So FCAT is coming up. At least I'm a tenth grader and it's my last year with that stupid test~

Age 16

"Ohmigosh! Oh, Oh my goooosh!" Winry squealed, propping Bunny's mechanical legs on her knee to examine them, one at a time. "I've never seen this kind of mechanical limb before!" she gushed further, paying no mind to the constraints that lay on the girls wrists, courtesy of the eldest Elric.

Elizabeth's mind was swimming with factual and gear head lingo being spouted off by her childhood friend, "The machinery of this piece is so much more complex than most of the comparable calibers, yet is able to maintain impeccable balance, as displayed with the chase earlier!" Winry began to test the ankles and fiddle with the weapons in the knees, poking and prodding, continuing to mutter mumbo-jumbo in the ears of the alchemists present. "The hidden artillery, with as much torque and firepower as many military issued weapons, does not seem to detract in the least from the general aesthetics, nor the piece's overall ability to withstand high impact! My suspicions point to a high grade steel, though I've never personally been able to forge steel as strong, light, and eye appealing as this!"

Over a few feet, the Elrics had given up on trying to understand their friend's little rambling. Instead, the three engaged in meaningless small talk. Alphonse began their pointless conversation by saying, "Brother, Sister, how are you enjoying Rush Valley?" as he was unable to withstand the awkward silence fueled by Winry's background speech.

"I just wanted to go to Dublith and get our asses handed to us already so we could get it over with." Edward moaned, pouting about having to stop for Winry. "But," he added, falling into a lapse of wonderment, "it sure did make her happy, eh?"

"Yeah it did, Ed." Elizabeth replied, also not entirely there. She probably would have been the one to break their silence, had she been paying attention to it. Her mind was also on someone important, only for her, it was Havoc, not Winry. She sighed softly, her mind wandering to the many possibilities of the real personality of the man Jean Havoc.

Alphonse, always the perceptive one, asked his sister, "What are you thinking of?"

Her eyes still fixed on the distance, Elizabeth forgot herself and replied, "Jean." The name rolled out off of her tongue so naturally and escaped her lips so swiftly and softly that she didn't even realize she had responded until Edward snapped out of his own haze.

Edward's ears had pricked at the soft sigh of his sister. She had said that bastard's name, Jean. As in the man who kissed her twice and went home with another woman, at least in Edward's mind. "What?" he replied tentatively, "Did you just say what I think you said, Elizabeth?"

The girl in question rose her eyebrows and focused on her brother, still contentedly, "Hmm? What did I say?" she asked, blinking the haze from her mind and the focus into her eyes.

"You were thinking of that one guy, Havoc?" he spat, more of a accusation than a question. He was standing now, looking very intimidating, with a brooding look in his eyes, where a well of fury lay resting behind. Havoc was not a good subject to touch when it came to Edward. Realization slapped the girl in the face as the words sunk into her mind.

Had she really, really just said that to him? Her hands started to occupy themselves with the suddenly interesting locks of hair falling into her face. She sheepishly muttered, "I wasn't paying attention. It's nothing, promise."

Edward glanced around and gritted his teeth in a poor attempt at the novel idea of tolerance. "It's-It's fine. You can't, uh," His eyes flickered subconsciously away from his sister, but he didn't even notice that he looked to Winry, "help who you like. Even if he's almost a decade older than you." The last part was a snide remark that he couldn't resist, which had his lips curled up in a nasty sneer.

Hurt flashed in Elizabeth's eyes as she realized the odd situation she was in. Sure, Havoc was seven years older, but he didn't seem it. Was he just that immature, or was she just very mature? The doubt worried her, almost as much as Melanie. Edward's sneer faded quickly as it passed through her expression, and he felt the guilt settling to the pit of his stomach. "Yeah, that is a lot, isn't it?" She replied, almost resigned. Her mind was still off, she wasn't feeling right. Something felt off to her, and she couldn't pinpoint anything that was really, physically, tangibly wrong here.

Edward sighed and searched the shallow waters of his short-term memory for something to comfort his sister. He may have hated Havoc, and what he was doing to his sister, but he wasn't heartless, and he couldn't stand not being able to do anything for the girl he could normally give the world. Then again, as a child, just letting her play with him and Al was the world to her. A few seconds in his search, his mind wrapped around his father and he consoled her by gritting his teeth and informing her grudgingly, "Our father was ten years older than mom."

As the words registered in her mind, Elizabeth blinked the feeling of unease away and drew her gaze away from the blank distance to focus on her brother. Though she wanted to accept the comfort, she couldn't. "And we all know how to worked out." She painfully whispered, looking back to the distance, somewhere behind where Winry and Bunny were still conversing about mechanical limbs.

"Hey, this is a non-smoking area, take it outside, man!" A voice called from the back of the bar. Havoc sighed angrily and pulled the cigarette from his lips and crushed the nearly-dead embers with his fingers. If the annoyed and annoying man had waited just a few more minutes, the blonde would have been holding an unlit cigarette anyway.

He turned to him, with a crumpled shirt and messy hair. His expression was one not to be trifled with, and his tone unwavering, "Happy?" he asked sarcastically, clearly not joking or pleased with the order of putting out his smoke.

The man who had spoken out, a merchant with a funny little hat and matching beige vest, grunted uneasily, as if being challenged by this military man. And in a way, he was. "Ecstatic." he replied dryly, turning back to his drinking buddies and the poker game at the next table over, which he had been watching.

Havoc turned back the the bar, beer in hand. He couldn't stop thinking about how stupid he was being. "Damn it." he swore, capturing the attention of the bartender, who meandered in Jean's direction as he continued, "I thought I past the awkward part, with women and games and older brothers! Damn it all to hell," He slammed his beer down with little conviction, "I'm not gonna say anything to her brother. I'm not going to say anything to her. I'm done with that woman. I'm done, I tell ya, done."

The bartender just chuckled. "Younger gal, eh?" he asked, cleaning a cup with a dry rag.

Havoc looked up at the older man through a fall of blonde hair, slightly shocked at his words. The man hadn't spoken a word sine he arrived, nearly three hours ago. He decided on telling the man, "Seven years. That's too much. She's practically a child. She's not a woman, why am I even considering her a woman? I don't ev-" A loud clack of glass on hard wood halted Havoc's rambles. The bartender stood directly across the bar from the drunk man, pouring a clear liquid into the scotch glass he'd just clamored down. He then slid to to Havoc, with raised bow. Not even knowing what was in it, Jean slipped it down his throat in one swift motion, waiting for the dulling burn of alcohol. But it never came. With a slightly clearer mind, he accused, "Hey! Bartender man. That was water."

A few heads in the bar turned, as this was a method that the bartender has used before. "You need to wake up, son." He shook his head disapprovingly, "If she's old enough to be giving you these kinds of troubles, then she's old enough for you to give her enough consideration a woman deserves. She may be younger than you, but once a girl is seen as a woman in one man's eyes, she becomes a woman in every man's eyes. If you love her one day, and deny it another, you'll only lose her to a man who didn't deny her."

He looked into Havoc's eyes and saw his words weren't affecting the drunk man like they should. He sighed aggressively and set the cup down roughly again. This time, he didn't pout water, but went to the back room and returned moments later with a cup of coffee. He set it next to the glass and returned to idly wiping the cup with the dry rag, "You just nurse that cup of coffee for and hour or so. Sober up and then we'll talk, son." He shook his head disappointedly, as if he'd known Jean all the young man's life.

Havoc's face scrunched up in confusion. "No," He replied without a slur, "Explain now. Tell me how some mysterious man is going to sweep that girl off her feet just because I decide not to rob the cradle." He sneered back, still not sober enough to think clearly or notice how everyone around the bar was grimacing and averting their gazes.

Narrowing his eyes, the bartender man asked, "How old is this woman you keep saying is a child?" The man set the rag and the glass down and crossed his arms, his chin up high with skepticism and his brow raised with a challenge.

"Barely sixteen." Jean replied gruffly, bowing up to the challenge held in the old man's eyes. "And I'm twenty two, twenty three soon." He replied no further, awaiting the man's reply.

With his lips pressed in a tight line, the bartender shook his head once more, and reached back with his arm and pointed to and old, black-and-white photograph on the shelf with all his glasses for the various types of alcohol. "See that woman in the picture? She was my lovely wife of fifty seven years. I fell in love with a girl of fifteen when I was twenty five and working as a farm boy for her father. She was literate where I was not. She would sit out in the barns where I cared for the animals and read to me. At night, she'd sit up late by candle light and teach me the letters and numbers. I, a man ten years older than she, was unable to do the things this little girl could do. By the time she was eighteen, I'd fallen so far in love with that girl that I knew that ten years was nothing. And the older we got, the smaller that span seemed. I asked her father for her hand and we married on her twentieth birthday. I was twenty nine at the time."

The man chuckled, "And we would have been together for fifty seven more years had that illness not taken her six years back. It was a shame for it to sweep through the East Area." His eyes and tone softened at the mention of his late wife, but immediately hardened once again as he tore a new one into Jean, "And you think waiting for a girl is hard? Think about waiting for the day you can see her again. I can't just go and find my woman in Amestris, you can. Don't give me these laments of how she's younger than you, learn to live like a man, not a boy. It won't kill you to keep it in your pants for a few years. If you love this girl, this woman, you can wait for her."

Gritting his teeth and looking away in shame, Jean replied back in vain, "And if I don't love her?"

Once again shaking his head, the bartender man sighed and said, "Then you wouldn't in my bar, drinking away your pains, son."

I haven't uploaded in like two weeksD: So sorry guys! And I missed Havoc, so there he is~!