Title: Follow the Leader [Winry, Gracia, Elysia]
Rating/Warnings: PG
Summary: Winry is doing her best to help out.
AN: Episode 25 spoilers.
Follow the Leader
When Gracia asks if Winry might stay for a little and watch Elysia, Winry agrees right away, still staring at the picture of Maes and the Colonel. It’s just that it’s so hard to keep up with the housework, Gracia explains, when you’re chasing after a four-year-old all day long.
Winry plays dolls with Elysia while Gracia dusts shelves, plays tea party while Gracia scrubs floors, teaches Elysia a song with silly windmilling hand motions that she used to sing with Al to drown out the sounds of boxes thumping loudly in the bedroom.
With Elysia settled on the living room floor with markers and paper, Winry goes back ot the bedroom and quietly shuts the door behind her. Gracia has the contents of the closet strewn all over the floor and bed, papers and shoes and clothes scattered like a tornado has gone through. Gracia is standing in the middle of it all, clutching one of Maes’ uniform jackets helplessly, and when she looks up, Winry sees Ed in her eyes.
“I can’t stop,” she murmurs as Winry guides her gently to sit on the bed, but she refuses to let go of the jacket. “I have to keep moving forward.”
She turns suddenly and seizes Winry’s wrists, too tightly, and the light in her eyes is feverish. For a moment, Winry feels like she is back in Risembool, with Ed screaming at her while she tries to rip one of his father’s books out of his hands.
“Don’t you understand?” Gracia demands, nails digging into Winry’s skin. “I can’t stop.”
The door slams open and Elysia bounces in, clutching a piece of paper that has a series of brightly colored blobs like Christmas lights. As Elysia explains in rush that this is Mommy and that’s Daddy and that’s an orange bunny rabbit, Gracia lets go of Winry’s wrists, and Winry watches her put herself back together, forcing the pieces of her face to all go into the right places so that she can look her daughter in the eyes. Winry presses her arms quickly to her sides so that Elysia won’t see the marks.
Winry takes Elysia for a walk while her mother tries to straighten things up, and they play Follow the Leader, Elysia jumping through puddles and hopping over cracks, and Winry is always two steps behind.
