Title: Her Clever Ruse

Summary: He's always known that Winry is different, even when she seems exactly the same... He knows it's all a clever ruse.

Pairing: EdxWin

Word count: 1,017, not counting AN.

Isn't it amazing how I have so little free time it's actually going into the negatives, and yet I still find just enough time to get insistent oneshot ideas stuck in my brain, scrabbling around in my frontal lobe and demanding to be written and presented to the world? I swear I have some kind of mental disorder making me stupid and procrastinatory. Here's your oneshot, and excuse me while I qickly panic over typing up the Chemistry lab write-up I was supposed to have turned in last class.

Disclaimer: Ah, Hagaren, sadly I own you not.

His heart thumps deafeningly in his ears—almost, but not quite, drowning out his own thoughts. He half wishes it would get just a little louder so he wouldn't have to listen to his cynical side chatter out his every inadequacy in laundry-list fashion.

"Isn't it insane," he queries the sky, "how I've done so many things: tried to bring my mother back to life, taking away and then restoring my little brother's body, fighting homunculi, 'saving the world' –or at least the papers will say that—and yet all it takes to have the Fullmetal Alchemist shaking in his boots is a girl." To his credit, not just any girl.

Then again, Winry Rockbell was never just any girl.

He remembers conversations a million years ago, before she was a girl and he was a boy and Mom was a gravestone and everything was so complicated.

He remembers the time he decided he was in love with Sandy Pollock, a girl in his class. He'd wanted to get her something for Valentine's Day, but all the boys were doing that, so his gift had to be special. He wanted to transmute it himself—that would impress Sandy for sure!

Sandy loved bunnies. She doodled them on her notebooks and homework. Ed had decided that it would be nice if he could transmute a bunny paperweight, so he'd gathered a few appropriately-sized rocks (just in case he messed it up on the first try) and sat down in his front yard by the tree to work.

"Whatchya doin'?" Winry asked, coming up into the yard and standing behind him to peer over his shoulder. "Anything fun?"

"Not really," he responded honestly as he was chalking the transmutation circle.

"What's the rune circle thingy for?"

"Transmutation circle."

"Same difference."

"I'm gonna use it to make something," he said ambiguously.

"Whatchya making?"

"You'll see." He finished the circle, placing the carefully sought white rock in the center, then repeated the composition in his head one last time and put his hands down. Winry jumped back—alchemical light still made her nervous—but stepped forward when it was done and looked at the rock bunny he'd made.

"It's so cute!" she exclaimed. "I wish I could make something so pretty."

"Not good enough," Ed responded, shoving the bunny away and picking up another rock. "It's missing a foot."

"What's wrong with missing a foot? Animals can live normal lives without all their feet."

"I don't care whether or not the bunny can live without its foot. The idea is to give Sandy a present with all its feet, Winry. I won't settle for less." He was already prepared for the next transmutation.

Winry reached down and picked up the deformed rock bunny Ed had thrown away haphazardly. "What will you do with this one?"

"Screw it. It's useless."

"Can I keep it?"

That stopped Ed short. He looked up at her from the ground. "Whaddaya even want it for?" he asked incredulously.

"Can I?" she persisted.

"Yeah, do whatever you want," he said, waving a hand dismissively.

"Thanks, Ed," she said fervently, then ran home to put it on her dresser next to her other treasures.

She's real mushy and cute, just like a real girl, Ed decided as he stared after her, but it's all a clever ruse.

"You can come in, Ed, I'm not quite ready yet," she shouts downstairs, then pops back into her room to strap on her shoes while her dress straps slide annoyingly down because she hasn't yet worked out how to reach the zipper at her back.

"Need help with that?" he asks casually, and she chuckles a bit and nods. As he's zipping up the back of her dress (slowly, so his fingers can brush across her smooth skin and listen to her sigh softly) Ed notices a misshapen rock on her dresser and it doesn't' take him long to remember. He releases her and goes over to pick it up from where it sits between a photo of her mom and dad (they're teenagers, goofing off in the kiddie swings in the summertime) and a bottle of never-used perfume.

"Is this what I think it is?" he asks. One of its ears has snapped off and it's darkened with the ravages of age and grubby child fingers (and grease-smeared mechanic's fingers) using it as a worry stone, and of course it never did have its right hind foot, but other than that it's the same rabbit he made all those years ago. "Why'd you keep this?"

She's now staring at herself in the mirror, putting in all three sets of earrings which she's carefully chosen to go with the dress and each other, so she has to twist to look at what he's holding. When she sees it, she laughs. "I was so jealous of Sandy Pollock, you know."

"So you kept something I made that was too bad to give to her? That seems stupid."

"You gave Sandy Pollock something pretty which took you many tries to make. Basically, you gave her seconds. But you gave me your very first attempt—your mistake. You weren't ashamed of the mistake when you gave it to me like you would have been ashamed to give it to her. You gave me your very first try, first dibs. I knew, even when I didn't really know I knew, that you were trusting me with a part of you that you didn't trust with her."

He sets the rock down on the dresser and walks over to her. "And you got all that from a three-footed rock bunny?"

"What can I say? I was intuitive as a kid." She flashes him a winning smile, and he reaches forward, meaning to pull her into his arms and kiss her, but she steps away cleverly and heads for the door. "Come on, let's get out of here. You can tell me all about how amazing my outfit looks while we're on the way there."

She's still just as sneaky, Ed thinks. The cuteness is definitely a ruse.

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