Standard disclaimer applies.
IMPORTANT A/N and Warning: This drabble contains major spoilers for chapter 46 and 47 from the manga, which is currently running. This is just my take at the given situation, from Winry's point of view, sort of. The dialogues on italics are taken directly from the scanlations. If you haven't reached this point of the manga or haven't read it at all and don't want to be spoiled, DO NOT read this drabble. Replies for the last chapter's reviews will be answered in the next drabble.Without anything else to say, except many thank you's for all your wonderful reviews, read on and see you soon!

Hands
12.05.2005

Angry tears fill her eyes and run down her flushed cheeks. She's enraged. Furious at the man before her, the man who stole her most precious people; she is furious at herself, who points the gun at the man with shaky hands; and she's furious at Ed, because deceive floods her like waves.

Why? Why did this man have to take them away from her and made her so lonely?

Why? Why was she a wrack of sobs and had only gained a pair of scrapped knees?

Why? Why didn't Ed tell her sooner that he knew?

She glances at the State Alchemist once, and she can only see pain and regret in the golden orbs of his. Ed's remorseful face makes her cry harder, hard enough not to let her hear Al's full of concern, strained voice on the background calling for her, so her eyes return to the man with the scar on his face.

"Wait... Winry…" A gasp. "Don't… Not that..." she hears one of them say desperately. "Winry!" Al yells.

"Please stop, Winry!" This time, it is the eldest Elric speaking to her. But she doesn't look at him.

"Why?" she mutters, even though she is fully aware that the answer will not bring them back. "Mom and Dad…"

She holds the gun's trigger with her fingers, so tightly that even a slight move could make the metallic weapon fire. But her fingers are frozen, her hands are cold, like the tears that she's crying. Winry knows now that fate goes by that old saying, cruel to be kind. And it's been far too cruel to her. For this, she thinks, fate has a lot to do to make it up to her. She doubts it ever will.

There's an exchange of words, one in which she isn't able to participate in because her mind has gone somewhere very far, far away in her memories. Memories in which a man and a woman gently hold their daughter's hands as they walk down the small path back home, where her grandmother awaits them with a grinning face. Memories in which her mother lets her play with her rubber gloves and pretends to be her ill patient, even though the woman can't hide the smile in her lips. Memories in which her fathers brings a new pet home, it's fur soft and smooth against her fingers, and they pick a name together. Memories so distant, and yet come to her as if it had happened barely the day before.

Both Ed and Al speak to her, beg her to drop the weapon, but her body is shaking so fiercely that she clasps the object even tighter, like the flower clinging on the end of the cliff for its life.

"Don't shoot!"

And then everything is so sudden that she can barely see when Ed jumps in front of her and she finds herself staring at the red cloth of his coat. As he faces the Ishvarian, his fingers touch her hands softly, and the thought that comes to her head is that his hand is warm against her own cold one. Still, she can't drop the gun, even when she can't shoot, even if she doesn't understand it herself.

It is much later, when Ed takes her somewhere safe and that he slowly takes it away from her that she knows why.

"They're hands that let people live."

So now she will use her hands like she only knows how to. Like her parents taught her to.