Envy shivered in Ed's arms as the young Alchemist kept Envy in a sitting position. The homunculus swallowed spoonful after spoonful of the hottest soup they could make, but still complained of feeling cold. Ed was at a loss of what to do. Clearly his idea of giving Envy food was not helping. Although Envy was able to sometimes keep it down, it did not seem to help him.

By now, caring for Envy had become a full time job, offering Ed little time for anything else. Hohenheim did the research by himself, not even stopping for food. Al did everything that he could. He cooked, cleaned, even tried to help Ed take care of Envy, but he still felt useless. The more he did, the more he felt like he got in the way. He dedicated himself to taking care of Ed, bringing him food, making sure he got enough sleep, little things like that which Ed always overlooked

Overall, things seemed to be going downhill, but Hohenheim had a sort of forced optimism about him that gave everyone hope. He kept citing text that claimed that there was period of time in the Time Element theory in which the homunculus could no longer get energy from the stones but was not yet human enough to get their energy from food. It was a small gap that left them feeling very weak, but they would get through it. No matter how hard he looked, Ed couldn't find a single book that mentioned the gap. They had never even found a single book that mentioned that feeding a homunculus food might give them energy in place of the stones. The only person who did not participate in the debates was Envy, seeing as how he spent most of his time sleeping.

"Hey," Ed whispered when he noticed that Envy was waking up, "How are you feeling?"

"Still weak" the homunculus muttered, opening his eyes slightly. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Almost a full 24 hours. We were starting to get worried." Ed said in a calm voice, brushing Envy's hair out of his eyes. It nearly killed Ed to see Envy like this, so weak and pathetic. Sometimes he had trouble remembering that Envy had been stronger than him, that he had been able to transform at whim, now he was unable to do a single thing. It was strange, but he almost wished that Envy would jump up and scream that this had all been part of a plan to lull Ed into a false sense of security so that he could gut him in his sleep, anything just so long as Envy was alive.

"Oh…" Envy closed his eyes again. Although he would not admit to it, they all knew that he was in pain. They could see it in the way he moved when he was awake, they could see the pain on his face while he slept, but Envy was just too proud to admit it. "Ed, if this gets much worse…I don't want to…"

"It wont, so don't even talk like that, okay?" Ed tried to change the subject as quick as he could. "I'll go tell Hohenheim that you are awake."

Ed hurried off into the kitchen where Al was sitting, watching Hohenheim eat. It was the closest to a family dinner that this set of miss-matched relatives could manage. He decided right from the start that he wouldn't tell anyone what Envy was about to say, that he wanted Ed to end it for him.

As soon as Ed entered the room, Al and Hohenheim understood that Envy had woken up. It was the only time that Ed ever left his side. They had even made a bed using blankets for Ed to sleep on in Envy's room.

Hohenheim stood up and moved over to the cabinet and pulled out some food that he thought would be easy to digest. He pulled out a can of soup and heated it up using Alchemy. Without a word he handed Ed the can. He knew that every time Envy ate anything Ed was certain that it would work, he hated seeing his son disappointed every time the food came right back up. He didn't know how Ed would handle it if things didn't go well.

Ed reached up and grabbed a bowl, not noticing the look on his father's face. After grabbing a spoon, he ran back into Envy's room. The homunculus was laying in bed still, looking more pale than he had before. Ed set the food down on the nightstand and went to help Envy sit up. He climbed in the bed, having found out the first time that it was easier on both of them for Ed to help him up like that.

As soon as he was seated, Ed took the bowl of soup and put it in Envy's lap. The homunculus looked down at it. He didn't want to eat it, but at the same time he refused to disappoint Ed. He picked up the spoon, pretending not to notice that his hand shook so much that very little soup actually reached his mouth.

"This isn't working." Envy said after three spoonfuls. He meant that eating the soup wasn't working, since most of it fell back into the bowl. Ed took it to mean that the entire idea of feeding Envy was not working, which, in all truth, was not working anyway.

"Don't talk like that, you aren't going to die!" Ed said with such ferocity that Envy jumped some, spilling a little bit of soup onto his lap. He spun around, no longer looking at Envy. He didn't want Envy to know that he was crying. Although before he suspected that Envy would simply laugh at him for crying, something had changed in the cold homunculus. Now he worried that it would upset him.

Envy looked down, unable to even look at Ed. With a deep sigh, he picked up the spoon and began eating more soup. Every swallow hurt and with each attempt less and less soup stayed on the spoon, but he forced himself to take spoonful after spoonful. Ed listened to the clink of spoon hitting bowl behind him, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face. He had had too many people die in front of him, there had been too many people he had not been able to save. He would not let that happen again, not to Envy.

Thank you for all of your reviews, you have helped me decide Envy's fate. As for yaoi…well, as I remember it, there were some people asking me not to make it yaoi. I haven't fully decided on the fate of Ed's sexuality yet.