hands4healing | IC Contact

"You've reached Winry Rockbell! I'm sorry I'm not here to take your call.

...If this is Ling Yao, no, I won't marry you.

...If this is Edward Elric, what did you do to my automail now?

Please leave me a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!"

[OOC: Please tell me which game you're contacting Winry about! Thanks.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I remmeber. [Vaguely. The Flare is interfering with some of her memories.]

You're right, I don't know who would choose to bring Mr. Kimblee here. Or people who're dead in their worlds.

Or Melkor. [ But the people who died in their own worlds hits home.] I can understand choosing the dead in some ways. Even if the Porter would somehow fail to cover our absence, no one will miss the dead, at least not dead humans.

I thought I was dead when I arrived here. This was an afterlife.

[She wrinkles her nose.]

I know I was dead or nearly so when they brought me here. There are some things not even an elf can survive.

What do you believe now?

It's strange, isn't it, waking up here? Thinking that you're dead back home.

[...]

There are people from my world who are from a time after when I came here. So I know what happens...how it works out. I live. Ed and Al get their bodies back. The battle's won.

What happened, that you were dying? If you don't midn telling me.

I had expected to receive the summons to the Halls of Mandos and, perhaps, Everlasting Darkness. Instead I found myself here. It was confusing. I am grateful that languages come easily to me.

That must be a comfort, especially now.

It... The ground had been ripped open by the end of the war. Some chasms went so deep, the fires in the earth burned in the bottom...

It is. Even if something happens...

[She's not going to go down that path, though.]

Oh...a lava pit, you mean?

[What kind of technology could open a lava pit? Though Winry guesses alchemy might, if it struck the earth at the right place and time.]

Not quite. They were not pits but giant gashes in the ground. [Alchemy might not be a bad analogy. But the power involved was beyond that of any alchemist.] Almost like if you would shoot an arrow through glass.

[The analogy helps Winry picture it - webs of lava radiating out from a central point, at least.]

And you were thrown into one?

No, I was not thrown. [It is hard to admit, even to one who would not understand the full significance it has for his race.] I jumped into one.

[Winry sucks her lower lip into her mouth at that. She's not quite sure how to react to it, really.]

That had to be a difficult decision.

[She said, finally.]

Not as hard as it should have been. It seemed easier than living, easier than simply waiting for the inevitable.

[Sort of like how she's been feeling, trapped in this house.]

How do you feel now, Maedhros?

That is hard to say. I had thought Iluvatar had forsaken us but now I am not certain. If that is wrong, then perhaps...

But Morgoth... Melkor is here now and whatever else, I cannot allow him to harm this world as he did my own.

When I was dying...my soul was being sucked out of my body. It was the leader of the country ordering it to happen. Well...his leader. But we were all dying. And all I could think of was how Ed and Al had promised me they wouldn't die, and I was the one...

[She takes a deep breath.]

Tell me about Morgoth and Melkor. Melkor's the one who attacked you, right?

He was what? [That sounds like a horror even worse than Angband. Even Morgoth had been able to simply rip a soul from its body against its will, only kill the body.]

Aye, it was Melkor. We no longer use that name, though. It is sometimes hard to remember that most people here have no reason to doubt him. In my world, everyone knows his crimes, everyone has suffered from them.

It was alchemy - a country-wide transmutation circle. Somehow, however it was activated, it was designed to take the souls from people. When I was brought here, my soul had just been ripped away.

[And it's difficult to talk about, but she does.]

He sounds something like Mr. Kimblee. I mean, that he's hurt a lot of people.

[Though Mr. Kimblee had never physically hurt her. He had hurt Ed and others. Winry feels a surge of fury at the thought of Mr. Kimblee, in jail, still alive when he'd hurt Ed.]

That is... obscene. What possible excuse could there be for killing an entire nation?!

[He sighs.] Perhaps he is something like Kimblee would be if he ruled a country powerful enough to make war on all its neighbors at once.

To create a Philosopher's Stone.

[Matter-of-factly.]

Oh...that sounds like Fuhrer King Bradley...our ruler back home.

What kind of stone?

Does he make monsters, also?

A Philosopher's Stone. Ah...talk to Ed. He can explain it better than I can.

Fuhrer King Bradley is a monster.

I will.

So is Melkor now. And he breeds more.

Fuhrer Bradley...I don't think he can have...or make others. But he's one of seven...

Mr. Kimblee worked for him.

You are fortunate, then. Melkor made the dragons of my world. Before that, he made orcs and trolls. I do not know how but we believe he used men and elves to make the first orcs.

[He laughs but the sound is sad.]

I was one of seven once. Some of our people would say we were monsters. We may not have used Melkor's methods but they were not entirely wrong.