Won first place for round 112: "Redemption" at LJ's fma_fic_contest community.
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Winry knew he was a soldier and not much else. She knew most of her patients well before they were on her table, but this was war. There weren't the pleasant but nerve-wracking pre-surgery meetings. She wasn't given time to prepare her instruments, clean the table, and build a new prosthetic directly to the patient's specifications. It was just a man bleeding out of the fleshy mess where his arm and shoulder had been and the team of medics waiting for her command. It took only minutes for the man to die.
Funny, though, how long his face stuck with her.
By the time the table was clean and the remains loaded away in a van driven by somber faced soldiers, Winry still couldn't close her eyes without seeing it. Him – death didn't make the man any less human.
Eventually, she shook herself from her dead walk and locked the door. She hadn't driven that day. There was another skirmish not a mile out from Resembool. They'd felt the aftershocks of an explosion while she and Ed had been arguing over coffee and some nonsense from the morning paper.
The walk home was nothing. She felt like she wasn't moving, and even though her feet were dragging her body up the steps and the dog was barking and her kids were shrieking happily at her arrival, there was a disconnect. She wasn't home. She was working through her mind, stripping down every single second she'd had her hands on that soldier, if I'd done this instead—
Ed pushed the kids out of the way to wrap his arms around her, the usual bearhug greeting. Instead of playfully socking him, Winry wrapped her arms around his middle and buried her face in his neck. For a brief moment, Ed froze. Then, just as suddenly, he was speaking to the kids and pulling her away while the last echo of small feet padded out of the house. She could hear the dog barking out the window, and it took her moment to realize she was sitting on their bed.
"Bad day?" Ed asked.
Winry wanted to say no. This was her job, her dream. Her parents had done it before her, and what was she, if she couldn't follow in their footsteps? Instead, she nodded, her fists still clenched in his shirt. "Really bad," she said thickly.
Ed let her cry for a good while, rubbing her back and twirling a finger in her hair, the stupid things she'd always loved, but it was difficult to appreciate the here and now when there was a crack in her world. Winry distinctly remembered her grandmother saying something, a sentiment echoed later by Garfiel: Sometimes people die. Let it get to you, and that's that.
She knew she needed to let go, but there would always be that small part of her, just as green as she'd been the first day of her residency, wondering how she could make up for this loss.