded as she strode quickly down Houston St toward Wooster.
Anger bristled in Ed's chest.
"Not good enough. Hail a cab if you see one, I want you here in less than 5 minutes."
Ed was in no mood for game playing or social graces; he was getting closer and closer to putting Winry's puzzle together and tonight he'd gotten a prize piece. He knew enough that she was afraid of this ex of hers, but now that flowers where coming to her apartment, it meant the guy knew where she was living. Ed stayed on the phone with Winry while she dressed and quickly threw clothes in a bag and didn't hang up until she was on the subway, and he immediately called Roy and asked him to look into the situation. It would likely take a day or two for a reply.
A yellow cab slowed to a stop on the cobblestone street in front of Edward, and he watched Winry hand the driver a bill before angling out and the car drove off.
"4 minutes, how's that?" She asked as she approached Edward and their hands instinctively joined without a second thought.
"Fine, now that you're here. Were you followed?"
"I don't think so. Thanks for letting me stay."
"Honestly Winry," Edward said as he ushered her through the door into the foyer and unlocked the second door into the entryway. "Theres no way in hell I'd let you stay home by yourself."
They climbed the stairs together and Ed unlocked Alchemy's door allowing Winry to step in before he followed her and slid the deadbolt in place behind them. Alone again in the quiet darkness of the studio, memories of the first night she'd come rushing to him pierced the forefront of their thoughts as they looked at each other. Edward reached for her hand again and gently pulled her along to the back of the studio and into the kitchen. Linoleum floors met walls of white subway tile and countertops and cabinets were basic and utilitarian. A beat up sofa sat against the wall to the far right and faced a small, wall-mounted flat screen with a coffee table between the two.
Ed opened the freezer looking for an icepack and grimaced.
"This kitchen is the last thing I'm ever gonna dump good money into, the way my artists leave it all the time. Bunch of shitpigs." He muttered as he looked past the science project and found a bag of frozen peas, before handing it to Winry.
"Your eye still looks a little swollen." He said as he grabbed a bottle of scotch from a cabinet along with two glasses and flipped the light off. They opened the red door adjacent to the kitchen and climbed the set of stairs up to Ed's loft as Winry replied,
"It's gone down a lot in the past day, still hurts though." She hadn't meant to, but the comment twisted a knife in Ed's chest as he poured them each a glass and handed her one. Instinctively he pulled her closer to better see her injury but found himself as usual, transfixed by how stunning she was. The low light of his loft only flattered her high cheek bones, her glowing skin, the lustre of her buttery blonde hair, and those pouty lips that he desperately wanted to kiss again, having not been given the gift of truly tasting her the first time his mouth briefly pressed to hers. But the timing was all wrong, and he wanted her to feel safe with him; it was his best shot at getting her to believe that he truly wasn't lying to her.
"I really am sorry for what Noah did to you." He said softly. Winry gazed up at his gold eyes, soft and saddened as he looked at the bruises on her face. She wondered if his eyes were this sad the first time he'd seen her scars.
"I know you are. You don't control her Ed, even if her anger is …justified—"
"—It isn't." He snapped, before taking a breath to gather himself. "There's no justification for her anger whatsoever. We're not together, I haven't seen her in years. Every now and then she just has these… episodes."
Edward's handsome face seemed to grow only more appealing when the muscles contorted into a frustrated scowl; the angular lines sharpened more as he sipped his scotch in deep thought. Winry sipped hers along with him and kicked off her boots before shuffling over to sit on his mattress on the floor. She patted the spot next to her.
"Why would Noah think you're still together?" Winry asked. Edward joined her on the bed and crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles, leaning back on his elbows.
"That's the thing, she knows better. She's not psychotic, she's a drunk and a drug addict. Even when she's high she knows we're not together, but she wants us to be. That's why she freaks out, because she'll never get her way. I'll never go back to her."
"Is her addiction the reason you guys broke up?"
Edward stilled and his eyes slid toward Winry. He gave a careful answer.
"Partially. This conversation is feeling a little one-sided, whats the deal with your ex?"
Winry focused her eyes across the room and breathed deep, wishing they could've spent more time talking about Ed's baggage instead of hers, but she knew she couldn't keep running to him without being honest. Even if he was lying and had a secret life with someone else, he had been more than kind to Winry and she decided to take the first real leap of faith she'd risked in years. She only prayed it wouldn't blow up in her face; she figured the worst that could happen by telling Ed the truth would be him getting freaked out and not wanting to be in the middle of her drama. If he asked her to leave and not come back, she would be incredibly hurt, but she would live. She took another swallow of scotch and as the amber fluid warmed inside her chest she turned to Ed.
"About 4 years ago, I started dating a man named Frank Archer. He was a cop and we met on the subway when he asked me for directions. We clicked and fell in love quickly, and moved in together after only 2 months of dating. Things were fine for the first few months, but when he suffered an injury in the line of duty he became addicted to pain killers. I tried to help him, but he became a bigger monster with each week that passed. The pain killers turned into bigger drugs, and when he was promoted at work the pressure and long hours took a toll while simultaneously boosting his already inflated ego. He liked power."
Edward watched Winry carefully, studying her features for signs of PTSD like what he'd seen at her apartment the night of the storm. She set down her empty glass on the floor next to his and pulled her knees to her chest as she kept talking.
"It never sat well with him that I was an engineer, but he never told me that until we were living together. He preferred the idea that I be home cooking and cleaning; the idea of an empowered woman was threatening to him. He also hated that my job involves me being around men, many of them naked for procedures. Frank was always convinced I would sleep with someone at work. His method of insuring that I never undressed in front of anyone was by pushing me into the edges of tables and countertops, rolling over in his sleep and 'accidentally' elbowing me in the ribs; he made lots of small bruises on my body at first, but as his drug habit worsened along with his jealousy, he became more violent. The bruises started getting bigger."
"Why didn't you leave?" Ed interjected, fighting down the anger pulling on his heart as he sat up.
"I was afraid to." Winry said, looking at Ed as he inched closer to her. "He always threatened me, said if I left he would find me. If anyone ever helped me get away, he'd hurt them. He used to stand over me hollering that if I ever became involved with another man, that he would kill us both."
"Where were the police in all of this?"
Winry scoffed. "Are you kidding? They were all on his side. He was a superior officer to a lot of people, and they all stood to lose their jobs if they went against him. They helped him in any way they could, they even made some very important evidence disappear when I needed it most—"
Her hand quickly flew to her mouth when she realized she'd let something slip. Edward wasn't about to ignore it for propriety's sake.
"What evidence?" Ed demanded. Winry shook her head but Edward captured her hand in his and bore his eyes into her. "Winry tell me what happened."
She continued to shake her head, her mind filled with the frightening images of Frank Archer's dark eyes and filthy dark hair, his pale skin flushed red from inebriation as he pushed her to the ground and screamed at her for wearing those tight jumpsuits and for not giving him painkillers when he demanded them. The stench of his breath as he threatened to kill whoever she might be fucking, before saying how he would just have to hit her harder to make her body ugly, so no one would want her. She was his property, and he would sooner destroy her than see her become someone else's. Edward grasped her by the shoulders in attempts to make her focus.
"Winry you're safe here, nothing's going to happen. I swear I won't let anything happen to you."
Winry's eyes watered as she croaked softy, "He's watching me. That's what he always used to say. He would hit me, and tell me to never be with another man, because he was watching… Edward he knows where I live. I don't know how but he knows where I live."
"You'll stay here."
"This isn't safe either!" She wailed. "I know it was him following me that night, and he saw me come here! He saw you waiting for me! He's going to come after us!"
Edward pulled Winry into his arms and held her, feeling her heart pounding from within her chest.
"…I saw what was following you that night." He said calmly to her. "Not in detail, but I'm telling you it wasn't human. The silouhette …it was more like a machine."
Winry's brow furrowed in confusion. It made no sense, but she knew it was Archer following her that night from the text he sent her, the one about the jumpsuit that he wanted her only wearing for him. She pulled back slowly from Edward, but slid her hands to rest in his.
"You must've gotten help at some point." Ed reasoned. "Didn't you say he's out on parole? What sent him to jail?"
Winry eyes became wide. "I can't tell you that."
"Yes you can."
"No… You don't understand, Archer's out now. He'll kill anyone I tell, he'll probably kill me for putting him away. I can't tell you Edward!" Winry's frantic heart silently begged Edward to stop asking questions she was still terrified to answer, but she was fighting a losing battle. Edward's hold on her hands tightened ever so slightly as his suspicions grew, but he simply couldn't fathom what his mind had deduced without Winry confirming it. He needed that confirmation if he was going to tell Mustang to go after this guy.
"He had to have fucked up big time if he was doing drugs and abusing you but not being jailed; what did he do that the force finally couldn't look away from, Winry?"
Winry tried to pull her hands from Ed's but his hold was firm, as she squeezed her eyes shut as the first tears fell.
"He'll kill you Edward." She cried. "If I tell you he'll kill you… He'll find me and he'll do it again…"
"Do what again?"
"…Nothing—"
"—He made them, didn't he!?" Edward barked, snapping Winry's eyes open to gape at him in shock as the tears pooled at the corners of her eyes and caught in her long lashes. Edward's blood boiled and he grabbed her by the shoulders again. "He made the scars! That's what you're afraid of isn't it?! Tell me the truth!"
Fear shot through Winry as she suddenly remembered how it felt to be shaken by the shoulders and hollered at, but she fought against her tears to take a full breath as she looked at Edward.
"…I had saved enough money for a flight to Nashville…" She trembled. "…But he came home from work early, he walked in on me packing my suitcase… he'd taken bathsalts that day…"
Suddenly Edward wanted her to stop -his furious expression slackening into a state of wide-eyed horror. His mind screamed at himself to stop her but his body wouldn't respond, and nausea crept into his gut as his head was filled with the imagery of her story. He desperately wanted to be wrong, but his assumptions were spot-on.
"…He held me down…" Winry whispered as the tears fell, "…and he cut me with a kitchen knife."
Edward felt his heart crack in half and he pulled her to him again as she cried, hating himself for what he'd just done. His hand smoothed through her hair, and he held her in his arms until exhaustion rendered her a rag doll. Scooping her up and walking on knees across the mattress to lay her down, Ed paused only briefly to thumb the tear stains from her cheeks as he blinked back his own, and as he turned to leave he was stopped by her hand grabbing his, silently asking him to stay. He almost protested, but considered that upsetting her so much could induce nightmares for her, it was the least he could do to be there to comfort her if she woke that night in tears again.
Kicking his boots off Edward moved to turn off the light and peeled his shirt off to sleep in his black pants before crawling in bed toward Winry. The scenario was far from what he'd pictured it would be like to slide onto his mattress with his gorgeous client waiting for him, and as he settled on his side with his arm under his pillow, he took a risk and curled automail around her waist, pulling her back flush to him. She wasn't quite asleep yet, just on the brink as she craned back to see him and he leaned over her.
"I shouldn't have made you tell me." He whispered in the dark, gold eyes dimmed to darkened amber as his faced hovered mere inches from hers. Winry said nothing as she gazed back from hooded, sleepy eyes, and reached up to run her fingers through his hair, sending it tumbling from its restraint in a golden curtain over his shoulder. The feel of her fingers on his scalp sent a small wave through him, pulling his face even closer to hers. Ed's mouth only just barely brushed hers, close enough to touch but far enough to not really be a kiss, and the breaths they shared just like before drove him mad. He was so damn close, one tilt of the head, one tiny movement and he would claim her sweet lips for himself.
But he couldn't do it. Not when she was so vulnerable. She'd completely exposed herself to him, he couldn't destroy the trust he'd earned by sexualizing this moment. Yet, it didn't feel sexual to him. It felt far deeper, more intense than any want he'd ever had. And so as horrible as it was, he angled away and pressed a kiss to her brow instead before settling behind her, curling his arm around her waist and breathing in the smell of her hair to lull him to sleep.
The next morning Edward was noticeably distracted as he sat on the couch in the kitchen with his coffee and macbook as he answered emails —or at least, tried to. For every sentence or two he typed, his mind flooded back to the beauty fast asleep in his bed upstairs. He'd woken up more than once during the night, first by his usual nightmares and again for seemingly no reason at all. Concern for Winry bore the blame for his exhaustion. Ed abandoned his work for a moment and shut his laptop as he stood and exited the room to retrieve something from his office. Once settled again in the kitchen with his pencil and sketch pad, his thoughts were consumed by art. He often found his inspiration in the workings of Rembrandt or Titian, but also found charm in the dark fantasy of Stephen Mackey, the cheekiness of Mackenzie Thorpe, the almost dream-like feeling Jeremy Miranda brings to oil paintings. It wasn't long, however, until Van Gogh with his sunflowers and Monet with his irises, Dali and his ship with bright pink blooms for sails would coast in on the seas of Edward's consciousness and send him right back into the misery with his own interpretations of such beauty.
And yet, for the first time in years, he was not miserable. Edward lined and shaded multiple stems, buds, and blooms on his sketch pad without feelings of anger or resentment. He did so without the crushing guilt. In fact, he felt almost nothing. A prized relief for him -to have such peace during a practice so essential for his craft when he was normally tortured by it. Several minutes passed and floorboards above him creaked, signaling movement from his loft and he heard the door at the top of the stairs open followed by the soft patting of careful footsteps down the stairs. When Winry appeared in the frame of the kitchen door Ed nodded for her to come in and he rose to pour her some coffee. His movements were calm and fluid as he fixed her coffee with sugar and no cream, having paid attention the day they were at the diner, and he handed her a mug before easing beside her on the couch.
"Hi." She said quietly after the first sip. He grinned a little and picked up his sketch pad to resume.
"Hi yourself. Sleep well?"
Winry nodded as she watched his hand move over the paper leaving faint grey pencil lines and admired the irises he drew.
"How long have you been doing this?" She asked, referring to his craft rather than how long he'd been sitting there that morning.
"Well…I've been drawing since I was a kid. I was always interested in art. I started apprenticing under a guy named Scar when I was in high school. He ran a shop a mile away from where I went to school, so everyday I'd walk there and stay until closing."
"How did your parents feel about that?" Winry asked. Ed's sketching never faltered as he bluntly replied,
"My old man hated it. My mom died when I was a kid and Hohenheim was never around, too busy working to ever notice me and my brother. My brother stayed after school too so when he was done with his studies he'd meet me at Scar's shop and someone would give us a lift home."
Edward never looked up at Winry as he spoke of his childhood, only kept his eyes firmly focused on his sketching and Winry soon become hypnotized by his motions.
"Scar is still a good friend of mine today, he comes in as a guest artist now and again. I owe him a lot, he was there for me when my old man wasn't."
Ed and Winry stood outside on the street together, knowing they had to part but not wanting to. A small part of Winry wanted to crawl under a rock and die when she opened her eyes that morning and remembered how she'd told Edward everything. She'd always sworn to herself that she would never tell anyone again, it was why she was getting the scars covered; hiding the evidence would allow her to finally move on and not have to worry about how others would treat her. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously and avoided Ed's eyes. She hadn't made eye contact with him all morning, so afraid that he wouldn't look at her the same way. She didn't want to see pity on his face. She'd suffered an unimaginable trauma, but didn't want others to see because she didn't want to be treated like a delicate flower. She'd grown up a tough girl, and Archer was the first person to ever make her feel that she was powerless. The thought that others might view her the same way was the real fear in her heart.
"Are you gonna look at me?" He finally asked after they stood on the curbside for several minutes, saying nothing. "I'm sorry I pushed you last night, I know you're probably pissed at me and—"
"—I'm not mad." Winry's head shot up in surprise, having quickly forgotten her aversion to eye contact. Ed's eyes remained the same as before; the intense alertness and otherworldly beauty was still there, and she felt a weight lift when she didn't find pity in his gaze. "I just haven't told anyone about me in a long time. I don't want you to treat me differently."
Ed shrugged to feign some indifference. "So you've suffered; we all have. I'm not gonna treat you any differently aside from just making sure you're okay."
Something swelled inside Winry's chest, and she stepped forward and hugged Edward. Crisp earthiness invaded her senses as she breathed him in, loving the feel of his black shirt against her cheek and his beating heart beneath it. His arms only held her for a moment before she pulled back and he squeezed her hand.
"Are you alright to get to work? I'd take you myself but I have a client coming in soon." Edward said. A soft smile relaxed him and she shook her head.
"Don't worry I'll be fine."
"Do you want to sleep here again tonight? I don't mind." He asked, secretly hoping she would agree but was gently turned down.
"I have a lot to catch up on, I'll probably wind up just sleeping at work tonight. Don't worry, my boss installed a heavier door after the whole Noah incident so it's pretty safe," Winry reasoned. "Besides, I have to get ready for your maintenance tomorrow."
Her chipper change in attitude revealed the true colors that Edward admired her for, and he groaned inwardly knowing that if an engineer was this excited to get their hands on you, it meant you were in for a dramatic evening. He smirked at her and pecked her cheek.
"Call me if you need anything, otherwise I'll see you tomorrow night."
As Winry turned to leave a tiny voice chimed in the back of Edward's thoughts, and before he could reconsider he called after her.
"You know you're not alone, right?"
Winry stood pondering the phrase, which he delivered as more of a statement than a question. He filled the silence again.
"You're not in this alone. Everything's gonna be okay." He said. Winry found it hard to believe him, and breathed deep to try and quell her building anxiety.
"I hope you're right."
Winry resumed her walk towards the subway with dread in her stomach as she mentally lashed herself for being so weak and getting Edward involved. No one was supposed to know the truth about her, and if Archer was still as well-connected as he'd always been, he would likely know exactly where Winry spent much of her free time. Tears sprang to her eyes; if Edward wound up dead, she would have no one to blame but herself.
A/N: I am an extra large piece of shit for being away so long and not updating as frequently as I have for past stories. I hope you guys can forgive me. Thanks to all for the reads and reviews, you guys are the best. Next chap is a doozie, see you soon.