The Same Coin

His Own Design

"Hey! Make room for one more. Come on, Al, scoot over—"

Winry shoved herself and her toolkit into the backseat of the car, and Ed went careening into Al as she claimed a space for herself. Her toolkit went across the brothers' laps.

"What are you doing, Winry!" Ed managed to squeak.

Kimblee advanced on the car, putting a hand on the roof as he bent to look inside. His eyes raked down her once and Winry felt her cheeks warm. Besides that, however, neither gave further indication of the night they'd spent together. Nor the brand of pillow talk they'd shared afterward.

"I'm sorry, Winry," he said, "but you need to wait here at the fort. We aren't going for a picnic."

"And neither am I," she doubled down. "I just performed a complicated upgrade on his automail that I've never done before." That was a lie, but it was the lie she'd practiced with Kimblee. "What if there's a malfunction? It would tarnish the Rockbell name if I'm not there to fix it."

Ed took the bait.

"Do you even realize how obsessed with your job you are? You're a workaholic," he said with a roll of his eyes.

There was a knot in the pit of her stomach, but Winry forced herself forward. She'd made her bed and by God she would lie in it, and just pray she hadn't bet on the wrong horse. She was betraying Ed and themselves into deeper trouble if they didn't come to heel.

"And proud of it, too. This has been my family's business for four generation," she said, turning up her nose.

Kimblee rolled his eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh of annoyance as he pulled the brim of his fedora low; if Ed were to believe the ruse, he'd need to believe Kimblee hadn't wanted her to leave the fort.

"Very well then, you can join us," he said. "I guess I can allow you to."

Winry continued her bickering with Ed until Kimblee walked away from their car and the door was shut. As the car began to drive, Ed spoke to her in a low whisper, "This could turn out really badly for us."

She didn't know what to tell him. That this was a disaster of his own design? She had no reassurances to offer, so instead Winry lowered her eyes.

"Yeah."

Once they arrived at Baschool, Kimblee assigned two of his men and two men from Briggs to supervise Edward and Alphonse during the search. Winry was to stay with Kimblee. Ed didn't even notice — or at least point out — how little sense it made for her to have come along for the sake of his automail for the expedition, only to then be kept from him.

It didn't take long. They'd been in Baschool for maybe twenty minutes, with Winry nearby while the squads radioed in updates, when the news she and Kimblee had both expected came in. Ed and Al had somehow become separated from Kimblee's men. Kimblee gestured discreetly with one hand, and Winry began to distance herself from him and his squad before finally sitting down in the shadow of a building.

Even if Ed hadn't felt the way she had, Winry knew the first thing he would try to do would be get her out from Kimblee's grasp. Her presence handicapped their decision-making abilities because they wouldn't do anything to compromise her safety. It didn't take long for Ed's automail finger to gently tap her shoulder from behind.

Winry rose to her feet and followed him further back into the alley where Al was waiting. Ed had unfastened Al's chest plate and gestured for her to climb inside his suit of armor. The prospect was less than exciting. Winry abided and, once Ed and Al began retreating so that the sound of their footsteps in the snow covered any noise she might make, she had taken her own radio out from her coat and snapped her fingers three times.