Fanfic: Passio (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Sketch: Passio
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry, Al
Pairing: None.
Rating: G
Word Count: ~630
Warnings: None.
A/N: Winry and Al in a hospital waiting room, initially posted un-beta'd, but now revised in accordance with helpful critique. Why don't creative fits come when I have nothing better to do? Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers, fma_fiction, winrylovers and ed_winry).
Dedication: For evil_little_dog, in the hope that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

---

She took the lead from her escorts once they told her which floor she wanted. There was no missing the correct waiting room: scarred linoleum, pale pink walls, an officiously ticking clock, and a seven-foot suit of armor taking up two-thirds of a chrome and black leather bench. She claimed the remaining third, leaning against him, and he put an arm around her shoulders. His greaves made uncomfortable dents in her trapezius muscles; she wondered fleetingly why they went through the motions when he couldn't feel her warmth and his touch hurt. "How long?"

"Six hours."

She'd spent five of those on an express from Rush Valley and the other arguing her way in here, well past visiting hours, through six layers of security, pulling strings that were bound to yank back someday. She didn't care. She'd have argued herself straight into the OR if his automail had been involved, but for once that wasn't the case. "How are you?"

"I'm all right." His voice sounded less strange than usual with her ear pressed against the side of his chest, like a message through a tin-can telephone. "Are you hungry? There's a vending machine down the hall."

"No." The call had come during dinner; Garfiel had turned her uneaten meal into a sandwich while she threw clothes into a duffel and grabbed the emergency toolkit, just in case. He'll need a tune-up. He always needs a tune-up. She swallowed. Her saliva tasted sour; grimacing, she ran her tongue across teeth still filmed with the coffee she'd drunk to fortify herself for the fight with the hospital. She'd have to find a toilet eventually -- take a pee, rinse her mouth out, clean herself up a little. When dealing with the military, it always paid to look ready for inspection. Neatness counted; passion was suspect. Which was why she'd refrained from screaming at any of the politely obstructive men and women downstairs, channeling her adrenaline into eloquence instead. It seemed to have worked. Here I am. "I'm fine."

"Thanks for coming." His hand closed carefully on her arm; she reached up automatically and patted it. "He'll be glad to see you when -- when he wakes up."

The hitch in his delivery was more painful than the ridges digging into her back. She sat up, faking a giggle. "No, he won't," she said. "I'm gonna kill him."

But once encouraged, the laughter kept bubbling in her belly, stopping her breath with uneven gasps until the drip of snot into her throat made her realize that they were sobs, not chuckles. She bent over his lap, unable to gulp back the tears, and pounded her fists against his thighs. He grabbed her fingers, squashing them in his fleshless grip -- fleshless, senseless, dead ... Damn you! Damn you, damn you, damn you, damn you ...

He pulled her toward him until his breastplate bumped her forehead. "Winry, Winry, don't," he begged. "Please, Winry, stop. Please -- "

His distress cut through hers; she brought their joined hands up to her mouth and bit down, hard, on his gauntlets. Throttled, her cries dwindled into whimpers, then petered out. She turned her face aside and wiped her nose clean on her shirt. "Sorry," she whispered. "Sorry, Al. I'm okay, really ... " Her fingers tingled, half-devoid of feeling; she squirmed, twisting her wrists, and he reluctantly let her go. Dangling her hands beside her knees, she tried to shake off the buzzing numbness without wincing. "It'll be all right," she said, looking up to hold his gaze. "It's just ... been a long day."

He said nothing, but after a moment settled his arm tentatively about her waist. Together they turned to face the door, waiting for footfalls to override the unremitting clock.

---

[Disclaimers: 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.]

Comments

[semipertinent.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'm a sucker for tension. This is a perfect little moment in time with no need for a past or future. You captured it so well! X3

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'm a sucker for tension. This is a perfect little moment in time with no need for a past or future.

Thanks much! I like tension myself; someday I hope to write another cheerfully tense piece, rather than the angsty tense ones that seem to be dominating my oeuvre. My last couple of inspirations have been TWTesque, too, which is a major departure; my usual MO is to tie my pieces as tightly to the original as I possibly can. Hmm. New skill or incipient sloppiness? :-)

Peace!

[mjules.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this. Such perfect little details, such flawless characterization. It's amazing.

ELD's gonna love it, too.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Hey, nice to see your smiling, um, icon again. :-)

ELD's gonna love it, too.

Hope so. This piece started out as a joke ("I'm gonna kill him" was supposed to be the punchline) and then made a hard left and got all angsty. So much for cute and cheerful. I guess it's just not that kind of a day. (Must be my upcoming final casting a long shadow before it ... )

[mjules.livejournal.com]

ELD and I were joking the other day about what penny-whores we are for angst. COM made a post about the holiday stories she's writing for us, told me that instead of sweet, fluffy romance like she'd originally planned, I was getting angsty kidnap fic, and told ELD that people get killed in hers.

Our response? Both of us commented back instantly with, "YES!!!"

*rolls eyes*

*laugh* So I assure you she'll like it.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

[grin] I always knew Dorothy Sayers was wrong: writers, not editors, are ghouls and cannibals.

[mjules.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Not all cannibals.

...okay maybe so. I torment the characters I love.

(Poor Al is beginning to regret having me as a patroness fangirl. I think he didn't look too closely at how I treated Roy and Maes.)

[arantzain.livejournal.com]

Excellent emotional development: realistic, and effective.

The biting the hands and silencing herself was incredibly potent. I know how that feels, I think most of us do.

Wonderful writing, thank you!

-Rantza

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Excellent emotional development: realistic, and effective.

Phew. This piece came storming up out of nowhere (although I've been working a lot with Winry lately in less fraught situations), but like so many pieces that do that, it seemed to have its voice in tune from the start. (Unlike my ed_winry Christmas Challenge piece, frex, which is not cooperating at all ... )

The biting the hands and silencing herself was incredibly potent. I know how that feels, I think most of us do.

Done it myself, though not recently. It was one of those moments where I stopped dead, knowing that I had to get Winry back under control to bring the scene to an end but not knowing how, and suddenly had a lightbulb flash on over my head: she can bite Al and he won't mind. [scribble] And then I spent the next half-hour trying to get the last line right. :-)

Peace (and it's still not quite right; must commune with ghost of Peter Roget later).

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you thank you thank you. *makes meeping sounds* It's lovely to have fic to "come home to". I will read it and make more appropriate comments later but I love Winry's thought process in this and the nonverbal exchanges. So much is said without vocalization and it's just...yay.

Don't feel bad about your holiday fic. Did you see I'd started mine now...six times? *eyeroll*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you thank you thank you. *makes meeping sounds*

Made you meep! Made you meep! Whee! :-) And you're welcome.

I love Winry's thought process in this and the nonverbal exchanges. So much is said without vocalization and it's just...yay.

The dialogue tried to expand in a couple of places and I pruned it back ruthlessly. It's late, they're tired and scared, and the last thing they want to do is talk. Plus, they know each other well enough that they don't need to.

Don't feel bad about your holiday fic. Did you see I'd started mine now...six times? *eyeroll*

You have my deep and profound sympathy. Did I mention that mine has repudiated its prompt? I hate writing to spec.

Peace.

Al! Yay!

[terracottabones.livejournal.com]

I love Al and Winry together, and saying things without saying them. It makes for such a soft, quiet sort of tragedy - very nice. I really like the disgusting you put here and there - pee and snot and wiping things on Winry's shirt, for example. It's more real that way. I got a sense of displacement, too - it was so strange to see the two of them so close to catastrophe without any context or knowing what had happened to Ed. A bit more shocking this way, I guess, and more threatening. Not sure if Winry's breakdown hit me as hard as it hit her, but I like this. Points for giving Al some action! ^_^

Re: Al! Yay!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I love Al and Winry together, and saying things without saying them. It makes for such a soft, quiet sort of tragedy - very nice.

Thanks. I'm the Apostle of Subtle; I'm happiest when I can slip things in quietly and make the reader grok meaning from subtext. It's the English major in me.

I really like the disgusting you put here and there - pee and snot and wiping things on Winry's shirt, for example. It's more real that way.

My creative process thrives on concrete detail; I have a devil of a time with descriptive prose, so any time I can imagine a strong sense datum (particularly one that's not visual), it's that much easier for me to lay down a setting. I tried to remember what it felt like the night I was stranded for several hours at Penn Station in Newark, N.J., between a plane-train connection -- first in a bar, then on the platform, with squirrelly-looking men inquiringly pseudokindly if I needed help. The sticky teeth and the intense desire to appear put-together at all costs came right out of that experience. The pee and snot are just human universals. :-)

Not sure if Winry's breakdown hit me as hard as it hit her, but I like this. Points for giving Al some action! ^_^

The transition may be a bit too subtle; this piece mutates slightly every third time I call it up. I like working with Al -- this is the third piece I've had him play a substantial role in (the other two are here (http://nebroadwe.livejournal.com/6197.html) and here (http://nebroadwe.livejournal.com/7612.html). One of these days I'm going to find myself writing chapter one of a post-manga 'fic in which he travels to Xing to study their alchemy and gets caught up in a Dastardly Plot (TM). The idea just won't go away, no matter how much I whine about the research issues involved.

Peace!
Peace.

Re: Al! Yay!

[terracottabones.livejournal.com]

Lol! Dastardly Plot! Lookin' forward to it.

*goes off to read other fics*

[c-b-syndrome.livejournal.com]

ACK! Now I'm all verklempt (probably spelled that wrong, but you know what I mean).

You are an evil, evil woman for this! I'm taking a break from editing, and I find THIS! It's just a good thing I'm not editing a chapter that's not exceptionally angsty, because I don't think I could get through it, now.

Honestly, your writing always hits me in the most emotional ways... this is obviously no exception. I've known that feeling of not-knowing-and-fearing-the-worst. You captured it beautifully, and quite viscerally.

(stop looking at me like that, it's a comment, I can get away with using all those adverbs) ^^;;

And I wish you the best of luck for your finals! Although I have faith that you'll do great!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

ACK! Now I'm all verklempt (probably spelled that wrong, but you know what I mean).

No, I think you spelled it correctly. [checks] Yep. Give yourself a cookie. :-)

You are an evil, evil woman for this!

[buffs nails in patented Evil Woman fashion]

Thanks. This was easy to write (although it's proving difficult to revise -- several things are not quite right with the back end and I just haven't had time yet to sit down with pen, paper, imagination and thesaurus to figure out how to fix them). It spilled out onto the page just like Facilis Decensus did. Maybe I should switch over to intelligent, moderately immature female narrators for good and all. (Wouldn't be much of a stretch ... )

And I wish you the best of luck for your finals! Although I have faith that you'll do great!

Wish I did. No, no, I'm pretty sure I passed yesterday's, but it reminded me exactly what I hated most about being an undergraduate: taking in-class finals. By hand. Oog. The nice thing about being an English major is that eventually everything turns into a final paper, which you plan out in the comfort of your own home and type.

Peace.

[orion117.livejournal.com]

This was very vivid. I looked back after I finished reading, and was surprised at how short it was. I think it was because you captured the sense of how interminable a few hours spent hospital waiting room can be, especially when the news is probably not going to be good. Also, you packed a lot of emotion into a few short paragraphs. An excellent vignette.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

This was very vivid. I looked back after I finished reading, and was surprised at how short it was.

Now there's a compliment. Thanks! Usually my pieces (drabbles excepted) expand from draft to draft, as things sketched out grow into their proper weight; this one seems content to remain at bantam level. The revisions have gone to word choice and getting the last confusing remnants of a prior conception of Winry's mental state as much more sense-deadened out of the narrative. I knew I should have brought my thesaurus to work; the online ones just don't cut it.

[Y]ou packed a lot of emotion into a few short paragraphs.

I'm revising very, very nervously on that account -- I don't want to dampen the drama or drive it through the roof, but some of the language wasn't visceral enough and a couple of transitions read awkwardly to me. If you come back and notice any amendments that cut the impact of the piece for you, do let me know.

Peace!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was telling my offline beta last night that it's a good thing this fandom enjoys angst as much as it does romance, because I'm pretty good at the former but can't manage the latter yet. :-) This could be romantic EdWin if you look at it one way or it could be familial feeling if you look at it another. I'm trying to psych myself up for some actual fluffy writing at some point, but so far nothing's bunnied properly.

Peace.

[lyricnonsense.livejournal.com]

I really like this piece. Like many people have already said, this piece manages to say so much with so little spoken. There's such a sense of fatigue and tension running through it, and it's so... true to the characters.

But I think what I like most is how timeless the piece is, how it exudes that sense of "we've been here a thousand times before, but it never gets easier." It could (and probably does) happen every time Ed ends up injured, but it never gets any easier for either of them.

I do love me some angst.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I really like this piece. Like many people have already said, this piece manages to say so much with so little spoken. There's such a sense of fatigue and tension running through it, and it's so... true to the characters.

The aim of good pastiche -- glad you find I managed it. I thought frequently as I was writing this about Arakawa's comment on Winry in one of the art books, that she laughs a lot and cries a lot. I wanted to represent that volatility alongside her utter dependability: nothing was going to stop her from getting up to that waiting room, but once she got there, she couldn't just ... stop. She'd wait patiently with Al for news, but she wouldn't be able to keep her feelings completely bottled up. Hence her brief moment of exhausted near-hysteria.

But I think what I like most is how timeless the piece is, how it exudes that sense of "we've been here a thousand times before, but it never gets easier." It could (and probably does) happen every time Ed ends up injured, but it never gets any easier for either of them.

I mentioned up-comment that this is one of the few pieces I've written that showcases some character constants unfixed in the timeline rather than an incident to be slotted into the interstices of someone else's story (either Arakawa's or the Crackbunnies'). This is what Al and Winry do for Ed, over and over, as you say. Though I also wanted to get in the sense that this was worse than usual: Ed's been in surgery for hours with no end in sight; Winry dropped everything and came immediately, rather than waiting for morning; and Al has no other friend or colleague sitting with him. I felt that was what made this a something's-gotta-give moment for Winry -- also why Al couldn't comfort her himself, only beg her to pull herself together. He's more scared than usual, too.

Peace!

[grass-angel.livejournal.com]

It's suspensive and then it's depressing and expressive.
Things are said with single words and it somewhat amazes me with how much is in there with so little an amount of words.

Succint, but also slightly depressing. ^_^;

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Only slightly depressing? Dang, gotta go back and fix that ... :-)

Thanks. I thought this was going to be a drabble (I think I still have a draft page somewhere where I'm keeping track of the word-count), but it soon disabused me of that notion.

Peace.