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The best recipes endure through the generations. The Rockbell family made their stew long before Pinako Rockbell was ever born. They’ll do so long after she is nothing but a fond memory of her descendants. She’d like to think that she’s improved upon the old recipe somewhat in her own time, she certainly can't take all the credit. Nor would she want to!
She may be getting on in years herself, but she's not dead yet. So long as she takes care of her own body, so long as she rests when she needs to and doesn't overwork herself like she did in her youth, she'll stick around for a good while longer.
It's a good thing that she can, too. She's used to taking care of little Winry while her parents are off saving lives in Ishval. With Hohenheim vanished and Trisha succumbed to plague, the least she can do is keep an eye on the Elric boys—two eyes, as often as she can spare them.
Sometimes, these kids make her wish she had three eyes. But right now, two is enough, because whatever else little Edward and Alphonse Elric get up to when unsupervised, they're here right now. Alphonse is happily chatting away with Winry while they wait, while Edward is staring sullenly, silently, at the wall. His expression is one that no child of that age should ever have—though no child should have to lose both of their parents so young, either.
Pinako has an idea. She clears her throat. Three pairs of wide eyes suddenly are upon her, gold and blue.
"Edward, would you mind getting me some potatoes?" She nods to the bag laying beside him, filled to bursting with potatoes from the market yesterday, and watches him turn, noticing for the first time that the bag is there.
For a second, Pinako thinks he might say no. It won’t be much of an issue if he does—she'll ask Alphonse and Winry to help her instead, and once Edward sees his brother and best friend helping surely he'll do so as well. But slowly—silently—he nods, hauling himself to his feet.
"How many...?" His small voice comes out rough and raspy. He's been crying recently, though Pinako knows better than to point that out.
Pinako considers this. "One for each of us should do nicely, I think. Pick whatever ones you like. Winry, dear, could you bring me the potato peeler?”
"Yes!" Winry chirps, racing across the room to the drawer that Pinako stores most of her kitchenware in... and pulling open the one directly next to it. She giggles, shuts it, and opens the correct one on her second attempt. "This is it, right?"
"That it is," Pinako says warmly, patting her granddaughter on the head. "Thank you. Alphonse, do you remember what my stew pot looks like?"
"It's... the biggest one, right?" Alphonse asks timidly.
"It is," she confirms. "Could you bring it over?"
Her stew pot is the oldest pot she has. It was her mother's stew pot before it was hers, but mothers in general are something of a sore spot for the Elric boys right now, so she won’t share that anecdote anytime soon.
"I can do that!" Alphonse chirps, as Pinako retrieves her knife and continues chopping the beef into bite-size chunks. She's finished with that and moved onto the onion by the time Edward comes over with what must be the four biggest potatoes of the lot in his arms.
"Where do you want them?" Edward asks.
Pinako nods to the countertop beside her cutting board, where Winry's set down the potato peeler. "Do you know how to use this?"
"...No," he admits, looking down.
Well, that won't do at all. Pinako sets her knife carefully out of reach of any small children and turns her attention to said peeler.
"I'll show you how to do it, and once you think you can do it by yourself I'll watch until you feel confident," Pinako promises Edward, picking up the peeler and the smallest of his potatoes. "You hold the peeler like this, see? Personally, I think the skin adds to the flavor, so I just peel any bad spots or eyes."
Edward nods attentively, watching as she works with that one.
"What else do we need, Grandma?" Winry asks, bouncing on her feet. "We've got the pot! Stew pot for the stew! Stew pot, stew pot!"
"Stew pot, stew pot," Alphonse chants. Edward joins him.
Pinako cracks a smile. "Winry, would you and Alphonse put in the meat and the onions?"
"We can do that!"
"What then?" Winry asks, curiosity shining in her eyes as Alphonse starts to do what Pinako had asked.
"Then, I am going to need you both to be very, very careful... just a moment." She turns back to Edward. "Do you think you've got the rest of these on your own?"
Edward nods, and she crosses the kitchen to join the other kids. So far, this is progressing slower than her stew normally would, but there isn't exactly a time limit to making it. And—keeping herself busy helped, when her mother died.
The Elric boys look the happiest that they have since theirs did. Maybe she should find easy things for them to help with more often. Maybe that'll help in the ways she's never quite been sure how to, and maybe it won't, but it certainly can't hurt to try.
Pinako is trying, really. She’d like to think that she's a decent enough parent, that Yuriy had turned out alright and that she'd helped somewhat in that. He'd turned out too alright, too highly principled. He'd been a hero, in the end; a hero that would never come home. Neither would dear Sarah, who might as well have been her own daughter.
Now, Winry has only her grandmother, and Pinako is starting to think that she's a much worse grandparent than she is a parent. This is not just because of Winry.
She'd thought that it would be good for Edward and Alphonse to get out of the house, to follow in their father's footsteps as an alchemist; she hasn't seen hide nor hair of Hohenheim since the year that Trisha died. If she had to guess she'd say it's because her old friend genuinely doesn't know how long he has been gone. He doesn't know that Trisha is dead, that Yuriy and Sarah were murdered.
He doesn't know what his sons did.
Really, Pinako herself isn't sure what the boys did. She knows that it involved alchemy. She knows that it involved their mother, because of how both brothers immediately stiffen whenever the conversation veers a little too close to her, because of how quickly Edward will change the subject and how Alphonse just retreats into himself. She knows that Edward lost his arm and his leg, that Alphonse lost his entire body and is using Hohenheim's old suit of armor as a full body prosthetic.
(Pinako hopes it will be a temporary replacement, but—she doesn't know enough about alchemy to know for sure. If this is what its results were, she doesn’t want to know anything more.)
There's not much she can do to help, anymore. What she can do is pour her feelings into her stew; her worries and her fears, and her love for the three kids who are infinitely more foolish than Yuriy ever was at their age.
"Edward," Pinako begins.
"Leave me alone," Edward snaps, and she does.
"Winry," Pinako tries, twice at that. It's not that Winry is deliberately ignoring her, but the glare she is leveling in Edward's direction evidently takes precedent over anything else, including responding to—or even hearing—her own grandmother.
"Huh? Sorry, what?" Winry asks after the third time she calls her name.
Pinako shakes her head. "Never mind, dear. Alphonse?"
The suit of armor standing in the corner raises its—his—head. Golden pinpricks stare out at her from the eye holes.
"...What is it?" Alphonse asks.
"Do you think you could help me cut some carrots?"
Alphonse blinks at her. "I-I don't know... I'm not used to being... like this..."
Pinako sets down her kitchen knife. That suit of armor really is massive, far taller than Alphonse himself was— is . This poor boy.
"That's okay," Pinako says gently.
"I can get you some carrots to cut...?" Alphonse says hopefully. Desperately.
"That would be very helpful, thank you." As Alphonse clanks his way over to the carrots, Pinako risks a look at Edward and Winry again. Neither of them will be helping her today, most likely—and she won't begrudge them that. Winry is still grieving, and Edward...
Oh, Edward. Whatever happened in that house, he most certainly blames himself.
The house feels far emptier with the boys gone. The kitchen, too. It has been a long time since Pinako was able to get all three of her grandkids, honorary or otherwise, to help her make stew—at least at the same time. Still, even when Edward was sulking too much to be much help, or Winry was too busy tinkering away, or Alphonse was too self-conscious about getting in the way—all three of them always found time to be present even if they weren't actively helping.
Now, though... now the Elric brothers have gone off to join the military. Now only Winry remains by Pinako's side. Winry, who without any prompting from Pinako sets the stew pot to simmer and gets to chopping vegetables. Pinako raises an eyebrow at this before, humming to herself, she makes for her spice rack. It's reasonably well-stocked, at the moment, though she'll need to get more salt at the market sooner rather than later. Maybe she'll talk Winry into going with her, this time.
Maybe she'll be able to, this time.
"You miss them already, don't you?" Pinako says at last.
Winry considers this. She cuts a hunk off of the cabbage with rather more force than is strictly necessary, chops that up, and dumps it into the pot.
It's only once Winry has finished with the old kitchen knife that she says, "Not that much."
"Hm," Pinako says, putting all the skepticism she can into the single syllable.
Staring at the simmering stew, her granddaughter sighs, and she says, "Maybe I do. They're... gone, just like that. Just like Mom and Dad..."
Pinako sighs, crosses the room, and takes Winry into her arms. Den comes slinking in too, as if she knows that Winry needs the comfort. Den isn't allowed in the kitchen and she knows it, but Pinako will let her slide, just this once.
(Den being there makes the kitchen feel at least a little less empty.)
"They'll come back," Pinako promises, because their boys had better.
The stew simmers. Winry and Edward are at each other's throats again, despite this being one of the rare moments that the boys have returned home, because they only ever return home when Ed's automail needs fixing. Alphonse is a lot better at complex tasks in the suit of armor than he used to be; he did almost all the heavy lifting today, and has been stirring the stew for several minutes now.
He stops.
"What if I never get my body back?" Alphonse whispers, barely audible even to Pinako over the stove. Edward doesn't hear him. Winry doesn't hear him.
Pinako does. She can't answer him.
Four bowls, for the first time in five long years. There's plenty of stew to go around even after she's filled each one, plenty for leftovers tomorrow. Edward and Winry are arguing over... something involving his automail. Alphonse is humming to himself, petting Den and reveling in the fact that he can again.
It's Edward who happens to glance over and ask, "Stew's ready?"
"Stew's ready," Pinako confirms. "I know you're impatient—"
"And who do you think I got it from?!"
Pinako just laughs as she passes him a bowl. Her family is more whole than it has been in years.