Sunshine spills in through the window of Studio Garfiel and splatters across Winry's work table, catching and sparkling upon the bits and plates of metal that litter the station. A tirade of notices and to-do's cascade from a corkboard upon the wall, but Winry is hunched over her task at hand, fixing a delicate screw with a very specialized screwdriver.
She lifts a piston before the light and squints. Almost done, and then onto the next part, the next limb, the next job, the next customer. She enjoys the work, but it is endless.
Winry sighs softly. Of course it all means more to her than that. Every case has a story - always a tragedy. Unexpected loss of limb, yet usually a relief when the customer had expected death - and the following determination! It always takes determination for them to round up the funds, prepare for the rehab, and head on down to Rush Valley to meet her.
She remembers the first time she saw that determination. It was in Edward - angry and restless, and just recently struck by tragedy. He was still adjusting to the disappointment, the trauma of the failed transmutation on that October day. Alphonse had become uncharacteristically quiet, his few words tinged with the resonance of metal. He became somber to discover he could not eat or sleep, and Winry had been beside him to watch the disappointments one by one until resignation washed over him.
But Edward was just the opposite. Edward had undergone fire and rage, his personality no longer childishly commanding but relentlessly determined. Determined to heal, to power through it, to have two feet to stand on - and Winry had felt enthusiasm building in her over the months of his rehab. She awaited the day that her work was made part of his body. Her childhood best friend, needing her automail, her art! And Edward would look at it every day and use it every day, and she knew that he would be grateful, no matter how much he yearned for the original leg he lost and the arm he sacrificed for his brother's soul. Winry hadn't even had a crush on him back then - at least, not that she knew of - and she had been so horribly impatient to show him how wonderful automail could be.
Winry's eyes flit to the telephone that waits upon a side table near the door. It's been… what, three days since Edward's call? Still she runs it over in her mind, again and again, dwelling on his gentle concern. It felt good to know he cared. It felt good to love. The separation hurt - but she could bear it. She had her ways of coping, and one of them was work.
Winry sets herself again on her task. No appointments today, just unbroken work, the lull of focus as her hands move and her mind drifts, and soon she finds herself lost in a familiar fantasy - a nonromantic one, a borderline unhealthy one, that she has never once admitted to anybody, save perhaps the one or two times she's cuddled Den close and whispered it into his fur as she cradled his automail foreleg and told him just how lucky he was. Winry's heard a thousand versions of the story and still she wonders what it would be like. What if she lost a limb? How would it happen? And what would her replacement be - heck, how would she even decide on a model? She can't pick just one answer, not even in her fantasy!
Winry has seen too many tears. She's seen children who've survived train crashes. She's served battle-weary veterans. She's even met a victim of torture. Yet still she wonders. What would her story be? Accident? Assault? How low would she go, and how would she bounce back? And what would her arm, her leg look like - her greatest work, the one she made for herself? And she thinks of seeing her customers, and potential customers, and being able to tell them that she even created the automail she wears personally. She'd be her own advertisement wherever she went.
She knows it would hurt. The shock, the trauma. The recovery - the acclimation that took Edward a year and most of Winry's clients much longer. And still she wonders! How would it feel once it was installed? To flex, to move, to punch the air, to do her work? She would keep the absolute best care of it. And the oils, the polish!
Winry's gaze wanders up the wall, scanning the tools she's collected or been loaned. Wrenches, screwdrivers… knives… saws…
She could probably do it. Yes, if she wanted to bad enough, she could definitely do it.
Winry takes in a breath. She doesn't let it out - not for several moments of shock. She could do it. If she really wanted to, she could do it…
Her pulse throbs. Her mind wanders back - back to a scared twelve-year-old who she did not yet know how to comfort as he huddled against the wall of her room and laid bare before her the pain he felt just for what had happened to him.
"It hurts, Winry… the stumps hurt… I miss being able to feel my other hand…"
His breath had hitched and his nose had twitched into a sniffle. Tears were soon pouring down Edward's face - and it pains Winry to remember it even now. It isn't the words, for she has heard them again and again in various forms from various people. It is the way his voice sounds, as still it echoes in her mind: hurt and scared and regretful. And even now, it makes her grateful: for the two hands she can run through her hair or wash in warm water; her two feet, that she can feel grass between, that she can let carry her down the street as she runs to a client on a house-call; the two arms she has for hugging the Brothers whom she calls her best friends.
And Winry knows she could never do it. Not on purpose. Not after knowing what Edward has been through.
Yet her mind drifts back down to her work - both the partially complete and mostly complete, the arm and the leg, the slender and the robust. The luster of metal, the straightforward functionality that she refuses to overcomplicate, the muscle structure mimicked carefully in her designs. She wouldn't do it on purpose… but what if something happened? What if she had an excuse?
And, still, she wonders.