"Hurry and blow out the candles, Winry!" Paninya shouted as she put her hand on Winry's back and smiling at her.

"So am I turning seven?" Winry asked, grinning back at her.

Paninya sighed, "Sorry that was as many as I could fit on the cake. I figured that since it's a third of your age it'd be acceptable."

Winry shrugged, "Well I wish that I was turning seven, I can't believe I'm already twenty-one…Time sure flies."

"Yeah well, I don't know about that, you're taking like an hour to blow out these candles," Paninya replied. Winry blushed and leaned closer to the cake and quickly blew out each one of the seven candles. "What'd you wish for, Winry?"

"Do you really need to ask that?" Winry asked, cutting into the cake and serving herself the first slice.

Paninya bit her lip, "Right, sorry."

"Oh it's fine, it's my fault that I keep wishing for the same thing every year…I should really just give up and wish for a million dollars or something." Winry yawned as she shoved a forkful of cake in her mouth. "Getting a million dollars is probably more likely to happen."

Alphonse glared at her from across the room, "Don't say that, Winry! Brother is going to come back!" He ran out of the house leaving Winry combing her fingers through her long hair in anguish.

"Jeez, he's more hopeless than me," she mumbled, finishing her slice of cake and beginning to help herself to more.

"It's not such a bad thing for Al to keep hope alive," Paninya said, hurrying to grab her own piece of cake before Winry ate it all.

"I know that, but he can't keep lying to himself pretending that Ed's just been on some sort of crazy adventure for the last three years when everyone in their right mind knows he's long dead! Alphonse is just going to wind up disappointing himself and wasting his life away waiting for someone who's never going to come back!" Winry bit down hard on her fork and winced as her teeth hit the metal.

"You don't know that he's dead…"

"Oh, I know, and you know too. He's been dead for three years, that's the way my life is, everyone dies. Everyone I care about winds off going somewhere promising to come back, and they never do! When I was a girl I would stay awake at night and wait for my parents to come back, I knew they were dead, but sometimes I just pretended that they weren't, but in the end I was just making things harder on myself. By playing my little games at night I would wake up in the morning disappointed, disappointed that I was back in reality, a reality where my parents would never return to me. Al needs to stop playing that game."

Paninya put her hand on Winry's back again and sighed, "I guess…As much as I hate to say it, you're right."

Winry nodded, "I hate to say it too."

The door opened and Pinako walked inside with Al trailing behind her. "Why did you already blow out the candles?" she questioned, serving herself a slice of the birthday cake and handing a piece to Alphonse. Al sat down and silently ate his cake, avoiding any eye contact with Winry.

Winry scooted her chair slightly closer to his. "Sorry grandma, I just really wanted some cake."

Pinako shrugged, "Well it certainly is good."

"Thanks," Paninya whispered before the room began to fill up with awkward silence and a fat elephant.

"Listen Alphonse," Winry started. "I just…"

"Its fine, Winry…" He paused, "I've made up my mind about something."

"What?" Winry asked, waiting for him to continue.

"I'm going to go find brother." Winry flinched and gave Paninya a pained look. Pinako just quietly smoked her pipe, her face not showing any expression.

"Al, don't do something so pointless. You know Heinkel and Darius have already searched everywhere for him, not to mention that Brigadier General Mustang and his men have too. I'm not going to let you go Al, no matter what, you're going to stay right by my side, because I don't have many people left and I can't afford to lose another one," Winry whispered.

Alphonse smiled, "I know you're worried, but I'll be fine. I can still use alchemy so I'll be able to find brother and save him from whatever trouble he's in. I promise!" He paused and took a deep breath, "Winry, don't you want him back?"

"Of course I do," she answered, "But right now you're more important to me, because you're the one who is still here, the one I can still protect."

"But I still need to protect brother!"

The pained expression was still on Winry's face, but Alphonse didn't seem to notice. "Don't be a fool, if you go, I'll never forgive you. If you leave me, I'll hate you forever."

"That's not very fair, Winry," Al whined.

"Yes it is!" Winry screamed, "Do you even realize how selfish you're being? We all want Edward back but none of us are going to make things even harder on everyone else by being a reckless idiot!" With that she went up to her room and let the door slam behind her.

Al sighed and set his empty plate down on the table. "Why can't she understand? She's being the selfish one." Pinako shrugged and began cleaning off everyone's plates. Paninya slipped upstairs, presumably to comfort Winry. Alphonse pushed his chair under the dinning table and went back outside.

The wind was cold that night. Winter was on its way, and though Resembool didn't get much snow, it still got near freezing. Something about the cold felt good to Alphonse though, made him feel alive; reminded him that he had a human body again. He took a deep breath and watched as it traveled through the icy air. Tears traveled down his cheeks and he quickly wiped them away before they had the chance to make his face even colder than it already was.

It seemed to him that since he'd gotten his body back and regained the ability to cry he'd been doing it a heck of a lot. At first they were happy tears of joy. When he had just gotten his body back he just cried for the fun of it. He cried when he tasted his first bite of food in more than three years. He cried himself to sleep, just because it felt so good to be able to dream. After the initial shock of living like a human being again, the tears stopped flowing for awhile, but once he realized that his brother wasn't going to come back anytime soon, he once again, couldn't stop crying like a baby.

Three years later, he was still crying. He felt like a helpless child. He felt like he had when his mother died, only this was somehow worse. When his mom died, he really was a kid, and he though he had missed her with every fiber of his being, he hadn't had a chance to develop the vital bond with her that he had made with Edward. Ed was the last member of his family, the most important person in the world to him. They had both sacrificed so much for each other and his disappearance made it all feel like a big waste of time. Why go to so much work to be happy when such unexpected things could always just blow in your path and make you as depressed as you were before?

Part of him knew that Winry was right. That part cursed himself for being such a fool. Believing that his brother would come back one day, or that he was actually somewhere just waiting to be found was really no different then Ed believing that he could bring back their mother through Human Transmutation. It was just another big lie that might end up costing him something if he kept playing along with it.

Al took another step outside and kept taking steps until he was standing in-between his mother's grave and his father's. The worst part of this was that Ed wasn't buried in this cemetery with the rest of their family. Instead Ed's bones were probably eaten by some sort of monster or dumped in a river where a serial killer was hoping they'd never be found. It always sent chills down Alphonse's spine to imagine his brother dying alone, screaming for help but not getting any. A bullet piercing his loving his heart, water filling his lungs and stopping his breath, a knife slicing his neck as he called his brother's name; there were too many possibilities and they were all too awful to even think about.

Eventually he was too cold to keep standing around outside, so he turned tail and headed home. Al had considered looking for his own place to live many times. Being a twenty-year old and still living at your parents wasn't considered all that cool, but being a twenty-year old and living at your friend's grandmother's house was just kind of weird. Plus Al felt like he was a burden on Winry and Pinako, even though he knew that they were honestly glad to have him. No matter how many times he thought about leaving though, he just couldn't. He didn't have a job, and he didn't know where to get one. He didn't know where else to live but Resembool. He'd miss Winry and Pinako if he left. He could think of a lot of cons, but he just couldn't think of many pros. So, for two years and a half, ever since he'd gotten back from his little adventure to the East, he'd lived with the Rockbells.

Whenever he thought back to his time in the East he felt guilty. It had been his idea to go east and in turn it had made Ed decide to go to the West, and that had led to his demise. The trip to Xing had certainly been enjoyable, but certainly not worth losing his brother. May had taught him a lot, and it had been great to see her again. She'd turned into…a beautiful young woman. He hadn't seen her since then though; she had no idea that Edward was gone because Al hadn't bothered to tell her. He wasn't about to make a trip all the way across the desert just so that he could watch someone else cry about his brother, he'd cry enough for the both of them.

He did miss her though. Of course, nowhere near as much as he missed his brother, but in a different way, he did miss her a lot. Maybe in some odd way that was why he didn't want to see her. If he saw her then he'd have to tell her about Ed, and he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to have to break the news to her like that. He was still trying to break the news to himself, and somehow wanting to see May made him feel even guiltier. Living made him feel guilty. How could he possibly love May when Ed couldn't love Winry?

He opened the door, stepped through, and let it swing shut behind him. The house was quiet now; everyone else had already gone to sleep. Paninya was spread out on the couch in the living room, her eyes closed, and her chest slowly rising and falling. Al walked past her and climbed up the stairs to the second floor. He could hear Den clawing at Winry's door but he didn't want to wake her so he just left it closed. He walked into his bedroom and took off his dirty black boots before climbing into bed and pulling his blankets up over his head. He was tired beyond belief; it had been such a long day. Alphonse was soon in a very deep, dreamless, slumber.

"How many slices of toast do you want?" Winry asked grabbing two plates from the cabinet. Al was sitting at the dinning table drumming his fingers on the top. They were the only ones awake, Paninya was still asleep in the other room and Pinako was probably still tossing and turning upstairs in her bedroom.

"Um…2?" Al said, making it sound more like a question than a statement. He was relieved that Winry was acting normal now. He wasn't sure that he would have been able to bare it if she was still made at him. She set a plate with two warm slices of toast coated with an even spread of strawberry jam down in front of him. She sat down across from him and began spreading jam on her own toast. "Hey Winry, I'm really sorry about yesterday," Al whispered, biting into his toast.

Winry just shrugged and smiled, "Its fine, I know how hard this all is on you, so I can't blame you…But please Al, promise me you won't do anything stupid."

Al smiled back at her, "Alright, I promise."

"Hey Al, what was the last conversation you ever had with Ed?" Winry asked, her voice growing softer.

Al hesitated for a moment as he swallowed a bite of toast, "We didn't really say anything special. We just said goodbye to each other and talked about our plans for our trips. He teased me about May, and in turn I teased him about you, and then he just…left." He paused and turned to Winry, "What was your last conversation with him?"

Winry sighed and rested her chin on her knuckle. "Ed was standing in the door of the train about leave, but he said he'd give me half his life for half of mine, I said I'd give him eighty percent of my life," she laughed somberly as she spoke, "I think that was his own weird little way of proposing."

Al looked kind of shocked for a moment but he tried to compose himself. "So…so you guys were engaged?"

Winry blushed and began choking on a piece of toast. She drank a large gulp of water, coughed, and said, "Well I don't know if I'd say that…but yeah, I guess we were…In a way."

"I had no idea…" Al whispered.

"Yeah well, I haven't really wanted to talk about it. It just makes me miss him more when I think about…About what could have been."

Al nodded, "I understand. I'm sorry Winry, I've been really selfish. I've always thought that you guys didn't understand what I was going through, that you didn't understand that Ed was the most important person in the world to me, but he was your fiancé, so he was probably the most important person in the world to you too, huh?"

Winry shrugged, "Well…I did love him."

Alphonse sighed, "It would have been better if was the one who died."

"What are you talking about!?" Winry screamed, getting up from her chair in a hurry.

"I just mean, Ed was so important to everyone. You guys were going to get married and have a family! Everyone loved brother, but I'm not nearly as important as him. If I was the one who died then, at least, you and brother could still be happy together," Al whispered, ignoring Winry's outburst.

"I told you to stop being such an idiot, didn't I, Al? Do you really think we'd be happy if you were dead!? Do you think we'd just keep on living and act like you never existed?" she paused to catch her breath, "What do you think I'd just say, 'Oh well, Al is dead, but hey Ed at least your still alive now let's go get married and have a party!?' Ed would probably blame himself for your death for the rest of his life, and I…Alphonse, you may not be my fiancé, but that doesn't mean that I don't care about you! I love you so much, Al! I just love you in a different way then I loved Ed, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't miss you every bit as much as I miss Edward, so stop being such a fool."

By the time she finished Al was grinning like a fool, "I love you too, Winry."

Winry grinned back at him, "Great. Maybe we should get married."

Alphonse cracked up and soon Winry and him were laughing like a couple of hyenas. Paninya stumbled into the room, rubbing at her eyes and yawning. "What the heck is so funny?" she whined, which, of course, only made the pair laugh louder.

Thank you so much for reading, reviews and advice are always appreciated.

The pairings for this story will include: Edwin, AlMay, and possibly a bit of Royai and LingFan.