Before he had become a He, he had been an It.

It came awake not knowing much of anything. It knew that it liked gingerbread and music. It also knew that it liked the look of deep emerald, and that it itself even seemed to be giving off a gentle green glow. It knew that it hated the color red. Somehow it knew that it couldn't stand the taste of either applesauce or grape juice, though it couldn't quite remember having tasted either of them before. But more than any of those things, it knew that it loved its mother. And it also knew that it was part of something much larger than itself.

You are… Envy.

"Hmm?" it asked, the word rippling over its entire being. It was only its fifth word, and with it, its knowledge and memories began to stir, some memories of being… hurt… of being… angry… of being… jealous, most of all… and suddenly it was no longer an It, but a He.

He was falling, but slowly. Drifting, really. The memories and thoughts shifted inside his head as he drifted down, and as he neared the ground he uncurled himself from his tight ball of arms and legs and stretched out his feet. He landed lightly on soft pink floor and sank into a crouch, breathing in some soft manner, studying this new world around him. His hair flopped down over one eye. He pushed it up, briefly, but it stubbornly fell back down again, so he let it stay. Eh, so be it, then.

It was red around him. He hated red, and the walls were full of it. But far down a corridor he could see a glimmer of green light and, since he had nowhere else to go and since something deep inside him felt drawn to the green, he stood up and walked towards it. The ground squished and shifted beneath him, but he never tripped. His feet seemed to know intuitively just how and where to step to keep him from stumbling.

As he walked, he began to whistle a light tune. How had he learned it? He did not know, but he rather liked the sound of it. Something seemed to flutter happily deep down inside of him. He tasted each and every note with care. Possibly he liked the music.

The green light was still so far away down the corridor. Was that strange? Yes, that was strange. He frowned and quickened his pace, even broke into a run, but the green light winked and danced and stayed infuriatingly out of reach. He ran and ran, until he found himself back in the exact same room where he had been born, and he was very lost.

He did not like that, he decided. Not at all, so he turned and charged down the corridor again. The green light taunted him from far away. He never caught it, never even came close to it, and always he ended up back in that great red room. He didn't much like that great red room.

So it went. Days might have passed. Or they might have not. There was no "day" and "night" in this world, though he was somehow aware of such concepts, and he never got tired, never ran out of energy. So he ran and ran, chasing the mysterious green light down the corridor. After all, he didn't seem to have any other purpose.

At least, not until his second Summoning.

His second Summoning came… how long after he had been born? There was no way to tell. He knew only that he was yet again chasing after his infuriating ball of light when suddenly the faint glow of green around him began to flicker up. He stopped walking and stared down at himself.

"… Huh?"

That was his sixth word, and so very similar to his fifth. The light around him continued to brighten, and suddenly he was filled with…

… a sizzling sensation. A pain, it seemed. He gasped and fell back against the wall of the corridor, banging his head on its rubbery red - er, green, now - surface. Faintly he could see the glow of the Green Light of Eternity intensify. It was pulsing, even, in time with his heartbeat, in time with his flickering glow.

Was he the light?

And then, suddenly, he was falling.

It happened so fast that he hardly had any time to process that he was falling before he stopped. He was standing upright, his fists were clenched, and that burning sensation was shooting all through him. He stood in a living room - the living room - and in front of him stood a strange man and a woman.

The woman he recognized instantly, though he didn't know how. She was his mother, with her round cheeks and soft brown eyes and the waves in her black hair, and in the briefest instant that he looked at her there came another fiery sensation over him. But this one was less of a painful feeling and more of a… pleasant one, so much so that it distracted him from the pain altogether.

Then he saw the man, and the pleasant feelings dissipated in an instant, replaced by the blazing feelings once again. He knew this man, somehow. It was one of his mother's new boyfriends - she seemed to go through them so quickly these days - and he hated him.

He hated him. This man was worse than the color red, worse than the green light that he could never catch, and he hated him with every bit of his being.

The man was touching his mother, and he hated that. No one should ever, ever touch his mother. He was the only one who should touch her, when she was giving him a gentle hug or kissing his forehead or tracing her finger across one of the scars just below his hip that his dad had given him when he was four.

You are Envy.

He said his next four words: "Let go of her!"

The man looked startled, and then amused. He did not look amused for long, however, because Envy threw himself at the man, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had no weapon, so he used his fists. He hit and hit as best as his frail little body had the capacity too, and the man slapped him back, and Envy rolled across the floor. He came up still screeching, hating the pain but unable to stop himself, and went at it again, the two of them fighting there in the living room, until the man caught a hold of Envy's shirt and it tore, and Envy blacked out.

He was falling again, and in an instant he was back in the great red room, dazed and lying on his back. There seemed to be stars far, far above him. Had there always been stars? He wasn't sure. But when he sat up he knew that something had changed, because the walls had grown a little less red and a little more green, and he could remember.

That was how his second Summoning went. After all of that it seemed silly to pursue the green light. He glowed green too, so perhaps he was the green light. But chasing the light down the corridor for all eternity seemed ridiculous somehow, and so he tucked himself away into a far corner of the great red-green room and sat quietly, staring up at the stars.

Something in him shifted after that second Summoning. There were more memories now. They floated through his head at random, and sometimes he felt that he could… See. Sometimes he Saw that living room where he had fought the man, and sometimes he Saw other places.

The emotions coursed through him too. Sometimes when he Saw he felt sad, and other times he felt pleased. He might have even laughed once. He loved when he saw his mother. But mostly he just felt alone or bored or just plain irritated with what his existence was, and more than anything he felt jealous. There was a world out there, and he wished to play in it.

He waited to be Summoned again. Day after day, perhaps. Or perhaps not. But tingling feelings ran across his body. He felt the disgust, and he felt the jealousy. It burned through him like wild horses running. Black spots clouded over his vision, and he Fell.

Before him spread out a park. There were trees full of autumn leaves, and birds sang from all directions. In front of him stood another of his mother's boyfriends, lanky and tall.

And this time, Envy was holding a rock.

"Keep your filthy hands off of her!" he shrieked, hurling the rock he held. It bounced off the man's head, and he went down to his knees without a fight, blinking in alarm. His mother yelped, and Envy Fell.

There wasn't another Summoning after that, it seemed. Not for a long while. He was alone for the most part, except that once, just once, the Green Light of Eternity came to visit him. It hovered in front of his face, and Envy knew that if he reached out for it, this time he would be able to catch it. It was a sort of key somehow, and it had big plans for him, if he would only let it lead the way.

He was reluctant to touch it, however. Though he did not like the great red room (in its defense it was growing greener now), he had found a comfortable spot to sit where he could stare down the corridor at the emerald light. He would watch it blink for all eternity, as it would and as he should. He didn't want to end all of that. And besides, he could make his own glow. He could glow green too, and showed the light as much. It vanished when he turned on his glow and returned to its blinking place at the end of the corridor.

When the fourth Summoning came, it was just like the others. The irritation, the jealousy, blah, blah. There was a boyfriend (Did his mother never learn?) Was she really so desperate, so lonely, after the way his father had left them? Envy had been glad to see his father go, he seemed to remember. His father had hurt him so many times. He remembered that, even though most of the memories tasted more like rentals or museum exhibits than entirely his own.

And then he was back. All by himself again, contained in that great red-green room with the blinking light at the end of the corridor. He always whistled, because whistling took time and keeping time kept him from going insane. That same short melody whistled over and over again. He whistled it thousands of times. It helped to keep him calm, especially when he Saw, especially when the emotions rushed over him. They did that a lot.

The fifth Summoning, though, was just a little bit different from the others. A man hugged his mother, and he was jealous. He shouted at the man, and the man turned out to be his uncle. That confused him long after he had Fallen again. But the uncle wasn't there at the sixth Summoning, and so Envy attacked the new man with relish.

"Do not hurt my mother," he snarled, defending her with his arms outstretched. She lay sprawled across the couch, drunk as she often was and oblivious to it all. "If you touch her, I willskin you to your bones."

The man paled and backed away. Envy never saw him again.

There were other Summonings. Oh yes, several times. On and off, on and off, on and off... Bouncing on the bed, rushing out to play in the rain because it looked like fun, hauling himself onto the washing machine to reach some thread so his mother could fix his shirt, curling up with her to shield himself from some nightmare he couldn't actually remember…

He had a Christmas once, when he awoke with a jolt amid warm blankets and the clock beside him said 3:21 in blaring red letters. Somehow he knew exactly what day it was, and he crept downstairs and crawled under the little Christmas tree, because that seemed right somehow. He picked up a gift wrapped in silver and set it in his lap, intending to tear it open, but something ... shoved him away, flipping him backwards into his red-green room.

He stayed there for awhile pacing and feeling rather frustrated, but he wasn't in there long. When he came back, he was hiding under the table with an entire plate of sweet-smelling cookies in his hands, and the few presents that had been beneath the tree had long been opened without him.

Those were a few of the better memories. Mostly there were just moments of… panic, for one reason or another. It was always different places when that happened, and those were often confusing since his mother sometimes wasn't there. That would scare him, when he couldn't see her, because he never knew if she was okay.

But there was the sixteenth Summoning. How much time had passed from the very first? Perhaps it had been a year. Perhaps more or perhaps less. He could never remember, because he measured time only by his whistle-cycles, and he wasn't always whistling. But now for some reason he was shirtless out in some dirty part of the city, a dark blue robe slung over his shoulders, and he was holding a sharp knife in his hand. And the man was reaching for his mother.

So Envy made a quick slash and cut off the man's fingers at the knuckles.

He despised the color red. The man screamed and withdrew, and Envy fell to his knees beside his mother. He pressed his ear against her chest.

Where was her heartbeat? Shouldn't there have been a heartbeat?

"You killed her!" he screeched at the man. The man was cradling his bleeding hand, but Envy didn't care. He snatched up his knife again. "I'll kill you!"

The blue robe fell off while he was trying to fight and, now shirtless completely, he Fell back into the great red-green room. He panicked. He screamed. He tried to attack the walls, and when he had finished he fell to the ground, staring at the chunks of red around him and thinking about how much they reminded him about the splattered blood of the man whose fingers he had cut off. He liked it better when his world was green, so he willed the walls very hard to be entirely emerald, and from then on they stayed that way for good.

Later, he Saw that his mother had only fallen into a coma. It took a long time before she woke. Twenty minutes, perhaps. Or twenty hours, or twenty days, or something else entirely. He never knew, and the not knowing drove him crazy, even with his whistle-cycles.

But at least she was alive. He cried briefly, not because her being alive was a bad thing, but because it was such a good thing. But then he stopped crying. Someone had taken hold of his mother's limp arm. A doctor.

He almost Fell then, but he didn't. Something was fighting against him, forcing him back. Somehow, Envy knew its name. This thing that was holding him back, he was called Golden. He did seem to have a sort of golden glow to him. When he was trying to hold Envy back, his whole green room took on the same golden glow. Envy still hated the color red, but he began to hate the gold too. It mocked him. Caged him, like a small squirming chicken that had yet to learn his place in the pecking order.

The golden boy, Envy thought with a bitter welt in his throat, kicking at the base of the wall with his little green foot. He's the golden boy.

Golden was holding him at bay. For whatever reason, Golden didn't want him to come out and attack the bad doctor. Golden had far more power than he did, and so Envy reluctantly settled down to wait. He waited a long time, and as he waited, he thought.

He had defended his mother. He loved his mother. He loved her so much that he had hurt that man. While he hadn't liked seeing the red blood, he was glad that he had hurt the man if it meant that he had defended his mother.

A long time passed, but things changed when finally, finally the green ball of light came to him again, and this time Envy reached out and caught it without a second thought. He… Fell. But he didn't Fall- not in the same way that he was used to. But he Fell into a different room. A room much bigger than the place where he had spent his life so far, so big that he couldn't see any walls at all. He looked around, startled all the way down to his toes, and the Green Light of Eternity slipped from his fingers. It floated off and dissipated into nothingness. He hoped it would come back for him someday.

There were… other forms. He could sense them. Restless. Moving. Envy knew all their names, though he wasn't sure exactly how he knew. A red light came from over that way. His name was Fury, and he had been here the longest - longer even than Golden.

Envy hated the red.

Then Lust, Sloth, Pride, Greed… all of those and more were mixed in with the dark blue that lurked in the opposite direction, but Lust seemed to be the one on top. Was that why his name was "Shirtless"? Probably. He wasn't red, but Envy hated him too. Lust was exactly what he had been defending his mother from his entire life.

Dodger had a different feel. Envy probed against the beating life force with his mind, puzzled, before he finally realized that she was female, like his mother. Envy waited to feel the love that he always felt when he saw his mother, but it did not come.

He decided that he hated Dodger then too, for that.

There was another one somewhere about. Deeper. Lurking, it seemed, skirting in the shadows. Envy could tell that this pale yellow-orange light was the newest. Oh, it had been around out here far longer than he had been, but it felt the newest nonetheless. His name was Seeker, Envy thought. Envy hated the other forms and was prepared to hate this one too, once he found a reason. But he couldn't seem to get a read on Seeker. Seeker was too new, too low, too faint. His presence seemed to ripple and always move.

Was he approaching?

Envy tensed up his shoulders at the thought. He had been alone so long. He had never met any of these life forces before- Only his mother and, vaguely, the golden boy too, in his distant golden way. What would happen if they met up? Could they coexist? Or would one of them suddenly just-

"G'day there, mate."

Envy's response was instantaneous. He spun around and hurled himself at his attacker. Seeker was faster, though, and although he had managed to get so close he had not been close enough to tackle. Instead, Envy smacked against the ground with a grunt, chest stinging, and when he looked up he saw that Seeker stood above him, one palm coddling an orange ball of light. The other palm was held out to him.

"Sorry there, skip," he said cheerfully, his arm still outstretched. "Din't mean ta startle ya like that, though I can see how I did. I'll try an' be a li'l more careful in the future then, eh?"

Envy did not take Seeker's hand. He stood and backed a step away, regarding him warily. Even though Seeker was standing right there, Envy still couldn't get a good read on him, on who he was. There simply wasn't enough of Seeker to do that. Seeker mostly hadn't even filled into his solid color yet- he was just a translucent shape that flickered with spasms of yellow-orange energy every once in awhile, though this didn't seem to bother him in the least.

Envy decided that he hated Seeker for all of that. Sneaking up on him, not letting him get a read. No manners.

"I see you made it out a' your corridor at last, then," Seeker continued in that cheerful way, withdrawing his hand. He didn't seem to mind that Envy hadn't taken it. "We've all been wonderin' when you would. Been bloody ages since that day you became more than just a splinter, it has, though I s'pose I really can't be exactly sure. So hard to tell in this world, eh? But," he said, taking a step away and tilting his head, "I can see you've been out Topside more'n I have, dingo- Look at you, ya've got your color there and everythin'."

Envy just… stared at him. He didn't know how else to react. Between his thrown-back shoulders and tipped-up chin and cocky smile, Seeker seemed like the kind of person who would hurt his mother if given half the chance, and Envy wanted to throw himself at him for that, but somehow he was stuck in place. His arms tingled. He could only gaze.

"Took me ages to catch my li'l key out the door right here," Seeker laughed, holding up his orange ball of energy. A Light of Eternity. "Din't quite figure out that I had a' dim down my flicker for it to come right up ta me, eh? Well, I never was intended ta be the humble one. Anywho, name's Manitoba Smith. And you are?"

Envy continued to stare at him, hairs prickling.

"You are?" Manitoba asked again. He was still smiling. Why was he still smiling?

Envy, said his mind.

"Malice," said his tongue, and that caught him completely off guard. Where had that come from? The name hardly seemed to be his own. Had the golden boy made him say that, somehow? He went on guard again.

"Mal, eh?" Manitoba's smile seemed to slip just a little. Good - he was glad to see it go. He didn't like the way that Manitoba was always smiling. "Well then, Mal, welcome ta the family, as they say. The others are all flittin' 'round here somewhere." He chuckled and gestured to the vast empty world with his free hand. "They'll come about when they warm up to ya, 'specially when Mike makes it back from above. He always does, no matter how fond he is of wearing that bloody crown. You'll want to meet Mike, I s'pect."

Mal blinked once, and then blinked again for good measure. He had hated the great red room, but he was almost starting to wish for it back. When Manitoba spoke to him - when Manitoba was even near him - it made Mal's skin crawl and his tongue dry out and his throat tighten up. Manitoba's voice rang against his ears like falling hammers on a sheet of iron.

"That's a nice baby flicker you've got on ya there," said Manitoba with a nod Mal's way. "But don't you worry 'bout it- it'll strengthen up in its own time sooner or later. All a' the others did. You and I'll catch up to the rest of them buggers one a' these days, you mark my spittle."

"How…" It had been so long since Mal had used his voice that he had to try hard to say the word. "How did you get here?"

"Why, Mike created me," Manitoba said in surprise, like he'd expected it to be quite obvious, really. With his free hand he reached out and poked Mal in the chest. "He created you too, I s'pect, straight out a' thin air, he did. Don't think he meant too, but, well, here we are now, eh?"

Mal's hand snapped out. He grabbed Manitoba's near-transparent wrist and squeezed his fingers around it until his color dimmed from orange to brown and finally, finally, that smile disappeared from Manitoba's face.

"Don't. Touch. Me." Mal growled out, and then released him. Manitoba spent a few seconds massaging his wrist, his ball of yellow-orange light still tucked beneath his arm.

"He created you too."

The golden boy. His name was Mike. Mal looked down at his own small hands, turning them over and back again.

Mike created me.

The concept irked him deeply. If Mike had created him, then why did he keep him locked up in that great room, that great room that glowed golden when Mike had tried to press him in? It was always so irritating to have to sit there and concentrate on switching the walls back to his beloved green again.

He hated Mike. Mike was just like every one of his mother's stinking boyfriends- and his father, too. It was very vague and misty, but when Mal screwed up his eyes, he thought he could remember that his father had smacked him around or sometimes kept him locked up in the basement closet for days on end and done all sorts of things, back before he'd even earned his color. His father had hurt his mother too, which was especially unpleasant. Rude.

And then here was Mike, acting just like that. Mal hated him.

"Well." Manitoba's smile had come back, and although it seemed a little strained he still cheerfully tipped the brim of his fedora at Mal as he backed away. "See ya 'round the block, mate. Play around with yer flicker, get yaself adjusted. We'll come by an' check up on ya again later, eh?"

The thought of seeing him again - of seeing more of them - made Mal bristle, and he curled his lip. Well then. Maybe he'd just go somewhere they couldn't find him. Somewhere high, if possible, where he would automatically have the upper hand. A washing machine would do. A fridge would be better. A tower would just be fantastic.

Mal had never been anywhere so… big. Sure, he had been to the park once after a Fall, and outside at his uncle's wedding reception, and those times in the street and in the rain, but those had all been brief visits to a world where he wasn't truly welcome. Now he was in this new world. Forever.

It felt empty and cold and made the hairs on his arms rise up again.

Mal whistled as he walked. He kept his eyes narrow and searching, he kept his ears alert. No one was going to sneak up on him like that again.

And then, suddenly, Mike arrived.

Mal didn't know how he knew, but he could suddenly feel Mike's golden presence sweep over him. He stopped walking and stiffened up. The notes of his song abruptly dropped away.

If he could sense Mike, then surely Mike could sense him too. The thought of confronting him filled Mal with both excitement and terror. Mike was the golden boy. He held a lot of power over this world, and Mal had only just arrived here. He wasn't sure if he was ready for a fight.

So he stood there, hardly blinking, hardly breathing, and when he sensed Mike's footsteps coming his way he turned to meet him. Mike's flicker didn't just glow- it glowed, electric gold (No real surprise there). Mal was expecting Shirtless and Fury to be with him, maybe, and Dodger and Manitoba too, but Mike was alone. What sort of king walked without a guard?

A stupid king, that's who.

Mike had a condescending smile and huge, shifty eyes. A gap had taken up root between his front teeth, just like the one in Mal's mouth. He didn't look like much of a king, with his chubby cheeks and hair all ruffled like a puff of grass and a few faint dabs of freckles along his nose that his glow almost drowned out entirely. Perhaps what bothered Mal the utmost about Mike, though, was that Mike seemed… hardly any older than he was. In fact, aside from him, Mike was the youngest of their entire tiny community. Why should he get to be king?

"Hi there." Mike stuck out his hand, beaming in his sunny-bright fashion. "My name's Mike. I'm, uh, sort of in charge around here, actually. Well, technically I'm filling in for You-Know-Who, until he decides to come back someday, although I really hope he doesn't. Chester told me that our green piece had just showed up, so I thought I'd come and greet you personally. What's your name? I'm Mike."

Mal didn't know what to do. He was frozen, just like he had been frozen when Manitoba had first spoken to him.

Fear.

That's what it was, keeping him stiff like this, and Mal hated that. He wasn't afraid of Mike. Just to prove that to himself, he drew his shoulders up around his ears and kept his arms straight down by his sides.

Mike, still smiling, reached out and took Mal's hand with his own. His touch sent a million prickles shooting through Mal's nerves and, out of impulse, Mal drew back his fist and slammed the golden boy square in the jaw.

He spun around and bolted into the darkness before Mike had even hit the ground.