(no subject)
Author: elviella
Title: Hands to work and hands to heal
Recipient: sofipitch
Rating: K+/PG
Characters/Pairings: Winry, Pinako
Summary: Winry Rockbell is ten years old when she decides to become an automail mechanic.
Notes: For the prompt: Was it always Winry Rockbell’s goal to become an automail mechanic? Or did she have any other goals in mind? It would be awesome if this could take place around the age 7-10. When I started this I didn’t think it would end up a 6500+ words long monster, but well. I hope you enjoy it!
It's the summer and Winry Rockbell is ten years old.
Her hands are sticky with fruit and the dry grass tickles her bare feet, her shoes abandoned somewhere near and the socks stuffed in her pocket. The sun paints the inside of her closed eyes a warm bright red that makes her sleepy. Winry sighs. The heat and the light make her thoughts hazy, fuzzy around the edges.
"I like the summer", she decides out loud.
"Everyone likes the summer", she hears Ed say grumpily.
"Don't complain, big brother. I like the summer too, Winry", Al says.
Winry half opens one eye. Al has his eyes closed, patting Den's head on his lap. Her eyelid slips back down, closes. The air is hot and still and she hears cicadas and bugs and, somewhere that seems very far away, messy human voices. She's sweaty and her dress is stained, her knees caked with dirt, and her legs hurt from running and kneeling and jumping.
"This is nice. I don't want to get up", she says.
“Then don’t!" Ed grumbles, fed up.
*
It’s hot and Winry can count the beads of sweat on her grandmother's forehead. Pinako has been silent for a while now, bent over the automail arm she is working on. Despite the morning light that fills the room, the lamp on the desk is switched on, cool white light reflecting on the metal. Pinako's hands, nimble and precise inside her gloves, slide down the smooth metal surface, checking the outer shell's steadfastness. Winry was late to go to the workshop that day and didn't come in time to see the thin mechanic nerves get fitted and soldered into place - she should arrange her time better next time, she notes.
Her grandma’s arms tense and relax again, her muscles well-defined and strong. Her grandmother is unlike any other, Winry thinks. Then she remembers that all human beings are unique, but well, Granny is unusual, too. And also great. She is short and stocky and strong, her hands thick and callused, and her smile is kind and so is her voice. She is always ready to help people, be it making a mechanic limb or fixing a broken oven. When she grows up and gets old, Winry would love to be like her.
"Are you bored?" Granny's voice cuts through the haze of her thoughts.
"No, no", Winry is fast to shake her head.
"Fetch me the couple of screws marked as A5 from the counter."
Winry does as told, and watches the pieces get twisted into place, steadying a thin metal slate.
"Look", Granny says, "I'm done now. But never, ever, leave something without checking it at least three times - even if it is a simple plumbing tube. Though no more than ten, because then you will start seeing mistakes where they don't exist. For better measure, it's very useful to have someone else check your work up once". Pinako pushes the arm so it rests in front of Winry. "Tell me if I've done anything wrong."
Winry nods. Granny has not even once shown not to trust her, no matter how hard the job. She bites her lip and runs her hands through her hair, tightening her ponytail. Tentatively, she places her hands on the arm and turns it around, the palm facing up.
"Can I open it up?" she asks.
"Of course! You want to do the whole thing, don't you?"
Her lip twitches upwards in a smile. She takes a wrench and twists each of the screws on the underarm's slate, without taking them entirely out of their sockets. The slate comes off easily and Winry places it on the counter, next to the arm. The lamplight illuminates the cables, the carefully welded connections, the tiny devices that make the communication easier. The arm's interior seems alive and dynamic. She pictures it working, the fingers twisting, cupping, holding, the nerves sparking with information, the mechanic muscles effortlessly pushing and pulling. Winry has spent enough time in the workshop to know two things: Automail are just devices; just like the rest of their kind, they need caution and attention, skill, a sharp eye and a firm but gentle grasp. They are things used by people in their everyday life and thus should be treated as such, taking in account how often and with how much force they are used (more than any other machine, Winry knows). So, and here comes the second important bit of information, one has to treat them as body parts as well; think of them as extensions of the human body and think of the person and their life when making or repairing them.
"Can I look at the designs?" she asks.
Pinako smirks and pushes them in front of her. Winry double checks every detail and makes sure that everything she sees in front of her matches the picture and notes exactly.
"I will check the connections now."
Pinako nods. Winry confirms that each screw is twisted firmly into place, that the nerves are connected correctly with each other, not letting her fingers touch anything they should not or move any of the cables.
She wants to do this right, and it takes time. Her eyebrows curl and uncurl and she bites the inside of her cheek. Her bangs get sticky with sweat.
When she finally pulls back, her vision is slightly clouded, but she is satisfied.
"I can't find anything wrong", she says.
Pinako smiles.
"Good. Put the cover back on."
Winry smiles as well, but then frowns.
"Shouldn't we run a test somehow? Make sure everything works well?" she asks, confused. She has never happened to see a test run. Maybe it's not quite safe to do that? But shouldn’t one ensure that everything functions perfectly before moving on to the surgery and attachment?
"Well done", Granny says. "I'm glad you thought of that. It's going to be done later. Before the final check, you have to leave it for a bit, let it rest. Your head is just too full of it. You need to face it relaxed, with a clear mind."
She ruffles Winry's hair and the girl grins brightly.
*
A pine cone slices through the air and hits the fallen trunk with force. Another. A third one. Three more.
"OUCH!"
The seventh one hits Edward on the head.
"YOU WON'T HEAR THE END OF THIS!"
He jumps over the trunk, lands in front of it with a thump, and starts to throw pine cones towards the tree opposite him with all his strength.
"THE TREE IS OURS AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE IT!"
"Ugh!"
From the other tree they can hear voices. Tom has jumped out with his own cones. Winry hears a bunch of them hit their trunk, but a few manage to get to Ed.
"WHO DID YOU CALL A TINY SHRIMP?!" she hears him yell.
"Come on, Al", Winry says. "Let's go around and get them."
She isn't sure how they'll manage that, since there aren't a lot of hiding places, but she grabs Al's hand and pulls him with her and starts crawling away from their tree. They rush behind a bush. The fallen trunk Ed is currently defending is in front of them, and, opposite that, the enemies' tree-slash-fortress. The field in between is empty, save for Tom, Ed, their pine cones and some tall weeds, so they will have to go around and attack from behind the others' back, she calculates. Al silently points to another bush and she nods decisively. She looks behind cautiously, checking if anyone else had the same idea as them and is invading their own castle. The coast is clear. They start running, footsteps light, hiding behind each tree they meet. Ed doesn't look tired in the least. They hear him shout something about multiple dragon attack and Tom eating his dust.
A tree. They run.
Bush.
Tree.
Their breaths are small and short.
They look at each other.
They nod.
"ARRRRRGHHHHHHHH"
They attack in perfect sync.
Even Ed looks surprised, but quickly recovers and benefits from Tom's shock to fall on him and pull him down. Winry is already climbing up the tree, when Al yells "HEY, UNFAIR! I DON'T HIT GIRLS!" from the ground. Hmph. So she'll have to do this by herself. Allie, unfazed, is sitting on a branch on the other size of the trunk. Her eyes are narrowed, two pine cones in her palm.
"The tree is ours", she says.
Winry puts on her most determined face.
"Not for long", she says, her hand fisting the cone in her pocket.
In the end, it's a tie.
"Can we make peace and let me take care of the wounded now?" Winry says brightly.
Ed is sitting on Tom's back. Lizzy has beaten Al. Allie and Winry have run out of cones to throw.
"Wounded, what wounded? There are no wounded!" Ed shouts.
“I wouldn't mind sharing the tree…” Al says hesitantly.
"We can PRETEND to have wounded and let me take care of them!" Winry says from up the tree.
Ed makes a puffing sound but doesn't say anything else.
Allie jumps to the ground. "We're not done, Rockbell", she says dramatically, but laughs and opens her bag to take out some apricots.
Winry climbs down herself.
"It's a truce, Ed."
"His boxers are too dirty to count as a white flag."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY BOXERS?!"
Each head is met with a cone. Winry narrows her eyes at them. Both boys stay quiet, their frowning expressions still on, and catch the apricots to follow.
*
Winry's finger follows the curving line of the muscle on the book's page. She has looked at a lot of her parents’ old books, but this one is one of her favourites. The pictures are carefully drawn with ink, the external outlines thick, the internal thinner. The details are accurately put to paper and each spot is connected with its label and name with a thin line. Winry follows each of them with her eyes and reads the strange names. Femur. Patella. Tibia. Fibula.
She does not so much interested in those - she prefers to memorize the pictures, know where everything actually is. She also prefers reading the more intriguing parts: various symptoms, uses of medicine, surgery methods.
She strokes Den's back absent-mindedly. She remembers reading these books even before her parents left, knowing the radius, the ulna, the vertebrae's names since she was five. Before she knew how to read, she used to look at the pictures and then take the books to her mom and ask the name of each organ. Her mom would read each of the names out loud and then take Winry's hand and touch her body with it, showing her where everything was.
"This is your stomach. Here are your kidneys. The spleen. The esophagus goes this way."
Winry would then lift her shirt up and see that her birthmark was above the pancreas, one of her moles on the left of her stomach and the other one under her right lung. Then she’d ask her mom if she'd seen all those things properly, without the skin covering them, and mom would tell her stories from when she was a medical student; about the teacher who always, always, had his exams on the brain's illnesses but when mom sat it he'd decided to make it about the brain's nerve system ("Eeeek! Had you studied?!", "No!"); about the time she found herself accidentally in a labour room and helped deliver a baby when she should have been in class; about how she once pulled an all-nighter but ended up in the wrong examination room ("Did you like Dad right away? Was he handsome?", "He was kind of adorable in how he made me laugh. He tried to flirt with me using scientific names. Very smooth!").
Winry bites her lip and turns the page. She feels the pain biting into her ribs, stinging, tied around her heart like a rope. The letter from the army ("We are in the sad necessity to inform you that your son and daughter-in-law...") has only been in her grandma's drawer for a few months. Winry hadn't seen her parents in years, and this should probably make the pain easier, but it doesn't. It only makes it hurt more.
Aorta. Pericardium. Valves. Pumps. Some names remind her of mechanical parts; her grandma showing her the interior of a plumbing installation and the knuckles of a steel hand.
She gets up and goes to the bathroom, washes her face. Her grandma is working - she doesn't want to bother her, even though she knows she won't mind. She looks at her face in the mirror. Her eyebrows are very blonde, barely showing. Her nose has acquired sun-made freckles. She puffs one round cheek, then the other one. She grits her teeth. Her parents never told her not to cry, ever. They said: Don't worry, it'll be all right.
Some things become all right by themselves. Other things, you make them all right. Her parents could make a lot of things better. She pictures them in the battlefield, the best doctors in all of Ishval, making everything bad better. Winry knows it is okay to hurt and cry. It doesn't make you weak; it doesn't make you less brave. She also knows she has to make things all right, herself. She bites her lip and smiles brightly at her teary reflection.
*
Winry bends her head over an old twisted scar on her knee. She was four years old when she got it - she fell while climbing down the steps to get to the orchard - and her dad had rolled up his pants and shown her his own thin mark on the calf. "I was five and just getting out of school when it happened. I have not met a single person that doesn't have a scar on their legs from when they were kids!" he'd said.
Allie is sitting cross legged on the floor, looking at the oven, inside which small cakes are baking. The silence between them stretches, comfortable and friendly. Winry lets her legs drop, feet grazing the floor. The window is filled with bright green leaves from the tree outside and Allie's cat comes to rub her head on Winry's ankle.
"When are we meeting up with the others?" Allie says.
"At around six", Winry says, stroking the cat's head. The cat is white and fat, with a ribbon tied around her neck. She might be pregnant, Winry suspects.
"Good, the cakes will be ready by then. We could even make some frosting!"
"Well, you could even make some frosting", Winry points out.
Winry isn't bad at baking. Allie is very good at it.
Allie laughs. "Well. I could even make some frosting! What are the others bringing?"
"Well, I hope Ed and Al don't bring anything. At least not anything they made. Lizzy said her mom would make pies. Max will bring biscuits, Dinah will make another pie... Mikael will make sandwiches. That's about it, I think."
"Isn't Tom coming?"
"No, he said his dad needs him to help with some work."
"Ah. So he's going to do that permanently? Like, work with a schedule and all?"
"Hmm? Yeah, I think."
"Well, because Mom says I should start working in the bakery properly this year", Allie says, half frowning.
"But we haven't finished school yet!"
"I know! I want to finish school, but she says I should work for some hours in the afternoon. You know, get the hang of it and stuff", Allie shrugs. "Well, it won't be half bad, I guess. I like baking!"
Winry grins at her friend. In Resembool, ten is a perfectly good age to start working properly or to become an apprentice, though no-one will scold you if you wait for a couple of years more.
Allie is now opening the oven's door cautiously, sniffing to see if the cakes are done. She pulls them out and leaves the door ajar to let the heat wither away.
"So, frosting. Chocolate it is?"
"Chocolate it is!", Winry replies enthusiastically. She falls back on her chair, the fat cat resting on her lap now, looking very comfortable. "Picnics are the best". She thinks about it for a moment. "You need any help?"
“Nah, it’s okay.” Allie pauses for a moment. “Won’t you start working with your grandma properly, too?”
Winry puffs her cheek, purses her lips.
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”
“Ah, um, I just meant, you already know so much about mechanics. And you spend a lot of time in the workshop. But I guess that a proper apprenticeship requires more time?”
“I suppose. But, I mean, we haven’t talked about me becoming an engineer. You know, I haven’t really thought of that myself. I always thought I would…well, decide later, or something.”
Allie brings the chocolate she’s melting in front of Winry, with a spoon.
“Only one spoonful, though”, she says.
The chocolate is hot and smooth and tastes like the best thing Winry has ever eaten. She sighs in appreciation.
“But yeah, I suppose… I suppose I should talk with grandma at some point.”
Allie turns her head and smiles. “Yes, I don’t know. You’d be a great mechanic, I think.”
Winry smiles back and gets up to get some more of the chocolate.
“HEY! I said only one spoonful!”
“Buth I can’tth help it! It ith too goodth!”
*
The steel catches the light as it moves, mechanical muscles functioning and soundless. The arm makes an elegant motion in the air; the fingers open and close swiftly.
“It’s perfect, Mrs. Rockbell”, the young man says. “Thanks so much.”
The healing of the body after the application of automail lasts three years or more, Winry knows. The face of the man who has come for some small repairs is wrinkleless but scarred, with almost as many small marks as it has freckles.
“No problem, son”, Winry’s grandma replies kindly as the man runs his palm over the metal bicep.
Until she was six, Winry knew very few people from the village that would visit her grandmother. More patients came from other places, mostly eastern villages and towns, since Rush Valley was - and still is - much more famous.
Then, blue uniforms flooded Resembool, thousands of soldiers on their way to Ishval, and later on, on their way back, bandaged men with serious injuries or soldiers with their glances haunted, recovering from something that was not apparent on their flesh. Suddenly, one fourth of the army had lost a limb, or even two. Some of them decided to stay that way, others would use simple wooden replacements and others chose to suffer through the surgery in order to acquire functioning limbs again. Winry remembers the freckled man’s face, a few years younger, stretched by the pain but grateful, from back when she would burrow into Granny’s workshop so she wouldn’t be alone.
The man has the same grateful expression now, squeezing Granny’s hand. “Bye, kid”, he tells Winry sweetly and pats her head. “Thank you.” (This time, Winry was not sitting on the floor by the door, holding her knees to her chest, but she was standing next to her grandma, goggles ready on her head, passing bolts and screwdrivers). Winry smiles.
Pinako yawns and rubs her eyes, but a few minutes after the man is gone, she grabs a pencil and a ruler and starts correcting some designs. Winry pulls the chair next to her. When she was younger, her grandma piled up some cushions on the seat and after the patients were gone, Winry would climb up and sit and ask:
“What is this? How is it connected? Why are there so many casings?”. Granny would explain and her voice would be calm, making the details understandable without being patronizing and Winry would frown over the details but feel better. It reminded her of her mom and anatomy, but maybe not that much: her grandma didn’t remind her a lot of her mom in general. Later in the day, when she got tired, she would fall asleep with her head on the counter and Granny would carry her to her bed in her sturdy arms.
Now, Winry is thinking of something else when she asks:
“Gran, did Dad ever care about mechanics?”
Grandma presses her glasses tighter on her nose.
“Yeah, when he was small he liked to hang out in the workshop. He was very observant - he had a good eye and a steady hand. Good for a mechanic, but good for a doctor, too.”
Winry places her arms on the counter and her head on her arms. She looks at her grandmother and her thin, smiling lips.
“Then he wanted to become a teacher, and for a while an acrobat. Eventually he went to the city to study medicine”, Grandma says with no sign of disappointment - more like with pride, Winry observes.
“Wouldn’t you want to have him with you?”
Granny leans back, pushing the sheets of paper away and turns her chair towards Winry.
“Well, it wouldn’t be bad to have him here. We always got along well when working on something together.”
“Except for the kitchen”, Winry says.
“Except for the kitchen”, Granny laughs. “Before you blame me, you should know that your dad got very stubborn every time he cooked. He just wanted to do everything his way!”
Winry laughs. When her dad decided to cook, he would sit her on the counter and tell her to stay there and not make a fuss. Winry would exchange her obedience with food and sit on the counter with a full mouth and watch as her dad chopped and stirred and mixed swiftly.
Winry, her lips still tense with cheerfulness, looks at the designs on the surface of the desk. The pencil in her hand fidgets.
“Winry, are you thinking about becoming a mechanic?” her grandmother asks.
The woman has raised her up - she knows her face like she knows her own calloused palm.
Winry quirks her head.
“Um. I’ve been thinking about stuff, yes.”
The light falls on the floor in ribbons, paints it bright and summery.
“Whatever you choose to do, I’ll be proud of you”, her grandma tells her. “Your dad chose to be a doctor and you know how proud I still am of him as well. He never felt any kind of responsibility to follow the line or keep up the profession or the name of the shop.” A pause. “We Rockbells are great in whatever it is we want to do, and you will be great in whatever you decide to do. And even if you are not, I will still be proud of you. I just want for you to do what you truly want, what you choose yourself to do. You are a wonderful kid, Winry, and I love you very much.”
Winry nods and tightens her lips for a moment, feeling her chest full of something she can’t quite name. She stands up and hugs her grandmother tightly and the golden light fills her eyes.
*
“Okay, so can we do something a little more dignified for all of us, now?” Ed grumbles.
Max and Lizzy are sitting on top of him. He’d yelled and kicked and fought at first, and he was definitely the strongest there, but every dragon needs to be defeated at some point, and Ed sometimes regretted liking Al and Winry so much, because really, they made him do the weirdest things.
“Sorry”, Liz smacks his forehead. “The knight said we needed to guard the dragon and that is what we’re doing.” Max only keeps on chewing the biscuit he’s eating.
Said knight, also known as Winry Rockbell, has fought her way to the princess’s room up the tower - also known as the branch Al (the princess) is seated on. Now she grabs her princess’s hand and climbs back down, ready to take up any challenge to sword fighting that may ensue.
“Winry, you’re done with your enemies. Are we going to do anything else or are we just going to keep doing ridiculous things all day long?” Ed grumbles some more.
“No! First I have to carry Al bridal style and march off to the sunset!”
“Winry, it’s the NOON! There is no sunset!!”
“Shut up or I’ll carry you bridal style too!”. Winry flexes her muscles with a glare.
Ed flushes but he only makes a “hmprh”-ing sound before he shuts up.
*
Winry’s head appears from inside the cabinet and she pushes fresh air into her lungs.
“The tube needs to be changed!” she announces.
Her hair is pulled back and her hands gloved. She happened to be at home when two kids much younger than her arrived to ask for Pinako to go over and have a look at the plumbing, but only if that’s not much trouble, please?, so she naturally trailed behind. Now, sitting under the sink, she is certain about the nature of the problem and she would be glad to do the fixing, as well.
“Want me to do this?” she grins up at her grandmother.
She shrugs.
“If you want to.”
“I do want to!” Winry says and disappears back under the sink, to check the tube type needed.
Under the sink, she blocks all other sound and focuses on the task at hand. It’s not a difficult job and she has it done quickly and neatly, and when she gets out and tests the tap and it works perfectly, the kids’ dad laughs good-heartedly and almost in awe and congratulates and thanks her cordially. Her grandma, smoking her pipe, smiles proudly.
“How do you know so many things, Winry?” one of the kids asks her as she’s repairing a broken toy for him.
She smiles, happy to be of help and happy to be admired like this.
“My grandma knows a lot of things”, she says. “Most engineers know a lot, but only about their own area of expertise, but Granny is too awesome for that. She always wanted to know how things work and her teacher insisted that she learned a lot of household mechanics for practice. Of course, she already knew a lot about those because she was always curious and she wanted to be able to fix her own trouble around the house.”
The kids nod, impressed.
“So she taught you how to be awesome, too!”, the boy says.
“No, silly! She was already awesome herself!”, his sister corrects him exasperatedly. “Her grandma just helped!”
Winry feels her cheeks redden in pleasure and she laughs. She twists a small bolt in the toy and gives it back to the kids.
“There you go!”, she grins at them brightly. “And thank you. I am glad you think I am awesome.”
The kids accept their toy back enthusiastically, and at once turn it around to see the changes Winry made.
The girl looks up at her and grins and then throws her arms around Winry’s shoulders. “You are great”, she says seriously. “Thank you very much!”
Her brother nods in agreement and both kids laugh, their faces flushed with joy. Winry can’t help but laugh, too.
*
Winry certainly does like the summer. The mornings are warm and bright and the nights are just breezy enough for her to fall asleep in her chair on the terrace, cuddled up inside her blanket, with Den dozing off at her feet. The evenings smell of Granny’s tobacco and night flowers, except for the times when they have to go inside because the wind brings the sheep’s stink towards them. Ed complains about the sheep and grumbles and exchanges “Tiny bean!!”s and “Old midget lady!!”s with Pinako. Al apologizes on behalf of his brother a lot and helps pick up the table and smiles and laughs whole-heartedly.
They play hide and seek, and fortress, and wild animals of the woods and Alexander the Cretan outlaw and band of bandits. Winry likes to play hospital, too, or pretend to be the great inventor in the palace who suddenly appears one day with the greatest invention literally ever. Younger kids come up to ask her to fix their toys every now and then, as they always did since Winry had fixed Max’s train years ago. Sometimes they bring her sweets, but Winry doesn’t really care because she likes to work on fixing things and she likes to see kids smile and laugh. It is also great when they tell her she is absolutely awesome, though she’s never missed being praised. She smiles and laughs herself and summer mornings are very, very nice.
They eat apricots and pick up berries and some of the summer apples, and Allie brings cakes and pies from the bakery. Winry actually ends up spending a lot of time in the bakery, because Allie’s mom keeps her more and more for help and Winry likes to keep her friend company. Sometimes she stays over, or Allie stays at her place, and a lot of times Al and Ed stay over after dinner and they build a pillow castle and a blanket mansion and sleep inside them, sometimes each with their book. It’s great to have friends with whom you can be quiet together, Winry thinks.
The autumn approaches, but not too fast. Winry likes the autumn, too, likes the orange and the brown and the dark green. Sometimes she is sweeping or tidying her room up and suddenly she is hit with a strong desire for the fall and her warmer clothes and the flames in the fireplace. Winry finds it hard not to find good things everywhere, even when she is sad. Mom used to tell her that this is a great gift, and so does Granny. Winry just smiles, the corner of her eyes wrinkling happily.
*
Winry is having breakfast late this day, a book propped up against the fruit basket as she sips her milk. It’s the book she had on her bedside table, and it happens to be an anatomy book (“You are such a nerd!”, Ed says. “Look who’s talking!”, she replies), so when she hears the workshop’s door opening, she is looking at a hand diagram.
Granny comes into the kitchen, followed by a tall brown-haired woman. Winry looks up and grins.
“Good morning!”
“Morning, kid”, Granny replies, her pipe between her teeth.
The woman smiles kindly at her, and the almost-noon light falls on her mechanic forearm, a bright square in the palm and shiny white fingers. She turns her hand and now the lines are seen clearly, the joints clean and the fingers perfectly in place.
It looks just like the hand on the page.
Of course, the drawn hand is more complicated in some aspects, with the carpus a complex combination of bones and the palm actually consisting of the fingers’ bases, as Winry very well knows. But the light catches on the mechanic hand again and she places her own hand, calluses just starting to form, on the table.
She is struck with the similarities.
Which, come to think of it, is kind of ridiculous, because Winry has grown up with automail arms and diagrams of arms and medical books. She knows that an automail arm is a replacement for an arm made of flesh and bone, that it can do the same work, that it is made to do the same work. Still, she is suddenly hit with the fact that they are so much alike; she feels like everything she knows, what she’s learned in the workshop and what she’s learned from her parents fall into place together.
The woman bids them goodbye and Granny walks her to the door.
In Winry’s head, a gear turns.
*
It doesn’t take her long to make her decision.
She is going to become an automail mechanic.
It feels natural but it is also a choice: Winry realizes that she can’t see herself doing anything else for a living. She doesn’t want to do anything else for a living. This is what she wants to do, she thinks to herself looking at the dark ceiling one night. She feels full of her decision, flooded with confidence and responsibility and it’s a very nice feeling. It’s like she always wanted it and like she now decides to do it and decisions are good things. She rubs the calluses that are forming on her palm and spends a long time thinking before she falls asleep, full of eagerness for learning so many things and creating and working and at some point she is definitely going to travel around, she decides, and she wants adventures but she doesn’t care about fighting, so she is going to have adventures in creating. That is going to be really great, she knows, and dreams of shiny steel and well-oiled joints and happy people who smile.
*
“Hey, Granny?”
They’ve just had dinner and Ed and Al have gone home and Winry is taking the dishes to the sink so Granny can wash them; there’s a light breeze that stirs the curtains and Winry can count eleven twinkling stars outside the window.
She places the bread back in its basket and braces herself on her toes, pushing up to put the salt and pepper back in place.
She can think of a million ways to go round and round and eventually bring up what she wants to say: “So, Granny, you’ve never had an apprentice, right?”. “I was wondering, Gran, did you always know you wanted to be a mechanic?”. “You know, Tom said the other day he’d start working with his dad”. No. She steadies her hands against the plate she’s holding and puts it next to the sink. She won’t go around. She wants to be straightforward, always, but now especially.
She stands next to Granny, looks at her calm profile.
“Granny, I’ve decided I want to become an automail engineer.”
Here. That was it. That’s the thing. She breathes in, then out.
Granny lets the water wash the soap off the last plate, then puts the plate on the rack to let it dry. She looks at Winry and smirks.
“You are very sure about this, aren’t you?” she says, very seriously, but with eyes twinkling with pride.
Winry feels - knows - that this isn’t because of the profession of choice, but the certainty the choice was articulated with.
Winry nods frantically.
Pinako opens the door to the terrace and motions Winry to follow her. They take their usual seats and Granny starts putting tobacco in her pipe and it all looks very normal, but Winry is restless; she feels her pulse and her sweaty hands still there, uneasy, despite the cheerfulness (and pride and emotion) in Granny’s eyes. She knows her grandmother and she loves her and she knows she loves her as well, but it’s the whole situation, this whole big formal step she’s taking that scares her.
“So you want to pursue this?” Granny says, looking at her straight in the eye.
“I do!” Winry starts. “I really do. I know you told me about not following anyone’s footsteps or line of work or anything but that’s not what I’m doing. I know you want to make sure I do something I want. And I want to become an engineer! There is nothing else I can even think about doing. I love seeing how things work and making things and I want to help people, some way, like Mom and Dad did and like you do. So. I am choosing to become an automail mechanic. Yeah. Ugh…Yeah.”
She gives a sheepish smile.
Granny smiles back.
“I never thought you’d do anything you didn’t want to do. I’ll love to have you as a proper apprentice.”
Winry grins, happily, her whole body tensing around it.
“Can I hug you, Gran?”
“Of course you can!”
*
“So. You are going to be an engineer”, Ed says.
“Yup”, Winry replies.
Ed shrugs. “Well, everyone saw it coming.”
“I suppose.”
Al grins. “You are going to be an amazing engineer.”
“Everyone can see that coming, too”, Ed says and Winry knows that’s the best he can do for a compliment. She doesn’t mind.
“Maybe we should find someone to take us in as apprentices too, big brother”, Al says with contempt.
“Maybe.”
Winry turns around on her stomach to look at them more clearly. They are lying inside their blanket fortress, and in the half light she can see their concerned faces.
“You know, I will do anything you want me to do to help you”, she offers.
Both faces light up with smiles.
“I don’t know if you can find us a teacher, but we’ll have it in mind”, Ed says and Al nods.
“Well, whoever your teacher is, I’m sure they will be just as awesome as Granny”, Winry says solemnly.
“Yep! It will be great”, Al says.
Winry turns around to lie on her back again.
“This is going to be the best winter. Definitely.”
Ed and Al can’t help but agree.
*
Winry wakes up very early that day. The sun is barely out and she looks at the clock and tries to make herself go back to sleep, but her body is restless and ready to jump and get to work. Eventually she pushes herself up on her elbows and she looks around the room, eyes wide. The outfit she’s picked up since the previous night is hanging outside the closet, simple, practical clothes, good for working. She congratulates herself on her choice as she dresses, her arms coming out of her sleeves chubby but strong.
It’s not even seven in the morning when she is sitting down on in the kitchen to have breakfast. She has washed her teeth and the dirt from under her nails, even though her hands won’t stay clean for sure. Birds are chirping outside and the sky is a lovely size of warm pink. She almost expects her hands to tremble around her cup, but they don’t, and Winry bites down on a smile, almost proud of herself.
As she spreads marmalade on her second slice of toasted bread, she hears barking and the sound of rhythmical footsteps approaching from outside. The door is pushed open and Granny comes in with her pipe between her teeth and a walking stick in her hand, returning from her early morning walk. Den passes by her hastily to get to Winry and pushes her soft head under the girl’s palm.
Granny laughs at seeing her, all set and serious.
“’Morning”, she says. “You nervous?”
She starts heating up water for some tea, pots and plates clinking around happily as she goes around the kitchen. Winry smiles.
“A bit”, she replies.
“Okay. Then we should get started with this as soon as possible. Let me have some breakfast and I’ll be ready in a bit.”
Winry nods, patting Den’s head, which smells of fresh morning air. She gets up and motions for the dog to follow her on her way upstairs. When they reach the top of the staircase, Winry cradles Den’s head in her hands.
“Hey, girl! This will be great, right? Automail training is going to be awesome.”
The dog barks and Winry laughs giddily.
“Okay”, she says, “let’s do this.”
She takes a cloth out of her pocket and looks at the mirror in the bathroom. She smiles encouragingly at herself and wraps the cloth around her head, tying it above her nape and keeping her hair out of her eyes. She secures the knot and tugs at the bandanna, winking at her reflection.
“Let’s go”, she says.
The world is bright and lively and Winry Rockbell is about to start her training as an automail engineer. The summer is coming to an end, but this is the best ending a summer could have, she decides and pushes the door to the workshop open.
Title: Hands to work and hands to heal
Recipient: sofipitch
Rating: K+/PG
Characters/Pairings: Winry, Pinako
Summary: Winry Rockbell is ten years old when she decides to become an automail mechanic.
Notes: For the prompt: Was it always Winry Rockbell’s goal to become an automail mechanic? Or did she have any other goals in mind? It would be awesome if this could take place around the age 7-10. When I started this I didn’t think it would end up a 6500+ words long monster, but well. I hope you enjoy it!
It's the summer and Winry Rockbell is ten years old.
Her hands are sticky with fruit and the dry grass tickles her bare feet, her shoes abandoned somewhere near and the socks stuffed in her pocket. The sun paints the inside of her closed eyes a warm bright red that makes her sleepy. Winry sighs. The heat and the light make her thoughts hazy, fuzzy around the edges.
"I like the summer", she decides out loud.
"Everyone likes the summer", she hears Ed say grumpily.
"Don't complain, big brother. I like the summer too, Winry", Al says.
Winry half opens one eye. Al has his eyes closed, patting Den's head on his lap. Her eyelid slips back down, closes. The air is hot and still and she hears cicadas and bugs and, somewhere that seems very far away, messy human voices. She's sweaty and her dress is stained, her knees caked with dirt, and her legs hurt from running and kneeling and jumping.
"This is nice. I don't want to get up", she says.
“Then don’t!" Ed grumbles, fed up.
*
It’s hot and Winry can count the beads of sweat on her grandmother's forehead. Pinako has been silent for a while now, bent over the automail arm she is working on. Despite the morning light that fills the room, the lamp on the desk is switched on, cool white light reflecting on the metal. Pinako's hands, nimble and precise inside her gloves, slide down the smooth metal surface, checking the outer shell's steadfastness. Winry was late to go to the workshop that day and didn't come in time to see the thin mechanic nerves get fitted and soldered into place - she should arrange her time better next time, she notes.
Her grandma’s arms tense and relax again, her muscles well-defined and strong. Her grandmother is unlike any other, Winry thinks. Then she remembers that all human beings are unique, but well, Granny is unusual, too. And also great. She is short and stocky and strong, her hands thick and callused, and her smile is kind and so is her voice. She is always ready to help people, be it making a mechanic limb or fixing a broken oven. When she grows up and gets old, Winry would love to be like her.
"Are you bored?" Granny's voice cuts through the haze of her thoughts.
"No, no", Winry is fast to shake her head.
"Fetch me the couple of screws marked as A5 from the counter."
Winry does as told, and watches the pieces get twisted into place, steadying a thin metal slate.
"Look", Granny says, "I'm done now. But never, ever, leave something without checking it at least three times - even if it is a simple plumbing tube. Though no more than ten, because then you will start seeing mistakes where they don't exist. For better measure, it's very useful to have someone else check your work up once". Pinako pushes the arm so it rests in front of Winry. "Tell me if I've done anything wrong."
Winry nods. Granny has not even once shown not to trust her, no matter how hard the job. She bites her lip and runs her hands through her hair, tightening her ponytail. Tentatively, she places her hands on the arm and turns it around, the palm facing up.
"Can I open it up?" she asks.
"Of course! You want to do the whole thing, don't you?"
Her lip twitches upwards in a smile. She takes a wrench and twists each of the screws on the underarm's slate, without taking them entirely out of their sockets. The slate comes off easily and Winry places it on the counter, next to the arm. The lamplight illuminates the cables, the carefully welded connections, the tiny devices that make the communication easier. The arm's interior seems alive and dynamic. She pictures it working, the fingers twisting, cupping, holding, the nerves sparking with information, the mechanic muscles effortlessly pushing and pulling. Winry has spent enough time in the workshop to know two things: Automail are just devices; just like the rest of their kind, they need caution and attention, skill, a sharp eye and a firm but gentle grasp. They are things used by people in their everyday life and thus should be treated as such, taking in account how often and with how much force they are used (more than any other machine, Winry knows). So, and here comes the second important bit of information, one has to treat them as body parts as well; think of them as extensions of the human body and think of the person and their life when making or repairing them.
"Can I look at the designs?" she asks.
Pinako smirks and pushes them in front of her. Winry double checks every detail and makes sure that everything she sees in front of her matches the picture and notes exactly.
"I will check the connections now."
Pinako nods. Winry confirms that each screw is twisted firmly into place, that the nerves are connected correctly with each other, not letting her fingers touch anything they should not or move any of the cables.
She wants to do this right, and it takes time. Her eyebrows curl and uncurl and she bites the inside of her cheek. Her bangs get sticky with sweat.
When she finally pulls back, her vision is slightly clouded, but she is satisfied.
"I can't find anything wrong", she says.
Pinako smiles.
"Good. Put the cover back on."
Winry smiles as well, but then frowns.
"Shouldn't we run a test somehow? Make sure everything works well?" she asks, confused. She has never happened to see a test run. Maybe it's not quite safe to do that? But shouldn’t one ensure that everything functions perfectly before moving on to the surgery and attachment?
"Well done", Granny says. "I'm glad you thought of that. It's going to be done later. Before the final check, you have to leave it for a bit, let it rest. Your head is just too full of it. You need to face it relaxed, with a clear mind."
She ruffles Winry's hair and the girl grins brightly.
*
A pine cone slices through the air and hits the fallen trunk with force. Another. A third one. Three more.
"OUCH!"
The seventh one hits Edward on the head.
"YOU WON'T HEAR THE END OF THIS!"
He jumps over the trunk, lands in front of it with a thump, and starts to throw pine cones towards the tree opposite him with all his strength.
"THE TREE IS OURS AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE IT!"
"Ugh!"
From the other tree they can hear voices. Tom has jumped out with his own cones. Winry hears a bunch of them hit their trunk, but a few manage to get to Ed.
"WHO DID YOU CALL A TINY SHRIMP?!" she hears him yell.
"Come on, Al", Winry says. "Let's go around and get them."
She isn't sure how they'll manage that, since there aren't a lot of hiding places, but she grabs Al's hand and pulls him with her and starts crawling away from their tree. They rush behind a bush. The fallen trunk Ed is currently defending is in front of them, and, opposite that, the enemies' tree-slash-fortress. The field in between is empty, save for Tom, Ed, their pine cones and some tall weeds, so they will have to go around and attack from behind the others' back, she calculates. Al silently points to another bush and she nods decisively. She looks behind cautiously, checking if anyone else had the same idea as them and is invading their own castle. The coast is clear. They start running, footsteps light, hiding behind each tree they meet. Ed doesn't look tired in the least. They hear him shout something about multiple dragon attack and Tom eating his dust.
A tree. They run.
Bush.
Tree.
Their breaths are small and short.
They look at each other.
They nod.
"ARRRRRGHHHHHHHH"
They attack in perfect sync.
Even Ed looks surprised, but quickly recovers and benefits from Tom's shock to fall on him and pull him down. Winry is already climbing up the tree, when Al yells "HEY, UNFAIR! I DON'T HIT GIRLS!" from the ground. Hmph. So she'll have to do this by herself. Allie, unfazed, is sitting on a branch on the other size of the trunk. Her eyes are narrowed, two pine cones in her palm.
"The tree is ours", she says.
Winry puts on her most determined face.
"Not for long", she says, her hand fisting the cone in her pocket.
In the end, it's a tie.
"Can we make peace and let me take care of the wounded now?" Winry says brightly.
Ed is sitting on Tom's back. Lizzy has beaten Al. Allie and Winry have run out of cones to throw.
"Wounded, what wounded? There are no wounded!" Ed shouts.
“I wouldn't mind sharing the tree…” Al says hesitantly.
"We can PRETEND to have wounded and let me take care of them!" Winry says from up the tree.
Ed makes a puffing sound but doesn't say anything else.
Allie jumps to the ground. "We're not done, Rockbell", she says dramatically, but laughs and opens her bag to take out some apricots.
Winry climbs down herself.
"It's a truce, Ed."
"His boxers are too dirty to count as a white flag."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY BOXERS?!"
Each head is met with a cone. Winry narrows her eyes at them. Both boys stay quiet, their frowning expressions still on, and catch the apricots to follow.
*
Winry's finger follows the curving line of the muscle on the book's page. She has looked at a lot of her parents’ old books, but this one is one of her favourites. The pictures are carefully drawn with ink, the external outlines thick, the internal thinner. The details are accurately put to paper and each spot is connected with its label and name with a thin line. Winry follows each of them with her eyes and reads the strange names. Femur. Patella. Tibia. Fibula.
She does not so much interested in those - she prefers to memorize the pictures, know where everything actually is. She also prefers reading the more intriguing parts: various symptoms, uses of medicine, surgery methods.
She strokes Den's back absent-mindedly. She remembers reading these books even before her parents left, knowing the radius, the ulna, the vertebrae's names since she was five. Before she knew how to read, she used to look at the pictures and then take the books to her mom and ask the name of each organ. Her mom would read each of the names out loud and then take Winry's hand and touch her body with it, showing her where everything was.
"This is your stomach. Here are your kidneys. The spleen. The esophagus goes this way."
Winry would then lift her shirt up and see that her birthmark was above the pancreas, one of her moles on the left of her stomach and the other one under her right lung. Then she’d ask her mom if she'd seen all those things properly, without the skin covering them, and mom would tell her stories from when she was a medical student; about the teacher who always, always, had his exams on the brain's illnesses but when mom sat it he'd decided to make it about the brain's nerve system ("Eeeek! Had you studied?!", "No!"); about the time she found herself accidentally in a labour room and helped deliver a baby when she should have been in class; about how she once pulled an all-nighter but ended up in the wrong examination room ("Did you like Dad right away? Was he handsome?", "He was kind of adorable in how he made me laugh. He tried to flirt with me using scientific names. Very smooth!").
Winry bites her lip and turns the page. She feels the pain biting into her ribs, stinging, tied around her heart like a rope. The letter from the army ("We are in the sad necessity to inform you that your son and daughter-in-law...") has only been in her grandma's drawer for a few months. Winry hadn't seen her parents in years, and this should probably make the pain easier, but it doesn't. It only makes it hurt more.
Aorta. Pericardium. Valves. Pumps. Some names remind her of mechanical parts; her grandma showing her the interior of a plumbing installation and the knuckles of a steel hand.
She gets up and goes to the bathroom, washes her face. Her grandma is working - she doesn't want to bother her, even though she knows she won't mind. She looks at her face in the mirror. Her eyebrows are very blonde, barely showing. Her nose has acquired sun-made freckles. She puffs one round cheek, then the other one. She grits her teeth. Her parents never told her not to cry, ever. They said: Don't worry, it'll be all right.
Some things become all right by themselves. Other things, you make them all right. Her parents could make a lot of things better. She pictures them in the battlefield, the best doctors in all of Ishval, making everything bad better. Winry knows it is okay to hurt and cry. It doesn't make you weak; it doesn't make you less brave. She also knows she has to make things all right, herself. She bites her lip and smiles brightly at her teary reflection.
*
Winry bends her head over an old twisted scar on her knee. She was four years old when she got it - she fell while climbing down the steps to get to the orchard - and her dad had rolled up his pants and shown her his own thin mark on the calf. "I was five and just getting out of school when it happened. I have not met a single person that doesn't have a scar on their legs from when they were kids!" he'd said.
Allie is sitting cross legged on the floor, looking at the oven, inside which small cakes are baking. The silence between them stretches, comfortable and friendly. Winry lets her legs drop, feet grazing the floor. The window is filled with bright green leaves from the tree outside and Allie's cat comes to rub her head on Winry's ankle.
"When are we meeting up with the others?" Allie says.
"At around six", Winry says, stroking the cat's head. The cat is white and fat, with a ribbon tied around her neck. She might be pregnant, Winry suspects.
"Good, the cakes will be ready by then. We could even make some frosting!"
"Well, you could even make some frosting", Winry points out.
Winry isn't bad at baking. Allie is very good at it.
Allie laughs. "Well. I could even make some frosting! What are the others bringing?"
"Well, I hope Ed and Al don't bring anything. At least not anything they made. Lizzy said her mom would make pies. Max will bring biscuits, Dinah will make another pie... Mikael will make sandwiches. That's about it, I think."
"Isn't Tom coming?"
"No, he said his dad needs him to help with some work."
"Ah. So he's going to do that permanently? Like, work with a schedule and all?"
"Hmm? Yeah, I think."
"Well, because Mom says I should start working in the bakery properly this year", Allie says, half frowning.
"But we haven't finished school yet!"
"I know! I want to finish school, but she says I should work for some hours in the afternoon. You know, get the hang of it and stuff", Allie shrugs. "Well, it won't be half bad, I guess. I like baking!"
Winry grins at her friend. In Resembool, ten is a perfectly good age to start working properly or to become an apprentice, though no-one will scold you if you wait for a couple of years more.
Allie is now opening the oven's door cautiously, sniffing to see if the cakes are done. She pulls them out and leaves the door ajar to let the heat wither away.
"So, frosting. Chocolate it is?"
"Chocolate it is!", Winry replies enthusiastically. She falls back on her chair, the fat cat resting on her lap now, looking very comfortable. "Picnics are the best". She thinks about it for a moment. "You need any help?"
“Nah, it’s okay.” Allie pauses for a moment. “Won’t you start working with your grandma properly, too?”
Winry puffs her cheek, purses her lips.
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”
“Ah, um, I just meant, you already know so much about mechanics. And you spend a lot of time in the workshop. But I guess that a proper apprenticeship requires more time?”
“I suppose. But, I mean, we haven’t talked about me becoming an engineer. You know, I haven’t really thought of that myself. I always thought I would…well, decide later, or something.”
Allie brings the chocolate she’s melting in front of Winry, with a spoon.
“Only one spoonful, though”, she says.
The chocolate is hot and smooth and tastes like the best thing Winry has ever eaten. She sighs in appreciation.
“But yeah, I suppose… I suppose I should talk with grandma at some point.”
Allie turns her head and smiles. “Yes, I don’t know. You’d be a great mechanic, I think.”
Winry smiles back and gets up to get some more of the chocolate.
“HEY! I said only one spoonful!”
“Buth I can’tth help it! It ith too goodth!”
*
The steel catches the light as it moves, mechanical muscles functioning and soundless. The arm makes an elegant motion in the air; the fingers open and close swiftly.
“It’s perfect, Mrs. Rockbell”, the young man says. “Thanks so much.”
The healing of the body after the application of automail lasts three years or more, Winry knows. The face of the man who has come for some small repairs is wrinkleless but scarred, with almost as many small marks as it has freckles.
“No problem, son”, Winry’s grandma replies kindly as the man runs his palm over the metal bicep.
Until she was six, Winry knew very few people from the village that would visit her grandmother. More patients came from other places, mostly eastern villages and towns, since Rush Valley was - and still is - much more famous.
Then, blue uniforms flooded Resembool, thousands of soldiers on their way to Ishval, and later on, on their way back, bandaged men with serious injuries or soldiers with their glances haunted, recovering from something that was not apparent on their flesh. Suddenly, one fourth of the army had lost a limb, or even two. Some of them decided to stay that way, others would use simple wooden replacements and others chose to suffer through the surgery in order to acquire functioning limbs again. Winry remembers the freckled man’s face, a few years younger, stretched by the pain but grateful, from back when she would burrow into Granny’s workshop so she wouldn’t be alone.
The man has the same grateful expression now, squeezing Granny’s hand. “Bye, kid”, he tells Winry sweetly and pats her head. “Thank you.” (This time, Winry was not sitting on the floor by the door, holding her knees to her chest, but she was standing next to her grandma, goggles ready on her head, passing bolts and screwdrivers). Winry smiles.
Pinako yawns and rubs her eyes, but a few minutes after the man is gone, she grabs a pencil and a ruler and starts correcting some designs. Winry pulls the chair next to her. When she was younger, her grandma piled up some cushions on the seat and after the patients were gone, Winry would climb up and sit and ask:
“What is this? How is it connected? Why are there so many casings?”. Granny would explain and her voice would be calm, making the details understandable without being patronizing and Winry would frown over the details but feel better. It reminded her of her mom and anatomy, but maybe not that much: her grandma didn’t remind her a lot of her mom in general. Later in the day, when she got tired, she would fall asleep with her head on the counter and Granny would carry her to her bed in her sturdy arms.
Now, Winry is thinking of something else when she asks:
“Gran, did Dad ever care about mechanics?”
Grandma presses her glasses tighter on her nose.
“Yeah, when he was small he liked to hang out in the workshop. He was very observant - he had a good eye and a steady hand. Good for a mechanic, but good for a doctor, too.”
Winry places her arms on the counter and her head on her arms. She looks at her grandmother and her thin, smiling lips.
“Then he wanted to become a teacher, and for a while an acrobat. Eventually he went to the city to study medicine”, Grandma says with no sign of disappointment - more like with pride, Winry observes.
“Wouldn’t you want to have him with you?”
Granny leans back, pushing the sheets of paper away and turns her chair towards Winry.
“Well, it wouldn’t be bad to have him here. We always got along well when working on something together.”
“Except for the kitchen”, Winry says.
“Except for the kitchen”, Granny laughs. “Before you blame me, you should know that your dad got very stubborn every time he cooked. He just wanted to do everything his way!”
Winry laughs. When her dad decided to cook, he would sit her on the counter and tell her to stay there and not make a fuss. Winry would exchange her obedience with food and sit on the counter with a full mouth and watch as her dad chopped and stirred and mixed swiftly.
Winry, her lips still tense with cheerfulness, looks at the designs on the surface of the desk. The pencil in her hand fidgets.
“Winry, are you thinking about becoming a mechanic?” her grandmother asks.
The woman has raised her up - she knows her face like she knows her own calloused palm.
Winry quirks her head.
“Um. I’ve been thinking about stuff, yes.”
The light falls on the floor in ribbons, paints it bright and summery.
“Whatever you choose to do, I’ll be proud of you”, her grandma tells her. “Your dad chose to be a doctor and you know how proud I still am of him as well. He never felt any kind of responsibility to follow the line or keep up the profession or the name of the shop.” A pause. “We Rockbells are great in whatever it is we want to do, and you will be great in whatever you decide to do. And even if you are not, I will still be proud of you. I just want for you to do what you truly want, what you choose yourself to do. You are a wonderful kid, Winry, and I love you very much.”
Winry nods and tightens her lips for a moment, feeling her chest full of something she can’t quite name. She stands up and hugs her grandmother tightly and the golden light fills her eyes.
*
“Okay, so can we do something a little more dignified for all of us, now?” Ed grumbles.
Max and Lizzy are sitting on top of him. He’d yelled and kicked and fought at first, and he was definitely the strongest there, but every dragon needs to be defeated at some point, and Ed sometimes regretted liking Al and Winry so much, because really, they made him do the weirdest things.
“Sorry”, Liz smacks his forehead. “The knight said we needed to guard the dragon and that is what we’re doing.” Max only keeps on chewing the biscuit he’s eating.
Said knight, also known as Winry Rockbell, has fought her way to the princess’s room up the tower - also known as the branch Al (the princess) is seated on. Now she grabs her princess’s hand and climbs back down, ready to take up any challenge to sword fighting that may ensue.
“Winry, you’re done with your enemies. Are we going to do anything else or are we just going to keep doing ridiculous things all day long?” Ed grumbles some more.
“No! First I have to carry Al bridal style and march off to the sunset!”
“Winry, it’s the NOON! There is no sunset!!”
“Shut up or I’ll carry you bridal style too!”. Winry flexes her muscles with a glare.
Ed flushes but he only makes a “hmprh”-ing sound before he shuts up.
*
Winry’s head appears from inside the cabinet and she pushes fresh air into her lungs.
“The tube needs to be changed!” she announces.
Her hair is pulled back and her hands gloved. She happened to be at home when two kids much younger than her arrived to ask for Pinako to go over and have a look at the plumbing, but only if that’s not much trouble, please?, so she naturally trailed behind. Now, sitting under the sink, she is certain about the nature of the problem and she would be glad to do the fixing, as well.
“Want me to do this?” she grins up at her grandmother.
She shrugs.
“If you want to.”
“I do want to!” Winry says and disappears back under the sink, to check the tube type needed.
Under the sink, she blocks all other sound and focuses on the task at hand. It’s not a difficult job and she has it done quickly and neatly, and when she gets out and tests the tap and it works perfectly, the kids’ dad laughs good-heartedly and almost in awe and congratulates and thanks her cordially. Her grandma, smoking her pipe, smiles proudly.
“How do you know so many things, Winry?” one of the kids asks her as she’s repairing a broken toy for him.
She smiles, happy to be of help and happy to be admired like this.
“My grandma knows a lot of things”, she says. “Most engineers know a lot, but only about their own area of expertise, but Granny is too awesome for that. She always wanted to know how things work and her teacher insisted that she learned a lot of household mechanics for practice. Of course, she already knew a lot about those because she was always curious and she wanted to be able to fix her own trouble around the house.”
The kids nod, impressed.
“So she taught you how to be awesome, too!”, the boy says.
“No, silly! She was already awesome herself!”, his sister corrects him exasperatedly. “Her grandma just helped!”
Winry feels her cheeks redden in pleasure and she laughs. She twists a small bolt in the toy and gives it back to the kids.
“There you go!”, she grins at them brightly. “And thank you. I am glad you think I am awesome.”
The kids accept their toy back enthusiastically, and at once turn it around to see the changes Winry made.
The girl looks up at her and grins and then throws her arms around Winry’s shoulders. “You are great”, she says seriously. “Thank you very much!”
Her brother nods in agreement and both kids laugh, their faces flushed with joy. Winry can’t help but laugh, too.
*
Winry certainly does like the summer. The mornings are warm and bright and the nights are just breezy enough for her to fall asleep in her chair on the terrace, cuddled up inside her blanket, with Den dozing off at her feet. The evenings smell of Granny’s tobacco and night flowers, except for the times when they have to go inside because the wind brings the sheep’s stink towards them. Ed complains about the sheep and grumbles and exchanges “Tiny bean!!”s and “Old midget lady!!”s with Pinako. Al apologizes on behalf of his brother a lot and helps pick up the table and smiles and laughs whole-heartedly.
They play hide and seek, and fortress, and wild animals of the woods and Alexander the Cretan outlaw and band of bandits. Winry likes to play hospital, too, or pretend to be the great inventor in the palace who suddenly appears one day with the greatest invention literally ever. Younger kids come up to ask her to fix their toys every now and then, as they always did since Winry had fixed Max’s train years ago. Sometimes they bring her sweets, but Winry doesn’t really care because she likes to work on fixing things and she likes to see kids smile and laugh. It is also great when they tell her she is absolutely awesome, though she’s never missed being praised. She smiles and laughs herself and summer mornings are very, very nice.
They eat apricots and pick up berries and some of the summer apples, and Allie brings cakes and pies from the bakery. Winry actually ends up spending a lot of time in the bakery, because Allie’s mom keeps her more and more for help and Winry likes to keep her friend company. Sometimes she stays over, or Allie stays at her place, and a lot of times Al and Ed stay over after dinner and they build a pillow castle and a blanket mansion and sleep inside them, sometimes each with their book. It’s great to have friends with whom you can be quiet together, Winry thinks.
The autumn approaches, but not too fast. Winry likes the autumn, too, likes the orange and the brown and the dark green. Sometimes she is sweeping or tidying her room up and suddenly she is hit with a strong desire for the fall and her warmer clothes and the flames in the fireplace. Winry finds it hard not to find good things everywhere, even when she is sad. Mom used to tell her that this is a great gift, and so does Granny. Winry just smiles, the corner of her eyes wrinkling happily.
*
Winry is having breakfast late this day, a book propped up against the fruit basket as she sips her milk. It’s the book she had on her bedside table, and it happens to be an anatomy book (“You are such a nerd!”, Ed says. “Look who’s talking!”, she replies), so when she hears the workshop’s door opening, she is looking at a hand diagram.
Granny comes into the kitchen, followed by a tall brown-haired woman. Winry looks up and grins.
“Good morning!”
“Morning, kid”, Granny replies, her pipe between her teeth.
The woman smiles kindly at her, and the almost-noon light falls on her mechanic forearm, a bright square in the palm and shiny white fingers. She turns her hand and now the lines are seen clearly, the joints clean and the fingers perfectly in place.
It looks just like the hand on the page.
Of course, the drawn hand is more complicated in some aspects, with the carpus a complex combination of bones and the palm actually consisting of the fingers’ bases, as Winry very well knows. But the light catches on the mechanic hand again and she places her own hand, calluses just starting to form, on the table.
She is struck with the similarities.
Which, come to think of it, is kind of ridiculous, because Winry has grown up with automail arms and diagrams of arms and medical books. She knows that an automail arm is a replacement for an arm made of flesh and bone, that it can do the same work, that it is made to do the same work. Still, she is suddenly hit with the fact that they are so much alike; she feels like everything she knows, what she’s learned in the workshop and what she’s learned from her parents fall into place together.
The woman bids them goodbye and Granny walks her to the door.
In Winry’s head, a gear turns.
*
It doesn’t take her long to make her decision.
She is going to become an automail mechanic.
It feels natural but it is also a choice: Winry realizes that she can’t see herself doing anything else for a living. She doesn’t want to do anything else for a living. This is what she wants to do, she thinks to herself looking at the dark ceiling one night. She feels full of her decision, flooded with confidence and responsibility and it’s a very nice feeling. It’s like she always wanted it and like she now decides to do it and decisions are good things. She rubs the calluses that are forming on her palm and spends a long time thinking before she falls asleep, full of eagerness for learning so many things and creating and working and at some point she is definitely going to travel around, she decides, and she wants adventures but she doesn’t care about fighting, so she is going to have adventures in creating. That is going to be really great, she knows, and dreams of shiny steel and well-oiled joints and happy people who smile.
*
“Hey, Granny?”
They’ve just had dinner and Ed and Al have gone home and Winry is taking the dishes to the sink so Granny can wash them; there’s a light breeze that stirs the curtains and Winry can count eleven twinkling stars outside the window.
She places the bread back in its basket and braces herself on her toes, pushing up to put the salt and pepper back in place.
She can think of a million ways to go round and round and eventually bring up what she wants to say: “So, Granny, you’ve never had an apprentice, right?”. “I was wondering, Gran, did you always know you wanted to be a mechanic?”. “You know, Tom said the other day he’d start working with his dad”. No. She steadies her hands against the plate she’s holding and puts it next to the sink. She won’t go around. She wants to be straightforward, always, but now especially.
She stands next to Granny, looks at her calm profile.
“Granny, I’ve decided I want to become an automail engineer.”
Here. That was it. That’s the thing. She breathes in, then out.
Granny lets the water wash the soap off the last plate, then puts the plate on the rack to let it dry. She looks at Winry and smirks.
“You are very sure about this, aren’t you?” she says, very seriously, but with eyes twinkling with pride.
Winry feels - knows - that this isn’t because of the profession of choice, but the certainty the choice was articulated with.
Winry nods frantically.
Pinako opens the door to the terrace and motions Winry to follow her. They take their usual seats and Granny starts putting tobacco in her pipe and it all looks very normal, but Winry is restless; she feels her pulse and her sweaty hands still there, uneasy, despite the cheerfulness (and pride and emotion) in Granny’s eyes. She knows her grandmother and she loves her and she knows she loves her as well, but it’s the whole situation, this whole big formal step she’s taking that scares her.
“So you want to pursue this?” Granny says, looking at her straight in the eye.
“I do!” Winry starts. “I really do. I know you told me about not following anyone’s footsteps or line of work or anything but that’s not what I’m doing. I know you want to make sure I do something I want. And I want to become an engineer! There is nothing else I can even think about doing. I love seeing how things work and making things and I want to help people, some way, like Mom and Dad did and like you do. So. I am choosing to become an automail mechanic. Yeah. Ugh…Yeah.”
She gives a sheepish smile.
Granny smiles back.
“I never thought you’d do anything you didn’t want to do. I’ll love to have you as a proper apprentice.”
Winry grins, happily, her whole body tensing around it.
“Can I hug you, Gran?”
“Of course you can!”
*
“So. You are going to be an engineer”, Ed says.
“Yup”, Winry replies.
Ed shrugs. “Well, everyone saw it coming.”
“I suppose.”
Al grins. “You are going to be an amazing engineer.”
“Everyone can see that coming, too”, Ed says and Winry knows that’s the best he can do for a compliment. She doesn’t mind.
“Maybe we should find someone to take us in as apprentices too, big brother”, Al says with contempt.
“Maybe.”
Winry turns around on her stomach to look at them more clearly. They are lying inside their blanket fortress, and in the half light she can see their concerned faces.
“You know, I will do anything you want me to do to help you”, she offers.
Both faces light up with smiles.
“I don’t know if you can find us a teacher, but we’ll have it in mind”, Ed says and Al nods.
“Well, whoever your teacher is, I’m sure they will be just as awesome as Granny”, Winry says solemnly.
“Yep! It will be great”, Al says.
Winry turns around to lie on her back again.
“This is going to be the best winter. Definitely.”
Ed and Al can’t help but agree.
*
Winry wakes up very early that day. The sun is barely out and she looks at the clock and tries to make herself go back to sleep, but her body is restless and ready to jump and get to work. Eventually she pushes herself up on her elbows and she looks around the room, eyes wide. The outfit she’s picked up since the previous night is hanging outside the closet, simple, practical clothes, good for working. She congratulates herself on her choice as she dresses, her arms coming out of her sleeves chubby but strong.
It’s not even seven in the morning when she is sitting down on in the kitchen to have breakfast. She has washed her teeth and the dirt from under her nails, even though her hands won’t stay clean for sure. Birds are chirping outside and the sky is a lovely size of warm pink. She almost expects her hands to tremble around her cup, but they don’t, and Winry bites down on a smile, almost proud of herself.
As she spreads marmalade on her second slice of toasted bread, she hears barking and the sound of rhythmical footsteps approaching from outside. The door is pushed open and Granny comes in with her pipe between her teeth and a walking stick in her hand, returning from her early morning walk. Den passes by her hastily to get to Winry and pushes her soft head under the girl’s palm.
Granny laughs at seeing her, all set and serious.
“’Morning”, she says. “You nervous?”
She starts heating up water for some tea, pots and plates clinking around happily as she goes around the kitchen. Winry smiles.
“A bit”, she replies.
“Okay. Then we should get started with this as soon as possible. Let me have some breakfast and I’ll be ready in a bit.”
Winry nods, patting Den’s head, which smells of fresh morning air. She gets up and motions for the dog to follow her on her way upstairs. When they reach the top of the staircase, Winry cradles Den’s head in her hands.
“Hey, girl! This will be great, right? Automail training is going to be awesome.”
The dog barks and Winry laughs giddily.
“Okay”, she says, “let’s do this.”
She takes a cloth out of her pocket and looks at the mirror in the bathroom. She smiles encouragingly at herself and wraps the cloth around her head, tying it above her nape and keeping her hair out of her eyes. She secures the knot and tugs at the bandanna, winking at her reflection.
“Let’s go”, she says.
The world is bright and lively and Winry Rockbell is about to start her training as an automail engineer. The summer is coming to an end, but this is the best ending a summer could have, she decides and pushes the door to the workshop open.