Numinous (adj.) describing an experience that makes
you fearful yet fascinated, awed yet
attracted-the powerful, personal feeling
of being overwhelmed and inspired

pronunciation - 'nU-mi-nus

A few days went by and like usual, we had slipped back into awkward territory. This time the fault was entirely my own. In truth I felt guilty for what I had done. It was honestly an accident, but when I walked past the slightly opened door and caught a glance at him I couldn't tear my eyes away. From the way I gaped at him, God only knows what he was thinking. He still covered up, and he hadn't said a word to me in days besides soft grunts of acknowlegment or one-word responses to any queries of mine. He hardly even looked at me. He had completely shut me out, and I found myself feeling defeated. Even though we hadn't come closer to figuring out who was threatening me, we had started to move beyond tolerable coexistance and into something more comfortable. We were starting to get along, and then I dragged it in the woods and shot it dead.

The crime scene had since been re-opened after longer than expected, allowing me to once again sleep in my own room and it couldn't have come sooner. I had spent the better part of a week showering in Elric's bathroom and sleeping in his bed. He didn't sleep next to me after the first night, he had since resigned himself to the couch which probably eased the tension for him but when I slid between his soft sheets the uneasiness washed over me. He was on the couch and I was in his bed and it was all because I was a peeping tom. Five days of this was more than I could take.

I was curled up in my over-stuffed club chair reading when he came into the living room. He was on his phone.

"Okay...I'll let her know... Keep me posted. ...Not yet, but soon. Everything feels alright so far. Okay... see ya." He slid his phone into his back pocket and sat down on the tufted ottoman across from me.

"That was General Mustang." He started. I closed my book slowly and raised my head to meet his gaze for the first time days. The gruff mask he had been wearing was still firmly in place. "After examining the body they've found that it wasn't a body at all. It was an intricatly-crafted, fabricated dummy. It was mostly a solid mass of silicone inside."

I blinked in surprise.

"It was a fake? Why would someone go through so much trouble to do all this? And where exactly would they get a fake body?"

"They're actually more common than you think. Everytime you watch a gory horror film you're seeing an example of one of these bodies. Its basically a life-size prosthetic crafted by makeup effects and fabrication artists for the film and tv industry. A talented artist can make a fake body realistic-looking enough to fool human senses. Until you cut it open, that is." He then let out a sigh and ran his gloved hand through his hair in frustration, loosening his ponytail a bit.

"We don't know why its being done, its really fucking annoying. If I didn't know any better I would say its some punk-ass kid messing with us, but this was designed and created by a professional. The eyeball was the same as the body, a very convincing fake."

I found a speck of relief in midst of this new information. No one had been hurt. At least not yet. As if Edward had read my mind he added,

"The new problem that the prosthetics bring to light is how we should proceed. This enemy may have done this with the hope that we wouldn't take him seriously and therefore drop our gaurd. We don't know how long he'll continue with the fakes before graduating to actual killing. These things aren't exactly cheap or easy to make. He could save himself alot of time and effort if he just kills someone. I don't like that we're sitting ducks just waiting for something to happen, but we don't have nearly enough information to make any moves."

In short, he was saying that we were basically sitting bait for a psychopath who could strike at any moment.

"Do we have any information on who this guy is?" I inquired.

"Hughes acquired the lobby and hallway security footage from the building manager. Investigations has been pouring over the tapes for a few days now. While you and I were out at the bar, the security camera picked up the image of a man dressed in dark clothes paying off the super to let him into your apartment." He scowled, and began to crack his knuckles on his left hand. "Needless to say, I'm gonna have a little chat with the super and convice him to skip town." I gulped.

"And because the super gave this guy a key, he can now come and go as he pleases. Which is why a locksmith is coming tomorrow to change the locks." I fanned myself with my hand, suddenly feeling over-heated and uncomfortable. I think he could sense my uneasiness because his voice suddenly softened.

"Everything's going to be okay." My eyes met his, and for the first time in days he wasn't cold. He got up from where he was sitting and crossed the living room to open a window, letting the icy air of late November blow into the room. He turned to me again.

"As long as I'm here, you're safe."

I found myself awake in the middle of the night, shivering uncontrollably. My room was beyond frigid, to the point where I could see my breath. I sat up and quickly pulled my silk robe around me as I scurried out the the living room to adjust the thermostat. It was 3 a.m. and when I entered the darkness of the living room I discovered the culprit of the temperature drop. I had forgotten to close the window Ed had opened earlier, and when I went to sleep that night I had opened several more in my attempt to relieve my sudden and unexpected hot flash. I quickly shut and locked them all, and thats when I noticed the sliver of yellow light coming from underneath the guest bedroom door. My first instict was to investigate, but as I had learned, curiosity killed the cat. I was about to head back to my room when I heard a groan come from his room. Deciding that cats had nine lives, I krept closer and put my ear to the door. I held my breath and listened.

"Fuck." I heard him grind out softly, followed by labored breathing. I jumped back from the door and blushed furiously. I thought for sure he was in there masturbating, until I heard him swear again more clearly followed by,

"I knew I should've modified earlier." I was sure I would regret this, but I knocked softly on his door and the murmuring stopped.

"Are you okay?" I asked softly through the door. "I...I saw your light on, I know the house is cold. I forgot to shut the windows." After a few beats of silence I figured I he was still grouchy and I began to turn away, when the door opened a jar and Ed looked out at me with tired eyes.

"Yea I'm fine," He said as he leaned against the door frame and scratched his head lazily. "I'm sorry if I woke you, I can't sleep." I noticed a light sheen of sweat on his brow and he was trying to hide that he was panting. I burned with embarrassment, convinced that I had just caught him in the act when I noticed the way he was standing. I thought he was leaning against the door frame out of exhaustion, but he was completly supporting his body weight on his right leg. The leg I knew to be his organic one. His right arm hung limply at his side and his flesh hand was holding his shoulder in a way I had never seen him do before.

"Did you need something?" He asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. Without thinking I gently pushed the door aside so I could get closer to him and my hand found his forehead.

"Are you sure you're feeling alright?" I questioned. "You don't look like yourself. You seem like...you're in pain."

His eyes fell away from mine and I could see him trying to drum up an excuse for me. Maybe it was the cold, or exhaustion, but for whatever reason he sighed and fessed up.

"Sudden and extreme temperature changes make my body hurt." He shifted his weight a little and winced. "Come in, I need to sit down."

I shut the door behind me and sat on the bed as he limped toward the bathroom. I watched him in fascination. I hadn't know him for long, but the only version of him I'd been witness to was powerful, confident and graceful in his movements. Yet even in his weakened state there was still a magnetic energy about him. I was drawn to him like a moth to flames, and I itched to know all I could about this peculiar man.

He returned to the bed dressed in long gym shorts and a black tank carrying two hand towels that he had soaked in scalding water from the shower and wrung out. The steam billowed off the towels as he held them in his steel hand and he sat next to me, placing one over his shoulder and chest plate and the other over his thigh where metal met flesh.

"You've already seen these, so I guess there's not much use in hiding from you anymore." His eyes closed and he let out a groan as his head hung down. I watched his strong flesh hand massaging the skin around his thigh as his brow furrowed and he grit his teeth. He was absolutly in pain.

"Can I do anything to help? I have Motrin." I offered. He shook his head and exhaled.

"Not really, its just something that's gotta run its course."

Seeing his metal limbs up close was even more hypnotizing than from my previous vantage point. I took notice of every detail. Plates held together by bolts and screws of various sizes, irridescent bubbles of light reflecting off the grooves of the cold surface. His fingers were long and slender and strong-looking, and I watched as he lifted back the steaming towel to examine his leg. His flesh fingers pressed and manipulated the skin running along the edge of his prosthetic, and I saw what I believed could be the source of some of his discomfort. Angry, inflamed flesh raged around his thigh. The puffy skin met steel in twisted puckers forming a jagged border of bleeding cracks and dry patches. When he pulled away the towel from his shoulder, I found more of the same.

"This frigid weather is a killer." He said, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. "I should've had my automail updated for the cold months awhile ago, but I've been putting it off."

"Automail?"

"It's what these are. Autonomous, sensory, robotic extremeties." He replied, finally looking at me. "My nerves are connected to them in the ports at my mid-thigh and shoulder. That's why I can move them like normal limbs. They recieve information from my brain via the nerves just like an average body would, and respond accordingly." I was stunned. Partially at what I was hearing and also because of how open he was being. He continued.

"When the weather gets really cold like this, the limbs need to be changed to a different alloy. Something that doesn't get as cold. Steel is great most of the year, but when it gets cold it makes my muscles stiff and achy, and the skin that lies flush to the metal can get frost bite. The hot towels help, but my skin is cracked and it stings from the dryness." A thought popped into my mind at hearing this, and I told him to sit tight while I dashed to my room for something. I returned with a small tube of shea butter-based hand cream.

"May I?" I asked. He blinked at me in surprise and nodded, moving the towel from his shoulder as I sat next to him. I deposited some hand cream onto my finger tips and gently smoothed it over the cracking, sensitive skin. His eyes connected with mine and my heart began to race.

"Am I hurting you?"

"No," he responded. "It's helping."

A few moments of stale silence dragged by as I continued smoothing my hand cream over his clavacle, down his shoulder blade, then along his ribcage. It was when my palms were caressing his smooth and strong chest that I found it difficult to breathe.

"I'm sorry about the last few days." He started quietly. "I've been kind of a bastard to you." I knelt on the floor to start working on his leg.

"Don't apologize, I deserved it. I'm the one who should be saying sorry." He suddenly stopped me when he took me by the wrist, and my head snapped up to meet his gaze.

"I just want you to know that you don't need to be afraid of me." I paused to absorb this and opened my mouth to respond when his phone buzzed on the night stand. He reached over to it as I stood from my kneeling position and took his towels to hang over the shower stall door to dry.

"Its Roy," He called to me. I re-entered the bedroom as he fired away a text response and set his phone down again. "An hour ago I let him know that I would need to be modified tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it."

I made my way to the door when his quiet voice stopped me.

"Thanks for the help Rocky, I mean it." I smiled and nodded, bidding him goodnight.

The days that followed had made me spectator to a wide range of Edward's emotions. His automail modification was successful, I had been gone with him to the hospital at Central for the procedure. When he was wheeled out of the engineer's O.R. he was exhausted, light-headed and nauseous. Softly muttering about the pain and how he needed to lie down. My doctor's needed a blood sample from me and since it had been awhile since my last check-up, I decided to let them admit me overnight and do the works. The works included full body scans, MRI's, CAT scans, blood testing, a general physical and an endurance test. They liked to keep regualar tabs on how my body was behaving, and we usually did all of this two or three times a year.

When Elric's engineers told me that he would need to be kept overnight for observation I knew I couldn't go home without him so I elected to stay. When I asked what room in the hospital he would be in, they shot eachother nervous looks and informed me that he was staying elsewhere and that it was off limits to civilians. The next morning I meandered over to Central HQ, having finished all of my tests and decided to pop in on some aquaintances if they were around. The main level of Central was its normal buzzing business, I waved to a few familiar faces and found Hawkeye and General Mustang walking towards his office in deep conversation when they spotted me.

"Winry! What a surprise! We thought you would've left by now." Riza said with a perplexed look about her. They both knew I was in tow for Ed's modification, and just like the engineers before them, I noticed an exchange of worrisome glances. I once again brushed it off and replied with a smile,

"Yea I'm just waiting for Ed. I haven't seen him since he was admitted yesterday. Any idea where he is? I can't exactly leave without him." The General sighed and raked a hand through his hair.

"If I had to guess, he probably started his day by barking at the doctors and engineers, then hollering at the cooks in the Mess Hall to give him a massive breakfast at astronomical protein levels, and now he's probably in the gym beating the crap out of the new Privates and causing thousands of dollars of damage." I reeled back in stupor. This didn't sound like the same man who I'd been living with. I followed them as we wound our way through a maze of hallways and up took an elevator down two floors. As we entered the gym lobby every person we passed sputtered and gaped at the sight of Roy Mustang, and stood ram-rod straight to salute him as we walked by. His midnight eyes hadn't emerged from under his furrowed brow, and Riza nearly lost her usual collected facade just trying to keep up with the irritated General.

We stepped out onto the runner's catwalk that snaked its way along the parifarie of the massive open gym. Soldiers halted mid-stride to salute Roy, huffing a wheezing as Mustang motioned them at ease so they could continue as they were. I stepped to the railing and looked out over a fitness guru's wet dream. The Training Facility at Central was truly state-of-the-art. Top level machinery ran in rows with an expansive free-weight area to the left. Towards the far back of the room was an open floor for stretching and floor excersizes and even a boxing ring. The military held strict rules for physical fitness for anyone who served in the field. Body Mass Index was something they took seriously, for a fat soldier would do them no good in battle. I had learned in the past that no expense had been spared for the military's training facility, and they even had a sauna and physical therapists on standby. A favorite pasttime of any skilled soldier was friendly hand-to-hand combat in the open floor space, and that was where I spied the Golden God himself.

Mustang was right, even from hundreds of feet away and above all the noise of running tredmills and clanking free weights I could see and hear the smart-mouthed, confident Fullmetal Alchemist. We stood for several minutes watching his showy, albeit impressive, display. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only his dark grey sweatpants that rode low on his hips, the fabric gathering in pooled softness on the floor under his heels. A sheen of sweat glistened across his perfectly sculted body and his long golden hair fell loose from its ponytail as he ducked, jumped, swung around kicks and threw punches, fully engrossed in combat with a fellow soldier. He easily sent his opponent limping away with his tail between his legs, when two more young men lept at him. Watching Edward fight was truly a thing of beauty. He moved with a graceful fluidity that would almost have you believe you were witnessing a choreographed dance. It seemed to be an effortless task, the way he knocked aside each soldier that dared to face him. He took a kick here, a punch there, but would flip backward and away to gather himself before charging full speed into a flurry of jabs, upper cuts, roundhouse kicks, whatever his opponants could throw in the effort to bring him down. Their efforts proved to be futile.

"This is what he always does." Mustang ground out, his eyebrow twitching in annoyance. "Every year when he upgrades to the lighter-weight winter automail he feels the need to test it out on his fellow soldiers. A lot of these kids just graduated from basic training and have no idea what he's capable of." We walked to the stairway and decended from the cat walk, making our way over to the small crowd of soldiers who had gathered as pleasantly enamored spectators for the friendly fighting. Mustang continued.

"They've never seen automail before, and most of them don't even realize that they're going up against the Fullmetal Alchemist. He gets all bent out of shape from the procedure, starts yelling at my officers, then comes down here to 'train the new recruits in hand-to-hand', causes thousands of dollars in medical costs and then leaves like its no big deal. But not today." We pushed our way through the crowd, and I could hear the shocked and stuttering whispers of men and women just then noticing the General's presense. They gasped, saluted, and when they saw who Roy's attention was fully focused on they shrank away from the scene. They knew what was coming.

"FULLMETAL!" Roy Mustang's powerful and authoritative voice bellowed across the gym, soaring above the surrounding noise and effectively silencing everyone around us. The group of younger men who had gathered in hopes to have a shot at Edward stared in shock and then began whispering frantically amongst eachother, having realized that the famed soldier was somewhere in the room. Their faces where completely dumbstruck when they realized it was the man they'd been attempting to fight. Ed's chest heaved from his 'workout' and when he saw Mustang striding over with the intent to kill his face broke out in that million-dollar, shit-eating grin of his. I realized I had been missing that grin for days.

"Mustang! My favorite commanding officer! How's life?"

"I'm in hell, Elric, and like usual I've got you to blame. How many times do I have to tell you? If you're going to spar, do it with an officer. Or at least someone who's fought you before. Or here's a brilliant idea, why not do it with another State Alchemist and level the playing field a little bit?! It's pathetic how you're tossing around my newest soldiers when they've only just gotten here from basic training!"

I went completely unnoticed by Ed, who was busy being lectured by the General all with a cheerful demeanor on his face. It was hard to believe that this was the same guy who only hours ago was screaming and cursing at people who were merely trying to do their jobs. He had mentioned that automail maitenance was painful and put him in a sour state, and I had seen Edward's grouchy side at home, but seeing the way his michievious eyes glimmered with mirth at the aggitated General only led me to believe that while he may have been a punk and a trouble-maker, he couldn't be a bad person. The crowds around us had only begun to increase in volume due to Mustang's shouting, and the spectating men seemed to hang on every word of the exchange. They were clearly in shock and awe of seeing two high-ranking officials at odds while the female soldiers in the room were fixated for very different reasons.

Being a woman myself, it was a facial expression I clearly recognized. They were practically drooling over the two boisterous men and it wasn't difficult to see why. Edward was a pillar of walking sex everywhere he went. Anytime I had been out in public with the guy he would go on with life seemingly unaware of women walking into lamp posts and stop signs because they were so busy gawking at him. As far as male attractiveness went, Roy Mustang didn't trail far behind his subordinate. Roy's black eyes smoldered under his dark brows and messy mass of thick black hair. He was a notorious ladies man with a silver tongue who knew exactly how to get what he wanted, whether it be a phone number from a pretty stranger, a peace-treaty with a neighboring country, or the extremely elusive and highly-coveted double chocolate chip muffin from the non-fat muffin basket at HQ.

"Alright, I'll try to be nicer to the engineers and the cooks in the mess hall. You know how painful re-attachment is for me and it puts me in a shitty mood. It would be better if I didn't have to be around so many people when I'm modified or upgraded." Edward explained. "And as for your new recruits, they should know better than to go up against any State Alchemist, not just me. It's not my fault if they don't know who I am. And besides, I'm just having fun with them. It's not serious."

"Just having fun?" Roy balked incredulously. "We just watched you break three of their noses! The military has to pay for their medical expenses Ed, you know this better than most!" Edward cast his eyes downward at this and Mustang turned to me, fire burning behind his gaze.

"Pay attention Winry, these are American tax dollars at work. Edward, I don't care how lightweight your new arm and leg feel. I don't give a damn if you're grouchy after your procedure. I don't give a flying fuck if you wanna get punched in the face by your fellow officers for fun. But when you show up here every winter and cause the uproar that you always do I can't just sit aside and let you continue. If you scream at another cook, I'll have you scrubbing pans in the kitchen. If you yell at your engineers, I'll order them to remove your arm for a week. And if you break a single bone belonging to any unexperienced fighter under my authority again, so help me God Edward I'll fucking set you on fire."

A wave of gasps and murmers moved throughout the on-lookers, and that's when Hawkeye intervened with a soft touch to Mustang's arm.

"Sir." Mustang collected himself and snapped his focus to the crowd with fiery glare.

"What the hell are you all looking at?!" Dozens of soldiers snapped to salute, and he barked at them. "As you were!"

They scattered like roaches to the light.

A/N: Thank you all for reading and for your wonderful reviews. Rest assured, there's more on its way.