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Winry was SO gunna kill him. It was the very first proper, complete thought Edward had as his consciousness returned. He felt unbalanced, even laying down as he was, and just knew something had happened to his automail.
Figuring out what had happened to said automail simply came back unsure. He recalled still having his limbs attached when he had last been conscious, when he had been dragged into the alleyway on his way to the military dorms. Al had gone off ahead, on Ed’s insistence to put the books they had read in the correct piles for the librarians by himself.
At least, that had been what he had said to his baby brother. He had really needed just a few minutes to fear they would never find the Stone and that he really had doomed his brother to a horrible existence that had to be worse than dying. He had to get those fears out without Al knowing. He could crumble just a bit before he picked himself back up and force himself to find the solution, no matter the cost.
He regretted letting himself break down, now that he was certainly not at the dorms, not with his brother, and not really sure where he was.
Ed opened his eyes slowly, finding himself looking up at a completely unremarkable ceiling. A simple three-lightbulb fan combo was on, the fan pieces lazily spinning in circles on the slowest setting. If anything, it looked like a bedroom, or maybe a motel room. Not that that helped him know anything more about his situation.
He still felt unbalanced, and the moment he tried to think about moving his automail hand, nothing happened. The signal had been sent, but there was nothing to connect, and there was no sound, not even the tiniest of squeaks of metal moving across metal - something only automail or other prosthetic-users were truly attuned to, on the quietest nights, when the phantom pains hit the hardest.
He tried with his automail leg, but when he felt and heard nothing again, he moved his head down. The limbs were missing, as he had guessed, but they looked to have been removed by an engineer. Confusion was beginning to creep into the logic Ed had been focusing on. Most kidnappers weren’t smart enough to remove automail properly - at most, they would find the connection switch, but that was about it - if they were trying to stop Ed from fighting back.
“Ah, darling, you’re awake!” A high, young voice called brightly, causing Ed to snap his head in the direction of the sound, and the confusion was currently more prominent than any other emotion.
A young woman - or maybe a teenager, it was difficult to tell - had been sitting before a desk, her entire attention focused on him. Her hair had been bleached badly, with parts of her long hair splotchy and various shades of blonde, and she was in engineer overalls.
“How are you feeling?” She asked, bouncing out of her seat to head to Ed, a hand reaching out to cup his face like she knew him.
Ed tried to swat the hand away, but found his flesh arm unresponsive. It was then that he realized, belatedly, that absolutely nothing except his head seemed to be listening to the signals his mind was sending.
“Ge’off me,” he snapped instead, attempting to twist his head away from the strange woman’s hand.
The blonde woman laughed, as if he had said a joke. If not for the current situation, Ed could have found the laugh to be nice to hear, but it only grated against his ears. “What’s wrong, darling?”
“Who are you?” Ed demanded, narrowing his eyes at the woman.
The laugh tumbled out of her mouth once again, a genuine peal of laughter. “Did you hit your head again? It’s me, your automail engineer. And, girlfriend!”
Whatever words Ed had thought he was going to say next fizzled into nothing as his mind seemingly stopped working altogether. His mouth snapped shut as his eyes almost bugged out, beyond perplexed by everything the woman had said, before he finally found something to shout.
“What?!”
“Oh, geez, darling, did I hit you too hard?” The woman grabbed Ed’s head gently, almost pinning the only thing he could move to the floor under him. “You always told me I could be a little too heavy-handed, but I don’t think you’ve ever forgotten me!”
She laughed again, and Ed could feel his flesh fingers twitch, the urge to slap her away apparently strong enough to begin pushing through whatever was causing the paralysis.
“Fuckoff,” he snapped as best he could, trying to twist out of her grip. “Let go of me, I don’t fucking know you and you sure as hell aren’t my engineer or girlfriend!” The girlfriend came out more strangled than he had meant it to be.
“Uh, yes I am?” The woman looked genuinely confused, but there was a spark of something in her eyes that Ed didn’t trust. “How else would I have gotten the automail off so you could be refitted?”
“You aren’t Winry!” Ed argued, and the spark roared through her eyes, her face contorting to rage.
“Yes I am!” She shouted back, holding Ed’s head in her hands, digging her nails into his scalp like she wanted to pop his head like a balloon. “I’m the one who loves you!”
“Get off!” Ed found his body was trying to listen to the orders his mind was screaming out, but at most he could only flail his arm like it weighed several tons.
“No! You’re mine!” The woman screamed, grabbing at his hair and pushing herself on top of Ed, straddling him to stop his feeble attempts at fighting back. “You are mine and you won’t ever say you don’t belong to me!”