Disclaimer
I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or related characters. No suing, please.

Death on a Silver Platter
Written by - Stripe

Chapter 1 - August

Everything was dark. He couldn't see. Couldn't speak. Couldn't even move.

He was going to die.

He had lost feeling in his hands and feet long ago -- his captors had no cares for his comfort. At the very least, he could no longer feel the rope biting into his skin. Blood flow to his hands and feet had been cut off long ago. He tried twitching a finger, but if it had worked, he certainly couldn't tell. He could barely turn his head to face his back -- where his hands were tied.

And even if he could, the blindfold obscuring his vision would surely do a good enough job of making sure he couldn't see anyway.

"Well, what do we have here?" came an all-too-familiar voice from in front of him. He was pretty sure it came from in front of him, at any rate. His sense of direction was too thrown off by the blindfold to be able to tell properly. It didn't matter anyway. "It seems like, despite our warnings, you forgot to follow our rules. You know what happens when you break the rules, right?" He didn't bother moving his head in any sort of response. Nothing would help now.

Suddenly, what felt like a large chunk of metal hit his face at full force. He tried not to show how much pain he was in, but he could feel the blood dripping down his face, and could tell that his nose had not taken kindly to the attack. It was probably broken, but he had no definite way of knowing, as with everything else happening around him.

"Answer me!" the voice demanded angrily. He forced himself through the pain and gave a feeble nod. Submitting was not something he wanted to do, but right now, it seemed the only option. They were going to punish him either way.

"Of course you do," the voice purred, deceptively sweet now. "You know the consequences. You know what needs to happen to your brother now. And you, Edward Elric... you, of course, can't be allowed to live."

"Code Blue! Code Blue!"

Winry's heart froze up as she heard the nurse shouting. Code Blue meant cardiac arrest, and she was the closest doctor to the room it had been called from. She had to go in and save the patient. She could make it to the room the quickest, so everything relied on her.

The thought would be exhilarating if another person's life didn't hang in the balance.

She would have liked to believe that when she sprinted to the patient's room, it would be shown in slow motion, much like the exciting doctors on TV. Her life was rarely like theirs; she mostly dealt with old people, bad cases of the sniffles, alcoholics, drug addicts, and the occasional car accident. There was nothing exciting like a mysterious, handsome young man who had full-blown amnesia -- oh no. The closest they got to amnesia were the old people who had forgotten themselves due to various mental conditions, and that was simply sad rather than dramatic.

However, Winry's fantasies of an exciting life as a doctor on a medical drama were short lived -- before she knew it, she was in the patient's room, surrounded by several nurses who were already preparing to reverse the condition according to hospital procedures. Winry took in the patient's appearance very quickly as her brain began to process what needed to be done. In her first year as a doctor, she would have freaked out in this situation, and an older doctor would have had to save her hide -- as well as the patient's life.

This was not the case anymore.

"He needs to be intubated," she said to no one in particular, though one of the nurses quickly handed the endotracheal tube to her before working on setting up the crash cart. Winry began the process of intubation without a second thought -- once again, something she would never have been able to do as quickly in her first year here. She slid the breathing tube down the trachea quickly and effectively and attached the tube to a mechanical ventilator. However, this only assured the patient's breathing would be unaffected. There was still the matter of the heart.

She turned to the nurses, who had prepared the defibrillator. Without a second thought, Winry grabbed the two paddles and set them on top of the patient's chest so that the heart would be in between. Winry let out a breath she was unaware she had been holding and then shouted, "CLEAR!"

A surge of electricity shot through the paddles and through the patient's heart, causing the heart monitor to blip for a second. However, the pulse didn't revert to normal. She needed to try again.

"CLEAR!" Once again, electricity raced through the patient's heart, and the monitor blipped again. This time, however, after the large blip from the electricity, the pulse returned to its normal pace. Winry and the nurses who helped her let out a sigh. They had all saved another life.

All in a day's work.

"Great job, everyone," she said with a weak smile -- she had yet to shake off all of the tension from before. A couple of the nurses rolled their eyes and walked out the door to attend to other patients, but for the most part they seemed rather appreciative of the fact that Winry was appreciative. Few doctors really took notice of the work the nurses did. They simply saw them as doing grunt work. However, Winry relied a good deal on them -- a couple of the nurses had saved her ass on more than one occasion when she had started working here. She was indebted to them.

She hung behind for a few minutes to calm her nerves a bit more. However, once all of the nurses had left, Winry was left to remember what exactly she had been doing before the code was called. She knew she had only been walking past the room in which the patient crashed -- it was a mere accident she had been there when she was.

But where had she been going?

Winry paused for a moment more before glancing at her wristwatch. It was 12:59 at the moment. It didn't take the blonde doctor long to figure out what she had been doing. At 1 on Wednesdays, she went down to the pediatric ward to read to the kids there. As this happened to be a Wednesday, it seemed pretty certain that had been what she was doing. Unfortunately, she now had less than a minute to make it there on time -- and the pediatric ward was two floors below her.

When Winry began to run this time, she didn't hope that it would seem to be in slow motion. In fact, if anything, she wished the non-existant TV scene could have been fast-forwarded. Doctor Fuery was a bit of a pushover, and last time she had been late for reading time, the poor guy had been forced to deal with a bunch of kids trying to attack him, demanding where she was. The sad thing was, they had been winning -- by sheer numbers if nothing else.

So, for the sake of her colleague, Winry felt it best to get downstairs as quickly as possible.

She didn't bother with the elevator. From her experience it was slow and often crowded if a patient needed to change floors. Wheel chairs, IV fluid bags, breathing apparatuses, and actual beds all fit into the elevator, but it wasn't a comfortable fit for the other elevator passengers. None of those people took the stairs -- in fact, almost nobody took the stairs.

This made them perfect when she was in a hurry. Most people completely ignored the fact that Winry was racing towards the stairwell. People ran through the halls all the time, even when no code had been called, though the Head of Hospital discouraged it immensely. But so long as people who ran were careful not to run into anything or anyone, no one entirely cared. Still, the hallway was like some sort of sick and twisted obstacle course. There was a body bag to the left, a couple of doctors talking to the right. Up ahead was a nurse wheeling an elderly patient down the hall, and just beyond them was a nervous family of a patient and the patient's doctor trying to console them. Finally, like the light at the end of the tunnel, there was the door leading to the stairwell.

Winry dodged these things expertly -- though she just narrowly avoided plowing through the worried family. Upon reaching the stairwell, she only took a second to catch her breath before running down the stairs, being very careful to watch out for anything slippery. Sometimes the patients who tried the stairs weren't feeling quite as well as they thought they were. Luckily, she saw no one else on the way down nor bodily fluids they might have left behind. She finally slowed down as she reached the ground floor. The pediatric ward was only a stone's throw away from the stairwell, so she was practically already there. What could it hurt to take another minute to catch her breath?

"Where's Dr. Rockbell? You said she'd read to us today!" came screaming from the other side of the door. Winry heard a somewhat muffled reply, which seemed to have come from Dr. Fuery, as well as a few other screamed complaints. She let out a sigh.

It seemed that the minute would be one minute too long.

Winry pushed the door to the hallway open slowly and found that half of the pediatric ward had spilled over into the hall, with the other half standing by the door leading into the recreation room. Everyone turned to face her almost simultaneously.

"Oh thank God," Dr. Fuery said, looking beyond relieved. The children seemed to react similarly to their doctor, only they did so with more gusto.

"Doctor Rockbell! Doctor Rockbell! What story are you gonna read to us today?"

"I liked the Little Mermaid story you read us last time. I wanna be a mermaid! Does this story have a mermaid? It should have mermaids!"

"No way. Mermaids are sooo lame. This story should have a great, macho knight fighting off a dragon with a sword! Those stories are always the best!"

"I don't care what it's about, as long as you tell it, Doctor Rockbell."

Winry chuckled as the children bombarded her with various story requests. She didn't pay much mind to them at the moment -- they had a habit of changing their minds about what they wanted halfway through the story. She only needed a basic starting point, and they usually told the story from there. "Alright, alright. But first, let's stop bothering Dr. Fuery and go back into the recreation room, why don't we? It isn't nice to bully him like that," she said, a bit of laughter twinkling behind her eyes. The kids all groaned and complained but slowly began filing into the room they should have been in. Dr. Fuery sighed.

"You know, I love kids, but so many of them is just ... overpowering. I think I might have been better as a lab technician instead," he said, adjusting his glasses back into a more comfortable position on his nose. Winry gave a small laugh without meaning to.

"I wouldn't stress about it," she told him, grinning slightly. "You're one of our best pediatricians. The kids love you in their own special way, I'm sure."

"They just like you more," Dr. Fuery said blandly in response. Winry laughed once again. She couldn't deny it -- ever since bonding with Nina her second year here, she had been a favorite of the pediatric ward. Unfortunately, Nina was still here and still sick. Other kids had come and gone throughout the past two years of Winry reading in pediatrics, but Nina still seemed to be stuck at the hospital, struggling with her disease. She had gone home a couple of times, only to continue to deteriorate or develop a new complication. Winry's mood fell a little bit upon bringing this information up in her mind, but her smile didn't falter as she walked into the room and was greeted by numerous children, Nina included.

Nina was still alive. There was still hope.

Winry sat down in a chair that would have been comfortable had she been about two feet shorter (unfortunately, to read to the kids, she also had to use their furniture). She had grown accustomed to sitting with her knees practically in her face, but she also had a sinking feeling that this would lead to early back problems. The kids all sat around her surprisingly calm given their previous behavior. There were a few nudges and pushes in order to get to sit in the front, but for the most part, they didn't fight amongst themselves. The kids who were the most energetic tended to sit towards the front, while the weaker of them didn't try to contest for the prime positions. It was an excellent way to determine how a child was feeling that day, as morbid as the thought may be.

Even kids could muster up surprising strength in the face of illness.

She looked at them for a moment longer, taking a few mental notes on their conditions, before a little girl -- who was leaving later today, if Winry recalled correctly -- decided to pipe up.

"So what story are we gonna hear today, Dr. Rockbell?" she asked, a cute grin crossing her face. Winry pondered this for a moment and finally chose the fairy tale she wanted.

"How about we tell the tale of Sleeping Beauty?" she asked the children, some of whom seemed vaguely interested, the rest looking excited. She noticed a significant correlation in gender between these reactions -- it seemed that the boys weren't big fans of Disney princesses. However, there were no outright objections, so she decided to continue.

"Well, this story starts long ago in a far off land, with a beautiful princess…"

"Aw, man! Does it have to be a princess? They're always the main characters!" an older boy in the back complained. "Why can't it be a prince? Who fights dragons? That's sooo much cooler."

"Oh, ewww! You can't make Sleeping Beauty a guy!" the girl sitting in front of him complained. She was a cancer patient, and had a rag wrapped around her head in order to cover up the hair she'd lost from chemo. However, her illness did not stop her from being very insistent that things work her way. "That sooo ruins the story!" Winry smiled slightly, considering the swap in gender for a moment.

"Well, I've never told it with a guy as Sleeping Beauty before," Winry said truthfully. "I think it would be fun to try." The boy seemed excited, and the girl looked to be contemplating holding a tantrum. However, Winry decided to move on with the story before she could carry out that idea.

"Alright. So, once, very long ago in a far-off land, there lived a very handsome prince named ..." Winry paused for a moment in order to think of a princely sounding guy's name … "named Edward. Prince Edward. Anyways, when he was born, three good fairies blessed him..."

Winry continued with the story as best she could with the rather major difference that Sleeping Beauty was, in fact, Sleeping Handsome. She described how Edward had been cursed by a horrible witch so that, on his 18th birthday, he would be doomed to fall into a deep sleep, only to be awoken by the hug -- it seemed that kids still thought of kissing as gross -- of his true love. His parents sent him to live with the three good fairies who had given him such gifts in the first place, though "fairies" became a very loose term, as one became a good dragon, the other a mermaid, and the final a golden retriever. They tried to protect him from the witch's curse, but on his 18th birthday, the very thing that had been prophesized occurred. And once this occured, a good princess decided to rescue him...

And this was where the story became slightly more interesting.

"Dr. Rockbell! You should be the princess! You'd make a really pretty princess!"

That had been Nina's idea, and every other kid sitting there had happily agreed with the plan with varying levels of agreement.

Hence, Winry had to describe a goodly princess-doctor going to save the handsome prince Edward. She described herself going through the garden of thorns -- only there had also been roses thrown in to appease a few of the younger girls. She had also bravely faced the dragon, whom she hadn't vanquished, much to the older boys' dismay. Instead, she had shown the dragon the error of her ways, and the newly reformed dragon had flown off to the mountaintops to meet other dragons. Then, finally, she had arrived at the place in which the handsome prince Edward was sleeping, and given him the "hug of true love" and revived him.

And then they lived happily ever after.

Most of the kids seemed appeased by this tale, though there were two girls who were still unhappy with the fact that Sleeping Beauty was a guy. Once the kids were escorted off by their parents or respective doctor, Winry decided it was time to leave herself. When she finally detached herself from the chair she had been sitting in, she found there was somebody already waiting at the door.

"That was a wonderful story, Winry," a dark-haired young woman said with a mischievous grin. "I especially liked the three fairies. Very clever. Oh, and using yourself as the princess? I'm sure Alfons would love to hear about this 'Edward' guy." Winry elbowed her friend playfully.

"Come on, Mei. You let the kids hear what they want to hear. They're sick -- it would be mean to argue with them. Besides, we all know that you wish you had your own Prince Edward as well," she countered. Mei let out a dreamy sigh -- Winry honestly couldn't tell if she was joking.

"One day I'll meet him ... My dream prince is out there somewhere ..." Mei replied, looking happily off into space. Winry decided not to interrupt her friend's delusion of a prince in shining armor coming to save her on a white stallion. It was well-known that Mei was a hopeless romantic, even though her luck with men had been very minimal thus far. For now, it seemed all she could do was dream.

However, as the two made their way into the entrance of the hospital, it seemed that Mei would have to cut her daydreamintg short. Several orderlies burst in, wheeling a gurney with what seemed to be a severely injured man resting on it. Mei snapped out of her daydream and into nurse-mode, following the orderlies pushing the bed. It wasn't certain she would be needed, but so long as she stayed out of the way, it was generally better to have the extra hands available -- just in case. Winry worked in internal medicine, so for the time being there wasn't much she could do to help.

Still, as she caught a glimpse of his bloody face, Winry felt that this would not be the last time she would see this man.

A/N:

Hello and welcome to my new Edwin fanfic! This is being done for a contest, actually. The contest is to write one chapter of a fanfic per month, given a specific list of words and phrases. The fics will then all be judged at the end, and the best wins some forum prizes... sorta. Nothing big.

But I entered 'cause it sounded fun.

This does mean that it will take about a month for another update, though. But at least the updates won't be as sporadic as they might be otherwise.

Here's the first chapter. The fic will be written in real time to an extent - right now, in the fic, it's late August, 2008. Next chapter will take place in September, the chapter after that, October, etc. This may change if the plot calls for it, but for the time being, that's the plan. And that's all I'll say for now.

Thanks to San, Kira, Kiza, and my mommy for pre-reading this for me. x3

Enjoy!