For a moment, Al stood there and the doctor gazed up at him.
Through the window, the boy could see the early light of morning. He could see the rolling hills of the town. He could see his and Ed's house, just in the distance. The sun was rising, sending gold to invade every nightshadow. The sun was rising, but on the horizon was the left-over cloud from the rain the night before and that darkness was growing. A storm was coming. Al wondered distantly whether it smelled like rain.
The doctor was still staring up at him, but the look he was giving him was strange. It wasn't scared, it was studying him, it was familiar and Al had the sudden feeling the doctor had seen something like him before...but that wasn't possible...was it?
Al sighed. "We tried to transmute our mother, Doctor Maenz." Al said, "That is what we did. That is what we have done."
It wasn't what Maenz had expected them to say, but he couldn't say he was relieved to hear it. The doctor felt Ed move against his back, press his face into his neck, hiding himself. "What did you say?" The doctor said, and then again, "What did you say?" It wasn't what Maenz had expected them to say, but he couldn't help the horror he felt to hear him say it. They had tried to bring their mother back from the dead? They had tried to bring Trisha...
Al had turned from him, he was moving purposefully, despite the fact that he was missing his head. After a moment he paused and reached towards something on the ground. "We tried to do it two nights ago and this is what happened. Ed saved me... If he hadn't transmuted my soul, I would've died." Ed was shaking his head in the slope of the doctor's neck. The doctor wasn't sure what he was trying to deny. The doctor watched as Al replaced his helmet and turned two eyes like captured fireflies burning bright and red towards him. "I'm sorry."
The doctor opened his mouth, but it was then that he saw over Al's shoulder to the doorway of the room where Pinako stood regarding him with a expression too nuetral to be real. He wondered how long she had been there.
"Al..." Ed whispered, then, and the doctor realized he had been whispering it, almost like a chant.
Al was suddenly before the doctor again, and kneeling and the doctor saw Ed's good arm reaching towards his brother as he whispered his name again. It was only when he had been collected into the arms of his younger brother that the doctor stood. Pinako was watching them too, that same too-calm look on her face, her pipe drawn tightly against her lips.
"Brother?" Al asked, but Ed merely pressed his cheek against Al's and said, so soft perhaps the doctor imagined him saying it, "I'm so sorry Al...It's all my fault. It's all my fault."
The doctor watched the brothers, this crushing sight before him...
He had known those two for their entire lives.
He had delievered Ed, touched Trisha's belly, full with Al...
But now, watching them...the hulking bulk of the younger and the broken body of the older, silver and gold standing together...
He couldn't recognize them.
He turned to Pinako and it was slowly her eyes, dim and haunted, turned to him.
TBC...