Fanfic: Telephone (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Oct. 17th, 2006 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweTitle: 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![[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_het, fma_writers, fma_fiction, winrylovers and ed_winry).
Dedication: Fortobu_ishi, master of the romantic drabble.
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.]
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.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.]
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:00 am (UTC)And as far as sidling approaches to romance go, this is omigosh-wonderful! Bunny luff.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:27 am (UTC)I love the last line in Dial Tone ...
I like using the shifting pronoun trick. Must be careful not to overdo it, however. Memo to self ...
... and the "he'll always need his mechanic" in Disconnected.
Ah, yes, I'm proud of that one. I wanted a line there that was ambiguous as all-get-out: something that could be comforting or hurtful or distancing or simply factual (or any combination of the above) depending on what quality that mental whisper has.
I think I would've liked to hear a little more in Voice Message - just expand some because it's a great idea. Just a feeling.
I decided to stick to the canonical 100-word limit for these, but I'm never sure when I might find myself rebunnied (as I did with my story about Maria Ross, which I thought had written out everything I had to say about her and then spawned five drabbles). Oddly, "Voice Message" has the loosest prose of the three because its base idea was the simplest (or so it seems to me). Although, now I look back at it, I think the central metaphor may be expressed a bit confusingly. Revisions may be in order ...
And as far as sidling approaches to romance go, this is omigosh-wonderful!
Thanks again! I'll keep sidling then, at least until I get the inspiration (and the courage!) to face the romance head on. :-)
Peace.