"The food here is just lovely," Mother said, flipping through the menu at her seat. "This is the best lunch spot in town." She had taken upon herself to act as a guide for Heinz in Central- even though he was an adult and perfectly capable of caring for himself, and didn't much enjoy these kinds of things anyway. But he had free time. It would be cruel not to indulge her.

"And how are things with your 'project'," Mother continued when she had settled on a favoured page. "They're not working you too hard, are they?"

"No, no," Heinz replied, though he doubted she was truly interested in the specifications of his work. Alchemy had never meant much to her. "I'm fine. It's fascinating stuff, really. Making great strides."

"That's wonderful. And…" she looked up at him now, tearing her eyes from the salads, a little smile decorating wrinkled red lips. "What about your personal life? Run across anything...special?"

Looking at her in the noon sun as it came through the window they sat beside- with her grey hair, her pearl earrings and fine dress, the wedding ring whose partner had been underground for years- he felt something like mischief strike him. A troublemaking elf whispered in his ear.

"As a matter of fact, I have," he said, and to his pleasure she folded the menu aside immediately and completely, her eyes wide and her mouth opening. "I've met someone."

"Oh, Kristoff!" she gushed. "You must tell me everything!"

"There isn't much to tell," he said, modest, and that wasn't a lie. "No particular progress. But I rather fancy...her, and I think she fancies me, too."

If the burning looks in those violet eyes were anything to go on. The seductive arch of those brows. The way strong white thighs parted when he looked over, like a suggestion, like some kind of offer.

"I met her at work," he continued. "She's part of the project, as well."

"And what is she like?" his mother asked, almost interrupting him, so eager she was.

"She's clever," Heinz said. "and very expressive. A little strange, maybe, but that's...it's charming. And very pretty, of course."

Very pretty indeed. In his mind Heinz watched Envy laugh at something, some offhand comment he had made, saw how the homunculus' hair fell back, white throat bared, the way that sharp smile touched every part of his face. Heinz realized he hadn't lied at all to his mother- Envy was clever, and expressive, and charming. It only sounded like a lie to him because of what was omitted- those descriptions made it sound like he was talking about an ordinary girl.

Not a shapeshifting demon he was experimenting on, who he only saw behind a wall of his own making, who was deep down nothing more than a slimy little parasite. Though it seemed like forever since Envy had been that to him.

"You must tell me everything that happens," his mother said, and she didn't sense the little film of falsehood that had slipped over his words. "Everything. I want to know when there is progress, as you say."

When they parted ways after the meal, Heinz felt poorly for his little mischief. He couldn't report anything to his mother. There would be no progress. He couldn't take Envy on a date, never mind the more advanced things she wished for.

After all, when the work was done, Envy was going to be destroyed.

…

This thought hadn't occurred to him in a while.

For the first time in many nights, Heinz had trouble falling asleep as he lay in bed, listening to late-night cars rumble down the cobblestone path. The thought of leaving Envy to die was affecting him in ways it hadn't before, not at the beginning, when he had agreed with Marcoh that it was a good thing, a necessary thing. What had Envy done so wrong, anyway? Why did he have to be destroyed? If they wanted a homunculus specimen- one of the most complex alchemical creations to ever exist- why not keep this one?

Of course, he had a file to tell him why. Ishval, murder, manipulation of the government, Ishval again. But those things were just words on paper to him. They didn't matter. They were nothing to the creature locked in the lab, with those glittering eyes and proud smile. Something that the thought of losing filled him with a deep blue, sickly ache.

Heinz thought for a long time that night.

~

"Do we really have to kill him?" Heinz asked one night, after work, when the laboratory had gone dark on Envy's eyes and he and Marcoh stood on the steps in the outside air. He hadn't wanted to ask this inside. For some reason, he hadn't wanted Envy to hear. "I mean- he is a person, in a sense. A war criminal maybe, but…"

He was floundering, perhaps he shouldn't have said anything at all, but now that he had started he had to go through with it.

"...but still a person. And he might be useful to keep around."

Marcoh just looked at him- he had a tired expression on his face, one tinged with maybe, the faintest bit of sadness.

"Envy is a monster," he said, flatly. "And it should have been destroyed a long time ago."

"I don't accept that."

Heinz felt himself flush under the sharp eye Marcoh gave him, he was flustered now, but he stood his ground. "I don't. I don't think he's any more of a monster than anyone who worked under the old regime- had to do things for that corrupt government."

"Envy was the corrupt government-"

"And he clearly has feelings," Heinz continued over Marcoh. "He thinks and feels just like everyone else. He's capable of happiness, and pain, and...love."

Accidentally, he had revealed more than he had intended. The words floated in the night air, and Heinz suddenly wished he could swallow them back, could seal his lips because saying any of this had probably been a mistake.

"Envy is not capable of love," Marcoh said. "It is only capable of one feeling, you can guess which. That, and malice."

This time, it was Marcoh who turned away from him on the steps.

"You shouldn't have been listening to it." he said.

~

Marcoh was out again the next day- Heinz knew he was trying too hard, coming back to work every time his situation improved even slightly, never giving himself a chance to recover completely. His insistence on pushing himself kept knocking him down again. Heinz now wondered, though, if maybe Marcoh was doing it because he didn't want Heinz alone with Envy. Well, he would certainly want to avoid that now, after what Heinz had said so stupidly the night previous.

"Can you love others?" Heinz asked spontaneously, finding it hard to take interest in his paperwork, the conversation he had had with Marcoh and Envy's white thighs distracting him too much. The homunculus was lying across the floor on his back, hair spread out in waves, legs stretched up one wall. When he spoke, he received a purple look of surprise.

"...what?"

"Can you...love," Heinz said, embarrassed again. "Have you ever loved anyone? It is possible for you, isn't it?"

Envy blinked slowly, like he wasn't sure what to do, and he wasn't smiling. In the furrow of sharp green brows there was something a little dark...sadness, maybe.

"I have," he said slowly. "I loved my sister. And…"

He stopped, bit his lower lip.

"...and a man."

There was silence for a moment. Envy was normally not one to leave the air empty of his voice- and this, to Heinz, was touching.

"What was your sister like?" Heinz asked, tentative of the atmosphere, but now he wanted to know. Envy had never spoken about these kinds of things before.

"She was very chic," Envy said, the smallest little smile curving up the corners of his lips. "Sexy. And powerful, too. She always knew what to do. She always let me play around…"

Heinz was uncomfortably aware of the past tense in Envy's words, and knew what he knew from the very nature of this work. Envy was the last homunculus, after all.

"What happened to her?" Heinz asked when Envy had quieted down, when the smile had slipped from his face.

"She was burned to death," he said, flat. "By the same man who turned me into a worm."

Glittering eyes met his, refocusing, now Heinz couldn't read that expression at all.

"...but I would have thought you already knew that."

"I guess I didn't," Heinz said. "I'm sorry."

Envy didn't say anything to that. He hadn't moved from his position at the wall- and now, snakelike, he just watched Heinz from behind the glass.

After that, it didn't seem right to keep talking, so Heinz buried himself in the charts. Envy was quiet.

After an hour or two of paper grind- which he could hardly focus on anyway- something occurred to Heinz. All the homunculi were dead, but certainly some human members of the old regime had survived. And what had Envy said? Other than his sister, he had also loved 'a man'. What did that mean? It was an inexplicably nasty feeling, the thought that someone who had Envy's heart might be out there, somewhere. Had Heinz misinterpreted all that flirtation?

"The man you loved," Heinz asked suddenly, breaking the silence like their conversation had never stopped. "Who was he?"

Envy looked over at him again, and this time he smiled, a slightly mischievous smile.

"Why do you want to know?" he purred. "Wondering how you compare?"

Heinz felt his face warm, like someone had cut a hole in the ceiling and was flooding him with summer sun. He hadn't meant to be so obvious.

"He was a wonderful man," Envy continued, and now he was not so teasing, a little edge of wistfulness had crept back into his voice. "Very handsome, and intelligent. And the things he did for me, you wouldn't even believe…he was the greatest of all the alchemists of Ishval."

Envy sat up at last then, folding his legs beneath him, letting his hair fall over his face. His expression couldn't be seen at all, now.

"But you don't have to worry. He's dead too. They're all dead. Everyone except for me."

Heinz had nothing to say to that. But his question had very much been answered- he couldn't bear the thought of letting Envy die now. He was too human. Why couldn't Marcoh see it? What did he mean, Envy couldn't love? Here, he was clearly in terrible mourning.

What was Heinz going to do?

~

Over the next month Heinz was hesitant to continue working in earnest. Marcoh recovered from his sickness gradually, until he was back to his normal self, and not missing any days at all- this was cruel, but Heinz almost wished he would stay sick instead. The days alone with Envy had been enjoyable. And now that he was back, there was little excuse for twiddling his thumbs, for taking long lunch breaks. But Heinz resented every new number put down, every accurate observation, because each one put them closer to the day where no more information would be necessary- the day Envy would be destroyed.

The homunculus, maybe, sensed it too. He seemed more lethargic during the days, talking less. He watched Heinz closely, but not with resentment in his eyes, rather some quiet contemplation. Once or twice, in the mornings when the alchemists had come in to start working, his eyes had been faintly red around the edges, like he had been crying.

More details were recorded. Without food or water, the homunculus slowly burned Philosopher's Stone to mitigate the effects of starvation and dehydration. However with those things, no waste was produced.

The mass of the homunculus did not correspond to the appearance. With the absorption of another soldier doll, the weight doubled while the figure remained the same, and the added stone allowed for a few more transformations to be performed.

Despite appearing human, much of the constructed biology inside the homunculus was reptile.

The days were whittling down. Eventually, Envy would no be longer useful.

Armstrong came a few times, to oversee- as well as, once, the new Führer. Envy always perked up for them, becoming more talkative and sniping- maybe, he didn't want to show his feelings. Wanted to be proud to those who would kill him. Heinz could understand that.

"Many soldiers under the old regime have transitioned," Heinz said to Marcoh once, wanting to get the other alchemist's support before challenging higher authorities. "Since we didn't make them the enemy, they easily started to work for us."

"This thing is the enemy." said Marcoh.

"Only because we have made him so. If we gave him a chance, he could change- couldn't you, Envy?"

Envy looked sullenly over at them from in the cage. He seemed sore from the last experiment, which had involved electricity. Was it just Heinz's imagination, or had his hair in recent days seemed less vibrant, drooping down his body like the leaves of a wilting plant?

"They won't give me a chance," he said, his voice as flat as Marcoh's, and after that the older alchemist insisted they continue work.

"We can discuss this more later," he said. "For now, I want to finish this."

The promise of later talk was just barely enough to keep Heinz quiet.

~

The day following Heinz was called to an office in Central before work- he had resented that, not wanting to spend a moment outside of the lab. During the evenings, his days were very grey, lacklustre. It wasn't that he had no one to talk to, or nothing to do, rather that there was no one he wanted to talk to, and nothing he wanted to do. He had found himself becoming dependant on that little touch of green.

"You're being transferred back to Briggs," said the woman at the office. "I have your paperwork here."

"What?" Heinz felt chilled all over at that, and not just from the thought of his former station. "What do you mean? When did that come in?"

"Yesterday," she said. "An express order I think. Well, you can sign this to show you've received it."

The pen offered was not taken.

"But why? What did I do?" Heinz asked, his voice pitching up with his panic, he was beginning to shake and there was white noise in his ears. The woman just looked at him.

"It says your contract for your current project has been terminated. Anything else, you might want to take up with your supervising officer...though, you should have already been informed."

Heinz tried to calm himself. There was an itching fear inside him, one he couldn't bear, one that told him he had no time to waste- that if the contract was up, then the research was done, and Envy…but he had to focus, he needed to do something, and of course he had to be smart about it.

"When does this termination enter into effect?" he asked the secretary, after a moment.

"Immediately," she replied.

He took a deep breath.

"Then let me return soon. I just need a word with my...supervising officer."

She nodded slowly, frowning a little, and then Heinz was gone. Running to his car, fumbling with the keys, the scraps of some half-baked plan turning over and over in his head. He had some money with him, didn't he? And his military ID? That would have to do. From his briefcase he pulled blank papers- cheap things- and with a pen and trembling hands made three circles; two for making doors, and one for making a cage. It would have to be enough.

It needed to be enough.

~

Parking his car in a frenzy, the laboratory seemed to ordinarily quiet for what he had been expecting. But then, why would there be pomp and circumstance? They probably only needed one man to do it. The front door wasn't even locked.

But inside the one to the laboratory was, and Heinz's key didn't work. The locks had been changed- alchemically, by the looks of things, and recently, too. They meant to keep him out. Heinz thanked any God he could think of for having the guard be on patrol just then, instead of stationed by the laboratory.

Heinz used the first of his key circles on the door- he had written it for a lock of this type, after all, and in a second the thing was open to him.

"Heinz-!"

Marcoh looked surprised to see him, sitting with papers spread out on his desk, why did he seem so distressed? And Envy was still there, thank all, looking over from a position on the floor of his cage.

Marcoh began to stand up, and Heinz fumbled with his papers, pressing the one for the cage into the ground- letting the power run through his arms and across the ground, to sprout bars around the other alchemist, pushing him away from his pen and papers. He couldn't interfere. There was no time- how long before the guards came back? Before someone came for Envy?

"Heinz, you don't know what you're doing," Marcoh said, and there was genuine fear in his voice. Heinz was so tired of the other alchemist, now. He had no right to be afraid, he wasn't the one who was going to be murdered for simply existing."Heinz, you can't do this-!"

Heinz ignored him. He was sweating all over now, and there was a kind of yellow electricity running through his whole body, a feeling that grounded him completely and utterly in the present. He had only one circle left, and the delicate little look Envy was giving him was stunning.

The last transmutation created an opening in the container he had made, one large enough for a human to walk through easily. When it was done he stepped back and held out his hand, and Envy reached out to take it, only overshot slightly, Heinz saw something bright and red flash before his face-

…

~

Marcoh yelled with an animal frustration from inside the cage as he watched the younger alchemist's head roll across the floor, the body slumping to its knees before its last creation. Envy hopped around the spray of blood, sword turning back into an arm, and the smile they wore now was not delicate at all.

"Fucking finally," they snarled. "I couldn't wait to kill that bastard. You saw how he stared at me all the time, didn't you? And what a fucking moron."

They licked their teeth, and looked over at the body only one more time.

"...he couldn't even begin to compare."

Marcoh was shaking from the shock of it, the sight was too much to believe just yet, and that was why he had sent the other alchemist away, he had seen how things were getting out of hand…

"And what should I do with you?" purred the mandrake, voice silky with self-satisfaction. "Since you've caused me so much trouble, I should at least pay it back."

In his cage Marcoh screamed again, this time for help, hearing over his own trembling voice a high, serpentine hiss. This next moments were crucial. Envy didn't have much power, not now, but if no one came before they could get to the other laboratory-

Just then, as both the man and the monster in the room realized these things, there arrived an answer to the prayers. Two guards had heard the shouting and, seeing the door to the laboratory hanging open, ran in with their guns raised.

"Shoot it-" Marcoh yelled, for he was half-mad with his own helplessness (caught in a cell with that thing standing outside it once again) and Envy made a horrible growling noise that was far too large for their chest, lunging towards the guards with a speed that seemed too great for their heavy body. The barrels flashed- what a nightmare of a scene to walk in on.

The rising animal roar turned into something more like a yelp, and one of the guards had his skull crushed, but the other was only shoved away.

Envy pivoted left, following the feeling of the red stone that vibrated weakly through the air, and were cut off by two more approaching guards- the path was blocked, they weren't strong enough, already they almost couldn't breathe. It was in a state like panic that they turned to the front door instead, and before they could get out the fallen guard landed two more shots in their back.

The air outside smelled like city, but it was still so fresh by comparison, fresher than anything they had breathed in months. Except breathing in general was difficult- and oh, if only they had been given another handful of Philosopher's Stone before this, they might have been able to heal themself and become a bird and be free forever- but they hadn't, and now the pain was too great and it was making the ends of their limbs numb, their joints useless.

"Shit," Envy hissed, falling to the pavement on their knees against their will, and they heard another gun cock behind their head. "Help, Kimblee-!"

BANG!

~

The last homunculus didn't think much after that final gunshot. The aim had been unusually perfect- almost as if by fate, the bullet had pierced the tiny fragment of worn-down Philosopher's Stone they had kept inside, destroying even the worm before it could manifest. They dissolved rather quickly. By the time Marcoh was freed, the wind had even taken the ashes, and there was nothing left to examine.

The other bodies made much more of a mess. Those ones involved family calls, and funeral procedures, and someone to wipe up all the blood.

However, the surviving alchemist was left with enough usable data to have the experiment be considered a success, even without the final deconstruction process. Certainly, if things became too desperate the young son of the former Führer could always be taken in for examination.

And perhaps the spirit of the country weighed just a little less after that day. Perhaps the clouds became just a little lighter. Slowly but surely, the hell-world that had been created by the old regime was being taken apart. The Underground dismantled, the experiments uncovered there appropriately catalogued and disposed of. The border skirmishes, under new management, were settling down. The tunnels of the nation-wide circle were collapsed. And now, though they didn't know it, there was vengeance for all those who had died to that strange creature, the parvulus invidia.

Old blood could only stain for so long. Eventually, there would be no traces left- some day, in the far future, there would be nothing and no one to say that any of these horrible things had happened at all.

And wasn't that better for everyone?