The Same Coin

I Could Go

🚧 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧

Story is currently being rewritten. Chapters that have been revised will be notated with a ✅ at the beginning

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Rush Valley was the window of opportunity Winry never realized she'd desired until she was here. The streets teemed with her favorite sorts: automail connoisseurs, automail users, and those who needed automail still. Automail was the tap and die threads that linked them all, and Rush Valley harmonized around it in perfect synchronicity. She saw herself someday owning her own shop here. Taking on her own apprentices here. Retiring here. And eventually dying here.

"The modifications are finished," Winry said, bending to take the appointment log from beneath the counter. "When can we schedule connecting?"

Becker tapped a finger on the counter. "Any openings for Saturday?"

"Mx. Garfiel can see you that morning."

"Alright then, Winry, pencil it in."

She saw Becker to the door before locking it it behind him. Across the street, a shopkeeper offered her a wave as they changed their own sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

It had felt insurmountable to leave Resembool until she'd actually done it, staking out on her own the way the Elrics had done. It helped, too, that Rush Valley had welcomed her with open arms — real and prosthetic alike.

"We're locked up," Winry called, heading to the workshop at the back — but hushed when she saw Garfiel on the shop phone.

She took a broom from its hook and set about cleaning up their work already. She could hear the diminutive sounds of metal shavings and random washers and bolts as she pushed them into a pile.

"Well, why isn't anyone taking it? I'm offering premium pay, I hired you to find someone to do it," Garfiel lamented. "And now we are getting into a window where if you don't find someone soon, I'll be wanting my advance back."

She heard the weighty sigh as Garfiel dropped the phone back onto the receiver, and they looked up to see her watching them.

"It's nothing," Garfiel dismissed as she retrieved the dustpan and hand broom.

"Sounded like a lot of nothing."

"I hired a headhunter to find someone to go overseas for me, and they still haven't found anyone."

"Overseas where?"

Garfield's dark eyes averted to one side and they bit their lip. "The United States of Saherta."

Winry swept the debris into the dustpan and dumped it into the bin, before perching herself on the corner of the workbench adjacent to where they sat at their desk. She idly took the wrench from her pocket and let it swing from her fingertips.

"Never heard of it — how far away is it? Could that be why no one's taking the job?"

"Usually I hire someone from Xing; the trip is shorter traveling from there, and then they mail me what they've found."

"How much are you offering?"

Garfiel's nose rose into the air, and their arms crossed over their chest in offense. "Double what I did last year. But the person the headhunters hired last year passed away after the trip, and Xing...They're a superstitious bunch. No one wants it now."

Her wrench ceased in its pendulum sway.

"How'd they die?"

"Ah—" Garfiel covered their mouth with a hand, eyes averting to the ceiling. Winry frowned. That was Garfiel's expression when trying to lighten the blow.

"The undertaker couldn't figure pinpoint it. Their best guess was some kind of foreign Consumption. Just wasted away on the trip back; they died on the ship."

"Well, I could go," Winry offered; already her head filled with images of what it would be like to see the sea. "What did you have them doing over there anyway?"

"Their tech is different than ours — more advanced. They have air carriers and buildings as tall as mountains. Every year I send someone to go look for items at the street auctions that I can use for automail designs. And their...science is different. They don't use alchemy like here. I hardly understand it myself."

She hardly caught the tail end of that, though. Her eyes were already sparkling and begging to go. Ed and Al always told her about the places they'd gone and things they'd seen in their travels, and she could imagine herself boasting to them in return already. The next time Ed would come in to replace his arm — again — she could tell him about these air carriers.

"They don't have automail there, either," Garfiel said.

The color and joy drained from her face. What did people do instead when they lost limbs? Garfiel snicked at her expression.

"I knew you wouldn't want to go when you heard that."

"Just means I'll be the best automail builder there," she countered, her disposition on the issue making a swift recovery.

"Are you sure?" Garfiel's thin brows perked high. "Between getting to the port in Xing and taking a ship, it'd be three weeks of travel to even get there."

"If you think you can handle the workload without me, I have no objections," Winry said. "I can see my grandmother when I pass through to Xing."

"Go park then after you finish cleaning up. I can probably get you a coach to Xing the day after tomorrow, and have you on the next ship out. Tomorrow I'll arrange a hotel, but if you want to take personal money you'll need to have it converted in Xing — they use Jenī in Saherta, not Cen."

Winry was already nodding again though as she hopped off the workbench, sliding her wrench into her pocket. She sensed none of Garfiel's apprehension as she slipped by, instead already too deep wondering what things she would discover across the sea.