Kismet

AN: This came out a little differently from what I'd expected, but I like it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.

"Winry! Winry, come out here, dear. It's a bad one."

The girl dropped her spanner, paying no attention to the fact that it clattered noisily against the floor as she rushed out of the workroom. Her master very rarely put on such a serious tone, so she knew that something was definitely wrong. She reached the front of the shop in seconds, but the sight that met her eyes made her want to turn away.

Garfiel and Paninya were gently carrying a young boy between them. His close-cropped brown hair was sticky with blood, and his innocent little-boy overalls were equally covered in gore. One of his legs was missing – only a small little stump of flesh remained. Winry's hands flew up to cover her mouth, and she felt tears spilling out of the corners of her eyes. What had happened?

"What..." was all that escaped her as she hesitantly approached her friend and her master, her eyes still riveted on the bleeding boy. Someone had tied a cloth bandage to the stump in order to stop the bleeding, she noted distantly, but it was still soaked with blood. Her stomach lurched, and she felt dizzy. Winry was used to seeing blood – after all, it was nearly impossible to install auto-mail without it – but in recent times, she'd been more involved in constructing auto-mail rather than installing it, and her time away from the surgery and the gore had obviously not made anything better.

"No one can tell us what exactly happened." Paninya's voice was gentle, but Winry could detect strain in the dark-skinned girl's voice – Paninya hated blood. "I was nearby, though, so when I heard someone scream, I went over immediately... but I couldn't save anything." Her expression was dark and regretful.

"I was trying to get him to a hospital when I saw Mr. Garfiel. We took him there together, but they have no room for him... no room for a little boy, can you imagine?" Paninya's eyes glistened with unshed tears. "So we brought him over here, for the meantime."

Winry nodded slowly, reaching out to brush the boy's sweaty forehead. He moaned and shifted slightly, his breathing labored.

"His name is Tetsu."

"Winry onee-chan!" The young boy scampered over, his feet quick and agile. "Winry onee-chan! I'm back!"

"Tetsu!" Winry greeted the boy with a smile, ruffling his short hair affectionately. "How are you? I can see you're handling that leg well! No problems, I hope?"

"Nope!" Tetsu beamed. "You're the best, onee-chan! It doesn't even hurt so much anymore!"

Winry's chest ached at the sight of the boy. He couldn't remember anything that had happened to him on that day. His mother had visited Garfiel's in a panic, and had tried to dissuade her master from installing auto-mail for Tetsu. In the end, the boy himself agreed to it.

"I want to walk again, onee-chan," he'd said pitifully, looking so desolate. "I want to walk again."

Winry hugged the boy to her and released him only after he began to make protesting noises. "You're here for a tune-up?" she asked. Tetsu nodded, hitching up his pant leg to display the shining metal that lay underneath.

"Yep. Even though there's nothing wrong so far, mama said to come over."

"Okay." Winry smiled gently and ushered him inside, seating him on her work bench and pulling up the pant leg further to check the area where they'd installed the docking port. The dark scars stood out against Tetsu's pale skin, but everything seemed to be working perfectly.

"I'm just going to tighten a few wires, okay? It shouldn't hurt," she reassured him. Tetsu nodded in response, swinging his other leg energetically. Winry shook her head and motioned for him to be still.

As she took out her tools, Winry reflected on how children weren't safe from the ugliness of the world anymore. There was Edward, with his innocent determination to bring back his mother – he'd lost two limbs, one for her and one for his brother. There was Alphonse, who learned the hard way not to always listen to his big brother – he'd lost his entire body, confined only to a metallic suit of armor. There was Paninya, who had just been unlucky, so unlucky – she'd lost her legs and crawled on the ground like an animal. And now there was Tetsu, whose only wish had been to be able to play ball with his friends again. Winry sniffed deeply and scrubbed furiously at her face.

Metal. She loved her auto-mail so much, but she wished with all of her heart that these young lives hadn't been touched by it.

AN: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Tetsu means 'metal', right? That's sort of ironic. A bit disjointed in places, and some of it might seem unrealistic, but I wanted to write something about Winry and Tetsu. Apologies for using 'onee-chan' – I heard him call Winry that in Brotherhood, and that stuck with me.

774 words.