And it hits you so much harder than you thought [complete]

[once_whole]

Characters: Edward Elric, Winry
Time: Late afternoon
Location: Lima bean structure
Content: Fullmetal Alchemist, checking in.
Format: Prose
Warnings: Ed's personality. Uh. Some blood. And likely some spoilers.

Comments

[nowhere_winry]

Millenium Park was beyond the Blackstone Hotel, but Winry felt like she needed a walk to clear her head after her encounter...or whatever it was...with Lara. The ring felt strange on her finger. She wasn't accustomed to wearing jewelry on her hands, not and work the machines necessary for crafting automail. Rings could get caught and tear off fingers.

She caught sight of something under the Bean, hesitating. It looked like...her breath caught in her throat.

Winry was running before she even realized she wanted her feet to move. "Ed. Ed!"

[once_whole]

Winry's voice cut off his anger and filled him with instead a cold dread. His gaze snaps to her direction, eyes widening in panic. "Winry! What are you doing here?!" Because to him, 'here' could still be one of Father's tricks. Something to stop Al, maybe. Something! His mind was jarred and there was still the dizziness, not to mention his state.

Oh god, his state. His eyes flicker down from her to his lack of automail, the connections hanging limply. He could see it now: "What did you do to my work this time?!" and maybe a wrench across his forehead -

Stop it. Focus, Ed.

He tries to stumble back to his feet; it isn't as though he hadn't dealt with lacking an arm before (it happened far too often that he'd like to keep track, but then Winry probably knew that number). "If you're here then - then -" He shakes his head, not understanding. She was in Rezembool. How could she possibly have gotten caught up with anything Father could have done?!

He hated being ignorant.

[nowhere_winry]

"I - I've - " Winry shakes her head, wide eyes staring at Ed. At the damage to his body. To his automail. "Ed," her voice goes hushed and strained. She reaches out to him, her hands hovering, almost afraid to touch him. "Ed, what happened to you? Wh-where's Al?" They'd disappeared together; shouldn't they come back together?

[once_whole]

He was afraid to move much at all, honestly. His left arm felt it had suffered the worst of his wounds, but from that mess back in Central, he couldn't tell if he had broken much else.

"I don't know," he tells her carefully. "Al - he was -" For a moment, Ed looks desperate, feeling just as he had when he watched his brother activate a transmutation that would have effectively sacrificed his own soul to bring back Ed's proper right arm. Instead... instead he was here. How the hell was he supposed to explain that to Winry?

[nowhere_winry]

"We'll talk about that later." Winry shifted her weight from side to side. Ed would fight her going to the hospital. "I need to get you back to the Blackstone." Ed would never be able to walk that far in his state. She couldn't remember if there were taxis around - she'd been walking everywhere.

Growling under her breath, Winry grabbed the hem of her dress, flipping it up to rip it. "Got to staunch the bleeding first."

[once_whole]

"...The Blackstone?" Confusion settles in fully. "Wait - what do you mean back? What's - Winry, do you know what's going on? Where the hell are we?" If she knew... what did that mean? How much longer had she been here?

Seeing her going for her dress, he would have tried to stop her, flail about that it wasn't necessary. But he barely had a shirt of his own to offer, and he couldn't use alchemy in his current state. He didn't have a whole lot of arguing room.

[nowhere_winry]

"The Blackstone. It's one of the two hotels we've been staying at..." Winry glanced at Ed sharply. "You've been in the Blackstone, Ed. Don't you remember? We - the three of us - have an apartment." She shredded the hem of her dress, pressing the end against Ed's arm and holding it in place as she started winding the strip around one of the wounds. Maybe whatever fight he'd been in messed with his head. "You look like you've been run through a millstone, Ed!"

[once_whole]

"What?" He just stares at her for a few moments. "Winry, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never been here before - and I'm sure I'd remember it if I had."

He twitches slightly. "Fighting for our lives and the sake of the country isn't exactly easy!"

[nowhere_winry]

"Hold still." She tugs the makeshift bandage a little tighter around his arm when Ed twitches. "You were here. You and Al both." Raising her gaze, Winry meets Ed's eyes. "Al...he was so skinny. It hurt to look at him." Her mouth purses. "Fighting for...Ed...the eclipse." She takes a breath, tying off the first bandage and reaching for her hem to tear off another strip of fabric. "Were you in the eclipse?"

[once_whole]

Better to comply than have her do something much worse to him.

His voice becomes very quiet. "Al was... he... he had his body?" This was becoming too much for him to process. For Ed to process, who could normally take it all in and sort it out. He knew Winry wouldn't lie to him about something like this but - but how was it even possible?!

"...Yeah. We were fighting with that Father bastard. Then I was here."

[nowhere_winry]

Winry begins wrapping the second bandage around Ed's arm. "Yeah. He was okay, Ed, just so skinny. You and he...we all arrived here the same day. Then, a few days later, you guys were gone." She sighs, hiding her eyes behind her bangs. "Al...said...you'd gotten his body back, but he was so weak, we didn't get to talk much. And you took care of him in our apartment...then you...vanished." Taking a shaky breath, Winry ties off the second bandage. She tosses her hair back, determined to get Ed someplace so she can better take care of him, if she has to haul him there on her back.

[once_whole]

He had gotten Al's body back.

Al had his body.

But he wasn't here. And Ed had never...

"W-Winry... the last I saw of Al, he was about to perform a transmutation to sacrifice himself for -" He chokes. For me. There's nothing else it could have been. The brothers were never quite in their right minds when it came to one another in danger. The setup... the kunai... "- for my arm," he finishes shakily.

Other than the shock that Winry has been laying into him, Ed is stable. Both his legs are fine. He can make it to wherever they're going but - he should be back in Central.

[nowhere_winry]

Winry inhales sharply. Al would sacrifice himself for Ed. She knew it, just as she knew Ed would sacrifice himself for Al. It had been a source of nightmares she'd never shared with anyone; that one of the brothers would come home without the other. "Ed." She caught his hand, giving it a squeeze. "You can't think Al's gone. You're the one who's gone. Al's...Al's probably home. You're the one who was sent here, like I was."

[once_whole]

His determination flairs back to its normal spark. "I know he's not gone! I just - I just have to get back there so I can send cocky bastard soaring and find a way to bring Al back from the gate!"

[nowhere_winry]

"You're going to need automail, then." Winry's mouth twists. "I don't just have a spare arm lying around here. But Mrs. Carpenter was talking about setting up a forge. That's a start, at least." She almost doesn't want to tell him how long she's been here, even though really, it hasn't been very long, time-wise.

"Everyone's been trying to find a way to get home. They think we've been brought here by magic but no one's sure how. Or why. I know it sounds crazy, Ed, but..." Winry raises her hand, looking at the ring Lara had given her only a short time ago.

[once_whole]

"Magic," he repeats, deadpan. "There isn't any such thing as magic." He was reminded of the priest from Liore, spouting that he could create miracles. It seemed like the same sort of deal. "There's always another explanation. I'll find it."

He pauses, looking thoughtfully at the mess left behind that had once been his automail arm. It seemed he'd have to make due without it for awhile, which also meant no alchemy. Great.

"You never answered," he says, looking back at her, "about where we are."