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“are you sure you want me to do this?” winry asked. her fingers fluttered over the scissors, holding them softly. she did everything softly, gently. she was firm but tender, stepping in the grass and never breaking a single blade. in her eyes, the world was a mere baby bird and she was determined to keep it safe. ed secretly hoped her rough palms had room for one more.
ed nodded, slowly.
he didn't see anything move, but he felt it. the steady weight of winry’s hand, the cool metal against his scalp. the sharp blades that got closer and closer. he could imagine the scene, the two of them. winry’s mouth furrowed in concentration, his teeth clenched and cold. his eyes blank and heavy, her rigor-mortis eyes locked on the long braid down his back. he could taste it now. the scissors had slid their way into his mouth and there was metal cutting through his tongue. it curled into his throat and he choked.
the scissors flashed. he felt lighter.
and then he didn’t.
the first thing he could remember was mud. resembool was all rolling hills, fields of crops and wild grasses that grew up to your knees. it could devour you if you weren’t careful. but ed had enough spirit to keep himself going. disappearing into the earth was too simple a demise. but tall grasses didn’t help when it rained, and the thick earth melted into something sweet and heavy, the scent of sugar and death following you past the welcome mat. he was two years old when he first knew the way it stuck to your skin like a dress that didn't quite fit.
he loved it.
he ran out one day, into the middle of a wailing storm. his mother was making dinner, his father was out, and al was asleep. he heard the crashing screams outside and had to wander out. ed slipped out the door and almost slid off of the stairs. his soft feet hadn’t known anything like this. he chose his next steps more carefully, picking his way across the sodden ground. each step made a squelch in the soaked earth, and he laughed. there was so much joy in each raindrop that hit his cheeks. he kept walking, wobbling across the wildflowers and into the nearby woods. he wasn’t old enough to be told to stay away, and his fingers were itching for something more.
follow us, the toads hummed, the trees sang, the birds cried. he hurtled into the undergrowth and ran headfirst into the brambles. his clothes snagged on the briars, and he knew his mother would be angry. but things like rules, and parents, and tidiness were so far away. ghostly concepts he would never have to touch. the woods were calling his name, his name, and he had to follow. he had to.
his clothes were shredded and his knees were shaved half to the bone and he was soaking wet. he couldn’t feel his toes and he could barely see past the rain on his eyelashes but he was alive. he was real and this was his body and this was where he was meant to be. he was a spirit, a wraith. a nameless entity in a wordless forest and he flickered like a flame in a blazing fire. a prince among men and a speck among gods. there was something freeing, something wild, about knowing nothing but the pebbles under your feet and the growing ache that pulsed in vicious symphony with his heartbeat when his mother called his name.
he cried, and the forest cried back.
it was much later when his mother finally found him. the rain had slowed to a trickle and the sun had slipped below the clouds. he was playing with a small frog he’d found, chirping brightly until he’d drawn a chubby finger down its speckled back. it was beginning to get cold, but ed wasn’t bothered. he felt safe in the woods, as children do. so he sat next to the dirt and leaves, and he stayed there for a while. but he was only two, and he was nothing if not voracious, and dinner time came sooner than he thought. gently setting down his friend, he stood and began to carefully find his way out of the woods. he’d made it back to the main road when he heard his name being called. it was his mother and father, along with a few neighbors and friends.
she’d spotted him almost immediately, and ran towards him, long skirts swaying like willows. “oh goodness, you’re all dirty! are you all right, sweetheart?” her soft arms wrapped around his back, her shoulder pressing into him like knives. the dense scent of her perfume overwhelmed him. he nodded.
“let’s get you back inside,” she’d tutted, picking him up and carrying him back to the house. he was tired and hungry, and didn’t protest. it was only after he’d taken a nice, hot bath and eaten his fill that a pressing question remained. he would not have words for it for many years. but it was there. it was always there.
the second thing he remembered were lilacs.
it was the scent of his mother’s perfume. every morning, ed would come into her room, wobbling in on four-year-old legs, his grin brighter than the gold of his father’s hair. his mother would smile back, and she would braid his hair. it was thick and long and ran halfway down his back. she was firm but gentle, and would tell him stories with every quick twist of her fingers. when she was done, she’d braid her own hair and shower them both in lilac perfume. god, how he hated that scent.
it was sickly sweet and nauseating, overwhelming and heavy in the summertime air. he never liked it, but his mother said it made him smell like a “little lady”, and that he should learn to like it. ed would squirm and whine, and his mother would hold his arm tight and look at him sternly. “behave,” she would say, and those eyes would cut into your soul faster than a blade. so he would behave. he would sit and he would listen.
he would listen when his mother finally taught him how to braid his own hair. how to lay each strand just so, to keep it from falling out. how to weave small flower stems into his braids, each petal brighter than the last. he treasured these moments with her. this was something they both shared, something that could be theirs, and only theirs.
he never cut his hair. his mother always said it looked prettier that way, that they would match. he thought he looked more like his father than her, but he never said anything. he didn’t want to upset her. he liked feeling like his mother, liked having this special bond with her that no one else could touch. not al, not their father, not winry or pinako or anyone. this was his and his mother’s.
when his mother died, he vowed never to cut his hair again.
the third thing he remembered was pinako. she sat at the table, her old bones sagging against her skin, and she told him that ms. jameson was no longer a miss, but a mister. her eyes were sharp as coal and twice as hot, but ed didn’t have anything to say. he felt like he was underwater, floating. drowning, perhaps. he couldn’t hear a word anyone else was saying. he felt right, in a way he could never justify. this was right. it was who he was.
after he told them, pinako, winry, and al never used any other names for him, no matter what. even when his father came back.
the curls hit the floor, and he felt heavy.
something inside him snapped, and he crumbled.
winry had a hand on his shoulder as he sank into a chair. it was all too much. he thought cutting his hair would make things better, that it would be the final broken piece inside his chest to heal. that he would be a new person, something different, something better. that cutting his hair would let go of that last, shameful part of him. the whispers that grew when his fingertips drifted over something that didn’t scream “man”. the thrumming in his body when a shopkeeper called him ma’am, when a neighbor called for someone who was no longer there. the curling ends of his nerves that were shot and torn ragged when he managed to catch a glimpse of his face in a mirror. he thought it would be gone. why wasn’t it gone?
“what is it, ed?” winry said, oh, so soothingly, her voice a tenor reserved for wounded animals. but he, too, was something pained and vicious. he was glad he didn’t have to face himself right now.
he struggled to pull words together in a semblance of a sentence. “i thought… that it would help. that i would feel more like… me. but i don’t.” each syllable was a barbed claw ripped out of an aching throat. he coughed up blood onto the table, spilling his guts and putting them on display.
“you’re an idiot,” winry said softly, rubbing his shoulders. “you’re already you. everything else is just extra. you can’t change a part of you in order to become more of who you already are.”
he laughed, pulled something weak and barely breathing out of his ravaged lungs. “that doesn’t make sense.”
“yes it does, you’re just a big dumb idiot who doesn’t know his grammar,” she teased. the his sang in his chest like a sunrise. “now hold still, let me fix what i can.”
her hands found the scissors, and before he knew it, she’d trimmed what she could. his hair hung in a soft bob, pooling around his shoulders, a few strands framing his face. he looked older now. the long, childish braid replaced by something new. he thought he liked it.
he felt lighter again, but this time, his heart was a thing with wings. it wasn’t leaping out of his chest. it was weak and it was fragile, but it was still breathing, and it was held in gentle hands.
winry pulled a small jar off the counter and sprayed it over his head. ed coughed, the air thick and warm and scented like cigar smoke. “what was that?”
“sandalwood,” winry said after a moment. “my dad used to use it as cologne. gram and i never got rid of it.” she handed him the bottle. “take it. i think it suits you.”
his heart was a thing with wings, and he was edward elric.
that’s all he needed to be.