Hello my lovely readers!
Today was my last day of school! So what am I going to do this summer,you may ask? WELL I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD! WOOOOT! XD (which ever one that's in Florida) I'm super excited because I've never been that far away from home and I've never been to a Disney Park before. I'm leaving this Friday but, I'm worried that I'm going to die because I'm going there with my high school's marching band and we have to march in our wool uniforms...
Any who, thanks for all of your lovely reviews last chapter! They were all greatly appreciated.
For once in his short driving career, Alphonse was actually taking extra caution to drive as carefully as possible. Due to the fact that Winry had taken their main form of transportation, Russell had nicked Rose's car keys and drove Ed and Al to the motel to pick up Al's car. Now Al was busy driving around the rain-washed city hoping to catch site of blond haired girl or her large, clunky red van while his disgruntled older brother sat in the passenger's seat.
It was completely understandable for Ed to be upset and worried over Winry leaving like this but Al still wished his brother would just tell him what the Hell had happened between him and Rose. But after a sending two minutes trying to get information out of Ed, Al gave up and realized that his brother wasn't going to talk until he wanted to.
Well, Al thought, if he wants to play the waiting game, fine. I'll keep waiting until he's ready.
"I don't know what you see in her!" Ed suddenly exploded, causing Al to veer to the other side of the road with surprise.
"What?"
"Rose! Why the Hell are you even friends with that thing? As your older brother, I forbid you from talking to that, that-women!" Ed yelled, turning suddenly uncharacteristically stern. "How old is she anyways! 20? 21? She's got to be at least 21 because she has so much booze. Isn't she a pedophile then if she hitting on me and Jean and other guys?"
Al couldn't help but smile at his brother when he was acting so protective over him; it was a welcome change to a few days ago when he could only imagine what his brother was even like.
"Do you know?" Ed snapped.
"What?" Al asked, not quite sure what Ed was ranting and raving about a few seconds ago.
"How. Old. Is. She?" Ed growled through his clenched teeth.
"Oh, uh 19."
"19? Why doesn't she go and find some friends her own age?"
"Well it's kinda hard for her to," Al mumbled quietly.
"What do you mean?"
Al let out a sigh while trying to organize his thoughts. Should he tell Ed? Well if he did, maybe he'd get off of her back and stop worrying. But then again…?
It's not my story to tell.
"You see, Rose moved here about a year ago with her boyfriend Kain. She moved her because she was having some major family problems-."
"Like what?" Ed scoffed thinking of his own 'family' problems. "Her parents weren't all giddy about their kid hooking up with another guy every night?"
"No," Al said gently. "Her parent's were getting a divorce and I guess things were turning pretty nasty in the household. And then apparently both of her parents wanted her to move away with them but neither wanted to stay in their old house and Rose was upset because, obviously she wouldn't see any of her friends anymore. Then I think Rose ran away on her own and then-she won't tell me how or why-both of her parent's died and she had no place to go, so she left."
"But wait. What about her friends? If she was so big on staying because of her friends, why didn't any of them step up to the plate and take care of her?" Ed asked in slight outrage for Rose's so-called friends of the past. He remembered when Winry's parent's passed away all of her friends had done everything to make her feel better.
"She won't tell me," Al answered but continued talking when he saw Ed open his mouth. "Yes I know what you're going to say. I don't know if she's lying or not but maybe she isn't. Anyways, then I guess she met Kain and they ran away together. I never had a chance to meet Kain because we met her about a week after he died. And I guess she's just had trouble making friends since then. I'll never forget how pitiful she looked that day…"
"So she's your friend because you pitied her?"
"No, we're friends with her because when she's not doing something like-."
"Ruining relationships?"
"And what kind of relationship did Rose ruin by the way?" Al asked with a small smirk. "But, yes. When's she's not going things like that, she's actually a good person who always thinks of fun things to do."
"Whatever…" Ed muttered before he folded his arms across his chest and stared out the slightly less rain-washed window before his heart froze for a moment when he spotted something. "Alphonse."
"What is it?" Al asked, instantly recognizing the change in his tone.
"Pull over," Ed ordered.
Even before Al had brought the car to a complete stop, Ed flung open the door and began running across the road, through the pouring rain, and over to the large red monster of van that he would recognize anywhere.
"Winry!" Ed shouted as he pounded on the driver's door; panic beginning to pour into his body when he received no answer. "Winry open up now!"
It was then that Ed realized that he didn't even know if the door was locked or not. Grabbing onto the rusty metal door handle, Ed pulled on it and was pleasantly surprised when he found that the door wasn't locked. After quickly shaking some excess water off of himself, Ed jumped into the van.
"Winry?"
But there was not only one bland-haired teen, but two. One was crouched behind the back seat so that only the top of her head was visible from where Ed stood, the other sat in the isle way and appeared to have been trying to coax the other out of her hiding place.
"Riza?"
Of course Riza was here…Ed thought, slightly annoyed with the blonds cunnings. Riza always knows where to go and what to do.
Riza sat in the car, seemingly drenched to the bone with rain and her hair stuck to her face like a second layer of skin. She gave him a slight smile before she made a quick shushing motion and turned back to the other blond, who appeared to be shaking slightly from sobs. Winry appeared to not have heard Edward storm in because she made no inclination to Ed. Instead, she continued to cry quietly; each tiny sob felt like a knife to the gut for Ed.
"…pisses-me-off…" Winry whispered between sobs.
"I know," Riza said while soothingly rubbing circles onto Winry's back.
"W-why can't h-h-h just be with me, o-o-o-or n-not?" Winry sobbed shakily into her folded arms.
"I don't know," Riza asked as she turned and began glaring pointedly at Ed, making him feel incredibly guilty. "It's clear that he likes you. Maybe he's just too much of an idiot to realize this."
"N-no…I kn-know he knows h-h-h l-likes m-me. H-he k-k-kissed me! And I k-kissed h-h-him!"
"Oh really?" Riza asked giving Ed a peculiar look as Ed flushed at these words.
"Y-yeah! But h-he ga-ave me th-this stupid…noble s-speech a-ab-out how h-h-he shouldn't d-d-d-ate me! And h-how K-k-Kimblee would be mad and could h-h-hurt me or u-use m-me t-t-t-to hu-urt him if I w-was Ed's g-g-g-girlfriend. Stupid idiot!"
Winry ended it all with a large sob, but Riza disregarded it as she tried to piece together what Winry had just said. What did Kimblee have to do with any of this? She knew that Kimblee wasn't the warmest of persons or nicest but…could he be hurtingEdward? She'd have to confront Ed later though. Riza turned to look at Ed again and found that he looked quite uncomfortable; could she be right about Kimblee?
"Ugh! I j-j-just wish h-he wasn't s-su-uch an idiot!" Winry yelled, pulling her head out of its place in between her arms before accidentally turning her head to the side and seeing Edward standing there.
Winry's cheeks blushed redder than her blood-shot eyes. She quickly turned her head away from Ed and hid her head back between her arms. Riza stared from one teen to another as if it were a tennis match before she sighed, got up, and grabbed a beat-up old umbrella from the floor.
"I'll just be outside if anyone needs me."
As Riza closed the door behind her, an awkward cloud of epic portions seemed to settle into the van. Ed had two choices: leave the van and wait until Winry had gotten over the ordeal enough for them to leave in peace or talk to her.
Edward let out a sigh before he took a few hesitant steps towards Winry and then taking Riza's empty spot on the floor. He had no idea about what he should say. 'Sorry that you walked in at the world's worst possible moment?' 'Sorry that I was so shocked that I couldn't do anything when Rose jumped me and then you walked in?' 'Sorry that I don't want you to get hurt by Kimblee and I want to have an open relationship with you but I can't so I won't?' All of these seemed to sound sarcastic in Ed's head and felt that if he said any of them, Winry might just hate him more. Instead, Ed lifted up his right hand and moved it closer to Winry's head, as if he was going to stroke her hair but in all reality Ed had no idea what he was going to do.
"Don't…" Winry moaned quietly, as if his touch would bring a horrible death upon her. "Just go away…"
"No," Ed said in a stern voice. "I won't until we fix this."
"There's nothing to fix. You don't want to be with me and-."
"Don't say-."
"Shut up!" Winry suddenly yelled; hair flying as she tossed her head back, blood-shot eyes glaring, and teeth bared slightly as if she was going to attack him at any moment.
"Winry!" Ed exclaimed, mostly out of fear for how the girl was acting.
"I said to shut up Edward Elric!" Winry screamed again, looking quite deranged. "All you always say is 'don't say I don't love you' and 'if I could, I would, but I can't, so I WON'T!' But you never, never have made a promise to me! I could deal with it if you promised me that once you had gotten rid of Kimblee that we could be together, but you haven't! You just say that you want to be in a relationship but all you're really doing is stringing me along and making me feel like a complete idiot!"
Winry glared at him for another moment, almost as if she was daring him to contradict her, but he didn't. He didn't because Ed knew that Winry was completely and undeniably right. He hadn't made a single promise to her and had only given her empty words in return.
"I'm sick of it! I'm sick of you not realizing what you're doing to me! I come along on this crazy trip for you! I ask you to come and live with me so that you don't have to live at that awful house for your protection! And what do you do? Nothing! Thank me?-yes, but not in the way I want! And you'll never get it because you are the biggest idiot that has ever roomed the earth!" Winry had begun to sob again now but did not do anything to stop the flood of tears. "You're denser than Roy Mustang and Jean Havoc for Christ's sake! Even those two ding-bats realize that I like you!"
Winry let out a noise so high-pitched that Ed was sure only Bats could fully hear it before she shot up from where she sat and began pulling on the latches that were on the back doors. After a moment of pulling and tugging on the locked doors, Winry collapsed onto the floor and dissolved into her sobs.
After a moment to let every scream and shriek sink in, Ed looked at Winry's shaking form and felt his heart shatter. He had done this to her, he had brought Winry to this state. Why did he have to be such an oblivious dumb-ass? Ed gave his head a little shake before he moved over to Winry and picked her up and placed her in his arms. Winry made half-hearted motions to try and get out of his embrace but then stopped and continued sobbing into his shirt.
"I'm sorry," Ed said after a moment of silence. "I'm sorry that I made you feel this way and I'm sorry that I never gave you a true promise but just believed that you would always blindly trust me; that was my mistake. And I'm sorry that I didn't try to stop Rose earlier before things got…complicated."
Winry said nothing but Edward thought her sobbing and crying was subsided slightly. Not sure of what else he could do, Ed inched a bit closer to her and tentatively wrapped an arm around her shoulders; she didn't try to shake it off or hurt him. So they sat there for a few more moments in silence, listening to the now gentle taps of rain on the windows of the van, until Winry's crying had become nothing more than sniffs and hiccups. Winry turned her head and looked up at Ed.
"Do you promise me?" Winry asked before getting cut off by a hiccup.
"Of course I do," Ed said with a small smile. "I promise that once I'm out of all this mess and I'm sure everything's safe, we will be a serious couple. Handy-holding in public, being cute-everything."
Winry couldn't help but snort slightly at these words for she was sure that no matter how much in love Winry and Ed were, they would never be the annoying couple who never stopped making out or the grossly over cute, lovey-dovey couple but it was nice all the same that Ed at least promised it, joking or not.
"Good."
Ed gave Winry one last big, goofy grin before he leaned over and kissed her softly on her forehead.
About a half an hour later, the four slightly drenched blond teens arrived back at the Motel Ed's friends
were staying at. Ed quickly explained what had happened in Winry's van, glossing over most of the alone time Ed and Winry had, and told the relived group of friends that he and Winry had made up. Exhausted from worrying, the group collapsed into a lazy heap, watched movies, and ordered lot's of take-out. Around nine o'clock that night, Al's cell phones rang.
"It's Izumi," Al informed the group before he answered. "She'll probably be mad that I didn't call her sooner. Hello? Yeah I'm with Ed and our friends…no. We're at the Motel they're staying at, watching some movies…yeah it's the one that's a couple streets away…We'll be home before midnight…yes I promise…okay, bye."
"So what's up?" Fletcher asked.
"Nothing, just checking up on me."
"'kay."
Ten minutes later, after they finally starting up the movie after a brief food fight that was initiated by Jean and ended when Riza dumped an entire leader of soda onto his head for hitting her in the face with a piece of pizza, there was a knock on the door. Everyone looked at everyone else.
"Did anyone order more food?" Roy asked with a small groan, staring around at all of the many different take-out containers that all appeared to be about half-full.
"No."
"Maybe someone called the main office and wants to bitch us out for being loud," Jean sighed through a mouth full of pizza.
When no one got up to answer, Ed let out a slightly annoyed sigh and said, "Don't all get up at once. I'll get it." Ed pulled himself up from his spot, passed the pyramid of pizza boxes Roy had stacked, and walked to the door. "Hello?"
Ed felt as if a small bubble had been placed around him, once he had fully opened the door, and time had frozen inside of it while life continued outside of it, for he felt frozen but only a few feet away, he could hear his friends fooling around.
"Edward…" the person said with a small gasp of surprise in his deep voice.
Edward could hear his heart hammering in his ear as he studied the tall man in front of him, eyes trailing from his brown shoes, up his brown pants and white dress shirt with a vest, all up until Ed reached the man's face. Long blond hair pulled into a pony tail matching Edward's and if Ed though he had freaked out before, he had no idea of how weird he could feel when he stared into eyes that were exact copies of his own and a face that might be his own in twenty years time…
It was his father.
AHHH! It's Hohenhime! And Riza might be piecing together Ed's neglectful homelife!
So I'm sorry to leave you at this cliffhanger (well...just a little sorry since I like making readers twist around for a while) but it's all part of my master plan. But what I'm actually sorry about is the fact that the earliest I'll be able to update again is late on the 17th since I'll be in Florida for six days.
Happy Summer! :)
-FSK