“Is it really that hard? Let me try too,” chimed in Alphonse. Up to that point he had only been watching his brother add to the growing pile of useless scraps, but now he rose to the challenge. His hands moved like clockwork and he produced a perfect, rectangular bandage in an instant, which made Winry’s eyes go wide.
“Al, you’re amazing!” she exclaimed.
“Grr …” Edward gritted his teeth in frustration, the opposite of Winry’s enthusiastic praise. He refused to lose face as an older brother that easily, so he snatched the scissors from Alphonse’s hands.
“Winry, we’re going to knock this out of the park too!” he declared, clenching his hand into a fist. It wasn’t clear if he felt solidarity with her as another person who couldn’t make bandages or if he was motivated by sibling rivalry, but Winry shook her head and said, “It’s not that easy.”
“We’ll learn how to do it while we’re working on it! See!” Edward forced the scissors into Winry’s hand, and she reluctantly started to cut the cloth. Of course, it didn’t go well. Regardless of that, Edward told her, “Again,” and Winry struggled over and over again with cutting the cloth. When she veered off she would try to make the next one straight, and when she cut off a strip that was too thin she tried to make the next one thicker.
How many dozens of times had she gone through this? Eventually, she cut one long, thin strip out of the gigantic piece of cloth. It couldn’t be called pretty, but it was still a bandage.
“Whoa! You really did it!” Edward, who had been leaning forward to watch Winry’s hands, exclaimed in joy as though he himself had cut the strip. “See! Told ya you could do it. If you just keep trying, you’ll get somewhere eventually.”
“Are you sure I didn’t get it right by accident? I can’t count on cutting it right every time. What will I do if I make a mistake on another one?” Winry hung her head, despite the excitement of finally making a single bandage. After all, she had been making mistake after mistake until that point.
But Edward puffed out his chest confidently and said, “When things aren’t going right, I just listen to my heart!”
“Listen to your heart?” Winry asked.
“That’s how you figure out whether you actually want to do something or not. If you still want to do a thing after listening to your heart, then you’re better off just doing it rather than hemming and hawing over it! If you do that, you can learn how to do it someday! It worked just now, right?” Edward grinned, then gave her a fist bump with his tiny, warm fist.
“Ed, are you sure you just can’t be bothered to actually use your head?” Alphonse, who had been watching the whole scene transpire, gave his brother a strained smile, which made Edward gnash his teeth.
“What didja just say?!”
“Look, you’re the only one who hasn’t been able to do it, Ed,” Alphonse said, managing to quickly dodge the fist his older brother aimed at his head in response.
Then, Edward, who had stood on the chair to teach his younger brother a lesson, sat back down in a fluster and righted himself before grabbing the scissors.
“I’ll show you,” Edward said. “Just you watch, this next one is going to be it!”
Alphonse and Winry couldn’t help but laugh at his antics. When Edward realized how single-minded he was being, he ended up smiling along with them.
The Rockbells’ living room was filled with joyful laughter for a while afterward.
“i guess i’ll listen to my heart then,” Winry said with some lingering hesitancy, gently placing her fist to her chest.
“Winry? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Lettie asked with wide eyes. Winry’s sudden gesture had surprised her. Winry quickly put her hand down. She had been right in the middle of tending to Lettie’s wound, after all.
“Oh, sorry about that,” Winry apologized. She capped the canteen and leaned in to inspect Lettie’s knee. Blood was still welling up from it, but all of the dirt had been washed away.
“How does it feel? Does it sting?”
“Just a little.”
“Let’s get that disinfected as soon as we get back. For now, we’ll just put a bandage on it.”
Winry often scraped her fingers while working, so she usually carried bandages on her. She gently wiped Lettie’s wet knee with a handkerchief, then pulled out a bandage and stuck it right onto the scrape.
“You should be all set. Does it hurt?”
“Nope.”
All traces of Lettie’s tears disappeared into a smile at her wound being kindly tended to. When Winry saw that smile, she questioned her heart again. She asked what it was she actually wanted to do.
The answer was obvious.
She wanted to keep learning about the latest techniques and gathering the newest information. She didn’t want to neglect having the compassion to carefully listen to her clients either. She couldn’t choose one or the other. She wanted to become a mechanic who could do both. What brought her happiness was seeing someone perk up and smile once they were outfitted with her automail. That was what her heart told her.
That was when Winry finally understood what Dominic had been trying to say, and his words connected with Edward’s. It was important for her to have determination about what kind of engineer she wanted to become. Continuing to walk the path she had chosen, despite any failures and struggles, was the only way to do that.
As Winry stood back up with her doubts cleared away, she heard the tolling of the town bell. The sun was disappearing over the other side of the mountains, and lights flickered on in the town below.
“Lettie, how about we get going soon?” Winry said, offering Lettie a hand up. Lettie didn’t grasp it, even though it was right there for her to take.
“I don’t want to see Darish,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes focused on the ground. Winry’s heart went out to the little girl whose emotional wound hadn’t been so easily fixed as the injury to her knee. Winry took back her offered hand and crouched to the ground so she was at the same eye level as Lettie.
Winry knew Darish didn’t actually think Lettie was a nuisance. He was just frustrated at himself for not being able to rush to his little sister’s aid. If Lettie started to avoid Darish, that would just make Darish even more frustrated. It would be sad to see the two once-close siblings avoid each other when it was clear that they were affectionate.
“Hey, Lettie.” Winry tried to peek at Lettie’s teary eyes and asked, “You just said that you hate your brother, but do you actually hate him?”
“No. I like him,” Lettie said quietly, a troubled look on her face as she shook her head.