Chapter Text
There were worse places to end up, Winry supposed; at the very least when the interdimensional portal of unknown origin swallowed the Elrics, she and Mustang had also gotten caught in the crossfire.
Mustang, she could take or leave most days, but if she had to put up with him to not be separated from Edward and Alphonse for the six hundredth time then fine , consider him tolerated.
And Naboo was a beautiful planet, alternating between sprawling cities set into cliff sides and lush, green fields, bracketed by crystal clear water and the occasional swamp land inhabited by the Gungans -- which Winry was still trying to wrap her head around. After having her soul ripped out by the homunculus running Amestris and finding out her best friends’ father was a 400 year old myth, aliens and intergalactic travel should really be nothing special but she was only human, okay? And it was a lot for a random Tuesday.
She was just trying to meet up with Edward for lunch, like she did the second Tuesday of every third month, and now she was dealing with laser swords and the Force, whatever that was, and staying in the palace while the Jedi (masters of laser swords and the Force ) tried to get information out of Edward, Alphonse, and Mustang while they, in turn, tried to get information out of them .
It was all very inefficient; if they just pooled all of their knowledge together they’d probably have all of the answers they needed and then some , but Mustang was a politician and the Jedi were not… un involved in the government and no one was willing to show their hand -- besides Edward, who didn’t so much as show his hand as scream it at whoever happened to have the misfortune to ask him anything that didn’t pertain to Alphonse or alchemy.
Freak.
Master Jinn, the older Jedi with the long hair and eternally (manufactured) serene demeanor, seemed determined to either pick Mustang’s brain or get into his pants while the two younger Jedi --Knight Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker, Jinn had called them-- looked profoundly uncomfortable.
Alphonse seemed about two minutes away from spiriting them off to planets unknown and Edward was far too involved glaring unabashedly at Jinn for daring to flirt with Mustang --who he was still pretending he wasn’t in love with, for fucks sake , could those two get it together? -- to notice her slipping out of the large, wooden doors of the conference room.
The only person who caught her was Riza who urged her along with a small smile and a nod. That woman was a saint.
No one would let her take their laser sword apart or give up their ‘com’ for her to tinker with (it was like a phone! But portable! And it could send letters!) and, frankly, she was bored of all the politics. If they weren’t going to take the obvious route and communicate like adults then she wasn’t going to stand around and watch them be stupid.
They’d crash landed on Naboo three standard days ago and all they’d done is argue the same points and run in the same circles. Correct her if she was wrong, but she was pretty sure that the definition of ‘insanity’ was something like doing something repeatedly and expecting different results.
How did they get there? Don’t know.
Where are they from? Amestris.
What system was that in? Excuse me?
Were they Jedi? What the hell was a Jedi?
What was alchemy? Oh, look, Ed is yelling again.
Winry was done . She was going to wander the grounds because at least that way she was likely to run into someone interesting or, even better, a droid or two. She loved the droids. Machines that acted independently according to some unseen protocols and communicated in a complicated language of beeps, chirps, and trills? They were her favorite .
They were also treated like garbage by most of the humans and aliens around them. No one could understand more than a few words of their language, nobody bothered to ask them how they were doing. Some of them were even running around with bent antennas and broken axles!
Not on her watch.
She felt bad about the grease smeared on the soft, flowy dress she’d been given to wear. It was beautiful, really, but machine oil was an occupational hazard and if this strange place with all of its advanced technology hadn’t figured out a way to get grease out of silk, well, that was their problem.
The little droid she was helping chirped at her as she adjusted the wiring inside of it’s tiny wrist; a thank you, if she’d ever heard one.
“Don’t mention it,” she told them with a smile; it was a simple fix, one of the wires had shorted out and left the claw that acted as the droid’s hand practically useless. She’d heard one of the ambassadors that stalked the halls say something very rude to the poor thing, like it was their fault their arm had malfunctioned, “There we go! Give that a try,” for lack of anything else she held out her own spanner for the droid to try and pick up. First time was the charm, damn she was good, “Perfect!” She accepted the tool back when it was held out to her, beaming down at her new friend, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The droid trilled sweetly, rolling forward on it’s tiny wheels to bump its’ head against her knee; Winry laughed, using the spanner to lazily imitate Mustang’s picture perfect salutes, “You’re very welcome,” she said, nodding seriously, “Now, you come and find me if it starts acting up again, all right? I’m here all week. Probably. Since those idiots can’t talk to anyone without starting a pissing contest for no good reason.”
Beeping, the droid seemed to tilt in visible confusion. Winry didn’t squeal, but it was a close thing. A rush of fondness reminiscent of the first time she’d seen Rush Valley curled around her ribs and settled warmly behind the cage of them.
“Actually,” she said, wiping her hands off on the skirt of her already ruined dress, “do you have any friends who need a tune up? I have the time.”
The weather on Naboo was perfect; sun warm with a cool breeze that fanned in off of the surrounding water to rustle the green, green grass and trees. The vast expanse of the palace’s courtyard was the perfect place for Winry to set up a mini-clinic for the miscellaneous droids that found themselves in need of repair. Some of them even brought her tools to keep with her so she had something to work with besides her ever present spanner.
A soldering iron that was the size of a screw driver was coming home with her regardless of anything else that happened.
“How did this happen?” She asked, dancing grimy fingers gently over a large, soot lined hole in the side of a cylindrical blue and silver droid, “Were you in the battle?”
The portal, for better or worse, had dropped them off in the middle of a firefight. Jinn had been facing off against a man, a ‘sith’, with red and black skin and a crown of horns decorating his head, and he’d been losing , while Knight Kenobi screamed from the other side of a wall made of shimmering light.
Riza, because she was a saint, had assessed the situation before anyone else had even picked themselves off the ground, and fired her pistol three times -- all of her shots landed in the man fighting Jinn and he dropped like a stone, his red saber dropping from stunned, limp fingers.
Edward, still flat on his back somewhere to Winry’s left, let out a humorless chuckle, “Guns, bitch.”
In front of her, the droid let out a loud, shrill whistle that Winry took as an emphatic yes and she winced in sympathy, “This is gonna take a little more than elbow grease to smooth out,” she told them, blinking at the letters and numbers embossed on the dome of their head, “R2-D2,” she read aloud -- the droid whistled again, “Is that your name?” Another yes. Huh. “It’s nice to meet you, R2-D2. My name is Winry Rockbell.”
A little bit of scrap and her new favorite soldering iron later and R2-D2 was looking good as new -- the color was just slightly off but it was nothing a little bit of paint couldn’t fix. Luckily, the wiring under the panel that had been blown off had been mostly intact, if a little singed, and she stripped them with practiced ease to replace the casing, just to be safe. She didn’t want the poor thing to short out once she’d welded the panel back in place.
R2-D2 was a fun conversationalist, so long as Winry kept to yes or no questions. A whistle for yes, a chirp for no, and a chime, beep, trill combination that, after a moment of quiet confusion, Winry realized was her name .
After a while, she tried repeating the sounds back to them. She couldn’t quite get her whistle as high as R2-D2, but it was close enough that they deemed her acceptable.
“How do I say your name? R2-D2?”
A short series of beeps and chimes that Winry was able to replicate easily, grinning with pride when R2-D2 let out a pleased whistle of approval.
She’d since moved on to several other droids in need of attention but R2-D2 stayed by her side, answering her questions, and teaching her new bits of binary in turn.
By the end of the hour, she could say yes and no, introduce herself, ask for someone else’s name, ask for someone to show her where it hurt, as well as swear quite impressively.
Very handy when dealing with droids who weren’t as well versed in Basic or trying to call someone a stupid motherfucking piece of shit when they were sitting just next to her.
She was trying to perfect her “Hello!” beep when someone approached her from the direction of the palace.
“So, you’re the droid whisperer,” the woman said, smiling widely at Winry and her gaggle of new friends, “Artoo, Anakin is going to be very sad that you’ve found a new mechanic.”
R2-D2 -- oh , Artoo. R2. -- let out a series of offended beeps and trills that had the woman laughing. She was dressed like one of the queen’s handmaidens, in the simple red robes and dark braided hair, but there was something. Not quite right, but it was hard to pinpoint what.
Anakin was the younger of the two other Jedi, seventeen or so if Winry had to guess, so she was clearly well acquainted with at least the three of them, which would make sense if she was close to the queen. Except, all of the handmaidens referred to them by their titles; Master, Knight, and Padawan. Never their first names.
Winry looked closer, trying to be subtle but probably failing miserably; she’d always been too curious by half but it usually paid off. Like when she spotted just a smidge of smudged, white makeup near the woman’s hairline when she tossed her head back and laughed towards the impossible expanse of blue sky at whatever it was Artoo was going on about.
Definitely not one of the handmaidens.
Winry cleared her throat, quickly lowering her eyes back to the small droid in her lap with the busted antenna, “Good afternoon, your highness,” she said, quirking a little grin as Queen Amidala startled bodily, “You have some make up,” she gestured towards the approximate spot on her own forehead, “just here.”
Muttering a word that Edward used regularly but was surprising to hear from royalty, the queen reached up to scrub at her face with the hem of her sleeve, completely missing the spot in question.
Antenna straightened, Winry set the droid aside gently and leaned forward, “Here,” she said, “let me. This dress is ruined anyhow.” A pause as she reached for the Queen’s face with the ornate wraps covering her own wrists, “Sorry about that, by the way. I didn’t mean to get it covered in grease.” The makeup came off easily, leaving no sign it was ever there in the first place, just smooth, pale skin and the occasional wispy flyaway that escaped her braid.
“Not to worry,” Amidala said, “I consider a dress more than worth the cost of someone making sure my droids are taken care of.” She shook her head, scowling, “I try, but I am so frequently off planet and no one else seems to understand, or even care to.”
“It’s terrible,” Winry said, brushing her fingers over the top of a small BB unit’s head, “they’re so… alive. They have their own personalities. They deserve to be cared for and loved, just like everyone else.”
When she looked up again, Amidala was smiling at her -- Winry’s breath hitched. Had she ever seen a woman that beautiful before? So lovely that the scenery around her seemed brighter for her presence? “I agree,” the queen said quietly, her smile never waning; heat rushed to Winry’s cheeks. She had to look away.
“Yes, well,” the blonde coughed to clear the lump in her throat, “it’s good of you. Your highness. I don’t expect a lot of royalty feel the same.”
“Unfortunately no,” Amidala replied, “And please, call me Padme, Miss. Rockbell.”
“Only if you call me Winry,” she dared to look up, pushing her hair out of her eyes and thinking longingly of her collection of bandanas, “Miss. Rockbell is my grandmother.”
Padme laughed, loud and bright before nodding and leaning in closer. Winry’s eyes went wide -- she could smell the queen’s perfume. Sweet, slightly spicy. A flower they didn’t have, back on her world. “You’ve smeared grease on your face, Winry,” when she spoke, it was barely above a whisper. Just loud enough for Winry to hear her in the scant space between them as she raised her hand to rub her thumb across the mechanic’s cheek.
Oh, god. Oh, god . Could Padme tell how hard she was blushing? It felt like her skin should have burned the other woman. All of the blood in her body either rushing to her cheeks or decidedly south to curl in her belly.
Oh .
Padme lingered, warm brown eyes glinting like whiskey in the sun, “There,” she said, “got it.” Next to her, Artoo whistled something that made her lips twitch.
The Queen understood Binary -- distantly, Winry had known that. While she was still trying to sleuth out who, exactly, she was she had been chatting idly with several of the droids. But it was different, with her so close.
She spoke to droids; she cared for them, about them. She was friends with them.
“Thank you,” Winry squeaked, fisting her hands in the grass at her sides, “Occupational hazard.”
“So I gathered,” finally, Padme leant back, letting Winry scramble to collect the melted bits of her brain that had dripped from her ears at the queen’s closeness, “Anakin is the same way,” she shook her head fondly, “He’s always covered in grease. He built a whole droid from scratch when he was a child. To help his mom.”
“That’s so sweet,” Winry said, the faces of two other boys who would have done anything, anything for their mother swimming behind her eyes,“She’s very lucky to have him. They must be extremely close.”
As Padme shook her head, Winry’s heart dropped, “He hasn’t seen her since he was a child,” she said, like she was telling a secret, “The Jedi code forbids attachment and even if it didn’t, she’s still a slave on Tatooine. Qui Gon,” that was Master Jinn, if Winry was remembering correctly, and clearly Padme was not the man’s biggest fan, “could only free one of them.”
“How do you forbid attachment ?” Winry asked, aghast, “What, he’s not allowed to love anybody at all? Ever?” Was that even possible ? What kind of person didn’t love? Who would she even be without the people she loved and who loved her in return? “A life without love… that’s… that’s terrible . Not even his mother ?”
“I agree,” Padme said, tugging the end of her braid over one shoulder to fiddle with the end of it, “it’s… it’s not good for him. For anybody, really, but especially for Anakin. He’s so strong in the Force and he just… he cares. He cares so much about everything and everyone. A lack of attachment just isn’t possible for him and it’s eating away at him.”
The corner of her lips twitched up, “The first time we met he asked me if I was an angel. And then he agreed to enter a dangerous race to help us get the parts we needed for our ship. He was eleven, then. And he didn’t even know that Qui Gon was trying to free him. He just did it because he wanted to help.”
Again, unbidden, Winry thought of Edward and Alphonse. They were very like Anakin, really. Too powerful for their age with hearts too large to match. When Trisha died, Winry worried it would break them, and then after the failed transmutation she was terrified that it had . Then Mustang had burst through her door and shaken the life back into Edward and he’d been able to get back up and take Alphonse with him, because he cared . Because he cared and he loved and he had people around him to care for, and to love him.
What would have happened, she thought, if they hadn’t had that? If the Elrics were alone? If they hadn’t loved their mother enough to try and bring her back? If Edward hadn’t loved his brother enough to trade his arm for Alphonse’s soul? If Edward hadn’t loved so much and so hard and so unrepentantly that he didn’t traipse across the country and back again to get Alphonse’s body back and collected a menagerie of people along the way? If both of those boys didn’t love hard enough to save the whole world?
She remembered the feeling of the gun in her hands; heavy, solid metal, so cold it burned her palms where it touched her skin. She remembered Edward, solid, warm, and loving , taking her hands and uncurling her fingers. Reminding her that her hands were meant to fix, and to create, and to heal , not to hurt. Not for revenge, as justified as she may have been.
If he hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t loved her enough to let Scar get away and stop her from killing him, then they never would have found the counter array. Scar’s brother’s notes would have died with him, there in that alley.
Amestris’ last hope would have died by her hands if Edward had loved her just a little less.
“No,” she said, finally, “that’s just… no.” Numb fingers curled around the handle of her spanner -- she didn’t care who she had to yell at. She’d take on Qui Gon, the creepy old senator with the fake smile, the whole Jedi Council if she had to.
“No?” Padme asked, blinking at the mechanic with wide, luminous eyes.
“No.” Winry agreed, standing with a muted wince when the muscles in her back pulled between her shoulder blades, “That’s unacceptable. To tell people they’re not allowed to love?”
Padme scrambled to her feet after the blonde, “Winry! I don’t like it either, but it’s just the way the Jedi are , how they always have been. They say that Jedi are too powerful; that love can… corrupt them. Make them fall.”
“Fall?” Winry paused in her determined stomp towards the palace proper, “Like… oh, what did they call it. Like a sith?”
“Exactly,” the queen nodded, smoothing her robes down and trying to appear unruffled, “Love, they feel, makes people selfish. It makes their power harder to control.”
Winry scoffed, “So, instead of teaching them to control their emotions they try to burn them out entirely? That’s stupid. You said so yourself, Anakin cares! He cares a lot! Just like Edward cares. You can’t stop people like that from caring. It just doesn’t work like that. There’s too much , your highness.”
“Padme,” she corrected with a quiet sigh, “and again, I agree with you. I don’t think that it’s right. I questioned Qui Gon’s decisions on Tatooine,” she winced, “honestly, I questioned more than his decisions.”
Snorting, Winry shook her head, “You and Edward should start a club. You can just sit and glare at Master Jinn from a distance.”
“I did notice he was a little…”
“Bit of a feral goblin?” Winry finished, “Yeah, he’s always like that. But he really doesn’t like Jinn. Probably because he keeps talking to Mustang.”
“Do Edward and the General not get along?” Padme asked, “They seemed close.”
“Edward’s in love with him,” Winry stated bluntly, “has been for… jeez. Years. Since before the Promised Day, probably. And Mustang feels the same way. They’re both just idiots .” If her volume rose a little at the end there, sue her, she’d been dealing with their shit for way too long.
“Oh.” Padme blinked once, twice, three times, “I could see that,” she admitted, shrugging one shoulder, “Shame. Obi Wan definitely gave Edward a once over and he could probably use, you know, a distraction.” Under her freckles, the queen’s cheeks dusted an extremely fetching shade of pink.
“If you’re saying Obi Wan, the cute Jedi with the cuter accent, wants to invite Edward around for some attachment-less sex then I’m going to tell you to encourage it. Just. Not where Mustang can hear.”
Winry’s heart stopped, sputtered behind her ribs once, twice, three times, before rumbling back to life; the staccato beat of it keeping time with the tinkling of Padme’s laughter.
To quote the esteemed wordsmith, Edward Elric, himself: motherfucker.