Pairing: Ed/Winry

Genre: Romance/Angst

Summary: Like it or not, she defined home. Even if his memory tried to burn, bury and negate it, she would not be denied.

Word count: 2,261 words

A/N: Sooner or later, I'd come back with another angsty bit. I've been sitting on this quite a while. I'm playing around with first-person perspective a bit.

Feedback: Always welcome with open arms. But please, no spamming. I've got plenty of that crap in my e-mail.

It gets hard

The memory's faded

Who gets what they say

- Gin Blossoms

It started with Al's simple musing

There are some implicit rules that are followed when you break ties from the past.

The main one was: don't look back

Over time, I learned that there are lots of ways to rephrase that one rule: don't regret, move forward, don't stay still.

For us, it began with burning down the bridge that led home. Which is why we set the house—correction, our mother's house—on fire in the first place.

Al, human as ever despite the armor he inhabited, couldn't help it. He tended to muse.

"Remember when we used to look at the stars?" came the sudden question, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Yeah, I do," I said, when I really didn't. I just couldn't admit it to him. And myself, though I didn't know it at the time.

Yet the longer we traveled from towns and villages and cities, the more Al found versions of our former selves. Younger, happier, and much unburdened. They played in the streets, laughing, half-crazed—all without a care in the world.

I envied that kind of happiness and the ignorance it entailed. The bliss stayed in our lives for so short a time, it was almost criminal. It was like looking through a window where he could only see what we once were, what things we used to do, but never experience it firsthand again.

I found myself thinking of roaring bonfires and the possibility of arson in the fall.

"Remember?" he would always ask unexpectedly, pushing out daydreams of flames with the sound of his voice.

"Yes," I'd say, though my heart cried no and the only reminder I had was the cold metal watch in my pocket.

I once stared through the open window of our room, trying to remember if and when I'd ever learned any of the constellations. Of course, they were hard to see in the middle of Central, what with all the lights from the city not letting all but the brightest stars shine through in an absurd competition to be seen.

I traced the few remaining into figures only I could see—a gun, a suit of armor, and the word 'regret' spelled out clearly in my tired eyes.

Sometimes I could feel the despair in Al's gaze, because he wanted the happier moments to eclipse the painful ones. Sadly, the bad ones tended to outnumber the years of his life.

Unfair as it was, I wished I could take all the tragedy myself so that he'd never know what sorrow meant. And other times, I knew I was selfish knowing I wasn't bearing the burden alone of all the mistakes that led us down this path. It might've destroyed a single person to take on so many sins, but we were strong enough to bear them together. Or at least, I hoped we could be.

"Remember when Winry stayed out with us one night to play?"

He wanted to remember those happy times. I knew, because I wanted the same. I thought I nearly found it once.

A nod.

"Uh huh."

It was then that I found myself wondering about her. Like an unplanned accident, Al's question made me dream corn silk and bright blue. I woke up with the scent of strong mineral spirits lingering in the air for a moment, but it could've easily just been my imagination.

I never did understand the meaning of nostalgia and homesickness. But I found myself longing for something I was sure I had missed somewhere along the way. As usual, I couldn't remember it and felt as though I was waking up too soon from a dream where things were far, far different.

It was soon after that we somehow wound up in Rizembool when I needed an automail repair.

I expected Winry to kill me when I showed her the damage. When a stray wrench hit me, she didn't apologize. I didn't expect her to.

Strangely enough, whenever we spoke, it always seemed as if we were picking up the conversation where we last saw each other. Usually, it consisted of the usual banter and her picking something of mine to take apart and figure out how it worked. The watch dug itself deeper into my pocket, where I hoped she'd never find it.

In the workshop the smell of oil and denatured alcohol were familiar, even if I had kept away for four years. Winry herself smelled faintly of mineral spirits. I looked away, praying none of it showed on my face.

As usual, she frowned in that careful way of hers while inspecting the most recent cataclysmic abrasion left on my forearm. I watched as she studied the latest reminder of another near death experience, all of it blurred into incomprehensible movements and luck as I tried not to think of it.

The way she studied my arm made me wonder if she stared that way at everyone who walked through her door or if it was part of the inheritance her parents, as doctors, had left their sole daughter.

I must have turned around at the wrong moment, because there was an unfamiliar smile on her face I wasn't sure she wanted me to see.

I smiled back, feeling as though some part that wasn't metal had bent painfully until it finally broke.

When I walked out of her workshop, I looked back, feeling as if she had transplanted my heart with metal in the thirty minutes we talked. It sank somewhere near my feet and I distinctly felt a giant absence in its place for the rest of the day.

- - -

In the meantime, visiting mother's grave was required on the agenda while we were in town.

Although I really didn't want to visit the cemetery, I couldn't let Al down.

I could tell that the memory loss was really affecting him. He described it as photographs slowly fading, corroded by time. I supposed that it was a side effect of the transmutation, but I couldn't be certain.

Then again, it could have been a simple case of growing up too fast, too old at once. At least, I hoped it was. And despite the metallic shell, even I couldn't shield him from the slow amnesia the years had claimed. Because not everything could be blamed on our previous failures.

While Al mourned the loss of memory of people he once knew, I paid respects to those mistakes we were supposed to correct. We were going to fix them, one way or another. We had to.

I don't know how long I stood in front of mother's grave, but it was enough to see the bouquet of flowers wilt in the late afternoon sun. It hit me how much like those flowers our mother had been. She'd been blinded with the presence of a man, our father, who left without any explanation. She'd withered away waiting for the day he'd return.

The walk back to the Rockwells was a little strange. The déjà vu sensation wouldn't go away and I couldn't explain the relief that came over me upon seeing the house.

It hit me then that no matter how far and wide Al and I would go, we'd be doomed to return here. I had to fake a smile through dinner and try not to look at her directly.

It wasn't that I was ungrateful for the help, but it was hard to describe what our hometown meant to me. I suppose cutting off ties to Rizembool cemented a need to roam. And through a blur of traveling, the people we met along the way gave us reason to try harder. Fix the world, even if only a little.

At the very least, we gained firsthand knowledge in the way no alchemical book could ever teach us, not even father's decoded journals.

Father. It had been a long time since I'd thought about him. His vagabond steps had taken him away. And now they were taking us, too.

Mother. She had waited for him until the bitter end.

Al and I were the ones left with the after taste in our mouths. Some inheritance we'd been left, huh?

And maybe, the two of us had a little more in common with the old man besides blonde hair. Being nomads as well as alchemists, I figured it was a starting point of resemblance in character.

It seemed as if we were cursed to wander like the ones that had come before us. Truth, however objective, varied wherever we went, blending together until it was as muddled as anything else.

We didn't have a home. Not for years. Not since we'd left.

A chance look upwards and it was one of those clichéd and stupidly romantic moments that writers tell about in cheesy romance novels. I saw blue. She didn't turn away for a long moment. Vaguely, I heard something quietly say, "Surrender," although neither of us spoke.

Though it might have been my imagination high on wishful thinking.

But stupidly, I did.

In that terrible, wonderful way that defies logic.

I learned that I had made another mistake by not burning down this bridge. I alone haunted those paths that led me back here to sunlit hair and awful beauty.

And I understood why Mother waited. Even while she was hopelessly lonely and staring through the glass for a sign of reciprocated love.

It made sense.

Truly, I am my parents' child.

It wasn't a comforting thought.

- - -

It's giving the past a long hard look that makes it difficult to bear as I heard it said before.

Which is probably why I couldn't sleep that night.

- - -

There are different ways to rephrase the Don't Look Back rule.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

Always, always keep moving on.

Don't dwell on the past.

But we weren't very good students, even if we had learned that particular lesson. We were failing the exam, even though we knew the solution to this problem.

- - -

I couldn't sleep right away, as I had wanted.

Instead, I saw a younger version of us playing in the field behind the Rockwell's house watching a meteor shower. Winry danced in dizzy circles under a midnight black sky with diamond bright stars while I watched her. She held her flowery nightgown like a princess and laughed that night.

She traced out constellations with her fingers, making up a few of our own and showed them to me.

- - -

The repair job on the automail was finished the next morning.

There were places to go, things to be done, a plan (however ill-defined) to be carried out. The heroes had to triumph lest Very Bad Things happen or continue to do so.

We had to leave. But Al wanted to stay. At least a little longer. Always a little longer.

Hang on.

Hold on.

Make it last.

Commit this to memory.

He was breaking the rule.

But he wasn't the only one I was worried about.

"Ed?"

"Hmm?" I answered, new metallic fingers flexing. Outward, inward. Simple.

"You will come back," Winry asked while leaning on the railing of the porch. "Right?"

From the corner of my eye, I see that same thoughtful stare penetrate the lawn. She'd be able to count every blade of grass if she kept it up.

She turned to me, even while I looked at Al making himself useful by carrying packages for Pinako somewhere along the road.

She reached for me then, sliding her hand over my arm until she gripped my fingers. Very smooth hands for a mechanic, I always thought. But that was Winry—a feminine girl in a male dominated field. Strong, but sweet.

And beautiful in that unattainable sense that no one would ever be good enough for her. Not even me.

"Ed?" she repeated, softer this time and reminded me again of that twisted metal feeling. A train wreck waiting to happen. Perhaps my own heart foretelling its demise.

I didn't see the bright blue of my dreams in her eyes. They were stormy, like gray clouds choking the light on a perfect spring sky.

"Will you?"

It wasn't Rizembool we were discussing here. Because this backwater town would mean nothing if not for what it held. Regrettably, I hadn't burned all my bridges. I couldn't. As much as I wanted to. Not with her looking at me expectantly. I said yes, but the burning guilt of not knowing if I could keep that promise wouldn't leave me.

Even so, I would try. I had to.

I wanted to kiss her then, to leave her some reassurance that despite my indecisive feelings toward the past, I would come back to her.

But it was a stupid idea and I was relieved not to give into a romantic whim. She probably just would've hit me with another wrench.

Her fierce embrace said all the things she couldn't articulate, but it didn't matter. Up close, like this, beyond the mechanic and the client, we were both promising each other something other than words.

Maybe for her it was knowing a childhood friend was going to make it out of a war alive and not missing any more pieces for her to put back together. I hadn't meant to remember that night all those years ago, that lifetime away, when Winry, Al and I lay on freshly mowed grass to decipher the meaning of constellations.

For me, it wasn't exactly hope that lingered in the warmth of that moment. I had just promised not to keep her waiting any more than was necessary.

She would always mean home and she knew it.