EdWin - Due Date (Complete)

Part 13

The snow fell onto their heads slowly while they continued their walk to Winry's doctor. A flake landed and held its form on her hand for
a second before her unnatural body heat melted it away. It tugged at her heart for some reason, seeing it fade away on the palm of her hand, like she had purposely made it disappear. A feeling that was completely unreasonable but she felt it nonetheless.

Weak as they were, she lifted her eyes from her hand, and scoped out the hills of Resembool. A familiar sight, exactly the same as whe she was a child, vast and some parts still unknown to her. Only now, it was blanketed in a bright white, threatening to make her eyes shut as she stared at it. The white made it beautiful, but also lonely in a way. Like that white needed a friend to accompany it, just as Ed was accompanying her through the snowy ground.

Edward had been walking and carrying her for a solid forty minutes already, and his breath was still even; he hadn't shown one sign of fatigueyet. It was a fact that he was well built and healthy, but she hadn't though he was capable of this. Winry was already in her second trimester, so she wasn't exactly a lightweight anymore.

And yet.... She shut her eyes, and laid her head against his chest, he's still carrying me.

"How's your leg Ed? The cold isn't hurting you is it?" she asked him after a few more minutes of walking.

"It's fine." He looked down at her and flashed his usual grin, "No need to worry about me. You're automail's the best in the world!"

She laughed to herself despite the gut wrenching pain in her throat and basically her whole body. It's really amusing when he tries to cheer me up with being nice. I love it, but it's just way too funny not to laugh at it.

Thinking back for a moment, she recalled the time years ago when the brothers had gone out to restore themselves. Gone for months at a time, without even a single word from them, and then they'd suddenly appear broken and bruised, the complete opposite of their goal. And then there were the times when she had actually experienced what they had to go through first hand. The dangers, the people, the emotions, it was all overbearing, and yet they had still refused to confide in her with anything. Though she understood why they had to keep quiet for a time, it had still been so frustrating, waiting and hoping that when they came back they'd at least be breathing.

The differences between then and now were worlds apart, but still so familiar. If someone had told her back then that in a few years she'd be married to Ed and pregnant with a house of their own and free lives, she would've been way too hopeful for her own good.

It had been a far off dream, one that at times seemed impossible and others just within reach, and the fact that it was now reality was enough. And because of this feeling of content and happiness, she was scared to death.

Being pregnant had brought to the surface many things that she hadn't known existed within her. Like her realization that life in itself is a double-edged sword.

Living and dying, these are two inevitable facts of every person's life. She knew this, it was basic knowledge for everyone, but when you go deeper than that, the meaning changes. You'll live your life, enjoying every moment, but all the while knowing that your end is going to come. You won't know when, but you know it's going to happen. And when you do die, you just have to hope you're lucky enough to not have regrets, wishing you had done more for the people you love.

You'll live your life, happy or not, but it'll all just end one day.

Winry knew her fair share of death, and so had Ed. Theirwhole family knew it all too well. They knew what it felt like to lose their parents, and it struck her motionless when she thought about their child having to go through the same thing. There weren't words to describe just how far you could fall because of it.

And throughout the course of realizing just how important Ed and this baby had become to her, a fear of her own mortality had reared its head. Completely ridiculous as it was, it was there rearing itself in her mind at random times.

In an incredibly flashy way.

Ridiculous.

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Ed, panting and terribly fatigued, set a sleeping Winry down on one of the doctors bed's, grimacing when he saw her flinch from the movement. About half way through their walk she'd passed out, prompting him to begin running without any regard to himself. The cold outside was an aid to him as it kept him cool for the most part, but now that he was still, he felt the heat from his pumping blood start to take over his limbs.

"Ah damn it." He wheezed and sunk down into a chair next to Winry's bed. Despite that fact that he'd kept the northern automail he'd gotten from her years ago, his leg was still aching badly from the cold, making for a terrible mixture of feelings swirling inside of him. And of course it wasn't of any help that he was worried out of his mind.

He looked back to Winry and became even more unsettled at the sight. Sickness in itself was traumatic thing for him. It didn't matter what kind of sickness it was, as long as it was making someone unhealthy, he began panicking inside, and not without reason either. It also didn't matter that he was now an adult, and some people might think he should be able to handle this sort of thing by now; it was something he didn't want to happen or even see.

Of course he wasn't so paranoid as to freak out over something like a cold, it was a bit worrying, but not terrifying. He'd had many a cold himself, but this was different. Winry, his expectant wife, was lying on a hospital bed, sweating, panting, and wincing with every movement. This was a plausible thing to be frantically concerned over.

He smoothed his hands over his face and through his hair, rubbing his eyes as they came back down. The pain in his joints were starting to become more evident and if he didn't start moving his body would get too stiff for comfort; plus the waiting was beginning to piss him off.

His legs swung out in front on him, standing up and put more pressure on his knees then he knew he should've. Ed walked over to Winry, and wiped her hair away from her slightly sweaty face, grimacing at her condition.

"I'll be right back." He voiced to her, and gave her hand a slight squeeze before he sprinted out the door, not bothering to waste time and shut it himself.

Luckily, the door shut without much noise and didn't even register to Winry's ears. She stayed still with her eyes shut, trying to block out the physical pain with a will power that was fading.

Though the door didn't disturb her concentration, a sudden stabbing pain that appeared in her abdomen did.

In a second, her eyes snapped open and her body shifted unwillingly, trying to cease the pain and Ed who was yelling at a male doctor to help his wife heard a shrill scream across the hospital, making every sense in his body drop.