Pinako had just finished setting down the cup of coffee even as the doctor had reached for it. Purposefully, he brought it to his lips, the steam gathered around his mustache, made shadows of heat. He drank it anyway, his eyes staring off towards the stairs, his mind on the two boys he had just left in that room.

They tried to transmute their mother.

Dear god...

"Del? Please pay attention before you burn your mustache off." Pinako said.

The doctor blinked and the action was enough to realize what he had been neglecting, "Ow!" He said, rubbing his lips together and pausing at the slow smile Pinako was giving him. "Don't laugh at me when I'm in pain, old woman." he said.

"I'm old enough to do as I want, Del." she replied, "Besides. You're not really hurt that bad, are you?"

The doctor set the coffee cup down. He felt the heat of the liquid through his fingers. "I wonder..." he said and then his eyes slid back to the old woman drinking her tea. "Why didn't you tell me what they had done?"

Pinako lifted her cup, drank. "You know why I didn't." She said between mouth-fill and mouth-empty. Her eyes fell on the doctor's left arm and seeing her looking, Maenz pulled it away from the table.

He stood then and walked to sink. He set his fingers down against it. He stared at those two gloved hands. "You shouldn't have called me. You should've called Thomas."

"Should I?"

The doctor sighed. "You're really a pain, you know that, Pinako?" From behind him came a small laugh. "But...you really shouldn't have called me if you knew what they had done."

"It is because of what they did that I called you."

"And didn't tell me."

"And yet you know now, don't you."

"You know that's backwards logic."

"Yes. It is." The doctor sighed, but Pinako wasn't finished, "But what isn't backwards is that those two boys are suffering now, Del. When I first saw them at my doorstep after a year of being gone..." Pinako's voice caught, "And when I recognize them at first...Edward bleeding from such terrible injuries...Al...when I realized what had happened to Al..." The doctor didn't turn and Pinako's voice remained where it was, the edge of an experience which even she could barely grasp, "I didn't want to believe it. They are idiots, Del. You know that...but...to me...to Winry..."

The doctor sighed again, but he was smiling now.

"I understand, Pinako. We all love those children, ever since they were born..." He paused, gazed out the window. The sun was all the way up the path now, but the doctor was looking beyond it. In truth, he was looking beyond the trees, beyond the village, into a city buried in the past. He sighed and his eyes closed, "We love them very much, don't we? So much we couldn't save them..."

"Del..."

The doctor said nothing, and nor did the sun or the sky or the wind sending a breeze to blow, ineffective, against the window panes.

TBC...