A/N: Wow. I don't normally do AlxWinry, but I think this turned out not-so-bad. Better than my EdxWinry fics, even.
Disclaimer: I don't own Full Metal Alchemist. I do, however, own a gold necklace. But you can't have that.
Summary: Winry muses on the different properties of silver and gold. Vaguely AlxWinry.
"It is forbidden in alchemy to transmute gold," Al had once told her.
"Why?"
Al shrugged. "Because everyone would want to, I guess. So the grownups banned it out of spi – no, I think they just didn't want everyone getting rich at once. Maybe it would confuse people."
It hadn't made sense to Winry then, why everyone would want gold, though she understood better the allure of money now. Gold was flashy and beautiful and rare, but it was impractical. Every scathe and scratch showed on a work of gold, unless it was melted and reshaped. The more intricate a work of gold, the less time it lasted. If she'd had her way, it would be silver that was the most valuable, not gold. Silver didn't have gold's allure, its warmth, but it carried a softer kind of beauty, more demure, and in a way, more beautiful. A hidden beauty, like the hard glint that lurked beneath its reflective surfaces. Silver could be placid or turbulent or deceptive, and it could put itself away completely, unlike gold, which always pushed its own colors into the light. Maybe that was why men loved gold. It was more visible.
She loved silver because her automails were silver. The were actually steel alloy, but sometimes when she moved them in the candlelight, testing them in the night, they could have been silver and not steel alloy. For the wires, too, she used silver. It was lighter than gold. Less dense. Gold was heavy and somewhat wild. It required careful precision and temperature control to work with, unlike silver, which could be easily handled and cooled according to a formula. And it was silver that made gold strong. Both were soft metals by themselves, but together they formed an alloy that was at once rarer and stronger 1 than the common steel she used for her automails.
Gold was the sun's element. It exposed and lusted and burned without mercy. Men were forever trying to grasp it and it was forever blinding them as they quested. The moon was more tempered in its judgment, but still meted out cool justice with an iron hand, and silver was the moon's element. Silver was more romantic, then, because what was romantic about harsh, revealing light? Silver was hidden, mysterious, tantalizing.
Gold might be the ultimate, the unattainable, but that was fine by Winry. She would take silver any day.
1 I'm actually not sure about this. I remember my chemistry teacher saying that gold/silver alloy was pretty strong, but I don't really remember how strong in relation to steel.
Give me a digital dessert just to let me know you've read it. :) And does anyone know how to preserve formatting and special characters on FFN? As soon as I upload it all gets messed up.
