The Same Coin

Tacky With Her Blood

"This isn't what I had expected when Chrollo said you'd demonstrate your Nen to me," Machi murmured under her breath as she knelt before the door in front of them.

Winry didn't speak while Machi worked, instead focusing on using En to see if anyone was coming in their direction. She'd only used it a few times before when training with Hisoka in Dublith, but it was the most reliable ability for the situation at hand. They had less than two hours before Hisoka would fight Kastro, but Winry had it from a reliable source that the building would be almost vacant then — because everyone nonessential would be on their way to Heavens Arena for the fight.

Machi was using her needles and Nen to pick the lock, and Winry glanced back at her when she heard the door knob turn. The two women slipped inside the building without a word, and Winry didn't hesitate to cross to the doors to the exam room and pull them shut. She pressed the button in the top corner to engage the lock.

"Which one do you want?" Machi asked, her breath misting slightly in the cool air.

Winry sat at the desk and began flipping through a stack of papers on a clipboard, looking for the most viable option. Her eyes scanned each before turning to the page behind it.

"Number 4," Winry announced after a few minutes of studying the forms.

Machi crossed over to the small square door labeled '4' and opened it. Winry joined her to pull it out until the wheels dropped to support the dead body lying there.

Nakamura Hina. Age 47, cause of death: car accident. Winry made herself look at the woman's face. In death her sallow features were relaxed, jowls sagging. There were deep lacerations from where glass from the windshield had made itself comfortable in her skin. She was still relatively fresh — the blood had only just begun to pool. They were keeping her on ice until transport arrangements were made for the funeral home to come get her from the morgue.

Winry pulled the white sheet down to expose the body. There was a dark bruise where the seatbelt had locked across her chest. The real cause of death, however, were the punctures in her abdomen. Hina had been on her way home with a bundle of garden stakes when a vehicle had collided with hers, and the stakes had impaled her. Help hadn't been able to get her to the hospital in time.

"Get to it," Machi prompted as Winry continued to survey the woman. "We have to get back to Heavens Arena."

Winry gave a quick nod, then inhaled while she focused her Nen. This was her Hatsu — the skill she'd been quietly experiment with for months, long before Hisoka had left for the 287th Hunter Exam. Before she had gone to Briggs—

She'd been in the butcher shop after Izumi and Sig had gone to bed for the night. She hadn't heard Hisoka's footsteps on the stairs, nor as he came down the hallway. It was only when he was behind her, brushing a lock of hair back over her shoulder, that she knew he was there. The knife in her right hand had slipped, and she felt the blade bite across her left hand instead of its target. She'd dropped the knife and backed away from the cutting board before the blood had a chance to well up from the cut.

Hisoka had intertwined his fingers between hers and raised their hands between them — as though they were dancing. He stepped forward, forcing her to retreat, until she was pinned with her back against the wall and his body was a hairsbreadth from being flush against hers. Her breathing had been loud thunderclaps as Hisoka lowered his mouth to her hand, his tongue snaking across the cut. Her blood stained his mouth red.

"They aren't going to wake up again — you might as well go to bed," Hisoka had whispered, glancing briefly to the animal she'd been in the middle of carving.

She'd let him lead her by the hand, up the stairs, her heart pounding in her chest. The gash had continued to bleed and both their hands were tacky with her blood as he'd begun to draw her over the threshold — into his room.

Then reason had returned to her, and Winry had pulled away. Hisoka had merely shrugged and shut the door, leaving her alone on the landing.

He'd nearly caught her practicing her Hatsu that night, and had nearly caught her in something even deeper. Edward had seen it escape her control, but he hadn't really understood what he'd witnessed. Machi would be the first, and she most certainly would understand.

Winry closed her fingers so they were flushed together, then struck Nakamura Hina's corpse. Machi's eyes widened and her spine went ramrod straight, lips parting.

"Can you reverse it?" Machi asked in a whisper after her shock had faded.

Winry nodded, laying her palm over the dead woman's body and focusing her Nen. She heard Machi's admiring exhalation even though she didn't look at her.

"It's your hands...They weren't meant to kill. They're meant to give life," Edward had said.

Silly Ed. She could do so much more than that.