Diaclaimer: Be glad I don't own FMA, as it would be nothing but fluffy plotlessness and angst.

This is a bit of angst that I wrote randomly one night about a month ago. It's in first person, from Winry's POV. It's short and very stark, but it was never really meant to be more than just a little 'what if?'

I wrote a counterpart to this story, (what would have happened that year if none of this happened) but it sucked and so I won't post it.

It's actually more of an angst fic than an EdxWinry fic, but the counterpart was EdxWinry, and I suppose that I always sort of mentally group them together. It sounds a little AlxWinry in places, but it's not intended that way.

I am a horrible person.

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COLD RAIN

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Every time it rains, I remember the tragic story of the Elric brothers.

As the rain pours down, I can't help but reflect on them; even though it's been years I still remember all the little details as though it happened yesterday. As the sky cries for them, so do I.

---

I suppose I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was; Ed and Al were searching for the Philosopher's stone. Ed was in the military, and Al might as well have been. Everywhere they went, they were in danger; everywhere they went, there was that possibility that they might not come back. Every time they left Resembool, there was an unspoken knowledge that we might not ever meet again. It just had never seemed real before.

Al, of course, couldn't be killed unless something broke his blood seal. Ed, however, was just a normal human, and could be very easily injured, or even killed. And that would be the end of both of them, for Al could not and would not live without his big brother. He had always been the more dependant of the two. Or perhaps he had just shown his dependency more – I don't know.

It was a sort of cruel irony that I was working on a present for Ed when I got the call. It was a beautiful automail arm – my best work ever. He didn't know about it, but I had been working hard on it for months. It was a late birthday present, because I hadn't gotten him anything for his birthday this year.

When the phone rang, I thought it might be Ed and Al, calling to say that they would be visiting soon. My seventeenth birthday would be in about a week, and I had been hoping that they might be able to take time off from their busy lives with the military to visit me. It was all I really wanted for my birthday. All my hopes were dashed, however, when I heard the voice on the other end of the line. After I hung up the phone, I took the automail arm – beautiful and perfect, as Ed had been – and tossed it in the garbage.

I don't believe I cried then. I was numb, and in a state of shock. That Ed had died didn't seem real to me then. I wondered if it ever would.

---

Three days later, I met Al and several military personnel at the train station. They had a coffin with them. No one actually told me, but I knew that Ed was inside. I didn't have long to dwell on that, however, because my attention was turned immediately to Al.

"Brother's dead." Was all he told me when I walked up to him. He said it in such a small, broken voice that, for the first time, I wanted to cry. I didn't though – it would have been cruel to cry in front of someone who could not.

"I know." I lied. It still hadn't clicked yet. This wasn't real. How could it be? Ed was invincible. There was no way he could be gone.

It didn't click when they opened the coffin and I saw him, either. He was lying on the bed of silk, dressed in his military uniform. I gasped – he didn't look dead at all. He was white as a sheet, admittedly, but he looked like he was only sleeping. His long blonde hair had gotten into his eyes, so I brushed it away, and shuddered; his skin was so cold.

I turned away after that, and they shut the coffin. It was all becoming more real, and I didn't know how to cope with it just yet.

---

I couldn't help but compare this to Pinako's death, only about a month earlier.

She had died peacefully, with me at her bedside the entire time. She was able to reassure me that everything was all right; it was her time to go. In the end, I believed her, and was able to smile through my tears at her funeral.

This was nothing like that.

It had not been Ed's time to go, and no one could convince me of that. I wasn't ready to let him go; I needed him still. Al needed him. How selfish of him to just leave us like this.

Perhaps the bitterest part of the whole ordeal was that I loved him. I had loved him for quite awhile, and hadn't been able to build up the courage to tell him. Now it was too late.

---

His funeral was a quiet affair. Only me and Al and the members of the military who had come along attended. Ed was to be buried next to his mother.

I had been asked to speak, of course, and how could I refuse? He had been one of my best friends. Had been. Was no longer. It still hadn't hit me.

I stood before the congregation, dressed all in black, and began to speak. It had taken quite some time to compose the speech itself, and I gave it without really thinking about what the words meant. After all, none of this was real, was it?

Halfway through my speech, they closed the lid of the coffin with a snap, and began to move it towards the grave itself. It was the lid snapping shut that did it, and I was suddenly hit with a wave of grief. Edward Elric was dead. Gone. Never, ever coming back. I would never be able to look into those golden eyes again. I would never see one of his rare smiles, the kind that made you instantly want to smile back. I would never hear his laughter; never speak to him or argue with him. I had thought he was gone before, when he and Al had left to join the military, but I was wrong – now he had really left me.

I stopped talking, and dissolved into tears. The entire military, it seemed, stared at me as I fell to my knees, head in my hands, crying noisily and unabashedly, like a child would. I have no idea how long I sat there, pathetically wailing with grief, before a few officers came and led me away.

I spent the rest of the day in bed, under the covers, hiding from the world.

---

"Winry?" It was Al. I sighed; I knew what was coming now, and didn't want to face it. His suit of armor loomed in the doorway, large, cold and distant, instead of warm and happy like his presence had once been. He had been distancing himself from me ever since he had arrived, as though to make it easier for us both when he left again, this time for good.

"Yes, Al?" he came and sat next to me on the couch. I clutched his arm, even though he couldn't feel it. It was my way of anchoring him here.

"We've been friends forever." He began softly, "And you're like a sister to me." I nodded, "So I know you'll understand." He was right; I did understand exactly what he meant. I wished I didn't; the horrible truth of what he was trying to tell me was almost too much to bear.

"I understand." I assured him, and he continued.

"I- I want to go be with brother now." He said, and I nodded again. I had expected this. I had expected it ever since I received the phone call telling me of Ed's death. I knew that the only reason Al had stayed here this long afterwards was because of me. To comfort me. "I love you, Winry." He said it in a completely innocent way, like a brother really would.

"I love you too, Al." My vision was flooding with tears, and everything was blurry, "Tell-." The word ended as a sob, and I tried again, "Tell Ed that I love him, when you see him." I wasn't going to cry. Not now.

"I will." And with that, he took off the helmet to the suit of armor that housed his soul, and handed it to me. I hugged it tightly. "Goodbye." Was his last word, before he reached back, and swiftly broke his blood seal. The now-lifeless suit of armor slumped against the back of the couch.

I felt so heartless; just sitting there and letting him go like that. But I would have been even more heartless to keep him here, for my own selfish reasons. After all, what was there in this world for him now that Ed was gone? He could never find the stone by himself; it would be nothing short of torture to continue searching, when he knew that the search for the stone was what had killed his brother. How could I ask him to stay with me, to live in that empty shell of a body forever? I couldn't. If you love something, you must let it go. I did exactly that.

For hours, I sat there on the couch, clutching the helmet, and cried. I cried for Ed and Al, for myself, and for the cruel world that had taken them from me.

---

I buried Al next to his beloved big brother the next day. There was no ceremony for him – only me and a handful of flowers that I had picked after burying him. I said a few words, about what a wonderful, kind, loving person Alphonse Elric had been, even though there was no one there to hear them but me and the ghosts of my loved ones.

I scattered flowers over many graves that day. Al's; Ed's; Trisha's;. Pinako's; even my parents empty graves. I even went to the back of the house and dropped some on Den's. All had moved on, and left me here. Alone.

---

That night, as I was walking back home, it rained. Within seconds, I was soaked in the cold water that fell from the sky. It was a very cold rain for this time of the year – a winter rain, despite the fact that it was late spring. The sky was crying for the Elric brothers, and I stopped walking, and cried tears of bitter sorrow along with it.

Now, whenever it rains, I try to smile through my tears, and picture them in heaven, whole and happy, waiting for me to join them so that the three of us can be together again.

Fin

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Ed: What the HELL?

Michi: You're alive!

Ed: Of COURSE I am. It's only in your imagination that I died, you twisted, sick, deranged -

Michi: … so harsh…

Ed: You KILLED me.

Michi: SHUT UP OR I DO IT AGAIN!

Ed: eep.

-braces herself for the flood of 'You killed them!' flames-