Number of words: 8,178

Published date: October 14, 2013

Began chapter: September 23, 2013

Finished chapter: October 14, 2013


Chapter 28: Nightmares

He woke up - or rather found himself (for he couldn't remember falling asleep in the first place) - in a world that seemed familiar and yet he couldn't quite place where and when he'd been there before.

It was pitch black.

No, that wasn't quite right. He could see somehow, even though there wasn't any light.

He tried to wonder about how that was possible, but the thought wouldn't stay in his mind. It didn't seem important anyway.

It was dark, but without knowing how, he also knew that the place was vast, nearly endless. He knew that if he walked in any direction, he would never find a wall. He knew that there was no sky and no ceiling either. There were no limits to this space. It was a place where the usual laws of nature didn't apply.

With no clear destination in mind, he began to walk.

Walking wasn't easy or pleasant, for although the ground was firm beneath his feet, the eight or so odd inches of blood that came halfway up his calves made the footing difficult and tiring. An ocean of red liquid. Was it just his imagination or was the blood still warm? Impossible, but as soon as the thought occurred to him, the blood only seemed to grow hotter until it should have been burning him, though he felt no pain, just disgust. He remembered how surprised he'd been at how hot freshly spilt human blood was, the first time he'd killed one. Maybe the Homunculi's blood was like that too, but when it turned to dust so quickly, he couldn't really be sure. He hadn't dwelt on it, but favoured killing with guns for the simple reason that he did not like getting blood all over himself. It was gross.

This strange place didn't just contain blood. There were parts of buildings and vehicles, concrete and rock and metal fragments, scattered about. Some portions were large, slabs of stone that created little islands in the red ocean. Others were smaller and he nearly tripped over those that were hidden from view, stubbing his toes and offering heartfelt curses for the brief moment before the damage healed. There were some bones strewn about as well, but thankfully those had been there so long that the flesh had long ago rotted away (even without flies to speed up the process), leaving the air free of any putrid smells except for the mildly sickening metallic odour of the blood.

Wait.

Where was he going?

There was no exit. He knew there was no exit, so why was he bothering to walk anywhere? There was no point. He was just wasting his energy.

He knew this, but then, he figured it didn't matter whether he was wasting his energy or not, because he was going to die here and there was nothing he could do about it.

This realization was not so much a coherent thought as it was a blend of wordless feelings and emotions, fear and anger and bitter helplessness and a sudden intense loneliness. He felt sick. This shouldn't be happening to him! This wasn't how he was supposed to die. He wasn't supposed to die!

He tried to talk it out logically, to accept the situation and the fact that there was nothing he could do – that was what Pride or Lust would have told him to do - and was morbidly amused when his attempts had no effect. Even in a Homunculus, in a creature that was only a fake human and that barely counted as alive, the human drive to survive overrode his will, urging him on and refusing to let him sit down and give up completely. Pride and Lust (and even Greed to a lesser degree) had mocked the humans for so desperately clinging to life. Who would have guessed that the same instinct was in them as well?

What was he hoping for? He knew there was some small thing, a tiny detail that might save him, but he couldn't remember...

And then, after it seemed he had been walking for an eternity (or maybe it had only been a few minutes; time felt very strange here), he saw a light up ahead. Real light, not this strange light that existed only so long as he didn't notice it. It was small and it flickered weakly, but it was something different and humans preferred light. If there was anyone else alive here, the chances were good that's where they'd be.

He trudged on, every step an internal battle. He didn't want to get his hopes up, didn't want to end up disappointed, but that also seemed beyond his control.

As soon as he saw the two men facing him on a large rock island with their little campfire, his heart lifted in his chest. He tried to keep it from showing.

He remembered now what had happened: Gluttony had been about to eat the Xingese fighter, the Fullmetal Pipsqueak had jumped in the way in an attempt to rescue his friend, and he had tried to grab the boy, to pull him out of Gluttony's aim and all three of them had been swallowed.

The Fullmetal Pipsqueak, without a hint of self-consciousness, loudly asked him how they could escape. The Xingese brat expressed disgust that Fullmetal would so quickly beg his enemy for help.

Hadn't he seen all this before? It felt so familiar...

He heard himself explain where they were, saw the relief on his own face as if he were in another body when he told them they could escape if Fullmetal performed human transmutation and sent them through the real Portal of Truth. He pointed to the stone mural from Xerxes which loomed up behind them (had it been there before?) and recited what the alchemic symbols meant.

No, Ed explained the symbols. He didn't know anything about alchemy, after all.

There was a transmutation circle on the ground. With no time in between, he went from facing the humans from afar to standing in the circle's centre, feeling somewhat nervous at the prospect of his Stone being used by someone other than himself. The boy clapped his hands together and the circle lit up. An eye opened and stared up at them from the floor. Light twitched in his vision as black tendrils twisted and swirled around them-

His body seemed to be disintegrating-

No, black hands grabbed at him-

No, they didn't touch him. The hands ignored him. He stood in the middle of the maelstrom and nothing touched him. His body remained whole, even while Ed and Ponytail were being torn into a million pieces...

"No!" he heard himself screaming. He saw his hand reach out, trying to grab them, to stop them from leaving, but no, he couldn't move, his body wouldn't obey his commands. No, that was wrong; he could move, but his hand passed through them like dust. "You can't leave me here! We had a deal! My Stone to pay the toll! My Stone to get us out of here! WE HAD A DEAL!"

The maelstrom was gone. They were in the Bradley mansion. He didn't take any notice to the sudden change in scenery. Edward was staring down at him, face merciless and eyes filled with hatred. It was Mustang's face, or it was just Mustang's expression on Ed's face, or it actually was Mustang. And he said, "You killed Hughes. You started the Ishvalan War. Whatever made you think I'd bring you back? I'm going to use your Stone and leave you here. You deserve to rot for what you've done, and if it takes a thousand years for you to die, so much the better."

He fell back into the sea of blood. The light from the transmutation was gone. They were gone. He was alone again.

The silence was deafening.

He sat there, slumped over in the blood, stunned. The human had lied. He knew humans lied, but somehow he still couldn't believe it.

Then he screamed. He pounded the ground, which sent blood splashing up into his face. He lashed out, unleashing his powers and demolishing every piece of debris within reach. He destroyed the stone island then immediately regretted it, thinking that perhaps he could have activated the transmutation circle on his own somehow, then he cursed his temper and hastiness and went back to destroying until there was nothing left to destroy, until finally his emotions were spent and he had no energy left to do anything more than plop back down and stare into the darkness.

After some time (in this place, what did time matter?), he began to laugh. It was a deprecating, self-mocking laugh. He sounded insane. But what did that matter either? He was alone. There was no one to hear him.

He had trusted the human. Who had he been kidding? Why had he thought – expected – Edward to save him? His experiences watching humans had taught him that they were petty, miserable, vicious creatures that only cared about their own skins and yet preached on about friendship and family and connection as if they actually believed in those concepts. Disgusting hypocrites was what they were.

He might have spent some more time self-righteously insulting humanity – it was one of his favourite pastimes – but more pressing concerns crowded that pleasure out.

Ed had been right:

How long would it take for him to die?

There was no food here, except for human bones to gnaw on. There was nothing to drink except blood.

As much as they pretended otherwise, the Homunculi were not immortal and they had known this even before Lust had been killed permanently. They could die; it was just that their Stones automatically restored them back to life, using up some souls as payment. If they were merely injured, they had a bit more control in choosing whether or not to heal, but the impulse was pretty much automatic, for removing and avoiding pain was an instinct as deeply instilled in them as it was in humans.

Hunger and thirst were not injuries. They couldn't just use their Stones' energy to get rid of them. Starvation led to weakness, then to muscle atrophy, then to organ failure, and then, eventually, to death. The Stone could start healing at the organ failure stage by regenerating the consumed tissues, but the Homunculi did not have the ability to use their Stones to create food out of thin air (if they had, Gluttony probably would have cannibalized himself) and the Stone didn't recognize anything less as an injury for it to heal. It wasn't as if the Stone was sentient, after all; they couldn't order it, Do this, and have the command carried out any more than one could control their own heartbeat.

This was what he had to look forward to:

For a few days, he'd be hungry and thirsty, but it wouldn't be all that big of a deal except that there'd be nothing to distract him from the sensations.

Then he'd grow weak and his body would start to turn on itself for food.

He didn't know how long it would take before his body actually started shutting down and dying. Amestris was a well-to-do country and he'd never heard of starvation there, so he had nothing upon which to make an educated guess. It might be days, might be weeks. And since his body wasn't human, he might last a lot longer. He had a much greater mass to live on.

In the end, it didn't matter how long it took. He'd suffer and eventually die and his Stone would kick in, bringing him back to life again, but it couldn't feed him and he would just go through the process of being revived over and over. He couldn't even order his Stone to leave him dead – it didn't work that way. He'd have to wait until it ran out of energy.

How long would that take? How many souls would each death consume? How many lives did he have in him? Fifty? A hundred?

A thousand?

He shuddered. It might be years before he was finally dead for good. He'd been condemned to a long, slow, torturous death with no chance of escape. The humans had it easy in comparison. They could only die once.

So, he asked himself, how can I get this over with?

No point in waiting. Suicide was the best and most logical option, but even that wasn't as easy as it seemed.

He had made something of a study of humans and suicide, since it had come up in various forms both as a help and as a hindrance in the Homunculi's schemes (and come on, he had to admit that he loved to see humans suffer). The most common methods were poisoning, hanging, jumping, and shooting.

None of those methods would work here. He had no poison. He had no rope with which to hang himself and no place to tie it anyway. There was nothing he could jump from and he didn't have a gun.

His only option, then, was to directly harm himself.

He could do this better than some of the other Homunculi. Sloth, Gluttony, and Wrath had no transformative powers, so they couldn't have managed it, and Greed's carbon-hardened claws would do the job but it would have been hard for him to use his full force for a lethal strike, what with the angles. He, on the other hand, was quite capable of changing his arm into a blade to stab himself through his heart or throat; the problem was more about nerves. He didn't like pain. He didn't like dying. And considering the multitude of failed suicide attempts in humans, killing oneself was a lot harder than one might think. The methods humans most commonly used were favoured because they could be done quickly. One only had to suppress the instinct to preserve his or her life for a moment and then it was over or you could no longer back out of it.

Stabbing, on the other hand, was intentional and comparatively slow. It was unlikely he could move fast enough to make the death painless. Far more likely that he would falter at the last moment, that his nerves would twitch and throw off his aim or momentum and leave him in more pain than if the attack had succeeded. He was breaking into a sweat just thinking about it, and he wouldn't only have to do it once – he'd have to do it over and over again until his Stone's energy ran out.

He didn't think he could do it.

But if he waited, eventually he'd grow too weak to have the choice to even try. Not to mention that he could already feel the silence and darkness and solitude pressing down on him. There was no way to tell time here and nothing to explore.

Maybe he'd go insane enough to get over his nerves before it came to that point.

The very thought seemed to prompt a change in the environment, for he had only just had the thought when there was a sound behind him, the light splashing of footsteps as someone approached.

He twisted around to see who it was.

There was no one there.

He frowned, squinting into the darkness, which only grew blacker as he remembered that there was no light. Then he corrected himself – the campfire Fullmetal and Ponytail had made was still nearby – and there was light again, but the only things he could see were a few fragments of stone rubble at the edge of the pressing darkness.

Did I... imagine it? he wondered uneasily. Wait! What was that?

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and whipped his head around, thinking that the... well, he was assuming it was a human, but it was possible it was something else... that whatever it was could be hiding behind one of the rock slabs, but despite his quick action, he still didn't catch sight of anything.

Tingles went up his spine. He felt like he was being stalked or hunted. It was the same feeling he got whenever Pride's shadows were nearby, but if it was just Pride, he shouldn't be feeling so nervous. Pride was dangerous, yes, but he hadn't done anything wrong that would warrant punishment. That he could remember, anyway.

... Yes I have. I let myself get swallowed and I almost lost one of the Human Sacrifices. Pride'll definitely punish me for this.

But Pride couldn't be here, right?

Growing more nervous and feeling foolish (There's no one here. If anyone could see me, they'd think I'm a moron for jumping at shadows like a little kid!), he rose to his feet and slowly spun in a deliberate circle, thinking to prevent anyone from sneaking up on him.

When his rotation had him facing the campfire again, a little girl in a simple, faded pink dress was standing there staring straight at him.

"You killed me," she said. Her tone was mildly reproachful.

He was startled for all of a moment and he wondered briefly where she'd come from, but perhaps she was just another hapless human who'd recently fallen prey to Gluttony's appetite and had yet to die. Mainly he was just thankful that he hadn't already gone insane and been hearing things that weren't there.

"Geez, don't sneak up on me like that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" he exclaimed, grinning from relief and placing a hand over his heart in mock fright, hoping to elicit a smile or at least to ease the girl's fear. She'd be useless to him in terms of escaping, but it beat being alone in here and he didn't want to scare her off. He squatted down to meet her eye level. "Where'd you come from?"

"You killed me," she repeated.

"Huh?"

This time he actually heard what she said and his unease returned tenfold. Recognition tickled in the back of his mind but escaped his grasp. He looked her up and down, hoping to jog his memory.

Her outfit was really nothing more than an over-large shirt, perhaps a hand-me-down from an older sibling or the most her parents could afford. Her white hair was straight and short, falling just below her ears. Her skin was light brown with a coating of desert dust and sand on top. Her legs were bare from the knees down and she had no shoes; her feet were scratched and dirty. The only thing she had was a stuffed teddy bear clutched in her left hand. The thing was clearly a hand-me-down too, for it was well worn, with its right eye button missing and one of the legs about to come off. Nevertheless, despite her poverty he could tell she was naturally a cheerful child, one of those girls who, like a fairy flitting from flower to flower, left smiles in her wake on even the most miserable faces from her innocence and delight at life.

Her eyes were deep red. Her expression was solemn. Whatever her natural cheerfulness, she was not smiling at him now.

"Who...?" he started to ask, then trailed off, recognition dawning. The child's expression didn't change.

"Our names are a gift from Ishvala. I'm dead, so I don't need my name anymore. I gave it back to Ishvala so he could give it to someone else. But I wish I could have had my name for a little while longer. Why did you have to kill me?" she asked plaintively.

Oh yes, he knew who she was now. It was impossible, absolutely impossible, but this was the Ishvalan child that he'd shot to instigate the civil war.

He stumbled to his feet and took a few steps back, trying to put some more distance between them, but for every step he took backwards, she matched him without even needing to move her feet, keeping the gap the same.

"Why did you kill me?" she repeated.

He felt like he was watching the scene through two different minds, for on the one hand he remained calm – she was just a child, so she couldn't possibly hurt him - and on the other he was babbling away that she's dead, she can't be here, it's impossible!

"It wasn't personal," he heard himself telling her in a sickeningly conversational tone. "It was just my job, you know? Instigate a civil war. Get the Ishvalans to revolt. You were the perfect choice. All it took was a single bullet and everyone was up in arms."

This doesn't make any sense. Am I insane already? Is this a guilty conscience or something? Nonsense! I've never felt bad about killing this kid.

"You know, I spent a lot of time picking you. I couldn't kill a kid with parents in the priesthood 'cause they were all sheltered away from the soldiers, and most of the street urchins wouldn't have gotten a big enough reaction. But you were perfect. Poor, so you'd get pity points, but cute too, which made it seem more tragic. Your parents vocally objected to the military's presence and were persuasive enough to already have a following when the bullet was fired, which made it easier to get the city to riot. And everyone knew and loved you; if you hadn't been so nice to everyone and been such a perfect child, you might still be alive now. That's certainly not my fault."

If she's just a hallucination, maybe if I kill her she'll go away. But then, she could just come back again. And wouldn't I rather have someone here with me, even if she's not real?

"You really ought to be flattered. Your death was such an outrage that it led to a war that killed tens of thousands of people. How many humans can say that they had such an impact on history? Not that many, I'd bet. I don't know if you're named in the history books, but you're famous all the same."

She didn't answer. She just continued to stare at him accusingly.

He became defensive.

"Look," he snarled, taking a step forward in the hopes of intimidating her. "What do you care that I killed you, huh? You're dead now, so you don't have any right to complain. The dead can't talk, so just shut up! I'm going to die here too, so we're even, and it's not as if I haven't paid for my crimes! And I shot you right in the head, so you didn't feel a thing. You ought to be thankful; I didn't need to be so considerate! I-"

There was an explosion of sound that made his ears ring and his eyes instinctively squeeze shut. When he opened them a second later, there was a smoking gun in his hand and the Ishvalan child's face looked just as it had after he'd shot her the first time: covered in blood, chipped bone fragments and brain showing from the hole in her skull, eyes wide but intact. It had been a very clean shot. Much cleaner than the fighting that had erupted afterwards, as Ishvalans swarmed the soldiers with whatever weapons were at hand and the soldiers in turn flocked together and drew their weapons to defend themselves. In the mayhem, no one had noticed that he'd needed to heal himself (impossible to avoid being hit in the chaos), and it had also been laughably easy to slip away and change faces once he was certain that enough witnesses would be able to pin the crime on the soldier he'd chosen to take the fall.

Unlike before, though, the girl didn't fall backwards to lie still and dead on the steps. No, she continued to stand and stare at him through the gruesome injury.

Disgusted, he tried to back away. A piece of stone under his feet tripped him and sent him sprawling backwards into the ocean of blood and the next thing he knew, hands were at his throat, strangling him, digging in in an attempt to tear out the Philosopher's Stone hidden at the base of his tongue.

He flailed and struggled to fight her off, but whatever was attacking him was no longer a mere child, but something that, in the fight to survive, he could no longer make out. Whatever it was was large and strong and was easily overpowering him. Helplessly he scrabbled at the hands around his throat, but for every one that he managed to pull away, more came to replace them, black shadowy tendrils like Pride's shadows that he couldn't fend off.

His head thrust beneath the surface. The depth of the blood increased. It felt like he was sinking. He couldn't breathe. He saw his Stone being ripped from his throat and disintegrating into dust; it didn't hurt, but he realized in vague panic that if he was killed now, he'd be dead for good, and he tried harder to free himself or to at least get to the surface before he drowned, but his urgent efforts only left him sinking deeper.

"Damn it all, stop struggling! I'm trying to help you!" his attacker shouted gruffly in his ear. He ignored it and continued to fight with the hands, but he could feel himself growing weaker and dizzy with lack of oxygen. White spots began to form in his eyes. He was losing consciousness.

The world went black.

...

The next thing Envy knew, the hands at his throat were gone and suddenly he could breathe again. With a rush, air filled his lungs only to have him choke on it. Disoriented and heart hammering in his chest, he rolled onto his side and spent several minutes coughing and gasping. A glass of water was put into his hand and he greedily drank from it between coughs without looking up to see who had given it to him until he was able to calm down, breathe properly again, and take a look around.

He was in his bedroom in the Bradley mansion. There was no child, no sea of blood. Everything was as he'd left it when he'd lain down to sleep that night, except that Greed was at the foot of his bed wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers, semi-straddling Envy's feet and breathing almost as heavily as Envy was, and Ms. Bradley was hovering at the side of the bed in a light flower-patterned nightgown, concern painted all over her face.

He was seriously confused.

"What... happened?" he croaked.

"'What happened'?" Greed repeated roughly. He looked just about as serious as Envy had ever seen him. "You're either a flaming dumbass who nearly killed himself in his sleep or you're damn lucky to still be alive. Take your pick."

The answer did nothing to clear up his confusion. Beseechingly, he turned to Ms. Bradley.

"Are you all right, dear?" she asked instead. "Do you need some more water? Or a bucket? Do you think you might get sick?"

He shook his head. "What happened?" he asked again, this time not quite so hoarse.

"Well, I- I got up to get a glass of water and... Please don't tell Selim - he wouldn't want me to - but I like to check in on him through the night when I'm up, and I thought I heard a strange noise from your room, and when I came closer, it sounded like you were choking or something. And when you didn't answer me, I got concerned and-"

"The Missus got me straight away," Greed interrupted. "Your sheets were all wrapped around your head and she couldn't get them off. Not to mention you were flailing around like some kind of deranged fish. I can't figure out how in hell you managed to get them like that." His brother held up a few scraps of fabric that Envy saw had been torn from his newly ripped bed sheets. Apparently Greed had been too flustered – or Envy had been flailing too much – for him to simply unwrap the sheets from around his sibling's neck.

"Greed's right," Ms. Bradley interjected gently. "You're very lucky. I'm so glad I was up to hear you. A few minutes later and it might have been too late."

"But," he stammered dazedly, "where's the kid?"

"'The kid?'" Greed repeated with a raised eyebrow.

" Selim?" Ms. Bradley asked. "He's still in bed; I didn't get him-"

"No, not him. The girl. The Ishvalan kid. She was- She was strangling me. And Gluttony's stomach. The sea of blood. Where- How did I...?" He stammered, unsure of what he was trying to say. Already the details of what had happened were fading. There had been something about Ed, hadn't there? He tried to remember, but couldn't recall what had happened. It had been bad, though. At least, he was pretty sure it had been bad...

"You're not making any sense," Greed said after a moment. "You've been here the whole time. What, you smoke something good before going to bed? If that's the case, I want some." He grinned to turn it into a tease, but it was half-hearted at best. He looked troubled, as if the gravity of the situation was weighing down on him. There was no love lost between them, but Greed would not have wanted to wake up the next morning to find his younger brother had died through the night, even despite how poorly they got along.

"Get off," Envy muttered more out of habit than anything else, kicking his feet and tugging on one of the blankets that was trapped beneath Greed's knees. He had thrown it to the foot of the bed before falling asleep, for the summer heat made it far too hot to sleep with the extra layers. The proximity of the kick to his groin had Greed up in short order; he made a face and griped about a 'certain someone's' lack of gratitude, but Envy ignored him.

I was... hallucinating? he wondered uneasily, misreading Greed's look of concern to be about his sanity. I knew I was a little crazy, but that was full blown mental! Is something... wrong with me? Did the transmutation go wrong after all...?

"Don't tease him, Greed. It was just a nightmare. Though an awfully strange one by the sounds of it," Ms. Bradley tsked lightly. "Are you really all right? Maybe some fresh air-"

"A nightmare?" Envy interrupted. "You mean... a dream? Impossible," he scoffed, shaking his head. "We don't dream. I've never dreamed before. Besides, I thought dreams were nice. Pleasant. This was anything but."

Lily looked surprised for a moment, but she seemed to be getting used to being surprised by what Selim's family members had to say, for she recovered quickly and responded easily, though for some reason Envy couldn't fathom, she seemed to be avoiding looking at either of them directly.

"Well, that's what a nightmare is: a dream that's unpleasant or scary. Dreams that are nice are just called dreams. If you were dreaming about being strangled, it was probably worse because you really were being strangled, but that doesn't usually happen."

Envy pondered over this. He glanced at Greed, who was yawning and running a hand through his loose hair. It looked weird like that, since he always wore it in a ponytail, but then Envy realized that he probably looked weird to them as well, for he had taken off his headband before going to bed. "I just... forgot about that. I didn't realize we'd start dreaming now that we're human..." he admitted.

"Some people don't," Ms. Bradley replied. "In all the years I knew him, King claimed he never dreamed, and a lot of people have dreams but can't remember them. It really just depends on the person. Selim says he doesn't dream either."

Well of course they wouldn't dream, Envy thought. He kept his instinctive eye-rolling to himself, but Greed suddenly seemed concerned that he might say something he shouldn't (not an unreasonable concern considering the argument with Pride the evening before last) and he broke in before Envy could comment.

"Look, it's the middle of the night. Why not save this for the morning? Besides, as easy as I am on the eyes, I'm sure the poor Missus here doesn't need to see any more of you than you're showing off now. Please tell me you've got something on underneath that sheet."

Greed was mistaken if he thought his brother would become embarrassed by the jibe, for Envy was not the least bit self-conscious when it came to his body (And why should I be? he thought with a pout. There's never been a human that didn't look at me and wish they had this body!), but at least it provided a distraction. It was clear now that Ms. Bradley looked uncomfortable because Greed was in his underwear and Envy perhaps not even that much. (He actually was wearing bottoms, but with one sheet covering just up to his hips, it was fair for them to be concerned.)

"If you're so worried," he snapped at Greed, "then get out. Go sneak into Lust's room instead. Maybe she'll be happier to see you."

Greed shrugged, unoffended. "I'll take that as a thank you," he replied dryly before turning and leaving. Ms. Bradley, though, hesitated in the doorway, not even bothering to frown at the pair's immature behaviour.

"Are you positive you're all right?" she asked.

Envy gave her an incredulous look. I answered this question two times already, he thought, and he was quite prepared to answer rudely, but then he looked up at her.

The old woman's hands were clutched tightly together at her middle. He only had the bedside lamp to go by, but her face looked pale and drawn. He tried, for a moment, to convince himself that she was not so much concerned about his life, but that her anxiety was more because most humans did not enjoy being exposed to even the prospect of death and, at her age, any reminder of her own mortality was unwelcome. Or, he thought, her face seemed drawn because the struggle to free him had been tiring even if she hadn't been the one doing the freeing. (She seemed to have a low tolerance for conflict, after all.) Or another possibility was that she didn't care about him directly, but cared indirectly through her love for Pride, and Pride would be upset less at the loss of his brother and more at how humiliatingly pathetic a death one of his siblings had suffered. (Strangled by his own bed sheets after less than two weeks of being revived? It would give all of the Homunculi a bad name!)

But even Envy couldn't convince himself that any of these reasons were true, not knowing what he did about Pride's step-mother and from what he had observed of her already. As foolish as it seemed for her to get so upset over a virtual stranger – especially one who had purposefully not been treating her well – Lily was genuinely distressed by how close he'd come to dying.

And it surprised him even more that he didn't want to make fun of her for it.

So instead of answering rudely, he responded more neutrally. "I'm fine. Really," he said, waving one hand in a flippant shooing gesture. "Go back to bed. I'm not some fake little kid like Pride; I don't need you to hold my hand."

With that, Ms. Bradley finally gave in and left, closing the door gently behind her.


Despite his assurance that he was fine, Envy didn't think that he would fall back asleep; he felt too wound up. He spent a long time tossing and turning and worrying that the same thing would happen again, only that this time no one would be around to save him, and the nightmare resurfaced in the imagined feel of hands at his throat and accusing eyes staring at him. Eventually, though, he did fall back asleep, a light and restless sleep that left him more tired than if he hadn't slept at all. The next morning, he was the last one up and the events of the night showed all too clearly on his face.

"You look awful," Lust commented bluntly as he entered the dining room.

Ignoring her, he made a slow beeline for the nearest chair and sank into it so quickly and abruptly that he resembled a marionette doll that had had its strings cut. He put his head down so that his forehead rested on the tabletop; his hair, free since he hadn't bothered to put his headband on, fell to both sides and effectively hid his face.

Selim and Gluttony looked up curiously from their plates, and even Sloth seemed (as much as he could seem) mildly interested in what was going on.

"Envy? What's wrong?" Gluttony asked.

No reaction and no response.

Greed snorted from where he had been leaning against the wall, looking out the window.

"Nothing's wrong," Greed said. "He just had a bit too much excitement last night. Isn't that right, Little Brother?"

"Can it, Greed," Envy mumbled into the table.

"What happened?" Selim part asked, part demanded. "You two weren't bickering again, were you?"

"Hardly," said Greed.

"Envy had a nightmare last night," Ms. Bradley supplied when it became clear that Greed wasn't going to elaborate and Envy wasn't going to answer.

"Really?" Selim asked, his voice rising in excitement and his face lighting up. "What was it like, Envy? What did you dream about?"

Envy hunched his shoulders defensively for a moment, then sighed in resignation. He answered without looking up.

"… Horrible. I can't even remember much of it, except that I was back in Gluttony's stomach…"

"I said sorry," Gluttony offered apologetically. Ms. Bradley glanced at him askance, then shook her head slightly in consternation.

"If I had known dreaming would be like that, I never would have wasted the energy being…" He trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished, though it wasn't hard for the others to guess at what he'd been about to say.

"Even so, I'm jealous," Selim declared after a moment, which jerked Envy's head up to stare at his brother, first in astonishment and then in suspicion that he was somehow being mocked. "Really," Selim said earnestly. "I don't think I ever mentioned that to Big Brother or Teacher – that we can't dream – and I still can't even now. I didn't think that you all might start dreaming now that you're hum-"

Greed interrupted. "I'm confused. I was too asleep last night to think about it, but what do you mean by 'we can't dream'? 'Cause I know I've had plenty of dreams before."

"You have?" Selim asked. Envy remained hunched over, but he twisted his neck so that he could look at Greed, and Lust looked up from the newspaper, frowning in surprise.

"No you haven't," she archly contradicted. "I clearly remember you griping about it. You were spouting some nonsense about how you didn't care if you didn't know how you'd do it, but you wanted it and-" She lowered her voice in an attempt to mimic him, but as far as Greed was concerned, she only ended up sounded more sultry than usual. "-'nothing gets in the way of Greed and something he wants'."

"That sounds like me," Greed admitted, "but that must have been the First Greed and I already told you, I don't have those memories. All I know is that I've definitely dreamed before."

"What were they like?" Envy asked, perking up a little.

Greed looked up at the ceiling and rubbed his chin reflectively. "Well, like the Missus said, they're hard to remember. I think there were a good number with food in them. And a lot featured mountains."

"Like… the mountain ranges in the West?" Selim asked.

Greed shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so. They were wet and misty and green. Is that what the West is like?"

Selim said no, the West was dry and mostly boreal. It definitely was not tropical the way Greed was describing. He shrugged, dismissing the oddity.

"There were some with fights in them, but honestly, none of them ever made much sense. I think I once tried to kill my father-" He cut off and held his hands up defensively at the sudden intensity in his siblings' eyes. "Not our father. It was some shadowy figure, dark-haired. Never met him before. And then the same man was trying to kill me. Or maybe he would just kill me if I failed at some task… I can't remember. Ah!" he grinned, tapping his closed right fist into his open left palm as he remembered something else. "There were a few niiice ones with Ling's bodyguard." His suggestive tone made it quite clear what he meant by 'nice'. "Shame she didn't show up until late. I don't care what Ling claimed about them not 'being like that'; I don't believe it for a second! No way a guy has a girl like that around and doesn't want-"

Ms. Bradley gave a small cough and Greed cut off before he ended up being a little too honest.

Envy sat up. "You know," he said, "I don't think those dreams were yours."

"Huh? What d'you mean? Of course they were mine!" Greed protested, but Envy shook his head.

"Tropical mountains? That sounds like Xing. And a shadowy father figure? Did your 'friend' ever describe his father to you? The guy is – was – the emperor, and Xing's politics are crazy. It's entirely likely that the prince brat wanted to kill his father or was in danger himself. You two were sharing a body and you've already said you could communicate with him. Maybe when you slept, you got to experience his dreams instead of having them yourself."

Selim nodded. "That makes sense," he said, sounding impressed by Envy's reasoning.

Greed simply stared. "… How do you know so much about Xing?" he asked incredulously.

Envy scowled at the not-so-subtle insult to his intellect. "'Cause unlike you, I actually had to know some stuff about the neighbouring countries to do my job," he countered. "You want another reason why they're probably not your dreams? You said you dreamed about that female bodyguard, right? Well, I know she was out of commission for a while because of her lost arm, and she lost that right before you were born the second time. When did she first show up? If you had dreams about her before you met her, you can know for sure that they weren't yours."

Greed bristled at the way Envy phrased it – something that he'd thought was his actually wasn't? Unacceptable! – but he had to admit that he couldn't be certain of the timing, and it did make sense when he thought about it. How could he have dreamed about things he'd never experienced before or been aware of? He and Ling hadn't touched on Ling's homeland much in their discussions and Ling definitely hadn't mentioned his father either.

The dreams about Ling's bodyguard, though… He'd keep those in his back pocket for when he finally made it to Xing.

At the very least, they'd make for some fun ribbing. And at the best and depending on how he played it, they might make for some useful blackmail. Better to have and not need than to need and not have, after all.

"What about you, Lust?" Selim asked curiously. "Have you had any dreams yet?"

Envy felt certain Lust would say no, for she hadn't mentioned anything of the sort to him. To his surprise, however, their sister did not immediately deny it. Instead, she paused, that familiar calculating look in her eyes, before she sighed and reluctantly responded with a simple yes.

"You didn't tell me," Envy accused indignantly.

"There are many things I don't tell you," she responded curtly.

"How come you weren't freaked out by it? I didn't realize what was going on until Ms. B pointed it out. I thought I was going crazy."

"Because," she explained, "unlike you, I had to spend time in more… intimate… situations, and apparently sharing dreams is a sign of trust. I had several lovers who enjoyed regaling me with their dreams." She crossed her arms over her chest. "One was so put off when I didn't return the favour that I had to start making things up just to please him." She looked distinctly disgruntled by the memory.

"… Well? What have you dreamed about?" Selim asked when their sister fell silent.

"… I don't remember," she lied.

None of them believed her. Selim protested, "That's not fair, Lust!" and Greed tried to wheedle out some details, but the only female Sin remained tight-lipped and unmoved. She did not feel that her dreams were ones that she could share, and it was not because there was a 'child' present, as Greed suggested.

How could she admit that she had had a dream – rather, a nightmare – about being in danger and none of her siblings had come to help her? That they had done nothing but watch as she died? And there were others, dreams where they had been in danger instead and she had not been able to save them, had been unable to move; dreams where she had been trying to obey Father's orders, only she didn't know what his orders were and didn't understand them and was it more painful to have disappointed him or to have her pride brought low by failure?

And of course, there was fire. She doubted she would ever be comfortable with fire again.

When it became clear they weren't going to make her talk, Selim moved on to questioning Sloth and Gluttony. Gluttony wasn't quite sure what they meant and didn't want to give a wrong answer and Sloth groaned outright, "What is… a dream?" so Ms. Bradley began to explain, but she rambled and Gluttony ended up looking no more certain of what a dream was than before while Sloth's face showed no sign that he was even listening.

"I don't think so," Gluttony asserted when Ms. Bradley asked if he had dreamed before.

"What about you, Sloth?" she tried, turning to the giant man beside her.

The question was more out of politeness than anything else, for none of them expected Sloth to answer in the affirmative, but after a few moments, Sloth responded in his dull monotone, "… Dreamed… about… sleeping."

The Homunculi had a good chuckle over that, claiming it was exactly what they should have expected from Sloth the Indolent, and so not everyone heard when Selim spoke to Ms. Bradley with a complete change in topic.

"Mother, what happened to your arm?"

Ms. Bradley glanced down. She usually wore clothing that covered her forearms, but the day was already off to a hot start, so she had chosen to go with something a little lighter. She hadn't even noticed (or perhaps it had darkened from the time she'd gotten up) the large bruise on her left arm.

"Oh my," she said. "Where did that come from?"

"You don't remember?" the child asked in disbelief. "You must have whacked it really hard on something."

"Well, you know I bruise easily, but- Oh, this was last night. I…"

Ms. Bradley faltered for a moment. She snuck a quick peek at Envy across the table. Envy didn't see her glance, but Greed did, and it wasn't hard for him to figure out what they were talking about by following Pride and the old woman's gaze. He realized, too, that the bruise must have come from before she had woken him up the night before. Envy had been flailing around enough to leave him with a few sore spots of his own. Nothing worth complaining over, but if she had tried to free Envy herself before coming to him for help… Greed shot a look at Envy, which this time Envy noticed. He glared back, but Greed gave the briefest shake of his head and then nodded in Ms. Bradley and Pride's direction.

"… I- I tripped and hit my arm on the banister," he heard her telling Pride.

What? Envy asked Greed with a raised eyebrow, but then Greed pointed at him and Envy figured it out.

He had hurt her by accident when she'd been trying to help him, and now Pride's step-mother was lying to protect him from Eldest Brother's wrath.

Envy sank into his seat, somewhat embarrassed and definitely disgruntled.

She had quickly racked up some 'I-owe-her' points and he could not remember ever being beholden to someone before. Being helped was nice, but owing her was not. The feeling was bittersweet.


Author's Notes:

The Homunculi and healing in relation to "non-injuries": My theory here is based on Hohenheim. When he is found by Xingese merchants passed out in the desert, he was not injured, but was stricken by thirst, hunger, and heat-stroke. The fact that he suffered from these things suggests that he could not use his Stone to heal them. There is the argument that Hohenheim chose not to heal himself because he didn't want to use the souls in his Stone, as they were his kinsmen, but I feel it is more likely that Hohenheim would have healed himself if he could. I've read that Arakawa, in an interview, asserted that the Homunculi ate and drank and slept like humans. This suggests that they needed to do these things, which suggests that they either didn't want to waste their Stones on such petty healing or that they couldn't heal in that way. The fact that Greed/Ling almost passes out from hunger (after attacking Wrath the first time) further suggests that hunger is something a Homunculus would suffer from, the same as a human. So the death I've described Envy as suffering in Gluttony's stomach is what I think was most likely to happen (not just the most horrible thing I could think of).