Like Poison

Ed comes back through the gate differently. He has to look at her twice before her features settle into a recognizable pattern. Then he smiles, just a little crookedly, and falls forwards against her shoulder, letting out a long and rattling sigh, his fingers slipping, and dropping a naked wrist. She looks over his shoulder then, and sees Alphonse lying unconscious on the ground, pale and scary-thin but unmistakably breathing. Something swells within her throat.

Ed stays closer to her than he had before. Sometimes she has to say things twice, three times for them to register and the sun to break through. Something behind the gate has changed him, Winry realizes, but does not ask. She probably wouldn't have understood the answer, anyways.

Alphonse is learning to walk again. His mind is still there, but his words slur when he speaks, the pitch out of control and slippery, until she can't understand him at all. Whenever he sees her his eyes flicker with that same urgency, and his babble becomes louder, more insistent, until Winry hushes him. It must be terribly frustrating for him, she thinks, a young man arrested in the body of a child.

Al doesn't look a day over eight. She imagines this is why Ed hasn't been in to see him yet. It must be upsetting. She can give them time.

"Winry," Edward says on the third day, gripping her wrist more tightly than he had before, "I should get back to central. They'll be wondering where I've gone to."

Winry looks at him disbelievingly, "Al still can't talk."

"He'll be fine here," Ed says, without the barest hint of hesitation or guilt. It shakes something deep within her, and she can't help but look at him in disbelief. Had the gate taken Ed's soul as well? His humanity? His heart?

"No!" she snaps, "No, you're his brother! He wouldn't leave you!"

For a moment, Ed looks trapped. Not chagrined or repentant—just annoyed, like he couldn't figure out the answer to a problem.

"You're right," he says at last, and looks out the window dismissively. She tugs her wrist out of his grasp and backs to the door, her hands clenched, and trying to figure out if she was angry or afraid.

There was a new ocean between them now, with the trio stranded on their separate islands. She sits beside Al and gently flexes each finger for him, over and over again. "Winry," he stumbles, again and again, "Winry."

"It's alright, Al," she rotates his wrist, "Ed's going to come visit soon, he's just a bit tired."

"Winry," Al insists, and she stops, looks at his shocking eyes, and finds herself trembling, wishing that all of this would just stop, that she could know things would get better, longing for even the slightest bit of assurance.

"Oh, Al," she sniffs hard, has always been an ugly crier, "Al, please come back."

"Winry," Al says, not quite gently, but obviously trying for it. She cries harder, and then gets up to change his pants.

"Al's starting to talk again," she cuts the apple into clean slices, focuses on her hands, the heft of the knife, how sweet the apple smells, her cold, wet fingers.

"That's good to hear," Ed says, but his eyes are bored. Winry looks back down, then sets the knife to the side carefully, and hands him the plate.

"Promise you'll see him soon," she says, meaning it. Ed takes a bite, and she watches his mouth crease in annoyance.

"Of course I will," he says, but she feels the promise breaking even as he says so.

Al is quiet while she washes him, carefully drawing the razor back through his hair. It's too matted to salvage.

"Winry," he says, and then there is a great silence, "Run."

Her hand slips and the razor slices his scalp cleanly and almost painlessly, but it still bleeds, and his forehead is etched with red lines. He has to blink.

"Sorry, Al," she says, and presses a clothe to his wound, "I'm so sorry."

She has a hunch.

So the next night she stands over Ed and watches him doze, then leans down and peels back one eyelid. His irises are a poisonous red before he wakes up, and they flicker back to gold.

"Winry," says Ed, "What're you doing?"

"Ed's dead, isn't he?" she asks. Edward looks at her, and then he smiles, his face changing to accommodate the wideness of such a smirk. He has been a false reality all this time, and it occurs to her now that Al had been trying to warn her away.

"I guess you could say I got another chance," Envy says, "Me and his brother, anyway. Ed's on the other end of the gate, and knowing Al, he'll try to break him out the second he's able to. It's like turn-based reincarnation."

"Get out of my house," Winry says quietly, "Leave."

"I couldn't hurt you even if I tried," Envy says, "He loved you down to his marrow."

She closes her eyes. "Just go!"

"Where am I supposed to go?!" Envy snarls, "The world needs an Edward Elric, you know. Do you really want to set me loose on it?"

Her head is pounding. "Al will kill you," she says.

"Goodnight, Winry," Envy—now Edward—says, and turns over.