Edward Elric x Aiame Kuroshi Official Fanfic
First…
I am writing this for a friend as her Christmas present. It began as the idea to just write a oneshot for her but I felt I couldn't get it done by my set deadline. Then, one day in my Applied Tech class (no offense to anyone who likes it, but it is the worst class in the entire world and I almost always spend it brainstorming story ideas) I began developing a very drawn out, complex romance plot for a new Fullmetal Alchemist story. That being said, the updates for this story will be very staggered and uncertain. Thank you all for putting up with me!
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.
The dreary gray sky rumbled deeply above the rolling green hills of Risembool. Every individual raindrop could be heard as it hit the flat roof over Winry Rockbell's automail workshop. The blond mechanic sat at her desk, tweaking with the frame of the prosthetic leg sitting before her. She was rambling aimlessly; throwing out tips for her apprentice whom she'd assumed was taking notes. Aiame, her new assistant from Aerugo, however, was watching the swelling storm outside. She sat on a rickety wooden chair next to the window, her forehead pressed against the chilled winter glass.
Aiame wondered how bad weather would affect Aya once she got the automail surgery. The metal was in direct contact with her skin and would conduct the cold straight to her arm's central nerve cord. After knowing Aya for years, Aiame knew she would be standing on broken glass when she was with her. This would result in a slap upside her head – hopefully Aya would be in a good mood and use her flesh arm. Then again, sitting on a coast, poor weather in Aerugo was very rare. Maybe then they wouldn't have to worry about it.
"You know," Winry said, peering over her shoulder to see Aiame perched in the corner of the room, "You could start on the arm for your friend if you would pay attention."
Aiame didn't pry her hazel eyes away from the storm clouds. "I could make her arm now, I've learned enough. You've moved onto legs without giving me any time to put my skills to use," she sighed. "I'd like to build an arm first.
"I had you begin on the frame, you could finish it any time you wanted," the mechanic remarked. Aiame knew better than to fight her mentor at that point, as much as she wanted to. "I kept it on the bottom shelf in the closet if you wanna get to work."
The seventeen-year-old leapt from her seat, swiftly and cat-like, and darted across the room. She halted before the wide closet door. Aiame opened the closet and crouched down on her knees so she could see the bottom shelf at eye-level. She cursed Winry and her very sloppy handwriting; it was so small and crunched together that it was barely legible, especially on a dark rainy day. It's worse than mine, Aiame thought.
She found the case that held her friend's prosthetic buried under three other cases. Aiame slowly slid it out onto the wooden floor, careful not to cause any of the other cases to topple over. She then carried back to the extra desk Winry had set up beside the window for her. The metal latches clicked as Aiame opened the case. She cautiously set the frame on the desktop and pulled her tools out of the top drawer. Aiame felt a certain pair of cerulean on her as she worked. She tried her best to ignore the feeling and continued tightening bolts on the frame.
"You said that she was athletic, right?" Winry asked.
"Mm hm."
"Then I suggest using a lighter alloy for the fingers and the outer plating of the forearms. It will be much easier on her, especially since you told me that her build was a bit smaller."
Aiame mumbled again. She ducked to grab the tool box below the desk, taking out five cords to attach to the central nerve for each finger. Then she drew out a slim cord, about the size of a pencil, and began untwisting several wires at one end to connect with the central nerve cord. Aiame delicately attempted to twine the two wires together.
"Damnit!" she breathed, louder than intended, when she snapped the good end of the wire. "Well, at least it wasn't the main cord." That took four hours to hook up correctly to the frame of her arm! Aiame caught herself before she spat out how Aya should appreciate her arm after everything that she has gone through to make it; she really knew that even if the arm came out jacked up, Aya would love it. She ducked her head lamely.
How Aiame was going to put up with seeing Aya without her arm, she had no idea.
"There is a cord that's been replaced with stiffer inner wire," Winry informed. "It also handles contact with water better. That way, the limb can be completely submerged for up to an hour." The blond mechanic reached across her workspace into a tool box that held said cords. She held them up for show.
"Just toss 'em," Aiame grumbled.
"WHAT?" Winry clutched the cords tighter, holding them against her chest. She was shocked that an apprentice of hers would ever suggest something so plainly disrespectful to her precious automail. "I truly thought I had taught you better than that."
The redhead shot her a nasty look. "Excuse me." She rose from her seat, took one step towards Winry and snatched the cords from her outstretched hand. Aiame returned to her seat, returned to twiddling with her tools and tweaking bolts and wires on the prosthetic frame.
After nearly an hour of silence between the two, Aiame began to yawn. The sky beyond the window had grown darker than the dull gray the rain brought. Night would soon be falling over Risembool. Aiame pulled through her lack of sleep easily, she thought of going home from the holidays and everyone's reactions when she brings Aya her new limb. Leaving was the hard part, returning should be fun.
Winry retired from her workshop soon afterward, leaving Aiame by herself. The quiet was nice, not that having Winry around was ever very loud – just when she got worked-up about something. Six months had passed and Aiame had adjusted to the mechanic's overreactions. The work that went into studying automail before she could even pick up a screwdriver to start amazed her. It was no wonder that Aiame was reading and watching Winry work and taking notes for a month and half before she even began designing a simple frame. Of course, automail wasn't simple; it never was and the practice certainly would not make that exception for her.
Aiame began to pack her tools away into the desk drawers and the arm – which she had upgraded from a metal frame to a gangly mess of nerve cords strung through the finger plates – back into its case. She tucked it away on the top shelf in the closet and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her. Her footsteps barely made a sound on the hardwood floor as she padded through the halls to the living room. As Aiame approached the front of the house, she heard two voices muffled by the thick walls.
"You could have at least called to tell me you were coming!" Winry scolded. Aiame could just imagine her mentor standing over whoever she was yelling at with one hand on her hip and the other firmly gripping her freshly polished wrench.
"Hey, hey, now! I thought we agreed that I still didn't have to make appointments," a male voice shot back at her. Aiame practically melted down into her shoes when she heard him speak. She did not want to admit to herself that a voice like his – firm and rough and almost childish – sounded like music to her ears, but deep down, she knew it did. "I have been doing this for years now, why is this one time any different?"
"Things have changed," she sighed. "I took in a girl from Aerugo as an apprentice a couple months ago; with her around I need people to give me heads up so I can take time away from teaching her." For that slight moment, Aiame noted, Winry actually sounded like an adult. Her voice lost her childish, immature undertone and sounded tired and overworked and dead. She felt guilty, as if she was making Winry stress over her. Maybe I should apologize to her sometime, Aiame thought.
"Let me guess, she probably got someone in trouble too? Why else would she travel across countries to Amestris, of all places?" The man was much lighter now. The palms of Aiame's hands grew slick with sweat, her cheeks flared. It was amazing how dead-on he was with his assumption. One bad day of sailing landed Aiame with a lifetime of guilt.
"Her friend back home lost an arm, that's all she will tell me. For all I know, it might not have been anyone's fault at all." At least Winry was on her side.
xXx
Aiame spent the next morning attaching the ball and joint system to the nerves in Aya's automail. It was rather hard for her to concentrate considering that Winry was working right beside her. Normally that wouldn't have been an issue, but she invited the man that showed up at the house the night before to join her. Aiame still hadn't gotten a good look at the stranger, but had gathered quite a lot of information on his personality. He had a tendency to raise his voice – usually because he was excited but also because of his strong temper – and was either very passionate about what they were talking about or bored out of his mind. She liked him but had a growing feeling that if they were ever to have a conversation that excluded Winry, they would not get along well.
Ignoring the pair of old friends was not as easy as it sounded; Aiame's mind was pressured to translate everything they were saying. Amestrian words and sentences were formed differently than in Aerugo. She couldn't speak the language fluently yet, Aiame still had to think about what she was going to say before it left her mouth. On the other hand, listening to it was rather easy. Aiame had followed most of Winry and the man's conversation until they began arguing. The faster back and forth people talked, the easier it was for Aiame to be lost among jumbled words.
By the time she was going to make herself lunch, the prosthetic limb that Aiame had dedicated her time to was nearly ready for the final plating that protected the nervous system. She carefully packed it back into its suitcase and slid all of her borrowed tools into the desk drawers. While Aiame was putting everything away, she kept in mind that she wasn't going to work on the automail again today. She may have fallen asleep early the evening before but the dark circles hadn't disappeared beneath her eyes after hours of sleep. A nap this afternoon does not seem like such a bad plan.
Dark golden eyes locked with hers from across the room. Aiame blinked. She blinked again. The voice she fell hostage to belonged to the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. His golden blond hair was tied in a pony-tail at the back of his head, leaving thick bangs to frame his tanned face. A smile was drawn on his rosy lips above his firm-set chin. Aiame bit down on her lip to keep her jaw from dropping.
"I forgot to introduce you two, didn't I?" Winry exclaimed, sounding overly joyful, shaking her head. "Edward, this is Aiame Kuroshi" – she gestured to her apprentice – "Aiame, this is Edward Elric" – she gestured to the blond man. It wasn't exactly how Aiame wished she could have been introduced but there wasn't much she could do now; she would have rather said her own name, forced a smile, and left. Winry didn't allow any opportunities like that, though. Aiame was stuck, so to speak.
"That was a nice arm you were building," Edward remarked.
It took Aiame a moment to realize that he was talking about the case sitting behind her. She thanked him. Her voice came across so normal that it surprised even her, she was sure she had been too quiet or shaky from the nerves but sounded nothing of the sort. Aiame commented on his automail, his left leg, and how she wouldn't have noticed it until Winry insisted on him rolling up his pant leg so she could get a good look at it – he walked so naturally with it, it was as if it wasn't fake. Talking to Edward felt so natural.
Aiame clapped her hands over her mouth in shock as the truth hit her like a ton of bricks. Talking to him was only easy because she was speaking Aerugian!
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking," Aiame babbled.
"That's okay…" Edward looked confused. He was quick to brush it off when he saw Aiame's face turning deathly pale. "What'd you say, anyway?"
"That your leg looks natural when you walk."
"Ah. I'd thank you but that's all Winry's doing."
Aiame smiled. "Of course it is."
Edward redirected his attention to the blond. "How long do you think it will be before my leg is ready?" he asked.
Winry shrugged but didn't look away from her work. "Can't say. How long will you be able to handle sleeping on the couch?"
Aiame chuckled.
"I have five days before I leave for Xing to visit Alphonse for the holidays."
"I'm sorry, Winry. I'm overstaying my welcome, I wasn't aware that the Amestrian holiday season was so close," Aiame apologized. This reminded her that she should talk to the mechanic later about taking a break for her own holidays and go home, possibly return with Aya so she can get the surgery. Now would not be a good time to mention this, however. Winry seemed to be in such a good mood.
Winry laughed. The cheerful sound echoed through the room. "The holidays aren't close!" she exclaimed between giggles. "Xing is across the desert, it will take Ed at least two weeks to get there."
"That sucks," was all Aiame said.
"Yeah," sighed Edward, "But I've got family and friends waiting for me. It's worth it."
Winry cut in, "Tell Al I said hi, okay? I won't be able to come like we talked about the last time you called. My work is cut out for me here."
Edward rolled his eyes. Thank God Winry didn't see that or else she would have had a fit, thought Aiame. Something about the look on his face told Aiame that Edward didn't really want Winry to accompany him on a trip across the desert anyways.
Aiame rose from her seat, as she had been itching to do for quite some time, and stepped around Edward's chair into the hallway. It was too hard for her to process her thoughts in the workshop, maybe some time alone or sleeping would do Aiame good. Yes, if she can't stop thinking about it, a nap is definitely the smart choice now.
After locking herself in her room, the engineer-in-training found that Edward was the type of person to make long-lasting impressions. She couldn't say whether that was a good or bad thing yet, mostly because she couldn't get his face out of her mind. He seemed so casual, which was a foreign concept to her considering that whenever she met strangers she was on-edge. Aiame could not fall asleep when she lay down; she was a bit busy thinking of Edward. It was amazing how she spent the time thinking how idiotic she must have sounded when she was apologizing to Winry for having no knowledge of the Amestrian holidays and not how she babbled to Edward in a different language without a second thought.
Just forget it, Aiame told herself, it was better to say that than to take no consideration of it at all, right?
That's it for now. If you liked it, there is plenty more to come – no worries.