Straykit: Mhm! I was playing with a couple different configurations but I like this one the best And I do want to do a longer version, but like I said I need to finish what I've started first XD Glad you liked it ^^ Thanks for reviewing!

The Blood Red Moon: Oh good, I haven't lost you XD Thanks for sticking with me, I don't plan to stop any time soon!

Fairyboydammit: I'm glad you like it ^^ Thanks for reviewing!

Pen-Name-Kitsune-Chan: You should see it, it's a horror rock opera starring Alexa Vega, Anthony Stewart Head, Paris Hilton (in her one decent role) and Sarah Brightman :D Good thing you understood what was going on anyway, though. AUs are some of my favourites ^^ Thanks for reviewing as always~

I've always wanted to do this kind of fic – it's been done quite a few times, but I thought adding Envy to the mix would change things up a bit.

Brotherhood-verse.

52. War

The days follow a sort of routine, out here on the empty Cretan frontier. Ed can't quite call it structure, because that implies sanity – sense – order. But there's no denying that there's a kind of schedule.

He wakes up at six, alone. He wanders over to his commanding officer's tent and wakes him up, unless he's already awake, or didn't sleep. The second is far more likely, because Roy Mustang promised that this would never happen again.

In Roy Mustang's tent, he brews the two of them some terrible coffee, and more often than not, persuades Mustang – just one more day, and then you can run off and do whatever. Just this one last day. For me. Please.

Mustang will try to get him to stay, try to convince him to sleep with him, and Ed will refuse as he always does. Mustang doesn't need something else on his guilty conscience, and despite feeling a hundred years old, he's not even seventeen yet.

By six thirty, breakfast is served. Something meagre and dry – cereal sometimes, or eggs, or tasteless protein bars. By six forty five they're gathering in their platoons, ready to march out against the Cretans.

Mustang tried to exempt Ed. He's too young. He's too inexperienced. He can't even fire a gun.

He had been denied. He's plenty old enough. And he has his alchemy.

So Ed claps his hands and impales ten soldiers at a time on spikes of stone, or flattens them into indistinguishable smears of blood with land that comes up to crush them, or simply tears them apart with Scar's deconstruction. He creates cannons for the artillery-men to fire, and walls for them to hide behind.

Mustang tells him it's not as dry out here as it was in Ishbal. It rains sometimes, but nothing more than a light drizzle that turns the sand beneath their feet solid and damp.

Ed kills perhaps three hundred men a day.

The night falls. Hostilities cease. The soldiers gather their dead, the snipers switch their shifts, and Ed eats a handful of jerky, forcing it down his dry throat and into his empty stomach.

Al is at home, in Rizenbul, safe with Winry and Pinako. Thank God for small mercies. It's not like there's anything else to thank Him for.

Mustang intercepts him one more time, asking if he's really comfortable having a tent to himself. Ed says yes, obviously. He wonders if Mustang is a closet pervert or just desperate for somebody to break his loneliness, his depressive streak.

And besides, he's not alone in his tent.

Envy sits crosslegged on his bedroll, purple eyes mocking and hateful. "So how many people did you kill today, Fullmetal? A hundred? Two hundred? It's amazing what alchemy can do in a situation like this."

Ed sits down across from him, picks up a book, flicks through it without really looking at the words.

"I wonder how many of those soldiers had brothers, Fullmetal? Or how about mothers?" Envy cocks his head. "Maybe some of them were fathers. Maybe there's another little girl who's gonna wondering why they're burying Daddy and it's gonna be your fault."

Ed's hands start to shake. The book falls from his hands.

"So much for the Hero of the People," spits Envy. "You'll do anything to restore your brother to his body but you won't do a thing for those soldiers."

Finally, from between Ed's lips, no matter how tightly he presses them together, comes a strangled sob. He covers his mouth, and then his face. Another sob comes, then he is crying.

Envy, his first role fulfilled, takes Ed's hands and pulls them away. He lowers Ed's head onto his shoulder. He lets the boy cry. He doesn't cry, but he's beginning to understand the human need for release – to be pushed past the brink instead of lingering at the edge between breakdown and sanity.

You can only crawl back over the edge once you've crossed it.

Once Ed's sobs have quieted down into sniffs – an hour or more into the night – Envy pushes him down onto the bedroll. He kisses him roughly (gentleness is not what a soldier needs) and slides his hands up his shirt.

"Quiet now, Ed," he murmurs, using the boy's name in a rare moment. He never did before this. "Quiet now."

Ed's tears remain, streaked across his face, but his cries give way to moans of guilty pleasure muffled by Envy's pale hand across his mouth. He can probably still be heard, but Edward isn't the only one to take comfort in the arms of another man during wartime. It's a common phenomenon, although there's nothing common about the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Finally, Envy has tired him out enough that he can sleep. He does, and Envy lies next to him for a while, wondering how his duty – protect the sacrifice – became so interesting.

Was the Ishbal conflict like this? The one he started, the one he revelled in?

Envy has to believe that it wasn't. Otherwise he might begin to feel guilty, and Father wouldn't stand for it.

Although, he has to remember – force himself to remember – no, forget, it is easier, don't torture yourself, don't make it harder –

this war was begun by Pride. A simple faked kidnapping. That's all it took.

Envy lays a kiss on Ed's cheek, ignoring the part at him screaming that he shouldn't be enjoying his duty of keeping the sacrifice sane so much. "I'm sorry," he whispers, before he slides off into the night.

Ed wakes up at six, alone. (And it all begins again.)