Day 01: Firsts

Edward Elric can count the number of times he's cried since he was eleven all on one hand.

There was the evening of the transmutation, when he cried in frustration as he screamed for Truth to give him his little brother back.

He cried twice on the Promised Day. Once that afternoon, when Alphonse's armor laid broken like a smashed wind-up toy on the pavement and the other that night, when they both laid there together in a half-made hospital bed and both sobbed out of relief.

The only other time after that that Ed cried was the day he married Winry, and he has no regrets about it whatsoever. Did the whole congregation watch him cry, overcome with happiness about marrying the most beautiful girl in the world? Yes. But does he love his wife and doesn't care? Also yes.

He'll never live it down, though Colonel Mustang wouldn't let him even if Ed wanted to. He constantly pokes at him about it, but Ed can't find it in himself to mind.

This time will mark his fifth, whether things turn out good or bad. Either way, Ed knows he's going to be a train wreck of emotions when this is all over.

A nurse comes speeding down the hall, right past Ed and into the nursery. She's holding a baby bundled up in a soft, cream-colored blanket. Ed stands, ready with a million questions for her, but she passes him by without so much as a glance and another nurse rushes up behind her and tries to calm Ed, telling him that the child the first nurse clutched to her so tightly isn't is his.

It's been several hours since he was escorted out of the room where Winry laid in the hospital bed, her face pale and sweaty and her hair in disarray. It wasn't supposed to go this way; the birth was supposed to be normal and fine. Winry was an old pro at this. Not because she'd ever given birth before, but because she's a doctor and an automail surgeon; she knows about this kind of stuff.

And because she's single-handedly delivered a baby before. He won't forget what he did for the LeCoulte family in Rush Valley

But things don't ever seem to go as Ed has planned for them to, and things started to turn badly as the birth progressed. The doctors are hoping neither Winry nor child will be harmed, but they couldn't be sure and so they began taking what precautions they could.

Precautions that didn't include Ed being there.

Complications with the birth, one nurse had said as she escorted him out to the public waiting room. She said more, but Ed knew it was nothing of importance, just general, detached words of comfort and so Ed tuned her out.

Something is happening. Something bad, something unexpected.

Fuck, he can't lose Winry too. Not their child that they've worked so hard to make a life for.

He doesn't like to think that anything horrific is going on as he sits in the blue, plastic chair and waits impatiently, his mind spiraling out of control. He doesn't want to think about all the endless possibilities that can come of these complications in birth, but the thoughts plague his mind anyway. Winry could be hurt. Their child could too.

No one will tell Ed anything and it's driving him mad.

"Are you Mr. Rockbell?" A nurse comes by, breaking Ed from his thoughts.

Ed jumps up. "Yes!" he shouts, a little too loud for a hospital waiting at two in the morning and not bothering to correct her on his name. At this time the little nuances don't really matter, there are so many more important things going on.

The nurse smiles. She's young, almost too young to be working here at around eighteen years or so, but Winry was working harder medical tasks at much younger, so perhaps he shouldn't underestimate this woman's abilities. She has a charming smile, one with a gap between her two front teeth, and she nods to him, confirming the answer to the question he hasn't yet asked.

Ed visibly sighs in relief, letting out a breath that he's been holding for hours now.

"Can I see her?"

"Of course." She has a breathy voice, the kind with all the right pauses and emphasis to put scared family members at ease. "Right this way."

Ed follows her down a hall painted lilac and with little motifs of flowers trailing down the walls, painted lilies and daisies with pressed leaves encased in glass picture frames. The place looks too welcoming for a hospital, but perhaps that's because this is a maternity ward and it's typically a joyous occasion for the majority of people. Ed knows it is for him, it will be, but he's not going to be able to be fine fully until he absolves this anxiety for himself by seeing his wife and child safe and sound.

The clicks of the heels of their shoes boom loud as they echo down the empty hallway and press on the tile. There's something ominous about the lilac hall, something that allows Ed's anxiety to continue to simmer.

Someone should really give this place a remodel.

Winry is still in the same room that she was in hours ago that Ed was asked to leave. Nothing about the door of the room has changed, the wood is still chipped in the bottom right corner and the temporary nameplate that has Winry's name on it still has the ink smudged across the two L's where whoever wrote the card must have dragged their hand in a rush. It's the same door, but it's no longer shrouded in panic and fear. It's an endless mystery now, anything could be inside, but it isn't a thing that is frightful. Ed isn't scared of the unknown, but still, he's more impatient than ever to see what fate awaits him behind it.

The nurse pushes open the door. "I'll leave you three alone," she says, quickly stepping away in a flurry and turning into the next room over.

He thanks her, his head in a haze. You three, she had said. You three.

Ed steps in, the door swinging shut behind him. He can't see them yet, there's a curtain on a moving stand by the door blocking his view.

"Knock, knock," Ed greets, at the edge of the curtain, not yet having stepped past it to see her. There's hesitation in his voice, but there's something like wonder there too. He's standing on the precipice of unknown greatness, he can feel it in his bones.

Ed can hear the smile in her voice, "who is it?"

"Your very worried husband."

"Oh well if it's only him then I guess he should probably get in here."

Her voice is exhausted yet playful and Ed can only imagine how tired she must be right now. She's been up for god knows how many hours working intensively to bring a new life into this world.

Without waiting any longer, Ed steps in.

However he had envisioned this moment, the millions of times he played out his first glimpse of their child in his mind throughout the course of Winry's pregnancy, the moment was never as good as it is here in reality.

His dreams, though spectacular, will never capture the true elation and relief of knowing they're okay and feeling the magic of seeing them in the yellow glow of the lamplight.

There's a bundle swaddled up in the same cream-colored blanket of the baby Ed saw only minutes before that that nurse was carrying laying across Winry's chest. Both her hands are wrapped around the tiny body, clutching it close like it's the only thing worth protecting in this world.

It's so small, so tiny. It's a miracle that so much magic can be fit into such a tiny being.

And then there's Winry, and for as exhausted and weary as she looks, she's absolutely radiant. There are dark bags under her bright, blue eyes and there are dried tears on her cheeks, but for all that even, she's completely stunning. Ed could never love anyone more.

"Wow," is all he can manage to get out.

She laughs. "Would you like to meet him?"

Ed nods, not trusting himself to speak. He can already feel it, the welling up of tears inside him like a great flood.

Him. Their baby is a boy.

Ed pulls up a chair beside the bed and Winry outstretches her arms, presenting the tiny miracle to him.

As Ed takes him from her, the child yawns, scrunching up his tiny nose and stretching out one of his tiny arms, his right hand clutched in a small fist. His skin is pale and soft, his cheeks splotched with the redness of all newly born infants.

His head is covered in a small, blue cap, and his eyes are closed, his soft, blond eyelashes—so blond they're almost invisible—resting on his rosy cheeks. Honestly Ed is having a hard time even getting past those tiny, scrunched up features like a Persian cat.

And then the baby opens his eyes and the entire world shifts on its axis for Ed. It's like the continental plates have decided to move all at once, the surface of the earth shaking and altering.

His eyes are blue. Not that same sapphire blue like gemstones that makes up the color of Winry's eyes, but a blue so light they almost look green.

The same eye color that Mom had.

They're stunning. They glitter in the light as the baby peers up at Ed, catching his first glimpse of his father.

"I know," Winry whispers, clearly seeing what he sees like she's able to read his mind. "Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yeah."

"Oh Ed," she whispers, and Ed feels a cold finger press up against his cheek. "You're crying."

Ed laughs, a wet laugh that he feels bubbling up from somewhere deep inside himself like a geyser exploding in his chest. "Am I?"

She nods, tears of her own falling onto her lashes.

The baby Ed holds blinks up at him and Ed just smiles, tears falling freely down his face. He can't do anything else; smiling and crying is all he's capable of it seems. It looks like his little boy already knows his papa.

Ed hands their son back to Winry when he starts to get fussy and she gently rocks him to sleep.

Ed mops at his eyes with his shirt sleeve, drying away his tears as best he can while never letting his permanent smile slip from his lips. He's too overjoyed at this moment to care about appearances or anything else. They really did it. She really did it. Here they are, both sitting alive and well in this hospital room with their first child.

Ed can't think of a better moment than this.

"Nicholas," Winry says as Ed messes with his sleeve.

"What?"

"We said if he was a boy we would name him Nicholas."

While Winry was still pregnant, they'd spent evening after evening sitting on the couch together, flipping through baby catalogs looking at baby bedding and baby clothes and baby toys. There was a lot that came with having a baby. Everything had to be purchased in new baby sizes for little baby hands.

And then there were the names. They would spend those same evenings writing down names on a notepad of paper every time they found one in one of the baby books that suited their fancy.

There were lots of them they liked. Andrew and Lilly. Collin, Wilfred, and Samantha. It was an important decision, one of the most important they would make, but there were just so many to choose from.

Nicholas was ultimately the name they decided upon if their child was a boy, and so Nicholas he will be.

It's a good name, Ed had thought at the time when Winry had written it out in the journal in her precise handwriting. It sounds strong and noble. The name of someone who will do something great.

The people's victory, they had read it mean. Greatness embedded in his very being.

"Nicholas," Ed repeats to Winry, smiling at her and the child that now sleeps in her arms. "Nicholas, our firstborn."

"The first of many," Winry adds and Ed only smiles back.

The first of many indeed.