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nebroadweTitle: Chibi Drabbles
Fandom: FMA (anime or manga version)
Character(s): primarily Ed, Al and Winry
Pairing(s): None. (Okay, a little childhood crushliness now and then, but that's it.)
Rating: G
Word Count: 3300 so far.
Warnings: None.
A/N: I give up. These unlinked drabbles, all set in Ed, Al and Winry's childhood, just keep springing fully-fledged from my subconscious, so I figured I'd better develop a place in which to collect them, rather than keep posting them as individual entries. At the end of the set are the usual author's notes to illuminate obscure references. Crossposted from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers, and fma_fiction, among others).
Dedication(s): See individual drabbles below.
33. Learner's Permit
for artemisrae -- happy belated birthday!
As soon as Winry can reach the pedals and still see over the dash, her grandmother teaches her to drive. The black jalopy her father left behind bucks around the yard, recording Winry's slow mastery of double-declutching in uprooted turf. At length Pinako clears her to take the road, but only in emergencies. "You can keep practicing out back," she says, locking up the garage. "No passengers. And don't let those Elric boys talk you into giving them a turn, either."
Winry sighs. "Yes, Granny."
The next day she refunds Ed the cens he paid for his first lesson.
32. Calenture
Al hates taking care of the lawn. The mower's weight increases turn by turn and sunlight broils his straining muscles. No-see-'ems rise in dusty clouds of pollen to harass him, while perspiration collects in the crook of every joint. He imagines his mother recoiling in horror from the scarlet, seething, boy-shaped welt that was once her son.
But instead she greets him with a smile and a pitcher of lemonade. He holds a cool, sweaty glassful against his cheek, listening to the ice pop as it melts -- and to her praise, sweeter than cut grass drying where it lies.
31. The Secret of Eternal Life
for Denise, obviously
Ever since the Elric brothers took up alchemy, they've been insufferable. They expect Winry to listen attentively while they drone on about it, but they tune her out whenever she mentions automail. Outnumbered, she pouts until Ed begins lecturing about the Elixir Vitae, the dram of immortality. "Oh, I know all about that," she interrupts. "Granny drinks it every morning."
Ed's mouth falls open, Al's eyes bug out, and they both demand, "How does she make it?"
"We-e-e-ll," Winry drawls, "first she grinds the beans -- "
A worm down her back is no equivalent exchange. Not even close.
30. A Circle Grazing the Confines of Space
originally written for this contest
Ed is bo-o-o-o-ored: it's raining; his mom's busy cleaning; the radio's broadcasting stupid soap operas; and Al's forgotten how to play hide'n'seek. There he is, lying in plain view on the carpet, reading. "You're it," Ed says, prodding him in the ribs. "C'mon, start counting."
"In a minute," Al answers, turning the page.
Ed stares down at a familiar illustration; didn't he once have something like it tacked above his desk? "Where'd you get that?" he asks.
Al points; Ed grabs his own alchemy book. Its leaves hold nothing of his father -- only sufficient enchantment to enthrall his restless mind.
29. Jove's Laughter
Ed can't understand it. When he races Winry, he's never the rotten egg. When Al's his opponent, they tie, mostly, and argue about who smells worse. But in a three-way contest, Winry beats Al every time. "Why d'you keep losing to her?" Ed finally asks.
"Well," Al hedges, "Winry doesn't like being called stinky -- "
"She knows she isn't really!" Ed interrupts, flushing as his brother smirks. "You cheater! I'm gonna tell her you cheat!"
Al ruffles up. "You do and I'll pound you!"
Winry thoroughly enjoys her subsequent brief winning streak, while the brothers bask, Janus-faced, in her condescension.
28. Whispers Down the Lane
originally written for this contest; now much revised
Al overhears the whisper at the Rockbells' funeral: They went to Ishbal and got themselves killed.
It follows Winry to school like a mosquito. (They went to help ...) Boys point; girls titter. (... in Ishbal ...) Everybody stares. And whispers.
(... got themselves killed.)
Winry says she's proud of her parents -- says she's done crying. (They were helping the Ishbalans ...) Maybe she doesn't hear the whisper. (... got what was coming to them ...) Al hopes so. His hands stiffen, hating it, but you can't swat people like mosquitoes.
(... do-gooders ... turncoats ...)
Even if you want to.
Even if they deserve it.
(... got themselves killed.)
27. The Art of Language
Overnight, the adults claim, the mercury fell with an audible thud, but Ed tells Al it was just a dead tree blowing over in the windbreak. Danny Cutter says it's cold enough to freeze the fecking nuts off a brass monkey, which seems equally implausible, but when Ed asks his mother about it, he learns instead that you can't blame other people for what you choose to say.
He further discovers that soap tastes terrible, but doesn't permanently wash impolite language out of your mouth. Also, when Danny licks the school flagpole, that poetic justice exists -- and it's fecking sweet.
26. The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
written in response to this challenge, with thanks to Dr. Bailey for the physics lesson
Riesenbuhl breeds no elephants, and riding slow, steady plow-horses bareback is no challenge, and Den growls when Winry tries to tie old curtains around her middle for a tutu, so the Elric brothers toss the backyard swing over its branch until the seat hangs higher than their heads. Ed wins the first turn because it was his idea; the others boost him up.
There he discovers how much more swiftly the bob's angular momentum changes when the axis of a pendulum is shortened. But while Al laughs and Winry cheers, he'll never admit how little that knowledge delights him.
25. Ever the Latter End of Joy
One tree in the Elrics' backyard is unique. Their father found it, or perhaps transmuted it, and planted it for their mother. It flowers, but never fruits. All its petals seem to fall at once in late April, whirling down to skim across the porch and stipple the new grass. Ed remembers shaking the lower branches to add to the fragrant storm, while Al squirmed and laughed in their mother's arms. Snow, Mama, snow!
That tree burns with the house, of course -- Ed sees to it. Al says nothing, but furtively catches a flying cluster of ashes on his palm.
24. Obsessions
Winry trails Ed and Al into the pharmacy and buys a bag of peppermints while they debate whether to spend their pooled allowances on boric acid or saltpeter. Ed's capable of all-day arguments with himself, so after five minutes Winry abandons the Elrics for the Morton Bros. (Mechanics) across the street. There, mints-all-around purchases a ringside seat for the diagnosis of an ailing tractor -- not as interesting as helping Granny, but a lot more fun than kicking her heels at the druggist's.
Walking home, she ignores the sighs and grumbles about how long she made them wait.
23. Endings
Winry's mother read her a story every night before bed. Their favorite was the one about the peasant girl who knows what the king will say before he says it, though Winry also enjoyed tales of disguised princesses hiding among the geese or beneath a cloak of a thousand furs.
Now story-time is over, but Winry dreams of her parents lying in a glass coffin and knows she cannot kiss them awake unless she takes their place. The cold touch on her lips wakes her instead; she slaps Den's muzzle away and never apologizes.
The fairy-books gather dust.
22. Vectors
for evil_little_dog and cornerofmadness, with accompanying get-well wishes
Ed hates being sick even when it excuses him from school. His stomach rejects everything but toast and tea and his mind rattles around like a pebble in a tin can. After another exhausting day in bed, he labors over the makeup assignments his brother brought home, temper soured to crabapple bitterness by Winry's shrieks as she and Den chase Al around the yard. Why's it always me? Why couldn't it've been him?
That night he totters barefoot down the hall, each shivering step an atonement, to tell their mother that Al needs a basin and some ginger water, too.
21. Autodidact
At Riesenbuhl's school exercises, the scrubbed and shining junior grades always recite patriotic verses to the proud parents assembled in the classroom. Or almost always: one year, Ed reels off Newton's Three Laws of Motion instead of the inspiring couplet he's supposed to have memorized. Then the already nervous girl beside him (not Winry, who's reaching for some chalk to throw) doesn't know whether to parrot his lines or her own and, before anyone can intervene, bursts into tears ...
Ed apologizes, eventually. But the teacher neither forgets nor forgives his indignant counter-accusation: "You said this was supposed to be educational!"
20. What Now This Night I See
for Mace
Pinako Rockbell believes you're old enough to hear the answers once you're old enough to ask the questions. So when her granddaughter wonders what the girl in the ballad was doing among the leaves so green, Pinako tells her.
Winry walks wide around hedges for a few weeks afterward; then the boys come home and she has other things to think about: the blood on the floor, redder than any rose; the armor clanging louder than silver bells; and Ed and Al holding fast to each other through that long night, and all the nights thereafter, in their charmed circle.
19. The Facts of Life
The boy remembers the day his innocence first began to dissipate, sublimating like dry ice. Some facts country folk learn early, so nobody warned him away from the barn or shielded him from anything but the cows' unpredictable hooves. Once cantankerous Daisy was safely stalled, Mr. Andersen squatted on a stool beside fat Bess, his head bent against her flank, her jaw working to the shish-shish of milk into tin. The boy's eyes tracked the liquid from pail to source, then sprang wide. He's pulling on its -- things!
"Want to try?" Mr. Andersen offered.
Nauseated, newly resolute, Edward Elric fled.
18. If Wishes Were Horses ...
Ed knows what he wants for his birthday: a red wagon. He tells his mother so, all the way to Riesenbuhl and home again, puffing its carrying capacity, so much greater than the marketing basket's. He pauses only to study the ridge where the Cutter boys court disaster with sleds; Trisha's wry smile passes unheeded.
Later, braced for her goodnight kiss, he asks, "D'you -- d'you think Dad'll be home for my birthday?"
Her lips graze his ear instead of his cheek; she murmurs something, Wait and see or We'll see, but he's already muffled his careless mouth in the pillows.
17. Paradise Lost
When Al's heels slip, he obliges gravity and crashes down against the hillside, grinning even as he rubs his head. The Wrights' sheep cropped this pasture short and moved on: among the spreading patches of clover a veteran crackle protests the renewed invasion, pale blades scratching Al's calves and neck. But the narrow petals gathered gossip-close breathe sweetly around his head and the hot, clear sky shines bluer than gaslight, than denim in the washtub, than Winry's eyes suddenly staring upside-down into his.
"Where've you been -- "
" -- Al?" Ed yells from the platform. "C'mon -- we're gone!"
"I know," he answers.
16. Treetop Travelers
Ed and Al spend their last truly happy summer up trees.
They summit them tied together with Winry's jump-rope, whispering to avoid starting an avalanche.
They sail them through pirate-ridden seas and howling equinoctical gales, prefacing every remark with "Ahoy!" or "Avast!" and calling each other "you lubber" until their mother makes them stop.
They try to ride them through the Eastern Desert to fabled Xing, but must abandon their faithful, desiccated, dying mounts to crawl toward what might be an oasis or merely a tantalizing mirage.
They could just climb them, but where's the fun in that?
15. Legacies
Winry has her mother's pearls, a string of Creatan "fishes' tears" with a tricky clasp, sleeping in a velvet-lined silver box until the day she turns sixteen.
And she has her father's gold-plated pocket watch, its case engraved with a message from his fraternity brothers: Facta non verba. 1897.
And she has their textbooks -- anatomy, physiology, surgery, obstetrics -- annotated in her mother's round Spencerian hand and her father's jittery medical scrawl. After the memorial service, she reads them over and over, listening to voices untouched by sorrow or time, discovering that knowledge is power, but learning is love.
14. Outnumbered
Now and then the Elric brothers close ranks against Winry: go away, we don't want you, we're busy! She wouldn't mind so much if they'd warn her ahead of time or at least explain why. You're a GIRL! doesn't count. As her grandmother says, that's a fact, not an excuse.
Sometimes Al apologizes later, but neither boy ever tells her what they were up to. Eventually she pretends not to care, sheering off at the first sign of dismissal. She has her own projects, after all. Someday she'll show them what she learned while they were so busy without her.
13. However Improbable
Al can't quite believe it's this simple. Simple? Ed scoffs, reminding him of the weeks of research, the partial experiments, the reticulose equations that define their transmutation circle. Besides, people, even scientists, overlook the obvious all the time. Gravity existed for millennia before Newton published his Principia, didn't it?
Al has no counterargument, only wordless uneasiness. Ed thumps his brother in the shoulder as he always does, whether they're preparing to sled down Cutter's Cliff or eat fried worms on a bet. We can do this. Trust me.
As always, Al returns the thump with interest. Pass me the chalk.
12. Scheherazade
"Song, mama?" asks Al as Trisha lays him down.
"No, more story!" Ed, theoretically tucked in, has kicked his blankets into a tangle for her to straighten: anything to delay the moment his traitor body succumbs to sleep. No lullabies for him, but he hasn't realized the endless picaresque she spins might serve the same purpose.
" -- when he cut off the wolf's head, a bird flew out -- "
The bird sings for Al, telling the prince where to find the water of life. Ed grumbles, eyelids drooping, and the story runs on till he snores open-mouthed, to be continued another night.
11. Want Shall Be Your Master
The best things in life are free. Who needs electric trains or windup cars when you've got rocks to throw in the creek or frogs to hide in each other's desks on a dare? The boys can't understand why Winry, with the run of her grandmother's workbench, sighs over Lily's fancy, 'spensive china doll. Watching her suck up to Lily at recess makes Ed gag; watching Lily turn away makes Al frown. As Winry's face falls, the brothers' eyes meet, thinking of the same page in Elementary Alchemy and the school sandbox.
But not then, not yet, of a price.
10. Charmed Life
Like all children, they believe a really good game involves risk. But though Ed ringleads them through a hundred death-defying stunts each month, he collects nothing worse than scrapes and bruises falling out of trees or into bushes.
It's Winry, braking to avoid a cat crossing the road, who somersaults over her handlebars and spends a day in bed with a concussion.
It's Al, jumping from the Andersens' hayloft, who lands sideways on his ankle and has to be driven home in the dog-cart.
"You lead a charmed life, Edward," his mother sighs.
Ed grins. He knows it's true.
9. First Love
for Joy and Sue and the Katies, who don't laugh when I try writing romance
Al falls in love with Winry the day she rescues him.
Ed's home in bed sick, exposing his brother to ambush by the schoolyard gang they've defeated once too often. Steeling himself for martyrdom, Al hovers in the cloakroom until Winry unexpectedly grabs his arm and drags him outside past his would-be assassins. They won't stoop to fighting girls, so they're reduced to jeers ("Elric's got a GIRLfriend!") which bounce off Al like cotton balls. Winry doesn't even blush. "Those jerks!" she says, defiantly taking his hand. "Wanna play hardware store?"
"Sure!" he replies, already hoping Ed's still sick tomorrow.
8. Hic Incipit Vita Nova
Winry graduates from eighth grade in a sleeveless blue dress with mother-of-pearl buttons ordered from the Sawyer and Hart catalog. She accepts her diploma demurely, mincing across the stage to polite applause, and waits until the ceremony is over to whoop and toss her hat in the air and hug everyone within reach.
The next morning, flush with ambition, she accompanies her grandmother to the notary to seal her indentures. The dress hangs for days on the chair where she threw it after Nelly's graduation party, but an apprentice automail engineer has more important things to worry about than clothes.
7. Down By the Station
None of them has cens to waste, but they found the coin together under the station bench, so it's only fair to use it for something they can all enjoy. Winry and Al keep watch while Ed jumps off the platform and lays the cen on the near rail, then scrambles back up.
Ten minutes later the express rumbles through, car after car of coal headed west toward Central. They shield their faces from the cinder-laden wind of its passage. Afterward Ed retrieves the squashed coin and they laugh at Liberty's face, her sober smile distorted into a grimace.
6. Tears
The first time Ed made Winry cry, they were playing hide-and-seek. He and Al, grinning underneath a wild rose bush, watched her searching everywhere else and didn't come out when she called the game over. She walked past them twice more, yelling their names, and they still didn't come out.
Then she started crying and they couldn't.
After she ran home, they followed, slowly. "I didn't know where you were!" she gulped when everyone stopped scolding to let the brothers apologize.
Though Ed hasn't learned how not to make Winry cry, he knows better than to hide when she does.
5. Almost Like Mom's
for my fellow Charter Orphans, in memory of that first apple pie
Winry learned to cook after her parents' death. Pinako makes delicious soups ("You can't kill soup, child") but not much else. She has no taste for sweets, either ("Sugar rots your teeth and brain"). If Winry wants gingerbread or oatmeal cookies, she has to bake them herself.
Her mother's recipe box was a masterclass in domestic chemistry; with Trisha Elric's help Winry muddled through failure ("These taste like dog biscuits!" "How would you know?" "Uh ... ") to competence ("S'okay; can I have seconds?"), pursuing excellence. As precious as Granny's That'll do is Ed's admission, This is almost as good as Mom's.
4. Gloria Totius Mundi
for Kristin, again
At first, they ignored what they couldn't read: their father's Amestrian books held treasure enough. But his notes defeated them, so now Ed attacks classical texts with dictionary and grammar, claiming knowledge as plunder.
When he abandons the field, tired or frustrated or hungry, Al filches the grammars for study, intrigued by the passages from Homer and Caesar bivouacked among the rules and exercises. Someday, when all obscurities are fled and his mother can tuck him in again, he'll translate the whole Odyssey by flashlight under the covers, though she nightly discover and scold him for such a transparent stratagem.
3. The Fly
for Andrew, pop-culture maven and all-around helpful guy
After the stone ended the fly-man's torment, the children walked home, pensive and shivering in the August sunshine. "I wonder how it worked," Winry said. "That machine."
"Alchemy?" Al suggested doubtfully.
"You can't do alchemy on humans," Ed objected.
"You shouldn't," Al corrected him. "But engines don't do things like that -- alchemy does."
Ed dragged his feet, chin down. "And he wasn't trying to make a chimera -- maybe you could just disintegrate something and send it somewhere ... "
Winry stared at him. "What're you talking about? I meant the projector, dummy."
She broke into a run, leaving them to catch up.
2. The Sneeze
for Lucy and Noël, who might just get it
The tickle in his nose is driving him crazy. Al suggested looking at the sky, but left when nothing happened, bored by his brother's complaints. Stretched out under the maple, Ed wriggles impatiently and squints again at the sun through the leaves.
Winry skips by, then backtracks and leans over him. "What'cha doing?"
"I'm -- " he says, and the sneeze explodes right into her face.
"Eww!" She recoils, arms flailing; he rolls over and prudently turtles. "Edward Elric, that's GROSS!"
Scrubbing at her mouth, she runs off. He scrambles up and follows, sniffling thoughtfully, wondering if he can do it again.
1. Ghosts
for Dave, requiescat in pace
"Granny?"
The whisper isn't even as loud as the tentative tap it follows, but Al's voice yanks Pinako right out of bed and over to the door in her nightdress. "What is it, child?"
He's nothing but eyes since the funeral, though she's tried to keep him fed and occupied. "I thought I saw a ghost."
She puts both hands firmly on his shoulders. "There's no such thing as ghosts."
Al bursts into tears. Ten seconds later, Ed erupts into the hall, pulling him away. "I told you not to ask her!" he scolds.
Dammit. Rebuked, Pinako bites her tongue.
Author's Notes: It occurs to me that drabble #3 ("The Fly") makes more sense if you know the basic plot of The Fly: a scientist, testing his newly-invented teleportation device, accidentally commingles his body with that of a fly. Bad Things ensue. (Ed and Al mention this film in passing in manga chapter 21.)
The title of drabble #4 ("Gloria Totius Mundi") is taken from a line in the Tabula Smaragdina, that odd little text which occupied so many of this universe's alchemists, including Sir Isaac Newton. The title of drabble #8 ("Hic Incipit Vita Nova") is one of Dante Alighieri's more famous utterances: "Here begins the new life." Just in case anyone doesn't know this already, Scheherazade (drabble #12) is the heroine of the frame story of The Book of a Thousand and One Nights whose nightly cliff-hangers preserved her life. Drabble #29 takes its title from a line in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (from the balcony scene, of course): "At lovers' perjuries, / They say, Jove laughs ..."
Regarding the coin in drabble #7 ("Down By the Station"), I couldn't find a visual reference for a cen in either the manga or the anime, so I borrowed the early twentieth-century American use of Liberty on coinage in order to build a bit of a zinger into the final line. If anyone can point me to a picture of a cen, I'll be pleased to look. UPDATE:karleen_tea has done so in the comments below. Guess they've changed the design a bit since Ed was a tot. :-)
The engraving inside Urey Rockbell's pocket-watch in drabble #15 ("Legacies") is the Latin motto of this world's Phi Delta Epsilon medical fraternity and means, "Deeds, not words."
The ballad Winry puzzles over in drabble #20 ("What Now This Night I See") is, of course, Tam Lin; the title is a line from one of its many versions. In drabble #21, Ed's opinion of the educational value of poetry, patriotic or otherwise, is not necessarily that of the author.
In drabble #23 ("Vectors"), ginger water is a folk remedy against nausea. This drabble can also be read as a companion piece to #9, "First Love".
[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title was directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu. All rights reserved.]
Fandom: FMA (anime or manga version)
Character(s): primarily Ed, Al and Winry
Pairing(s): None. (Okay, a little childhood crushliness now and then, but that's it.)
Rating: G
Word Count: 3300 so far.
Warnings: None.
A/N: I give up. These unlinked drabbles, all set in Ed, Al and Winry's childhood, just keep springing fully-fledged from my subconscious, so I figured I'd better develop a place in which to collect them, rather than keep posting them as individual entries. At the end of the set are the usual author's notes to illuminate obscure references. Crossposted from
nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers, and fma_fiction, among others).Dedication(s): See individual drabbles below.
33. Learner's Permit
artemisrae -- happy belated birthday!As soon as Winry can reach the pedals and still see over the dash, her grandmother teaches her to drive. The black jalopy her father left behind bucks around the yard, recording Winry's slow mastery of double-declutching in uprooted turf. At length Pinako clears her to take the road, but only in emergencies. "You can keep practicing out back," she says, locking up the garage. "No passengers. And don't let those Elric boys talk you into giving them a turn, either."
Winry sighs. "Yes, Granny."
The next day she refunds Ed the cens he paid for his first lesson.
32. Calenture
Al hates taking care of the lawn. The mower's weight increases turn by turn and sunlight broils his straining muscles. No-see-'ems rise in dusty clouds of pollen to harass him, while perspiration collects in the crook of every joint. He imagines his mother recoiling in horror from the scarlet, seething, boy-shaped welt that was once her son.
But instead she greets him with a smile and a pitcher of lemonade. He holds a cool, sweaty glassful against his cheek, listening to the ice pop as it melts -- and to her praise, sweeter than cut grass drying where it lies.
31. The Secret of Eternal Life
Ever since the Elric brothers took up alchemy, they've been insufferable. They expect Winry to listen attentively while they drone on about it, but they tune her out whenever she mentions automail. Outnumbered, she pouts until Ed begins lecturing about the Elixir Vitae, the dram of immortality. "Oh, I know all about that," she interrupts. "Granny drinks it every morning."
Ed's mouth falls open, Al's eyes bug out, and they both demand, "How does she make it?"
"We-e-e-ll," Winry drawls, "first she grinds the beans -- "
A worm down her back is no equivalent exchange. Not even close.
30. A Circle Grazing the Confines of Space
Ed is bo-o-o-o-ored: it's raining; his mom's busy cleaning; the radio's broadcasting stupid soap operas; and Al's forgotten how to play hide'n'seek. There he is, lying in plain view on the carpet, reading. "You're it," Ed says, prodding him in the ribs. "C'mon, start counting."
"In a minute," Al answers, turning the page.
Ed stares down at a familiar illustration; didn't he once have something like it tacked above his desk? "Where'd you get that?" he asks.
Al points; Ed grabs his own alchemy book. Its leaves hold nothing of his father -- only sufficient enchantment to enthrall his restless mind.
29. Jove's Laughter
Ed can't understand it. When he races Winry, he's never the rotten egg. When Al's his opponent, they tie, mostly, and argue about who smells worse. But in a three-way contest, Winry beats Al every time. "Why d'you keep losing to her?" Ed finally asks.
"Well," Al hedges, "Winry doesn't like being called stinky -- "
"She knows she isn't really!" Ed interrupts, flushing as his brother smirks. "You cheater! I'm gonna tell her you cheat!"
Al ruffles up. "You do and I'll pound you!"
Winry thoroughly enjoys her subsequent brief winning streak, while the brothers bask, Janus-faced, in her condescension.
28. Whispers Down the Lane
Al overhears the whisper at the Rockbells' funeral: They went to Ishbal and got themselves killed.
It follows Winry to school like a mosquito. (They went to help ...) Boys point; girls titter. (... in Ishbal ...) Everybody stares. And whispers.
(... got themselves killed.)
Winry says she's proud of her parents -- says she's done crying. (They were helping the Ishbalans ...) Maybe she doesn't hear the whisper. (... got what was coming to them ...) Al hopes so. His hands stiffen, hating it, but you can't swat people like mosquitoes.
(... do-gooders ... turncoats ...)
Even if you want to.
Even if they deserve it.
(... got themselves killed.)
27. The Art of Language
Overnight, the adults claim, the mercury fell with an audible thud, but Ed tells Al it was just a dead tree blowing over in the windbreak. Danny Cutter says it's cold enough to freeze the fecking nuts off a brass monkey, which seems equally implausible, but when Ed asks his mother about it, he learns instead that you can't blame other people for what you choose to say.
He further discovers that soap tastes terrible, but doesn't permanently wash impolite language out of your mouth. Also, when Danny licks the school flagpole, that poetic justice exists -- and it's fecking sweet.
26. The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
Riesenbuhl breeds no elephants, and riding slow, steady plow-horses bareback is no challenge, and Den growls when Winry tries to tie old curtains around her middle for a tutu, so the Elric brothers toss the backyard swing over its branch until the seat hangs higher than their heads. Ed wins the first turn because it was his idea; the others boost him up.
There he discovers how much more swiftly the bob's angular momentum changes when the axis of a pendulum is shortened. But while Al laughs and Winry cheers, he'll never admit how little that knowledge delights him.
25. Ever the Latter End of Joy
One tree in the Elrics' backyard is unique. Their father found it, or perhaps transmuted it, and planted it for their mother. It flowers, but never fruits. All its petals seem to fall at once in late April, whirling down to skim across the porch and stipple the new grass. Ed remembers shaking the lower branches to add to the fragrant storm, while Al squirmed and laughed in their mother's arms. Snow, Mama, snow!
That tree burns with the house, of course -- Ed sees to it. Al says nothing, but furtively catches a flying cluster of ashes on his palm.
24. Obsessions
Winry trails Ed and Al into the pharmacy and buys a bag of peppermints while they debate whether to spend their pooled allowances on boric acid or saltpeter. Ed's capable of all-day arguments with himself, so after five minutes Winry abandons the Elrics for the Morton Bros. (Mechanics) across the street. There, mints-all-around purchases a ringside seat for the diagnosis of an ailing tractor -- not as interesting as helping Granny, but a lot more fun than kicking her heels at the druggist's.
Walking home, she ignores the sighs and grumbles about how long she made them wait.
23. Endings
Winry's mother read her a story every night before bed. Their favorite was the one about the peasant girl who knows what the king will say before he says it, though Winry also enjoyed tales of disguised princesses hiding among the geese or beneath a cloak of a thousand furs.
Now story-time is over, but Winry dreams of her parents lying in a glass coffin and knows she cannot kiss them awake unless she takes their place. The cold touch on her lips wakes her instead; she slaps Den's muzzle away and never apologizes.
The fairy-books gather dust.
22. Vectors
evil_little_dog and cornerofmadness, with accompanying get-well wishesEd hates being sick even when it excuses him from school. His stomach rejects everything but toast and tea and his mind rattles around like a pebble in a tin can. After another exhausting day in bed, he labors over the makeup assignments his brother brought home, temper soured to crabapple bitterness by Winry's shrieks as she and Den chase Al around the yard. Why's it always me? Why couldn't it've been him?
That night he totters barefoot down the hall, each shivering step an atonement, to tell their mother that Al needs a basin and some ginger water, too.
21. Autodidact
At Riesenbuhl's school exercises, the scrubbed and shining junior grades always recite patriotic verses to the proud parents assembled in the classroom. Or almost always: one year, Ed reels off Newton's Three Laws of Motion instead of the inspiring couplet he's supposed to have memorized. Then the already nervous girl beside him (not Winry, who's reaching for some chalk to throw) doesn't know whether to parrot his lines or her own and, before anyone can intervene, bursts into tears ...
Ed apologizes, eventually. But the teacher neither forgets nor forgives his indignant counter-accusation: "You said this was supposed to be educational!"
20. What Now This Night I See
Pinako Rockbell believes you're old enough to hear the answers once you're old enough to ask the questions. So when her granddaughter wonders what the girl in the ballad was doing among the leaves so green, Pinako tells her.
Winry walks wide around hedges for a few weeks afterward; then the boys come home and she has other things to think about: the blood on the floor, redder than any rose; the armor clanging louder than silver bells; and Ed and Al holding fast to each other through that long night, and all the nights thereafter, in their charmed circle.
19. The Facts of Life
The boy remembers the day his innocence first began to dissipate, sublimating like dry ice. Some facts country folk learn early, so nobody warned him away from the barn or shielded him from anything but the cows' unpredictable hooves. Once cantankerous Daisy was safely stalled, Mr. Andersen squatted on a stool beside fat Bess, his head bent against her flank, her jaw working to the shish-shish of milk into tin. The boy's eyes tracked the liquid from pail to source, then sprang wide. He's pulling on its -- things!
"Want to try?" Mr. Andersen offered.
Nauseated, newly resolute, Edward Elric fled.
18. If Wishes Were Horses ...
Ed knows what he wants for his birthday: a red wagon. He tells his mother so, all the way to Riesenbuhl and home again, puffing its carrying capacity, so much greater than the marketing basket's. He pauses only to study the ridge where the Cutter boys court disaster with sleds; Trisha's wry smile passes unheeded.
Later, braced for her goodnight kiss, he asks, "D'you -- d'you think Dad'll be home for my birthday?"
Her lips graze his ear instead of his cheek; she murmurs something, Wait and see or We'll see, but he's already muffled his careless mouth in the pillows.
17. Paradise Lost
When Al's heels slip, he obliges gravity and crashes down against the hillside, grinning even as he rubs his head. The Wrights' sheep cropped this pasture short and moved on: among the spreading patches of clover a veteran crackle protests the renewed invasion, pale blades scratching Al's calves and neck. But the narrow petals gathered gossip-close breathe sweetly around his head and the hot, clear sky shines bluer than gaslight, than denim in the washtub, than Winry's eyes suddenly staring upside-down into his.
"Where've you been -- "
" -- Al?" Ed yells from the platform. "C'mon -- we're gone!"
"I know," he answers.
16. Treetop Travelers
Ed and Al spend their last truly happy summer up trees.
They summit them tied together with Winry's jump-rope, whispering to avoid starting an avalanche.
They sail them through pirate-ridden seas and howling equinoctical gales, prefacing every remark with "Ahoy!" or "Avast!" and calling each other "you lubber" until their mother makes them stop.
They try to ride them through the Eastern Desert to fabled Xing, but must abandon their faithful, desiccated, dying mounts to crawl toward what might be an oasis or merely a tantalizing mirage.
They could just climb them, but where's the fun in that?
15. Legacies
Winry has her mother's pearls, a string of Creatan "fishes' tears" with a tricky clasp, sleeping in a velvet-lined silver box until the day she turns sixteen.
And she has her father's gold-plated pocket watch, its case engraved with a message from his fraternity brothers: Facta non verba. 1897.
And she has their textbooks -- anatomy, physiology, surgery, obstetrics -- annotated in her mother's round Spencerian hand and her father's jittery medical scrawl. After the memorial service, she reads them over and over, listening to voices untouched by sorrow or time, discovering that knowledge is power, but learning is love.
14. Outnumbered
Now and then the Elric brothers close ranks against Winry: go away, we don't want you, we're busy! She wouldn't mind so much if they'd warn her ahead of time or at least explain why. You're a GIRL! doesn't count. As her grandmother says, that's a fact, not an excuse.
Sometimes Al apologizes later, but neither boy ever tells her what they were up to. Eventually she pretends not to care, sheering off at the first sign of dismissal. She has her own projects, after all. Someday she'll show them what she learned while they were so busy without her.
13. However Improbable
Al can't quite believe it's this simple. Simple? Ed scoffs, reminding him of the weeks of research, the partial experiments, the reticulose equations that define their transmutation circle. Besides, people, even scientists, overlook the obvious all the time. Gravity existed for millennia before Newton published his Principia, didn't it?
Al has no counterargument, only wordless uneasiness. Ed thumps his brother in the shoulder as he always does, whether they're preparing to sled down Cutter's Cliff or eat fried worms on a bet. We can do this. Trust me.
As always, Al returns the thump with interest. Pass me the chalk.
12. Scheherazade
"Song, mama?" asks Al as Trisha lays him down.
"No, more story!" Ed, theoretically tucked in, has kicked his blankets into a tangle for her to straighten: anything to delay the moment his traitor body succumbs to sleep. No lullabies for him, but he hasn't realized the endless picaresque she spins might serve the same purpose.
" -- when he cut off the wolf's head, a bird flew out -- "
The bird sings for Al, telling the prince where to find the water of life. Ed grumbles, eyelids drooping, and the story runs on till he snores open-mouthed, to be continued another night.
11. Want Shall Be Your Master
The best things in life are free. Who needs electric trains or windup cars when you've got rocks to throw in the creek or frogs to hide in each other's desks on a dare? The boys can't understand why Winry, with the run of her grandmother's workbench, sighs over Lily's fancy, 'spensive china doll. Watching her suck up to Lily at recess makes Ed gag; watching Lily turn away makes Al frown. As Winry's face falls, the brothers' eyes meet, thinking of the same page in Elementary Alchemy and the school sandbox.
But not then, not yet, of a price.
10. Charmed Life
Like all children, they believe a really good game involves risk. But though Ed ringleads them through a hundred death-defying stunts each month, he collects nothing worse than scrapes and bruises falling out of trees or into bushes.
It's Winry, braking to avoid a cat crossing the road, who somersaults over her handlebars and spends a day in bed with a concussion.
It's Al, jumping from the Andersens' hayloft, who lands sideways on his ankle and has to be driven home in the dog-cart.
"You lead a charmed life, Edward," his mother sighs.
Ed grins. He knows it's true.
9. First Love
Al falls in love with Winry the day she rescues him.
Ed's home in bed sick, exposing his brother to ambush by the schoolyard gang they've defeated once too often. Steeling himself for martyrdom, Al hovers in the cloakroom until Winry unexpectedly grabs his arm and drags him outside past his would-be assassins. They won't stoop to fighting girls, so they're reduced to jeers ("Elric's got a GIRLfriend!") which bounce off Al like cotton balls. Winry doesn't even blush. "Those jerks!" she says, defiantly taking his hand. "Wanna play hardware store?"
"Sure!" he replies, already hoping Ed's still sick tomorrow.
8. Hic Incipit Vita Nova
Winry graduates from eighth grade in a sleeveless blue dress with mother-of-pearl buttons ordered from the Sawyer and Hart catalog. She accepts her diploma demurely, mincing across the stage to polite applause, and waits until the ceremony is over to whoop and toss her hat in the air and hug everyone within reach.
The next morning, flush with ambition, she accompanies her grandmother to the notary to seal her indentures. The dress hangs for days on the chair where she threw it after Nelly's graduation party, but an apprentice automail engineer has more important things to worry about than clothes.
7. Down By the Station
None of them has cens to waste, but they found the coin together under the station bench, so it's only fair to use it for something they can all enjoy. Winry and Al keep watch while Ed jumps off the platform and lays the cen on the near rail, then scrambles back up.
Ten minutes later the express rumbles through, car after car of coal headed west toward Central. They shield their faces from the cinder-laden wind of its passage. Afterward Ed retrieves the squashed coin and they laugh at Liberty's face, her sober smile distorted into a grimace.
6. Tears
The first time Ed made Winry cry, they were playing hide-and-seek. He and Al, grinning underneath a wild rose bush, watched her searching everywhere else and didn't come out when she called the game over. She walked past them twice more, yelling their names, and they still didn't come out.
Then she started crying and they couldn't.
After she ran home, they followed, slowly. "I didn't know where you were!" she gulped when everyone stopped scolding to let the brothers apologize.
Though Ed hasn't learned how not to make Winry cry, he knows better than to hide when she does.
5. Almost Like Mom's
Winry learned to cook after her parents' death. Pinako makes delicious soups ("You can't kill soup, child") but not much else. She has no taste for sweets, either ("Sugar rots your teeth and brain"). If Winry wants gingerbread or oatmeal cookies, she has to bake them herself.
Her mother's recipe box was a masterclass in domestic chemistry; with Trisha Elric's help Winry muddled through failure ("These taste like dog biscuits!" "How would you know?" "Uh ... ") to competence ("S'okay; can I have seconds?"), pursuing excellence. As precious as Granny's That'll do is Ed's admission, This is almost as good as Mom's.
4. Gloria Totius Mundi
At first, they ignored what they couldn't read: their father's Amestrian books held treasure enough. But his notes defeated them, so now Ed attacks classical texts with dictionary and grammar, claiming knowledge as plunder.
When he abandons the field, tired or frustrated or hungry, Al filches the grammars for study, intrigued by the passages from Homer and Caesar bivouacked among the rules and exercises. Someday, when all obscurities are fled and his mother can tuck him in again, he'll translate the whole Odyssey by flashlight under the covers, though she nightly discover and scold him for such a transparent stratagem.
3. The Fly
After the stone ended the fly-man's torment, the children walked home, pensive and shivering in the August sunshine. "I wonder how it worked," Winry said. "That machine."
"Alchemy?" Al suggested doubtfully.
"You can't do alchemy on humans," Ed objected.
"You shouldn't," Al corrected him. "But engines don't do things like that -- alchemy does."
Ed dragged his feet, chin down. "And he wasn't trying to make a chimera -- maybe you could just disintegrate something and send it somewhere ... "
Winry stared at him. "What're you talking about? I meant the projector, dummy."
She broke into a run, leaving them to catch up.
2. The Sneeze
The tickle in his nose is driving him crazy. Al suggested looking at the sky, but left when nothing happened, bored by his brother's complaints. Stretched out under the maple, Ed wriggles impatiently and squints again at the sun through the leaves.
Winry skips by, then backtracks and leans over him. "What'cha doing?"
"I'm -- " he says, and the sneeze explodes right into her face.
"Eww!" She recoils, arms flailing; he rolls over and prudently turtles. "Edward Elric, that's GROSS!"
Scrubbing at her mouth, she runs off. He scrambles up and follows, sniffling thoughtfully, wondering if he can do it again.
1. Ghosts
"Granny?"
The whisper isn't even as loud as the tentative tap it follows, but Al's voice yanks Pinako right out of bed and over to the door in her nightdress. "What is it, child?"
He's nothing but eyes since the funeral, though she's tried to keep him fed and occupied. "I thought I saw a ghost."
She puts both hands firmly on his shoulders. "There's no such thing as ghosts."
Al bursts into tears. Ten seconds later, Ed erupts into the hall, pulling him away. "I told you not to ask her!" he scolds.
Dammit. Rebuked, Pinako bites her tongue.
Author's Notes: It occurs to me that drabble #3 ("The Fly") makes more sense if you know the basic plot of The Fly: a scientist, testing his newly-invented teleportation device, accidentally commingles his body with that of a fly. Bad Things ensue. (Ed and Al mention this film in passing in manga chapter 21.)
The title of drabble #4 ("Gloria Totius Mundi") is taken from a line in the Tabula Smaragdina, that odd little text which occupied so many of this universe's alchemists, including Sir Isaac Newton. The title of drabble #8 ("Hic Incipit Vita Nova") is one of Dante Alighieri's more famous utterances: "Here begins the new life." Just in case anyone doesn't know this already, Scheherazade (drabble #12) is the heroine of the frame story of The Book of a Thousand and One Nights whose nightly cliff-hangers preserved her life. Drabble #29 takes its title from a line in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (from the balcony scene, of course): "At lovers' perjuries, / They say, Jove laughs ..."
Regarding the coin in drabble #7 ("Down By the Station"), I couldn't find a visual reference for a cen in either the manga or the anime, so I borrowed the early twentieth-century American use of Liberty on coinage in order to build a bit of a zinger into the final line. If anyone can point me to a picture of a cen, I'll be pleased to look. UPDATE:
karleen_tea has done so in the comments below. Guess they've changed the design a bit since Ed was a tot. :-)The engraving inside Urey Rockbell's pocket-watch in drabble #15 ("Legacies") is the Latin motto of this world's Phi Delta Epsilon medical fraternity and means, "Deeds, not words."
The ballad Winry puzzles over in drabble #20 ("What Now This Night I See") is, of course, Tam Lin; the title is a line from one of its many versions. In drabble #21, Ed's opinion of the educational value of poetry, patriotic or otherwise, is not necessarily that of the author.
In drabble #23 ("Vectors"), ginger water is a folk remedy against nausea. This drabble can also be read as a companion piece to #9, "First Love".
[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title was directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu. All rights reserved.]
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Date: 2007-01-27 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-27 01:42 pm (UTC)