FMA: First Step

FMA One-Shot
Manga/Brotherhood Verse
Character Study of Winry Rockbell

You are four years old.

You love your mommy and daddy who work so hard to fix people.  You just wish they were around more.  You love your granny who tinkers away with machine parts that also fix people.  When you aren't paging through anatomy books to look at the pictures, you watch her work.  The things she makes help people walk, but they also make them hurt.  They look like they're in so much pain.  But eventually they smile.  You like it better when they smile.

So when your granny one day hands you a screwdriver and asks you to tighten a part for her, you can't help but giggle with glee.  You'd like to think you're helping her put those smiles on their faces.

***
You are six years old.

Your best friends in the whole wide world have lost their mommy.  You don't want them to be sad.  You want to help them, want to take their minds off their sadness.   But they are slipping away.  They go to their house a lot, even though there's no mommy there to welcome them home.  They spend hours holed up in their daddy's study.  They keep secrets from you and they won't tell no matter how much you ask.

So you tighten another screw for Granny and wait for them to come home for dinner.

***

You are eight years old.

Your mommy and daddy are dead.  They left home to help people, like they always do.  Soldiers took them away to a battle, and they can never come back.  It doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem fair.

Suddenly you understand why your best friends were so sad.  And you also understand why they fell back on their silly alchemy to make it through.

You wish you didn't.

***

You are eleven years old.

Your best friends are broken and barely alive.  Ed's missing two limbs; Al's missing his whole body.  All because of that stupid alchemy.

But you think a moment.  If you had a small chance of bringing Mom and Dad back, would you take it?  If you could change things so the last thing that you see of them isn't their backs, leaving you behind, would you do it?

Maybe it's not so stupid.

Soldiers came today, offering your friends a chance to get their bodies back.  Will they go to a battle, never to be seen again?  Will they be taken from you too?  You're not sure you can go through this again.

But that woman who visited, she was nice.  She didn't seem like a solider to you.  And she gave you something to think about.  She shoots people and has to do terrible things, even though it's hard.  She smiles softly when she tells you why.

There is someone I have to protect…

She's doing all she can to help someone important to her; to help them get where they want to go.

You know now that you should be doing the same for the ones important to you.

***

You are eleven and a half.

You polish off the metal, nodding in satisfaction.  It's your very first auto-mail limb that you've made all by yourself.  Granny helped a lot of course, but she let you do most of the work when she saw how much you wanted to help.  Because this isn't just any auto-mail, this is going to be Ed's leg.

He's powered through the surgeries and the therapy with a fire you did not think he was capable of.   Seeing that fire made you realize you couldn't do this halfway either.   When you've helped Granny before, you always knew that you were helping people, but you never thought much beyond those first steps.  You never really thought about where those people will walk with those legs given to them.  And you still don't know.  It's uncertain where Ed intends to go and how far he'll have to walk to fulfill his promise to Al.  So those limbs that you've made for him better be good.

You carry the leg over to his chair, going through the motions of locking the wheels and lining up the limb with his port.  He's pale and clammy; he looks like he might hurl right here and now.  But he grips the armrest of the chair and doesn't say a word.  You warn him yet again that connecting the nerves is going to hurt.  His eyes flash at you, annoyed.  You know he wants to say "Just do it already" but he just grits his teeth and nods.

You click the leg in place, turning the switch and engaging the connection with his nerves in one smooth motion.  He spasms, gripping the chair even harder, knuckles white.  He doesn't yell or scream; just lets out the barest whimper.   That idiot refuses to cry no matter what he does.

You both sit for a few moments, giving him time to adjust.  Once the color has somewhat returned to his face, he reaches for the grab bars.  You move in front of him, hands hovering inches away from his hips, ready to catch him should he fall.  But he manages to pull himself up to a stand, all of his weight on his good right leg.   You remind him not to push himself.

Just when you think he'll snap at you or make a cocky boast that he can do anything, he looks up at you with…wonder.  Then he looks down at his feet.  Two feet on the floor.  Something he hasn't seen in six months.

Gingerly, he takes a step.  He's leaning heavily on the grab bars, and he shifts his weight off of the auto-mail foot as fast as he can in a pronounced limp, but it's a step nonetheless.

His face lights up with the brightest smile you've seen in ages.   It's infectious; you have to smile back.

"Got a long way to go, but I already made the first step," he grins.

You now understand.  You get why all of Granny's patients looked so happy.  Because with that first step, a world of possibility has opened up before them.  A world that was unattainable before.

Ed looks ready to charge into that world, full throttle.

You look down at his two feet and wonder why they suddenly seem so blurry.

"Aw, c'mon Win.  What're you crying for now?" he asks, halfway between annoyance and affection.  He's right:  you really are a cry baby.   But he's still smiling at you, and he looks so…grateful.

"Shut up," you laugh, wiping your eyes.  "If you're so tough, let's see you take that second step."

"Fine!" he growls.

And he walks forward.  He's got two good legs to take him there.