The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2013-02-16 20:05:00 |
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Current music: | Christina Perri - Jar of Hearts |
Entry tags: | ed x riza, edward elric, fma, fma: alternate anime timeline, fma: alternate post-anime timeline, fma: post-anime, het, multi-parter, novella, pg-13, post-series, yuuo, yuuo: fma |
[Edward Elric/Riza Hawkeye; PG-13] That Summer: Chapter 1
Character/Series: Edward Elric/Riza Hawkeye; Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: AU to EoS. Generally, assume that Ed never went to Germany and the military group stayed status quo.
Title: That Summer Chapter 1: A Thousand Miles From Nowhere
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 7217
Summary: Winter was fighting a losing battle in the Western provinces, where farmers had turned sod and prairie into viable farming land.
"I went to work for her that summer,
A teenage kid so far from home.
She was a lonely widow woman,
Hell-bent to make it on her own.
We were a thousand miles from nowhere,
Wheat fields as far as I could see.
Both needing something from each other,
Not knowing yet what that might be.
-Garth Brooks
Winter was fighting a losing battle in the Western provinces, where farmers had turned sod and prairie into viable farming land. Ed's train stopped at a little town called Goehner, where his assignment was. He pulled out his orders from his coat pocket and eyed them. Fix a dried up well for one 'R. Grumman'. Ed had no idea how he was going to recognize this person, but he supposed someone would step up to say something eventually.
His train had arrived, miraculously, an hour early, so he had time to kill, and a hungry stomach begging for attention, so he adjusted his grip on his suitcase, then headed into town proper, checking the time on his watch to note the time so he knew when to get back to the platform to meet this 'R. Grumman.'
He wandered along the main road of Goehner's dusty streets. Nothing was even paved here, except the occasional sidewalk and storefront. There was a bank, a post office, a general store where he supposed he could get a sandwich and a bottle of water, but he was hungry for a real meal, and he didn't feel he could impose on Miss-or-Mister Grumman for food. So he kept looking.
He passed a sleepy bookstore, and a second-hand clothing store, then finally a restaurant. He wondered about any place that called itself 'Chez Bubba', but as long as the food wasn't as bad as train food, which Ed had gotten used to over the years, he was happy.
They turned out to sell very good barbecue, with sweet potato fries that were the best Ed had tasted since Teacher's cooking. And cheap prices, too, which had worried him.
"Excuse me," he stopped his waitress as she grabbed his empty plate to take back. She stopped and looked at him. "Do you know someone with the last name Grumman around here?"
She smiled. "Oh, Miss Grumman? Yeah, she lives about a mile and a half down the road. She's supposed to be in town today, picking up an alchemist to fix her well. Poor thing, she can't get around too well. She says it's an old injury that's getting better, but she doesn't seem to be getting better. Why?"
"I'm the alchemist sent out to fix her well," Ed answered. "I didn't even get told if I was helping a man or a woman, so I'm pretty clueless here."
"Oh good, that poor woman needs help. You'll be watching for a blond woman in her late twenties when you meet her," the waitress said. "If that helps any."
"It does, thank you. And the food was good, give my compliments to the chef."
The waitress laughed. "That'll be the owner. I'll let him know. Thank you, you have a good day."
After leaving a sizable tip for the waitress, Ed grabbed his suitcase and headed out, checking his watch again. He had a little time to kill, maybe fifteen minutes, but he thought it better to just wait at the train platform and read a book, rather than risk losing track of time and being late and making this Miss Grumman wait.
Of course, Ed forgot that reading a book would make him lose track of time, more than wandering a podunk little town would. He was pulled from his book by a familiar voice saying his name. He blinked, his mind fogged over by the text, then looked around for who said his name.
"Edward?" the voice came again, a familiar one, and Ed finally spotted Lieutenant Hawkeye, out of her familiar uniform in a red cotton dress, on a tired old cart pulled by an equally tired-looking mule.
"Lieutenant? What're you doing here?" Ed put away his book.
"I live here," she said. "And it's just Riza now. What're you doing here? Don't you live in East City?"
Ed sighed. "I'm on assignment," he answered. "I'm supposed to help fix a dried-up well for someone named R. Grumman."
Riza stared, getting a frozen look on her face, then she introduced the palm of her hand to her face. "Oh, Edward, I'm so sorry. I'm R. Grumman. That's my mother's maiden name. I told Roy not to use one of the State Alchemists. I'm so sorry, Ed, you should be home with your family."
Ed blinked. "You're R. Grumman?" He decided, for the moment, anyway, to not ask about the injury, although now that he looked, he noticed a cane propped against the seat next to her. "Well, he wanted the best for you, so here I am." He grabbed his suitcase and walked over to the cart.
She slid over a bit, clearly fighting back a wince as she did. He frowned as he stowed his suitcase in the back of the cart. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she said. "Come on up. Hopefully we'll have you on the evening train home to your brother."
Ed climbed up and shrugged. "Eh, he and Winry are fine on their own. If the job takes longer, I'm not in any hurry."
She frowned as she urged the mule to turn and start taking them up the road. "Maybe, but I feel bad for taking you from your family."
Ed shook his head. "Naw, like I said, don't worry about it. They're still playing newlyweds, I doubt they even notice I'm gone." He tried his best to leech the bitterness out of his voice when he said that. He didn't begrudge his brother his happiness, nor Winry's, who'd always been like a sister to him anyway.
Riza pursed her lips together. "I'm sorry, Edward. I didn't realize things were like that at home."
"What? No, we're fine, I'm just peripheral concern right now to them. It's fine."
They both fell silent, conversation feeling too awkward to continue. Riza clearly didn't want Ed to stick around longer than absolutely necessary; maybe he could find an inn there in town he could stay at, let her have her privacy that he knew she always had jealously guarded. And even though Ed had not been joking that his brother and Winry probably barely noticed his absence, he was still eager to get home. He wasn't particular towards farmland, and it was chilly there, spring still settling in.
Not that East City wasn't still a bit chilly, but he could stay indoors to work there. Except when Russell pulled him away to help him with something.
They rode in silence until they reached her house, a nice old farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and a swing that didn't look like it'd been used in awhile, with rusted chains and chipped paint. Actually, as nice as the house looked, it also looked in a sad state of disrepair. A shutter hung loose over one upstairs window, the paint peeled in some places, and the roof looked ready to call it quits for want of repairs and reshingling.
"Nice place," he commented idly, following polite protocol.
"Thank you," Riza said, directing the mule and cart behind the house to the barn. "I got it cheap. It needs some repairs I haven't gotten to yet, but I'll get to them."
Ed glanced at the cane. Yeah, I'll just bet. "Maybe I'll help you with them while I'm here," he said. "Couldn't hurt to have a few extra hands working."
She looked at him. "No, that's okay. It's nothing I can't handle. Although I suppose a little help with the roof wouldn't be out of place. Ladders can be dangerous to climb, after all, and while I do like the people in this town, they're a bit nosy." She stopped the cart in the barn and climbed down slowly, grabbing her cane.
Ed grabbed his suitcase and hopped down. He'd offer help unhitching the mule, but she knew better how to do that than him, so he left that offer unsaid. When she limped around the back of the cart after releasing the mule, he stuck a hand in his jeans pocket. "Speaking of nosy, mind if I ask what happened? You didn't have a cane last time I saw you."
She froze, her cheeks coloring slightly. "I- ... well, I suppose there was no way to keep it secret. I broke my hip three years ago, in a skirmish along the Southern border. I was in sniper position to protect the general and the building collapsed. The doctors said I got lucky that's all that happened."
She started walking towards the house, Ed walking slowly to let her keep up. "They said I'd never be serviceable for the military again. Which I suppose is why I'm out here. I have no intention of letting this keep me down. I'm a Grumman, we don't let injuries stop us from being where we're needed."
"You sound like an Elric," Ed said with a bit of a rueful tone. "What about a hip replacement?"
She shook her head. "It wasn't just the joint area that broke, Ed. It was my entire side of my hip. They said I was lucky they could piece anything back together."
Ed stared at her. "God, are you sure about this, Riza? That's not something you can just stubborn away."
"You stubborned away two lost limbs and your brother's missing body," Riza said, opening the back door. "If you can do that, I can do this."
"Riza?" Ed stepped back out of the way of an excited Hayate greeting his owner. "There's no automail for a broken hip, and you saw what it cost us to fix Al's body, so don't even try to use that argument." If she thought she was more stubborn than an Elric, she was dead wrong.
She whirled to face him as the back door slammed shut behind him. "I didn't ask you. If I can't do it, I'll stay out here until I can. This is none of your business, Ed."
Hayate whimpered, squirming back as Ed held up his free hand defensively. "I'm speaking as a friend, and you were a friend to my family," he said. "You're going to kill yourself out here. I think that's my business."
Riza's grip on her cane visibly tightened. "You are as bad as the general. I see why he sent you out here. You can put your suitcase in the second bedroom on the right upstairs, then we can get to work on that well." Her tone was the tone he always remembered as being Lieutenant Hawkeye, hard and no-nonsense. It was dramatically different from the softer tone he'd heard when she first caught his attention that day.
He heard the dismissal. "Fine by me," he grumbled, stalking up the stairs she directed him to. She wanted to be dumb and stubborn, that was fine by him. Frustrating woman. Now he could see why Mustang never had any patience to spare on a fifteen year old boy. He spent it all on his lieutenant.
Ed's frustration had already simmered down to something no stronger than rolling his eyes by the time he found the bedroom Riza had picked out for him on the off chance he had to stay longer. It was a decent little room, with a bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. The curtains fluttered in the spring breeze. Ed went over and shut the window. Must've been opened to air out the room. Well, either way, the room was aired out, and now it was making the room chilly.
He set his suitcase on the bed and walked back downstairs. "Hey, Riza? How've you been getting water since this well dried up?"
"Hm?" She looked up at him as he hopped off the last step. "Oh, the well's not a hundred percent dry yet, it's spitting out dirty water, though, so I've been boiling water for Hayate and myself. The other animals are used to drinking out of creeks, I figured they could live with a little dirt in their water. Mister Martin said that the dirty water was the first sign that a well was drying up."
Ed nodded. "Okay. Think you can get by a few more days that way?"
"I can last a few more days, yes." She grabbed the back screen door and held it open for him. "Ed, you're doing me a favor, I can accommodate you for a few days without you paying for it."
He frowned, stepping outside, then turning to wait for her. "If you're sure."
She limped down the three steps to the ground. "I'm certain. If it ends up being a prolonged stay, we may have to find something else to do, but for a few days, it's fine."
He walked slowly beside her, although she was clearly struggling to walk faster than she was capable of. "Riza, slow down, you'll hurt yourself."
"I'm merely trying to walk at a normal pace, Ed. I'll be fine." She had that tight tone again, and Ed had already decided he hated it compared to the tone he'd heard her use on his brother whenever Ed had to go report in to Mustang.
He wished he could keep that tone from her voice, but at the same time, he wished he could smack the stupid out of her and make her take it easy on herself. As long as he was concerned for her health, she'd get that awful tone. Rock and a fucking hard place.
Oh well, he supposed. He was only going to be here a few days before shipping back home to do his work out there. The best he could do is report to Mustang and hope the older man could get through to her.
"Well, slow down anyway," he snapped. "I'm in no damn hurry."
Riza stopped in her tracks, causing him to stumble a step as he pulled himself to an abrupt stop. "Aren't you anxious to get out of here?"
He shrugged. "I told you, I got nothing exciting wait for me back home. Just time alone in the lab while Al and Winry get romantic at each other. I'm out here helping a friend, can't I stop and enjoy that?"
She flushed, then glanced away. "Yes, I suppose you can." She started walking again, this time at what had to be a more comfortable pace. After a few steps, she spoke up again. "I didn't know you considered me a friend, Ed."
He smiled. "Well, now you know. You were nice to my brother, and all of you took care of us. Hard to not consider someone like that a friend."
Her cheeks turned pink again. "Well, I. Thank you, I suppose. I only did what anyone with sense would do. It was more the general taking care of you than me, though."
Ed shrugged. "You made my brother smile. I consider that part of taking care of us. You're one of the few people who treated him like a normal kid."
"That's because he was normal," Riza said simply. "Just like any other boy in his early teens that looks odd for whatever reason. And believe me, while you escaped that, most boys in their early teens do look slightly odd."
He laughed. "I guess. I never really noticed. Anyway," he interrupted the conversation, crouching down next to the well, "is this the well?"
The well amounted to nothing more than a small pipe sticking up from the ground with a cap on it. The rest was underground. There'd be a pipe leading from the well to an indoor reservoir, probably in the basement, along with a control box for the submerged pump down in the well bottom.
"This is it," Riza confirmed. "The rest is in the house. Mister Martin came up and checked some of the internal components, but he was far from an expert."
"I'll check those, first," Ed said, rocking back on his heels. "Before I go digging down to the water table, let's make sure those are working. Where are they?"
"They're in the storm cellar," Riza said, stepping back a little as Ed got to his feet. "I can show you."
Ed shook his head. "Wait here," he said. "I can check it on my own. It's over here, right?"
Riza gave him a tired look. "Yes, which is why I was going to go with, to show you where the cellar was."
He flashed her a grin. "I can find a cellar if you point me in the right direction. I got it. Just find a seat and wait, I'll be back." He wandered off, quickly finding the door to the cellar. It lay at an incline to the side of the house, a white set of doors. He pulled on the handles, opening them into a dark basement. He looked around for a light knob, finding none. Probably a pull chain further down.
Taking the stairs carefully, Ed kept feeling along the wall for a switch as his natural sunlight overhead began to dim the farther down he got. Finally, at the bottom of the stairs, was a pull-chain light on the ceiling. He pulled the chain, flooding the basement with light. In the far corner was a giant tank, the reservoir tank, and a box on the wall, both with a pipe and cord disappearing into the wall respectively.
"Here we go," he muttered to himself, walking over and immediately zeroing in on the control box. A cursory inspection showed nothing wrong, and once he got at the guts of the device, he couldn't find anything wrong there, either. He reassembled the control box and snapped the casing back on, frowning.
There had to be something going on, and he was really not wanting to dig down the sixty feet that well probably went down to find that the water table was dry. If the water table was dry, he'd have to get his hands on a local mapping of the area's aquifers and hope there was a contained one further down, though god only knew how deep it'd be. If there wasn't more water to be found lower down, Riza would be stuck trying to sell the utterly worthless property and house and move somewhere else.
Well, he'd stick around and help with that, no matter what she said. Moving was stressful enough without having to sell a useless property on top of it.
He headed out of the cellar, only barely remembering to turn off the light on his way up the stairs. "Okay," he said to Riza as he got within hearing range. "The control box and reservoir are fine. If it's the pipe or the cord leading into them, I won't know without tearing up your yard. I can check them before we go digging down to the water table."
Riza sighed. "How long is this going to take? It's very troublesome, going without water here."
Ed shrugged. "Truthfully? I don't know."
That got a frown out of her. "I thought you could use alchemy for this? That's why Roy sent you."
"I could," Ed admitted. "But I don't know what I'm looking for. I'll use alchemy to speed up the dig, but some of it's gotta be done by hand. Probably why he sent me instead of someone else. He knows I'm up for this."
She continued to frown for about ten seconds longer, then sighed again. "All right. Take as long as you need, Ed." She hesitated. "You can fix this, right?"
Ed looked at her. "Probably. Depends on the water, honestly. If it's a problem in construction, it'll be a simple fix. If the water table's gone dry, I'll have to get a mapping of the aquifers around here and see if there's something deeper down. If there's nothing to be had, I hate to say this, but the property's useless without water."
Riza groaned. "Well, here's to hoping there's water down there, hm?"
Ed rubbed his nose. Itchy. Must be all the dust out here. "Yeah. Don't worry too much, if it comes to it, I'll buy the property and you can move somewhere else."
His statement got a lot of confused blinking from Riza. "Oh, Edward, I couldn't ask you to do that. You wouldn't be able to do anything with this place."
He grinned. "Sure I could. there's bound to be bedrock down there, and all sorts of interesting minerals to play with. Aquifers are ancient lakes and waters, they tend to be treasure troves for scientists once the water's gone and the other people vacate. Don't worry, it wouldn't be a totally wasted investment for me. But the land would be useless to you if the well's dry and there's nothing down there we can tap."
"Thank you," Riza said with an exceedingly grateful look on her face. She looked like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. "Is there anything you need to get started?"
He looked around. "A shovel?"
Her lips quirked upwards. "I suppose that should've been obvious. There's one in the barn. I'll go get it."
"No, you go in and sit down. I can get it," Ed said.
She gripped her cane tightly again. "Don't baby me, Ed."
"I'm not," he said. "I don't want you babying me out of some misplaced sense of pride. It's insulting."
She was taken aback, and she looked down at the ground. "I'm sorry, I didn't think of it that way. Very well, I'll leave you to your work. Tell me if you need anything."
He nodded. "I will, don't worry." While she went inside, he wandered off to the barn to get the shovel.