She appears composed
So she is, I suppose
Who can really tell?
She shows no emotion at all
Just stares into space
like a dead china doll
I'm never gonna know you now
But I'm gonna love you anyhow
Now she's done and they're calling someone
Such a familiar name
I'm so glad that my memory's remote
'Cause I'm doing just fine
Hour to hour, note to note
Here it is, the revenge to the tune:
"You're no good,"
You're no good, you're no good, you're no good,"
Can't you tell that it's well understood?
I'm never gonna know you now
But I'm gonna love you anyhow
Fortunately, Edward was reunited with Al and Winry at the table—as well as with Pinako, who kept shaking her head at the three of them and muttering "Who raised you?" every time they committed an embarrassing breach of formal dining etiquette, which seemed to be roughly every two to three minutes. It was obvious to Winry that her grandmother was mostly joking—but the Elric brothers looked like they were taking her a little more seriously, with Al looking progressively more nervous as the meal went on.
The dinner itself consisted of nearly a dozen courses—but luckily, each one was impossibly small, and artfully arranged on a fresh white plate by the army of Armstrong staff.
The meal passed about as uneventfully as it possibly could have; between the crash course in table manners and Edward and Winry talking a mile a minute about that actor they were obsessed with, Alphonse has barely been able to get a word in edgewise. That was good, really, because it gave him plenty of time to focus on eating extremely, extremely carefully. There were no camp dishes here; the plates were bone china, the glasses were crystal, and the silverware was, well, definitely silver. It was taking all of his concentration not to spill, scratch or shatter anything, and as much as he'd enjoyed the parade of extravagant new dishes, Al could barely hide his relief when it was over.
The staff finally started clearing plates without replacing them, removing cutlery and cloth napkins onto carts and gathering empty wine-bottles and glasses, sweeping tablecloths smoothly away with well-practiced movements. Al got distracted for a moment watching them, moving with almost clockwork precision all over the dining room—and he was so mesmerized that he forgot that this meant another change of scene. Other guests all around them were already being shepherded back through the doors they'd come from.
"Now where's everybody going?" Ed asked. He was aiming the question at his brother, but one of the waiters answered graciously as he took Edward's plate.
"The guests are proceeding to the ballroom, Major Elric, sir."
"Oh, right."
The waiter continued on his way; meanwhile, Winry stifled a laugh with a cloth napkin to her mouth as Al elbowed his brother behind the table.
"Major Elric, Brother, did you hear that?" Al managed not to laugh aloud, but he couldn't keep the mockery out of his tone or the grin off his face. "They make you sound so dignified."
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," he said, rolling his eyes as they all got slowly to their feet. "I dunno where he even got that from. It's not like I'm in uniform or something. And even if I was, I don't use the title like that."
"It's probably on the seating chart," Pinako chimed in matter-of-factly. "A place like this, with this many officers an' VIP types—the staff probably have ranks and titles mapped out on a big chalkboard right behind the kitchen door so they can check it before they come out."
The three teens exchanged glances. This made perfect sense, but the source—
"Wait, where are those guys going?" Ed asked, tilting his head toward the far end of the room. "All those old guys, and—isn't that Grumman?"
Al looked; there were about a dozen older men making their way through a separate doorway, heading the opposite way from everyone else. He squinted and craned his neck, but he couldn't see in. Then, when somebody moved out of the way, he recognized Havoc among them.
"Oh," Alphonse said. "Right. They're probably going for cigars. After-dinner cigars. That was in the letter too."
Ed raised an eyebrow. "Wait, the Major gave us cigar etiquette instructions?"
"No, no—he even wrote in giant letters that MINORS WILL NOT BE PERMITTED in the lounge," Al replied, laughing, "however high-ranking they might be."
"Aw, what? We can't even go in?"
"What do you wanna go in there for?" Pinako said. "I seem to recall cigars not workin' out so well for the three of you."
The three teens grimaced in unison. The incident she was referencing had happened when they were all around seven or eight and, in a fit of curiosity, had liberated one of Granny's cigars from her purse and lit it behind the Rockbells' chicken coop. All three of them had returned to the front porch shortly afterward, weak and dizzy from throwing up but refusing to explain why, unaware that the heavy scent of the cigar smoke on their clothes had given them away instantly.
Pinako had laughed at them for a good long while before treating their upset stomachs with ginger beer and peppermint gum.
"Well, what have we learned today, you three?" she had asked them finally, and they had grumbled noncommittally for several moments before Ed finally piped up.
"How can you like those things so much?! They're horrible!"
"Didn't I tell you to stay away from them?"
"Yeah, but—but—"
Al and Winry both were completely mortified at having gotten in trouble, and the shame of it all was too heavy for them to resurface just yet—but Edward, as usual, was unperturbed.
"We wanted to know why you like them so much," he said. "They're the only thing you ever ask for when people go to the city, even when you could be getting candy like the neighbours brought us, or—or—or anything. So we figured they must be good. But they taste—they taste—"
Frustrated, he looked to his brother for support, and Al finally found his voice.
"They taste like burning leaves and garbage."
Ed and Winry both nodded.
"And you always said they're bad for you," Winry added, "so you can only have them as a treat. So why—why would—"
Pinako was trying her hardest to be stern, but she couldn't help but crack a smile at the children's completely earnest confusion. She shook her head.
"That's why I told you they're only for grown-ups," she said. "When you grow up, a lot of things are different. There's lots of stuff that won't make sense until you get there. Your taste is gonna change."
"You mean we're gonna like stuff that makes us throw up?" Al asked.
"You already like stuff that makes you throw up, dummy!" Ed shot back. "Remember that spinning ride at the fair last year?"
Back in the present day, in the Armstrong mansion, the three of them watched as Granny Pinako turned on her heel and started in the opposite direction.
"You kids be good in there," she called over her shoulder. "An' don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"That's kind of a mixed message," Ed muttered, watching as she disappeared into the crowd.
Al nodded. "Is it just me, or is she being kind of…" he glanced nervously from Ed to Winry. "…Weird?"
"You guys think so too?" Winry said, twisting at the cream-coloured ribbon around her wrist. "I can't tell if she's being weird or if it's just weird being here."
"Me neither," Al replied; Edward just shrugged and didn't add anything further.
The three of them let themselves be herded toward the ballroom with the rest of the guests, and as they crossed back through the huge double doors Alphonse's eyebrows flew up.
In their absence, the space had been completely transformed. The long tables laden with food were gone, and the floors had been—well, Al couldn't remember what they had looked like before. But now the room was bordered by wide blue rugs over white marble that matched the steps of the grand staircase, and in the middle—surely it hadn't been there before—was a genuine dancefloor. It was a huge expanse of smooth, shining hardwood, the light and dark boards arranged in elegant geometric patterns that made him think they were what you'd get if you forced an alchemist to go into interior design.
Recalling that they were in fact in the home of the Strong-Arm Alchemist himself—with his techniques passed down for generations, allegedly—Al realized there might actually be something to that theory. It would certainly explain a lot about the room.
What had previously been the centre of the buffet was now replaced—somehow—by a full-blown stage, a raised diamond-shaped platform in the middle of the dancefloor with royal-blue edging. Uniformed musicians were sat row upon row tuning their gleaming instruments, arranged concentrically so that their conductor was visible from all sides.
"Whoa," he said simply, and the others nodded.
Unsure where to go and unable to pick any familiar faces out of the crowd just yet, the three of them found a patch of wall space just inside the doors and took up temporary residence there as they took in the scene.
Even though he was full from dinner, Al looked forlornly at the orchestra, sad that he'd reached the end of his culinary journey for the evening. He hoped he was concealing his disappointment well, but just after this thought crossed his mind, Edward elbowed him and cocked his head toward a small table by the staircase that was still laden with refreshments. Al's heart leapt, and he resolved not to let the snacks out of his sight for long.
Winry, meanwhile, could feel her heart start to beat faster for an entirely different reason. A realization was hitting her—quietly at first, and then louder and louder. Something was happening in here now. All around her, men in tails were crossing the floor and approaching women in gowns. The women were extending their white-gloved wrists, and the men were signing their names on the dance cards hanging from them. The room was filling with a palpable air of intrigue, and even though Winry barely knew anyone in the room, she still got the powerful impression that acts of enormous social significance were taking place all around her. Things were happening here, the kinds of things she'd only ever read about in her mother's old novels.
There was no real reason that this should have made her nervous. After all, none of it had anything to do with her.
But it could, a voice in her head whispered. He might ask you to dance.
Winry felt her mouth go dry.
He wouldn't. Obviously he wouldn't. That would be giving him way too much credit, however many medals the military had just piled onto him. Edward might have a Lion's Cross and a Silver Hexagram and a rank equivalent to Major, but he was still an idiot.
Don't be ridiculous, she told herself firmly. Don't get your hopes up.
She glanced over to him, hoping a bit of visual evidence would be enough to put the issue to rest. But when she looked, Winry was met with the sight of Edward, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, looking stupidly handsome in his stupid tailored suit. Jarringly handsome, unnervingly. And he didn't seem to realize it, either; that much was obvious. Otherwise it would have gone straight to his head, and he'd be making it everybody else's problem right now. But it hadn't, and he wasn't—and he was standing there leaning against the gilded wall panels, casual as anything, watching the musicians prepare.
Winry registered that—for the first time in awhile—Ed had braided his hair the way he used to. She wondered if there was any significance to that, or if maybe Al had suggested it. She hadn't really even noticed that he'd stopped doing it in the months since he'd made it home; it was hardly topping the list of noticeable changes in his appearance, after all. But now it seemed significant to Winry, although she couldn't say for sure why.
You're way overthinking this, she said to herself. Just focus on standing up straight and not embarrassing yourself.
Trying to move gracefully in her long dress and less-than-forgiving shoes took up more energy than Winry thought it would, and as she watched the elegant women all around her sweeping their way onto the dancefloor she couldn't help but resent how easy they made it look. She was hyperaware of the weight of her skirt, and she could feel the position of every single one of the bobby pins holding her hair in place.
Okay, don't focus on that either. Winry took a steadying breath. Just relax. None of this is actually a big deal.
Then she remembered with a jolt that somebody had in fact asked her to dance. One of the boys she'd been talking to by the punchbowl had written his name in the little booklet, somewhere toward the middle.
He was just being polite, Winry told herself. And when he saw that all the other spots were blank, he probably put down a made-up name.
She hasn't recognized the name he'd told her, and now she couldn't remember what it was. She could open the dance card and check, of course, but—would that look pointed if she opened it now? Would it look like she was trying to insinuate something? Would Ed think—?
Ed wouldn't think anything, Winry told herself firmly. He's never taken a hint before. He's not gonna start now.
As she was repeating this in her head and twisting the ribbon around her fingers, the orchestra struck up in earnest.
The sound was bigger and fuller than she could have possibly imagined, and she realized she'd never actually heard a real orchestra like this before. She looked past the first few pairs of dancers already on the floor; there were no amplifiers or loudspeakers or microphones of any kind. It was just loud enough on its own—thanks to the size of the orchestra, the design of the instruments, the acoustics of the space—to fill the whole room. The whole huge room, built specifically to be flooded with sound like this. There was something fundamentally incredible about that.
Winry wouldn't exactly call herself a classical music fan—and, really, she didn't know a thing about it. But right now, with everyone in the room starting to move in time, and with the musicians attacking the strings with such precision right in front of her, she couldn't deny that the bright, sweeping waltz was, well, moving. It drowned out the noise of her own internal back-and-forth—which was no small feat—and she found herself cracking an actual smile.
She felt steady and self-possessed again as she moved toward the wall where Ed was leaning. He looked down at her mildly as she stepped in front of him, his expression giving away nothing at all.
"Ed—do you want to dance?"
He blinked several times, his eyes widening and his mouth falling open, and he stared back at her in silence for six agonizingly long seconds. Winry couldn't detect a trace of connotation, one way or the other—just absolutely blank shock.
"What?" he said finally.
"Do you want to dance," Winry repeated, tilting her head slightly to indicate the dancefloor behind her.
He looked, his head turning as he surveyed the entire ballroom as if looking for something very specific.
"Uh—no. No, I'm good." He glanced frantically around the room, landing on a group of small round tables and chairs near the grand staircase. "I have to—I'm gonna go sit down."
"Oh. I—okay." Winry stepped to the side to let him pass, and she watched, bewildered, as he made a beeline for the spot about fifty metres away, skirting the dancefloor altogether and sitting down by himself.
She looked away again as quickly as she could—and then her eyes landed on Alphonse, who had been standing on Edward's left. He was staring back at her with a very readable expression.
"Oh my god, Winry!" he hissed, his eyes wide. "I cannot believe him sometimes!" He scowled after his brother, shaking his head, and then turned back toward her. "He can be such a—well, you know."
Winry sighed. "I sure do."
Al gave her a searching look. "Are you—do you want me to say something to him? Because I—"
"No," she blurted, louder than she'd meant to. "No, it's fine! I mean, it's Ed, right?" Winry let out a casual laugh that was about seventy-five percent convincing. "What do you expect?"
"Well, still—"
"Excuse me, you two."
Al and Winry both looked up, startled, to see Roy Mustang in front of them, with Riza in her charcoal dress a half-step behind him.
Alphonse suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as he recognized the tone in Mustang's voice—the one absolutely dripping with superficial charm that the Colonel used whenever he was talking to a woman.
"Forgive me if I'm mistaken, of course," he began, addressing Winry, "but I couldn't help but notice that you seem to be without a partner for the very first waltz of the evening, Miss Rockbell."
Winry nodded, nonplussed.
"Absolutely inexcusable," Mustang continued, and Winry caught the noticeably theatrical glint in his eye. "Miss Rockbell—if I may—would you grant me the honour of having this dance?"
He held out a hand with far more flair than strictly necessary, and Winry grinned as she extended her white-gloved fingers in equally dramatic fashion to accept it.
*
Alphonse was staring after Roy and Winry with narrowed eyes as they stepped out onto the floor together—and then Riza caught his eye. She was smiling warmly at him, and didn't seem annoyed in the slightest.
"You don't need to look so suspicious, Alphonse," she said. "He's only doing the same thing you would have done."
She was right, obviously, and he felt silly for not having realized it sooner. "Right," he said, laughing softly at himself. "I knew that."
Riza laughed too, and then she joined him in leaning against the wall to watch the dancers.
"I would have," Alphonse said suddenly. "I definitely would, I just—"
She raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to finish, and his cheeks reddened.
"I thought I might be able to do it," he said quietly, "but I'm still on this thing—" he held up his cane, "—and my co-ordination still isn't—you know—she'd be doing me a favour, not the other way around."
"I see," Riza replied, nodding her understanding. "But you would like to give dancing a try?"
"Well—" Al blushed even further, more flustered than before. "Well, maybe, but it's not like I can just—I mean, all those other girls, have you seen them?! Winry's my friend, so at least she's got a reason to be nice to me, but—I mean—"
"Be that as it may," Riza said, grinning at him, "it looks like my usual fallback dance partner has, ah—left me for a younger woman."
"But you—oh!" Al's face cracked into a smile. "Well—but—you really don't mind, Lieutenant? Really—I'm probably going to be a disaster, so—"
"You can't possibly be a worse dancer than Second Lieutenant Falman at the Officers' Ball at East HQ two years ago, Alphonse," she replied, "and if I survived that, I can survive anything."
Edward, meanwhile, was radically misusing the chair he was sitting in, scowling in no particular direction and casting the occasional furtive glance toward the dancefloor.
She's blushing. Why the hell is she blushing? What in the fuck is the Colonel saying to make her blush? What kind of weird-ass game is he playing here?
Uniformed waiters kept coming by with trays of appetizers, and—eager for a distraction—he kept accepting them. It had happened four times already, and now he had a little collection of tiny snacks in front of him and absolutely no recollection of what they were supposed to be.
He was facing away from the sweeping marble staircase, the little alcove of tables and chairs tucked into the corner next to it. Behind him, he could hear a crowd of girls—two or three dozen, by the sound of it—who were chattering away loudly and paying no mind to the fact that they were blocking the stairs. He couldn't make out an individual word any one of them was saying, but the dull roar of their conversation was helping to dampen the sound of the orchestra, so that was something, at least.
"Not that I don't appreciate it, but don't feel like you have to hang out with us all night on my account," Winry said. "As much as aggravating Ed is a worthy cause in my book, I know you've got actual vested interests here, right? With all these high-ranking officers and stuff all in one place, you've probably got important people you're supposed to be rubbing elbows with or whatever."
"Well, you're not wrong—but full disclosure, I always have a vested interest in aggravating Ed," Mustang said, smirking. "And besides that, it's a party—there's no reason a girl at a party shouldn't get asked to dance. As far as I'm concerned, letting you just sit there would be a crime."
Winry giggled. "And it wouldn't look good to have a crime committed right under all these officers' noses, huh?"
"Exactly."
They were waltzing, but in the least ambitious sense of the word. The two of them stayed toward the outside of the floor where they were less likely to collide with anyone else, and they stuck to the most basic steps rather than attempting the elaborate lifts and spins that some of the couples on the floor were performing—but there was no avoiding the basic occupational hazards.
"Oh shoot, I'm sorry!"
Mustang gritted his teeth ever so slightly, smiling gamely as Winry stepped on his foot for the third time. "It's alright," he said, chuckling. "You're a little new at this, huh?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "I probably should've warned you in advance. I think this is the second time I've tried to waltz in my entire life."
"Well, in that case I'd say you're doing great," he replied, nudging her foot gently to indicate she was about to turn the wrong way, and she corrected herself quickly. "I know this is all very formal, but the steps aren't all that different from a lot of regular folk dances."
"That's true," Winry said, "but I'm a little rusty at those too."
"What—don't they have dances in Resembool? No dancing at the Spring Harvest? The corn races? The Crowning of the Sheep Queen?"
Winry laughed. "Where are you getting your Resembool information?!"
"It's possible that I may not have paid super close attention to the regional briefing details over the years," he conceded.
"Anyway, yeah, we do have dances," Winry said, "but I haven't really been to that many."
"Really?" Mustang raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"Well," she began, "you have to be fourteen to go, right—and when I was a kid I always thought I would go, but when I actually turned fourteen there was nobody in town that I wanted to go with, so..."
"What, nobody?" he asked, before his brain parsed her actual meaning. Nobody in town. "Ah, I see. You only wanted to go with F—fff—" his sentence ended in a hiss as Winry stepped on his foot for the fourth time.
"Sorry!" she said. She blushed—though Roy couldn't tell if it was in admission of her feelings or merely admission of guilt vis-à-vis his foot.
"Well, I guess it's my own fault," he replied, rolling his eyes playfully. "I displaced one pint-sized hick kid and I disrupted the whole hick ecosystem."
Winry laughed, then glared in mock-offense. "Where are you even from that's such a big deal?"
"Me? East City."
She scoffed. "So you're from the East Area too! What gives you the right to make fun of Resembool?"
"Well, for one thing, where I grew up we had paved roads," Mustang replied. "Although I guess when I was around your age, I was actually living in the countryside too."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh—in a little hamlet just outside the city. That's where I did my apprenticeship—and I won't lie, it was a bit of a culture shock."
…
Roy traded smiles with Riza as they passed each other on the floor. She had been expecting to have her work cut out for her with Alphonse, a boy who, all health issues aside, had been living on the road for years with only his brother for consistent company. Nothing she knew about him indicated he would have had the chance to learn how to waltz, let alone the inclination. She was very comfortable back-leading, to say the least, and that's what she'd been expecting to do.
But Alphonse Elric was full of surprises, and Riza tried not to look too shocked as she realized he absolutely knew how to dance.
His movements were tentative and a little shaky, and he was definitely leaning a bit more of his weight onto his partner than he was strictly supposed to, but Al knew the steps. He struggled a little with the execution, but not nearly as much as he was afraid he might.
"Sorry, Lieutenant," he said, having started to turn on the wrong foot and hastily correcting himself. "I'm not very—"
"You're doing great, trust me," she replied, and there was so much warmth in her voice that Al almost believed her.
The dance steps were taking up nearly all of his focus, and he was hoping he wouldn't need to carry on much of a conversation at the same time. But then again, it would be rude not to, so—
"I mean it, I'm really impressed, Alphonse!" Riza said. "Where did you learn how to dance?"
"Well…" he paused mid-sentence so she could spin, and continued once she was turned to face him again. "It's kind of a long story, but you can't tell Ed I told you."
…
"I have to admit," Mustang said, "I'm actually a little surprised to see Fullmetal reverting back to…well, this." He cocked his head toward where Ed was sitting, brooding over a selection of canapés. "The last time we saw the two of you in Central, he seemed a bit more…mature for a minute there."
Winry smiled ruefully and rolled her eyes. "Yeah," she said, sighing. "I've pretty much given up trying to figure out what goes on in his head."
"This is the spin," Mustang whispered, catching Winry's attention in time for her to change course.
It was a little disjointed, but she was able to correct herself and execute the move roughly in time with the other couples on the floor. The hem of her long skirt flared out gracefully, the layers of tulle set in motion, and it occurred to her that this kind of thing was exactly what dresses like this were made for. Every cut, every dart, the weight of the material—they were all decisions made to allow it to move this way. As far as she was from her comfort zone, it still made her happy to see a purpose-built design live out its intended function.
Well, more or less.
They stepped together again—roughly in time—and Winry felt a little more sure of herself now. She was starting to get the hang of following the music rather than trying to rely on rote memorization of the steps, and the patterns were starting to click for her.
"I can't tell you what's going on in his head either," Roy continued, picking up where they'd left off, "but I'm sure he'll come around eventually."
"You think so?"
"I do," he said, grinning. "Especially judging by how mad he looks right now."
Winry didn't say anything, but Roy could tell she was glad to hear it.
"Although," he continued, " I don't think anyone would blame you for running out of patience."
"He's the impatient one, not me," Winry said. She avoided his gaze, looking down at her feet as an awkward, involuntary grin crept across her features. "Ed can't stand waiting around for anything—not even his own surgical rehab. He's always been—restless like that. He needs everything to happen right away."
Roy tilted his head a little to the side as he looked down at her, the frustration behind her smile starting to bleed through. Winry didn't say anything more, but it wasn't hard for him to fill in the unspoken part: except for being with me.
Ah, jeez. At first Roy had just been making light of the whole thing with her as standard-issue party banter—but the girl's sad and self-effacing little smile stopped him in his tracks as he realized how serious this was to her. This poor kid—she really loves him.
"So, what…" he said gently, pleased to see that she remembered to step backward at the right moment this time around. "…you can't just let him know you're getting a little sick of waiting?"
Winry executed the spin perfectly—her first-ever flawless turn, her skirt fanning out elegantly—and she flashed him a crooked half-smile as they fell back into step.
"What—and let him win?" She shook her head, and her expression turned serious—but the tone of her voice gave away that she was starting to hear herself. "I can't be more impatient than he is. I could never live that down."
Roy laughed. "Well, you're definitely just as stubborn as he is, I'll tell you that for free."
Winry laughed too—and then she looked him square in the eye. "Oh, I'm even worse," she said, grinning.
"Man," he replied, shaking his head, "is there something in the water in Resembool, or what?"
"Speaking of being stubborn, though," Winry said, "I'm glad I have the chance to talk to you, actually. There's something I've been wanting to ask you."
Edward was sitting at the little table and staring into his glass of decidedly un-spiked sparkling cider, which as far as he could tell was basically just apple juice taking an ego trip, watching the little bubbles fizz to the surface as he tried to piece together what the hell was going on. All he had done, as far as he could figure out, was show up to the stupid party like he was supposed to. How had things suddenly turned so confrontational? These kinds of apparently-critical moments were making a habit of sneaking up on him lately, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why everybody except him seemed to see them coming and to know what to do. At this rate he felt like he was possibly only days away from inexplicably getting called into one of those schoolyard jump-rope games where you had to yell out the initials of the person you had a crush on.
It wasn't that he minded being here, exactly. It was more that, on a day already packed to the rafters with symbolic gestures and calculated political chess moves, where every tiny action was allegedly loaded with hidden significance, now not only was he trapped in a crowd full of people all adhering to a set of etiquette rules and unspoken (and pointless, and stupid) social conventions that he'd never learned, but he was also apparently making all kinds of significant symbolic gestures himself, too. He was being shoved into these unexpected binary decisions, these goddamned Boolean operators, these dichotomies from hell, when all he wanted was to drink the stupid apple juice and go home already.
"Do you want to dance?"
Well, maybe—but that wasn't the real question, as he now realized. Most of the higher-level alchemy Ed had studied in recent years dealt with symbols and their associated schools of thought, and with way more esoteric, until-recently-unknowable shit like "What connects the body to the soul?" and "Is there a way to surpass the laws of equivalent exchange?"—but that didn't mean he'd forgotten the basic chemistry underpinning it all, which at its core was really just math. And—hell, what was the first step to solving any stupid math problem? Figure out what you're actually solving for.
Once you had all the numbers, they were never that difficult; as kids he and Al had breezed through the algebra practice questions at the ends of every chapter in the big old green textbook that Hohenheim had left behind. But when the same kinds of problems came up at school, at first they were both a little thrown. They were packaged all differently, wrapped up in little fictional scenarios full of unnecessary information, and before you could run the numbers you had to figure out what all the relevant numbers actually were. Both brothers had stumbled on the process at first; they were used to cut-and-dried equations and being frequently praised for how fast they could solve them, and this was a different game entirely.
Winry, on the other hand, with her practical, let's-look-at-this-from-another-angle engineer's brain, had a real knack for that stuff. It was so easy for her to parse out the relevant variables from a long string of irrelevant nonsense, to cut to the heart of a question and understand what it was really asking.
At the time it had been infuriating, a serious blow to the Elric brothers' intellectual pride and an endless source of vindictive smugness for Winry. It was a short learning curve, anyway, and of course Ed and Al got the hang of it soon after—but she was always, always a little quicker at it. She beat them both to the punch in math class that whole semester because of it (well, at least when she was actually awake), and it drove them both insane.
Well—did it ever drive Al insane? Maybe not. He never was all that competitive.
So it was just him then, Edward, being slow to figure out the stupid word problems and letting Winry drive him crazy.
Huh.
Anyway, more to the point—"Do you want to dance?" wasn't the real question. It was so much more nebulous than that.
Last time he'd been here, here in Central, Ed had been so sure at first that he knew what he was doing. He was balancing the equation. It was an equivalent exchange like any other to him: he had made Winry unhappy, so he owed it to her to make her happy. You couldn't quantify it numerically—well, you could, but it'd still be subjective as hell—but it was still very straightforward math.
But then it got complicated, and so quickly. Putting aside the Colonel and his gang of jerks, even, things didn't go the way he expected them to. Winry wasn't just happy; she was over-the-top excited, having the time of her frickin' life watching the movie, getting to mess with the projector and save the day. And then at the end of the night she'd even told him that she was never actually upset in the first place. So if she had been at, say, a baseline of zero to begin with, rather than, as he'd assumed, like, a negative ten, then by the time they were back at the hotel, that would mean she was at—what, a two? A six? A ten? What even were the parameters? How high did the scale go?
Okay, again—you couldn't quantify it numerically. Whatever. But you'd definitely be looking at a positive value greater than zero. Winry was happy.
He hadn't even settled a debt to her, because it turned out that according to her, there was never even a debt to settle. So his understanding of the operation at work here had been totally wrong. He hadn't been solving for the right value, from the very beginning.
That said—in algebra, and with alchemy, often you knew the end result from the start, and the real problem was to work backward to understand what happened to get you to that point. So, then, what was the end result? And, for that matter, what was the end result he was expecting, really?
Winry was always better at this type of thing. Or quicker, anyway.
Which probably means she's way ahead of you right now, he realized with a jolt. So what the hell is she solving for?
The song ended, and Ed glanced up just in time to see Winry step back from Mustang only to be immediately intercepted by—oh, shit—Rosé, in a light-purplish dress a lot like Winry's. He'd barely recognized her again, only her pink-tinted hair giving away her identity.
Oh, right, he remembered vaguely. They met in Reole, didn't they?
He watched from across the room as Rosé pulled Winry off to the side of the dance floor, and they both started talking animatedly.
What are they even talking about? Since when are they friends?
Mustang, meanwhile, had immediately slithered over to the next available female—some lady in a green dress he didn't recognize—in preparation for another dance.
Creep.
Rosé had pulled Winry immediately into a frenetic exchange of pleasantries and gossip, which was a welcome reprieve after she'd just left Colonel—no, Brigadier General—Mustang on such a serious note. She was more than happy to stand off to the side with the older girl and gush excitedly about each other's dresses and hair, about the food and the music, about the absurd size of the Armstrong house.
"But enough about that," Winry said eventually. "How are you? How are things going back home?"
"They're good!" Rosé replied, her tone earnest. "We've still got a long way to go, but things are picking up little by little. We were actually able to open a second kitchen on the north side of town thanks to some donations, and we're getting set up to grow a lot more food of our own too. Y'know—community vegetable garden plots, that kind of thing."
"That's huge! I remember you telling me you wanted to expand—I can't believe you did it already!"
"I know, it's crazy—but we had a lot of help. The military finally sent a bunch of relief money, so we qualified for a bit of that…"
"…Well, that's good, jeez."
"Yeah—but that wasn't even the biggest factor! Get this:" Rosé leaned in conspiratorially. "Back at the beginning of June, we got this huge donation out of nowhere, totally anonymous—and all the memo on the wire transfer said was to 'use it to help people.'"
"So, what, they just—they just sent it through the bank, and didn't leave a name or anything?" Winry asked. "That's—well. Just how huge are we talking about?"
Rosé whispered the number into Winry's ear, and she had to clap a hand over her own mouth to stifle a yell when she heard it.
"Are you serious? Who even has that kind of…" Winry trailed off, looking up and reminding herself where they were both standing. "Well, I guess people do have that kind of money," she admitted. "But jeez!"
"I know, I know!" Rosé laughed. "None of us could believe it—but it all checked out. At first I thought it must be some kind of scam, or—or some kind of money laundering thing, at the very least. But the bank said there were no red flags about the donor, they just weren't allowed to say who it was."
"Well, and even if it was money laundering—at the end of the day you're feeding people, right?"
"Yeah, that's what I landed on too. Although ideally the less crime involved, the better." Rosé shrugged. "But I'm really not that picky." They both broke into hushed laughter again.
"Anyway," Rosé continued, "I'm so glad we both had a break at the same time so we can catch up—I think we have just enough time to go get a drink or something before the next one. I'm sure you're just as booked up as I am."
"Oh. Well, actually—" Winry shifted uncomfortably, and Rosé caught her meaning immediately. "I've only got the one—" She flipped open the little dance card, sheepishly holding it up for the other girl to see the one name amongst all the blank spaces. "I don't really know anyone here, and even at home I've never really—"
"Oh! Well—look, I can stick with you instead, if you want," the older girl said. "I'm sure—" she paused to check the next name on her card "—Lord Walter…something…can wait."
"Maybe he can work on his handwriting. What does that even say?"
"I don't know! He could be anybody!" They both laughed.
"Or, of course," Rosé continued, "we could just do a lap of the room right now and get your card filled up too."
"Really?"
"Definitely. It's easy, I'll show you."
Edward wasn't watching, and he definitely wasn't staring, and he definitely didn't care that Winry was dancing with her fifth or sixth random douche—presumably—and smiling the entire time.
Definitely not. No, he was sitting quietly, sampling the tiny hors d'oeuvres, and thinking measured, reasonable thoughts in a calm and logical manner. If he intermittently looked up from the table and Winry happened to be within his field of vision when he did, that was a coincidence, and it did not impact him one way or the other. And he was not at all on edge when Havoc interrupted him.
"What's the matter, chief? Sad you didn't make the cut?"
"What?"
"Well, that guy your mechanic's dancing with is worth about 800 million cenz, and you're just sitting here eating crackers."
"I—well—" Ed sputtered, looking down at his assortment of crackers and back up again. "What's your point?"
"I'm just sayin', even if she turned you down, there's still plenty of girls—like that whole herd of them over there just hovering around hoping you'll ask them."
He gestured toward the stairs, where there were indeed three remaining girls in pastel gowns from the original gaggle leaning against the banister with unconvincingly nonchalant expressions.
"What?!" Ed looked, and all three of them immediately giggled and looked away. He turned back to Havoc. "For crying out—will you mind your own business?"
"Well, one thing at a time," Havoc replied. "I'm trying to mind Fuery's business right now, actually. That's why I came to get you."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah—he got into the heavy stuff earlier and he's gone on a rampage."
"What?!"
"Yeah, we could use a little help—just don't do anything to tip Hawkeye off, or we're all screwed." He paused. "Unless you've got a prior engagement?"
"Nope." Ed scowled as he got to his feet.
WHEW!
I have been really, really excited about that Ed Doing Relationship Algebra inner monologue for literally a YEAR, so I am so psyched that it's finally seeing the light of day. And yes, Ed is being very, very dense here. But he's trying his best, sort of!
We'll catch up with Al next chapter (and a loooot of other stuff is gonna happen) but I was glad I could figure out a sweet moment between him and Hawkeye. And there's some vague background RoyAi in there if you squint, which I'm sure you will. Welcome to the fic. Thank you for squinting.
SOME NOTES:
- Okay, so I did a lot of research into what kinds of dances could be taking place and how difficult they might be, and I learned very quickly that it's really difficult to write scenes where Dancing Is Taking Place when you yourself do not know how to do it, so the original draft of this literally contained the phrase "she danced away and then danced back" and it was SO dumb and my friends made fun of me. And they were right. I'll be getting into a smidge more detail with the dance stuff a few chapters from now, though, so keep an eye out!
- I did a lot of research into how exactly a historical ballroom would be laid out and what everything in the room would be made of-like, a truly embarrassing amount-until I remembered that it's an anachronistic fantasy setting and I can do whatever I want. BUT! They did all have nice, smooth hardwood floors, often in fancy parquet patterns! So that checks out!
- I think I mentioned dance cards last time, but they're essentially meant to make sure you know who you're dancing with well in advance, so that you as a fancy young lady at an important social event are never standing around like a dingus with nobody to dance with, and if you do have a gap in your schedule you can go and sit down and act like you did that on purpose once the music starts.
- I'm not sure if I'm going against the prevailing fanon here by having Roy be from East City, then raised in Central some of the time and then living out in the Eastern countryside during his apprenticeship, but that's what I'm setting up here. It probably will not come up in this fic again, but who knows!
- In terms of talking about "the House" and mention of people having titles as well as military ranks and all that, I'll get into this a bit later, but basically what I'm setting up is that the Amestrian parliament ("which is just the military's puppet right now," per Hawkeye in vol. 15) originally had a House of Commons and a House of Lords, like they do in the UK, and essentially the military dictatorship either bought people out or grandfathered them in, ie kind of converted their titles into honourary military titles and folded them into the military bureaucracy, so there are some people who are really rich AND come from nobility AND have an important role in the government, and then there are people who are really rich and come from nobility but sold all their land to the government and they just kind of hang out and do rich people activities. It's...I'll get into it more later. It is past 3AM.
- Large mansions like this totally would have lounges for all the old men to smoke cigars in after dinner; that's very much a Real Thing historically. They also definitely would not let women in. Does that apply in our story, where the social rules are made up by me? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT.
- That's all I can think of and I am very sleepy. Let me know what you think, and if you're curious about anything I didn't mention feel totally free to ask! THANKS FOR READING, BACK SOON WITH MORE 3
ALSO please note: I finally started crossposting to Ao3, same name, so if you're more comfortable over there feel free to hop on over! I will keep posting here until the website falls apart completely, though, so if you don't wanna go anywhere you do not have to.
