Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction

Dying Not To Hurt You

Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of the Fullmetal Alchemist characters in any way. I only own Patricia, her father, her mother, Sean and Loraine Lewis and my plot.

Chapter seven: Working Nine to Five

"Patricia? Patricia, you need to get up." The voice of Maes Hughes woke the sleeping teen.

"Hm?"

"Patricia?"

"What?"

"You need to get up now. We're going to the tailor before we go to work." Work? Oh, yeah, she'd gotten a job. Right.

"Okay, I'll get up." Patricia sounded awake and happy, but she was lying down with her face buried in a pillow.

Wait... had Maes said 'work'? Work! Patricia's brain connected to her body as the word sank in. Work. She'd begin to work today!

"Oh my..." she whispered. She didn't know what to wear. But it was the military, right? She'd four sure get one of those green uniforms they had at home. But, she was a girl, and Maes had told her that it was a desk job, so she would probably get a skirt. And if she wore a skirt, how would she be able to hide her automail leg?

'Shit, shit, shit, shit'. She wasn't ready to let the world know that she was nothing but a little lonely girl without a left leg yet. 'Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful.'

"If you ever want it to be hidden," Sean had said to her when she was still in Rush Valley. He had talked about a pair of socks... Patricia searched in her bag for a pair of socks. When she found them, she held them up in the air, doubting that it would hide anything.

But, willing to try anything, she put it on, and was amazed by what she saw. It looked like she had two legs in flesh and bone. The left one was a little bit tanner than the right, but it was so small difference so no one would notice.

She walked a little back and forward to see how much the sock could take before falling off, but it hanged on. Realizing she didn't have much time left to dress before Maes came up again she put on some clothes and went down to eat something.

The breakfast was over faster than expected, and Patricia and Maes went away from the house at 8 o'clock. After about fifteen minutes of walking they got to a small shop. They went in, and heard a man shout a 'I'm coming' to them.

After a little while a man in his early fifties came out from a small room in the back of the shop.

"Hello, Mr. Hughes," he said. "New girl again, eh?"

"Hello, Mr. Summers. Yes, and she'll need a uniform too," Maes answered the man.

"Hello, miss...?"

"Patricia Taylor."

"Miss Taylor. Ha-ha, that's too funny. I'm a tailor, and you're Miss Taylor! However, I'll sew you a uniform in less time than you can say the longest word in Amestris. Just come here and I'll measure you." Patricia stepped over to where Mr. Summers was standing. Mr. Summers took a measuring tape from the desk beside him and started to measure until Patricia was sure he'd measured every square inch of her body twice.

"There you go."

"Okay," Mr. Hughes said. "I'll be back in a week, and I expect it to be done by then."

"Okay, okay. Let's say a week. It'll be ready."

"Excellent. Goodbye, Mr. Summers."

"Goodbye, Mr. Hughes, Miss Taylor."

The man and the girl went out of Mr. Summers's shop and continued their walk to the Military Headquarters. Patricia thought it was very far to walk, and as far as she knew they could be walking in circles through the whole city, but she didn't complain, no, she wanted to show Maes that she wasn't a whiner.

So they walked and walked and walked forever without saying a word. But after all the walking she saw it; the huge building wherefrom the military ruled the country.

Patricia stopped and just stared at the building. Sure, she was used to skyscrapers from her time in Paris, but she hadn't seen any of those in a couple of months, so this was something extraordinary.

"Yeah, it's pretty big, isn't it?" Maes said. "It's where I work every day. You'll get used to it after a couple of weeks."

"I will have trouble finding the toilets," Patricia whispered.

"What?"

"Nothing!"

"However, we need to get going. I'll take you to the closets where we have some spare uniforms for times like this. C'mon."

Patricia hurried after Maes as he walked into the building. They went down several miles if corridors, and after a million passed doors Maes seemed to have found a door with a sign that said 'closet'.

"Here it is. Now, let's see... which size do you want?"

"Erm... small I think."

"Here we have a... Too big... Too small... Ah, here we got one! Small." Maes handed Patricia the blue uniform.

"Blue? Isn't the military supposed to have green clothes?"

"Green? What planet are you from? The moon?" Maes laughed. Patricia laughed a little too, but only half-hearted. Wasn't it supposed to be green?

"You'll need shoes too. Which size?"

"Seven, maybe."

"Hah! Found them! Now, come here. We'll go to the dressing rooms so you can change from that," Maes said with a passing glance at Patricia's jeans and shirt.

They one again went down mile after mile of corridor to a door with a tiny painting of a pink woman.

"I'm not allowed to follow you in there, but I think you'll manage to dress yourself. Just call if you've gotten the wrong size or something, and I'll get a new one."

"O-okay," Patricia said and went into the room. There was only one other woman in there, and she sat on one of the three benches tying her shoes.

Patricia sat down on the bench furthest from the other woman and changed into the uniform. It was a skirt as she had predicted, so she was thankful that she'd thought of the sock, and a jacket that looked like no other jacket she'd seen.

Then it was time for the shoes. They were varnished black with inch tall heels. A killer.

She put her clothes in a nice pile and went out to Maes.

"They fit perfect, I see. Excellent. Now, we'll go to my office and wait for Scieszka."

And then it began over again, the walk through endless corridors. Let's just say that she was dead tired of long maze-like corridors. But, that got to an end, eventually, and they arrived to a small office, but there was no sign of this 'Scieszka' person.

"She's always late on Wednesdays. No exceptions." Maes said. "You can just sit here and wait for her, while I go and check on some things, okay?"

Patricia nodded, and thankfully sat down on a chair as soon as Maes left the room. Those shoes and walking didn't match well. She sat there massaging her poor feet for maybe half an hour, and the started to wonder how late Scieszka used to be.

The clock ticked its way to half past nine, when a girl busted through the door almost screaming "I'm sorry I'm late, I'm sorry I'm late!"

The girl stopped in the middle of the sentence when she saw that no one was there, but a girl she'd never seen before.

"Who are you?" she exclaimed.

"Erm... I'm Patricia Taylor; I'm beginning to work here today."

"Oh, I see. I'm Scieszka. I've been working a here a while now, and I... Now I remember!" Scieszka held a finger up in the air as she said "Lieutenant Colonel Hughes told me that a new girl would come." She lowered the finger. "Hm... let's see... I guess you'll be following me around. We'll begin to..." She picked up a list from the desk. "... We'll begin to get some books for the Lieutenant Colonel. Come here," she said and walked out of the office without even checking that Patricia had understood what she was saying.

'Well, okay, now I've met a man who's so giving he's barely even making enough money to eat, a man who's so crazy he's walking around in a suit of armor, a guy who wears his nice, blonde hair in a braid, my murderer, a man completely obsessed with his wife and kid, and a lunatic. Wonderful, isn't it?' Patricia sighed and went after the girl named Scieszka, who she now unofficially had nicknamed the Lunatic.

"Are you coming?" Scieszka shouted to her.

"Yeah, yeah." Patricia didn't know how to answer that. She just followed her, half running, half walking the whole time.

"Where are we going?" Patricia asked.

"To the library! Oh, you've never been there before, have you? Okay, let's slow down, so you might remember!"

'I don't think I'd remember if we were snails....' she thought.

"You know, the Lieutenant Colonel use to say that he'll be back soon, but he won't show up until lunch anyways. Oh! We're already here!"

And before them raised a building almost as big as the Military Headquarters. Patricia dropped her jaw and just stared. How could the state of this godforsaken country afford to have two enormous buildings like these in one city? This was crazy.

"Well, it's pretty big, isn't it?" Scieszka said using the very same words as Maes had earlier. "Come, we gotta hurry. Soon, every assistant and secretary will come here to fetch books, and you won't want to e here by then. It gets crowded. Believe me, I've worked here."

"O-okay..." Patricia still couldn't think of how much money that had been out into the both buildings. And now, this one was filled to the roof with books, too. And how much money didn't that cost every single year, for paychecks and such things? Geez...

When they got in through the huge, massive oak doors Patricia was dumbstruck once again. This was way more books than she'd expected. The shelves was so narrow that a man barely could pass them without tip them over.

"Whoa..."

"It's a lot of books, isn't it? And I've read almost all of them!" Scieszka smiled wide.

"All of these...?" Patricia couldn't believe it. How could a sane person read all of these? Oh, right, Scieszka wasn't perfectly sane. Well, she was one to talk; Patricia wasn't too sane, either.

"This way," Scieszka said and went left, and then right, left and right again.

"How come you don't get lost?" Patricia asked, panting.

"Well, I worked here before the Lieutenant Colonel hired me."

"Oh, well, I see."

"Here, take this," Scieszka said and gave Patricia a book. It was big, brown, heavy and smelled bad. She held it on both her arms, just waiting for another one.

"Take this, too... And this... And this..." Scieszka put several books on the one she'd handed Patricia earlier. In the end, Patricia carried eight books, and Scieszka none.

"Well, I think that's all we need. But, oh, dear! Wait..." she said and took four of the books.

"Thank you, Scieszka."

"Well, I couldn't let you carry all of those, and carry none myself, now could I?" Scieszka laughed a little.

'And here I am in this fucking other world befriending a lunatic. Wonderful.' The girls went back to the Military Headquarters, and put the books on Maes's desk.

"Now what?" Patricia asked.

"Well, the Lieutenant Colonel's daughter, Elysia had a birthday party the other day, and now we're supposed to write them all thank-you-letters. By hand."

"Well, that's not a big deal. How many are we gonna write?"

"Like, sixty, I think..."

"Sixty!? How can a kid have so much friends!?"

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Song of the day: Working Nine to Five – Dolly Parton