fic found in a dark, forgotten corner of my hard drive

[emwitchwood]

In the process of trying to declutter I found old, old fic. I think there was once a time where I meant to go somewhere with these. Not sure if I'll pick them back up again or leave them as is.


Fullmetal Alchemist

(Roy/Ed-ish)
 

“Ed.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Was there something you forgot to mention?”

 

Ed twirled the pen in slender, nimble fingers, deliberately Not Looking at Roy where the man stood, wearing the expression of no expression that came from being too shocked to know what expression to settle on.

 

“Edward?” Roy prompted, a little desperately.

 

Gold hair slipped over slender shoulders as Edward bent down, carefully inked in the last few lines of the array. “Well, there were... a few minor, unexpected side effects.”

 

“Minor side effects, hm?”

 

Demonstrating that the ‘side effects’ had in no way effected dexterity or resident attitude problem, Edward threw the pen unerringly at Roy’s forehead, shouted, “Who’s so flat-chested you’d never even know they’d been turned into a girl?!?!?!?”

 

Roy examined the far from flat additions to Edward’s chest, and couldn’t think of how to answer that.

Fullmetal Alchemist
(Ed/other!Winry)

Irina was not Winry. Winry never stared at his false arm with such pity. Winry never squealed and leaped away when he touched muddy hands to her face. Winry never looked so soft or smelled like perfume and books. She never wore her hair in elaborate curls and twirled around, laughing, with her skirts flaring out around her, a vision in blue lace and sunlight. Winry had never held him so uncertainly, kissed him so nervously. Winry never cried herself to sleep in his arms because her baby sister was dead and it just wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t Winry who had looked bashful and unsure as she said, “He asked me to marry him, Edward.” and waited for him to reject her. Winry wasn’t the girl he danced with at the wedding. It wasn’t Winry’s son he’d held so carefully, in awe of the tiny bundle in his arms that had his best friend’s eyes and a stranger’s smile. Irina wasn’t Winry at all. He knew that, because Winry was alive but Irina was dead.

Fullmetal Alchemist
Some Things Are Free snapshot

He stretched numbers and crunched them. Juggled and compressed them. Tried to make them do what he needed them to do and got nothing but a vicious headache for it. No matter how he rearranged them, the facts remained the same.

 

“Ed?” Esta called quietly from the doorway. “Ed, it’s late. Come to bed.”

 

He set down his pen, sighed and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. She was there almost instantly, her arms sliding around his shoulders and her cheek pressed against his. She squinted down at the papers spread before him.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Our finances.”

 

Written word she might not have been able to read well, but she could read every nuance in his voice. “And?” she asked.

 

“I… I can’t see how we’re going to make this work.”

 

They both knew how to stretch out a handful of cash. Even before he had come to this new, strange world, he had known what it was like to have to scrape up money. There had been some hard years when he was a boy and his mother had not wanted to dip too deeply into their savings- knowing, he knew now, that she wouldn’t be around to provide for her boys in the future –and had picked up laundry and done work as a seamstress to make ends meet. His mother had been resourceful and creative, and they had never felt like they were going without. Then when he had arrived in Munich, he and Alfons had always been cutting corners, eating only what they had to and doing a mad scramble to find the money for the rent each month. Esta had never had much money. Her family had been dirt poor, and then they’d been gone and she’d wandered aimless and rootless, stealing and conning until she found herself a family of thieves and cons. They knew how to cut their expenses down to the bone, were used to going without, but it had been easier when it was only themselves they really had to worry about. They had Anya now.

 

“Maybe…” Esta stopped, thought out her words carefully. “Maybe we should leave.”

 

“Munich?”

 

“Germany. Maybe we should head to Madrid. Or London. If we went to Madrid, maybe I could find work, too.”

 

“And London?”

 

“My sister lives there, now. She found work, her and Jal both. I could find work, too, and … and you could ask your father for help. You said he has connections there. He could find you good work.”

 

Just two years ago, Edward would have snarled out that he was not going to ask that bastard for help. Ever.  But he had still been so angry, then. He had been so angry and had still half believed he would get home. He hadn’t had to watch his closest friend die by inches. He hadn’t had a baby to think about, and that made such a difference. What was his pride when compared to his daughter’s wellbeing?

 

“I’ve thought about it.” Ed admitted. “He’d help me. He wouldn’t even rub it in my face that I needed his help after all.” Ed sighed. “I don’t see another way.”

 

“Don’t you want your father to meet his grandbaby?” Esta asked softly, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

 

Because she could read it in him anyways, it was easier to say, equally soft, “Yeah. I guess I do.”

Inuyasha
(Kagome/Ayumi)

She had thought that after all she had been through, all she had experienced- getting sucked into the past through a dusty well, meeting a dog eared demon, learning she was the reincarnation of a powerful priestess, and so on and so forth- that there was nothing more that could surprise her.

 

She had been wrong.

 

She blinked at the press of soft lips against hers, raised a hand with the intention of pushing the unwanted advance away but ended up simply closing her fingers around a delicate wrist.

 

“Ayumi…” she said when the girl pulled away.

 

Her friend just smiled at her, sweet and sad. “I just wanted to know what it would feel like. Just once, I wanted to know what it would feel like.”

 

Kagome nodded. She could understand that. “Okay.”