#edween2020

She dodges out the way of Ed’s elbow jab, and he grumbles. “That was one time, General Lazyass was half the reason I even got into that mess, and anyway they already laughed at me over it the last time I was in Central.”

“Did they now?” The light dancing in her eyes is about as cheerfully unholy as the mechanical bats – bats!? – flapping their wings on the rooftops around them, and Ed still has absolutely no fucking idea what festival he’s walked in on, but he’s pretty sure Rush Valley has taken it to technical extremes either way.

“Yeah. Y’know, the thing where Hawkeye doesn’t twitch a muscle and Mustang keeps talking all stern but you can tell they’re cracking up inside?”

“Yeah,” Winry agrees, serious, like he can’t tell she’s snickering silently too. But any complaint he’d been about to make is derailed by her next words. “Luckily, that means you’re just in time to be my opponent for this year’s carve-off!”

Ed feels his brain stutter: blip, blip, bloop. “Carve-what.”

How does Rush Valley manage to still be one of the strangest places in all the countries he’s travelled? Is it something in the water here? Would a valley full of alchemists be just as weird?

…never mind that last one, actually. It would’ve imploded first. 

“Pumpkins, duh,” Winry says breezily, like it was something you could take for granted in a community with scarily sharp surgical tools and few qualms about applying them. “It gets messy real quick, so the judging’s always done two by two.”

“And so you conveniently signed me up?”

“Paninya got a lifelong ban after she blasted a pumpkin with her leg cannon, see. Which reminds me – no alchemy for you either!”

Ed splutters his way out of pumpkin gargoyle imaginings. “And why not!?”

“Do you want a repeat of That Incident?”

“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific–”

“–yeah, that time when we had to spend three hours cleaning tomato guts off the kitchen cupboards because you thought you could alchemise your way out of cutting vegetables for the stew!”

“That was…” Ed wisely swings his mouth shut before he can say only because the onions made me tear up and lose focus, but from Winry’s look she knows full well anyway.

Though she at least lets it pass, jabbing his chest with a finger. “And if it’s against you, it’s either my skill or my automail, so I win both ways!”

Yep, that glee is definitely reaching unholy levels. “Putting the win in this Hallo-whatever thing, huh,” he sighs theatrically, but lets her drag him off into the crowd anyway.

There probably were worse ways to make up for being one month late, after all.

.

.

“You know he?” the girl asks, increasingly confident now, and Winry follows her pointed finger to see a figure in red – Ed standing near the wall he’d transmuted earlier to divert most of the avalanche around the town, in the middle of a surprisingly spirited discussion with several of the townspeople.

From the looks of it the talk is either about any other stopgap measures they could put in place while waiting for official help to arrive, or about fighting bears barehanded in the mountains. 

It’s hard to tell; Ed’s clearly very into the topic, judging from the enthusiasm with which he’s flinging gestures around, but then again both of those options would excite him anyway.

Nerd. Winry can’t help the fond sigh. 

He looks over then, an eyebrow-raised wave – need help? – and Winry shakes her head and smiles an okay back at him before looking back down again.

“Yes, I know him,” she tells her inquisitive visitor, who brightens visibly.

“That…” she trails off for a moment, fumbling for words, before just cutting to the chase and clapping her hands together with a whoof of thick gloves. “Is magic?”

“Magic?” Winry echoes, half-dumbfounded and half-bemused, because – yeah, she can totally see how the transmutation might’ve looked that way, to anyone who wasn’t used to Ed saving the day on the way to lunch. 

…and that thought in turn brings her up short, because alchemy hadn’t been one of the words she’d asked Ed for. Does Drachman even have a word for alchemy? Alchemists don’t seem that common here, not like in Amestris and not the way Al had described the alkahestrists in Xing, though she’s vaguely aware that Drachman does have words loaned from Amestrian (like automail, for starters). Maybe this is one too?

“It’s alchemy…?” Winry hazards, but the girl only blinks back in confusion; clearly she hasn’t had reason to learn this word in Amestrian, and if there’s a Drachman term for it, it’s not close enough to ring a bell either. 

Dammit. Maybe she really should have called Ed over.

“Um.” Winry flounders for a moment before deciding to go with it anyway. “A bit like magic?”

“Magic!” the girl cheers.

………which is when Winry remembers that the only reason they’d gotten permission to even come to Drachma was by swearing up and down that Ed is visiting purely as a civilian, not as a military-contracted once-state alchemist, and this might’ve been justifiable as a literal emergency but if rumours of some strange magic-using Amestrian start making the rounds, she’s pretty sure General Armstrong will personally make blades out of the peace-treaty-in-progress and challenge them to a sword fight on the spot. 

And Ed might totally be keen to take up that gauntlet, but Winry definitely isn’t, thank you very much.

“But keep it secret, okay?” she adds post-haste, pressing one gloved finger to her lips in what she hopes is a universal gesture. 

The girl giggles and nods, but from the way she claps her hands together again as she runs away, Winry isn’t terribly optimistic about the news not getting around.

Oh well. At least she tried.

(“And so we probably need to call Colonel Miles and ask him what would make a good apology present for General Armstrong,” Winry concludes when she’s recounting this to Ed over their belated lunch.

“Just send her a pumpkin. Fill it with flowers or somethin’,” Ed says around a forkful of food, waving a careless hand. “Festive greetings courtesy of the reigning carve-off champion.”

Winry snickers despite herself at the horrifying mental image. “Not technically, since we’re not participating this year.”

“What d’you m– oh damn, it’s the end of October already? I hadn’t even realised,” he mumbles, chewing contemplatively as he looks at the snow all around them. “What if I sent them a pumpkin made of ice? That’s gotta score some bonus points for cool.”

…not an intentional pun, Winry judges, so she lets it slide. “It’d melt even before it got halfway to Rush Valley.”

Ed’s grin gains a dangerous and foreboding edge. “Eh, I’ll figure something out.” 

That be right back, gotta go the library and break the laws of the universe tone, on the other hand, is definitely intentional. “I’d better not wake up to pumpkins everywhere around that cottage we’re renting, it’ll scare the neighbours.”

“I’m offended you think I’d go for quantity over quality, Win. Really. It wounds me,” he laments, never mind that it doesn’t work at all with that maniacal look still on his face, and Winry resigns herself to the inevitable with a sigh.