Title: Perfectly Damaged
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Hiromu Arakawa-sama, not me!
Warnings: The uncensored version of Chapter 2 that is posted at my livejournal account is NC-17. But if you're not into that, then the one here works just as well.
Summary: A chance meeting and shared regret bring two unlikely people together for a chance at unexpected forgiveness. Roy & Winry Takes place after the series and movie.
Timeline: this takes place after the series and movie - both have happened, so, you know: SPOLIERS! This does not follow the manga - one of those will be coming soon.
Chapter 1: Equivalent Trade - A year after Ed and Al leave her world forever, Winry finds herself under Central. But she's not alone in her silent vigil anymore, and she's the only one who can free him from the prision of guilt he's surrounded himself with.
Author's Notes: This is for SE for being such a pal! Edited and uploaded just in time for Thursday! And now, no citrus of any kind. It's not my best work, I know this. But I hope you enjoy it anyway :) Thank you... and enjoy.
It had been a year since Ed and Al left Winry's life for good. Before, when Ed was gone, she dreamt of him on sun kissed days, smiling and laughing like he used to. But now that she knew he was really gone, her dreams turned to vengeful nightmares about all the people who had been taken from her in her short lifetime. She was eighteen now, and ready to leave the small village that she had called home for so many years. It no longer held happy memories of days gone by, but pitiful regret for all that she let be taken from her. She would cry at night and chastise herself for not trying harder to go with Ed and Al to the other side of the gate. Part of her knew how absurd the thought of actually making it alive was, but she still couldn't stop wishing that she wasn't so alone. Sure she had made friends over the past five years, but there was no one anymore to take Ed's place in her dreams. So she stopped dreaming, she stopped hoping that somehow he would come back to her.
She left Rezembool and made her way to Central. The place where she last saw them, the place where she was almost killed when she was thirteen, and the place where the last of her remaining friends were. Glacier took her in for a few months before she found and job and got enough money to move out on her own. Elysia was harder to leave than she thought she would be, but the beckoning loneliness that solitude granted her called her home.
Home was small, damp, dark and in a very remote part of town. It was dangerous, and part of her liked that thought. The first time she twisted the key in the lock and let the ugly door slide open, she wished Ed could see her from out there somewhere and was furious at her for living somewhere so unsafe. She hoped that he stayed up and night and worried about her. But she knew how crazy that was. She worked in an auto-mail shop in town that her grandmother told her about. It was easy, familiar work. But without the possibility of seeing Ed ever again, it just didn't seem as important anymore. Sometimes, she caught herself trying to calculate how much he would have grown so that she could make adjustments to the arm and leg that she still kept in her closet. It was a morbid obsession, but one that kept her going.
It was now the two year anniversary of Ed and Al's departure. And while she tried not to think about how empty she felt, she went to work and cried at her lunch break. After her shift was over, she left with every intention of going home and crying some more in loneliness. But she felt drawn to the underground city. It had long since been closed and under the new military control. No one was allowed in, but luckily for her the new parliament hadn't been as strict as the previous ruler and there was no one on duty. So she quietly made her way to the last place she saw her lifelong friends and crashed to the ground in a thunderous act of aggression.
"Why, why did you leave me here all alone? Why didn't you take me with you? Even death couldn't be as bad as living in absolute desolation! How could you abandon me like that, without even saying goodbye?" she screamed through teary, stinging eyes as she slammed her tiny fists onto the old cobblestone streets. Her tears slipped past her eyes and came crashing down with violent hatred. She knew she shouldn't be mad, but she wanted to blame someone, and since they were gone it was easier to be mad than accept that they did what had to be done.
Once her heart stopped pounding in her ears, she was aware that there were long, echoing footsteps in the distance. And for one shinning moment, she convinced herself that it was Ed. But as she dusted her knees and stood, there was a deep blue uniform in the distance. Through the haze of her own tears, even she couldn't deny the raven hair and a single, narrow, black eye.
So for the second time in her short life, that same face single-handedly took away her hope. There wasn't a hint of gold in that distant figure, and the weight of the past nineteen years of disappointment, regret, loneliness, and pain came crashing over her. She was alone, just like she always had been. And the ground was suddenly rushing up at her faster than she could react to. Instead she let the pain of the cold ground smashing against her face sooth the pain of her heart. The tears fell freely and without effort anymore. She was sobbing so hard, it was difficult to breathe, and for a moment she thought that she might die; and to her horror that idea was a welcome reprieve.
"His last words to me and Al were to tell you thank you for the auto-mail." A thick voice intruded her thoughts and left a ringing sensation of familiarity. But she didn't acknowledge the voice; she pretended that she was still alone, in her fortress of bitter envy for everything that was taken from her. She cried harder because she couldn't stop the echoing voice of her parent's murderer and Ed's ally. It was his voice that brought her the much needed finality to this whole saga. She knew they weren't coming back, but crying and letting the cold stone comfort her was the only way she knew how to keep breathing.
"I love him." She screamed into her balled fists with heartbreaking vulnerability. "I loved him." She whispered it again and again until her voice was so soft; she wasn't sure if she was saying it in her own head or if it was still out loud. But that didn't matter, because she was alone now. She was going to be alone forever, and no matter how many times she yelled at herself for being so selfish – she couldn't stop the anger she held for him.
It was some time before the tears stopped. But even then, she lay on the street of an abandoned city and waited for oblivion to come. She wasn't sure if she had imagined the voice a while ago, or if he had left. But she began to feel the cold chill of the frozen air seep through her light dress. And the ache in her fists beckoned attention. So finally, after all the will power she had was sucked away into the void of a deserted city, she slowly pushed herself into a sitting position. She didn't bother to turn around, but she could hear his breathing. She didn't care why he was there, or if he stayed, or even that he'd seen her at her worst. All she was aware of at that moment was the blood that oozed from her knuckles and stained her clothes.
She stared at her hands in disbelief. She didn't even remember punching the ground. It is such a vulgar move, something she would have expected Ed to do when he was frustrated. But then again, she was rougher that she cared to admit. She watched as the blood ran down her hands and into her lap. Winry was, for the first time in her life, broken. Something in her was now shattered and she knew that nothing in the world could ever fix her.
"Equivalent Trade..." she bitterly spat as she watched the pain that she felt materialized on her body. "What a load of crap."
It wasn't until that moment that the infamous flame alchemist felt any affinity towards the young, broken girl sitting in the street. But with that one moment, he was irreversibly linked to her; because she shared his contempt for the blasphemous skill of alchemy. The law of equivalent trade that he had based his entire life on was in fact a load of crap. He looked down at her bleeding hands and broken heart and felt compelled to ease her pain.
It was at that moment that she turned to him, eyes still full of un-cried tears and spoke to him. "What did I get, what was my trade? I've lost almost everyone I've ever loved, where is my equivalent trade? Where is my happy ending?"
Roy Mustang took a step forward, hesitantly, and tried to keep his last remaining eye clear of the stinging, hazy sensation that accompanies very un-mainly tears. But to his dismay, the girl at his feet was beginning to blur because she finally said what had been in his heart for years. He had taken so much, he was part of the reason that this girl was laying broken in the street. He had taken countless lives, and seen so many others split apart because of him. He had taken other men's women, and all the while pretended to ignore the love that Riza Hawkeye held for him. Where was his equal trade, where was the horrible fate that should have been waiting for him around ever corner? He had been waiting for the day when someone would take his life in return. But that day never came.
When he moved to the country, he knew that Riza wouldn't follow him anymore. Despite the slight reprieve in his alchemy abstinence when he once again fought by her side, he knew that it was only temporary. When the battle was over and the snowy village called him home – she couldn't go with him. She had completed her duty to protect him. And he honestly wished her happiness with the man he had taken so many women from. Armstrong was the one who told him of Havoc and Riza's impending nuptials. It seemed fitting that Havoc get the one girl that he never sullied.
So now it was the solitude of his country cottage that kept him moving each day. It was the constant wait for the end that made him not pull the trigger. Well, the wait, and his own cowardly fear. He had killed without question in Ishabal, and yet he still wasn't able to pull the trigger on the one life that deserved to be taken. His own.
But in the midst of his own thought he found his way to the street next to the young girl he helped to break. He looked at her and saw the embodiment of all his sins. He was the man who took away this girl's parents and then helped to recruit the man she loved. He had stolen her last remaining chance at happiness.
"I took it." He whispered quietly to the frozen air by her side. He was faintly aware of her warm arm brushing against his uniform but the thought that he had taken her joy ripped the air from his lungs and filled his heart with fears and self hate that even he hadn't achieved yet.
"What?" she asked from his left, soggy face upturned in fearful apprehension. For a moment he wasn't sure what happened. He hadn't thought he spoke out loud. But her painful voice told him everything he needed to know.
He closed his remaining eye, trying to keep his own tears at bay while he confessed his evil sins to her. "You asked where your happy ending went." He paused and took in a long, ragged breath. "I took it. I am the reason that you are alone and heartbroken. I took your…" his words caught in his throat as he tried to speak. "… I'm the reason you are an orphan. I'm the reason Ed became a Nationally Certified Alchemist. I couldn't stop him from leaving. I didn't even try…" it was then that the tears began to fall. The thought of Hughes' family, Ed and Al leaving; the memory of Ed detaching the plane wing while he drifted farther away, and all he could do was help Al jump across. "I helped Al leave… I helped him…"
So it was there, on that street, in the presence of that girl he had broken that his own heart split into pieces. He hadn't let himself grieve for the loss of the boys who he had come to love yet. But he couldn't hide it anymore. Watching Ed and Al fly off to the gate that he could never possibly survive was one of the hardest things he ever did. "I wanted to stop them, I wanted to bring them back!" he screamed into his palms.
He was lost in the void of tears, regret and hatred when a warm, small hand grasped his from in front of his face and brought in down. He slowly opened his eye to see blue eyes and blond hair giving him an equally shattered look. He looked down at his own hand wrapped in her bloody ones, resting in her lap.
"Roy," she tilted her head to the side and examined his stone features. It was as if she was gauging what to say next or maybe she was just adjusting to the idea of saying his name without malice. Because the truth was, that no matter how many times she tried to forgive him in the past, tried to see the good in him, what Hughes died for, what Riza tried to protect; every time she said his name it came out laced with contempt. But this time was different, this time she looked right into his mournful, angry eyes and felt a swell of companionship and pity for him. "…you didn't take my happy ending. Ed was just doing what he thought was right, like he always does. You couldn't have stopped him, or Al. They're all grown up now, and… and…" her own tears threatened to spill out as she tried to comfort the man that had just confessed to ruining her life. "… Ed would have done alchemy regardless of your visit. You kept him safe all those years, you looked after him when I couldn't." she finished slowly and honestly.
His eyes slinked to the left and right, trying desperately to not have to look her in the eyes. So she gently lifted her hand to his chin. She felt the slight stubble of a day's long train ride from his new home into the city, and the cold of being without his fire for two years more. She pulled his face until he had no choice but to look her in the eye. "I know why you are here today," she spoke quietly and full of all the truth that she could hold. "... I know your pain, and your guilt. And I am the only person in the world who can say this to you." She paused and let him soak in what she had said. "Listen carefully, because I'm only going to say this once." She stopped once more before she finally gave him what he deserved. "Roy Mustang, you are forgiven." Her gentle voice slowly said each word to his widening eye.
With that one gesture, he was finally free of all the pain he felt when he looked at her. He could feel all the pent up self-hatred beginning to ebb away. She soothed away all his guilt and shame. But her faith in him sent his last remaining shred of self control tumbling over the edge into misery. He collapsed into her arms and cried like a child who lost his parents and cried harder at the thought of the irony of that analogy. His ungloved hands grasped the thin fabric of her dress and balled it into fists.
"How can you forgive me?" he sobbed into her chest as she shifted her position of let him be completely enveloped in her arms. She didn't respond, but slowly rubbed his back with bloody hands and whispered soft words of encouraging forgiveness into his ear. She ran her fingers through his hair and let him cry because she knew that he had not been able to, and probably wouldn't allow himself to do it again.
"You are a good man, Roy." She whispered over and over again into the air that surrounded them in their combined solitude. And after a while of sitting there like that, he finally pried himself from her arms and looked her in the eyes, willingly, for the first time in his life. "I know why you really came to Rezembool all those years ago. You have been forgiven from that day by the river when you were chasing Ed and Al." she gave him a small, half smile. It was a kind gesture, but he could tell that it didn't reach her eyes.
Still vulnerable and self-conscience, he began to stand. He winced slightly as he rested his weight on his leg. Even after four years, it still hurt some times. Winry followed his example and stood next to him and looked to the roof of the cavern. It was still hard to believe that they were gone for good. But in her misery, she was surprised to find that she didn't feel quite as lonely anymore.
She slid her arm around his as they started to make their way toward the exit. She felt like she was standing at the edge of something very important, but she hadn't quite reached it yet. She didn't say a word as he carefully led her from the abandoned city under the city and made their way back to the streets of Central. She absentmindedly twirled her fingers in the rough fabric of his police uniform as they walked in silence through the city.
The second half of this is located on my livejournal page (because it's lemony).
rosweldrmr. livejournal. com / 694.html
There is a link on my profile if you want.