A Sense of Feeling
A Fullmetal Alchemist: pre-Manga Short Story
The seasons had begun to change, shifting from the cold of winter to the lukewarm of spring. In the East of Amestris this change didn't come about with the gradual transition that occurred in other regions of the circular country. It was often accompanied by a bounce of temperatures: warm one day, frigid the next, oven hot another, and so on. Such random shifts made the weather unpredictable at this time of year. Violent storms and heavy rain followed by weeks of not even a droplet of dew were common in the East until it settled back into its savannah styled climate in mid or late spring.
Edward looked out the window situated behind where Colonel Mustang sat at his desk in his work office at Eastern Headquarters. His thoughts drifted slightly as he watched the water slide down the glass panes in rippling light-bending waves. It had been in the midst of a flood, not unlike the storm that battered East City with its volatile winds and waters, that he had met his teacher, Izumi Curtis. She had saved the town with her alchemy, and then taught him and his brother the art beyond their own self taught experiments. Then, later in life, it had been in the midst of another early spring downpour, in the basement of a home now reduced to ashes and new grass that had brought him to this point, working in a governmental office while flooded railways delayed travel. While the first rain had brought him happiness and the joy of learning, the second brought blood and pain that far outmatched anything that she had tried to drill into his mind as a warning.
Sometimes he wondered if his teacher had been trying to warn him and his little brother away from human transmutation with her harsh lessons. If only they had heeded that warning he wouldn't be feeling the pained throbbing in his arm and leg that matched the pulse of his heart. And his brother, Alphonse, would be able to feel period.
Shuddering, purposely pushing the painful, frightening, traumatizing memories back into the closet of his mind where they belonged, Edward turned back to the papers the Colonel had set him to, the plates in his right arm making a slight clicking sound with his motions as the metal limb shifted. The task took his mind off of the memories. Those memories were still important, he knew that, but they caused a paradox in him that made him both long to forget and never forget them all at the same time.
He lifted his right arm and rested his cheek in his hand as his pencil hovered over each line of the application he was reviewing, another round of soft clicks sounding close his right ear from the shifting plates in his palm. It had bothered him once, the sounds automail made, often waking him in the middle of the night after he had beaten the fever that followed the surgery and begun the true rehabilitation. Now it was easily ignored.
He hadn't really wanted to help the Colonel review the state certification applications, but when Al suggested that one of the alchemists might turn out to be a lead for what they wanted he had agreed without much further fuss. Of course the Colonel had been suspicious when the teenager who had prior fought tooth and nail to get out of helping him look over the applications while stuck in East City arrived at the office without fuss and settled himself into one of the spare desks. Any other time he was sure the colonel would have made jabs at him. His failures, his lack of uniform despite the request to wear one while working in the office, or his supposed vertical challenge, but now that he was working on reviewing the applications he could see why the colonel hadn't entered into their typical exchanges. The applications were tedious, and great in number.
When he thought about how the colonel most likely had to deal with this on his own it made him shudder. His staff couldn't help him since none of them were alchemist. The man probably thought of Edward as a godsend. Edward would never tell him that it wasn't out of any supposed goodness of his heart, but his own selfishness that allowed him to tolerate the desk work. It was selfishness for an end to the pains of automail and to look at his brother's smiling face and see a smile, not just hear it in a disembodied metallic voice that echoed through the cavern of an empty suit of armor.
Turning the page on the present application and not seeing anything worthwhile he turned it back to the front, wrote 'No,' circled it, and set the paper aside in his completed stack. Reaching with his right, the palm clicking as plates slid back into their at rest positions he picked up another application, feeling the springs in his metal fingertips tighten, telling him he had gripped it and set it down in front of him.
"The colonel and the chief have it rough," Breda commented to Havoc. Edward glanced up, but when he saw that he wasn't being spoken to, he refocused his attention on the paper. They had started conversing some time ago, but he had tuned them out until they inadvertently mentioned him.
"Lots of people apply for State Alchemist, but they usually don't make it past the application process, except for a few special exceptions," Havoc said, and suddenly Edward couldn't focus, feeling more than the two people speaking rest eyes on him.
"If you've got something to say to me, say it already," Edward commented with a growl of a sigh, eyes still skimming over the ink on the page.
"No offense meant, Ed. Just small talk," Havoc assured. "We've been at this for three hours, after all."
Edward blinked, looking up at the clock to indeed see that three hours had passed. Looking back at the desk, he saw that he wasn't even half way through the papers. In fact, he had only made the smallest dent in them. He groaned at the sight of what all was still to be done, starting to regret his choice of looking them over with the colonel. His left hand wondering down to his knee and he bounced his automail leg's heel, hand messaging the junction of flesh to metal. The rain may have brought back memories to his mind, which were easy to ignore, but it seemed his body remembered more readily, despite the reign he had over his thoughts.
Breda noticed the motion Edward made to his left leg. "Does it hurt?" he asked, finger half raised as though to point but not doing so.
"Huh?" Edward asked, feeling a stellar sort of intelligence that made him want to smack his forehead for his lack of vocabulary.
"Your leg," Breda asked. "Just asking. Don't mean anything by it," he added hastily, obviously fearing he may have made Edward uncomfortable. The subject of his limbs was something Mustang's staff didn't really talk much about with him. While going through rehabilitation many of his old friends that had found out he'd had to get automail had bombarded him with questions. He was grateful that Mustang's men hadn't asked much about it, but now it seemed after two years their curiosity was finally going to reach a breaking point.
The question did make Edward uncomfortable, but only in its oddness, not in the question itself. He'd known in due time that questions would come. It had only taken prolonged exposure to them to make them curious.
"It gets achy when it rains, that's all," he finally replied offhandedly, making a point to pick up his left hand and go back to the paper work, holding in the urge to rub at his shoulder a bit before starting back. "It's no big deal." He shifted his right arm, rolling the shoulder slightly, the metal plates clicking and making the so very soft slide of smoothed metal against metal as the muscle tubes inside contracted to allow him that motion.
"Why does it click? It's annoying."
Everyone looked up when Mustang had spoke, handing a stack of already checked applications to Lieutenant Hawkeye that was three times the size of what Edward had managed to do.
"How the hell did you get so many done?" Edward demanded back, ignoring the question.
"Experience, kid. I've done this for a while now," Mustang said offhandedly, "and I believe I asked you a question."
Indignation rose in Edward, and he looked back down at the application beneath his left hand without really seeing it. "Why should I answer?"
"…Good point."
At the soft tone in Colonel Mustang's voice Edward glanced back up and straitened at what he saw. Mustang had gone back to his work, but the look in his eyes wasn't one of the usual teasing that he vested upon the shorter than average teenager. Looking around he saw that Havoc and Breda had also returned to their own work, similar looks on their faces, and he realized that they thought they had touched on a subject that shouldn't be touched on. Sure, he didn't want people talking about his supposed lack of height. He wasn't short, after all. This, though, was something they had never asked him about, not since he had been working with them for the last two years, both briefly and sometimes in collaboration.
It felt almost as though he had done something wrong, and he hated that feeling. He had done plenty wrong in his life, and the feeling of guilt was something he despised. He had long gone beyond the guilt of what he had done both to himself and to Alphonse, but there were plenty of other things to feel guilty of. Because of the past, even an inkling of that feeling made him uneasy. Alphonse often claimed he was always over-defensive, but because of his own fears Edward never could bring himself to tell his brother why.
"It's just the pressure plates," he finally said, putting down his pen and sitting back in his chair. "I forgot to oil them, so they're catching more."
"Hm?" Mustang sounded, looking up from his work where he had rested his jaw against his knuckles, one of the applications in hand.
Edward held in the urge to fidget in the chair, knowing it was more than the Colonel that was looking at him. "My pressure plates in the automail are what do most of the clicking and make sound." He shrugged, wincing a little, this time rubbing his right shoulder to ease the ache. "They're usually not as noisy, but I was late, and didn't have time to do my maintenance this morning."
"Pressure plates?" Fury asked. It was the first time he had spoken since the initial greeting he had given everyone before they had begun their work. "What are those?"
Edward felt one of the many lectures that Winry had given him come to mind, and found himself echoing it, though with less complex terms than his childhood friend would have used. "They're parts of the automail that press against my control wires," he began. "They shift a metal piece against them, sending a signal to let me know when I'm touching something or against something." He took off his glove on his right hand, looking at the multiple plates that made up his palm. It was the most detailed part of the automail, the bar that crossed up to his fingers and along the bend of his palm being the only solid piece, the other parts of it being made of the pressure plates that he was talking about.
"How much can you feel?" Fury asked further, standing up to bend and look at Edward's hand. Edward, though it felt odd to have someone aside from a mechanic look at his hand, extended it, letting Fury poke at the plates and the solid support frame. They clicked in response to his touch, once as it went down, and again when it rose back up once he moved his finger.
"I wouldn't exactly call it feeling. More like a sense of it," Edward began, trying to grasp for the right words to describe it. Automail was different for each person, so he didn't have preset words to describe it with ease. He fidgeted as Havoc, Falman, and Breda came and looked over Fury's shoulder. Edward fingered his shirt. "It's kind of like this," he said, tugging on the black cloth. "I feel it like you would feel someone touching your cloths, but that's it. I can't feel different amounts of force. It's kind of like," he paused, fishing for words again, "like a simple 'you're touching something.' That's about as detailed as it can get with automail. Hot, cold, texture – I can't feel it."
"How many of these 'pressure plates' do you have, Chief?" Havoc asked, almost stumbling over the new term.
Edward gently tugged his hand from Fury's grasp, pointing to his palm. "I have three in my palm," he said, pointing to the plate by the base of his thumb, the one on the outside of his hand, and the last resting at the base of where his fingers were, "and each of my fingertips has a spring that works like a pressure plate." He touched his shoulder. "One of the support plates has a pressure lever in it on my shoulder," he lowered his hand, "and my leg's toes and sole are plates to let me know when I'm stepping."
"Sounds complicated," Breda commented.
"It is, but I guess I've gotten used to it," Edward said thoughtfully, looking at his automail hand's palm before slipping the white glove back over it. "If it weren't for them I wouldn't have the kind of motor control I do. People think automail is just a machine powered by the electric currents in the body, but I have to agree with my mechanic that there's more to it." He looked up at them, seeing something in their faces that he hadn't seen before; a kind of acceptance that hadn't been there. He shrugged and picked back up his pen, resuming his work as he said, "I got these applications to finish. I can't let the lazy colonel show me up."
Colonel Mustang, lazy colonel in question, wrote on the application he had been working on, adding it to the ten he had added to the pile that Hawkeye had previously cleared since his subordinates had begun talking to the State Alchemist. "Before you get back to work, take ten to do your maintenance," he said offhandedly. "All that clicking is annoying me. It makes something so tiny far too easily noticed."
"Who are you calling a mini-wind-up toy so noisy you squish it like an ant out of frustration!" Edward hollered.
"Easy, Chief," Havoc said with his hands raised defensively, "the colonel didn't say all that."
"Whatever," Edward said heatedly. He reached behind him into his coat for a small box he kept in its pocket. It was his travel maintenance kit. Despite what Winry would claim he did take care of his automail. Functioning automail could mean the difference between life and death. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
"Ten minutes," Mustang corrected.
"Would you shut up?" Edward shouted as he walked out the door, slamming it with purpose behind him.
There was a moment of silence before the men got back to their work, marveling at the volatile temper held by one so young.
Hawkeye sighed where she had returned to her desk chair, opening a folder to examine the contents for cross reference. "Why must you always press on that boy's nerves?" she questioned of the colonel, who seemed to take a perverted delight in making Edward's life a little bit miserable with his consistent teasing.
"Didn't you see the look in his eyes?" Mustang asked, suddenly pensive, his hands folded in thought in front of his face, chin resting on them.
"… Yes," Hawkeye softly confirmed. "They're old on a face that's still so young."
"Someone's got to remind the kid that he's just that: a kid," Mustang said, setting his hands down and looking back to his work.
Hawkeye smiled. "I suppose you're right, sir."
Though he had meant to get started back on his reviews, Mustang hesitated. He stopped, looking at his right hand, pen poised over the paper. Reaching with his left he tugged on the sleeve, feeling it, but not feeling it. "Just a sense of feeling, huh?" he said in a rueful whisper. He allowed one last moment of reflection before returning to the paper work.