Work Text:
Winry lost her parents when she was really young. She’d been waiting for them to come home from her, perched on the porch every night until the sun went down, but what arrived in their place was the worst possible news. They were dead, killed in their medical tent, only trying to help people.
The grief tears her apart inside. She’s old enough to understand what it means that they are dead, that they are never coming home for her, and it hurts. It kills her. She can’t bring herself to get up and play for the first few days. Her grandmother tries to help, but there’s nothing she can say to ease this pain. Trisha, the mother of her best friends, offers an open ear, open arms, and all the comfort a mother can, but it isn’t right. It isn’t what she needs.
She needs her mother and her father to walk through her bedroom door and wrap her up in their arms. But they won’t, even if part of her wishes every night that they will.
Ed and Al are the only thing that helps her at all. They don’t try to heal her, they don’t try to fix it, they simply lay in her bed, Al’s back to hers and Ed at their feet, sometimes reading to her, sometimes talking to his brother about Alchemy or something equally lost on her. The gentle chatter is nice. Their lack of expectation is even nicer.
Eventually she finds her footing in her grandmother’s automail shop, and dives headfirst into mechanics. She loves it, the feeling of metal beneath her fingers, of making something come to life.
When Trisha dies, it’s not the same for Ed and Al. They’re terribly sad, it’s obvious, but they don’t spend even one day curled up in bed. Standing in front of their mother’s grave, Winry can see a determined light in their eyes, especially bright in Ed’s. They don’t succumb to their grief, they don’t mourn visibly.
Edward becomes manic. Winry hears her grandmother muttering concerns about him under her breath, and she watches him closely whenever she can. His energy is like a shaken soda, bubbly and explosive. He can hardly sit still, constantly researching or practicing Alchemy. For what, she does not know, but she assumes it’s just his outlet, his way of distracting himself and pouring his grief into something tangible and productive.
Alphonse is a little more calm about it, but equally as absorbed in their Alchemic aspirations.
It all culminates for them six years after their mother dies. Alphonse shows up at their doorstep in a suit of armor, his expressionless face panicked, somehow, cradling his unconscious and heavily bleeding brother.
Winry wants to ask what happened, but she can’t bring her mouth to move. Can’t bring anything to move, really, not even her feet, not even her lungs. Her grandmother thankfully does not suffer the same paralysis, ushering Alphonse upstairs and into one of the spare bedrooms so she can begin working.
There’s so much blood, no one’s even sure Edward is alive, at first. He’s missing an arm and a leg, and what’s left of him is pale beneath the blood. But Pinako confirms that she can feel his heart beating, though it is weak. Her face is grim as she operates on Edward’s missing limbs, sewing closed whatever skin she can manage. She commands Winry in different directions to help, and sends Alphonse straight out of the room when he finally starts bawling.
They do everything they can to help Edward, and once the bleeding has been staunched, Winry is kicked out as well. She finds Alphonse in the hallway outside, sat silently on the floor with his knees to his chest. Why he won’t come out of the armor, she does not ask. Instead, she sits against the wall beside him, like he had in her bed, and matches his posture.
Grief crashes into her like a wave, filling her lungs with saltwater and choking her. Tears land on her knees as she fights to keep herself quiet, for Alphonse’ sake. The armor he’s in looks empty, hollowed out, even though she can see its eyes glowing. Alphonse isn’t all there, she thinks. He’s left part of himself in that room with his brother, who may well be dying for all they know.
Dying. Edward may be dying. All the other death in her life had been distant, but this is staring her in the face. It’s a different kind of grief, harsh and disbelieving. He’d been fine just six hours ago, when she said goodnight to them, and now he might die.
Might, is the key word. He could pull through. She wants to believe he will, but she saw those wounds in all their glory, and she knew that no matter how much of a fighter Edward may be, it may not be enough. That’s almost worse, in a way, the not knowing. With her parents, she was sure they would be fine, and then all of a sudden they weren’t, but here there’s a might. There’s a chance.
Should she grieve or hope? Surely she cannot do both, because to grieve is to know he is gone and to hope is to hold on to the chance he isn’t. They cannot exist together in tandem.
It’s not too long that they sit in their uncertainty, but it feels like hours. Time is liquid, flowing around them like they’re standing on a beach with the waves going round their ankles. But eventually the tide goes out and she’s able to ground herself in the moment when her grandmother finally comes out of Ed’s room. She takes one look at the pair of them and gives them a weary smile.
She says he will be alright, and if they’d like, they can go see him. They are not to attempt to wake him or get in the bed with him, but they can sit by his side and talk.
Relief brings Winry to tears again, smothering in a different way. It’s both heavy, crushing, and extremely light. It’s possibly the best feeling in the world. Alphonse seems to have been hit similarly, and in synch both of them get to their feet and all but stumble into Edward’s room.
He’s pale and small in the bed, one arm gone and a dip in the blanket where his leg should be. In his remaining arm rests and IV, and there’s a wet cloth draped over his forehead.
Winry still does not ask what happened to them, but Alphonse, never one for keeping a secret, or so she’d thought, tells her anyway. He tells her about the circle in their basement and the creature that came out of it that may or may not have been their mother. He tells her about the white void and the grinning thing within that stole his body and his brother’s leg. He tells her about the sacrifice of Edward’s arm to drag Alphonse’ soul back from wherever it had been taken.
It’s all horrifying in so many different ways. The missing limbs and body, the creature in their basement, but most of all, the fact that neither of them felt as though they could tell her about it. She had no idea they were planning something like this, no idea that six years later they were still so desperate for their mother that they would do something like this. It’s a striking reminder that they’re not as much of a trio as she likes to think. It’s them and her, separate groups. And it always will be, as much as she wishes things were different. Now more than ever.
She looks at Edward and sees his future, sees the perpetual difficulties he will face, even if he decides he wants Automail in the future which she’s sure he will. She looks at him and mourns the boy she thought she knew, because she may never see him again. Nothing will ever be the way it was. That hurts. But perhaps, from here, she can help. She can be by Edward’s side wherever he goes from here. She can force herself into their duo and make them let her help.
She won’t let them grieve alone anymore. She swallows her tears and steels herself. Everything will be just fine.