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Ed catches sight of himself in the mirror after the shirt slides off his shoulders and over his head.
He’s seen them before- of course he has, since it’s his own flesh they carve a pattern into- but the scars still give him pause.
The most obvious is the scar from his automail surgery. Knotted pink scar tissue travels from his shoulder and around his arm.
He runs his fingers over it, feeling the raised flesh beneath the pads of his fingers.
There are other scars- smaller ones- that litter his torso.
None of them stand out quite the way the one on his abdomen does. The one where he got impaled.
None of them hold the same meaning.
His scars aren’t something he’s ashamed of. There’s no reason for him to be.
“Edward, you didn’t…!” Winry bustles into the room like a whirlwind with no prior warning.
Ed startles.
His jerk is instinctual, but there’s no shirt for him to yank back down over his torso. He feels far too naked, exposed…
Which is ridiculous, because she’s seen him without his shirt countless times.
“Geez, Winry!” he snaps before he can entirely help himself. “Give a little warning next time!”
This isn’t the first time she’s seen him shirtless. She’s been his mechanic since they were children.
But it’s the first time she’s seen him without his shirt after the fight with Kimblee that left him with a metal rod impaled in his side.
She’s seen his scars before, but she hasn’t seen that one.
Figures that would be right where her eyes are fixed.
It had been illogical, he knows, to hope he could keep that one from her forever.
But still.
Damnit.
Ed grimaces.
“Ed, you…” She stops, swallows hard, and seems to hesitate. But then she steps forward and a small, cold hand brushes against his skin.
He knows the exact moment her fingers reach that scar.
Ed tries to ignore the prickle of gooseflesh.
With her parents’ background in medicine and her own proficiency in automail mechanics, there’s no way Winry doesn’t understand what a scar in that particular location means.
That she doesn’t understand how close he came to dying.
She knows, already, of his close brushes with death.
But there’s a difference between knowing and the visceral reality of seeing the evidence right before your eyes.
“Winry...:”
“This… this scar…” She looks up at him. Tears glimmer in the corner of her eyes, but they don’t fall. “How did you get this? What happened to you, Ed?”
What haven’t you told me?
He reaches up, grasping her wrist. The pad of his thumb runs over the back of her hand.
Her chin lifts till she’s glaring at him.
“Winry,” he says again, voice heavy.
“No,” she says, voice hard. “Don’t try to hide it, Ed. Please.”
It’s the please that breaks him.
“After we staged your kidnapping by Scar,” he confesses quietly, dropping his eyes to her small, gentle hand, “I had a fight with Kimblee.” Fight seems something of an understatement. It’s hard to capture the desperation of those moments. The terror and helpless rage he’d felt at knowing Winry’s fate was far out of his hands and that he had no way to protect her if things went downhill. And while they had orchestrated the event themselves, that didn’t change that Scar was a murderer. That he was dangerous. And that if he had half a mind to try anything, there wasn’t much Winry could do. “A mine shaft collapsed and…” He still feels a ghost of that pain today.
Pain like that isn’t the kind you just forget overnight.
Or ever, really.
“I…” His fingers move to probe the scar. “I got impaled.” He can’t meet her eyes, but he’s acutely aware of her flinch.
“Ed…” Her voice trembles and he dares to look at her.
“I… told myself I wouldn’t let it make you cry,” he whispers.
“That’s why you hid it from me?” Winry takes a shaky breath and wipes the back of her hand across her face. She’s making a monumental effort not to cry. For his sake.
Will he never stop making her cry?
His chest tightens.
“You big dummy. There’s nothing wrong in letting other people cry for you.”
“Winry…” Ed reaches out, brushing a lock of hair away from her face. He holds his hands out.
She accepts his unspoken invitation, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, letting his eyes slide shut and holding her close to his chest.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Ed,” she says softly. Her hands reach around him, combing through his braid. “I know you think you have to be strong for Al and me, but remember that we can be strong for you too.”
“Winry, there’s… something I need to tell you.” He pulls away from her reluctantly, but he allows her to reach out and take his hands.
His words catch in his throat, but she’s right. She has a right to know this.
“It’s about how I survived.”
Because if… if they’re going to give each other their lives, then… then she at least ought to know how much of his he has left.
“I had to use the energy from my soul to seal the wound.” I would have died otherwise, I was bleeding out too fast, he thinks, but he doesn’t say because this has to be hard enough for her to hear without the added reminder. “I didn’t have a choice, but I don’t know… I don’t know how many years it took from me. At least a few, I’m sure.”
Winry hasn’t said anything and he keeps his eyes down, staring at her hands. He can’t look her in the eyes, too afraid of what her reaction may be.
Gently, she extracts her hands from his.
When she turns away from him, wrapping her arms around herself, his heart sinks.
This is a big deal.
He should have told her before.
Or maybe he shouldn’t have told her at all.
Now she knows he was planning to hide it from her.
Or at least that’s what she’ll think.
“I’m not…” There’s a little hitch to her breath and he knows that she’s struggling even harder not to cry. “I’m not mad at you. I’m glad you told me.”
“I hope you know,” she says, turning back around and Ed sees the streaks the tears have left down her cheeks, “that I would rather spend whatever time you have left with you, then have lost you then.”
He knows.
Of course, he does.
But hearing her say that aloud- it’s like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
He lets himself smile.