FMA Fic: "Brave New World" 23/?
Title: Brave New World - Differences
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: evil_little_dog
Characters: Winry, Ed, Al
Words: 1,940
Rating: Gen
Summary: Winry keeps finding things out about the brothers.
Warnings: Same warnings still apply.
Disclaimer: So very not mine.
Part One: Through the Back Door
Part Two: Aftermath
Part Three: Reminders
Part Four: Under Any Circumstances
Part Five: Lost and Found
Parts Six-Seven-Eight: Cold Comfort, Equivalent Exchange and In the Hallway
Part Nine: Discussions
Part Ten: Telephone Call
Parts Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen: Simple Requests, Tell Me a Story, No Tears
Parts Fourteen-Fifteen-Sixteen: Similarities, Discussions II and Painkillers
Part Seventeen: Wake Up Call
Part Eighteen: Chance, 1,000 Yard Stare
Part Nineteen: Thoughts Of
Part Twenty-Twenty-One-Twenty-Two: Waking, Curiosity, Treasure
Part Twenty-Three: X X X
“I want to go outside,” Al whispered.
Winry glanced at the window, with the pearly-grey sky showing through it. “It’s raining, Al. It’s not the right weather.”
“Hnng,” Ed sighed from his own bed. “Any idea when they’re gonna let us loose, Winry?” He rolled his head like it was a leaden weight on his neck to look at her. “I’m sick of the hospital.”
“You’re still recuperating from your surgery, Ed.” Picking up a little bowl, Winry stirred the concoction of bread, milk and apple sauce, spooning a little bit up and offering it to Al. He opened his mouth like a baby bird and smiled around the bowl of the spoon.
“Mm! That’s good.”
Ed made gagging noises. “How can you feed him milk?”
“Because it’s easy to digest.” Winry didn’t even bother looking over her shoulder. “At least for some people.”
“I guess your Ed didn’t like milk either, huh, Winry?” Al’s question hung there for a few seconds and Winry stirred the bread in the bowl hard to cover the silence in the room.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t.”
“Huh. Guess that’s another thing we have in common.” Ed shifted around on the bed. “I still don’t know how anyone can drink that crap, though.” Winry glanced over her shoulder in time to see him make a face.
Al asked, “What else is alike, Winry?” The innocent question made her want to leave the room. She offered him another spoonful instead, considering.
“Well…I guess…Ed’s scar, that’s different.” She nodded at the white mark above his eyebrow. “And your coloring…Al has eyes that change color; grey or brown or green. And his hair’s light brown.”
Ed scoffed. “Those are differences, Winry.”
“Hmph! I don’t know enough about you to say similarities!”
“I know!” Al grinned. “You’re as close to them as our Winry is to us.” When she couldn’t answer, he tilted his head a little bit. “Winry?”
She wanted to put down the bowl, and walk out of the room. Instead, Winry smiled at Al. “Sure. They’re just like my brothers.”
Al’s eyebrows shot up into his too-shaggy bangs. “Brothers? Really?” He gave Ed a sly look.
“Shut up, Al,” Ed growled.
“That’s how I feel about Winry,” Al went on, ignoring his brother, “she’s like my sister. Even if I did win the fight to ask her to marry me!”
Ed made a strangled noise as Winry snickered. “Al won that fight here, too.”
“Great, beaten by my little brother no matter what world.”
“That probably won’t happen for a while now, Brother.” Al raised his skeletal hand. “I can barely move.”
“Hmph! You’ll see,” Ed told him, “with Winry and the old hag taking care of you, you’ll be back to normal soon.”
“Do you want any more bread, Al?” Winry hoped she could get them off the subject of what was the same and what was different.
He shook his head. “I don’t think I can eat any more.”
“Good. The smell of it is making me sick.” Ed gagged again in emphasis.
“Oh, shut up, Brother.” Al yawned, blurring the belligerent tone in his voice.
Expression softening, Ed said, “Go to sleep, Al,” even as his brother’s eyes were closing.
Winry slipped off the bed, setting the bowl with some of the other items to be taken from the room to be cleaned. “I guess I’d better be going,” she started to say.
“Why?” Turning around, Winry caught sight of Ed’s cheeks pinking. He glanced sideways, hiding behind his bangs. “I mean…it’s not like you have anything to do in Central, is it?” Ed kind of choked on the words. “Al…Al can sleep through anything right now, and I’m.” He grumbled something Winry couldn’t quite understand.
“What?”
Fierce, he met her eyes. “Bored, all right? I’m bored. I hate being in this bed, with nothing to do…I don’t even have my journal; it’s in my coat.” His scowl deepened. “Didn’t bring anything from that place but what I was wearing and.” Winry watched as realization brightened, then darkened, Ed’s face. “Shit. I almost forgot.”
Trying not to sound exasperated, she asked, “What?” again.
Ed sighed, picking at the hem of his hospital blanket. “Do you know where my clothes are?”
Winry went to tiny closet, opening it to show him his trousers and his shirt, draped together over a hanger. His boots were in the bottom of the closet. Pulling out the clothes, she said, “They had to be washed.”
Frown back in place, Ed beckoned to her, and Winry, with a sigh, brought him his clothes. All black; obviously, another thing they had in common. Ed dug into pockets of his pants, his scowl deepening. “Where are they?” The low growl made Al mumble something, and Ed lowered his voice to ask, “Who cleaned out my pockets?”
“If there was something important in them, they’re probably at the nurse’s station.” Winry couldn’t imagine what Ed would have that was so important - maybe his watch?
“Could you find out? It’s important, Winry.”
She nodded and, gathering up the bowl and a dinner tray left over from earlier, she carried them out of the room. The guards nodded at her as she walked by. Winry thought she remembered them from before, but they weren’t Mr. Mustang’s command, so she just smiled in return, unable to recall their names. The tray and bowl of milk bread went on a cart to be wheeled off to the cafeteria, and Winry continued to the nurse’s station. Once there, it took a few minutes to get someone’s attention, and she asked about Ed’s effects.
“He asked for them,” she said. “I don’t know if you can give them to me or not.”
The nurse at the station recognized her, at least, as someone associated with the room, and agreed Winry could have Ed’s things, but she still had to sign for them. They were wrapped in a surgeon’s towel and Winry recognized Ed’s watch without even flipping the cloth open. She carried the treasures back to the Elrics’ room, and passed it all over to Ed.
“Thanks, Winry.” Ed gave her an absent-minded smile, though his eyes lingered on her face for a few seconds more before he ducked his head to open the packet. A relieved sigh left him, making Winry crane her neck in hopes of a view of what was inside the towel. Ed leaned back to let her see.
“Those,” she said, losing her voice for a few seconds.
“Winry’s earrings,” Ed said quietly. “She gave them to me to take care of. I…I could’ve given them back to her when I was in Rezembool, but.” He sighed. “It didn’t seem the right time.”
Winry took a deep breath. “May I?”
Ed handed her the towel, and Winry sat down at the foot of his bed. She tilted the towel, the muted light from the window making the jewelry gleam. “I don’t know if it’s how you got your earrings,” Ed said, “but Al told me I needed to buy them for her. Al said we needed to take souvenirs home with us, so we did. And she shoved all of the earrings in her ears, so she’d have something to remind her of us.” He twisted the hem of the blanket between his fingers, not looking at her. His voice lowered. “Now she doesn’t even have that.”
Winry passed back the towel. “Ed didn’t buy mine for me.” She managed a smile when Ed glanced at her through his bangs. “He bought me other stuff; any tool I wanted.” Saying she put one of the wrenches Ed bought her to use installing his automail just before he went away again hurt too much, so she didn’t. “I still have some of the tools he gave me.”
Folding the towel back over the earrings and watch, Ed asked, “What happened to them? Um, me and Al, from here.”
Winry pulled up a chair, sitting between the beds. “I’m not really sure. Ed…disappeared, somewhere in that place where we found you, but he got Al’s body back before he vanished. Al…he was only ten, like when...they tried to bring Auntie Trisha back.” It was almost like telling a story, though Winry couldn’t look at Ed as she told it to him. “Al didn’t know what happened to Ed. No one knew what happened to him. Most people thought he was dead,” she took a breath, “sacrificed himself for Al. Rose was there, but Ed made her leave before he did…whatever he did. She brought Al and Wrath home back to Rezembool - ”
“The fuck?” Winry raised her head in time to see Ed lean forward sharply, wincing at the pull of his stitches. “Why the hell would Rose be there? Doesn’t she have any idea how dangerous Wrath is? He’s the one who - who ordered Kimbley,” he panted, bent over, his eyes tight with pain.
“Easy, Ed!” Winry lay her hand on his shoulder, his good shoulder, guiding him back into the bed. “You’re going to pop your stitches.” That didn’t make a difference so she used a worse threat, “Or wake Al!” When he’d caught his breath, Winry kept her hand on him to make sure he stayed down. “Wrath…I don’t think he’s alive anymore, Ed. He…he had automail. He was missing the same limbs as yours. Yours before, I guess.”
From the open mouthed stare Ed gave her, Winry guessed it was very different in his world. “The homunculi aren’t to be trusted,” was what he grated out. “Any of…hell, Greed, I guess…at least you always knew where you stood with him.”
Winry shook her head slightly, spreading her hands. “Wrath was okay. A little wild, I guess. He never did anything to…to hurt me. He was Mrs. Curtis’s son, or he had been, before he died and she tried to bring him back.”
“The hell?” Ed burst in before she could say any more. “How? That’s…Master told us…” It was his turn to shake his head. “I guess I could ask her, she’s an alchemist, she’d be able to explain it,” he muttered almost to himself.
“Ed,” Winry said very gently, “Mrs. Curtis passed away.”
His eyes seemed to swallow his face. “Wh-what?”
“I’ve been to her grave, and left flowers for her. Mr. Curtis is still in mourning.” Winry almost patted his ankle, but pulled her hand back. Ed had never accepted being touched like Al had, not since they were little kids and they’d lost their mom.
“You know - you knew her?” Brow furrowing, Ed rubbed his hand over the towel. “She…she’s still alive. I just left her,” he swallowed, taking a deep breath again. “She’s never met Winry.” Ed seemed about to say something else, but even though Winry waited, his mouth remained shut.
When the silence dragged on too long, Winry slapped her hands on the thin mattress. “I guess maybe I should go now, huh? Let you guys rest.” Slipping off the bed, she hesitated for a second, turning to face Ed and offering him a smile. “You’ll be okay, Ed. Both of you will.” Before he could answer, she spun on her heel, walking out of the room. “I’ll see you later,” Winry called as the door closed behind her, and she raised her hand to the soldiers at the door. “If anyone needs me, I’m staying with Mrs. Hughes. Captain Hawkeye knows how to reach me!”
It really was time to go, and think over everything she’d learned. Winry felt it again, a pang of jealousy that her counterpart in the other world had such good friends as the Elric brothers.
X X X
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: evil_little_dog
Characters: Winry, Ed, Al
Words: 1,940
Rating: Gen
Summary: Winry keeps finding things out about the brothers.
Warnings: Same warnings still apply.
Disclaimer: So very not mine.
Part One: Through the Back Door
Part Two: Aftermath
Part Three: Reminders
Part Four: Under Any Circumstances
Part Five: Lost and Found
Parts Six-Seven-Eight: Cold Comfort, Equivalent Exchange and In the Hallway
Part Nine: Discussions
Part Ten: Telephone Call
Parts Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen: Simple Requests, Tell Me a Story, No Tears
Parts Fourteen-Fifteen-Sixteen: Similarities, Discussions II and Painkillers
Part Seventeen: Wake Up Call
Part Eighteen: Chance, 1,000 Yard Stare
Part Nineteen: Thoughts Of
Part Twenty-Twenty-One-Twenty-Two: Waking, Curiosity, Treasure
Part Twenty-Three: X X X
“I want to go outside,” Al whispered.
Winry glanced at the window, with the pearly-grey sky showing through it. “It’s raining, Al. It’s not the right weather.”
“Hnng,” Ed sighed from his own bed. “Any idea when they’re gonna let us loose, Winry?” He rolled his head like it was a leaden weight on his neck to look at her. “I’m sick of the hospital.”
“You’re still recuperating from your surgery, Ed.” Picking up a little bowl, Winry stirred the concoction of bread, milk and apple sauce, spooning a little bit up and offering it to Al. He opened his mouth like a baby bird and smiled around the bowl of the spoon.
“Mm! That’s good.”
Ed made gagging noises. “How can you feed him milk?”
“Because it’s easy to digest.” Winry didn’t even bother looking over her shoulder. “At least for some people.”
“I guess your Ed didn’t like milk either, huh, Winry?” Al’s question hung there for a few seconds and Winry stirred the bread in the bowl hard to cover the silence in the room.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t.”
“Huh. Guess that’s another thing we have in common.” Ed shifted around on the bed. “I still don’t know how anyone can drink that crap, though.” Winry glanced over her shoulder in time to see him make a face.
Al asked, “What else is alike, Winry?” The innocent question made her want to leave the room. She offered him another spoonful instead, considering.
“Well…I guess…Ed’s scar, that’s different.” She nodded at the white mark above his eyebrow. “And your coloring…Al has eyes that change color; grey or brown or green. And his hair’s light brown.”
Ed scoffed. “Those are differences, Winry.”
“Hmph! I don’t know enough about you to say similarities!”
“I know!” Al grinned. “You’re as close to them as our Winry is to us.” When she couldn’t answer, he tilted his head a little bit. “Winry?”
She wanted to put down the bowl, and walk out of the room. Instead, Winry smiled at Al. “Sure. They’re just like my brothers.”
Al’s eyebrows shot up into his too-shaggy bangs. “Brothers? Really?” He gave Ed a sly look.
“Shut up, Al,” Ed growled.
“That’s how I feel about Winry,” Al went on, ignoring his brother, “she’s like my sister. Even if I did win the fight to ask her to marry me!”
Ed made a strangled noise as Winry snickered. “Al won that fight here, too.”
“Great, beaten by my little brother no matter what world.”
“That probably won’t happen for a while now, Brother.” Al raised his skeletal hand. “I can barely move.”
“Hmph! You’ll see,” Ed told him, “with Winry and the old hag taking care of you, you’ll be back to normal soon.”
“Do you want any more bread, Al?” Winry hoped she could get them off the subject of what was the same and what was different.
He shook his head. “I don’t think I can eat any more.”
“Good. The smell of it is making me sick.” Ed gagged again in emphasis.
“Oh, shut up, Brother.” Al yawned, blurring the belligerent tone in his voice.
Expression softening, Ed said, “Go to sleep, Al,” even as his brother’s eyes were closing.
Winry slipped off the bed, setting the bowl with some of the other items to be taken from the room to be cleaned. “I guess I’d better be going,” she started to say.
“Why?” Turning around, Winry caught sight of Ed’s cheeks pinking. He glanced sideways, hiding behind his bangs. “I mean…it’s not like you have anything to do in Central, is it?” Ed kind of choked on the words. “Al…Al can sleep through anything right now, and I’m.” He grumbled something Winry couldn’t quite understand.
“What?”
Fierce, he met her eyes. “Bored, all right? I’m bored. I hate being in this bed, with nothing to do…I don’t even have my journal; it’s in my coat.” His scowl deepened. “Didn’t bring anything from that place but what I was wearing and.” Winry watched as realization brightened, then darkened, Ed’s face. “Shit. I almost forgot.”
Trying not to sound exasperated, she asked, “What?” again.
Ed sighed, picking at the hem of his hospital blanket. “Do you know where my clothes are?”
Winry went to tiny closet, opening it to show him his trousers and his shirt, draped together over a hanger. His boots were in the bottom of the closet. Pulling out the clothes, she said, “They had to be washed.”
Frown back in place, Ed beckoned to her, and Winry, with a sigh, brought him his clothes. All black; obviously, another thing they had in common. Ed dug into pockets of his pants, his scowl deepening. “Where are they?” The low growl made Al mumble something, and Ed lowered his voice to ask, “Who cleaned out my pockets?”
“If there was something important in them, they’re probably at the nurse’s station.” Winry couldn’t imagine what Ed would have that was so important - maybe his watch?
“Could you find out? It’s important, Winry.”
She nodded and, gathering up the bowl and a dinner tray left over from earlier, she carried them out of the room. The guards nodded at her as she walked by. Winry thought she remembered them from before, but they weren’t Mr. Mustang’s command, so she just smiled in return, unable to recall their names. The tray and bowl of milk bread went on a cart to be wheeled off to the cafeteria, and Winry continued to the nurse’s station. Once there, it took a few minutes to get someone’s attention, and she asked about Ed’s effects.
“He asked for them,” she said. “I don’t know if you can give them to me or not.”
The nurse at the station recognized her, at least, as someone associated with the room, and agreed Winry could have Ed’s things, but she still had to sign for them. They were wrapped in a surgeon’s towel and Winry recognized Ed’s watch without even flipping the cloth open. She carried the treasures back to the Elrics’ room, and passed it all over to Ed.
“Thanks, Winry.” Ed gave her an absent-minded smile, though his eyes lingered on her face for a few seconds more before he ducked his head to open the packet. A relieved sigh left him, making Winry crane her neck in hopes of a view of what was inside the towel. Ed leaned back to let her see.
“Those,” she said, losing her voice for a few seconds.
“Winry’s earrings,” Ed said quietly. “She gave them to me to take care of. I…I could’ve given them back to her when I was in Rezembool, but.” He sighed. “It didn’t seem the right time.”
Winry took a deep breath. “May I?”
Ed handed her the towel, and Winry sat down at the foot of his bed. She tilted the towel, the muted light from the window making the jewelry gleam. “I don’t know if it’s how you got your earrings,” Ed said, “but Al told me I needed to buy them for her. Al said we needed to take souvenirs home with us, so we did. And she shoved all of the earrings in her ears, so she’d have something to remind her of us.” He twisted the hem of the blanket between his fingers, not looking at her. His voice lowered. “Now she doesn’t even have that.”
Winry passed back the towel. “Ed didn’t buy mine for me.” She managed a smile when Ed glanced at her through his bangs. “He bought me other stuff; any tool I wanted.” Saying she put one of the wrenches Ed bought her to use installing his automail just before he went away again hurt too much, so she didn’t. “I still have some of the tools he gave me.”
Folding the towel back over the earrings and watch, Ed asked, “What happened to them? Um, me and Al, from here.”
Winry pulled up a chair, sitting between the beds. “I’m not really sure. Ed…disappeared, somewhere in that place where we found you, but he got Al’s body back before he vanished. Al…he was only ten, like when...they tried to bring Auntie Trisha back.” It was almost like telling a story, though Winry couldn’t look at Ed as she told it to him. “Al didn’t know what happened to Ed. No one knew what happened to him. Most people thought he was dead,” she took a breath, “sacrificed himself for Al. Rose was there, but Ed made her leave before he did…whatever he did. She brought Al and Wrath home back to Rezembool - ”
“The fuck?” Winry raised her head in time to see Ed lean forward sharply, wincing at the pull of his stitches. “Why the hell would Rose be there? Doesn’t she have any idea how dangerous Wrath is? He’s the one who - who ordered Kimbley,” he panted, bent over, his eyes tight with pain.
“Easy, Ed!” Winry lay her hand on his shoulder, his good shoulder, guiding him back into the bed. “You’re going to pop your stitches.” That didn’t make a difference so she used a worse threat, “Or wake Al!” When he’d caught his breath, Winry kept her hand on him to make sure he stayed down. “Wrath…I don’t think he’s alive anymore, Ed. He…he had automail. He was missing the same limbs as yours. Yours before, I guess.”
From the open mouthed stare Ed gave her, Winry guessed it was very different in his world. “The homunculi aren’t to be trusted,” was what he grated out. “Any of…hell, Greed, I guess…at least you always knew where you stood with him.”
Winry shook her head slightly, spreading her hands. “Wrath was okay. A little wild, I guess. He never did anything to…to hurt me. He was Mrs. Curtis’s son, or he had been, before he died and she tried to bring him back.”
“The hell?” Ed burst in before she could say any more. “How? That’s…Master told us…” It was his turn to shake his head. “I guess I could ask her, she’s an alchemist, she’d be able to explain it,” he muttered almost to himself.
“Ed,” Winry said very gently, “Mrs. Curtis passed away.”
His eyes seemed to swallow his face. “Wh-what?”
“I’ve been to her grave, and left flowers for her. Mr. Curtis is still in mourning.” Winry almost patted his ankle, but pulled her hand back. Ed had never accepted being touched like Al had, not since they were little kids and they’d lost their mom.
“You know - you knew her?” Brow furrowing, Ed rubbed his hand over the towel. “She…she’s still alive. I just left her,” he swallowed, taking a deep breath again. “She’s never met Winry.” Ed seemed about to say something else, but even though Winry waited, his mouth remained shut.
When the silence dragged on too long, Winry slapped her hands on the thin mattress. “I guess maybe I should go now, huh? Let you guys rest.” Slipping off the bed, she hesitated for a second, turning to face Ed and offering him a smile. “You’ll be okay, Ed. Both of you will.” Before he could answer, she spun on her heel, walking out of the room. “I’ll see you later,” Winry called as the door closed behind her, and she raised her hand to the soldiers at the door. “If anyone needs me, I’m staying with Mrs. Hughes. Captain Hawkeye knows how to reach me!”
It really was time to go, and think over everything she’d learned. Winry felt it again, a pang of jealousy that her counterpart in the other world had such good friends as the Elric brothers.
X X X