Clockwork Heart (A Study Of Winry Rockbell)
Her first love is automail, and everything else comes secondary. The neat immutability of gears and pistons, the biomech accuracy of the nerve splicings, all of them like pieces of a grand, beautiful puzzle under her greasy fingers.
She still loves automail as much as she did when she was a baby, fascinated by the different sounds that it made, that others never seemed to hear- it made her feel special. It still does; it's like a secret language, the machines whispering harshly to themselves of their condition, their age, the people they've seen, the people they rush for. She feels privileged to be able to understand what they say; well, most of the time anyway.
This might sound strange- she's puzzled over it ever since it was installed- but she never could tell the condition of Ed's automail just from the sound. To her exasperated mind it is as if it leached the personality of its bullheaded owner, shouting its fine condition to the world while rust and grit attacks it under the shiny metal sheathing. That's why she greets him with yelling, with swearing, with smarting reprimand. She worries for Ed, worries for his automail, because he's not so easily read.
Al, that's a different box of bolts entirely. He manages to give the impression of feeling, real emotion, that tends to make people temporarily forget that he really resides within an empty suit of armor. Where Ed hides his wounds deep down inside, Al lets them out before they fester. She always thought he was the more sensible of the brothers anyway. Edward might be in the limelight all the time, but it's Al's steady intelligence that gets them through the day-to-day situations. As their childhood friend, she can almost guarantee that time hasn't changed this.
So maybe she doesn't see them a lot, and maybe Ed never writes to her at all (and neither does Al), and maybe she worries for them- she tells herself it's just for the sake of her precious automail- and maybe, just maybe, she might feel more than friendship for one of them.
Until then, she'll keep what she can clean and safe, til the rare occasion that Ed comes back or she goes to him (usually with some part or other of his body in pieces) when she can see them again and feel the bolt deep within her chest loosen itself. For now, she listens to the soft, gentle ticking of her clockwork heart like an underlying harmony of her life's melody, and wonders when the requiem will become an exultation.
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No angst here, I've had enough of it! Probably will make a reappearance next chapter, oh well.
Hmm, I'm writing a fic a day. That's a new record even for me... Look out for the next study tomorrow! Who's up next? (I don't know!) Someone review and tell me!