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Hurt

Winry removed her protective goggles furiously and threw a dirty look at the far wall of her bedroom. She had been trying to tinker with a joint motor but for the last twenty minutes she had been infuriatingly distracted by the repetitive stomping coming from the room beside hers.

Thump…clank…

“********!”

Thump…clank…

“Son of a b***h!”

Thump…clank…

“Idiot!”

Thump…clank…

“******** son of a b***h idiot!”

Winry had had enough. She couldn’t concentrate with Ed pacing and cursing in the next room. She needed to get him to clam down so that she, in turn, could also relax. Ever since Colonel Mustang had come to Resembool seeking the brothers and they had discovered Hohenheim of Light had returned there had been an unbearable tension in the Rockbell house as thick as cauliflower soup. There was a horrid uncomfortable feeling that cloaked all occupants of the yellow house and Winry couldn’t stand it!

This house wasn’t just her home, it was a place of hope where the injured and crippled could be given a chance at a fresh life thanks to the automail that Pinako and Winry provided. It was a symbol of birth and renewal and for the Elric brothers it was a sanctuary that was meant to bring a sense of homecoming.

Winry didn’t like that Ed was upset in the one place he should be able to find peace.

Pulling off her bandana, Winry made her way to Ed and Al’s bedroom. She didn’t knock, merely stepped in and closed the door behind her. Ed was still pacing, his boots having been thrown at the other end of the room leaving him barefoot. He was wearing his black trousers but had discarded his coat and gloves, leaving him in his black sleeveless shirt. His braid had been ripped out of its neat coif, his golden hair falling in crimped tangles around his face and shoulders.

Winry’s breath caught in her throat as she watched him move.

Disheveled and angry Ed looked like a wild animal, stalking around the room, his golden eyes seeking his prey.

They landed on her, narrowed and harsh and Winry gulped. She could feel the anger radiating off of him like electricity, the furious sparks crackling around his taut body, reaching out for her with deadly intent. She began to wonder if it was wise to close herself in with Ed when he was obviously ready to pounce on the first person who crossed his path. She had only seen Ed this mad on a few occasions and all of those times he had been just a little boy. Now he was a sixteen year old teenager, brimming over with too many hormones and too many emotions. He was as equally dangerous as he was vulnerable and Winry felt her heart expand with compassion for her oldest friend. She also felt her skin flush and her pulse beat a frantic staccato as Ed stared at her with those furious golden eyes, but Winry would not cower, no matter how much her body tingled in the darkness of the room.

She crossed her arms and forced an expression of petulant boredom on her features.

“What’s the problem?” she drawled.

Her blunt question and seemingly uninterested demeanor only added fuel to Ed’s ragging inferno of a temper.

“******** off, Winry. I’m serious. Leave me alone.” Ed warned, his voice strained and dark, like the hollow wail of a lonely ocean. Winry bit her lip, refusing to shatter her mask of ennui and allow Ed to see how truly concerned she was.

“I’m not leaving until you stop sulking and tell me what’s wrong.” she insisted haughtily. “Where’s Al?”

“Arg!” Ed hollered and Winry jumped back in genuine surprise. He kicked the bedpost with his left foot, the wood chipping under his heated attack. He cried out again, the noise an uncomfortable strain within the quiet house. Ed raised his hands and pulled at the roots of his hair like a raving lunatic, his desperate, hard yell making the floorboards shake. He spun around and looked at her, a wounded animal so deprived of soft affection that he would bite the first tentative hand that reached out to offer him a gentle touch. His eyes were so very angry, but in the centre of the fury, Winry believed she could make out the swirling mists of pain.

He was hurting.

Badly.

“Al’s out there!” Ed spat, his automail finger pointing accusingly at the open bedroom window. “With him.”

“Him? You mean your…”

“Don’t say it, Winry! Don’t ******** say it! He’s not my father he’s the b*****d who left my mother and let her die and he never gave a s**t about me or Al!” Ed ranted, his hands now dropping to his sides and forming into harsh fists. Winry bit her tongue when her well tuned mechanic’s ears picked up on the subtle hiss of wrenching gears and protesting hydraulics. She wasn’t going to yell at him, even if he was putting undo strain on her greatest piece of automail thus far.

He was too angry to even listen to her, anyway.

“How can he do that? How can Al go to him?! How can both of them act like the last thirteen years haven’t happened?!” Ed demanded, breathing heavily, his back to the window.

“Ed…”

“That…that man betrayed us. He betrayed mom! He just left and never wrote and never called and then he comes back…we hate him…”

“Does Al feel that way?” Winry asked quietly.

“He should!” Ed growled. “That b*****d doesn’t deserve our time, or respect, or love, or…”

Ed’s voice trailed off, shrinking into the faint echo of that three year old boy who didn’t understand why his father had walked away and why his mother continued to wait for a man who had hurt her so horribly.

“He made her sad. He let her die. She would have lived if he’d come back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The ******** I don’t!” Ed cried. The Fullmetal Alchemist was straining to keep control over his rage, his body shaking as he yelled his hurt for all the Rockbell house and surrounding countryside to hear. His words were ugly and horrible, but at their core Winry could hear the pathetic whimpers of a little boy who wanted to know why he had been abandoned by his father. “I thought Al understood! Maybe he’s been bottled up in that armor for too long. I just…how can he just go to him like that? How can he just forgive him? I can’t. I won’t!”

“You don’t have to!” Winry bellowed back. “Just slow down for a minute. Just stop!”

“I can’t!” Ed roared brokenly, doubling over as if someone had punched him hard in the gut. “It hurts! I hate him and it hurts.” he growled lowly, like an angry whisper. His arms, lax at his sides, seemed to drag him down and when his shoulders started to quake Winry’s cold façade finally dissolved. She couldn’t be cross with him, no matter how much he abused her automail or made a racket or lashed out irrationally, Ed was hurt and as his best friend she would do all in her power to make those deep seeded aches drain away from his taxed body.

She walked towards him, stealthily and tentatively, like an animal tamer might approach a rogue beast. Ed started at her movements, looking up at her and seeing that she was coming at him with that soft compassionate look that he only ever admitted to himself made his breath catch and heart pound erratically. But Ed didn’t want Winry’s comfort or the feelings she inspired within him. So he retreated, stepping back from Winry for every step she made towards him, but Winry didn’t give Ed a chance to escape her and rushed forward, capturing him in her embrace, her arms wrapped firmly around his neck and her face buried against his throat. He struggled, first with a genuine fierceness that left Winry locking her elbows and wrapping her legs around his automail one, pressing herself deeper into him, refusing to allow him to just walk away.

He needed this, even if he didn’t realize it.

Ed fought against Winry’s embrace, twisting his neck and slithering his body between her arms in a desperate rush for release. He did everything he could think of without hurting her, and even then he wondered if she would let him go if he bit her. But he wouldn’t resort to that. No matter how illogical his horrid thoughts and dark feelings were, Ed couldn’t fathom ever hurting Winry.

When it was apparent that he wouldn’t be able to free himself from her, Ed went nearly limp, his body numb under the barrage of emotions that were tearing him apart.

And then he hugged her back, his arms of automail and flesh snaking around her waist and pulling her flush against him, his embrace hard and desperate. He buried his nose in her yellow hair and took deep breaths as he struggled to keep his tears of frustration at bay. His heart continued to hammer, his pulse beating like war drums in his ears, and he hugged her tighter.

Winry squeezed Ed back, her ferocity no less than his. She wanted to purge his soul of the dark, lonely hurt that was suffocating him. She hoped that by hugging him she could absorb all of his burdens. She cared about him so much and wanted him to understand that he could trust her…he could share with her…he could cry in front of her…

It wasn’t tears that he gave her, however.

In the morning, when Ed was hiding safely in the basement and she was tinkering with her latest automail project, Winry would wonder why she believed that Ed would simply hold on to her, gaining all the comfort he needed from her mere presence and strong arms. Passivity was never Ed’s style, even when he was at his lowest point. He always acted, always had to do something to prove his emotions. Maes Hughes had once explained to Winry the power behind strong actions and had told her that for men like Ed, words were not easy to come by when dealing with overpowering feelings.

He kissed her.

It was not a chaste flight of fancy like most first kisses, nor was it sweetly romantic or a sizzling wet erotic dance of tongues and lips. It was a brutal punishment, an angry outcry. He kissed her hard and furiously, penalizing her with his lips. He nipped at her mouth, very nearly biting and leaving a sensational sting in his wake. When Winry groaned against him Ed slipped his tongue past her lips, having discovered this enticing form of kissing from a raunchy paperback he had secretly read on long train rides. He didn’t care if he was doing it right or if Winry was frightened by the gesture, he just wanted her to understand that he didn’t want her succor.

He was trying to hate her for wishing to comfort him. He didn’t want her sympathy, or her hugs, or her regard. All of those things took away his pain and Ed wanted to selfishly hang on to it like a crying child refuses to give up a moth-eaten teddy bear. He understood his anger and didn’t want it to be taken away, because when it was gone what would be left of him? So he kissed her thoughtlessly, part of him wanting to frighten her, part of him wanting her to know he would not give her his pain to carry. It was his and he didn’t share.

And yet…

He needed something from her, as much as he denied it. He needed her to battle his pain, to continue to try and tear down the solid stone walls he had placed between them the day he left to become a State Alchemist. Her resilience in the face of his coldness, her determination to try and be close to him, to recapture what they had lost…it made Ed feel like a whole human again. He kissed her, seeking an unnamable alchemy, a science that was completely out of his reach but beseechingly beckoning all the same. He reached for it, and when Winry’s tongue, not shy and docile but passionately and with matching aggressiveness, began to kiss him back, Ed felt that wall he had built puncture, allowing only a small hole into the defense, but it was enough for Winry to press forward and capture him completely.

And that was when Ed realized that Winry was kissing him for the same raw reasons that he was kissing her. She wasn’t trying to carry his hurt, or grasp onto the old bonds they once shared. She was fighting him with her own pain. She pulled at his hair and bit his bottom lip hard, telling him that she had her own burdens to bear, ones that he was the cause of and that he could never repair.

They wrestled as they savagely kissed, Ed forcing Winry against the wall so that he could press his body flush against hers. She yelped when her back thumped against the unyielding wood, but Ed barely gave her a chance to breathe before his mouth was on her again. He held her wrists above her head in a brutal grip and when she gasped from the pain of her skin pinching between his automail fingers he simply kissed her harder. She bumped her hips against his in retaliation, teasing him cruelly for being cruel.

It was a violent catharsis for both teens, each angry at each other and the world. Ed’s left hand worked its way down Winry’s torso, grasping onto the smooth warm flesh of her hips, certain his tight hold would leave bruises. Winry yanked at his hair several times, pulling out a few of the golden tresses, but the sting in Ed’s scalp only encouraged him to continue kissing his mechanic so hard that their teeth clanked uncomfortably together.

They were kissing each other to make up for all the kisses they could have had if life and Truth and Fate and alchemy had not been so fickle. They kissed to bring pleasure and to hurt and to prove to themselves that there was a spark that existed between them. They were kissing each other as a sadistic glimpse into the future they might have had, but that was certainly lost to them forever. It was kisses of greetings and goodbyes, of comfort and pain, of brutality and solemn tenderness.

They kissed to heal and to wound.

When Ed released Winry’s lips and gasped for air, he looked into her face, prepared to see resentment, prepared to take a wrench to the temple, prepared to get the longest lecture of his life, but not prepared to see her mirroring his own hurtful scowl, two trails of crystalline tears falling from the corners of her eyes to meet at the tip of her chin and drip down to the floor in the space between them. He should have said something, should have turned away from her like he always did, but Ed found he couldn’t let go of her, and when he commanded his feet to back away, they brought him forward until he collapsed against her, trembling as if he had emerged from the black depths of a frozen river.

He felt them then, his own tears racing down his cheeks and falling onto the floor. They landed on top of Winry’s tears, and as Ed tried to piece himself back together after giving up everything within himself to those fevered kisses, he felt himself being lowered. His body fell slowly, just like his tears, but he was supported steadfastly by the body of the only other woman he would dare human transmutation for.

Winry’s body slid down along the wall, her arms holding Ed around the shoulders in a light, supportive manner. When she hit the floor, Ed slumped listlessly into her lap, his cheek resting against her belly, his arms hanging loosely around her hips, his tears continuing to fall. Winry’s tears continued to fall as well, mingling with Ed’s. They held each other through the night, two souls drifting in the dark phantoms of hurt and pain and betrayal, seeking the other to anchor to so they wouldn’t have to be alone.

If either Edward Elric or Winry Rockbell were flowery teenagers given to fairy tales and the cosmic divinities of Fate and Destiny, they might have believed that they were soul mates, each one an incomplete fragment until culminating with the other. But Winry didn’t give credence to such fripperies and while Ed did believe in a soul he knew there was nothing on earth or beyond the Gate that could ever be equal to the spark of life that made each human their own unique person.

However, there was something that drew them together…something that left them feeling whole when in the presence of the other.

Ed was a wonderer, a man who drifted on the torrid seas of pain and navigated through the fogs of hurt. Winry was a port, a beacon that was beat upon by the waves of that same stormy sea and found itself cloaked in those same thick fogs. Winry could never tame Ed, she could never truly understand his pain just as he could never fully grasp hers, but what they could do for each other was provide a strange glowing companionship, one that survived every hurricane, typhoon, deluge and shipwreck. Winry was his port, Ed was her ship. They could never go where the other went, but on hard lonely nights, when the pain was too much, when the hurt threatened to splinter the ship into a million tiny, irretrievable pieces, they could find each other in the dark and hold on tightly so that they wouldn’t fly away.

In the morning, they would go back to the way things were.

He would still be an alchemy freak. She would still be a machine freak. They would tease and talk and laugh and not let on to the night’s tumultuous events. But in their eyes, the storm would still rage, the pain would still be there, and yet their strength to see the hurt through would be unstoppable.

They remained together on the floor of Ed’s bedroom, tears still trickling from exhausted, closed eyes, arms still lopped around weakened and overtaxed bodies, and lips still swollen and moist from hard punishing kisses until the sun broke over the mountains, bringing with it the cleansing balm of a new day.

TwT


Giant Nickel