A/N: This fic is one I have adopted off of Violetlight and Veltzeh from a comment Violetlight made on Veltzeh's fic 'Forged in Ice 2' when she was asking people to provide explanations for a 'Noodle incident' that occurred before Forged in Ice takes place, and I really liked it so they've given me permission to run with the idea. Wonder if that makes this a gift fic…? Anyway, here it is~

Hiromu-Sensei owns FMA, of course.

Whispers in the Dark

Feb. 1780

Pride had come to quite enjoy staying in the tunnel, well, enjoy wouldn't be the right word, rather he had become so accustomed to it that some part of him managed to convince the rest that he enjoyed it. If he tried hard enough he could almost believe it. He huddled close to the side, curled towards his little blue lantern, half bathed in its pale light, while his shadow grew dark and thin, scattered for miles behind him. It could be considered sleep, he supposed, not true sleep, but without this substitute his consciousness would crack, split and divided between his container and shadow, and it was far more convenient to allow his container to rest than risk passing out. Besides, the peace and quiet here soothed him, and at his fractured thoughts that dared to consider leaving, Father's words echoed in his head and he thought better of it. He wouldn't disobey Father's orders. He needed nothing else…

His shadow, that trailed Sloth from an acceptable distance without a sound, sputtered at a sudden disconnect between it and Pride's container, dissolved, and Pride jolted awake with an undignified gasp at the recoil. His hands dug clumps from the wall, until he had clambered to his feet.

The few remaining blobs of wax still burned in their own wistful way, while Pride fumbled in the unstable light, but caught sight of them and froze. He understood now, and with a calmer, if still rather irritated sigh, Pride found the door latch and replaced the candle as best he could without being able to see, his container's eyes no better than a human's in complete darkness. Soon enough Pride managed to drag a splinter across the paper Father had given him with the quick, efficient skill that came with thirteen years of practice, and a quaint little flame formed. The flame was disposed of as soon as he'd lit his lantern, leaving the one around his head empty. He didn't need it.

He remembered now, where he was, though most of the stretches of tunnel looked the same. It wasn't that far, when he thought about it, given the distance it took to reach the smaller room that held the entrance to the tunnel the tunnel itself passed closer to Father's room than the entrance ever did. From this spot Pride could, if he tried, and if he listened for it and willed himself to feel it, sense the deep thrumming of Father's power pulsing beneath him. If he were to hazard a guess it felt about six hundred and fifty feet away from Father's room, that wasn't very much distance between them at all…that wasn't far enough for him to miss it, or miss him, or Lust or…he wasn't so weak.

"Oh, there you are!" Pride, while he pulled the lantern to his side again, turned his head towards the voice, curious almost, at a sound that wasn't the rumble of moving soil or Sloth's lethargic murmurings. "What'cha doing so far in here?"

At the inanity of such a ridiculous question Pride allowed himself the quirk of a drowsy scowl to form in the corner of his mouth. These days he always chose to rest somewhere like this while he supervised Sloth; deep enough that he hadn't the temptation to sneak away in his more isolated moments when the cold would gnaw at him, but not far enough that he felt too detached from Father's room. Pride thought it the perfect place from which to monitor Sloth, and no one else could tell him otherwise. At the first signs of the roaming figure in the shadow coming closer Pride's posture changed in an instant, becoming rigid and dignified once again, and he leant against the tunnel's wall with an air of purpose about it, rather than being a simple place for him to sleep. Even somewhere like here he had to maintain the correct hierarchy among his siblings.

"And where else should I be, Envy?" None of Pride's mild irritation seeped out into his voice, calm as his androgynous sibling strode into the light, plonking down on his haunches with his usual grin that just might split his face.

Using 'he' was not correct, Pride knew that. Pride was quite aware that Envy had been born sexless, as he was created to be, a mix of both, but no matter how hard he tried to voice the correct 'it' in his head, that persuasive part of him outright refused to accept anyone but Lust sibling-wise to be anything other than male in his eyes. Lust was female and everyone else must be male, that was how it was, how it had always been. That stubborn, disrespectful, shameful part had won despite how incorrect it was, so male Envy remained. It felt better this way, somehow.

"I don't know, I jus' thought you'd either be up top, or right there with Sloth, y'know?"

Pride liked to think he preferred to be in the tunnel itself, the floor was softer even if it made his clothes dusty and it helped him work in a more efficient manner by making the transition from his container into his shadow less jarring. Of course, he was used to sleeping on the hard stone of Father's Lair, and thought it much better than any bed his weaker siblings could be provided with. Father slept on stone just fine and so would he, once he was permitted to leave, at least.

"Why are you here?"

"Oh, I came to tell you that Father wants you to come back, so you can get Sloth's food."

That made sense; every few weeks or so Pride would venture home to collect food for Sloth. Though Pride needed but a little food every few days in his container requiring less to sustain itself, Sloth was far larger, and by extension required much more food, lest he squander the souls in his Stone by starving. Pride's twitchy scowl twitched further at the impudence of Envy's sudden appearance though, if he had come here just to tell him that.

"Why was it so difficult for you to bring it to me to take to Sloth?"

"It's not like we're even that far away, Pride, it's right there at the beginning of the tunnel!" Envy waved in the general direction to his side, though in their small, watery bubble of light Pride could see nothing to so much as hint that it was as close as Envy said.

Pride didn't bother with answering, if Envy was going to be stubborn so could he, and Envy could wait a little while to avoid losing grace with Father, at least until he had calmed from being severed from his shadow before. Envy knew the hierarchy well enough it seemed, saying nothing for the time being, pushing himself up again and pacing a little, back and forth, to and fro in front of him. Still calming himself as the minutes passed Pride weaved a thin wisp of a string-like shadow between his fingers, shaping in it in a mock cat's cradle, just moving his fingers around it, sometimes loosing a quiet breath of a hum. Soon enough though, Envy caved.

"God, this is so boring, Pride. What do you do here all day?"

Pride looked up, jerking his hands apart and breaking his thread of a shadow.

"I am here on Father's orders; there is no need for me to do anything that does not relate to monitoring Sloth. In my spare moments, however, I find other things to occupy myself with. I doubt you have the capacity to spend your time alone wisely."

"Like what?"

"Like…like…" Envy should have known better than to question him, especially with such trivial things, and yet Pride could not ignore the query. Pride needed to answer, to prove that he had plenty of things to do down here, that he wasn't lonesome or miserable, even if only to convince himself that it might be true. "Riddles."

"Oh, really?" Envy's irritated frown twisted into an intrigued, if mischievous, normal sized smile. "Tell us one then."

He should have seen this coming, same old prying Envy. Pride had no riddles to tell, at least none he could remember from his naïve, blurry youth, and even then they weren't worth repeating. It was so feeble a concept he had grasped that Pride didn't even want to admit that he had said such a thing, looking away, stringing words together in his mind, and forming a haphazard excuse for a riddle with it, speaking aloud despite himself.

"Th…This thing with… mouth yet no stomach to fill

Is coated in darkness… and an icy chill

With its thick wooden teeth in twisting… stems

Lures humans away with the… promise of gems."

Pride thought it very easy a riddle, too easy and obvious. Though he had thought it up on the spot, so maybe he considered it simple because he knew the answer. Pride watching him, Envy didn't stop his pacing or make any attempt at answering. "Well? What is it?"

"Eh? You wanted me to guess? I just asked for an example, I don't wanna guess it."

Pride almost scoffed at Envy's laziness, when it was Envy's fault for asking him about what he did in his spare time (no matter how much of a lie that was), but saw no point in trying to argue.

"Fine. It was a cave, where humans mine for diamonds and other precious stones."

"A mine? Mines don't have teeth."

"Those were the tree roots that grow through the cave's ceiling." After beginning to explain himself and the intricacies of his riddle Pride was becoming quite pleased with it after all, it at least made sense, and that was good enough for something he would never speak of again.

But of course, Envy had to be awkward and stubborn.

"Human mines go too far down; there are no tree roots that deep." He said it with the utmost conviction and surety, as if he actually knew anything about it.

"What do you know of mining, or digging for that matter?"

"I know enough. As a matter of fact we've got a gold vein, that I found, all lined up for later in some little forest-y village. Father wants us to tell one of the corrupt generals about it sometime, to keep them interested. So, when I went to that mountain… cave… thing, there was gold but no tree roots, Pride." Envy nodded along with his own conclusion, looking quite pleased with himself, thinking he had bested him, as if he could.

Saying nothing, Pride pushed himself up and padded over to the large mound of dirt and soil his shadow had collected from Sloth's digging that day. He would get rid of it all later on. Pride focused, summoned his shadows and folded two pairs of little dark hands flat against his own, then melded them together, fingers ending in sharp tips akin to Greed's carbon shield. Though his shadows had no joints, moulded around his container's jointed fingers he could bend them with ease, and he pushed away the first layer of dirt. With sharp and concise swipes Pride began rummaging through the soil, shadows preventing his sleeves from dirtying, until he found what he was looking for, the shadows fading away as soon as he'd finished tugging it out from the pile.

"I found it this morning." He held it out where Envy could see it- the pointed edge of a tree root that had been protruding out of the tunnel's ceiling, that his shadow's teeth had snagged on earlier, before he chewed through it with a snap of their nonexistent jaws. "See, there are tree roots, even so deep where Sloth is digging, sometimes." Pride would be lying if he said he didn't relish even the tiniest bit as Envy's self satisfied smirk began to droop, twitching up into his annoyed frown, to be proven so unequivocally wrong. It was his own fault.

"Well…whatever. It's not like this is a normal tunnel anyway." Envy almost hissed it, scoffing and throwing himself back against the tunnel wall. The whole section shook with Envy's weight, a tremor running up and down Pride's container as he stumbled around to keep his footing, throwing the piece of tree away back into the pile. A small chunk of ceiling fell away as a plume of dust and dirt, landing on Envy's head, painting his hair a sootier brown. While Envy sputtered and dusted himself off with frantic pats Pride couldn't resist a soft smirk and a quieter snicker at his vain, pathetic antics. Below that, though, something flitted, something warm and wistful, something he hadn't felt in a long time, so long ago he could barely recall it.

"Don't you dare laugh, Pride!" Before Pride could concoct a suitable retort to put Envy back into his place, a large clump of dirt, this time in a compact ball, came barrelling towards him. As quick as thinking his shadows compressed, tightening his container's skin until he sank a good four inches shorter, the clump flying just over, stray bits of it catching in his own hair as it flew by, and he popped back up into his correct size within the space of a second, still smirking.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Envy called to him, something wavering under his voice too. "Fine, I can cheat too y'know!" Envy slouched, red sparks dancing over his skin. He wouldn't dare change into his True form here, he simply would not fit, he would destroy the tunnel and Father would punish him, oh yes Father would punish him. Envy only seemed to shrink, his red stained silhouette smaller now. Was Envy going to steal his form again, as he had all those years before when he was born, to be so disrespectful as to imitate him? Once the scarlet sparks subsided all that remained was a…shorter version of Envy. Same old Envy with the too-long hair that fell in strands and clothes too short to be sensible, everything the same except for his height. The Envy if Envy was a child, though Envy could never be such a thing, no more possible than Pride could ever be, and yet…

Pride didn't move an inch, something jittering inside him, that fluttery thing growing bolder, that part that had been so alone for so long… he longed for…something, exactly what he could not tell, but he felt that before him was an opportunity for that something, and one that he might never have again. With an almost fearful reluctance, Pride indulged it, just this once, and his piercing, cold violet eyes softened, a brighter glimmer within them, shining in the candlelight. His tight, unyielding posture fell slack, and he coiled in on himself with a darkly delightful, scheming, yet somehow not malicious smirk that didn't carve harsh lines in his face, while the shadows poured beneath his feet in thick oily puddles.

Half expecting to be punished Envy had frozen too, watching, until, once the favour was returned and a perfect sphere of dirt struck his pudgier stomach, Envy understood.

Annoyance and abhorrence melted away into mischief and playfulness, so sudden that it was impossible to say when such had occurred, but it didn't matter. Pride scurried off, casting aside his papers and splinters and bottles of chemicals from his pockets, while Envy stole his lantern and forced the shadows back, using the pile of unused soil to hide behind. Pride's shadow chewed lumps from the pile, rolling them into hand sized spheres between its teeth and giving them to him in a continuous loop, efficient, but it was those Pride clawed from the ground himself and formed with his container's hands that he liked the best.

A clod at least a foot in diameter got sliced in two by the flick of his shadow through the air, spattering rocks and smaller clods over his knees as it hit the ground and crumbled, and through the dust cloud that followed Pride could see the green of Envy's oversized claws peeking out from his diminishing earthy shield. Cheating too, indeed. Dirt had caught under his nails, in his hair, all over his legs and arms and formed a filthy brown tint in his clothes, but Pride didn't mind it, too enthralled to even take notice, his only thoughts on where he should next choose to aim.

There were no words, their endless trills of laughter just reverberated throughout the tunnel, so pure the way it pierced the air maybe Sloth could hear them, and Pride found himself not caring if he did.

The lantern's glass, plastered with dirt, grew dim and the shadows faded mid-production, all of Pride's prepared clods falling to the floor, breaking apart. While Pride bent forward to scoop up a replacement, a normal sized one from Envy hit the top of his head, knocking his headlamp down over his eyes. In between failing to rub the dirt from his eyes and pull his headlamp back up, Pride could only flail and throw blindly into the darkness, before he overbalanced and fell over. The misshapen blob soared in a low arc through the air, and hit Envy square in the face, and he, too, lost his footing, landing with a much heavier thud. It was best they think it a draw.

A few minutes later Pride had crawled along, coming to lean against his barely there lump of soil, and pulled up his headlamp, it pushing all his hair up with it. Envy perched a few feet away, still in his smaller shape, still trying to catch his breath too, and pointed at him with a grin.

"You've got mud on you."

"So do you." Pride chirped with a weak, tired laugh, but then Envy began sparking, all the dust and dirt covering him falling away. Pride was not best pleased, and flashed him an exaggerated, angry pout. "Cheater." As soon as the immature, teasing insult had left his mouth a sharp, sudden spasm tore through him, and the selfish indulgence of such shameful, embarrassing behaviour began to dawn on him, and it almost hurt. Such childishness… never again. How could he have even let it happen?

"Look," Envy was none the wiser, and merely pointed to his headband, then motioned towards the way Pride's headlamp had pushed his hair up. "heh, now we look even more the same."

Envy's trivial comments were disgusting now, but that part of him still bleated sadly, it was over and it was something he'd never have again, and Pride could do nothing to stop it. He could only muster a nod. Already the keen frigidity began to seep back into his eyes, and the tense, stiff inflexibility to bleed into how he sat, but at least that burning glint of unbearable loneliness had faded away.

"That was…fun…" It came out as more of a yawn, and within a few seconds Envy had tipped backwards, and said nothing more. Pride murmured something in agreement; he couldn't allow himself any more than that, his drowsy smile twitching.

Lying down in his soft pile of dirt in his messy, dishevelled clothes, and before the smile could disappear completely, Pride curled up and drifted off to sleep too, and dreamt of their disgraceful, ever so wonderful little game that had been all too brief.

When Pride woke up Envy was gone, and Pride thought nothing of it. Why should he? It had been Envy's job to tell him about Sloth's food, and he had done just that, so there no reason for him to remain where he was not wanted. The last few embers burned bright in his lantern, but all his paper and splinters were gone.

With his usual poison-lined scowl, Pride pushed himself to his feet and retied his loose green ribbon around his neck so it was at least presentable. As soon as he was permitted to leave he needed a bath. What a wretched, unacceptable state he was in.

After a few minutes of walking along with his dying flame, about halfway between where he had been sleeping and the entrance to the tunnel, something stood out in the middle of the path. It was the large basket filled with Sloth's food. How odd.

Odder still, one of his phosphorus-coated papers was beside it and the rest of the bundle behind it, splinters inside, unused. The single sheet was painted with spattered drips of sulphur, leaving yellow splotchy stains in strange patterns. They looked like words. Oh, they were words.

I won't tell anyone.

It wasn't a concealed threat, or a teasing jab, just a promise that felt…sincere enough, for Envy. Pride regarded the paper as clinically and as emotionlessly as he should, set it alight soon after and began to change the candle on his head (he had Sloth to attend to, after all), and the faintest twitch of a smile flickered in the lamplight.

I had a lot of fun with this fic, and I hope everyone had as much fun reading it =) and yes, I know I suck at making riddles ^^; I'd also like to thank Violetlight for beta-ing this for me, it was really helpful ^_^

Also, that 'forest-y village' Envy referred to, it's Xenotime (or maybe, Youswell? I guess Envy and co could have visited lots of places to find things to manipulate humans with), since it used to be a pretty lush place until everyone ruined it by Gold mining. I made a reference to General Grumman, Raven and Armstrong (Alex's dad) discovering the gold vein in their youth during one of General Armstrong's stories once, in another fic.

So as to have not spoiled this fic, I'll post the truncated extracts of Veltzeh's fic and Violetlight's suggestion here, rather than at the beginning:

"You don't know what I did with Pride in that large maintenance tunnel two hundred metres to the north from Father's chamber around 1780, right? Awesome. That was pretty private so it's better if you don't know about it or other stuff of that nature."

And Violetlight suggested that it was this- "I was thinking that maybe, he and Envy actually played together, that Pride acted like the child he resembles, with Envy taking a child shape itself."

I don't know why I found it so cute, but I did, and I just wanted to write something kinda fluffy ^_^