Stealing the Thief

Note: Bump Wrath’s age up from thirteen to whatever you feel comfortable with, if you wish. I’m pretty sure Homunculi have a different way of aging, and It really isn’t the first thing you should be worried about anyway.

+ + +

Eighteen months after. What happened next?
She’d visited Alphonse four times. Made three automail arms, a foot and a leg, fed the dog, stopped writing weekly to Sheska; eaten all the chocolate she could stand. When she cried, she couldn’t associate it with any of her feelings–things were just about as they’d always been.
“What I been doin’?” The boy shrugged, “Goin’ here an’ there.”
Winry had gone to visit Sheska in Central two days ago; she’d found her lodgings unlocked and empty, and a scribbled note on the table about her mother relapsing back home. Wandering the city, Winry had found the smallest homunculus, sleeping on one hand in a gutter. After giving him an earful for treating his automail arm and leg so shamefully, she’d dragged him back to Sheska’s place to put food in him. So far, that was it.
“Did you, ah, meet nice people?”
“Could’ve been nice.”
“Do anything?”
“Na, not much.” Winry knew she couldn’t take much more.
“I can see one thing you haven’t been doing. Come on.” Wrath shook his head.
“COME ON, you stupid Homunculus, who nobody’ll get within a mile of because he STINKS!” Winry dragged Wrath to the bathroom by his flesh arm; he stopped resisting when she didn’t stop pulling–and picked up the notorious wrench. He’d become very well acquainted with it while his automail was getting fitted–as Winry expected he shuffled like a defeated captive, limbs shaking, eyes half-shut. Sometimes being right was so disappointing.


The last time she’d washed his hair–at Ms Izumi’s house, before the other Homunculi had found him–he’d been quieter. Not that he made a sound now, even a moan; but you could feel it, ready to pour out.
“What you need is a series of small goals,” She cooed, clawing shampoo into Wrath’s mat of hair. “I’m sure that must be–”
“I wanna kill Envy.”
“Of course, organisation and cleanliness are important–”
“Ain’t something that hurts every second–”
“And proper eating; it helps you grow taller.” She absently put a hand on Wrath’s metal arm–withdrew it, as his eyes flashed round and he grinned.
“Humans are stupid.”
“Quite. But I’m sure no Homunculus ever helped you wash your hair.”
Trails of water hit the wall. Winry almost fell in the shower as Wrath slapped down her hand.
“Mum!
You could always tell when it was Sloth;
“She should’ve, she was good! Kind! Never shouted, never hit me like a dog. She would’ve!” Winry held his shoulders.
“Listen. your mother’s Ms Izumi Curtis. And she’d slap Ed and Al silly every week, for good–”
“SHUT UP!”
Winry hit the wall; before she could scream, the Homunculus was above her. After a bewildered moment, she scrambled at his shoulder. “Oh, yes. Found that. Your little catch, to flick this bloody thing off, if I ever–did something like this? Relapsed?”
Wrath’s eyes were wide, his breath hard as a pressing hand; Winry could count every tooth. And she couldn’t think when the warning had come–she couldn’t add it up. Maybe she could almost be calm because she could feel he wasn’t hard.
“That’s you. Calm, smiling, pretending to care for me; why the hell should you care…?”
That was when Winry’s fingers reached the spanner. Wrath’s eyes flicked; he gripped her face and turned his head as it hit. He kept gripping; Winry swung at his face and wrists. And then she stopped. Blood rained softly around her eyes. Wrath’s grip had not loosened.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” She breathed. Wrath said something like ‘What doesn’t?’ and understanding the thing that happened next might’ve been possible, but Winry would never remember and hold the memory down. Her arm dropped to the floor, and she gripped the cold metal of the spanner with pain, as Wrath’s head fell onto her breasts. With his little shark teeth he started ripping through her top, head shaking


His mouth on her breath gave a dull, warm feeling; until with little sobs of rage, he bit down. Winry gasped and shut her eyes–then the automail came down onto her breast, cool on the wet cuts–she felt herself harden into the hand. Wrath sniggered faintly into her.
“Ain’t automail makes him special, is it? He makes the fucking stuff do it for you, filthy, stupid…”
“Ed…” She kicked weakly as he brought his fingers down through her skirt; stared at a patch of ceiling. She heard the click as he made a fist; all the screws and hinges burnt fearfully in her mind. Wrath could hurt her with them, do irreparable damage.
He looked at her face, and lowered his smooth metal palm, moved it over her dark-blonde bush and she sighed, hard. It was okay, he wasn’t angry now. No more fighting. He wanted to love. The metal knee shock against hers–his thing slid into her from nowhere. A little movement, a little time–over. What happened then was that Winry cried.
“Please. Stop it. I’m with you.”
“Th-tho-I thought crying made you go crazy.”
“Babies. You’re different–even now, or when you’re angry, calm inside.”
“No condom.”
“What?” Winry choked;
“Figures–thing to stop me having a baby–”
Wrath screamed as his hands shot out.
“You’re not having no baby!” Winry felt the wall give behind her, and her breath fail; Wrath’s teeth seem to grind out tears. “Never, no, no–”
“No. No. Sure you can’t have–”
“Never a baby! You mustn’t have one! I’d kill you!” Wrath slumped from his knees to a sobbing heap. Winry bent, touched his shoulder, slowly.
“Wrath…you mustn’t hurt people. Please. You have to get rid of your problems some other way.”
“No problems,” Wrath blubbered, “Can’t get of ‘um. Wouldn’t be me no more.” Winry had never known that last line to be more pathetic. She moved down, gripped his automail hand. So slowly, kissed his hair; it came away in her mouth. Still in tears, Wrath mashed his lips into her breasts; some things he’d always been able to pick up straight off.
“Fingers straight, or the hinges’ll cut me,” She put her hand over his, and couldn’t stop shaking.
They moved together, deeper, upwards, and something was going to burn out of her chest or burst it. Wrath finally found her nipples, and looked up as she started to moan. They carried on, till Winry herself pour out of her own cunt in a trail of liquid fire.
“There…that’s. It. You’re…already?”
“No hormones,” Wrath muttered, “Effort of will.” Winry pushed him down with her free hand. Wrath whined at moving way from her, as he watched her breasts move.
“It’s alright…Ed. I’m here for you.” She pushed the automail leg behind herself–it took her whole weight on its own–and leaned back as she pushed down. The shock directly onto the right spot flew straight up, and into the air as a scream. She kept pushing down, it was exhausting, but she couldn’t have stopped if she’d died, and Wrath was pushing up, smiling, unwinded, gripping her hand. The shocks burst up, she was dizzy, and breathless, there was fire under her skin, and Ed, Ed, Ed, you should be here. It was there, a firework bursting in layers, and she rested on Wrath’s leg, eyes shut till it cooled a little. She could run a marathon; break the fabric of the world with her fist.
She heard Wrath slowly get to his feet above her, and pull his shorts back up. Unwillingly, he backed towards the door.
“Am I really…anything like him?”
“You’re his bad side. Just sometimes, I sit alone, and that’s the only bit I remember.” Winry smiled; Wrath grinned back.
“I should really give up on trying to steal Ed’s things.”
“Don’t you dare walk out. Carpet to clean up.” Forgotten aches in Winry’s hand and head reintroduced themselves.
“You ain’t gonna…? No. Wouldn’t be fair.”
“‘Course not, our secret if I can find some new clothes and foreswear the company of humans for a week.”
“I was thinking of goin’ to Rush Valley again…”
But Winry ended up going home, with an equally brief note to Sheska. The next time she saw Wrath was under the tree in the cemetery, when everything was too late.