Circles Be
S J Smith
Summary: She walks in circles
Characters: Winry Rockbell, Rezembool, Rush Valley
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: No no, never never, uh uh uh.
A.N.: Thanks to D. M. Evans for looking this over.
A.N.2: A very, very belated birthday gift for Leni. :D
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She walks in circles.
When she was a little girl, the boundaries were small: a little town, the houses of her friends, the fields and woods where they all played, the school they attended. She thought the whole world was contained in that scape.
But Mom and Dad went away to the war. They had to, people needed them, more people than just her. And then they died, far away, in a land like none she'd ever known. It wasn't right but they were gone.
Her friends drew the best circles, drawing them with chalk or sticks in the dirt or sometimes fingers in dust. Beautiful, perfect circles, with curlicues and arcs and lines and letters that she couldn't understand.
And if she had, maybe she'd have known what they were trying to do and maybe, maybe been able to stop it, keep her friends from hurting themselves the way they did. Now, she tries with her grandmother to save the one boy's life, trying not to see the irregular circles – blood drops – on the surgery room floor.
She drilled holes in metal parts, places rivets and screws. She designed wiring to replace nerves, hydraulics in place of muscles, metal for bones. It seemed an endless cycle – draft, sculpt, create and, in context to the particular friend, rebuild and replace. She found she could do this anywhere – her small, sleepy village or the bustle of a boom town.
Rush Valley was an exciting place to live for an automail mechanic but she found herself missing the lush grass of the Rezembool hillsides, dotted with clouds of sheep; that familiar, lonesome cry from the railway whistle; the barking of her dog; the smell of her grandmother's pipe. Two brothers she encircled in her arms.
Dreams come to her sometimes, dreams of golden eyes like the sun, dreams of a spark of yellow hair. No more armor, no more circles of blood. No more screws or rivets.
And those circles will be broken.
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