The first drabble was written for fma100's challenge, the rest just sort of…poured out of me. And depressed me in the process. All the drabbles are exactly 100 words.
Only the Good
by Maaya
What is hardest to leave is their daughter. Sara knows that Riesenburg will not change; never has during her lifetime. The only thing that changes in Riesenburg is the people. (And that just barely, Markus tells her with a laugh.)
Sara doesn't know how long this war will be fought in and she hates the thought that Winry, her daughter, might change while she is gone, treating the injured.
Winry is showing signs to develop a temper similar to Sara's own. Her eyes are like Markus'.
Sara tells Winry, mother is going on a trip. She will be back soon.
Sara learns to hate trains. Ishvar is far away, nervousness tugs at her insides and the only thing she can do is wait and swallow everything she wants to say. She has learnt, as a doctor, to remain calm in any situation.
No one around her is able to say she frets. Sara doesn't move much at all, she stares out the window and watches the green landscape slowly dry into desert.
Sara wonders if she ought to have seen a battlefield by now – Amestris is a country that is constantly at war.
Things are wrong out here. Tense. Unwelcoming.
Sara and Markus Rockbell are assigned to work in the first hospital tent. It is for the minor injuries, those not life-threatening.
The name 'First Tent' is playing on the words 'first priority'. The people most likely to survive are most important to the military, after all. The second tent is for those who are dying. Sara and Markus both suspect not much effort is put into saving them.
First and second priority, a natural choice. Horrible, logical and just the way the military has always operated. Humanity suddenly feels like something very cold.
The world is cruel, Sara realizes.
Riza Hawkeye is a respectable woman. Young, perhaps, but Sara finds that she likes her. She met her when Riza helped an injured man into the hospital tent, began to respect her when she offered to help as Sara amputated the man's leg. The two women went together to wash blood off, afterwards.
It is not quite a friendship, but it is mutual understanding.
Sara finds Riza write a letter home one day. Riza looks up at her, thoughtfully, and gives Sara a paper.
Sara knows that the letters won't be posted. It is still nice to sit there together.
The State Alchemists make Sara think about the Elric boys.
She doesn't like those powers that could be used for good but right now are nothing more than weapons.
She detests seeing how those who are using the powers are being destroyed by them. Grahn, cruel. Kimbley, insane, obsessed. Marcoh, scared. Roy Mustang, young, unsure.
Mustang pains her the most. He shouldn't be out here. He is still looking for the meaning of alchemy and won't find it in killing.
Sara wonders about her daughter. Is Winry watching the Elric boys practise alchemy, with the same worried eyes as herself?
Basque Grahn tells Sara and Markus not to treat Ishvarites' wounds one hot evening four weeks after their arrival.
Sara's head is hurting, the air is dry and warm and there isn't enough water in the camp. Her skin is uncomfortably dry, the sand feels like it is everywhere. She is grumpy enough to think about complaining or outright refusing the order in that...man's face.
Markus knows her too well. He grabs a hold of her balled fists, turns to face her. He is shaking his head.
Behind him, Grahn is smirking. Sara feels threatened, humiliated.
She swallows her anger.
State Alchemist Roy Mustang comes to the hospital tent to have a gun wound in his shoulder treated. Markus looked at him, then told Sara to take over. Sara had always been better at soothing, he muttered.
"I know a couple of boys at home who practices alchemy," Sara tries calmly as she cleans the wound.
Mustang doesn't seem to listen.
"They're not even ten and they still preformed a perfect transmutation." She smiled as she remembered. "They made doll for my daughter."
Mustang looks up when she is done. Sara thinks, perhaps, his eyes are brighter.
He thanks her.
No matter how much Sara and Markus tries, they can't not help people. Helping is what they do, wanting to help is the reason they became doctors.
Despite their orders, they help Ishvarites.
Sara feels appreciation amongst the Ishvarites. Some of the tense feelings of being unwelcome are faltering.
They disappear completely the day a little girl from Ishvar, who has somehow ended up in the camp after a battle, smiles and tells her, thank you.
A new, dark, hateful feeling replaces it that evening when she finds the girl among drunken military men. She is beaten, naked and dead.
Sara wakes at night, dreaming nightmares about that dead girl who is in her dream somehow replaced by Winry. Winry, before her, naked, abused, raped, dead. Winry, Winry. Sara can't help but tremble, it wakes Markus up. He takes one look at her and hugs her, hard.
Sara wonders is she really does look that terrible, if it is enough to make Markus do that. They don't usually hug, didn't before Ishvar.
The moon shines outside, brighter than Sara remembers it did in Riesenburg. She and Markus sit awake for the rest of the night, quietly leaning against each other.
The military feels wrong, somehow. There are no reasons left. Lies. Confusing, confusing, confusing.
It is not visible. On the outside everything seems just like usual. But Sara feels what she can't see. Grahn gives her and Markus the same order again, do not under any circumstances treat Ishvarites.
Sara is tired but knows she should do what she is told. She can't. Stubbornness gets the better out of her and she continues the way she always has.
She dreams at night about Riesenburg. About peaceful nights, about Pinako and Trisha. But mostly about Winry.
Sara wants to go home.
end