Color Theorem
Summary:For someone who managed to become a State Alchemist at the age of 12, Ed sure was dense. A color collection for Fullmetal Alchemists golden couple, Ed and Winry!
Author's Note: This shot is a mix from the anime and manga. Oh, and the Chimera part... I know I don't explain very well but it was necessary for the story; even if their meeting is sort of impossible due to the circumstances.
Disclaimer: If I owned Fullmetal Alchemist, Truth would be a narrator.
021: Silver
She breathed in, he breathed out.
He breathed out, she breathed in.
Her hands, always so careful and gentle, slowly brushed down his arm – his metal limb – and felt the rough scratches and dents within the automail.
Her lips formed a frown, informing him that she was not happy with the way he had been treating his arm.
He figures it's okay because at least it's in one piece this time.
"Honestly, Ed," she says, softly, grabbing another tool from her toolbox and adjusting a loose screw here and there. She knows she'll need to make another arm but for now she'll try to keep it from falling apart at the seams. "What the heck are you doing out there?"
The question sounds innocent and rhetoric, but Ed knows better.
It's one of her loaded questions. It's one of the questions he usually responds to with a shrug or a sheepish smile, ignoring the dark shade that passes through her eyes as she continues to fix whatever remains of his busted up automail.
"My duty," he responds instead, giving her more than she bargained for. This time there is no darkness in her eyes, none of the hurt he has to endure during his stay. Instead, there is surprise and another softer emotion that he is not accustomed to receiving.
"The military must be rough," she comments, placing the wrench back in it's proper place and taking out a rag instead. He notices that this rag – this clean, white, rag – is brand new. It is nothing like the old, dirty and torn, rags that she uses on her other clients.
He feels a swell of what feels like pride by this information but simultaneously he feels conflicted by this other, stronger, emotion that makes him want to—
Shuddup you perverted bastard! He yells at himself, feeling his cheeks burn.
"Yeah, it's no walk in the park," he says, looking far beyond her.
She meets his gaze but is not surprised to see that his mind lingers elsewhere. Where, she does not know, but as she wipes the towel across his automail to get rid of excess grease, she can't help but to think that even though they don't confide with her their most intimate secrets like before, they at least have the decency to visit her; even if it's only to repair his beaten automail limbs.
"Al tells me that you've made a lot of friends," she smiles, "that's good. You were never the social one in our group."
There is an awkward silence, one that seemingly cannot be cured, before he speaks.
"Yeah, we have. We've met a lot of great people," he continues to look ahead. Then he closes his eyes and lets her start to work on his leg, which has the most damage from what she can see. At least his arm is in one piece and more-or-less functional. There is scratches and she could see bits of metal ripped clean off. She decides to start on his leg first instead of his arm. The top sheet is completely mangled and it seems that he uses his leg more for combat than his arm.
This information unsettles her because the leg is vital to his survival rather than his arm. At least he could escape if his arm broke down, but if his leg did...?
She picks up a few screwdrivers and starts the deconstruction process.
She can't help but to smile at the irony.
Automail engineering is it's own type of alchemy.
"Wow, your leg is really beat up this time," she laughs hollowly, sliding a finger down the metal. "Geez, Ed, you really can't stay out of trouble, can you?"
"I guess I can't, huh?"
She gives a strait smile and traces her fingers along a rather brutal slash down his upper thigh. She sees that the cut even manages to reach his skin and something gives a lurch inside. The skin around his ports is stretched out and ugly, a bitter reminder of the choice he made when he was a child, but now there is a new scar adorning his limb – the scar from the knife cut he had gotten from who-know's-where.
"What happened?" she asks softly, touching the still-healing cut lightly.
Ed still has not opened his eyes.
"Fight."
She waits for more information but nothing comes. And why is she so disappointed? Edward and Alphonse never tell her anything of where they have been, who they have fought, or what they have accomplished aside from the obvious. She thinks that perhaps she should demand this information or threaten it out of Alphonse or even go to the main source: Edward.
But she can't do that and she knows it.
It would be intruding and she doesn't want to anger Ed. She knows that wherever he has gone, he has met other people and she has no doubt in her mind that if she were to say something uncalled for, be too clingy or too rash, he would be able to find a new mechanic; easy. Someone better than she who can do a better job than what she is doing right now.
Because she has made her fair share of mistakes. She has forgotten to bolt in bolts, screw in screws. She remembers that day, long ago, when she picked up a stray screw and realized with horror that it was from Ed's automail and she had forgotten to screw it in. Sure, Ed had never found out, but when she had arrived to the hospital to find Ed in a hospital bed and bandaged, she had felt a blast of terror shoot through her.
What if it had been worse?
Somehow, this thought is too pressuring as she struggles to keep her concentration. Suddenly, the bolt she is trying to unscrew is so difficult to twist and the screwdriver is too hard to manipulate. She has done this a thousand times over, she had not injured herself with any tool since she was six, yet as she adds more pressure something happens.
She freezes as the screwdriver veers off the bolt and adds a new scratch in his leg.
Ed's eyes snap open. "What the—? What happened, Winry! Are you alright?" He sits up and glances at the scrape in his leg but dismisses it when his eyes catch red.
Winry doesn't know what happened either but if the clean cut over her knuckles says anything, then she is content with that.
"Winry, are you ok—"
"I'm fine." She stands up and places the towel aside. She is quick to head to the door, making sure that her face is away from the boy sitting diligently on the chair. "Its just a scratch – I'll be right back. Don't move or else!" She adds for extra measure, trying to inject as much of her usual bossiness so he doesn't notice anything.
He doesn't say anything but she's out the door before he can, anyways. She makes the bee-line for the bathroom and quickly opens the tap and lets the water wash over the cut. There is a lot of blood. The cut is not as shallow as she had thought it was. It's deep and gruesome and Winry can't help but to think he has suffered greater wounds than this.
She clenches her fist, pooling blood in her palm.
"Damn it," she whispers shakily. She swallows and breaths.
In. Out.
Out. In.
The blood hasn't stopped. Its gotten worse and Winry could see that she has severed the delicate web between her forefinger and her middle finger. She curses once more and grabs a roll of toilet paper from the cabinet below, letting the paper roll down as she hastily wraps her hand around it. The red bleeds through the paper and, no matter how much she wraps, it doesn't stop.
She sits on the toilet seat and presses her uninjured hand over her eyes. This is no time to be a baby, she scolds herself. She needs to repair Edward's automail in three days so he could continue his mission. She needs to make a few adjustments to the current blue-prints and she will get nowhere by crying.
She knows this but can't help the stinging in her eyes.
Oh, no, she groans. Stop it, Winry! Ed needs his automail fixed now! Damn it, why are you screwing up so much today? What the hells wrong with you? Winry throws the roll of paper to the far wall and slams her foot against the tub, making the curtain wobble and tangle against her foot. She feels angry and sad; a bad combination. She slams her foot against the tub again and again and again until her foot's throbbing and the pain in her hand becomes ignorable.
The body can only handle one pain source, she reasons. At least my hand doesn't hurt anymore.
With one last vicious kick at the tub, she stands up and discards the bloody toilet paper into the trash bin. There is a shuffling behind her but she pays no attention to it. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out the rag she uses on her other clients and thinks of the white one she uses specifically for Ed.
She smiles bitterly. He doesn't even care about his automail! I stay up about four nights every week thinking up of new ways to improve his automail to keep him alive and he doesn't even care.
She reaches up to press the heel of her hand into her temple, feeling a headache start to form.
He doesn't even fucking care!
She's about to wrap her hand in the dirty rag, probably not the smartest idea with the oil and grime smeared on it, when another hand stops her. A metal hand.
She freezes for the second time that day as he takes the dirty rag from her hand and replaces it with a new one, a cleaner one, and starts to professionally wrap it.
She doesn't turn to see who it is.
She doesn't need to.
"Just a scratch my ass," she hears him snort. "That's a pretty deep wound and you're gonna' wrap it with that? I thought you were a some great doctor, Win." He adds with a wobbly smile, tightening the knot.
As she stares at her nicely wrapped hand, something pierces her heart.
How does he know how to medically wrap a wound?
He probably needs to, a nasty voice tells her, because he's always out there risking his life. Getting hurt. Getting almost killed.
She can't take it.
She weakly steps back and falls atop the toilet seat once more, dropping her head into her hands.
("Yeah, he got impaled through the back by a beam. He was pretty beat up and we was sure he was gonna' die, ya know? But he did some weird alchemy; something about using his life energy to heal himself. 'Told us to pull it out so we did. It looked pretty nasty – glad you weren't there to see it!")
Those two experiments, the chimeras, had told her after everything had blown over. She was in the hands of that murderer Scar when it happened, completely oblivious to the danger he had been in; laughing with Mei, chatting with Al; being oblivious to his dire situation even if she felt a bad feeling twist inside her gut.
("... sure he was gonna die...")
She ran fingers through her hair.
("... got impaled through the back...")
He was so close. So, so, so very close.
("... use his life energy to heal himself...")
He could have died. What if he couldn't do it? What if he had failed? Would he still be here or would he be in that other place she had heard he and Al talk about when they thought she was asleep? That place beyond the Gate?
She feels him step closer to her, his uneven steps loud in the small bathroom. He has put his hand over her shoulder and the other on her head, easing the fingers that were slowly starting to dig into her skull.
"Winry, stop it," he frowns, voice uneasy, "don't be stupid. You're hurting yourself. Tell me what's wrong and maybe I can—"
She snaps.
"YOU CAN WHAT?" She raises her head and sends him an icy look, one that leaves him stunned because even though they had gotten into fights before, she had never shown true anger. "You can fucking what, huh? You're back there acting like you're the king of this whole damn place and I'm here trying to keep you ALIVE!" she snarls, "You act like your don't care! You have no idea how important your automail is to your survival, Edward! One screw up could mean your death and you don't mother fucking care!" She stands up and sneers. "You strut in here with a broken limb and I fix it. I always fix it. I spend hours trying to make your limbs better and stronger so it doesn't break. So that when you use that accursed alchemy of yours, it won't fall apart and you won't DIE! So you can continue this quest of yours and restore Al's body back! So you can finally live a normal life!"
She suddenly laughs. It's a harsh laugh, one with suffering and mad amusement. "But that's alright, isn't it? If you die, I mean. Because all you need to do is create that stone of yours and everything is just good and dandy." She stops somewhere and it's not a laugh anymore it's a hiccup. She stops and looks at Ed for the first time.
He's pale. His eyes are wide and they look anguished and ashamed. She looks away and whispers, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" she says louder. "I-I just can't lose you." She adds brokenly, scrubbing her eyes off. "I can't lose you, too." And she knows that he knows who she is talking about. "I-I can't. I don't know what I would do if I lost you and Al..." She could feel warmth spill down her cheeks. Then she's crying and she couldn't feel weaker and stupider than ever.
Edward is still shocked, still staring wide-eyed, and hasn't a clue what to do. The confession wracks his sense of being; makes him realize just how much he's truly hurt her with his silence and recklessness. It makes him guiltier knowing that he still hurt her despite trying to protect her.
He does something though. He does something because he needs to do something since he doesn't know what he could do to atone for this hurt he unintentionally inflicted upon her. He reaches out quickly and grabs her wrist and pulls her to him before he can think himself out of it. She doesn't resist as she stands up and slams into his chest. She can feel him awkwardly pat her shoulder before gaining confidence and wrapping an arm around her.
"You won't lose me," he says, after breathing out sharply. "I won't die, Winry. Have a little faith in me, will you?"
"...You almost died," she whispers, squeezing him. "You-you got impaled by a beam that time... with Kimblee.. "
She feels him freeze and grip her tighter.
"... I'm sorry." He's guilty.
"I'm sorry too." She's ashamed.
Because she knows that she needs to trust in him more even if he leaves her in the dark half the time. She supposes there are things he would want to keep her shielded from. She thinks back to Brigg's and how they used her as a hostage. She knows that its not because does not want to tell her but because he can't tell her, even if waiting drives her up the wall in despair for the unknown. She knows if he tells her it would mean risking her life and she gets it but it still doesn't stop the betrayal she feels. She knows if he tells her of their dangerous encounters it would mean involving her and she knows that if she got into trouble Edward wouldn't know how to live with the added grief and guilt.
He's been selfless all along and she has been selfish in wanting to be apart of their little entourage when she knows she can't because of the risks that would impose. So she needs to cooperate. She needs to help him out in the one way she can: his automail.
Was this was Mae Hughes had meant?
("Men display things in action instead of words. If it's something tough, they don't want to let the other feel the same way. And they don't want someone else to worry. That's why they don't tell you.")
She squeezes him tightly, sucking back all the tears, and nods to herself. Edward is just protecting her, even if it hurts her in the process. She understands, as the pain flushes to a lighter emotion; something close to serenity but not exactly.
"You promised me you would only cry tears of happiness," Ed accuses softly.
She smiles and looks up and soon she is smiling genuinely. "Who says these are tears of sadness?"
Ed blinks slowly. "Wh-what? You mean you weren't having a mental breakdown? You mean you just swore like granny Pinako because you were happy!" He peels himself off her and crosses his arms in irritation at her teasing smile. "Humph. Well, that was pointless. Worrying me like that.." But there is relief in his eyes.
"I did breakdown," she nods and his brows furrow in concern. "But, just promise me." She lifts her pinky for old times sake and smiles. "Promise me, whatever happens... you'll come back. No matter what."
"Crap, Winry..." he scratches the back of his head. "You sure you're alright? Really, really sure?" She nods and he sighs, undertoning: "this is so stupid..." but adding on a louder note: "I swear I'll come back. No matter what."
Their pinkies intertwine.
That's all it takes to ease the worry she'd been harboring all these months.