Peaceful. That was the first word that came to mind upon waking up.

He could feel the sun on his face and soft blankets both above and beneath him. A window was open nearby, and a cool breeze wafted through the room, bringing with it the chirping of birds and the bustling of a lively city beyond the concrete walls. Those sounds were faint, though, and the room itself was quiet.

It would have been perfect, if not for the strong smell of chemicals mixed with the aroma of flowers from outside. Disinfectant? Yes, that was it. It smelled… like a hospital. But when in his life had a hospital visit been peaceful, of all things?

"Finally waking up, huh?"

Envy inhaled sharply and opened his eyes, the familiar voice jarring him with a flood of memories he had been sorely unprepared for. Wait. He remembered the lab, and he remembered Jacket, and he remembered being hit by flying debris. He had bled—a lot—and he had passed out. Wait, wait, wait. No, he hadn't passed out. He had died. He had died, and if he was alive, then that meant—

"Envy, are y—?"

"You weren't supposed to use it on me!" Envy sat up in the hospital bed, grunting slightly at the twinge of pain in his gut. "You were supposed to use it on—on the one in the lab. I told you to—I told—"

Mustang put one hand on Envy's shoulder and held the other one out in a soothing gesture. "Envy, take a deep breath, and I'll explain everything."

Envy did take a deep breath, but it wasn't because Mustang ordered him to. He felt lightheaded, which he blamed on his poor physical state, and his lungs were demanding more oxygen. I'm not in a lot of pain, though. I don't… I don't understand.

"I did what you asked, and I used the Stone to revive the homunculus downstairs. However, when he realized he had an older brother, he wanted to bring you back." Mustang put a finger in front of Envy's lips, silencing him before he had the chance to object. "He said Rinehart had two Stones, and—"

"He said he only had one." Envy interrupted despite Mustang's efforts to stop him, his brain quickly realizing Jacket's real name must have been Rinehart. "Well, three. Two for the new homunculus, and one for the homunculus downstairs."

Mustang smiled lightly. "Well, of course he did. He knew you wanted one. He wasn't about to tell you he had an extra."

Envy blinked a few times, and then his gaze dropped to his lap. That makes sense. I know he was an idiot in some regards, but in others, he was pretty clever.

"Your new brother used a few of his souls to create your physical body, and we used the fourth Stone for your core. You don't have any special abilities outside of healing, but I figure you've gotten used to that by now." Mustang pressed his lips together, almost as if he were trying to suppress a smile. "You know how Fullmetal feels about the Philosopher's Stones."

Envy nodded slowly and stared at the hand still resting on his shoulder, wrapping his arms around his stomach. He was surprised Edward had even allowed Mustang to use one to bring him back. Alphonse, too.

"Well, they said they wouldn't make a fuss, but there's a catch." Mustang still managed to keep his lips in a straight line, but it was clear he was amused. "They said their father got to know every soul in his body—all 536,329 of them—and they want you to do the same."

Envy swallowed and blinked a few times. He hadn't even known it was possible to converse with souls, let alone get to know them individually. He couldn't have had as many as Hohenheim, but still…

"They don't mind you having a Stone at your core, and they aren't opposed to you using it, but you have to have permission from the people inside you."

Envy sputtered, fists curling through the bedsheets. "What? How am I supposed to do that? And why would they give me permission, anyway? What if they all hate me? What if—?"

Mustang allowed his smile to grow, fully genuine, and he let his hands drop to his sides. "Envy, I will help you. I am certain Fullmetal would be willing to help you, too, as well as Alphonse when he's here." He kept smiling, his hands clasped together behind his back. "What you need to focus on right now is that you're alive. You're alive, and you will stay that way for the foreseeable future."

Envy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reaching behind himself and adjusting his pillows so he could sit up. "I take it I still belong to the military. No clean slate just because I died."

Mustang nodded, his expression somewhat grim. "Correct." He stepped forward and grabbed the back of the bed, pushing on some sort of lever and pulling the head into a slanted position. "But you can't deny you've enjoyed the missions you've gone on so far."

Envy settled back into the mattress and let out a soft sigh. "I guess so. I'll stay on your team, right?"

Mustang nodded. "That has not changed. I would not allow it to."

Envy folded his hands in his lap and started at them, toying with his fingers and trying to process the situation. So, I'm alive, I still work for Mustang, and I still can't shapeshift. I have to get to know however many souls are inside me, or I'll get an earful from the Fullmetal Pipsqueak and his brother. Mustang is avoiding an obvious question, but I don't know if I want to bring it up.

Envy decided on avoidance. "Did the new homunculus survive?"

"Yes." Mustang smiled lightly. "Would you like to meet your new brothers?"

"Not yet." Envy swallowed and cracked each of his fingers in turn. "I don't… I'm still a bit disoriented." He ran a hand through his hair. "How am I still… me? If you made a new body with two new Stones, how did my memories and personality get into this body?"

"Ah." Mustang leaned against the nearby windowsill. "That was a bit tricky. We weren't entirely sure how to make that happen, so we had to make a few educated guesses. We knew coming into contact with a Philosopher's Stone while in your worm form—" Envy cringed at the word, "—automatically brought you back to your human form. We attempted to perform an extension of that by gathering the dust from when you disintegrated and putting it with the ingredients for a body. We used it the same way we would use soul data in human transmutation. For a while, your body couldn't quite decide what to look like, and every time it healed, it came back looking different. We were worried we wouldn't be able to recreate you, but by the time your new body joined with the new Stone, you looked like yourself. We hoped your mind would follow suit, and it seems it did."

Envy nodded slowly, running the theory over in his head. "That's… pretty ingenious, actually."

Mustang chuckled, folding his arms over his chest. "You have Fullmetal to thank for that one. He said something about taking a leap of imagination and putting milk in stew, whatever that means. He and Alphonse knew more about human transmutation than any of us. It was their idea."

Envy nodded a few more times—he felt like he was doing that a lot, but what else could he do?—and cleared his throat to break the silence settling between them. "I—I guess I'm ready to meet them."

Mustang pushed off the wall with a quiet hum and walked over to the door, sticking his head out into the hall. Words were exchanged, and then Mustang returned to the room with two boys on his heels.

One was average in height and build, with long black hair and green eyes. There were scars on his arms, wounds in various stages of healing, and Envy immediately determined it to be the homunculus who had been kept alive and experimented on.

Then came a slightly smaller one, still with black hair but cut to a shorter length. His eyes were a dark brown, almost black color, and his skin was a sun-kissed, tan color. He was jumpy, eyes constantly moving from one thing to the next as he examined the room he was in.

"Hi, Envy." Waving slightly, the taller one offered a smile. "I'm Jurian. I, uh, I guess I'm the oldest of your younger brothers." Glancing over his shoulder, Jurian nudged the other boy with his elbow. "Go on."

"Uh—" Still nervously looking everywhere, the boy wrung his hands as he tried to answer. "Hi. I think—I think my name is Kasimir, but I keep feeling like it's Kaiser. Or maybe it's Joseph?"

Jurian and Envy exchanged a look. "Souls," they both said.

Kasimir—at least, until further notice—nodded his head rapidly and started to look around the room again. Whatever he thought he had to worry about was clearly more important than meeting his brother.

Envy tried not to be offended. It didn't work, but he did try.

"Colonel Mustang says you should be back on your feet pretty soon. I'm looking forward to it." Jurian gestured vaguely toward the boy behind him. "He's going to Xing with Alphonse and Raiden. We're hoping some time away from alchemy and Philosopher's Stones might help him calm down and sort out the voices in his head. But, uh, but I'm staying."

Envy blinked in surprise, gaze flickering over to Mustang before landing back on Jurian. "You're staying here?"

Jurian nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna help the military, if I can. Well, really, I'm helping you and Colonel Mustang, but we can say it's for the military." He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing softly. "I, uh, I really owe you. You could have taken the Stone for yourself, but… you didn't, so… I want to help. If I can, I mean. I don't really know much about… anything, really. I never left that lab before you came, but I'll do what I can."

Envy blinked again, his surprise increasing more with each thing he heard. He couldn't show that, of course, so he quickly covered up his disbelief with a snort. "Yeah, well, don't get used to any kind of benevolence. I do my very best to be selfish whenever possible."

Jurian gave him a small smile. "I'll keep that in mind, Brother."

Envy smirked at him, but it quickly dissolved into a yawn. He heaved a sigh and went limp on the mattress, draping one arm over his forehead. "I better not be stuck in here for too long."

Mustang, who had silently observed from the window, took that moment to interject himself into the conversation. He chuckled and gently ushered the two standing homunculi towards the door. "I think we need to let Envy get some sleep. Kasimir, why don't you—"

"No, wait, I think it's Kaiser." He nodded a few times. "Definitely Kaiser."

Mustang nodded slowly. "Alright, then. Kaiser, why don't you—"

"Wait, never mind. It's Kasimir. Stick with that for now. Um… yeah, that."

Mustang took a deep breath through his nose and let it out, taking a few seconds to pause before attempting to speak again. "Why don't you go meet up with Alphonse and Raiden in the cafeteria? Jurian, please make sure he gets there safely, and then come back up to this room."

Jurian nodded his hand and took Kasimir's hand in his, pulling him towards the door. They both waved another time—though Kasimir was slightly facing in the wrong direction—and then they left. Mustang shut the door behind them, and then it was just the two men and their silence.

"I know you're tired," Mustang started, walking back over to the bed and sitting on the edge of the mattress. "I'll let you sleep. I just wanted to say thank you."

Envy frowned. "For what?"

"You took a bullet for me, so to speak." Mustang offered a light smile. "You died trying to protect me, and that is deserving of thanks."

"Oh." Envy looked down at his lap, nodding absently. Yeah, I guess I did. I didn't really think about it. It just happened.

"Please tell me we aren't doing the 'oh' thing again." Mustang smirked lightly. "It's good to know you've learned to care."

Envy gave another quick nod. "I… you said a one-way relationship was a bad idea, didn't you?"

Mustang smirked a little more, chuckling. "Indeed, I did."

"Then don't flatter yourself. I didn't do it because I cared, I did it because it's the best way to obtain a relationship worth having." Envy pulling his blankets up to his chin and nestled down in the sheets. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to sleep."

Mustang never stopped smiling regardless of what Envy said, and it was with a small laugh that he turned to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

"Mustang?"

Mustang stopped and waited, looking over his shoulder but making no move to return to the bed. "Hmm?"

"Would…" Envy bit his lip and looked out the window. "Would you stay? Just for a little while."

Several seconds passed in silence, and then Envy heard footsteps and the sound of a chair sliding across the linoleum. Clothing rustled as Mustang sat down, and then a gentle voice spoke. "I think I can manage that, Envy."

Silence settled over the room for a moment, and then Envy looked back at him. If Mustang didn't want to freely offer the information, that was his choice, but Envy wasn't about to go the rest of his life without knowing the answer.

"Mustang, why… why did you do it?"

Mustang frowned slightly. "Do what?"

"Why did you… bring me back?" Envy wet his lips and looked away, taking a deep breath. "I know you said Jurian wanted me to come back, but that's hardly a good reason from your point of view, and… even if you decided not to go out of your way to kill me… or torture me… why would you go out of your way to bring me back?"

There were a few beats of silence, and then Mustang sighed.

"Well, there's quite a few reasons for that. You aren't who you used to be, for starters. I wouldn't exactly say we're friends, but you're a member of my team, and I don't mean as far as paperwork is concerned. You're an asset, sure, but I enjoy having you around. You're my subordinate, and it's my job to take care of you."

Envy wasn't quite satisfied with that answer. He felt like Mustang was holding something back, and while he didn't like it, he chose not to press the issue. Whatever it was would no doubt crush his ego even more—like 'I believe there's good in you' or something equally maudlin—and he still had another question to ask.

"That's how you think now." Envy cleared his throat and looked back up at the window. "But you didn't think that way when you first captured me. When you did all those human transmutations… why didn't you kill me when you were done?"

Mustang was quiet for a moment, and then Envy heard his clothing rustle again. "When we fought you in the past, no matter how beaten down you were, you were always cocky. You always told us not to look down on you, told us we were worms, and so on." Mustang paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "I guess… when we were finished with the transmutations, I expected you to still have your enormous ego, but you didn't. You couldn't even speak. You just cried."

Envy felt his cheeks heat up, but he kept his lips pressed tightly together.

"You cried just as hard, if not harder, than Elysia did at Hughes' funeral. You cried like the children in Ishval while they watched their parents burn. You didn't cry like someone who was in physical pain, you cried like someone who had been left behind; someone who was alone and afraid with no one to turn to but themselves." He paused. "I once said I never feel more human than when I'm fighting monsters. It's hard to see someone as a monster when they're as miserable as you were."

Envy fisted the sheets in his hands, keeping his eyes glued to the window. He felt his cheeks heating up more with every passing second, and he barely managed to acknowledge the statement with a nod. But… oddly enough, he wasn't angry. He was embarrassed, but he wasn't filled with his usual sense of hatred and indignation. He was almost relieved—relieved to know Mustang hadn't seen the tears as weakness, but rather, as a sign of humanity.

Funny. He had once regarded the two terms as synonyms.

"You haven't tried to kill me yet. I'm surprised."

Envy snorted bitterly and gave his head a light shake. "For the longest time I thought you were trying to make the torture last. I don't honestly know when I started thinking otherwise."

"I won't say I didn't consider it. How else would I have had your room ready?" Mustang's clothing made a noise, and Envy assumed he had shrugged his shoulders. "I wasn't sure whether I could use your entire Stone up in one night, and if I couldn't, I would need somewhere to put you for a day or two. However, by the time I actually got you to the room, execution was nowhere in your near future."

"Because I was so pitiful," Envy finished, lips drawing into a scowl.

"Because it occurred to me that no one had ever given you the chance to be something different. Because I realized if you were afraid enough and in pain enough to scream the way you did, and yet you wouldn't beg me to stop, you genuinely believed there would be no mercy for you. Because you held onto me for dear life when I got you out of the car, and you cried on my shoulder, and I saw someone who was worth giving another chance."

Envy wet his lips and shook his head, eyes burning as he dropped his gaze down to his lap. "I was so afraid," he whispered. "I had never been afraid before."

"Never?" Mustang sounded surprised.

"Never." Envy shook his head again. "There were a few times I was nervous, mostly when I made Father angry with me, but I was never… never afraid. Not until you started chasing me."

Mustang hummed softly. "If I recall correctly, you turned that fear into anger rather quickly."

Envy shrugged. "Maybe, but it didn't do much good." He traced idle patterns on the bedsheets. "I thought if you knew how… beaten down and weak I was, it would make it easier for you to torture me. I didn't want you to know how depleted my Stone was or how much I missed my family. I thought you would use that against me."

He managed a brief glance in Mustang's direction, catching the tail end of a nod before looking back at the window.

"You thought I would cut you open and take everything out?" Envy could hear the smirk in Mustang's voice. "I began to figure that out after your nightmares started."

Envy snorted softly, a light smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"I guess we both learned a lot," Mustang said softly.

Envy allowed his smile to grow just a little more, and while he was still too red-faced to look at the colonel, he felt himself relax. He leaned back into the pillows and heaved a sigh, eyes drifting shut, and with Colonel Mustang standing guard, he faded off to sleep.

No, he still wasn't quite sure what the future held, and he wasn't quite sure how he got where he was. He didn't know what it would be like having a new family, and he didn't know when he would have a chance to visit General Hughes' grave so Mustang would help him commemorate his old one. He didn't know how he was going to get to know the souls inside of him, and he didn't know how many of them there were. He didn't know what it would be like, spending every day working alongside people he had once demeaned and fought against.

But he did know that right there, in that moment, laying in a hospital bed with his warden standing by, there was nothing Envy wanted that he didn't already have.

For the first time in a long time, Envy was content.

And it was all thanks to Colonel Roy Mustang.