Outside, the moon was near-full, bathing the streets in pallid light. There was a dusting of snow, early for that time of year. It was a boon to Kimblee in that it let him follow Envy's footsteps. The snow, the light, and a dark pool of blood welling at the mouth of an alleyway, told him where to go.

The alley was narrow and tall, cut off from the moonlight. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and in that moment he was not above feeling afraid. Yes, he was more to Envy than the vagrant who lay dead on the ground (had the poor fellow asked Envy for change?) but that might only serve to make him a more appealing target.

"What are you doing here?" Envy's voice did not sound pleased, but neither was it attacking him. Envy's skin was a pale shade in the gloom, darkened in places with spatters of blood.

"Certainly not looking for you."

"Why?"

"I owe you an apology. It wasn't my intention to make you angry."

Envy's form shifted; lengthening, thickening, features broadening, until he was looking not at Envy, but Greed. He held out one hand.

"You should come back to me. I can give you more than it can."

"This, after you advised me not to get too close to him?"

"Greed, yes. Me even less."

Perhaps because Envy had been forced to betray the act of being Greed, it shifted again. Body smaller, hair longer, for a second Kimblee thought Envy was reverting back to normal, but he faced instead the form of Lust.

"Do you want someone whose body you can torture endlessly without killing?" Her husky voice inquired. "Or is it just the old, I want a different partner each night deal? Are you a sadist, or just a normal man?"

"I'm both, but neither is what I want with you."

"What, then?"

"…You said you didn't understand me. I don't understand you either. I want to."

There was more that he wanted, but he was content to let understanding come first. Anything else could follow in due time.

"No you don't." For the first time, Kimblee could believe that Envy was older than he was. Much older. The face was youthful as ever, but there was something too ancient, too terribly knowing in those eyes.

"You're so sure of that? I've never once averted my eyes from terrible things."

"Yes. I'd turn away from myself if I could."

"I can't. I couldn't if I wanted to."

"Whatever you want, you won't find it. Whatever you think you're chasing after in me, it's nothing." The form was changing again, and this time…he found himself looking at himself.

"If there's anything that attracts you to me," his own voice said to him, "it's just your own reflection. I'm hollow, we all are. You've seen Gluttony's hunger, Greed's avarice: appetites sufficient to devour the world. It's because we're empty. Father made us as extensions of himself, like an arm or a leg. Soulless shells to carry out his will."

There was a silence heavy as led.

"The idea of a soul is a highly theoretical one." Kimblee didn't know if it would help, he merely spoke the words as they came to him. "Alchemists cannot revive the dead, and this may be because there is nothing to revive. It could be that the sum total of what we are dies with our bodies, unless alchemically grounded to another object. We might be nothing, beyond our physical form."

"Do you believe that?"

"I like to think that there is more to me than this fragile piece of meat."

Envy was wearing a look that was not at all becoming of Kimblee's features: wide-eyed and so horribly vulnerable.

"And, if we're going to assume that I have a soul," he continued, "I don't see why you wouldn't have one as well. If your Father made you from himself, that's no different in principle from how two humans make a child together. And yet we generally believe that babies have souls."

He walked up to Envy, across ground slick with blood, and gently placed one hand on the side of his stolen countenance. "Darling, if you make me watch myself tear up I will blow your face off."

"I'm not about to cry, idiot." Envy muttered, but it shifted back into its normal form nonetheless. Kimblee was surprised at just how much of a relief it was. Maybe that was why he reached out and pulled Envy into his arms.

Envy stiffened in shock. Normally, it would have been the last thing it wanted or tolerated, and yet…its arms found their way around Kimblee of their own accord. It was the aftereffect of his punishment, damn it, that horrid yearning to be touched. And Kimblee was very warm, whereas Envy was not a degree warmer than the chilly night air.

.

From the shadows, Pride watched and was not happy. It could expect no better from Greed and Lust, but Envy? Envy was nothing, but still better than this, simply in the fact that it called Pride 'brother'.

.

"Don't you feel how cold I am?" Envy said. "Like holding a statue. How could you want that?"

"I've been called a strange human." It was bliss, actually, to finally know what Envy felt like, to be allowed to get this close.

"Are you a necrophiliac?"

"Show me an attractive cadaver and I'd consider it."

"Seriously."

"Seriously?"

He took a step back, just as a precaution, to get out of Envy's direct reach. Maybe he was paranoid, but then again, he never would do what he was about to if were he entirely sober. Envy's arms felt disconcertingly empty without him.

"Greed briefly described the circumstances of your birth."

From the look on Envy's face, Kimblee was ready to start blasting away vicious onslaughts. Yet Envy merely asked, in a low, stiff voice,

"What about it?"

"It reminds me of mine."

"How?" Envy snapped, eyes flashing. "You're not hideously malformed!"

"My conception was the consequence of rape." It was strange to say it out loud. It had always gone unspoken, first due to his family's shame, and then to his own resolve never to be looked down on for any reason.

"My family didn't come to this country legally. They never spoke the language well or had the protection of the law. My father, whoever he was, must have known that." He smiled, bitterly. "Had I been born a girl, I would have been drowned at birth like a little of mutt-puppies. Luckily for me, Xingians value sons, and my grandparents never had one of their own so they gave me a chance."

"Your surname…" Envy began.

"I can't give myself an Amestrian face, but names can be changed."

Envy just stared at him for a long time. How strange to think that the person standing before it might never have been. And on account of such a trivial thing, to the shapeshifter's mind, as gender or race. And Envy found itself glad, absurdly glad, that by sheer luck Kimblee had lived long enough to come this far. And simultaneously enraged that it might so easily have not been the case.

"And you don't hate them?" It managed at last. "The ones who would have killed you as soon as look at you? How?"

"I did." He didn't like to admit that, to remember a time when such petty resentment had ruled him, and yet giving voice to it was strangely cathartic. "For years I hated them, and loved them too. I had to kill both things, or let them kill me."

"I could have never forgiven that."

"Is it something to be angry about? It made me who I am. Although some people would say that's the worst part."

"Fuck 'some people'. Fuck all people, for that matter. My opinion matters more than all of theirs put together, and I say that you're the only human who deserves the pride your kind takes in itself."

He was rendered speechless for a moment. How was it that Envy of all people had just spoke the kindest words ever said to him? Whatever he had expected or hoped for from the homunculus, it had not been that. He had never felt the need to hear such sentiment expressed. It surprised him, how much those words suddenly mattered.

"I've always thought myself immune to that pride." He said quietly.

"Bullshit. If you're not a worthwhile human, there is no such thing."

One amazement after another. It was something else he and Envy had in common, he realized: they were both valuable only to the extent that they were useful. His worth had always been rather finite: a dutiful son to his grandparents, a loyal soldier to Amestris, an unabashed turncoat and pawn to 'Father', along with myriad less significant roles he had played as the need arose. There had never been anyone who saw him as more than the function which he served. And that was alright. Hell, until that moment he would have said it was preferable. But how was it that Envy treated him more like a human than any human ever had?

"For what my opinion is worth, I think pretty well of you, too." It was a bit of an understatement. "And I just wanted you to know that I know what its like – to be unwanted. To be viewed as an aberration."

"There's nothing wrong with you."

"There's nothing wrong with you either."

"You really think that?" Envy couldn't quite believe it. Not after Kimblee had seen it transform, seen all its ugliness.

"I do."

Envy smiled. "Crazy bastard."

Something he had been called often enough, and yet there was a bizarre note of affection in the way Envy said it.

"Coming from you, I'll it as a complement."

Envy took a step closer, reaching out as though to touch him again.

"You're shivering."

"It's nothing."

Envy had almost forgotten that Kimblee was human, still a fragile creature for all the power he possessed. It was the sort of thing that Envy would have – should have – found irritating, repulsive even. And yet Envy was the one who felt lacking, for it had no heat of its own to share. And Greed could have, Greed was always so much warmer –

"You should go back inside." Envy said, dropping its hand and stepping back.

"You should come with me."

"I can't. I've got things to do."

"And siblings to avoid?"

Envy winced. "And you claim not to understand me."

"Come back in with me." He moved closer, advancing the distance Envy had retreated. "Show him he doesn't understand you as well as he thinks he does."

Envy had all but given up on that, on being anything beyond than what Greed said it was - ugly, bitter, petty. Back in the bar, it would still be Greed, as always, and Envy was no different either. The only thing that had changed was this human, who said Envy wasn't ugly, but for all Envy knew he could be lying, and Greed never lied.

But he's out here, with me. Envy. Not Greed. But he can't stay out here, and if I go in...

Envy hesitated.