Chapter 2
Escape
Winry threaded her fingers through the grate, using it to balance herself as she teetered precariously on top of her tipped-over bed. She'd eaten her meal – at least, as much as she could force down while her gut churned with both anticipation and dread – and then promptly overturned her bed as she'd planned, used the metal slats beneath the mattress to climb onto the footboard, and then begun working on unscrewing the grate to the vents with the knife and fork that had been delivered with her meal.
At the moment, the knife was clenched between her teeth while she used the prongs of the fork as a makeshift screwdriver. Slowly, painfully, the screw was easing free. The small piece of metal wobbled in the air, and Winry finished the job with her bare fingers before pocketing the screw – no self-respecting automail mechanic would ever throw a screw away.
She started on the next one, all the while hoping no one would come in and catch her in the act. But if she was just a hostage – and with the basic necessities in the room with her – it seemed likely that the only visits she would be receiving were Pride's meal runs.
So, with any luck, it would be at least a few hours before anyone missed her.
The second screw gave way but the grate didn't list downwards, suggesting it lifted up rather than down. Winry went back to work, trying to ignore the way her arms were beginning to ache at being held above her head for so long.
When the last screw finally popped free and she pushed the grate upwards and sideways, Winry had to suppress a shout of triumph. She hooked her arms over the rim and scrambled up into the vent with some rather inelegant grunts of exertion.
To her surprise, she realised what she'd climbed into couldn't really be classed as a vent. It had a flat concrete floor, and there was a multitude of pipes and cables running through the place. She could have stood to her full height and easily had a foot or two between her the mess of piping above her.
In fact, it seemed almost like some kind of complex boiler room. Even just from a swift glance around, Winry could see that there was a multitude of other pathways branching off from the one she was in, and the bubble of optimism that had filled her when she first climbed in popped with such force she could practically hear it.
How on earth was she going to find her way out of here? In something like this, she could end up completely lost within minutes. She had no idea how she'd been brought into the cell or from which direction, and it wasn't as though the place was displaying exit signs.
And while she might not be missed for a while, eventually her captors would notice she was gone, and then she'd be scrambling around up here while being hunted by creatures who surely knew the place a lot better than she.
The blonde glanced into her cell again, wondering if she should risk kicking the bed back down. Initially, she dismissed that idea for fear the noise would bring someone running...but now she was seriously considering it.
Her original plan had been to climb into the vent and follow the air flow. Eventually, she'd come upon a fan which was bringing in air from the outside world, a fan which she could then dismantle and remove (granted, all she had was a knife and fork but Winry had told herself that she'd cross that bridge when she came to it), and then escape. And, since she had no idea where this place actually was, she'd figured she'd judge her surroundings and go from there.
Now...now she had to seriously consider the possibility she'd still be looking for a way out when her escape attempt was discovered. If they found the bed like that...they'd know she'd gone up. But if she could at least confuse them about how she'd gotten out, they'd split their force and she'd have a greater chance of sneaking past them.
Plus, the concrete walls and large, practically air-tight metal door ensured sound probably wouldn't travel very far. So Winry delivered a short, sharp blow to the footboard, causing the bed to list backwards and crash back into its original position. Winry winced at the sound, even as the creatures in the cell yelped.
The blankets and pillows were still crumpled in a heap on the floor, but she couldn't do anything about that. So Winry lowered the grate back into place, and wondered which direction she should go in.
The cell had been lit by a single bulb in the ceiling, but there was no such light source here. In fact, the faint glow from the grate was the only thing illuminating her surroundings. There was no obvious air current to follow, so she simply picked a direction and began creeping down it – it didn't seem like this part of...wherever she was being kept...was used frequently, but she wasn't about to take chances.
At first, she had thought that light was going to be a problem, but just as the light from her cell was beginning to fade, she spotted another source – there was another grate in the floor, obviously serving as ventilation for another room. Keeping it in mind that a light source usually meant the room was being used, Winry crept towards it, crouched down and leaned over it slightly.
The room below was empty, which was rather a surprise. Usually rooms had some sort of furniture in them or storage boxes at the very least, but the one below her seemed to be nothing more than empty space. So Winry shrugged mentally and moved on, refusing to take any pathways deviating from her current one – until she reached a dead end, she was going to do her best to avoid becoming hopelessly lost.
But eventually, she did reach a dead end, though not the one she'd been expecting. The pipes and cables around her suddenly curved and shot straight down, disappearing into a black hole in the floor. And while some part of Winry was tempted to climb down simply to continue following the pipes – they had to come out somewhere, after all – she knew that even if she could climb down there she certainly couldn't climb up again. So she went left instead, knocking out a grate that apparently wasn't screwed in and sliding through to another mess of pipes and cables that continued in the same direction, but without the downward drop.
Winry resumed her somewhat-stealthy shuffle along the pipes, but nearly leapt out of her skin when she heard voices. She had flattened herself against the pipes before she realised the voices were actually emitting from a grate just in front of her, and so she obviously wasn't in danger of being discovered just yet.
Curiosity piqued, Winry slunk closer and cautiously peered into the room below her.
Pride was standing there, conversing with a man who Winry assumed was Ed and Al's father at first glance, until she remembered their story about a man who looked exactly like Hohenheim but wasn't actually him, and went by the name of Father.
From what she remembered, he was also the boss of the homunculi and the brain behind all the evil things they'd ever done, and it was with that in mind that Winry began backing slowly away from the grate, not even hanging around to listen to their conversation. From what Ed and Al had told her about this guy, she wouldn't put it past him to have some kind of ability that made him capable of detecting her presence even if he didn't see, hear, or smell her.
So Winry went in the opposite direction as quickly as she could, feeling as though her level of anxiety had tripled. She swallowed a few times in an effort to coax moisture back into her suddenly dry throat.
Was that a growl behind her?
Winry jerked her head around, her eyes scanning the dimly-lit world around her, half-expecting to see glowing eyes as some monster rose from the darkness. But there was nothing, and she firmly told herself to stop being silly – a glimpse of Ed and Al's arch-enemy was no reason to completely lose her head and start imagining monsters creeping up on her.
Still, she couldn't help her frequent glances behind her as she turned down another pathway, following one of the broader pipes.
Which turned out to be a good decision, as a rather pungent smell hit her nose. Was there a sewer somewhere?
While finding a sewer was usually not cause for celebration, Winry beamed to herself. Sewers meant drains, which meant some connection to the outside world...and sewers always had manholes, and access to the outside in case they needed to be repaired. Now all she had to do was hope that the smell was actually coming from a sewer, and not a decaying rat stuck somewhere in the pipes.
She sniffed the air like a scent hound to try to determine the direction it was coming from, walking one way then the other to see if it got any stronger and wrinkling in her nose in distaste when the stench emitted particularly strongly from her right.
The blonde was just about to set off in that direction when another menacing rumble came from behind her. She turned around...
And this time there was a set of glowing, reflective eyes. Four sets, to be exact.
Winry couldn't help the scream that ripped from her throat as she tore off down the strange corridor, heedless of direction as she dipped and swerved around corners, taking whatever path seemed most likely to throw them off her trail.
But the sounds behind her never abated – the clatter of hooves, the thud of heavy paws, the high barks and roars of animals pursuing their prey – and Winry was forced to grimly assume they were probably too close to shake. She didn't dare even glance behind her for fear they'd be on her at the slightest hesitation in her stride.
All her concentration went to focusing on what was ahead of her, and not tripping on the pipes and cables – if she went down, she knew she'd never have the chance to get up.
Her legs burned and her lungs ached, but adrenaline and sheer desperation lent her strength. She hurdled a pipe that obstructed her path, landing lightly on the other side...
And then the ground dissolved beneath her, the concrete under her feet parting like curtains and leaving her tumbling sickeningly through space.
The landing was bad one. Winry felt her left foot turn beneath her and her collapsing leg sent her tumbling down on her side, the hard stone smashing against her ribs and knocking the breath from her body. For a few crucial moments, she could do nothing but lie there, pain stabbing through her leg and ribs, chest heaving as she coughed and spluttered.
Eyes watering, her skin tingling and half-numb from the impact, she managed to drag herself to her knees and grasp the knife and fork in her pocket. They were hardly fearsome weapons, but they were better than nothing, and she brandished them at the two figures she could barely glimpse through her blurring vision.
She managed to draw several short, shallow breaths that eased the burning in her lungs a little, and as Winry blinked away the reflexive tears she finally realised who she was staring at; Father and Pride were standing in front of her, gazing down at her – Pride in obvious puzzlement, and Father simply in mere interest.
The mechanic became aware of just what a picture she must represent, on her knees, brandishing cutlery as her final line of defense.
"How'd she get out?" Pride asked, apparently directing his question to empty air. "I thought I locked that door."
Father glanced up at where she had emerged from, and to Winry's surprise – without any movement, any kind of gesture on his part – the ceiling slid back together, sealing away the glowing eyes of her former pursuers. She didn't pretend to be an expert on alchemy, but she was pretty sure that wasn't something normal alchemists could do.
"The fact the chimeras on the above level were alerted suggests she escaped through the vent," Father mused, before glancing back down at her. "I suppose we should have taken more precautions before housing a mechanic."
Winry fought the urge to quail beneath his stare and glared at him with the kind of fire she normally reserved for Ed when he returned with his automail in pieces.
"No matter, we will take them now – Pride, take her back to her cell."
Father turned away, and Winry automatically brandished her utensils at the approaching homunculus. However, it didn't really surprise her when she was disarmed with a flicker of shadow.
"Better luck next time, honey," Pride said, his tone condescending.
"Don't call me honey!" Winry spat.
"Yeah, yeah – come on, back to bed."
He lifted her in his arms like he was lifting a baby, and with about as much effort. Winry had been thinking of hitting him, but the impulse was lost in the waves of pain the radiated through her when Pride picked her up. Stinging aches were flaring up all over her body, especially on the side she'd fallen on, and Winry could tell she would have some very impressive bruises in a few hours.
Her ribs throbbed with each breath, but she couldn't tell if they were cracked or simply bruised. The shift in position had done her injured foot no favours, but Winry could tell that most of the pain seemed to be coming from her ankle. Sprained, perhaps?
It took less time than she would have thought to reach her cell. Apparently, in her wild dash from the...chimeras, as Father had called them...she must have doubled back somewhere along the way.
Pride deposited her on the bed, and Winry looked up at the vent above her just in time to see the ceiling shift, flowing over the vent like water, until it didn't look like one grate but a series of very small grates.
Father stood in the doorway, contemplating the ceiling with a slightly satisfied air.
"Is she badly injured?" he asked, and Winry presumed that inquiry had been brought on by her wince as Pride set her down.
"I think there's something wrong with her ribs, and her ankle's gone funny," Pride said, and Winry could have sworn he sounded almost worried.
'You're just projecting,' she told herself. 'He looks and sounds like Ed, and Ed would be worried in his position – you're just projecting.'
The blonde woman glanced down at her ankle, and immediately saw what Pride meant by 'gone funny' – she had obviously twisted it, and badly; her foot was on an angle no one but a very skilled ballerina could hold.
No wonder it hurt so much.
Father approached her, and Winry was unable to control the way she shrank back against the wall, survival instincts clamouring to get herself out of his way. He simply grabbed her arm to hold her still and touched his hand to her side.
The mechanic shivered, feeling as though a slight pulse had run through her body, and it was only when Father drew his hand away that she realised he had taken most of her pain with it. Her ankle still throbbed, but her ribs and side felt as though nothing had ever happened to them.
Had he healed her?
The man who could have been Hohenheim's identical twin stared at her for a moment, then turned and began to walk out of the cell.
"Hey, aren't you going to fix her foot, too?" Pride asked.
"No – it may serve as a deterrent to future escape attempts," he replied, before turning down the corridor and becoming lost to sight.
Winry was left gaping, unable to grasp the cold disinterest in that statement. That man was capable of fixing her up, yet he was going to let her languish with a badly twisted ankle with no more remorse than if he had hobbled a horse to stop it wandering off.
She was so stunned that she wasn't paying attention to what Pride was doing until a hand touched her injured ankle. Winry yelped and pulled it away from his grasp, eyeing him distrustfully.
"Look, I'm trying to help you here," the homunculus grumbled. "You know this sort of first-aid medicine stuff, right? What do I do?"
Some part of Winry wanted to spit in his face and scream at him...but her ankle really, really hurt. "First, you need to take off my boot."
Pride unlaced her shoe with much more tenderness than she would have expected, but hesitated when he was about to pull it off. "Won't this...hurt?"
Winry was in too much pain to dissemble. "Probably." The swelling alone would ensure that.
"Isn't that...bad?"
"Just do it – yank it off."
Pride obeyed, practically tearing the shoe off as Winry gritted her teeth and fisted her hands in the material of her pants. A strange sort of high-pitched whine emerged from her throat, but she was pleased she hadn't screamed.
Pride was staring at her swollen, purpling ankle and looking horrified.
"T-tear up the sheet," she managed to force out. "I need a bandage."
The homunculus did so, ripping the sheet on the floor into strips.
"My foot needs to be repositioned," Winry instructed, panting slightly with the effort of keeping herself calm and in control. "Twi-twist it back into place."
"No way!" Pride yelped.
"You do it or I do it!" Winry bellowed, not having the patience to deal with her captor's strange reluctance to hurt her. "You can't bandage it until it's back in the correct position!"
Pride swallowed, looking terrified, and his expression was such a mirror of Ed's when she'd told him she was going off with Scar that Winry had to look away.
"Okay," he said quietly, reaching for her foot.
"I might not be in much shape to give you instructions after this," Winry admitted. "So, when everything's back the way it's supposed to be, wrap from my toes to the middle of my leg, with most of the bandages around the ankle. And do it tightly."
Pride nodded, and Winry lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to anticipate what she knew was coming.
To his credit, Pride did it cleanly. One wrench and while Winry screamed she dimly registered the feeling of cloth being wrapped around her injury. But of course, the pressure on the swollen mass of tissue made the pain worse, and the mechanic was unable to do anything but hiss and whimper while she waited for the fire in her leg to subside.
Lost in her own private struggle, Winry didn't even register that Pride had finished bandaging her until she realised someone had wrapped her in their arms, and she was being rocked and soothed like a fussy child.
She breathed deeply for several seconds, trying to get the pain under control, trying to stop herself from simply closing her eyes and imagining she was hearing Ed's voice.
Though some spiteful part of her wanted to shove Pride off the bed and onto his ass, the rest of her was eager to grab whatever comfort was around, and it didn't help her resolve that this homunculus looked and sounded so much like Ed. She turned her face into his chest, sniffling, shocked and horrified to find herself on the verge of emotional tears.
She told herself it was simply a delayed reaction to...everything. It wasn't uncommon for her – Grandma had always said she was good in a crisis because she kept her head and waited until everything was over to collapse. It had been the same when she delivered that baby in Rush Valley.
"Why are you doing this?" It was only when Pride went stiff that Winry realised she'd said that aloud.
For his part, Pride was wondering the same thing. He was a homunculus – he didn't go around cuddling humans! What the hell was wrong with him?
What was worse, was that it felt...good...to do this for her. To help her, to comfort her. What was wrong with him? What made her so different, so...fascinating?
She was a shade taller than average, pretty in that classical beauty kind of way, and he supposed automail mechanics as talented as she was were rare...but really, she wasn't all that out of the ordinary. Some pleasant packaging, yes, but still just a human.
He became aware Win-the human was still waiting on his answer (and that he was still holding her), so he simply huffed and pulled away.
"We need you in good shape," he blustered. "After all, we may need you here for a while."
"To get Ed and Al to do...whatever you want them to do?" she snapped, managing to sound defiant in spite of the pain she was in.
"Exactly." He forced a smug grin to his face, trying not to show how much her agony was distressing him. "If we handed you over in less than stellar condition, it might be regarded as not keeping our word, you see?"
Winry scowled, her contempt obvious in her sarcasm. "And keeping your word is important to you? And my question was about that hug-thing, not the bandaging."
Pride glared, and slammed the door on his way out.
"That didn't answer my question," Winry commented to the empty room.
The blonde sighed, dismissing Pride's behaviour as bizarre homunculus mood swings, and tested her ankle. It ached like fury, and certainly wouldn't support her weight, but Pride's treatment had been competent – the tight bandages would restrict movement and hopefully control the swelling.
She limped over to the table and took a drink, then shook the blankets and pillows out and tossed them back on the bed. She glanced towards her companions in the cell, watching the one with the reptile head scuffle in the corner while the other just lay there, as it had done ever since she first saw it, its head lolling on the ground, its mouth open as it panted.
The spots of red on its teeth and tongue were most definitely blood, but as Winry glanced around it suddenly struck her how strange that was. There was no remnants of a meal around the chimeras, and the one with the crocodile head seemed to have no blood on it at all...so where had the blood come from?
Was it injured in some way?
Feeling a strange, reluctant kinship with another creature that had been left injured and alone in here, Winry limped cautiously closer, ready to leap away if it tried to attack her, but it seemed too exhausted to really do anything. The one with the crocodile head watched her with flat, reptilian eyes, but it didn't growl or charge, so the blonde risked kneeling beside the incapacitated chimera.
"Hey, little one," she crooned, in the voice she used to soothe Den after her automail leg had been reattached. "What's wrong with you? Aren't you feeling well?"
It blinked at her, its lips lifting, as though it were trying to snarl but hadn't the energy or the will.
"Well, you seem to be a girl," the blonde continued in the same low, soothing voice. "I mean, I don't know what indicates a reptile gender, but if we're going with dogs you look like a girl...and it's not as though you'll know the difference, so we'll say you're a girl."
The chimera's mouth was slightly open, and Winry risked ducking close for a moment to glance inside. She straightened up immediately, looking at her patient to see if she objected. When the creature didn't move, she repeated the movement, this time lingering to peer into the mouth.
There was something pale inside – it looked like a yellow-white sliver of bone. It had somehow become jammed diagonally in the chimeras mouth, one of the sharp ends sunk into the gum and the other wedged between two teeth.
Not at all enthusiastic at the prospect of reaching into a slavering monster's mouth, but reluctant to leave a living thing in such obvious pain (and in such a tender area), she cast about for something to hold the chimera's jaws open or, at the very least, something she could knock it on the head with to persuade it to release her.
The screws in her pocket obviously weren't going to do anything, but Winry was struck with inspiration upon spotting the plate still resting on the table. It was still half-full with cold food, and Winry was a little unsure how to deal with that – it wasn't as though she had a garbage bin nearby.
Deciding it the plate was just as functional if it had food on it, she slowly, painfully levered herself to her feet and hobbled to the table to retrieve it.
"If you bite me, I'm going to bash you on the head with this plate," she informed the chimera as she knelt down next to it once more.
The other chimera looked at her with interest as it scented food, and Winry began to wonder if this was such a good idea after all, but after sniffing the air ominously for a few moments it seemed to lose interest. Maybe it was like a reptile and didn't need to eat as often as mammals?
Winry let the plate rest on the ground as one hand worked on prising the chimera's jaws apart. "Easy girl, I'm going to help you – I'm going to get that out, and you'll feel much better..."
The chimera didn't make any sort of recognisable protest, which led Winry to wonder just how weak it was. It would have been difficult for the animal to eat in that state, and it was looking awfully thin. Initially she'd just assumed the protruding ribs and visible vertebrae were part of the freak-of-nature package, but now she was seriously considering the possibility that she was looking at a severely emaciated animal.
"Okay, now I'm just going to reach in here and try to twist this out..."
She was wary of moving the bone at all, embedded in the chimera's gum as it was, but there was no other way. As gently as she could, she twisted it free with the kind of dexterity automail engineering had taught her, withdrawing the bone and flinging it to the ground.
The chimera closed its mouth and a long, rather reptilian tongue emerged to lick its lips but it made no other move.
Considering how long it might have gone without food, Winry was feeling rather sympathetic and – determined not to have her patient die on her after she'd gone to so much trouble – scooped a handful of mashed potato from her plate and pressed it to the chimera's mouth. The tongue emerged again, tentatively sampling the food, before her fingers were cleared in a few weary swipes.
"Good girl," she crooned. "Want some more?"
Winry fed the chimera the remainder of her dinner, grinning a little. Though it seemed bizarre, helping it had cheered her up – probably because it was something positive she could do to take the focus off herself, rather than lying around whimpering in self-pity about how much her ankle hurt.
"Very good girl," the blonde whispered, stroking the chimera's ears. "Hey, if I give you some of my dinner every night, will you let me try to figure out how to open the door, hmmm?"
'You're attempting to make a deal with an animal that doesn't understand a word you're saying,' muttered a sarcastic voice in the back of her mind, but Winry studiously ignored it.
She was tired, but doubted she could fall asleep with the way her ankle was throbbing. So she simply stayed where she was, scratching through the thin, velvet-like fur that covered the chimera's head.
"You know, if I closed my eyes, I could almost fool myself into believing I'm sitting at home, stroking my dog," she informed it. "You seem about half-dog...but what's your other half? Some kind of giant lizard?"
It blinked at her, and Winry was startled from her reverie by the sound of metal on metal that she had learned heralded the opening of the door. Struggling to her feet, she took her weight on her uninjured leg and faced the door as it swung aside to reveal Pride behind it, looking severely pissed off.
She tensed automatically, wondering what was about to happen – he looked angry enough to reduce her to a little red smear, so she was surprised when he simply shoved a small plastic packet into her hand.
"Painkillers," he snapped. "You'll need them."
With that, he stalked out again, muttering obscenities under her breath. Suspicious and confused, the mechanic glanced down at the packet, expecting some kind of trick...but the labels were for painkillers, and the package didn't appear to have been tampered with.
"And this whole thing is only getting stranger," she muttered.
-xxx-
AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this!