Chapter Text
She doesn’t know him, she is sure.
She would remember someone with eyes like that. They are the same color as polished gold; warm and deep enough to hide a thousand thoughts and feelings.
But he doesn’t hide them. She sees them plain on his face, a billboard with flashing lights, where every emotion flits across, chasing on the heels of the last one.
She sees equal parts surprise and recognition in those eyes, even if it isn’t mutual. Recognition flits to despair, flits to fear, flits to mistrust, finally settling on a wary sort of vigilance.
“Can I help you?” she asks, trying to be nonchalant, but he has the most beautiful eyes, and she wants to calm him, to assure him that she is no threat. She doesn’t know him, but she wants him to linger, to feel at ease with her. She doesn’t want him to be afraid of her and she isn’t sure why.
The man is maybe a year older than her, his long blond hair swept up in a tail that fell out of fashion decades ago. Maybe he’s a foreigner? That would explain how nervous he is, the way he tugs self-consciously at the sleeve of his right hand.
“I need to send a telegram,” he says, his voice soft and accented, though she can’t place the origin country. He sets a few marks on the counter, and she obligingly hands him a telegraph blank.
When he writes, his letters are stilted and slow, and it takes him almost ten minutes to copy the note he pulled from his pocket onto the blank. Maybe that’s what has him so nervous? Maybe he doesn’t know how to write, or at least write in German?
She thinks about offering to copy it for him, but she doesn’t want to embarrass him, so she sits and waits, pretending to organize the pens on her desk and the receipts of telegrams already sent.
He finishes and slides it across her desk with a shaky hand. She smiles at him encouragingly and takes it, reading it back to him—some note about how he’s ready if no one has any better ideas, she can’t seem to make much sense of it— and confirming the address as the University of Vienna. He nods, and she quickly taps it out and gives him his change.
“Anything . . . else?”
He’s gone before she finishes the sentence, sweeping out of the post office as if being chased by hungry dogs.
Something pangs in her chest at that, but she’s not sure what it is. The loss of an opportunity? A possibility slipping through her fingers?
She’s not sure, but she thinks about him often, like a dream that you’ve forgotten all but a fragment of, but the fragment haunts you. Three weeks later, the memory of him almost doesn’t seem real.
Then he’s back at her desk.
Of all the desks he could have chosen, he’s picked hers again. His eyes are still wary, but firm, more resolved, like he has to make an effort to stand before her. It goes beyond a boy embarrassed to talk to a girl, closer to a man heading to the gallows.
But he’s here, and she smiles at him.
He looks surprised for a moment before returning the expression, his own smile small and careful, but his eyes tell her it's genuine. Something about his eyes tell her the man across from her is almost incapable of deception.
“Hello again.”
“Hello.”
“Another telegraph?”
He nods, the smile still on his face even when she presents him with a telegraph blank. He places his marks on the counter and begins the painstaking transcription of his message. She waits patiently, and while she waits, she wonders if he ever got a response from his last note. Odds were the response would not have come to her desk anyway, but she wonders what someone could have to say to such a cryptic message.
This one, as it turns out, isn’t much better. He tells someone named “Hohenheim” that he will hold off for now, but he’s so vague that she cannot possibly fathom the context. Regardless, she reads it back to him, taps it out, then gives him his change.
“Anything else?”
This time he hesitates, almost lingering at her desk, and looking at the way the sun hits his face through the high windows, she wonders if her father would like this man as much as she does.
What a strange thought for a man she’s seen twice.
“That’s all,” he says softly.
He doesn’t flee, so she takes a chance. “What’s your name?”
The man grips his right wrist hard enough that he’s probably lost circulation. “Edward.” He looks like he wants to either ask her name or chew staples.
“I’m Winry,” she supplies with a smile.
It’s as if she’s punched him. He flinches hard and staggers back, eyes turning down to look at his feet before they can betray him to her.
And before she can apologize—before she can pinpoint what to apologize for—he’s gone again, flying out the door to the cheery ring of a bell, almost plowing into a man on his way in.
This time, it’s two weeks before he ends up right back at her desk.
This time, he doesn’t have a message, only a question.
“Will you go to dinner with me?”
Her surprise flits to joy, but she doesn’t want to scare him, this fragile man with fear in his every gesture, but quiet strength underneath it all.
She shuffles her receipts again and offers an encouraging smile. “I get off work tomorrow at six.”
He returns the smile, this time the warmest it’s ever been.
“See you then.”