Chapter 2
Mirror Images
Winry stayed motionless for a long time, listening to the laughter from inside the bar. She had to calm down, she had to think!
She'd been hurled...somewhere...through some strange, alchemical gateway...
Wait! Hadn't Colonel Mustang said something about a world beyond the Gate? A world that Ed and Al had returned to?
'Oh...no way,' Winry thought, shaking her head. 'There is just no way!'
She looked back up at the sign, proclaiming 'London's finest pork'.
'London?'
"No freaking way!" Winry whispered, as though saying it aloud would somehow solidify her denial. "Not possible!"
'But,' a snarky voice in her mind piped up. 'Ed and Al did it, didn't they?'
Her vision whirled, and for a second, Winry was certain she was going to pass out.
'Breathe,' she coached herself, sitting down in a puddle and soaking her legs. 'Deep breaths, just don't think about it...'
But she couldn't not think about it. She had ended up in another world! Another world!
Disbelief was swiftly followed by terror, and a gut-wrenching uncertainty. What happened now? Where could she go? What could she do?
Winry pushed away the urge to cry. She could do this, she just needed to take it one step at a time.
First, her injuries.
It hurt to breathe, but it was a constant, dull ache that made Winry think of bruised ribs. She explored the flexible bones gingerly, but found none broken. Her ankle she was not so optimistic about, but as she flexed it, she became convinced it wasn't even sprained. She'd probably just stretched a tendon or something. It would hurt like crazy for a few hours, but was nothing that could cause permanent damage.
Her next problem; it was raining, it was cold, and she had nowhere to go.
oooooooo
"Listen, whore, give me your money, and I won't have to get nasty."
Half-limping through the pouring rain, soaked and shivering, Winry's first thought was that she was hearing things. Then she spotted the man in the overhang of a shop, towering over a woman and child. She could barely see his two victims, he had pressed them both up against the wall so tightly.
Winry felt her ire rise. If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was bullies.
And without a thought to the consequences, Winry stuffed Ed's journal in her toolbox, and pulled out her wrench.
"HEY!" she bellowed, running up behind the man. "Pick on someone your own size!"
The man whirled, revealing a sharp knife clutched in one hand. Winry's eyes landed on the blade – raindrops pinging off its surface – and felt her heart sink.
'One of these days,' she thought in resignation, 'I'm going to learn to stop trying to be a hero.'
Well, she was in deep now, and she'd have to be the one to get herself out of it.
"Girl, are you blind or just stupid?" the mammoth in front of her asked blankly. "I've got the knife, that means you listen to me."
"I don't think so," Winry shot back, shifting her weight, wondering how hard she'd have to hit the guy to knock him out. "And for your information, I'm not blind, and I'm certainly not as stupid as you look."
The man's face twisted, his lips lifting in a primal snarl. Winry felt a bolt of fear at the sight, but ruthlessly pushed it down.
'Keep goading him,' she told herself. 'Get him angry, get him stupid.'
"You have about two seconds to get running," he growled.
"Oh, and who would run from you? I've seen toddlers scarier than you!" Winry snorted with a confidence she did not feel.
With a roar of rage, he lunged for her. Winry darted aside like a dragonfly across a pond, her rain slicked hair spraying water into her attacker's face as she whipped around...
To find him nearly on top of her. The blade rose, slashing down towards her throat, and there was no room to do anything but try to scramble backwards...
Winry recognised how lucky she was to have stepped into a puddle at that exact instant. Her foot slipped, her injured ankle folded, and she fell. Instead of opening her jugular veins, the knife bit into her chest, spilling blood onto her shirt.
Winry swung her wrench with her usual devastating aim. She caught the man on the side of the head, knocking him to the ground. He blinked, looking dazed. A look that swiftly disappeared when she hit him again. His eyes closed, and he slumped to the ground, clearly unconscious.
"Jerk!" Winry spat, dropping her wrench back into the toolbox and trying to put pressure her injury.
The knife had opened a V-shaped gash on the curve of her right breast. It was about three inches long, and by the amount of blood dripping from her already-saturated shirt, it was probably fairly deep. It seared like a line of fire.
"Oh God, you're bleeding!"
Winry raised her eyes from the red stain spreading across her clothes at an alarming rate, catching the eyes of the woman she'd just saved.
And she gaped. The woman gasped as well, stumbling backwards.
They could have been identical twins. Winry's eyes took in the woman's features – features that she saw in the mirror everyday. The same straw-yellow hair, if cut to a slightly different length, the same sky-blue eyes and pale skin.
"You look just like me," Winry breathed, mouth agape.
But then a warm trickle of blood on her stomach brought her attention back to the wound. She could deal with the weird mirror image woman later, right now she had to treat her injury or she would be in serious trouble. The rate at which it was bleeding made her medical mind wonder if she'd been cut deep enough to nick a few veins.
"But you're hurt!" the woman exclaimed, dropping to her knees beside Winry. "Big help I am – you got injured helping us and I'm too hung up on the way you look to give you a hand."
She ripped a long strip of cloth from her dress and placed it against the wound, using the additional pressure from her hands to try and stem the flow of blood. When it began to slow, she looked up at Winry.
"I'm Wendy, by the way," she said, giving a tight smile.
"Winry."
"And this is Eddie," Wendy offered, nodding towards the child behind her.
Winry looked...and felt her eyes nearly pop out for the second time that day. Wendy's son looked like a miniature version of Ed, from bronzed hair and golden eyes to stubborn chin.
She became aware that Wendy had continued talking.
"...a sticky situation, and I'm so glad you came along. I don't what would have happened if you hadn't – well, that's not exactly true, I know exactly what would have happened. But really, thank you very much."
Winry gave a tremulous smile. "Don't worry about it. I hate bullies - most people would have done the same."
"That's where you're wrong," Wendy countered. "Most people would have walked right by. But you stopped and helped us. And got injured into the bargain. If there's anyway I can help you-"
"Well, actually," Winry cut in, gritting her teeth against the rush of pain in her ankle as she stood. "Do you know anyplace where I can stay?"
Wendy's eyes widened. "You're homeless?"
'Okay,' Winry coached herself. 'Options. Lie, and tell her some half-assed story you come up with on the spot? Tell the truth, and have her think you're a lunatic? Or...something in between?'
Taking a deep breath, Winry chose the last option. "Homeless? Kinda. You see, I...this is going to sound stupid and crazy, but I...I don't know where I am. The last thing I remember is being in a train station...very far away from here...and then, I just woke up on the street a few blocks away. I guess...I guess I must have lost part of my memory, or something..."
She felt guilty about lying, but still tried to put as much honest bewilderment into her voice as she could. To her relief, sympathy flooded Wendy's face. She believed her, she was going to help her!
"Well, it isn't much...but you could stay with us," Wendy offered, wiping her bloody fingers on her dress before taking Eddie's hand.
"What do you think, Eddie?" she addressed the child. "We'd like to have Winry staying with us, wouldn't we?"
"Yeah," the little boy bobbed his head. "The way you knocked that guy down was so cool!"
Winry was a little surprised at how articulate he was. He couldn't have been more than four years old.
She realised Wendy was waiting for her reply, the other woman looking distinctly nervous.
"Thank you so much," Winry's heartfelt gratitude wasn't a lie in the slightest.
Wendy beamed. "Come with us."
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AN: Just to clear up the timeline: I'm saying that Ed was 15 during the anime, and the movie occurred 2 years later, making him 17. My story is set a little over a year after the movie's conclusion, which makes Winry 18. As for the kid that looks just like Ed, it will all become clear soon, I promise.
