(Note: This chapter takes place after 'Survival of the Fittest', another story in this series. Withiut reading that first, this last one might be a little confusing.)
Kimblee woke to the sound of rapid breathing in the dark.
The air in the luxury Cretian hotel was sweet, perfumed with sandalwood, and the silk sheets smooth to lie upon, the elaborately embroidered drapes over the four-poster bed forming eerie impressions of black-upon-black in the diluted moonlight from the wide curtained window facing north; how easy it was, under the power of night, to make ordinary or even beautiful things strange. A vase of flowers became twisted hands reaching for consumable flesh, a coat rack a gruesomely tall figure watching from the corner. The darkness stirred fears in the heart and made weak the mind; humans had not been designed for these times, they were beings that flourished in the day, needing the sun and the blue sky in order to function properly- in order to stay sane. For others, it was not the same- some creatures were meant for the night, for the suffocated underground places, for graveyards and other such planes of existence that made humans mad. He could feel the weight of one such thing pressing into the bed beside him, pushing down the feathered mattress beneath their tremendous mass, and in turning his head to look he could see how their skin picked up even the faint glow from the window, seeming to shine of its own accord, pure white and iridescent like polished marble. Marble was a good word for it; as they were, they looked like a statue, a carven image of perfect torment.
Envy sat upright, kneeling with their legs spread, face hidden in their palms to shut the world away from their eyes. Their hair looked entirely black in the light, the green not coming through as it would have under the sun, and the thick strands of it hung over their bent shoulders and brushed their thighs, on the left of which the red serpent tattoo stood out like a bloody wound. If not for the slight trembling in their limbs they could have been entirely inanimate, an artificial imitation of life formed under a careful artist's hands- but then, they were that already, weren't they? They had sculpted themself. Faintly, Kimblee heard them whimper.
"What's the matter, love?" Kimblee said, his voice clouded a little from sleep, and he reached out to touch them, rubbing one palm over the smooth skin on their knee. The question was pointless, he knew already the answer; Envy had become (more) insane in the nights of late, the colour of the sickness in their mind different than what it usually was (something a kind of sour yellow, Kimblee fancied, rather than green). It had started a few days after they had left Amestris- crossing into Creta, over the hard-drawn borders that marked the uneasy relationship between the two countries, into a nation where the people dressed and spoke and held themselves differently, and wrote using foreign words, and made use of foreign devices. A new playground, in a sense, and Envy had been overjoyed with it at first, as he had known they would be- they could be reluctant or fearful of some things, he had noticed, but when pushed that fear could turn itself into fun. Needless to say, the beginning of their "vacation" had been idyllic, full of mischief and sharp teeth and little evils.
And then this had started.
Something had crept into Envy's mind while Kimblee slept, some mad idea or emotion, and it had taken a terrible hold on their heart. It wasn't the night that had done it, he knew, though it was only during the night that it possessed them- it was something else, some inherent flaw in Envy's making, a chip in their core, triggered (Kimblee thought) by the lack of imminent danger in their current lifestyle. Underneath their sharp tongue and confident eyes, they were really very insecure. It was one of their cuter traits, as far as he was concerned. And even like this (sometimes, especially like this) they were beautiful; pain was an enjoyable thing to look at, for Kimblee. He sat up now, to run his hand up their thigh (was he imagining it, or did the ouroboros somehow burn with a deeper cold than the rest of their flesh?) and they let out a shuddering sigh, like they couldn't bring words from their head to their tongue, still unwilling to unclap their hands from over their eyes.
"You're still here, lovely," Kimblee said, and he pressed his face into the back of their neck, to smell the dark and slightly death-like scent of their hair. With his wandering hand he gave the skin on their thigh a sharp pinch, hard enough to perhaps bruise a human. "Can you feel that?"
Kimblee believed he had seen what affected Envy before, in others; the potent feeling that the surrounding world was not real, or rather could not be real, the belief that all of one's accomplishments were false and undeserved- on the tongues of military doctors the phenomenon formed itself under the title 'imposter's syndrome'. It was the thought that at any moment, the bubble could be popped, and one would discover that every achievement or good thing had in fact been a grand delusion, unreal from the beginning, or that someone else would come and expose the sufferer for the sham they were. Kimblee remembered some high-ranking officials in the military who had been like that- prodigies, often, young men and women given great opportunities for their skill (or, occasionally, their malleability) too soon and too fast. People who had seemed almost ashamed of their own advancement, like they thought they were unintentional frauds, those kinds always cracked under the pressure after a while and lost everything. And then there were others, some of the survivors of Ishval who had been similar, (a different flavour of the same malady, perhaps) sent to mental hospitals for their delusions, broken people convinced that they had died in the desert wastes with their comrades and that everything after was some kind of desperate, purgatorial dream, their happiness and comforts to be taken from them as soon as their minds caught up with their bodies. It was a nasty way to feel, from what Kimblee understood, and of course Envy (being the kind of creature they were) felt it in strength tenfold.
"It's wrong," they said to him suddenly, likely referring to the pain he had inflicted on their leg. "It's not there, that's...that's the other me." They sounded so afraid.
Kimblee hummed a little into their hair. "The other you? What do you think you look like, right now?"
They shivered, and pressed as close as he was Kimblee could feel all of their limbs move as the chill ran through their body.
"The worm…" they whispered, the words barely making it past their teeth, so ashamed were they of that part of themself. "He's hurting me...it burns…"
Ah, yes, Mustang again. Kimblee was familiar with this delusion- in previous nights, piece by piece, he had pried the fragments of Envy's hallucinations from their mouth, sewing together the other reality that took over their head when they were like this, the false existence that they believed was true when the world went dark, when Kimblee slept and wasn't around to distract them and keep them aware.
It was a strange delusion, very specific- they believed they were still in the Underground, being tortured by the Flame Alchemist, but instead of escaping- losing the vengeful colonel in the labyrinth, finding Kimblee in the remnant Pride's body, and fleeing Central, as had truly happened- they believed instead that he had reduced them to their weakest self with his fire, and that they were meant to rip their Stone out and die by their own hand.
"You don't look like a worm to me," said Kimblee in their ear, and with a flash of inspiration he took ahold of a few strands of their hair and yanked it, pulling a little gasp followed by a deep growl from their chest. "Worms don't have hair. Come on now, open your eyes."
Slowly, Envy pried their fingers from over their face- this was progress, in previous nights it had taken much more coaxing to get even this far- but their eyes were still clamped shut, the vertigo of seeing one world when another played out inside their head too disorienting to manage. They were very cute. Even like this, he found them charming.
"You're lying," they whined, voice high pitched like a child's, but they were melting in his arms, leaning back into his embrace, their brows still furrowed but much less tight.
"Hardly. You're the liar here, and you know it." said Kimblee, teasing them a little while squeezing their arms, and there was the shadow of a smile on their lips before they opened their eyes to meet his, the fiery violet shining in the dark like twin gemstones. Still, they were a little nervous, gaze flicking back and forth across the room to his face and back again, cat's pupils expanding and dilating too drastically to be healthy. Kimblee kissed them on the nose, and they sighed.
"This sucks," they mumbled, and Kimblee grinned in spite of himself at the petulant tone in their voice. He could tell it was almost an apology- the closest thing to an apology Envy could let past their lips- an acknowledgement that they kept waking him, unintentionally or otherwise, an admittance of a fear that they were displeasing him somehow. He wasn't sure, though, if they could ever really displease him- such a thing could only happen if they were to become someone other than themself.
"Let's go back to sleep," Kimblee said, guiding them back into a prone position on the bed, where their hair fanned out on the pillow like the tentacles of some underwater creature, or the leaves of a mandrake. They clung to him there, cold fingers digging into his sides and legs entwined, fastening themself to reality as a lamprey would its victim (they could never hide what they truly were, not really, though they liked to think they could) and started to drift again, whether to sleep or to their fiery nightmares he didn't yet know.
It didn't matter, though. They were getting better every night- whatever malady had struck them now was of no concern in the long run, it was simply another experience like any other. Such a disturbance would be but a blip in the face of eternity.
Thinking these thoughts, Kimblee closed his eyes again, and it was only when he opened them the next morning that he knew Envy had slept through the night, as well.