Plunged

"Al!"

"Mm?" He looks up idly from where he is sitting.

Winry stands pensively in front of him, holding her wrench loosely in her hands and fiddling with it thoughtfully. "I was just wondering . . . what happened last night? Where were you?"

Al stares at her in disbelief, but she shows every sign of being serious. "I . . . I was helping Brother," he says hesitantly. "You know that, Winry. You were there."

"We had plans to go out, Al."

He starts, unable to understand what she is saying. "But . . . his automail! You said the infection was serious. You said he needed rest and wasn't allowed to walk. You said we both needed to stay at home and keep an eye on him."

"You always choose him over me!" she shouts suddenly.

Al steps back, startled, afraid.

"It's always Brother this and Brother that. . . Why don't you think about me for a change?"

Al gapes, shocked, his brain refusing to offer either explanation or solution to the situation he has been plunged into. He stutters uselessly. "But . . . the infection . . ."

"See?" she yells, furious. "Even now you're going on about him!"

Al's lips part and he stands aghast, tears brimming uncontrollably in his eyes.

Then he turns on his heel and flees from the room, unable to think.

Ed is lying on the sofa, and he starts and half-sits up as Al stumbles in. "What is it? What's going on?"

"I . . . it's Winry," he says, unable to quell the thick, tumbling sobs that force themselves from his throat.

Ed's face suddenly becomes sour. "Oh. Her again."

Al looks up at him, distraught, eyes wide in fear. "What?"

". . . Nothing," Ed mutters, lying back down.

"Brother!" Al cries in anguish. "Tell me!"

Ed hesitates, and then shoots upright, spins around and glares at him. "Why don't we ever spend any time together, huh? It used to be cool, you know, we could chat and stuff. . . Now you just go off with her all the time!"

Al's mouth falls open in shock. He is speechless.

"Whenever I suggest something it's 'no thanks, I can't, I'm going somewhere with Winry again' . . ." Ed continues heedlessly as Winry herself comes into the room behind him and stands, bracing herself, in the doorway, observing them both with a face like thunder.

"Just as I thought!" she shouts. "You ran off when I was talking to you and now here you are with him!"

Al moves, and takes a few steps towards her, trying to placate her.

Then he freezes, as-

"Where are you going, Al?" Ed asks dangerously from behind him. "I was speaking."

"But Brother, I have to talk to-"

"Don't bother explaining to him Alphonse, just get over here NOW!"

"No Winry, I need to say-"

"You're just going to walk away from me? This is exactly what I was talking about. . ."

"Don't say that, Brother! I'm sorry, I-"

"AL!"

"You have to choose, Al!"

"It's him or me!"

Al cries out, a nameless, wordless scream, and tumbles to the floor in a wild sweaty tangle of sheets and limbs. His head snaps backwards violently with the movement and collides with the floorboards, and his vision goes from white to black very quickly.

"Al?"

Winry sits up in bed, her voice containing equal measures of sleep and concern, the blankets having been ripped away from her body in one sudden movement. She switches the bedside light on.

At the same time, there is the sound of confused stirring from the next room. "What happened?" comes the muffled question. "Are you alright?"

Winry has already assessed the situation; she slips off the now bare mattress and hurries over to him, kneeling before him and taking his shivering frame into her arms. She mumbles nonsense in his ear, strokes his hair repeatedly, trying in vain to soothe him.

The door flies open and Ed has arrived, magnificently, on the scene. Al snaps his head around to stare at him in horror. "Brother! Your automail!"

Ed looks blankly at him. "Um, yeah," he says. "What about it?"

"You shouldn't be walking, Brother, your infection-" Al mumbles, and then looks suddenly, guiltily, over at Winry.

"That was weeks ago, Al," Ed says gently, walking over to sit cautiously on the floor beside them. "It's fine now. See?"

But Al isn't listening. "Winry, I'm sorry, really, I promise, whatever you want- and you too, Brother! I'm sorry for what I did. . ."

His words continue to flow, trickling weakly out to join the hot damp tears streaking his face.

"It's alright, Al," Ed tells him again, quietly and as comfortingly as he can manage. "It's ok. We're here. Both of us," and he puts his mismatched arms, one warm, one cold, around them as they huddle on the floor, Winry still rocking the youngest Elric, who cries silently into her shoulder, "we're both here for you."

Author's notes: Ok, so. . . I hope you tell me that this one scared the pants off you to begin with, as that's exactly what I intended. . . :D I don't know if it's just me, but I have always been absolutely terrified of the prospect of one member of the trio somehow having to make some sort of hideous choice between the other two. . . In the end I decided that, although it's probably just me, I still couldn't go this whole series without addressing the issue.

I had a hell of a job writing the last paragraph. Just look at the commas fly. Actually, there's just generally a lot of dialogue, drama, commas, adverbs, and people saying each others' names in this one, huh? XD;;