Part 3 in the three brothers series. Sequel to I'm not your son and The boys with golden eyes.
Envy can't find his brothers. They usually met by the river but they were not there he had waited for hours before shifting into a generic male form heading over their house. The lamps are all out, there is no wood in the fireplace, there is dust and cobwebs everywhere. Ed and Al are not there, nor are they are not playing in the fields,they are not at the school house, or Rockbell's automail shop. Envy is worried.
He wanders around Risembool trying to find them until finally he spots two golden heads. He runs up to them. Then he realises where they are. Its a cemetery.
Ed and Al are asleep curled up together but shivering still, tears on their cheeks. He reads the grave stone TRISHA ELRIC. Envy had no affection for Trisha but he is sad she has died, now his brothers are orphans.
Envy sighs not wanting to leave them here where they will get cold and sick. He picks them up one over each shoulder, they do not wake up which shows how tired they must be. They are lighter than they should be, Ed who has always been small cannot afford to lose weight and Alphonse who has always been more heavily built is noticeably thinner.
Envy carries them back to the house. He puts Ed and Al in bed together and pulled that bed in front of a fire which he lit.
He decides they need to eat and tries to make something hot, then he realises he doesn't know how to cook, raised on red stones he's never eaten human food. He heats up some water and throws in some random vegetables. He's seen people make soup before he figures it will do to warm them up.
Alphonse stirs first, he opens his eyes and looks around in panic he shakes Edward awake. Edward jumps up.
"It's ok its only me" Envy tells them.
"Envy I..." Tears fill Ed's eyes and Envy finds himself holding the two boys. He's only known them for two years but they have changed him. With everyone else he is as cruel as ever but with Ed and Al it's different.
The boys sob. He wants to take them with him...he can't he knows he can't he knows what Dante would do to them. He can't protect them.
He feeds them and finally they stop shivering he manages to tease information out of them, how one day they came home and found their mother on the floor, how she got sicker and sicker. How they wrote letters to everyone in Hohenheim's study hoping to contact him, it was all their mother wanted...but he didn't come. They tell him about the Rockbell's Winry, the little girl he sometimes sees with Ed and Al and her grandmother Pinako, how they feed them and care for them. Envy is relieved they will not be abandoned.
He visits more and more regularly, Ed and Al live alone but with the help of the Rockbell's, they go to study alchemy under a woman named Izumi. A woman who Envy noticed can perform alchemy by clapping her hands, another idiot like Hohenheim. But he says nothing.
A few days after Ed's tenth birthday Envy visits he brings the constantly hungry Ed some sweets and an alchemy book. He steals them from Dante's library they were Hohenheim's since he is gone his sons should have them Envy has no interest so he gives them to his brothers. Ed smiles at Envy he seems happier than he has been since his mother died, even though it has now been almost three years. Envy voices this and Ed laughs and tells him he is going to fix everything. Envy doesn't ask what he means, he assumes he means he's going to become a powerful alchemist and provide for himself and Alphonse.
Later he will wish he had told Ed who he really is, late her will wish he confronted Izumi, later he will wish he asked Ed what he meant by fixing everything. But it will be too late.
The next time he goes to see Edward and Alphonse he opens the door to their house no one is there, he searches the rooms, when he opens the study of that bastard Hohenheim he sees the room is disordered, the desk is pushed against the wall. There are chalk markings on the floor, there is a rotting corpse in the middle and blood everywhere.
Ed's last words to him echo in his head "I'm going to fix everything." If physically capable of it Envy would have been sick. Ed, and he is sure it was Ed not Al who did this. Is just like the bastard that abandoned them.
He tells Dante what Ed, and possibly Al have done. He doesn't tell her for the past five years he has been visiting them as their brother.
Dante laughs "I expected this ever since I heard she had died, they are the sons of Hohenheim after all."
