Bah. I don't think it's emotional enough. There's no sense in writing angst unless it can make the readers cry. I can't do that. *angsts about how I can't write an angst fic* I also think that Winry may be a smidge OOC.
Dear Edward,
Her pencil scratched on the paper. It was the most unattractive sound that she had ever heard; the thought that it had come from writing his name-- his name-- made her feel sick. His name was supposed to make her eyes wide and her heart soar (So said the paperback romance with the bent spine from overuse, sitting patiently on her bedside table, waiting to be read again).
Instead, it made her eyes teary and her heart sore.
His name was not a pretty sound.
I can't believe that you're really gone. I always wake up and expect to see your unfinished automail on the worktable, and you in the kitchen waiting to say hello, but you're never there. I try to just pretend that you left earlier than expected, as you always did, but it never works.
Immediately after writing the words down, she regretted them. She wasn't this needy. What did it matter that he would never see the letter? Just writing it made her feel exposed, removed completely from her comfort zone. Why should she share these thoughts with him- no, with a useless sheet of paper?
She turned the pencil around to erase it, only to find that the eraser had disappeared completely from the number of times that she had painstakingly written and rewritten the letter in the previous weeks.
The war with Drachma is over. We won, though we have nothing to show for it.
The graveyards are more crowded, if you call that progress. (1)
She was so painfully aware of the words that she was writing. She pressed the pencil to paper so hard that the words were almost definitely scratched into the table from the force, blending together with crudely drawn hearts and hopeful initials from when she was younger and could think of such things without drowning in her own tears.
Al's the one who told me to write a letter to you. He's been much more sentimental since you died. He's been talking less and less, but I know that he's been thinking more and more. That's not a good combination, you know. I think he stopped seeing his therapist.
Whoever thought that this world would be better off without you is an idiot.
Writing to him was so much harder than simply being with him. Instead of moving with practiced grace, as they did when she worked on his automail, her hands trembled and shook and begged to put down the pencil and rip the paper to shreds.
I think about the afterlife a lot. Where are you now?
Some people believe that you'll be reincarnated. Maybe you're in heaven?
She refused to think, even for a moment, that he may have gone straight to hell.
Maybe you just disappeared. Maybe you're no one and nowhere now. That's what you believed; the dead are dead.
Why am I so inclined to agree with you? Are you hurting me on purpose?
She tried to block out the silence, but the absence of noise was both distracting and unnerving. The quiet of the room pounded against her skull, beating her ears and demanding to mingle with and contaminate the loose thoughts that floated around inside her head. Time to think caused thoughts to expand, until they grew so big that they could rebel against her and overthrow her from the inside out.
You were perfect, you know.
She only saw the perfect parts of him. In all the time that he was gone, she created false images in her head. She ignored the imperfect parts of him; his bad qualities could shrivel up and die in a corner for all the attention she gave them.
Instead, the perfect parts died, leaving her with the jagged pieces of imperfection that she had overlooked before.
Except when you ignored me. Except when you came late and left early. Except when you demanded too much and gave me so little in return. Except when
No, what was she writing? Of course he was perfect. Those bad qualities-- they weren't him. They were part of someone else. Edward was Edward was Edward.
Why should she care that he always left without saying goodbye? She was a professional and she was being paid. That was the only purpose of his visits. She had never really learned to keep her emotions separated from her work.
Why should she care that her last words to him were 'I'll see you in the morning'? Why should she care that she didn't see him again until he was lying inside an open coffin?
Forget it. You were perfect. That's how I'll remember you.
With that, she realized that her word choice had been completely exhausted. She had nothing left to say.
She carefully folded the letter twice, giving it the perfect shape and size to fit inside an envelope. It was simply a habit; the small, sad collection of all her envelopes fit comfortably at the bottom of a kitchen drawer, blanketed by spare pens and screws and other odds and ends.
She ripped the letter in half once, twice, three times and threw the scraps into the trash can that sat dutifully next to her desk.
(1) The story is that Ed died in the war between Amestris and Drachma. That's all the back story you bitches are getting. This is a simple oneshot; I prefer not to think too extensively about such things.