laography | Every day is a journey

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Every day is a journey

They had nearly messed up. They had only just gotten there in time to warn everyone, and stave off the Witches attacking Spirit till Stein arrived. She heard there had been various other attacks throughout the city, but they had been fending off, and thankfully there had been no deaths and only a small number of casualties. Now, after the four of them had explained things to Kid they were shepherded off to the clinic. Her clinic, she realized with a bit of surprise, though it hardly felt like it anymore.

The clinic was rather busy as to be expected so soon after a battle, and Winry was trying to convince Naomi and Watson to let her help, but her efforts were completely shut down by both of them who insisted that she needed to rest as well. She knew they were right, but she couldn't help but feel a sense of guilt after having been missing for so long, and leaving the responsibility of the clinic in Watson's hands.

She was about to give up, concede and go to her room when yet another person entered the patient room.

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"WINRY?"

Was he - was it - could it really - but that's -

She open her mouth, closed it realizing she didn't know what to say. They wasn't exactly how she had imagined things going so she just ended up giving an embarrassed shrug.

"I-I'm back."

His feet were moving before he was aware of it, and he not entirely gently grabbed her by the upper arms, seeing - that, yes, she was tangible, she was there, she was -

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I was gone and came back. Unless you didn't notice."

At least that was what Winry almost said but she bit her tongue. It had been an incredibly stressful couple hours for her but even she knew that was uncalled for, and even if not she was determined to treat Ed...well...better than she had in the past.

"It's a...really, really long story, Ed," And she really did want to lie down, "you said you had something for Watson?"

He didn't seem to notice the last thing she said, staring at her as hard as he was, as though he still couldn't entirely believe it.

"...You're really okay?"

At that Winry can finally give him a smile.

"Yea. I'm really okay. Just tired, really, really tired." she looked back at Watson, giving him an apologetic look before returning her gaze to Ed.

"We should go to my room to talk. It's right down the hall."

His grip tightened momentarily, before he let go, nodding. "Seems like there's a lot to tell."

Boy was that ever an understatement. She excused herself from Watson and lead the way, looking around and marveling. The last time she had seen this place it had been completed decimated, a relic of a time that could have belonged to a fairy tale. Seeing it standing tall and proud, and bustling with life nearly made her eyes film over but she steadied herself and opened the door to her room only to stop again.

There it was, as she had left it. It seemed to have been tidied up a little bit but for the most part was still the same. Blueprints, half-finished inventions and tools strewn around, Haze and Evelyn were perched side by side on her window sill.

She gave a lopsided grin at that. The two had been reunited--at least in her eyes. Prussia kept Haze safe, but she had never seen Evelyn.

She drifted over to her bed and absolutely sunk in it. God it had been too long since she had been in a bed this soft.

Where Winry was watching everything else, Ed was watching her. He couldn't take his eyes off her if he wanted to - and he didn't want to, not after having lost her for so long that there had been a kind of blind panic building in his mind, a terror of not another person, please, not her.

So when she lay down, he sat down on the ground next to the bed, close but not - well, too close.

She stuffed her face into her pillow and inhaled deeply. So many other things--how fresh it smelled, how clean it was. At last she turned over to lie on her back and for a moment just looked back at him.

She could understand that look on his face, and it the guilt well up in her, especially as thoughts of what he had become came flooding back to her. She forced herself to sit up, and as she had done so many times before--as she did for the first time, she pulled him into a hug.

"I'm sorry for making you worry."

He went still for a moment, lost enough in his thoughts that it caught him off-guard - and even then, how often did he ever get hugged? Aside from Teacher in Dublith, he couldn't remember the last time something like that had happened.

But then his arms went around her, holding her close.

"Idiot."

She rested her chin on his shoulder and held him tight, protectively. She couldn't help but muse how different it was hugging him now. It still brought that same level of comfort, warmth, and security but she felt more equal to him now. She wasn't sure if that was because they were the same size now, or because she felt she understood him more. He was stronger, yet weaker at the same time.

"When the Madness Wavelength hit," she finally began, "I was training with Miranda in her room. It made things go really crazy, we weren't able to control our resonation or her Time Record and we were sent away."

He nodded. "That's what I thought."

A longer pause before. "We were sent ten years into the future."

...He'd wondered about that - he'd never stopped wondering, being terrified they'd be sent to a place the Time Record wasn't. "What's it like?"

She swallowed, and took a breath steadying herself.

"It was horrible, Ed. Everything had gone to hell. Shibusen was right...these Witches really are horrible, horrible people. I don't even know where to begin describing it all. They had experimented on people, found ways to give them unimaginable powers and then keep them under control. As far as I saw, and understood Shibusen and one other place were the only safeholds left in the entirely world. It had all become dead between the Witches and that monster Asura."

He tightened his hold on her, swallowing as well.

"...I'm sorry."

The details would could later, or if he asked. For now she couldn't help the wane smile that spread across her lips.

"How am I not surprised to hear you apologizing?" she really was going back to square one, wasn't she? She found she didn't really mind though, down as he seemed now it still didn't quite seem to match how bad he had sometimes gotten before. Or 'after'.

"It's not your fault, Ed. It's no ones fault, and in a way, maybe it was better it happened. Shibusen now knows what to prepare for, and we can stop them before they get started. Several lives have already been spared, which already makes it worth it. Maybe this was the reason Miranda and I were brought here by BREW at all." Random as the machine was, Winry had sort of come to feel perhaps there was a reason for everything it did. Perhaps this was the purpose for which she had been summoned.

"And I'm here now, and okay."

It wasn't that all of that didn't matter - of course it was important, but - he'd take her safety over all of them, any day, and that was something he'd only realized over the last several weeks.

"...Don't do that again."

"I won't. Promise." Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to promise. Who knew what could happen, but Winry was determined that she'd never leave Ed or Alphonse like that again. They still had a long journey ahead of them. Even if that future was avoided there was no telling what it held in store for them now, and it could very well last just as long, even if they road they tread was infinitely better.

She finally pulled away so that she could look at him, taking his hands into hers now.

"I also wanted to apologize for not understanding before. Not understanding a lot of things."

He looked at their hands, then her, confused. "What're you talking about?"

"I thought I had understood your feelings before. About me, and Al, and everything that happened. But I didn't, not really, and I had been really inconsiderate in how I treated you." she remembered with a small cringe how she had taunted him about not realizing how much she and Al cared for him.

"And I was always complaining about unnecessary things like having to wait," when he would have done the exact same thing for her, "and making assumptions about what I thought you should and shouldn't know."

That....was unexpected, and he looked at her with wide eyes for a long moment before shaking his head and smiling ruefully.

"It's not like I was able to blame you for it."

Edited 2010-11-05 02:35 (UTC)

She slowly let go of him and laughed a bit. "You should have. I was stupid. Still not as stupid as you, but I was."

"You said things like how I should know how much I was able to help you," and she almost added 'without my automail' but she recalled what Ed had told her before she returned, and left it at that, "how much I was able to help you. You said that should have been a given but...it should also be a given how precious you are to me, Ed."

That was...unexpected, though maybe only so much, since they'd been having arguments like this before she - too. But this was riding far too soon on a thousand failures, the slow madness of waiting and searching and getting nothing, a useless 'human weapon' if there ever was one. And before that, before that -

- 'only one common denominator, isn't there?'

"Winry..."

"Shush, Ed." She would have none of his attempts at refuting or ignoring what she was saying.

"It's true. You can think all you want about whether I should or shouldn't but nothing is going to change that. I love you." She didn't raise her voice or get angry. Obviously years of that had done absolutely nothing. The only thing that had was being straight-forward and reminding him of this.

This Ed may have none of the burdens his future self had gained, but she was going to continue on with reminding him till he too finally came to realize that it was true.

It was lucky he wasn't in the middle of drinking anything.

" - What?"

It was just as funny this time as it was the second time. And of course Winry just had to go and fake obliviousness.

"What?"

He was totally flailing. He couldn't help it.

"You what?"

Winry managed to keep her smile from getting too big. She didn't want Ed to think that she was insincere. She gave a shrug and nodded, saying it clearly once again.

"I love you."

"You..."

He shook his head finally, getting a hold of himself and very much pushing a certain conversation or two out of his head.

"Tch. Some joke."

"Why would I joke about something like that?"

"Why would you say something like - that - out of the blue like that?"

She shrugged. "Because I figured it was something you already knew. As I said--I made assumptions too so now I'm going to make up for that, and I'll tell you exactly what I told the you of ten years from now. No matter who I meet, or where my life goes, you will be one of the people who means the most to me. You, Al, Granny--everyone will always come after you guys."

She sighed and shrugged, scoot up the bed a bit so she could lean against the headboard.

"You don't think you deserve it, but frankly that's not your decision to make. That's the way it is, always has been, and always will be."

He was quiet for a long moment, leaning back against the bed with his legs crossed under him. 'Don't think you deserve it' was putting it lightly, after the past month. He closed his eyes, breathed in, breathed out.

"The day you left. [a beat] I saw my Shadow. You know what that is, right?"

Complete honesty, wasn't it?

Now that was definitely not something she had been expecting. Her head shot up and she stared wide-eyed at him. "You did? But...how?"

Edited 2010-11-06 22:17 (UTC)

"People's powers came back that day. Rise's is to go into some freaky place where they live, and I got caught up in it."

...that's some crappy power right there. Winry couldn't imagine ever wanting to go to a place where Shadows lived.

She hadn't ever thought she'd hear of those things again, hadn't ever wanted to, really, but now it left Winry with a deep concern. Knowing Ed he probably hadn't told anyone about this so had he kept this bottled up for the entire month or so she was gone? She looked at him, unsure, but patient to see what he would say.

He was quiet, actually, mulling back over that memory which he'd tried to keep locked up with everything else going on.

She shifted forward again and this time just rested a hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze.

"It's okay, Ed. We can talk about it later if you need, whenever you want."

"No," he said pretty quickly, and if he noticed her touch, he didn't react to it. "You'd said complete honesty, right?"

Yet something else she hadn't expected, but Winry nodded and remained by his side, pulling up some of the blankets around her.

She said nor did anything else, not wanting to seem impatient and rush him into such a talk. She knew how hard it was.

'Worse than murder, isn't it?'

He pulled his legs up close to his chest, resting his arms on his knees.

'Trust wasn't able to save anyone.'

"It wasn't able to get very far."

She frowned. "What do you mean?" The hand fell from his shoulder to his back, gently kneading him with her knuckles. The fatigue she felt from the day had hardly gone, and she knew this was going to be a long and equally tiring conversation but Ed was being open, she couldn't waste this opportunity. She thought it would take much longer before he would be able to speak freely to her as he was.

"Rise'd said that you have to accept them to stop them. It wouldn't shut up, so..." He trailed off, then continued, a set look to his face. "Listed names, mostly."

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Every day is a journey

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