AN: Hey everyone! I'm so excited to be updating! I had actually nearly completed a story for 503 day, but was late and decided to save it for next year, however I never know what I will feel up to working on so that could change too. I just wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to comment, fave and follow this story, it is literally the only thing keeping me going at all. I hope to clear up a lot with this chapter that people have been asking about for a while.

Disclaimer: No rights to FMA!

Warning: Moderate depictions of gore. Proceed with caution.

Even with the brief sound of shock that Alphonse had released, he didn't have time to tense before feeling the sickening crunch of impact. After the initial contact, everything seemed to move by at a crushingly slow rate to process. They hadn't hit the other vehicle head on as he had originally thought, but they had primarily collided with the left side of the car though still managing to smash the dead center as well. Hearing what sounded like bone being pushed in by metal, Ed tried to align his sight to see where it originated from. Unfortunately the windshield imploded, showering them with both tiny and large pieces of glass. Within a millisecond of the shattering, the car actually became airborne as if it had been a baseball sliced by the precise swing of a bat.

While being flipped, he noticed that part of the dashboard had come loose from the beating it had taken and was now broken in a sharp edge. Throwing his arms above him to keep himself from smacking his head on the roof, Edward saw his brother's head do the very thing he had been protecting himself from. Upon landing on the road hood first, he watched as his body flew forward from the force of the grounding motion into the dashboard, and meeting almost no resistance when the soft skin of his right arm was breached by the deadly edge he had previously noticed. The sound of muscles and bone being sliced clean was like a wet scraping noise that he didn't think he would ever forget. Seeing the plastic protruding through the seat back and the twitching, gorey stump that remained of his arm was too much for him. He choked on a scream at the blinding pain he felt throughout his whole arm, which was impossible as it was now completely separated from his body. Feeling his stomach tighten and bile rise in his throat he violently vomited on himself, not even able to turn his head in time to save himself that small embarrassment. Tears slid hot and numerous down his forehead as he turned to look disorientedly at his brother.

Until leaning forward to check for his brother's breathing, he hadn't noticed that there was anything else wrong with himself. He was tightly wedged where the steering column had crushed his left leg and the lack of immediate pain to the area let him know that something was drastically wrong. Trying to keep his rising alarm from bubbling over into hysteria, he schooled his attention elsewhere to manage the pain from the lacerated nerves in his arm.

When their father had still managed to interact with them, Ed had often watched him work on projects and learned many things about how the body reacts in different scenarios. In this case from a previous conversation they had had, he recognized the grip of shock and suppression of panic lying just beneath the surface. He knew at a time not far from then he would have to face the reality of what had happened, however right now his goal was just to take care of Alphonse before he passed out from his own injuries. Quickly becoming more aware that he was going to lose consciousness any time, he awkwardly pulled his belt out from around his waist, which was the easy part, and slowly made a makeshift tourniquet for his blood soaked stub. The open wound throbbed as he tried and failed to secure the leather a couple times, but thankfully between his teeth and remaining arm, he managed to draw it tight and secure it. Clearly years of having use of said missing appendage had made him complacent about building the dexterity of his other. In fact, he had a suspicion that it wasn't for all the training he had done with his teacher, this task alone would have proved insurmountable.

He attempted to visually assess his brother for any major injuries similar to his own, and while he found none he became increasingly worried about the lack of response to his voice.

"Alphonse..." Pausing a moment, he waited for an answer then tried again, louder this time. "Al, wake up." Another few seconds passed with no response, and he could literally feel the fingers of unease unfurl within him. "Al, please just let me know that you are okay." No reply again; now he couldn't handle the silence and some of the blatant anxiety that he had been trying to keep under control burst forth when he spoke next. "AL! Hey! I need you to answer me!" He didn't want to shake his younger sibling in case there was some injury that he wasn't currently seeing. Considering how hard his head impacted the roof of the car when it crashed to the ground, he found himself calculating the amount of pressure the weight of his body and the force that the fall would have put on both his head and spine. The nearly debilitating fear was deafening over the sound of his own shallow breaths in reply. "Al, please..." His voice became small as the endless possibilities flooded his head, and none of which were positive.

Suddenly the doors of the car were being forced open and he could see bystander's varying facial expressions; some were just rubbernecking, which just made him want to tell them to go fuck themselves, and others were looking on with complete horror or shock. He knew that things were bad, but it wasn't as if the other people were worrying about his brother or the fact that he now had a stump for an arm. A man that announced that he was a first responder was trying his best to pull him out and Ed yelled at him to help Alphonse instead, his injuries were apparently getting to be too much for him though because the words came out sounding garbled and his vision became spotty. However, an EMT had successfully pulled Al from the car, so he calmed some. A second later a sound so terrifying that he was literally pulled from the tunnel of darkness he had begun to sink into pierced the air, a woman's excruciating screams. The sound was as if the world were ending and being on the verge of losing consciousness, he struggled to look past the person who was trying to shimmy him out of the car. When his eyes finally focused on the source of the tortured agony, he felt his stomach turning again. This whole time he had been so focused on his brother and himself that he had completely forgotten what had led them to their current circumstances. Flashes of a little girl chasing her loose dog into traffic came abruptly to him, but were quickly gone once he fully took in the sight before him.

The car that he had hit was on fire, though he hadn't noticed what started the blaze, and the woman, only distinguishable from the tenor of her screams, was melting before his amber eyes. He began thrashing against the responder, pleading with them to help her before it was too late. They must have understood his frenzied cries despite taking no action to help the one who was being seared alive.

"Son you need to stop fighting us, until firefighters arrive we can't help them and you have been seriously injured." There was only one word that was sticking to his fading brain, 'them' holy shit 'them' he had probably killed them all. His pulse quickened at the thought and the sheer weight of guilt made him dizzy. He had done this. He had hurt everyone. Just then the telltale wail of the huge, red truck pulled up and other first responders seemed to sit around while they assessed the situation. What the hell were they waiting for!? A sharp tug finally elicited his awareness as the EMT who had pulled Al out had begun to turn his legs out of the car, at least before he jerked back in response to the vision they were both seeing. From the sick way it resembled an opened pack of a sweet tarts with the wrapper ready to be torn off, Ed realized that there was a high chance that he wouldn't keep his left leg either. Mercifully, he didn't have to deal with that reality then because he finally succumbed to the blackness, offering him a momentary reprieve from the mistakes that were starting to pile up all around him.

In the weeks that passed following the accident, Edward had only found himself awake for fleeting minutes, catching only pieces of conversations going on around him. He heard his pile of shit father, who admittedly may have been the lesser evil between them now, a seemingly kind doctor whose name was Marcoh, and an old woman who aside from having a sad, scratchy voice seemed to be a spitfire. As time elapsed and he began to grow stronger, his only worries were finding out what happened to his little brother and the people in the other vehicle. However, when he did, he wished more than anything that he could have traded his worthless existence for the lives of the married couple, Urey and Sarah Rockbell, and the well being of Alphonse. Urey and Sarah had surprisingly survived the crash and the fire, only to pass away from the severity of their burns not long after. The idea of them enduring the smell of their own charred flesh, writhing in pain while their burned open flesh was the last thing they experienced would haunt him until the day he died. The Rockbell's were the son and daughter-in-law of the old woman in charge of installing the automail his father had paid for, Pinako. Why she would even come near him without utter revulsion and hatred all things considered, was beyond him. He knew he sure as hell hated himself.

His brother had suffered a major spinal injury that had severely damaged the thoracic portion of his spine, more commonly referred to as incomplete T-9 paraplegia. Essentially, with years of physical therapy Al may be able to control his own bowel movements and would certainly have control over his core and arms, though he would likely never walk again. The thought that he had caused his sibling to lose the full use of his body was enough to make the elder not want to recover at all. Just thinking of Alphonse never being able to compete in martial arts, or maybe never having a physical relationship with a girl was enough to cause self loathing. The idea that tormented him most frequently was the possibility of others treating Alphonse differently or even poorly because of HIS actions. For instance, their 'beloved dad' had stuck around long enough to ensure that they weren't dead and to set up home care as he would not be around. Imagine that. He was turning out to be a spitting image of the man, they were both complete fuck ups.

Later, during his rehabilitation from the automail surgery, Pinako had mentioned that her granddaughter was already beginning to become as skilled with automail as she was. Not until after she had left did the information really sink in. The Rockbells had had a daughter, a daughter that now had no parents. Despite the fact that Hohenheim was still alive, Ed knew what it was like to not have that connection and struggled further knowing that he had caused it to happen to another person. He could see how he had grown bitter and shitty towards his dad because of the death of their mom and imagined the girl with the same hostility held against him. The old hag and Alphonse had tried numerous times to placate him with the notion that he had tried to do the right thing by swerving to miss the little girl and her dog, but all he could picture was the young woman whose life was now forever changed because he hadn't seen what was happening five seconds earlier.

He had been tried for involuntary manslaughter and painted as an irresponsible teen driver to the jury. They had never been able to find the little girl that had avoided tragedy, though it would have been a great help to his cause in the eyes of the expensive, elitist attorney that his father had hired. Thankfully because of the testimony of his brother and the heartfelt plea to forgive and move forward by the deceased couple's mother, as the stuffy prick of a lawyer stated, he was sentenced to probation and community service which was a slap on the wrist comparatively. Besides, it didn't really matter what the court was sentencing him to, as he was tried and found guilty in his mind and would administer retribution accordingly. He was then assigned a probation officer, the bastard he would come to know as Roy Mustang; who seemed to delight in irritating the shit out of him. With the press surrounding the whole ordeal, Hohenheim had decided it was in his son's best interest to adopt their mother's maiden name of Elric so that in the future they would have the highest chance of avoiding the stigma surrounding the case. To him, he could care less about what everyone else in the world thought, except for Alphonse. His new goal in life was to ensure that Al came first; his happiness and rehabilitation would be his focus.

In the years that followed, Edward had worked with that single minded purpose and made something out of himself, even with the ever present weight on his shoulders. He had been able to secure a position where he could hear about up and coming research that could potentially help Al. He was making enough money after solid investments and saving, that should a viable treatment become available, he could afford it without the aid of Von Hohenheim. There was nothing in the world more important than being able to give that total independence back to his brother, or at least there hadn't been anything else of consequence, until the day Winry Rockbell had shattered the tentative agreement he had with life.

Finally his thoughts had come back around full circle, and he was again scowling at the prospect of making these facts known to the brilliant mechanic. Besides letting Alphonse down, there was nothing in the world that made him more ill at ease than thinking of her possible reactions. The bottom line was that trust was tantamount to love and given the physical intimacy they had just shared, the only thing to do was to tell her the truth and hope for the best. He couldn't handle days like this where he replayed the sordid events over in his mind and was eaten away with regret, he would just have to tell her, whatever the outcome may be.

The professor headed towards their coffee shop and ordered her usual. This may have been a feeble attempt at trying to make her happy all things considered, but with the difficult conversation ahead, he hoped that starting the day with her favorite 'kick in the pants' drink would help. His pace heading back to her place was less hurried than on the trip in. As he approached her door, he turned the knob only to find it locked. Despite the fact that Winry had left a note saying that she was just running a couple places that morning, Ed was hoping that he would be back before she returned. He had even considered making her breakfast and then broaching the awful truth, however that seemed to be out now as she had clearly beaten him back. Steeling his resolve, he knocked on the door, nervously counting his heartbeats in time with the seconds he stood waiting for her to answer.

AN: Alright everybody, we are FINALLY ready for the chapter everyone has asked about. How do you guys think Winry is going to take everything? Please review and let me know what you guys thought!