Living Room Space: 04 Heart of Armor, Part 4
And I was thinking
What I’ve been thinking
When Ed woke up, it was 4:13 in the afternoon.
No one had pulled open the curtains, but light diffused through the fabric as if it were only paper. Ed blinked, and drifted back and forth - through curtain light and darkness, curtain light and darkness, curtain light and his heart rate’s steady increase, the feel of the air in the space inside his lungs.
Air is life. Air, he thought, was all he ever wanted.
He waited half an hour to let himself wake up slowly, and then tottered to the kitchen to eat everything in Winry’s ice box that he didn’t have to heat up to chew.
He didn’t look around much. It was stifling inside the apartment, and the grind of his teeth was a roar in the silence constructed of absence.
All he noticed was Al’s note and the cut-out from The Central Post - “MIA Alchemist and Hero of the People Returns.”
He chewed for a while more, staring at the picture with the article. The Colonel - the General - Roy Mustang - whatever - was shoving him into a car. Ed had looked over his automail shoulder into the photographer’s camera, surprised.
Ed, in the kitchen, chewed.
In the picture, he was pale, unshaven, with bags under his eyes and a smattering of cuts and bruises all over his face. He looked not so much like an alchemist than a ghost of one, and he wondered if Winry had worried over it when she picked the paper up off the stands, or when she ate breakfast everyday on her way out to work.
When he was finished eating, he looked for her pictures.
There were two in the living room - one of Winry and Pinako in front of the Rockbell Automail sign in Resembol, and the other of Winry grinning with a group of dirty, heavily muscled mechanics in front of some shop in Rush Valley.
In the hallway, there was only one. Winry stood on the steps of an old porch with an umbrella raised above her head. Ed was sure the picture was taken in Rush Valley, yet it was raining.
Winry’s expression was distractingly sober, and - he searched for the word - soulful.
He glared at the frame, and spun on his heel down the hall.
The only thing at the end of the corridor was her bedroom and the bathroom. There was nothing in the bathroom.
For a moment, he stood in front of her door, not quite debating, with his fingers on the knob. Here is the Winry you never got to meet.
Here is three years when you didn’t exist; here is five years when she was a stirring name from the past you wanted to leave behind. Here is eight years of a girl you’ve known since before you knew yourself, who grew up in your mind and in your heart, but not in front of your eyes.
After a few seconds, he opened the door.
He stood in its wake for a while, not quite debating, with his fingers by his side.
He went in, only for a bit, to look at the picture by her bed and glance around, then walked out and shut the door. Not quite debating, and coming to a decision, he walked to the living room, tied his shoes, stared at the curtains, picked up his suitcase, and closed the front door softly behind him.
If he whispered goodbye, no one heard him.
We’ve been drinking
And it doesn’t get me anywhere