UTOPIA
About the title of this fic:
The definition of utopia is 'an ideal and perfect place or state where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best', but it comes from Greek, meaning 'not place'- a place that does not exist. I think that what the homunculi are searching for is utopia- some glittering and perfect thing that they can never reach, because it is not real.
I realise I'm going on a bit, but I'm nearly done, I promise. I just want to say thank you to Killing Lies, who was my beta reader and did a brilliant job of fixing up all my errors and making sure I didn't ramble on too much. I really appreciate it!
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. WARNINGS: Mild gore, violence, and language.
i. Beginning
Once upon a time he had a father and a mother, and he thought that they might have loved him.
His father was a scientist- an alchemist- and spent much of his time in the laboratory. He felt alone and, seeking attention from his father, snuck into his lab, attempting to prove his intelligence. He was trying to earn his father's praise- but when he was found, his father went into a blaze of fury, and forbid him from entering the lab ever again.
He didn't know- couldn't know- that his father only feared for his safety. He believed that his father hated him, could not bear the sight of him. He felt first abandoned, and then angry- and one night, while his father was not there, he snuck into the lab again.
His anger towards his father coursed through his veins as he swept a shelf of empty glass beakers to the ground; he overturned the table and its piles of notes. He smashed bottle after bottle, never noticing the silvery liquid spilt on the floor, never noticing the mercury vapour that hung in the air, poison slowly pulled into his body with every breath he took.
Soon, it was far too late.
After he died his father, horrified and guilt-ridden, brought together all the ingredients he would need to build a human body and placed them in a circle chalked upon the laboratory floor. He stood over the circle and sliced into his own palm, allowing his blood to drip down over his hand and into the large metal basin below, a tiny crater forming from the impact, the dark liquid spreading and bloodying everything it touched.
He placed his hands on the circle, and light flashed.
ii. Birth
Blood dripped from the father's mouth as he staggered, horrified, away from the transmutation circle and the thing in its center; a monstrosity; a twisted pile of flesh and sinew and gore with two hideously glowing eyes. Its entire frame was convulsing with effort for every rasping breath it took. The creature, alone and in pain and terrified and new to the world, followed him with its eyes, wanting to cry out to its creator, wanting to beg the man to return- but unable to force its twisted tongue to form words.
It did not understand what it had done wrong, only that the man- its creator, its father- was abandoning it, leaving it to die. Terror and loss flared as it watched him go, wanting- desperately wanting- to follow as images it did not recognise flickered through its head. The creature lay, helpless, alone, confused, wishing that its creator would return- but he did not.
Instead came a woman with dark hair and dark eyes, calling out a name. The woman saw the creature on the floor and gave a gasp as she realised what it was- what it was supposed to be.
"My son," she murmured. "Oh, god, my son. My little boy..."
She had stood, horrified, for a moment, and then she had suddenly rushed from the room and returned with a few glowing red shards.
"He couldn't complete it, but with this I can; with this I can have you back..."
The creature pressed itself close against her; against this woman who smelt of something it couldn't remember and resembled somebody it had never meant to forget; this woman who had come for it, rescued it when it had been abandoned by its creator. She found its mouth and pushed the shards between its lipless teeth, forcing them onto its malformed tongue, and it readily accepted them, because she had come for it and what she wanted, it would give her, it would please her so that it would not be abandoned again.
The stone fragment pulsed a brilliant bloody red, and the creature's lidless eyes filled with pain as an unholy screech rent the air and the twisted failure in the circle began to jolt with electricity as its mangled body began to mend.
iii. Mother
The woman who had come for him cradled him closely, sobbing into his hair, whispering and murmuring things he did not understand. She asked him what he was; who he was- because he was not her son, he was all wrong, with his purple eyes and deathly pale, cold skin and his hair just the wrong shade of blonde: too dark; too inhuman; too dead to be her son and why wasn't he her boy? Her little boy who he was supposed to be, her precious little boy and why, why, WHY?
The homunculus lay still and listened to her pleas until she fell silent, her warm breath mussing his hair and heating his cold flesh until he almost could've felt warm enough to be human.
iv. Change
When she awoke, she screamed at him. She shouted and cried, furious and terrified and sad and lonely. The man who had left him in the circle had left her too, and he felt a flash of something deep within him, something hot that made his fists clench and his teeth grit together. This woman had come for him, had made him whole, had held him and that man had abandoned them both. He felt the first stirrings of hatred within him as hazy images of a man scrambling away in fear rose to the forefront of his mind.
She had screamed at him for being her son, but not being her son. She was angry with him because he wasn't who he was supposed to be. She was crying because he reminded her of somebody who was gone and he wanted to comfort her, wanted to stop looking like this dead child who had hurt her so much- and suddenly, he knew what to do and exactly how to do it. He shut his eyes and felt warmth course through his cold body: a sensation that ran over each of his limbs in turn bringing a healthy pink tint to pallid flesh and new life to cold eyes. He reshaped his bones and muscle into somebody new, somebody different.
The woman had been shocked into silence, and for the rest of that day she either screamed at him and sobbed as she had the day before, or cradled him in her arms and babbled nonsense into his ear that sounded by turns grateful and insane.
v. Hate
As the months passed, the woman had turned from hysterical, grieving and terrified to something new, something that he did not understand. She became colder towards him, and she began to test him- telling him to turn into people when she showed him portraits of them, asking him to imitate her voice. Sometimes she would ask him to be her son again, and when he was her son she would talk to him, hold him and tell him things that both scared and angered him. It was when he was her son that she told him about Hoenheim, about her lover and her loneliness and her guilt. He did not understand her most of the time, but what he did understand only made him hate the man.
He told her that he hated him and she had lashed out, yelling at him: "Good! Hate him, hate him! He left us- left us both- so hate him and hate him and hate him for leaving us, do you understand? Hate him!"
He obeyed. After all, was she not the one who had pulled him from the circle and made him whole?
vi. Son
He told her, one night, that he wished he were her son because she loved her son more than she loved him.
He told her that he saw people walk by and wished he could be them. He saw things and wished he could have them; he wanted; he needed; he coveted.
She laughed bitterly and told him that he was feeling envy.
The word seemed to fit him, and he played with it in his mind. Envious, he would whisper, envy, envied, enviously...
One night, he told her that his name was Envy.
Her eyes glittered, and she told him it suited him.
vii. Master
Gradually, she stopped asking him to become her son. She told him to call her Master, not Mother. She seemed harsher, colder, and crueller. She ordered him to do things and he obeyed, because she had not abandoned him and hate her though he might, he was too afraid of being alone again to refuse her.
He found her one night before the mirror, glaring in distaste at her wrinkles. She had raged at Envy when she caught him watching and then she stopped and looked at him strangely.
"If you can take another's body, why can't I?" she had asked, dangerously softly, and then she bade Envy go into the nearby village and find her a pretty girl, a young woman just beginning to flower into a beautiful lady. Her eyes shone with a mad, malicious light and Envy obeyed her, because she was his master and his mother, and he could not, would not be alone.
The girl he found was only seventeen, but beautiful, with long, dark hair, a lithe, willowy figure, a pretty white-toothed smile. His master sneered, and then she took out a glowing red stone, and in a flash of light, his master's body crumpled to the floor, and her cruel eyes glowed from a new and unblemished face.
viii. Greed
Envy was envious.
His master had found herself a plaything, a human man whom she would kiss and touch and smile at, and Envy felt a familiar feeling of spitefulness settle within him for the attention lavished on this man. When the human man died Envy was glad, because then he would be the only one in his master's life- but it did not happen as he expected.
His master drew a circle in chalk and heaped ingredients in its center and tried to bring the human man back. She received a ragged, twisted thing- but she remembered Envy, and so she fed it a stone shard and watched as the deformed creature became a man.
She named him Greed. Envy, cast aside like an unwanted doll, simmered with resentment.
ix. Gluttony
His master had found another human transmutation.
The thing in the circle was, as always, deformed: bones sticking through the flesh, eyes aglow and chest heaving as it struggled to breathe. The master fed it a stone fragment, and the thing began to change.
It became bloated, a small bald man with a large stomach and two piggy eyes that looked up sorrowfully at Envy.
"I'm hungry," it beseeched them.
Envy watched the new homunculus adapt to its new world with anger, feeling jealousy boil inside him. Master was his and his alone, he was first!
Master named the new homunculus Gluttony. Envy hated him.
x. Favoured
Envy took great pleasure in beating Greed. He smiled viciously, watching maliciously as the pain flickered across his rival's face as Greed's precious shield began to give way. He abandoned him in the cell, watching gleefully as the master sealed the younger homunculus in.
Gluttony, he could bear. Gluttony was an idiot, after all, and master treated Gluttony like a dog, a stupid pet, and Envy revelled in the knowledge that he was the favoured homunculus.
xi. Pride
Envy detested Pride.
Pride had come not long after Gluttony, and suddenly Envy was only second best once again. Pride was master's new favourite, her precious aging homunculus, her military puppet rising rapidly through the ranks.
When Pride became fuhrer, Envy nearly screamed in anger. Pride just smirked at him in that infuriatingly calm way.
xii. Lust
During the Ishbal massacre they gained another homunculus.
Dante named her Lust, and Gluttony latched onto her as if he were a child. Envy was as condescending as he could be to her, desperately trying to establish his place in the pecking order before he was pushed aside and abandoned again. Master seemed to know his fears though, for Lust and Gluttony did not overtake him.
Still Envy felt wary. How could he be sure he would not be replaced?
After all, his father had replaced him, he had found to his great disgust.
Whenever he got the chance, Envy would watch the Elric boys. He took an immediate dislike to the elder - Edward - because in Edward's golden eyes and hair and his fierce rage, Envy could see the child he had been, and that abandoned child cried out in horror and hatred at seeing this child- this Edward- that had taken his place.
xiii. Sloth
Envy found the irony infuriating. Sure enough, his place as second in the ranks of homunculi had been taken from him- and to make it worse, his place had been taken by the mother of the child that had taken his place as a human. Edward Elric had stolen his father from him, and now Trisha Elric – Sloth – was taking his mother.
Envy could not hurt Sloth, but he could hurt Edward Elric and so this he set out to do whenever the opportunity arose.
xiv. Wrath
When Wrath had first met their Master, he had latched onto her, crying, "Mommy?"
Envy flew into a rage. "She's not your mother, you brat!" he snarled. "She's your master, and nothing else."
When Wrath learned of Sloth's history, he chose her for his Pet Mother instead; but Envy still felt resentment festering inside him. He treated Wrath with disdain from that moment on, spending as little time with the childlike homunculus as possible. When Dante noticed his avoidance of the boy, she laughed at him.
"Jealous, Envy?" she asked.
Envy only growled in reply.
xv. Family
When Envy found out that Hoenheim was dead, he snapped.
It was betrayal. She had promised him Hoenheim- promised that Hoenheim was his; that his filthy, hateful father was his, and yet she had taken the bastard away from him. Hoenheim had abandoned him, abandoned him and replaced him with perfect darling Edward and his father; his father belonged to him and him alone!
At that moment, all he wanted was to tear Dante apart- master or not. The only thing that stopped him from snapping her rotting body in two was that ridiculously calm voice of hers, wheedling its way into his mind.
"Of course his sons are still alive, you know."
Edward. Alphonse.
"They have the philosopher's stone with them, although I'm sure you know that."
The stone.
"They will regain everything they lost."
NO.
"I want to see them lose everything." he growled.
Dante- his master; his mother- smirked.
xvi. End
The armour brother was trapped within the array, ready to be devoured and Edward was gone through the gate- dead. Envy had won, and it was a delicious victory. He revelled in it, took pleasure in every cry of grief, could have almost sung with sick, hate-filled, malicious joy, because he had won, and nobody could ever take his place again. Sloth was gone, Pride was beginning to outlive his usefulness, Wrath and Lust had both betrayed Master and Gluttony was a mindless fool. Envy had won and finally- finally- he would get what he longed for so badly: the attention, the love that she should have lavished upon him like she had the others. He would be her prized one, her precious one again and he would finally be able to sate the awful, awful empty envy that had been a constant weight within his soulless body for so, so long.
Envy was, for perhaps the first time in over four hundred years, happy. It was a sick, twisted, depraved form of happiness, a warped and perverse mockery of happiness, but it filled him with a satisfaction he had not felt in so many years, so many centuries. He was happy.
...He was happy. But then Dante used the gate to take Wrath's limbs from him, and the Gate wouldn't go away.
"Master!" he cried, feeling a ball of disbelief form in his stomach as he stared at the gate. No. It couldn't be."The gate!"
And then the doors creaked open, and Edward Elric- breathing, living, Edward Elric fell to the floor.
Envy screamed in his mind. No! I will not let this be taken from me! I WILL NOT BE DENIED THIS!
He transformed to catch Edward off guard, grinning at the look on his face when he realised just who it really was. Of course, Edward's alchemy could be a problem- but it was ridiculously easy to convince the bastard that using it might hurt Alphonse, and dear Edward wouldn't dare do anything that might hurt his precious little brother Alphonse. Envy grinned viciously and attacked, sending Edward stumbling backwards.
He flipped away from the boy with a laugh and was about to attack again when he felt a hand around his ankle. Furious, he stomped down hard on Wrath - little traitor! – but before he knew it, Edward was on top of him, full of righteous anger and indignation.
Envy transformed, over and over, hoping to gain the upper hand, but to no avail- Edward attacked anyway. Anger bubbled up into his mind and all he could think of was betrayal, betrayal, abandonment and right there before his very eyes, his replacement...
"Show me who you really are!" demanded Edward.
"Do you really want to know?" asked Envy with a feral grin, and for the first time in four hundred years, he wore his own face.
Edward's hand stopped before it could fall, and he stared, horrified, at Envy's face.
"You're his son..."
He listened as Dante told Edward his story, and in his own voice for the first time in so long he told Edward exactly why it was he hated him so badly. Envy looked directly into a pair of golden eyes and felt all the hatred and anger that had built up over four hundred years, every last shred of envy he had ever felt poured into him and without even being fully aware of what he was doing he morphed his arm into a long, crude spike and took his revenge on a dead man, killing the son who had never even known what he'd done wrong.
Edward's eyes widened as the blood dripped down Envy's arm. In his victory, the homunculus could've sobbed- with revulsion, with hatred, and with sheer, utter glee at the death of a child who had never really been so very different from himself.