(Fullmetal Alchemist) Timeline
Title: Timeline
Day/Theme: August 5 // destiny calls and I go
Characters/Pairings: Winry-centric, Ed, Al
Notes: Set after the series, which reminded me a little of Tsubasa.
Summary: She remembers time in flashes and pieces, in their smiles and her tears.
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She remembers time like this:
1.
Small, secret moments where the sun blazes on her neck. She tinkers and tunes, trying to find a lighter but strong alloy, a new design, an interesting adaptation. Her wrench turns round and round (and she remembers whacking two skulls with it, remembers tossing it in the air and seeing the fear on their faces.)
(She can't do that anymore, now can she? Sometimes Winry catches herself turning around at each footfall, ready to yell angrily and hug desperately. Each sigh of the wind brings voices she hasn't heard in months (in years) and she has to train herself to stop reacting so easily.)
Her latest innovations have been turning a few heads, bringing in more customers. Soon enough, she's in charge of a dozen other mechanics, teaching techniques and adjusting methods.
For her new projects, she goes back to the basics, sitting in her house, by the window. The small set of tools sits to her right, her grandmother's grave is just out the window, and she waits for the faces she'll probably not see for weeks.
If she sheds a tear or two, there's no one to see but Dawn.
2.
Al smiles and laughs and jokes and lives. He dashes across the lawn, feeling each blade of grass, each gasp of breath. His lungs ache and his muscles scream and all he can do is smile. Smile as the breeze brushes his hair, as a leaf rests on his arm.
The world is full of sensations and even though he has been relearning them for the last few months, he still seems surprised that any of this is real.
Winry watches him for a few minutes, watches him feel and taste and smell, before grabbing his arm. "It's time for dinner," she answers when he looks at her curiously.
Al likes to eat slowly, to savour each bite. Ed teases him for that the few times they are together. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, with them living in opposite directions. More often than not, Winry waves goodbye to one only to have the other arrive.
"What's for dinner?" Al asks. Her hand slides down his arm, grasping his hand as she walks back. He likes to touch people, to feel their warm palms and mixed textures. Some hands are smoother, warmer than others.
Hands can tell a lot about people and Winry's are rough and warm and kind.
"It's a surprise," she replies with a grin and they head inside.
3.
Winry was alone when Pinako died. She was alone when Dawn died two years later as well.
Al arrives two weeks after the funeral, Ed two days after that. They sit there, silently, uncomfortably, in front of the small marker. It's plain and nondescript, only her name differing it from any other. Al lays a white rose, Ed a wrench, and Winry stands quietly behind them.
"I'm sorry," they whisper (the dead still haunt their steps. They've been to too many funerals, seen too many lifeless bodies, and it's hard not to believe in ghosts.)
"It's okay." And it is, because at least they came. At least, after the silent dinners and empty rooms, they bumbled in with their taunts and fights.
At least she's no longer alone.
4.
Ed holds her hands every time he visits. It's an odd ritual, where he runs his fingers over each callous and vein, before finally locking hands as they walk back to her house from the station. He doesn't say anything, neither up or down the dirt path.
She savours the silence, taking in the changes in his appearance. One month, he cut his hair short, nearly shaved it. Another he had a bunch of strange scratch marks on his cheeks.
Once they arrive, everything starts again. They spend evenings outside, her tuning her latest patient while he lazes on the grass. Stories flow from one corner to another, a perpetual river, and the occasional wrench soars through the sky.
Life is on stereo those days he stays, where she teases and yells while she has the chance. He's grown taller, as though his body was making up for the lack of growth earlier, and she can barely see over his shoulders now.
The moments she doesn't like, though, are the times when an apology flickers across his face. He gets sober those times, morosely hesitating all evening before finally expressing himself.
"Winry, I'm--"
"You know," she interrupts, not willing to hear it again. She knows his place already, just as she knows hers. "I like your stories. I think one of these days, I'll probably go with you and see those places." Pausing, she glances at him and smiles darkly, "And perhaps see if you've been hitting on any of those girls out there."
"WHAT?" he yelps but she cuts in again.
"It sounds like you're hiding something."
"I'm not! Winry, I...you..." He stumbles over his words again and Winry thinks that this is cute sometimes. Sometimes but not all of the time because it's been four years now and he really ought to get over this habit of his.
5.
Winry can count easily the times that Ed and Al have spent with her. She can remember each conversation, each action. They aren't all that clear, some more blurry than others, but they are all she has these days.
That isn't to say she's lonely--her latest employees keep her hands busy and sometimes Riza and Sheska drop in for a visit. There are festivals and holidays and some days Winry forgets about the two brothers entirely.
It's only, when she lies down in her bed, Eve resting on her feet, she can feel the emptiness of her house. There is no Pinako to yell at her to hurry up, no Ed complaining about his arm or Al cheerfully putting away her tools.
There is only her and Eve and this wish that maybe those boys of hers could stay longer than three days, appear more often than five, ten, fourteen months.
Then she rolls over, falls asleep, and gets ready for tomorrow.