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Terracotta Bones
Her army fatigues lay idle on the chair. She'd thrown them there a week ago, distracted. Her dog tags sat in a tangled pile on the sleeve.
Winry bit her lip, hard.
Dust motes floated through the air above her; late afternoon sunlight drifted through the window. Resembol was the same. Her bedroom hadn't changed.
She closed her eyes.
In the corner, a heavy oaken desk rested underneath stacks of magazines, textbooks, old wrenches and hammers, several cans of screws, a tiny round mirror, a pink hat box full of lip stick and blush, long rolls of blueprint paper, and an electric lamp. Two wide bookshelves stood next to the desk, bearing much the same weight. A large crocheted rug on the floor was covered in dog hair and beaten down by childhood. The bed was tucked under the window. The white sheets were the same; the white comforter was the same. Her white pillow still smelled like her shampoo.
She took a deep breath and shifted so she could reach down to her ankle. Her fingers ran over cool steel plates, rivets, depressions in the metal, the engraved lines of the Rockbell brand, tiny toes. She rolled her ankle and felt the gears moving. Tears came to her eyes, but she was ready. She gave herself one good long sniffle and then blinked rapidly, rubbing away her weakness with the back of her hand.
It was no problem, really. She could still walk. Well – she'd be able to walk soon, at least.
She never thought that this was what it was like.
Her grandmother designed this leg.
Winry arrived home from the front lines in a wheelchair, clutching a letter and compensation in her hands and trying not to cry – or scream.
Granny took one look at her and said, "Oh, my girl…"
She tried to tell herself she was lucky. She looked back on that day – the first aid tent, the desert, the bombs running ravines through the earth, the yells, the gunfire. She'd been running back and forth, grabbing this needle and pulling that bandage tight, but then a wave of staggering soldiers lurched toward them. A screech, the squeal of a rocket arcing through the air, and an explosion blew shrapnel into their backs. A young woman with brown skin and a bleeding neck fell, screaming. Winry remembered running forward, not thinking, and the screech of one more rocket. She's just a girl.
If it's the first time, you might think, maybe, if you scream enough, the heat will go away. It'll stop when you can't take it anymore.
You'll touch your finger to the stovetop burner by accident and yank it away as fast as you can – but this isn't the same. This is your hand on the burner, your face on the burner, your chest on the burner. This is the burner lighting on fire, searing your skin, scorching and destroying your nerves, hitting the bone and roaring. This is shards of rocket casing slicing through your flesh.
And that sound, that's you screaming until you don't have air to scream any more, but your mouth is still open, and your vision is going black.
This is a white hot poker to the collar bone, and this is you taking one split second to wish you didn't have to die here.
Later, in the hospital, she remembered slowly. She couldn't feel most of her body.
The doctors were stern, brusque. You can't keep that leg.
It's all right, she told herself. I'll just get automail. It's fitting. I'm fortunate here.
But laying there on her bed, in the room she grew up in, in the home that never changed, everything was wrong. The metal was cold. She'd never understood what Ed meant when he said, I want my body back.
A doctor far away cut the skin, the nerves, the tendons, the blood vessels, and the muscle. A doctor took away the leg, the ankle, the foot that ran with her through cornfields and swam with her through ponds and walked with her to the train station. A doctor sewed her up. A doctor gave her an automail crutch.
As it turned out, her gravest error had been her belief in that salvation.
Her leg was gone. And the ache never went away. It just gleamed in the sunlight, cushioned in white blankets.