A/N: Oh hooray, the site is working again! Nothing was loading for the past... eh, four hours or so, maybe longer.
This could fit in either canon, since I was originally thinking about post Lab Five insanity. But then I had to go and write a prequel to this scene (coming about five or six prompts later), and that kinda ignored the fact that Major Armstrong brought Winry from the train station. So pick your poison on a world, and I'll turn off the gravity so you can easier suspend your disbelief.
Also, on the topic of drabbles on the way, I haven't forgotten about the sister-story. I'm posting all drabbles in the original order of all the prompts (who the heck came up with them, anyway?), so you'll just have to be patient :-p
37. Silver Watch
"Miss Riza?"
"Please just 'Riza,' Winry," said the first lieutenant as she led Winy through the hospital.
"Ok, Riza? How come the state alchemist ID is a watch? Why not a certificate, or a license, or something you can carry around in a wallet?"
Riza considered for a moment before she answered. The same thing had occurred to her as well, but it simply wasn't something one asked her superior, friendship and feelings notwithstanding. "I think the Fürher decided that a pocket-watch was more dignified than paper," she concluded. "They're harder to forge, as well," she added.
"Not harder, just different skills. I could probably build one if Ed would just let me take his apart."
Riza smiled at the girl. "I doubt he'd allow that," she said. "Even if it weren't for the transmutation amplifiers, most of the state alchemists engrave something meaningful, or personal, on the inside."
She heard Winry's footsteps slow. Riza turned to see what was delaying her. Winry had stopped and seemed to be staring into space.
"Winry?"
"Oh? Sorry."
The girl ran back to Riza, apparently out of her daydream. "Everything all right?" the first lieutenant asked.
"I'm fine, I just was remembering something. I kind of broke into Ed's watch once."
Riza knew the temptation well. The chain of Mustang's watch was always just dangling there, begging to be- "He must not have taken it well," said Riza.
"Well, yeah, at first. But in the end it was probably a good thing. He only stayed mad for about twenty minutes."
Riza smiled and led on. If Winry could tamper with the Silver Watch and make it out mostly unscathed, she really was something special to that little alchemist.