This is the final chapter! Thank you all so much for your support! Now Ed and Winry get an ending they truly deserve!

The evening sky stretched out overhead, with the sun's last rays struggling to break through the dark to my left. Winry walked on my other side, and we crossed the field where Den and Amber had been running around. I looked at the fading sun, barely the size of my thumbnail against the horizon. I glanced over to Winry, whose gaze seemed locked on the rising moon. The stars slowly emerged in the velvety blue of the open sky, and the cloudless night seemed to be a sort of entity in itself, a serene, invisible being keeping balance between the light and the dark.

Winry suddenly broke the contented silence. "You know, the cat and the dog can find their own way home, if they want. Den never strays too far if he can help it, and Amber seems pretty independent anyway. If she doesn't want to be found, I doubt we'll find her." She laughed. "I guess my little temper tantrum earlier might have scared her a bit."

"It's a good thing Al isn't here. He'd be heartbroken to hear you saying that. She was meant to be your cat, you know." I looked at her, my eyes roving across her face. In the dim light, the single bruise that remained on her eye seemed to be only a shadow, fleeting and ethereal. I thought about how strong she must have been to get through such a terrible experience with only a single mark on her to show for it. The bruise was there, though, just like the tears I had seen earlier, and I knew that no matter how strong she was, the memory of this awful month was going to stick with her for the rest of her life.

"Ed?" I looked away from her eyes, not wanting to be rude or anything like that. She smiled a little, and turned to face forward. "It's a wonderful night, even after all the chaos we've had to endure. It's a nice feeling, in a way, to know that the world isn't really all that shaken by your problems; it's just how you see it that changes." I feel my right arm move, and look down to see her hand wrapped lightly around my steel fingers, moonlight glinting off of the reflective metal of my arm. Her arm for me. A part of me we somehow shared.

I pointed to a low hill, saying, "I think that'd be a good place to look for cats. With that nice big tree right there, Amber could have easily climbed out of Den's reach." It actually was a nice tree, the branches spread just right so that the stars were still visible if you sat under it. The grass was cool, but still dry, and we leaned against the tree's trunk and stared at the multiplying stars surrounding the full moon.

I heard Winry whisper, "I think...I think there's something I want to say…" I turned to look at her. She was still staring at the night sky. I could see the hint of a blush forming on her cheek, but I decided to focus on what she said before making any rash judgements. It wouldn't kill me to slow down and think about what I'm doing for once in my life.

"You both go out so often, and you get into so much trouble with it all the time. You want to get your bodies back, I know, but… if you die, you won't have a body to fix anymore. Not one that works, anyway." She furrows her brow, frowning. "I don't really know if that even makes sense. I don't think it makes sense what you're doing, or how I feel about it, but we just have to take what we've got and go."

I quirked my head to the side, raising an eyebrow slightly. "How you feel about it? How do you feel about it?" She had expressed a lot of opinions about our personal quest over the years, but I didn't know whether or not any of them were the whole truth of it. Maybe it was all of them?

"I feel, well… I feel like you're always leaving Granny and I behind. I feel like you're risking too much for too small a chance, and I feel that at the same time it would all be worth it to see you both happy and smiling again, with Al in his real body and you with your arm and leg back. I feel like I miss you all the time, and I wish that there were some way for you to get what you want without having to leave." Her hand tightened around mine, and my own automail hand gripped hers in response.

I struggled to say something smart about it. I really didn't want to be that idiot she kept watching as he left on one dangerous journey after another; I wanted to be the one she could count on, the one that didn't let her down so often. The one that could actually be there for her once in a while. I wanted to be someone more important than me. "I think that I don't care, up to a point, what happens to us. If we get our bodies, then we succeed. If we don't, then it was never possible. But I know for a fact that you should never have gotten involved, not like this. I swear, Winry, on my life and everything I am, I will never let anything like this happen to you again. I'm not going to stop until we can all rest easy, because I just recently realized this affects you just as much as it ever affected me or Al. I want to make sure you won't have to worry about us. I don't want you to worry about yourself." She looked at me, her eyes shining in the moonlight. More tears gathered, but they didn't fall. She smiled. I smiled back.

She looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she just settled back against the big tree, nestling her head on my shoulder. "Isn't that kinda uncomfortable?" I asked. She was leaning at a bit of an awkward angle, but she gently shook her head no.

"Honestly, Ed, I don't mind at all."

I leaned my own head next to hers, looking at the stars again. They gleamed in the inky black that the sky had become, providing a strange sense of calm. "You know, Winry," I said, without warning, "there's a reason, I think, that you don't have to be afraid of us not coming back. You know how in the old days, before compasses and maps, travelers found their direction by the stars? Well, Al and I really don't have much in the way of compasses when it comes to this weird quest we've started. All we do is chase leads and follow rumors, and we need something to bring us back on track. That's you. You're the star map, Winry. You're the little light in the darkness that guides me back home."

Winry let out a huff of laughter, and a shaky sigh. "At least you didn't use alchemy," she said, and out of nowhere…

We were kissing. She was kissing me.

I didn't know what happened, or how in the hell this made any sense, but I didn't care. For once in my life, I didn't care at all. She huddled closer, her lips pressing into my own before slowly backing away. No. You can't be done yet. I don't want you to.

Her eyes briefly opened, widening in surprise as I followed her and started kissing back. I put my arm, my metal one, behind her head, and let the other one reach across to find her own hand. I could feel my heartbeat in my temple, pounding in my ears and searing across my thoughts. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and we just… melted, I guess, into this trance-like state where neither one of us felt quite there. I was drifting towards a euphoria, and the euphoria drifted back. Eventually, we stopped for air, and I opened my eyes.

The euphoria looked exactly like Winry. Her eyes were wide, like she couldn't believe what had happened. I couldn't either. "Did we just…" Her voice was quiet and soft, like she was afraid of driving away some easily startled animal. "Did we...actually kiss?"

I blinked. I blinked again. "Uh… y-yeah. I guess we did. We, um… we just kissed. A lot."

Winry's face went almost entirely scarlet. I felt the heat rising into my own face, and figured I wasn't too far behind her.

I lifted my automail arm out from behind her back, and caught a glimpse of the yellow-white glow of the summer moonlight streaming through my fingertips and reflecting off of the polished metal. I smiled, and glanced at Winry, who was also looking at my arm.

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" she said. "The glow of the steel, the hum of the ball bearings, the dexterity of the artificial joints...it's actually beautiful, Ed. Can you see that?"

"Yeah." I took a longer look. The arm seemed to gaze back at me, and I saw a reflection of my eye in the palm of my hand. It may be on my body, connected to my nerves, but it's Winry's soul that was put into it. And I think it's beautiful, now more than ever. "It really is."

She giggled. "Now I know something's up. What happened to the real Edward? He's never been this much of a soppy romantic." She stood up and began jogging lightly away.

My smile turned quickly into a hurt frown, even though I was laughing. "Hey! I'm one of a kind! There's nobody else stupid enough to try to be me!" I leapt to my feet and began to chase after her, and we both just kept laughing like little kids. A bark sounded behind us, and Den bounded past us with his tongue lolling playfully.

"Come on, Ed!" Winry shouted behind her, "you still have to fix Al, you know!"

As Den and Winry raced each other home, I couldn't help but take one last look at the vibrant sky. Winry was healing, the light in her slowly breaking through the shadow that was cast over her. She wasn't done yet, but she was still fighting, and someday, she would win the war she had been forced to fight within herself. Someday she would emerge stronger than ever.

Someday, we'd both have full metal hearts.

Please visit my friend and co-author, DarksteelRebelhawk, out on Wattpad! His stories are so amazing!

Thank you so much to all of you who reviewed, favorited or followed this story! I had so much fun collaborating with DarksteelRebelhawk, and there may be a chance that we will co-author another FMAB fic together in the near future, so if you liked this one, please stay tuned!

-warehouseluver13