Title: The Unsuspecting Captive
Author: S J Smith
Rating: Teen
Characters: Winry-centric
Summary: Winry hates waiting.
Disclaimer: Sekritly at night, I dress in a cow suit and fight crime. Not.
Warning: Spoilers for chapter 84; speculation for end of the manga.
A.N.: Thanks to D. M. Evans for looking this over. Title totally lifted from the opening lyrics to Michael Nesmith's The Prisoner.
She waits.
The thing is, Winry hates waiting. She's usually able to fill her time, or she always has been able to, in the past. Now, she's stuck in Rezembool, hiding out in her own home, without any orders to keep her busy. Her clients – all but one – are in Rush Valley. She can make pies, like she was asked, but there are only so many apple pies she can bake before that becomes tedious. So Winry stops making her pies. She's perfected her technique, now she simply has to wait until Ed comes home.
And that's harder than she expected.
* * *
Winry bites her nails down to the quick, listening from her hiding place while Granny talks to a local farmer about what's happening. "Someone blew up a bridge north of here. Shepherd I trade sheep with says he saw a train car go down with the bridge."
She stares at nothing, hands clasped in front of her mouth, chanting to herself, "It will be okay."
They'll come home safe.
They'll come home alive.
They promised.
* * *
Central City seems so far away from the quiet of Rezembool, where nothing ever seems to change. She feels it in the air, hears it in the muted voices in her grandmother's house. The radio hums with self-importance but no real news comes out of it.
The cry and fury comes faster than the news. Granny calls them "old warhorses, kicking up their heels," and refuses to upgrade Mr. Nedobeck's automail to something "with a machine gun." "You'd shoot yourself, you old coot," she tells him.
Winry doesn't show her the designs she'd made to install a machine gun in someone's automail. Ed's words rang in her ears, the pleading note in his voice as he begged her not to shoot. Staring at her calloused palms, she now thinks she understands.
* * *
It's spring and she waits, trapped in a basement while the flowers bloom outside. Shepherds raise their flocks, cull out the sickly lambs. Farmers till and plant their fields and Granny says there are babies everywhere. Winry thinks her grandmother looks a little sad when she says it but then the old woman sucks on her pipe and ruffles Den's ears.
* * *
The rains have come, the river has risen, though it didn't flood this year. The spring flowers; crocuses, daffodils, tulips – are all mostly blown. Shoots from the crops are springing from the soil, their pale green softening the dark ground. The air is perfumed by apple blossoms and filled with the sound of buzzing bees.
The radio is desperately silent beyond a few terse reports. The locals mouth over what little news they have; news already stale and old. Winry's nails haven't grown back. Every day, it's a fight not to walk out of Granny's front door, down the road to the station, and buy a ticket for the first train to Central City. Granny says she's like a ghost and she's ready for this 'Promised Day' to be over, if only so Winry doesn't have to hide any more. Winry's ready, too, but she'd promised Ed to stay hidden until it was safe again.
Waiting, she's gotten good at that. Too good, maybe. Because it's starting to feel like it's her whole life.
* * *
The eclipse is strange; it makes everything look weird. Winry's heart beats hard in her chest and she wonders, trying not to look at the sun blotted out by the moon. It's the final sign; the Promised Day. Her breath is tight and her fingernails bloody. She thinks she might throw up. She hears animals calling, reacting to the loss of the light. She sinks to the rough wood of the porch, unable to remain standing, and that's how Granny finds her later.
"Get up," Granny says, "we lived. Whatever they did, we lived." Her gnarled hands fall on Winry's shoulders. "No more hiding."
But the waiting, Winry knows, isn't over yet.
* * *
The telephone rings in the middle of the night, waking Winry from an almost sleep. She fumbles out of bedding, nearly falls down the stairs in her rush to answer the call. Picking up the receiver, her breathless, "Hello?" is barely audible over the roaring in her ears.
No one answers, then, "Miss Rockbell? You remember me, Darius? I met you at your grandmother's house. You and your grandmother are to come to Central. Tickets will be waiting for you at the Rezembool station and someone will meet you when you arrive."
"Wait," Winry hears herself say, "wait."
But the line has already gone dead.
* * *
The train trip takes two long days, the rumble of the wheels not enough to drown out the voices around them. Winry tries not to listen to women, men, children – worried about a family member; concerned about the country. Ed, she thinks, Al. And Granny squeezes her hand tight.
* * *
A blond man waits for them – not Major Armstrong, but the man who'd been with Ed at Granny's house. Mr. Heinkle. He doesn't talk much beyond greeting them; saying he would take them to the hospital. Winry nearly chokes on her own breath. Granny asks the question she wants to know but Mr. Heinkle shakes his head – "I'm not at liberty to say." Ice lodges in Winry's chest. Al. Ed.
The lines on Granny's face deepen as Mr. Heinkle drives them to the hospital. He leads them in the back way; growling something about reporters and protesters, taking them down labyrinthine hallways crowded with people. Winry feels like she's floating in a dream, Granny's hand on her back her only contact with the world. The soldiers standing watch come to attention. Mr. Heinkle waves them off to usher the Rockbell women inside.
The boy is skin and bones and staring eyes that warm like the sun at the sight of them. "Winry," he breathes, "Granny." Trembling hands reach to touch and Winry envelopes Alphonse in their first hug in far too long. As she wipes her eyes clear with the heel of her hand, laughing and crying at once, she hears a grumbled little cough and turns to see Edward on the other bed.
IV tubes string along his arm and leg and his body might've fared better being run thorough a meat grinder. He smiles, though it has to hurt his face, as bruised as it is, and Winry catches hold of his hand before Edward tugs the IV needle loose. Dark circles ring his eyes, visible even through the bruising, and a bandage holds a pad over his right eye again. That bandage needs changing, Winry thinks as she leans over the bed rail, almost afraid to offer Ed the same hug she'd given Alphonse. "Ed, you look," she bites her lower lip, her eyes stinging.
"Like hell." The words come out rougher than normal but there's relief in them, too. Maybe joy. They lived. They both made it. "We'll heal an' then we can go home." Edward catches hold of a strand of Winry's hair, giving it a clumsy tug. "Need new automail." He yawns before he finishes talking, his eyes starting to close.
"You'll have it, son." Granny's there too, her eyes spilling over, a trembling smile on her face. "Just rest now." She pats his leg with a wizened hand and Edward makes another of those grumbly sounds, relaxing into the mattress.
Winry realizes she can't move. She's a captive here, almost as much as she was in her own home. Edward clutches a strand of her hair, tethering her to him even as he sleeps. It's okay, though.
She doesn't mind waiting.