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“Follow your heart 'til it bleeds / As we run towards the end of the dream”
- The End of the Dream, Evanescence
Winry woke to the sound of Ed screaming in the grey hours before dawn. She knew, along with nearly everyone else, that he suffered from chronic nightmares. The problem was so persistent that he had long since learned to control his reactions and rarely disrupted others’ sleep. It must have been a new and horrible nightmare, to elicit that grief-stricken cry.
She staggered from her room as Ed slid down the opposing wall of the hallway to slump in an almost-seated heap on the floor.
“Ed?” Her voice was rough with sleep.
He looked up at her with haunted eyes that ignited with relief and hope. In an unexpected display of affection, he launched himself up and flung both arms around her. Ed sobbed silently into her shoulder, clinging so tightly that her own breath caught.
“W-what are you -” she stuttered, “what’s wrong, Ed?”
He mumbled into her shoulder: “I missed you so much.”
“It’s only been a few hours,” she whispered in confusion, trying to push through the fog of waking up so late. So early? Whatever.
“I dreamed for years, Winry. I,” he raised his head again to look at her, “you’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m safe.” It pained her to think of how often his nightmares tortured him by harming others. He often sighed in relief when she or Al joined him for breakfast after a particularly harrowing night.
She led him to the living room sofa, where they could talk (or doze) in relative comfort. Winry snagged a quilt from the rack leaning against the wall as she watched Ed collapse onto the cushions. She sat beside him, close enough to share the large quilt, but not quite invading his personal space.
Winry tried to coax an explanation from him. His reluctance to speak about the nightmare was further evidence that she had been in it. When the events of a nightmare finally burst free, he hated burdening someone with dreams involving them specifically.
“Years, huh?” She asked, attempting to sound casual.
He responded in kind. “Yeah, I think the dream lasted the whole time I was asleep. It feels like yesterday was years ago.”
“Was it a new one?” She guessed, gently encouraging him to continue speaking.
“Mhmm,” he hummed in agreement. “Most of it was actually a good dream. There were three main parts, and the first two weren’t bad at all.”
“Will you at least tell me about one of the good parts?” She hoped that once the story got rolling, he would tell her all of it. Past experience showed this was a decent way to help him recover from whatever torture his nightmares subjected him to.
To her surprise, he blushed scarlet. “I dreamed that we were older, and we, uh, had, you know, a kid.”
What?!
“It was so peaceful that I should have known it was a dream.”
“Did our kid,” now Winry was blushing too, “have a name?”
Ed smiled through his embarrassment as he answered: “Sara.”
The blush fled from Winry’s face in favor of a tearful smile. Of course he dreamed of naming their daughter after her mother. Imaginary daughter. It wasn’t as if he had visited a fortune teller. Ed would never believe one anyway.
He described that part of the dream in mundane detail, an idyllic life that wouldn’t suit either of them for long, but sounded lovely all the same.
As she had hoped, Ed spoke more easily as he fell into the rhythm of storytelling. He had plenty of practice, with such an eventful life and a penchant for melodrama.
“The second part of the dream was kinda weird, but still good.”
She grinned, they were weird enough without any dream nonsense making it worse. “What kind of weird?”
“Something shifted and suddenly we were calling our daughter Winry. Granny still treated us about the same, but then she called you Sara. Everything fell into place when my family walked in to join us for dinner. All four of us.”
Winry gasped in realization. “You dreamed that we were my parents?”
Ed nodded. “Once I got over the shock of being someone else, I didn’t mind all that much. We were happy. Our kid-selves enjoyed life, you have the same sense of purpose as Aunt Sara, and dreaming from Uncle Urey’s perspective was pretty cool. Your automail rants must have gotten to me, because I actually understood some of the gearhead stuff.”
She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder, thinking of a recurring dream in which she could perform alchemy. It had been years ago, before she left Resembool and met alchemists who were not her neighbors. That thought pulled her back to the current conversation.
“That was the second part of the dream?” Winry knew that Ed could hear her real question. The third part of the dream had been the nightmare. She had a sickening suspicion that she knew why he didn’t want to tell her about it.
He nodded again, clearly hesitant to speak further.
“Ed, please don’t try to carry this alone. I can handle a secondhand nightmare.” She released a huff of humorless laughter. “You’re not going to give me a new nightmare if I’ve already had it.”
“Winry,” he protested, “nightmares aren’t like catching a stomach bug. We both know you can have more than one nightmare about the same thing.”
Speaking of stomach bugs, Ed looked pale and nauseous.
She reached over to press the back of her hand against his forehead. It was a bit warm, but not feverishly so. “Are you sick?”
“No!” He flinched apologetically at his own volume and lowered his voice. “Well, I suppose I’m sick of having nightmares, but there’s not much we can do about that. We’re here, so a few bad dreams aren’t a big deal.”
She sighed, dropping both the discussion and her hand. “When did the dream go bad?”
Ed gave her a pleading look, but complied when she refused to drop his gaze. “I disagreed with Uncle Urey. I lost any agency I might have had in the dream and became a passenger. I could still think, feel emotions, and use all five senses, but I couldn’t interact with anything. It’s how I imagine Ling felt when Greed was in control.”
Winry knew what she should ask, even if she knew the answer. “What did you disagree about?”
Ed looked down and folded his automail leg across the other so that he could fidget with the metal toes.
She wondered absently if this helped ground him in reality. She was proud of those fully-functional toes.
He didn’t look up when he finally responded. “I freaked out when he told Granny that we, I mean, they were required to meet with a recruitment officer because the military needed more doctors.”
Sometimes she hated being right. Expecting some version of that answer didn’t make it any easier to hear. “How long did you dream that we were my parents?”
“Until I woke up,” he answered far too quickly.
Winry glared and growled under her breath, “that’s not funny, Edward.”
“I know!” He yelped. “I’m serious, the dream continued with us as them until it was over.”
Perhaps he wasn’t being intentionally obtuse? She begrudgingly gave Ed the benefit of the doubt.
“I meant,” she paused to steady her voice, “how far from the argument with Granny was that?” She knew it had caused an argument, at least in real life. It was the only time she remembered hearing her parents and Granny fight.
He said nothing for a moment.
“You know how dreams have a tendency to muffle sensations and gloss over stuff that you don’t have any frame of reference for?
This time she nodded, unsure whether he was getting to a point or simply delaying his answer.
Dark humor laced his next words. A soldier’s humor, she thought.
“Apparently, my life experiences can fill in the relevant details for pretty much anything a nightmare throws at me.”
Winry shuddered. Her nightmares were more than bad enough with the muffled sensations and subconscious protections that seemed to have abandoned Ed. He noticed and draped one arm across her shoulders. The motion seemed strangely natural. He was absurdly awkward about any affectionate contact. Was this a lingering effect of the sweet dreams before… the rest? She certainly wasn’t complaining about the comforting gesture.
She slid closer to Ed, feeling chilled in spite of the warm quilt. “You still haven’t answered my question. When, I mean, where did the dream go before it woke you up?”
“Are you sure you want me to answer that?” The more questions he dodged, the more certain she became of his reason for doing so.
Did she want him to answer? She wasn’t sure, but she truly hoped he would feel better, maybe even manage to fall back asleep, if they could endure discussing his nightmare a little longer.
She faked her professional voice. Badly. “I can comfort you more effectively if I know why you woke up screaming.”
“I actually didn’t,” he admitted nonsensically.
“Don’t be ridiculous! You woke me up and I know I didn’t imagine it.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “I was already half-awake when I screamed.”
Wait. She stared at him, uncomprehending. “You, what?”
“I didn’t wake up because I got scared.” He spat the words like they were something to be ashamed of, even though she and Al often woke from nightmares that frightened them awake. He was currently too upset for her to hold that against him, but she would bring it up later if he gave her cause to.
“Then, what happened?”
“I woke up because I reached the end of the dream.”
“The end of the dream?” She echoed with a deep sense of dread. He had been right, she didn’t want him to be any less vague. He must have seen the thought on her face, because he forged ahead instead of elaborating on the nightmare’s obvious conclusion.
“The whole dream felt so real, that when I started waking up, I didn’t realize it was over. I thought -“ His voice broke, but he soldiered on, “I’ve had enough close calls that waking up from a nightmare of a dream and waking up in the hospital from a nightmare of a mission sometimes blur together. I thought someone managed to save my life. Because the dream was so long, I wasn’t used to being alone. The first thing that broke through the fog was that you weren’t beside me. I screamed because -” His voice did not merely break, it shattered into a half-heard whisper. “Because I thought I lost you.”
Winry pulled Ed close and held him tightly while tears of relief and grief washed the sleep from his eyes. She didn’t loosen her embrace until she felt Ed wipe a tear from her own cheek.
He had the gall to look guilty. “Ed, it’s not your fault I’m crying.”
“Of course it is,” he argued. “You’d be sound asleep if I hadn’t woken you up, and you wouldn’t be crying if I kept quiet about my stupid nightmare factory’s new trick.”
His earlier words echoed in her thoughts: “Apparently, my life experiences can fill in the relevant details for pretty much anything a nightmare throws at me.” How many times had she almost lost Ed?
Was this nightmare partially her fault? Ed really had thrown his life on the line to protect her, and her own nightmares refused to let the memory fade.
At least hers had the muted touch of dreams, not the illusion of reality. The only element that felt as real as Ed described was cold. Winry’s nightmares often left her shivering with memories of the bone-deep chill of the north. Nightmares occurring in Central and even in Resembool had developed a wintery bite that never failed to make her more miserable than she would have been without it. Rush Valley never truly got cold, but the sense that something was wrong retained a chilly presence. She kept a quilt on the end of her bed, even though the summer weather should have rendered it unnecessary. Even thinking about it sent a sympathetic shiver through her. Ed felt it and hugged her close again. She realized that she hadn’t responded aloud.
“Ed?”
“Hmm?”
“You were right. Thank you for trusting me with your nightmare, and for sparing me the details.”
“Mhmm.” He was half-asleep and drifting off in her arms.
Winry dared to press a gentle kiss to the top of Ed's head as he dozed off, humming in response. She truly was grateful for his trust, and that she was able to help him calm down. Ed was right to insist that nightmares were a small price to pay for all they had survived. The heartache would probably remain with her for the rest of the day, but they could endure it together.