Chapter Text
There is plenty of white at the wedding.
White dress, white veil, white shoes, a white arch in front of a few rows of white wooden chairs set in a field dotted with the little white flowers that mark Resembool in spring.
It’s not just white, of course. The guests are dressed brightly, and the fields are lush green, and the colourful homes of town aren’t far off. Really, white might be well-represented, but the wedding is an explosion of colour.
This, though, is not the wedding. Winry’s not sure where this is. Or how she got here.
Everything is white. Or it is at first glance. When she turns, it’s to find a looming set of stone doors standing in the bright void. She’s heard something of these doors. Whispers in the dark as Ed grappled with the loss of his alchemy. Whispers about the creature at the foot of the door and its terrible choices.
Maybe she’s asleep. Maybe the stress of the last few years has finally caught up with her and she’s passed out at her own wedding. At least she’s not in the dress yet. Ed’s been joking all week that they’re both going to end up with oil on their nice clothes before the day is over, but she was hoping for it to stay clean at least long enough to get down the aisle. Mostly, at least.
It doesn’t feel like a dream. It feels realer than that. The creature is watching her, head tilted slightly to one side. Waiting. If it is a dream then talking to it shouldn’t do anyone any harm. If it’s not, well, then Winry’s got several very big problems. Either way, ignoring Truth isn’t going to do any good.
“Hello?” She tries, giving the cosmic and all-knowing entity in front of her an awkward sort of wave.
“Hello, Winry Rockbell.”
“Um, yeah. Hi. I, uh, think I must be lost. Your whole thing is supposed to be human transmutation…right? Ed said—”
“I guess, as far as the Elric brothers are concerned, yes. My ‘whole thing’ would be human transmutation. But there is more to me than that.”
“Oh. Right, sorry. So then…” Winry glances around. “What am I doing here? Did I do something wrong? Some not-alchemy thing you handle?”
Truth shakes its head. “You? No. You’ve done nothing to deserve a visit to this place. And yet here you are.”
“Okay,” Winry grits her teeth against the urge to snap. Al’s version of Truth has always sounded nicer than Ed’s, and she knows full well that one of the main differences between the two Elrics is temper. “So, what then?”
“What what? What are you doing here? You’re paying a toll. The price of crossing. Why you’re crossing, that’s harder to say. Something is out of balance in the order of things. Something was done— not wrong, exactly, but not quite right.”
“What am I supposed to do about that?” Winry throws her hands in the air, sympathizing an alarming amount with her stubborn, rude fiance. “I’m one person. You’re some sort of god or something. If it’s unbalanced can’t you just…I don’t know? Put your finger on the scale?”
“I am,” It points at her. “Something is broken, I’m sending a mechanic.”
“Sending me where?”
“Back. Back to the beginning of this mess. Back to the Elric house, you know when.”
“What? You can’t just do that! I have a life, I have a family, I won’t just leave them!”
Truth turns its head and Winry’s narrowed eyes snap to follow. There, to her right, off in the distance, is another gate. A little boy is standing at it, frozen, and for all the distance and the years Winry recognizes him instantly. Edward Elric, age eleven. He’s about to lose a leg, if her understanding of this event as her Ed described it can be relied upon.
“You won’t help them?”
Them? She has to squint to see him, but off beyond little Ed is another gate. Alphonse Elric, age ten and about to pay a much steeper price. Winry wants to run to them, wants to throw herself between the boys and any harm coming their way. Wants to beg with their manifestations of Truth to have mercy on grieving, desperate little boys who don’t understand the gravity of what they’ve done.
But Winry is not stupid enough not to have learned to look before she leaps by now. “Of course I want to help them. I do help them, I always have! I helped them through everything that happened because of that—” she jerks her thumb towards the boys “— and everything after it, and now I’ve got them both whole and in reach and content. They’re finally safe. How is going back to the beginning so they can live through that again helping? You’re supposed to be fair! How is that fair?”
“Who said I was fair?”
“Ed did!” She screams, pointing at the boy, “even after you put him through hell, he said—”
“Did he really?” Truth sounds almost contemplative. “Losing his Gate did that boy good.”
“Exactly!”
“But it doesn’t matter. It’s not quite right. Too much suffering, too much weight on only two sets of child shoulders. Balance isn’t far off, but it’s just a little too skewed.”
“It’s over now, though. Why not add more joy in now?”
“‘Why not add more joy in now’ she says,” Truth mutters, looking very much like it would roll its eyes if it had eyes to roll. “Say you’ve got sand in an automail joint. It’s been there for years, it’s stiff and locking up and not right. You can buff the metal smooth and oil the joint and try to reconnect the numbed nerves, but how much does that help if you don’t remove the sand first? How long does that buy you?”
“Maybe a year.”
“A year. Maybe two or three if you’re lucky. Then they come back and they’ve done more damage and now you have to replace the whole. Damn. Limb. Do you understand?”
Not only does she understand, she’s pretty sure she’s given that exact lecture in that exact tone to a certain former-alchemist she knows.
More than anything, even more than the dire situation Truth is describing, she’s surprised it knows enough about automail to make this point. She’d always assumed it was some sort of…god of alchemy or something, with the way her boys have talked. Probably silly, it’s not like ‘The Truth’ is a subtle title.
“So…what? My options are to abandon my life or abandon the world? Some choice that is.”
“I am sorry it’s come down to this.” She’s sure it is. That doesn’t make any of this better.
This is no choice at all. She thinks of trying to explain that to the people she loves, that she’s doomed the world they all gave so much to save. She thinks of trying to live with herself.
Winry knows her decision. She’s barely started to shift her feet towards little Ed when the gate opens.
“You’re going to need this,” Truth says. It sounds almost sad.
Then there’s no room to think, nothing but a constant onslaught of information that doesn’t make sense until it does. Until every arcane abstraction the Elrics have ever mentioned makes sense. Alchemy. More of it than anyone is meant to know. Enough that everyone Winry’s ever met who has seen beyond the gate calls it a punishment not a reward.
It’s agony. It goes on forever.
ooo
She lands hard on the floor of a still-standing Elric house, at the edge of an array that makes perfect sense, staring right into the eyes of something that is not and was never Trisha Elric.
Every one of her limbs and every one of her senses is accounted for. Winry’s paid no price for the knowledge she never asked for, except the loss of everything and everyone she’s ever known.
Someone is screaming, for a second she thinks it’s her. Then she blinks, hard, and forces herself to work through the situation. Forces herself into the mindset of a surgeon that’s always come naturally in a crisis.
The screaming was coming from Edward, now it’s quieted to whimpered muttering. Edward, who is eleven and screaming and bleeding from the stump of his leg. She needs to get him to Granny. She needs—wait? Where is Alphonse? Where is…oh.
Absolutely not.
Winry dives across the circle, avoiding the thing in the middle, fast enough to stop Ed before he can do something stupid like lose an arm. She grabs his hand before he can finish drawing the blood rune and wipes it away.
“Who are you? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The boy shrieks, trying to shake her off. “I have to save—”
Before he can finish the sentence she releases his arm and claps.
ooo
White again, expected this time.
“I’ll give you this, you’re certainly efficient. That’s got to be the fastest turnaround between learning alchemy and attempting human transmutation I’ve ever seen.”
Sarcastic little shit. She’s never gotten the impression that Truth was capable of irony. “You picked a hell of a time to grow a sense of humour.”
“Of course I have a sense of humour, Winry, you have a sense of humour. That’s how this works.” And, well, she doesn’t have time to process that right now. She files it away for later.
“Give Alphonse back.”
“There’s no vessel for him. You destroyed it for some unfathomable reason. You’re supposed to be making things better, remember?” Is she being…nagged? Is Truth nagging her right now? That’s so messed up, it’s not like any of this was her idea in the first place.
“I am. I don’t want just his soul. Give him back. All of him. In one piece.”
“And have him pay no toll for human transmutation? I don’t think so.”
“Don’t act like there’s no wiggle room. You took Ed’s leg, not his whole body.”
“Alphonse has seen further beyond the gate than his brother. His toll is balanced.”
“I’ll pay his toll. Give him back.”
“And take your body?”
“If that’s what it has to be.” It’s probably a death sentence, though she doesn’t realise it until after she’s made the offer. She erased the blood seal, and neither of the boys know she exists, so they won’t redraw it. Winry’s been ready to die for them since they were kids, her dearer-than-blood boys, and she’ll do it in heartbeat if it spares Al everything he went through in that armour.
It’s certainly a step towards balancing out the suffering. Truth did say it wasn’t that far off, maybe this is all it needs from her.
“Stubborn, selfless mules, the lot of you.” Truth sighs “You three are unbelievable.” It shakes its head. “No, that won’t be enough on its own.”
“I won’t leave without him.”
“Oh, you’ll leave when I make you leave, trust me. That’s not the problem.” The being is silent for a long moment. “It’s not just any punishment, you know. It has to fit the person as well as the crime. It won't do to send him back in one piece. But I could…I suppose I could shape things a little, hold onto the symbolism of the gesture. You know?” It tilts its head again, watching her just as it had when she first wound up in this place. “You’d have to share the toll for that.”
“That’s fine, I don’t care, just give him back. Body, mind, and soul. Give him back.” It’s a stupid thing to say. Hasty and rash and nothing she’ll ever regret.
Truth nods, and the pain she feels as she’s ripped from the void is entirely physical, this time.