Fanfic: Telephone (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabbles: Telephone
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry
Pairing: very early, one-sided(?) Winry/Ed
Rating: G
Word Count: 300
Warnings: Implicit spoilers for chapters 56 and 64.
A/N: Three drabbles about Winry that bunnied earlier today as I was thinking about my in-progress fic "Errands of the Eye" (aka "Winry and Paninya go to the movies"), which is by-golly going to get finished someday! Consider this a kind of preview. These drabbles are only my second sidling approach to romance; concrit welcomed with the ringing of bells and the freedom of the city. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_het, fma_writers, fma_fiction, winrylovers and ed_winry).
Dedication: For tobu_ishi, master of the romantic drabble.

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Dial Tone

Automail is a noisy business. Every competent engineer learns to sift sounds of order (or incipient disorder) from cacophony. Winry knows she's competent, but lately her ears trick her: she hears the telephone bell in the overtones of drills and saws, screaming as they bite into steel, in their motors' burring whine and even in the forge's hiss and clang. One morning she woke trying to answer her alarm clock, which was just embarrassing. Garfiel worries her about tinnitus when not teasing her about absence's effects.

Sometimes she wishes they hadn't called. Mostly, she wonders whether to call him back.

≈
Voice Message

Sensation is automail's Philosopher's Stone. Engineering makes the lame leap like a stag; why shouldn't it give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf? So Winry sketches the human ear: the tympana, the ossicles, the petrous labyrinth. Do sounds, she wonders, ever get lost in there, never reaching the vestibulocochlear nerve? Is that why she still hears his words (Are you all right?) as clear and puzzling as they were that day -- and as warming?

She snorts and crumples the sketch, ignoring her own blush. I hear what you said, Edward Elric. Why can't I hear what you meant?

≈
Disconnected

Winry stares at the disassembled knee on her workbench, but sees the wall by the telephone and the calendar with its picture of snow-streaked mountains brooding over an autumn forest. That's that. They're off again. Next time they call, it'll be because Ed's leg's too short or his elbow's seized up or ...

She won't think about "or". Ed's disregard for her masterworks is enough to make a dedicated engineer weep, but at least the repair bills pay her apprenticeship fees. And he'll always need his mechanic, her mind whispers.

The next time the telephone rings, she lets Garfiel answer it.

[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I have a couple Ed/Winry icons, but this one just seemed to fit.

Awww. :-)

I loved this! It's just... oh, it's just... yes.

Well, that seems positive. Phew. :-)

I'm stretching myself in all kinds of ways writing 'fic. Dealing with the insides of people-in-love's heads was never something I felt competent to try in my original stuff. And I also didn't want to get too far ahead of the story in the manga: Winry's just had the beginnings of a revelation about her feelings and Ed's still oblivious. [thinks about that] Okay, seven-eighths oblivious and the remaining eighth horrified (viz. his talk with Riza).

... I think the part with her sketching the ear might have been my favorite.

Thank heaven for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which more or less made that drabble by giving me a) a picture of the ear with all the parts labeled; and b) the information that the twisty, bony part of the inner ear has been called, since time immemorial, the labyrinth. Suddenly I knew exactly where those song lyrics that get stuck in your head for days go to rest. :-)

Peace.