For kerrykhat's prompt at the Multifandom Women Comment Ficathon on LJ: "Destroying is easy; rebuilding is hard."
Winry Rockbell considers her genius to lie in understanding the lessons life hands to her, whether bitterly or only as warning, and letting them soak into her bones. This is one - something Al realises later, something she suspects Ed never does, judging from the broken, battered state of his automail every time he deigns to visit:
What is broken is not easily repaired.
Winry has never taken the easy road when she could do good by taking the harder one.
- : -
Sometimes it is a simple, through not easy, decision to make.
Wind howls outside the four walls, rain splatters down until it almost drowns out the pacing from the other side of the door, men, and Winry scours her memory knowledge on childbirth she'd never thought she had to use so soon. The noise as lightning cackles across the sky outside is nothing compared to the thudding of her nervous heart.
But she cannot be nervous. Is not allowed to be, if she wants to help this family.
So she asks for hot water and as close to a sterile environment as she can get, wipes sweat off her brow, calls on her memory, skill, calls on the gods because she could really use some luck, and dives into it.
- : -
Sometimes it is an easy decision to make after all, as simple as reaching for her wrench and tearing after Edward Elric, yelling at him for the unnatural curves of metal that had become bent and broken since his last visit.
She tries hard not to wonder what he's doing, to return so battered he gives his automail a run for his money, and he never volunteers. Shouting until she's red in the face and panting helps; and then she's bent over her desk for several days straight, ruining her eyes under the unreliable lighting, her room visited only by the sound of metal on metal. Or later, after she's settled in a new valley and learning her craft, her communication reduced to mumbling, hand me a wrench, trying to focus her eyes.
"Thank you," Ed always says, and it is the only time he doesn't do it grudgingly. "You're amazing." It is also the only time he implies so without going scarlet, and she feels pleasure tugging up the corners of her mouth. Of course, he has to ruin it by adding, "You could work a bit faster, you know. Places to be. Things to do."
Anger rages through her like fire, made worse by her exhaustion. "Yeah, well don't come back next time! Find someone else, if you can. This isn't easy, you know!"
His reply is so quiet, she almost misses it. "Yeah, I know."
- : -
And sometimes it is very difficult indeed.
(Gun in her hands. Revenge like a siren song. Knowing she won't be the same if she does this, and almost beyond caring.)
But Winry has friends who help, who tell her that letting go isn't a weakness on her part, it's strength (one that he's never had, he doesn't say, though it is true).
She has friends whose metal arms and legs she's adjusted, who remind her that while Ed and Al, and even the colonel and lieutenant, go off on grand adventures, she's carved out this place of her own as the one who brightens their day, makes their aches go away, makes their lives run.
- : -
So after she opens her eyes again and finds herself on the floor, after the heavens return to normal, after her boys return to her, happy but now aimless-
(After orders begin rolling in for soldiers and civilians of the capital, who need assistance to move on-)
Well.
Winry can help.
- : -
Well?