Work Text:
“Well,” Winry says thoughtfully, “the damage isn’t actually too bad for once.”
It’s surprisingly mild, actually, though she figures it’s got to be worse than it looks. Ed hadn’t seemed to be limping, when he and Al arrived this morning, but Winry knows the pattern by now, and she knows that Ed doesn’t ever just stop by. So when he’d said his leg had gotten damaged, she’d braced herself for the worst.
But nope. There are scratches across the shin, and a couple of minor dents, but miracle of miracles, the damage doesn’t look severe. Winry’s not gonna be pulling any all-nighters this time.
“I know that,” Ed says irritably from his perch on the table. “It’s my leg, I can tell if it’s working. But it’s been bugging me, and we were in the area, so…”
“Honestly,” Winry says, turning his ankle from side to side experimentally, “I’m surprised you actually bothered to come. Could it be you’re actually starting to care about proper maintenance?”
“We were in the area,” Ed repeats stubbornly.
Winry straightens up and stretches. “Well, it shouldn’t take long to fix. I can probably have it done by tomorrow. Lemme just grab you a spare leg and then I’ll be taking this one off.”
She heads over to the storage cabinet where they keep the spare automail, running her fingers across the boxes as she finds the section she’s looking for — legs, over the knee amputation, approximately matching Ed’s height. Maybe something that can handle rough treatment and exercise, knowing Ed, but then again he won’t be wearing it very long…
“So, how’ve you and Al been doing?” Winry asks as she sorts through a few options. “Anything exciting happen?”
As she glances back at Ed, gauging whether his regular leg’s outgrown his current automail, he waves a hand dismissively. “We’ve been fine. Just travelling, nothing interesting. You know how it is.”
She doesn’t. That’s why she’s asking. “So, no progress?”
Ed’s head droops. “…Nope. Nothing yet.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure something out soon,” Winry says as she turns back to the cabinet, willing herself to believe it. It’s hollow reassurance when they’re both well aware that she has no clue what she’s talking about in terms of how close Ed and Al are to their goal, but whose fault is that, huh?
“We’d better,” Ed mutters.
Winry exhales through her nose. “Well, do you want to hear about what’s been going on here in Resembool?”
“Nothing ever happens in Resembool,” Ed says. “But if you want to regale me with thrilling stories of the annual sheep festival, then sure, go for it.”
Winry snickers, pulling out a box and opening it up to examine the automail inside. “The sheep festival is a time-honored village tradition, Ed. Don’t disrespect your heritage. And anyway, this year’s was thrilling. The Watsons’ sheep all got loose in town square, and there was a huge argument over whether Katie Johnson or Gabriel Irving won the sheep-shearing contest.”
“Who was right?” Ed asks curiously, because apparently mentioning a fight is the best way to get him invested in something, even if it’s about stuff he doesn’t care about and people he hasn’t spoken to in years. “Actually, I bet it was Katie — you meant the Katie we went to school with, right? — she was cool, I think. I don’t even remember which of the Irvings Gabriel was but they were all annoying.”
“Aw, is someone still sore about Ralph Irving making fun of him for being a nerd when we were ten?” Winry teases, returning to him with the prosthetic. “Anyway, Gabriel is the oldest brother, and yes, they are all still annoying. Katie obviously won, he was just throwing a fit about it. Katie is cool, by the way — you should stop by some time and say hi, the Johnson farm is just up the road. She and her parents ask after you sometimes.” And it’s kind of awkward to have nothing to report except ‘Yep, still gone’ and ‘Alive, probably’.
“Uh huh,” Ed says, in a tone that indicates he does not object to the idea on principle but has no intention of taking initiative.
Winry rolls her eyes and bends down to carefully detach his automail leg from its port. Ed winces slightly as the nerves disconnect, but doesn’t make a sound — it’s the nerves reconnecting that’s the painful part.
“In other news,” Winry says as she deposits the damaged automail on her workbench, trying to sound casual and not as if she’s been dying to tell this to literally everyone she can, “We got a customer from out of town recently — a woman from the next town over who’d lost a hand — and she and Granny let me make her automail for her. It’s the first time I’ve gotten to specially make a full piece of automail for someone since I did yours, and when Granny looked it over she couldn’t find anything to critique!”
“The first time?” Ed asks skeptically. “Isn’t making automail literally your job? What do you even do all day?”
Winry rolls her eyes, leaning against the table next to him. “How many people in this town do you think are losing limbs on a daily basis? Or damaging their automail enough that it needs a full replacement? Most of the automail work Granny and I get is just repairs or check ups, not making new pieces.” Winry sighs. “Plus, well. Most people prefer to have Granny do it than me.”
Ed looks honestly baffled at that. “Why?”
“Because most of our regulars got their automail made by Granny in the first place, and I’m only fourteen while she has decades of experience,” Winry says glumly. “Just because you’re crazy enough to ask an eleven-year-old with hardly any practical experience to make your automail for you doesn’t mean most people are.”
“Hmph,” Ed says. “Adults are idiots. You’re smarter than most of them put together.” Winry only gets a few moments to bask in that praise before Ed gestures to the spare automail. “Well, are you going to help me with that or not? It’s easier if you do it, and I want to get it over with.”
“Right,” Winry says. Back to business. She grabs the spare leg and leans down to focus on Ed’s automail port. “Brace yourself, alright? On three.”
Ed grimaces and grips the edge of the table with his automail hand, hissing in pain as the leg slots into place. It only takes a few moments for him to relax, though, stretching out the leg and flexing it experimentally. He slides off the table to stand on the floor, only wobbling for a few seconds before finding his balance.
Winry watches closely, analyzing the movement for any signs of stiffness or sluggishness. It should work fine, if not as well as Ed’s specially tuned regular automail — she made this one herself too, and she hadn’t noticed any issues before — but there’s always a chance of unforeseen problems, especially with automail that’s rarely used.
“Everything feeling alright?” Winry asks.
“Yeah, seems good,” Ed says. “I mean, I’d rather have the regular one back, but this one’ll do for now.” He hops back up on the table, kicking his legs. “Is this the same one you gave me last time my leg needed fixing?”
“Yup,” Winry says, turning towards her work station to start gathering her tools. “Luckily,” she adds, glancing over her shoulder to give him an exaggerated once-over, “it doesn’t look like you’ve gotten any taller since then, so it should still work fine.”
Ed scowls, even though she didn’t technically call him short. Winry smirks. “You’re very lucky, you know,” she adds. “Most teenagers would be having to get their prosthetics adjusted all the time, but since you’ve barely grown since you were eleven—”
“It’s NOT LUCKY,” Ed snaps. “It’s awful. And also who are you calling short, I’m not short, you’re the one who’s short—”
Winry throws a wrench at him. Ed catches it seemingly on instinct but is still startled enough that his tirade screeches to a halt. He glares at her and she smiles sunnily.
“Why do I put up with all this?” he asks irritably. “I ought to find a different mechanic. One who can provide half-decent customer service.”
Winry sniffs. “Go ahead, then. I dare you to find one as good as me.”
He could, is the thing. Winry’s good, sure, but she’s not the best, and she knows that. And sure, there are benefits to going to her — she gives him a discount, and her having made his automail in the first place makes the whole process easier — but not enough to stack up against the inconvenience of coming all the way back to Resembool. Ed works for the military; he’s traveled all over the country, has all sorts of connections who could point him towards the best automail engineers in the business, and gets plenty of money in his yearly stipend to pay for it. He doesn’t need to come here.
She knows all that, and surely he does too, and yet he keeps coming back here, time after time, year after year.
(But what if he doesn’t know? What if, just as he never listens to her maintenance advice and barely tries to look after himself, he simply can’t be bothered to find an easier way, or is so dismally clueless about automail that he genuinely believes she’s the best?)
(If he doesn’t, Winry’s certainly not going to be the one to tell him. Even if that’s selfish of her.)
He doesn’t have to be here, but he is, and what’s more he’s here in this room, still perched on the table even though his part is done and he’s free to wander off and do whatever it is he does. And maybe that’s just because Al isn’t here and there’s nothing to do in Resembool, but Winry’s grateful anyway. She can’t afford to be picky, can she? Not when she doesn’t know how long it’ll be until she next gets to see him. If she’ll ever…
(Hold on to this while you can. That’s a lesson she learned a long time ago.)
As she sets up her workbench, she scrambles to think of new conversation topics, ones that might be able to coax… well, anything out of Ed.
“Where’d you and Al go this time, anyway?” she asks, glancing over at him.
“South, mostly,” he says with a shrug — a slightly stiff-looking shrug, which strikes her as strange, since it’s not his arm that’s damaged. She doesn’t think about it too hard, though, because she has more important things to focus on. Such as:
“Ooh!” she cries. “Did you visit Rush Valley?”
Ed blinks at her. “Where?”
“Rush Valley! The automail capital of the universe! It’s a town whose automail industry boomed after the start of the Ishvalan civil war, and now it’s the foremost congregating spot in the country for automail users and engineers alike, it’s on the forefront of innovation in not only automail but medical technology and mechanical engineering as a wider field—”
“Yeah, yeah, sounds great,” Ed says, already looking bored. “Not interested. Tell me about it when they start making innovations in bioalchemy, or better yet, developing the philosopher’s stone. Then it’ll actually be a good use of my time to visit.”
“I don’t know how you’re so uninterested in this stuff. Half your limbs are automail!”
“Look,” Ed says irritably, “automail’s great and all, but what do I need to visit a place like that for? I’ve already got an automail mechanic, don’t I?” — Winry takes a moment to feel victorious and validated at that — “If you’re so crazy about this place, then go there yourself.”
“I want to, but I’m busy helping Granny in the shop,” Winry tells him, which is only sort of true. Because Granny could manage without her for at least a few days, and while she’s never travelled so far on her own she thinks she could manage, and even if she couldn’t she could probably find someone in town to come with her, and train tickets aren’t that expensive. …If Winry’s being honest with herself, the only reason she hasn’t ever gotten beyond the daydreaming stage is the worry that Ed and Al will come home while she’s not there. “Anyway, fine. Where did you go, then?”
“South City, mostly — government laboratories and libraries and stuff. Went around to some small towns as well, following up on some leads that didn’t go anywhere. Same shit as usual, though of course we kept getting sidetracked, because the world’s full of people with stupid problems and the military is incapable of cleaning up their own messes, apparently.”
Winry feels very cold all of a sudden. “What sort of messes, exactly?” she asks slowly.
“Um—” Ed fumbles for words in a way that does not ease her worries. “Just helping out with stuff. Like, okay, so I helped fix up this government building that had gotten blown up a little bit — uh, nothing serious, don’t worry about it — and despite me doing it for free out of the kindness of my heart and also loyalty to my country or whatever, they got mad at me just because I improved the decor by adding some cool gargoyles.”
Winry wants to just be amused at the idea of Ed inflicting his own sense of style onto government buildings, but she’s still caught on the idea of just what dealing with the military’s messes might entail, and what sorts of things cause buildings to ‘get blown up a bit’, and the fact that the South is where the border with Aerugo is and Amestris and Aerugo are at war and God please why do people she loves have to keep ending up in war zones—
And maybe if she wasn’t thinking about all that she wouldn’t have noticed, but she is and she does. So she watches Ed gesture in dramatic frustration as he continues ranting about his controversial gargoyles, and she sees how he starts to lift both arms, but winces for just a fraction of a second and drops his left arm back down, flinging out the right arm alone.
She’s out of her chair and next to him before the wrench she was holding can even clatter against the floor.
“Show me,” she says, pointing at his left arm commandingly.
“Uh,” he says. “What?” Because he’s too smart to actually be oblivious and too terrible of a liar to convincingly fake it, his right hand reaches up to cover his left shoulder.
“Your arm is hurt,” Winry says sternly. “Show me.”
“It’s not even my automail arm,” he mutters, like she’s only supposed to care about the parts of him that she’s already had to replace, but he obligingly shrugs off his jacket so she can see the bandages wrapped around his upper arm.
There’s not much to see. The bandages are fairly clean and arranged neatly, and without removing them she can’t get a good look at the wound itself. It’s a flesh wound, it seems, not any kind of break or sprain. He winces when she lifts his arm to get a better look at it, but the wound doesn’t seem to be affecting the functionality of the arm itself outside of the pain it clearly causes.
“Satisfied?” he asks irritably.
“No,” she says. “What caused it? You didn’t get shot again, did you?”
“…No,” Ed says, in a tone that Winry has a bad feeling means The bullets didn’t hit me. “Geez, are you still stuck on that? It was one time, months and months ago, and I only got shot a little bit — the only reason you even knew about it was because it hit my automail, not my actual body!”
“Okay, so what kind of wound is it, then? How did it happen? How long ago? Did you see a doctor? Did you need stitches? How recently have these bandages been changed? Is there any sign of infection?”
Ed rolls his eyes. “It’s just a scratch, Winry, geez. I’ve had worse.” For her own sanity, she chooses to believe he’s referring to losing two limbs. Not that she thinks that should be the standard for what counts as severe. “I went to the hospital and got it stitched up and everything. And that was a little while ago, so it’s basically healed by now. I’ve been changing the bandages and looking after it just fine — Al is almost as much of a worrywart as you and I’ve got him hanging over my shoulder, so it’s not like I can forget.”
“But how did it happen, Ed!”
“I got into a fight,” he said in a long-suffering tone of voice. “Which I won, by the way. This is nothing, you should see the other guy. And it was a knife, if you’re going to keep harping on about that. Are you done now?”
Winry doesn’t answer, just presses her lips together and stares down at the bandages, wondering if she ought to demand to take them off so she can look at the wound herself.
“Seriously, Winry,” Ed says. “What exactly do you think you can do about it? It’s been treated, now it just needs to heal. Staring at it isn’t going to make it magically get better.”
It’s true, and Winry hates it. Injuries, illness, they’re not like machines, or even like automail past the initial surgery — there are treatments to be done, but in the end one must always wait and hope.
If it were Ed’s automail arm to have been damaged, Winry could fix it no problem, her own skills and the resources at her disposal the only limits, control firmly in her hands rather than left to the whims of the body and its ability to heal itself. Is it any wonder, then, that Winry has always gravitated to automail above any other kind of medical practice?
Winry reluctantly steps back. “Make sure you keep an eye on it, and if it ever looks like it’s getting worse again you see a doctor,” she says, “and get plenty of rest and don’t overuse that arm, and don’t be getting into any more fights…” Ed nods impatiently and she sighs. “You should’ve said something about it,” she says as she grudgingly returns to her workbench.
“Why should I worry you by telling you about things you can’t do anything about?” Ed asks, sounding genuinely baffled.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? She can’t do anything about it. She can’t do anything about Ed’s stupid knife wound and she can’t do anything about people leaving her and she can’t do anything about the things that happen to them when they do and she can’t even do anything about the things that happen to them when they’re only on the other side of town in their own house.
Winry had once thought she and Ed and Al had been together in that suffering, in the agony of powerlessness. The ache of her parents’ absence and the fear that eventually became reality in a letter telling of their deaths miles and miles away, the dread of watching Ms. Elric waste away of a sickness the doctors couldn’t manage to cure and the emptiness she left behind. The world was scary and cruel and unfair and they all knew that, but at least none of them were alone, were they? They could face it together, holding each other as they cried, and wasn’t that at least doing something, if they could share the burden a little?
Winry had thought, once, that being there for her friends was the one thing she could do. She was wrong.
Now Al is too big to hold and too made of metal to cry, and Ed is neither of those things but he’s determined to pretend he is. All because they tried to fix the things no one in the world can do anything about, and they pushed Winry away to do it, burying themselves in research and leaving town to study for months, and she didn’t even realize how far they’d slipped away from her until they’d staggered bloody and defeated through her door, with new burdens to bear far beyond what she could understand.
She’d tried to help anyway. For a whole year, she’d tried, and they’d let her, even. She’d been there for them, had given up sleep in the name of sitting by Ed’s bedside or keeping Al company, helped Ed through his surgery and rehabilitation and helped Al learn how to live as a suit of armor. And when her inability to do anything for them but be there grew almost maddening, there was Ed’s automail — the one thing he’d asked of her, the one thing she could do.
She’d put everything she had into making new limbs for Ed, knowing that in the end he’d use it all to leave her behind. And he did. And now he’s gone.
But he comes back, every few months or so. And she’s always here, where he knows he can find her.
Ed doesn’t let her come with him on his quest, or tell her the full truth of where it leads him. He doesn’t ask her for advice or talk to her about how he’s feeling. But he comes to her, again and again, for this. Edward Elric does not need anyone’s help or support or kindness, but he needs a leg to stand on and an arm to work alchemy with, and he trusts Winry with providing them without a second thought.
This is the only thing Ed will let her do for him. And so she does it, and she does it excellently.
She stares down at the damaged automail in front of her, some distant part of her brain that’s still on task cataloging the steps she’ll need to follow. Unscrew the damaged metal plates. Inspect the wiring underneath. Decide what parts need to be replaced.
This, this is something she can do. The only thing she can do. The only thing he asks of her, the only thing he needs from her.
Her hands still haven’t moved.
“What happens after?” she finds herself saying.
“After what?” Ed asks, bewildered.
“After you two get your bodies back!” Winry asks, turning to meet his eyes, struck with a sudden determination. “Once you have your original limbs and Al has his body and your quest is done. What happens then? What are you going to do?”
Ed stares at her blankly, like he’s never once considered this. Because he hasn’t, probably. Because he set his home and childhood and all his bridges up in flames so he couldn’t turn back without ever considering that turning back isn’t the only way one reaches an ending.
“You haven’t ever thought about it, huh?” Winry says, unimpressed.
Ed’s mouth moves silently for a few moments, fighting to come up with a counter; finally he settles on, “We’ll figure something out when we get there! What’s the point in making a whole life plan when we don’t even know how long this is going to take?” Defensively, he adds: “Why do you care, anyway? Worried about losing your best-paying customer?”
Winry’s frustration sharpens into anger. “You’re such a child, you know that?” she hisses. “You never think anything through, you never think about anything besides getting what you want, you have one mission and can’t be bothered to care about anyone or anything else! You act like you’re so smart and grown up, but you can’t even be bothered to properly take care of your own automail! You just come crawling back every time you screw up badly enough to need help and you call that good enough!”
“My mission is kind of important, you know!” Ed hisses. “Al and I aren’t just playing around, we’re trying to get our original bodies back. Trying to make sure Al doesn’t spend his whole damn life as a glorified tin can. I thought you wanted that for us!”
She does, she always has, but—
Where does it leave her? What will be left for them to return to in Resembool except the past they left behind? Will Ed still need her, when all his limbs are his own again?
She doesn’t say any of that. “Grow up!” she snarls, turning back to her workbench.
Ed snorts. “Me? I’m a nationally famous state alchemist. You’re still living in your granny’s house in the same tiny town you were born in.”
“Could you get lost already?” Winry snaps. “I have a job to do, and you’re distracting me. You want your leg fixed or not?”
Ed huffs and slides off the table. He stumbles a bit as his feet hit the ground, taking a moment to find his balance on the unfamiliar prosthetic. Winry almost stands to try to reach out and help him, but he steadies himself and storms out before she can.
Winry sighs and turns back to her tools, throwing herself ferociously into her work. As she attacks Ed’s leg with her screwdriver, she feels eleven years old again, pouring her heart and soul into making the leg he’ll use to leave her behind.
-
Winry finds Ed sitting on the back steps, staring up at the sky as the sun vanishes and the first stars appear. It’s peaceful out here, no sound but the cool breeze rustling the leaves.
“Your leg’s ready, when you want it back,” Winry says. It’s the first thing she’s said to Ed since this morning. She’d only seen him at lunch, where Al and Granny had exchanged long-suffering glances and attempts at polite conversation through Ed and Winry’s stormy silence. She’d taken dinner at her workbench.
She’s not angry anymore. She’s always been good at getting angry and bad at staying that way. Ed’s always been much the same, rage frequent but fleeting, except that he’s less liable to burst into tears in the end.
“That was fast,” Ed says. “I thought it wasn’t gonna be done until tomorrow?”
“I worked fast,” Winry says, sitting down beside him. “I know having to use an unfamiliar prosthetic bothers you. Figured you’d want it as soon as possible.”
“Thanks,” he says. He looks for a moment like he might say something else, but he doesn’t.
“It wasn’t a super complicated fix, either,” Winry says. “I had to replace some parts, but the damage was mostly just minor dents and scrapes that weren’t impacting the overall functionality much. There was a bit of stiffness in the knee joint, but nothing major. The only reason it even took this long is that I touched up a couple things — cleaned off a bit of rust, oiled the joints, did your regular maintenance for you. You’re welcome.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ed says with a sigh. “I get it.”
Winry pauses. “You usually don’t show up here unless the damage is more severe,” she says hesitantly. “Unless I missed something, this stuff seemed pretty minor. You didn’t need to come back here yet.”
(She didn’t miss something. She checked exhaustively for anything wrong besides the obvious, until eventually she'd been left with a barely-damaged-until-she-took-it-apart piece of automail and a question: Why did he bother to come here?)
Ed doesn’t say anything.
“Not that it’s a bad thing,” Winry says. “It’s good you’re not waiting until you can barely walk, and I’m always happy to touch things up. It’s just unusual, that’s all.”
Ed shrugs. “We were in the area,” he says yet again, not looking at her. “Figured I might as well stop by.”
Winry chews on the inside of her cheek as she contemplates what to say. “I’m glad you did,” she says. “I mean, you can always stop by. Even if you don’t have any actual work that needs to be done.”
“Besides the daily maintenance that you want me to do, you mean,” Ed says with a half-smirk.
Winry rolls her eyes. “If you want to come out here every week instead of doing the bare minimum to keep your own limbs from rusting, then be my guest.”
Ed leans back, looking up at the sky, nearly entirely dark now. “Guess Al and I will be leaving first thing tomorrow,” he says. “No reason to hang around.” He doesn’t sound particularly happy about it. The way he says it, it sounds like an inevitability rather than a choice he’s making.
“At least wait until after I wake up, alright?” Winry says. “Don’t just disappear on me.” Not again.
Ed grunts noncommittally. Winry sighs.
“You know,” she says after a minute of silence. “You can always just call. I mean— I’ve told you before, you really ought to call ahead rather than just showing up unannounced. Phones exist for a reason, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ed says.
They sit in silence for another long minute. Ed rubs his injured arm, and Winry wishes anything she does could ever be enough.
She thinks about the difference between being wanted and needed. Want is a fickle and unpredictable thing, something far scarier to put your faith in. But maybe there isn’t always a choice. Maybe, even, it’s better, because wanted things can’t outstay their usefulness.
Ed stands abruptly. “We should go get my automail reattached. Get it over with.”
Winry gets up too, and turns to head back into the house, but Ed’s voice stops her. “Just don’t sleep until noon, alright?”
Winry looks back at him. “What?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Ed says, fidgeting with the end of his braid and not meeting her eyes. “We’re not gonna leave at the crack of dawn or anything. Just don’t sleep stupidly late and you’ll be able to see us off.”
Winry finds herself smiling. “Given that you didn’t make me pull an all-nighter this time, I should be able to manage that.”
“Um, yeah. Good.” Ed tosses his braid over his shoulder and strides past her into the house. “Glad that’s settled. Let’s go.”
He’ll still leave. Tomorrow, he and Al will go, vanishing from Winry’s life to return to theirs, the one she doesn’t get to know about, the one where they risk ending up hurt or worse. But for now, in this moment, he’s here. Because he wanted to come back.
Winry decides maybe she can live with that.
She follows Ed back inside, and thinks she believes it when she tells herself that she’ll see him again.