Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is still not mine. I'm just making it dance.
A/N: Last chapter hoooooo! I hope I do Winry justice in this. I've got a fairly solid idea of what she's like now but...eh, let me know what you think.
Chapter 4: The Engineer, Equivalency and the End: Act 1
He was not entirely surprised when he traced the sounds of enthusiastic maintenance back to their source. A couple of weeks had been more than enough to satisfy him that his travelling companion was a machine-obsessed workaholic. Not that he'd had any great doubts about that to begin with, but it was always nice to be sure about such things.
Slipping into the barn through the half-open doors, he took a long, calculating look at the semi-dismantled tractor and the two, overall-covered legs sticking out from under it. Then, shaking his head, he made his way around to the other side, squatted down and peered under.
"You know, most auto-mail mechanics stop at fixing their patients' limbs."
An upside-down face stared back at him blankly.
"I mean," he went on, "you keep going round souping-up every bit of farm machinery you meet, people are going to start expecting the rest of us to be all-purpose fix-everythings as well. And I work hard enough as it is, thank you very much."
Blue eyes rolled mockingly.
"This isn't work, this is fun!"
He sighed and brushed a strand of red hair across his forehead.
"For you, Rockbell, for you. The rest of us have better things to do with our time off."
The girl under the tractor returned her attention to the bolts she had been undoing.
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
He shrugged.
"Like drinking. Dancing. Spending time not smelling like an oily rag."
"Sounds boring!" she retorted cheerfully, liberating a large chunk of the engine and carefully easing it out into the open.
Standing up, he leaned over the bonnet.
"So you wouldn't be interested in coming to the party in the village inn this evening then? You know, the one to celebrate there being a village inn again? Which is, you know, handy, since if we'd arrived a couple of days ago, we'd have had nowhere to stay…"
She already had the whatever-it-was in half a dozen pieces. Tilting her head back, she looked up at him, feigning wide-eyed innocence beautifully.
"Why, Jon Dodds…are you asking me out to a dance?"
"Just to save you from yourself, Rockbell, just to save you from yourself."
Laughing, she tossed him a spanner.
"Then get the radiator off this wreck. I promised I'd have it cleaned up and working by tomorrow."
"Oh joy." Jon grimaced. "You and your promises. Now we'll both turn up looking like grease monkeys."
"Looking just like the grease monkeys we are, you mean?"
"Don't you bring common sense into this!"
Grumbling melodramatically, which made her laugh even louder, he knelt and began to unfasten the bolts that held the radiator on.
Dancing had never been one of Winry's strong suits. In fact, she couldn't remember going to a proper dance with music and everything since she was ten. Drinking was another matter. As a young apprentice mechanic in Rush Valley, it went without saying that she had had considerable practice at it. Being one of the few young female apprentices altered things a bit, of course: most of what she drank, she didn't have to pay for. Paninya frequently accused her of being shamelessly mercenary about wiling alcohol out of impressionable young men, to which she retorted that if they were always trying to wile it into her, they only had themselves to blame. She didn't do anything to them they didn't try to do to her. Well, nearly. A string of spectacular bruises and minor concussions (none of them her own) might have been brought up as evidence of some inequality in the equation, but surely that just proved she knew how to take care of herself.
But drinks after work were one thing. An actual party, where you were expected to have fun and dress up nice and not spend the whole evening talking about the torque/stress ratio of ginglymus motors…that she was out of practice at. As far as she could remember, the last party she'd been to had been Elysia Hughes' last birthday and that hardly counted, since she had known most of the people there. This time, there would only be Doddie and a handful of grateful patients among crowds of strangers.
Which was fine. They were Dominic's patients really, of course – and she was never going to get over how many he had scattered throughout the country – but check-ups had earned her a lot of praise, not to mention the title of 'the prettier one.' And Doddie was…Doddie. He'd apprenticed with that strange Mr Garfiel about half a year before she'd come to work in Rush Valley full time and he'd been one of the people who'd shown her the ropes of the town outside the workshop. He existed in a state of perpetual mock-exasperation (although when it came to Mr Garfiel, it wasn't so mock-) directed at pretty much everything and could make moaning about the day's workload very, very funny. They met every now and again in the Rush Valley cafés, which opened early to get the mechanics their morning caffeine fix as soon as possible, and when he'd learnt that she was going back East to help out with her Grandma's clinic, he'd offered to accompany her some of the way. His family lived in East City and he was going back to make sure they were all right after the earthquakes. Predictably, their respective employers had taken advantage of the situation and gifted them with long lists of check-ups they could conduct along the way, most of which would have meant serious detours if the general havoc wreaked upon the railways hadn't made those detours the only possible route.
It had been nice, really, to have someone to talk to on the journey. She'd thought about inviting Paninya along with her, but Dominic's work-load had put pay to that. She hadn't seemed too disheartened about being stuck running errands for the foreseeable future, especially when Winry told her about Doddie's offer. In fact, she'd been positively enthusiastic about the news, nudging and winking as if her life depended on it. She'd be terribly disappointed when nothing happened, Winry thought as she quickly washed her arms down in the little water-closet next to her room at the inn. Doddie had been his usual garrulous self all the way from Rush Valley and there just being the two of them didn't seem to have made any difference to how he acted around her. Not that she'd expected it to. She looked at herself briefly in the scrap of mirror above the basin. Straw-coloured hair roughly brushed into some semblance of neatness and held out of her eyes with a grubby bandana. Dark bags under said eyes caused by late nights, early starts and too many uncomfortable means of transport. The faintest hint of the axel grease that had been painted in two neat smears down her left cheek. Yeah, exactly the kind of look that made her worry about unwanted attention from boys.
She made one last attempt to scrub the mark off her cheek, gave up and tossed the flannel onto the edge of the basin. Throwing a shirt on over the top she usually wore while working, she headed for the door, the stairs and the sounds of the party.
Mustang smothered a yawn as he waited for the doctor to dig through the file on his desk. It wasn't particularly late but, as Hawkeye was repeatedly pointing out, he needed a decent night's sleep soon or he would collapse. He had been wounded, repeatedly, and had not slept in a proper bed for several days. His ability to function well solely on the back of many mugs of coffee was starting to wear out.
But next to a certain blonde inconvenience, he didn't really feel justified in complaining.
"Mr Elric is a remarkably lucky young man," the doctor said at last, tugging thoughtfully on his moustache, "Remarkably lucky indeed."
"I'm sure that is not the word he would use," Mustang replied, leaning an arm on the desk, "But he's going to live then?"
"Oh, he'll certainly live. He should never have come so far in that state, of course, but we managed to catch the infection just in time. Not the easiest case for a newly recovered medical alchemist but Ransome did a first rate job. Still…"
Mustang arched an eyebrow at the word.
"I take it this isn't going to be an entirely optimistic prognosis?"
"Frankly, General, no."
The doctor pressed the papers flat and cleared his throat. He did not look at Mustang as he spoke.
"Mr Elric has, obviously, suffered severe physical trauma. Most of the injuries are relatively minor in themselves but together, they've taken their toll. Major exertion in the near future is completely out of the question. But…the auto-mail. Whatever destroyed the prostheses put an incredible amount of stress on the connection ports. As you've seen, they were virtually disintegrated and we had to remove most of the remaining external components ourselves, to prevent further damage. But it's the sub-dermal structure that really worries me…the connections to his skeleton have been severely compromised – and, for all the evident skill in their construction, they must have been installed in a hurry. And there's evidence of some very primitive components at the core which frankly has me baffled…" He trailed off and cleared his throat again. "My point is, if those ports are not completely removed and replaced from the ground up, I cannot guarantee that infection – serious infection – will not reoccur. As you know, General," he added, looking up, "carrying around metal fragments inside you is a recipe for disaster."
"So we need to get him an auto-mail mechanic as soon as possible," Mustang concluded, drumming his fingers.
"Not just any mechanic, General." The doctor waved at their surroundings. "An operation like this will take a great deal of skill and, frankly, I don't know of anyone in Central with that degree of expertise. Certainly there's no one currently on my staff who could do the job. And we certainly don't have anything like the necessary facilities."
Rubbing his chin, Mustang leant back in his chair.
"I see. Is it safe to move him?"
"If great care is taken, I believe so," the doctor replied cautiously, "But the main risk is aggravation of the remains of the ports. Any jolt could be extremely damaging."
"Hm." Mustang's chair scraped backwards as he stood. "Thank you for your time, doctor. It seems I have a lot to get organised."
"My pleasure," the other man said, standing as well, "I'll keep you appraised of the young man's condition."
Thanking him, Mustang stepped out of the pokey little office and strode away along the corridor. Hawkeye fell into step beside him soundlessly.
"What were the last reports of Miss Rockbell?" he asked.
"She left Rush Valley five days ago," the major told him, without needing to consult the folder she was carrying, "We have a list of places she was supposed to be visiting but with such a good head-start, she will probably have reached Risenbool before we can catch up to her."
'We,' of course, meant the inner circle of people they could trust. A full military alert would probably have caught her in no time flat, national disaster or no national disaster. But that was a little more extreme than Mustang was willing to risk just yet.
"Then since we can't bring Rhazes to the mole-hill, we'll have to take the mole-hill to Rhazes."
Hawkeye heaved her eyes skyward at his Edward-lack-of-height-thereof-mocking joke.
"I take it he can be moved then, sir?"
"Yes. Now we just have to organise some sort of slow train to get him there without rattling him too…much…"
He stopped as a thought struck him.
"Major…are the Armstrong family in residence at the moment?"
"I believe so, sir. Their manor escaped serious damage during the earthquakes. Architectural stability passed down through the generations, I believe."
Mustang rubbed his hands together.
"Excellent. Time to make a heartfelt plea on behalf of an old friend of their son's."
"Colonel Armstrong is still in Lior," Hawkeye pointed out.
"And his big sister is still in the North," Mustang countered, "which gives me at least half a chance of pulling this off. Get me a car, please, major. I have a house-call to make."
It took Winry a little time to reach the corner table Doddie had appropriated. First, she had to ask the barkeeper where her friend was sitting. Then a farmer, whose leg had been locked solid until she had repaired it, scoped her up into a brief but energetic polka, all too happy to be able to move freely again. Parting from him as the band started up on another tune, she bumped into his wife who embraced her warmly and promised to have some scones for her in the morning.
She sat down next to Doddie with a relieved sigh.
"And now you have to get up again to buy me a drink," he told her with a grin.
"And why would I want to do that?"
"Because I got oil all over me while serving as your slave all afternoon."
She punched him on the shoulder.
"Half an hour and you barely got your fingers dirty."
He flopped back across the padded bench with an expressive gesture of wounded pride.
"You're heartless Rockbell, heartless."
"Right, so go get me a drink or I'm stealing yours."
With more theatrical muttering, he did as he was told, bringing her a glass of the local ale. She sipped at it experimentally and found that it wasn't too bad at all.
"Nice," she commented.
"I thought so." Doddie wriggled back into his seat. "You ever thought about working up north?"
"You said you were trying to save me from myself. Is talking about work really going to help that?"
"This is you, Rockbell. You have a limited repertoire of conversation."
"Hey!"
"You saying it's not true?"
"I'm saying you're a tactless goon," she retorted, cradling her glass.
"True. But if I'm going to skilfully ease you onto broader subjects, I need an opening. Got to get that out of the way or we'll end up sitting in this corner all night talking about things no one else can understand."
"I can hold a decent conversation most of the time!"
"Most of the time, you're in Rush Valley."
She snorted and sipped at the ale.
"Ok. No, I haven't. I've never been further north than Central, so I've never thought about it much."
"So where have you thought about?"
"I'm not sure…Rush Valley, obviously, but it's too…dusty, really. I miss fields and trees. Then there's Risenbool, obviously. Gramma won't be able to run the clinic forever…"
She frowned as she said that. It scared her to see the woman who had raised her getting slower and more tired every time she went home.
"Ah…" Doddie grinned. "Gonna be the next Pantheress of Risenbool, huh?"
"Oh!" Winry groaned and blushed. "Wish I'd never found out about that!"
"I'm sure it's meant to be a compliment…"
"Pft!" The sound summed up her thoughts on that. "Yeah, well…if I did take over there, I'd need another practice somewhere – so I could get to see more clients, get to do as many different types of operations as I could. Risenbool's too out in the sticks to get a lot of variety."
"Oh, yeah," Doddie murmured, tapping his nose, "The Rockbell Master Plan."
"I just want to be the best auto-mail mechanic I can be," she protested, "and for that, I need to see as many cases as I can."
"Yeah, but two practices? That's ambitious. You couldn't do it alone. Need a partner."
Shrugging, she took a swig of ale.
"I haven't thought it through that far yet. I want to learn all I can with Mr Dominic and there's still a lot more of that."
"Don't doubt it," he said round his own glass, "Man's a genius."
"So, d'you have any plans?"
He took his turn to shrug.
"Same at the moment provided I don't brutally murder Garfiel first. Beyond that…I don't know. East's a hole with a barracks in the middle. Rush Valley's a hole full of sand and other mechanics. I kind of wanted to try Central but then I thought about, you know, the rent and the fact that it keeps disappearing down a hole…"
"You don't want to live in a hole," she summarised.
"Not really."
"It's the start of a plan, I guess."
"S'what I thought," Doddie agreed amiably, lifting his drink in a toast, "Here's to starting plans. May they be many and fruitful."
They chinked and drank.
"Know anything about art. Rockbell?" he asked after listening to the band for a moment or two, "Though if the phrase 'no, but I know what I like' passes your lips, I will have to kill you."
"Is this what you call 'skilfully easing me onto broader subjects'?" she wondered.
"Just answer the question."
"No. Nothing," Winry admitted, "You do?"
"Kinda hard not to when your dad runs the biggest gallery in East City."
She blinked.
"He does?"
Doddie had never seemed as if he came from a particularly well off family. In fact, she'd always had the impression that he was a bit hard up.
"Runs, mind you." He waved dismissively at the air. "Some big time banker owns the place, dad's just the curator and…oh damn."
She looked at him as he broke off, frowning quizzically.
"What?"
"Oh…" He coloured and avoided her eye. "Nothing."
Winry kicked him under the table.
"Ow! Ok, not nothing. I just remembered…"
"Remembered what…?"
She readied her foot again. Doddie glanced up and down, very obviously checking for nearby blunt objects.
"Something Paninya told me before we left…um…" He hesitated again, weighing up the possible consequences. "She gave me a list of topics to avoid if I didn't want my block knocked off."
"Did she…?" Winry made a note to misplace one of her friend's feet the next time she did her maintenance. "What topics?"
"I don't really want to, you know – ow – you wouldn't want to – ow – since you're about to twist my arm, she told me not to talk about family, the military or alchemy, in that order. I…" He paused once more, concern flitting across his narrow features. "Actually, I got the feeling it was less about me not getting my skull bashed in and more about not upsetting you. Which is obviously something I wasn't planning on doing either –"
"It's ok," she told him, putting a hand reassuringly on his forearm, "I believe you. Paninya's…a bit…overprotective sometimes. Too many nights with me bawling on her shoulder. I'm not going to break down because you're talking about your dad."
"Oh. That's good. Um."
Doddie looked down at the calloused fingers resting on his right wrist. Winry followed his gaze and quickly took her hand away. They toyed with their drinks in silence for a while after that, neither quite looking at the other.
"Oh, for God's sake." Clapping his glass on the table, Doddie stood up. "Come on, Rockbell. I'm not sitting here blushing all night."
"What?" she said, blankly.
"Dancing. You. Me. Music. Movement. Fun. Supposedly."
"I'm…not very good…err…"
"Neither am I. First one to twenty squashed toes buys the next round."
Winry looked from his hand, to the near-empty glass in hers, to his face with its mocking, laughing eyes. She put down the glass and took his hand.
"You're on."
The expression Mustang wore as he strode down the steps in front of the Armstrong mansion was that of an especially smug cat that had just swallowed a particularly succulent canary.
"They agreed then, sir?" Hawkeye inquired as he bounced into the car's backseat.
"Practically fell over themselves to do so," he told her, "Anything for a close friend of their son's and a hero of the people. The Armstrong's private coach is at our disposal and being shunted onto the east-bound tracks as we speak. Fullmetal will ride home on top of the best suspension money can buy."
"And…they've assured you they'll be discrete?"
"But of course. Didn't you know? Discretion is a trait that has been passed down the Armstrong family for generations!"
Hawkeye shifted the car into gear and headed for up the driveway.
"It's scary how well you do that, sir."
He smiled contentedly.
"I know. That's not the best part, however. Apparently they received a telegram this morning from Alex. It said that they were to get word to me that an old acquaintance had come through Lior and that he's heard all about that suit of antique armour we used to have standing around headquarters."
Hawkeye blinked and glanced at him in the rear-view mirror.
"Alphonse?"
"Who will no doubt be heading straight for home. Another day or two and we'll have the complete set."
"Apart from Edward's double."
She had to go and puncture his happy mood with that little pin, didn't she? He deflated and leant an arm on the windowsill, propping up his chin on his fist.
"Apart from Fullmetal's double," he echoed dejectedly.
They clambered up the stairs arm in arm, neither exactly drunk but both the wrong side of sober. The dancing had gone on past midnight, by which time the band were in their shirt-sleeves and Winry's feet felt worn out. Despite his protests to the contrary, Doddie could dance quite well. Or, rather, he didn't dance too badly. Certainly, she came out of it with less bruised toes than he did. Which had meant that she had been buying most of the drinks.
Doddie giggled as he missed his footing and nearly sent them both tumbling back downstairs, a proper and surprisingly high-pitched giggle. She prodded him in the ribs and he hiccupped, straightened as much as he could and hauled her up the last couple of steps. They tottered into the passage and came dramatically close to falling over in a heap before they righted themselves against the wall. Winry broke away from him and fumbled with the door to her room.
"The Pantheress of Risenbool, defeated by a doorknob!" Doddie hollered and he giggled again.
Glaring defiantly at him over her shoulder, she opened the door with a flourish.
"Victory is mine," she growled.
Harrumphing, she stepped inside and turned back to her companion. He had crossed the passage and was leaning round the doorframe, scrutinising the little room.
"S' bigger than mine," he opined, "You've got a bed that isn't a shelf in disguise."
She chuckled, looking at it herself. It wasn't as bad as some of the rooms she'd slept in but it wasn't anything to write home about.
"No, it's a bench trying to look grown up."
They both grinned broadly at the shared joke. Their grins faded. They avoided each other's gaze.
"Well, night-night, Rockbell." Doddie pulled away from the door, shoving his hands in his pockets. "See you in the morning."
He ambled off up the corridor, his gait placid and rolling. She watched him go and then slowly closed the door, putting her back to it. Confused thoughts about what she was going to tell Paninya flitted through her mind. Probably after she'd stolen the other girl's foot and had her undivided attention. Family, the military and alchemy, in that order. Poor Doddie. He didn't deserve a warning with all those heavy implications. Especially when it wasn't really necessary anymore. Of course she still cried sometimes about her parents. Of course she still disliked the military, in spite of all the friends she now had in it. And of course alchemy was a touchy subject. But she wasn't about to clobber someone just for mentioning them all. Especially if she liked them. Especially if they made her laugh and let her dance with them without too much protest.
Shaking herself, she crossed – well, stepped over – the floor between the door and the bed and began to get ready for bed. She felt happy and content, the glow of the ale suffusing everything with a slight swaying warmth.
The only sour note, aside from wanting to dismantle Paninya for being 'helpful', was that old hatred of seeing people's backs as they walked away.
