A/N: Why anyone reads my old FMA crap is beyond me, so I'm gonna post something new. And probably remove my old stuff. Rewrite Esclavo, maybe. ANYWAY HERE'S A ONESHOT FROM ME.
This oneshot is an afterwards to the Bluebird's Illusion Pride!Ed ending. No obvious spoilers, but if you've gotten than ending or know what happens, you'll catch my subtleties. I hope. Also, the scythe: I'm sure I'm not the only one who has seen its concept art?
Easily Distracted
Names and faces float just out of reach as he dreams. It happens every time he closes his eyes. Envy calls them distractions, that he should learn to ignore them, regard them as insignificant.
He's tried. That doesn't stop them. Their persistent assault on his mind wakes him from sleep and keeps him awake for hours. He stops telling Envy about these distractions. He doesn't tell anyone.
Sometimes he suspects Lust knows. He tries not to talk to her and she never talks to him. It is an unspoken agreement that he is fine to abide by.
In fact, he feels comfortable with his brother Envy only. He gets the feeling that Envy does not feel the same, but he does not pursue the issue; he has seen Envy's rage before and he prefers to be ignored.
Envy gets angry often. When he does, it is usually blamed on "Mustang's dogs". Envy glares a lot during these fits-usually at him. He stays quiet in his confusion. It matters very little, anyway.
On the nights that he hears about these dogs his brother hates so much, he dreams of distractions wearing royal blue. These dreams feel warm, but when he wakes he feels strangely empty.
The distractions don't stop with the blue uniforms.
He dreams of his siblings, sometimes. These confuse him, for they don't quite match up with what he knows to be certain. For instance, when he sees Sloth in his dreams, his brother's face is as unknown to him as daylight, though his subconscious knows the titan. His profile is as lost to him as the beings in blue.
Lust shows up with Gluttony and for some reason his dreams become nightmares. In his waking hours he cannot look at either of them.
Brother Greed brings sorrow to his dreams. His face is sometimes unrecognizable. He wakes with curious tracks on his face and cannot explain why, the dream a blur in his memory.
When Wrath and Envy appear in his dreams, they start much like his nightmares. Then the horror fades to a deep anger, a soul-shredding hatred, and they seem to receive it all. He mostly dreams of them with two other distractions, the calming kind, and oceans of blood.
Waking from those dreams makes him vomit. He recovers soon enough and waits for the day to pass.
After all, these are his siblings, his family. This concept is terribly important.
"Take care of your brother," haunts him. He can't tell the origin of the gentle request, but it burns in both his mind and body.
There are also the rare nights with distractions surrounded by fields upon fields of green grass. These dreams make him yearn and something clicks and when he wakes his mouth is turned up in an unfamiliar, painful way. Despite how it hurts his face, he doesn't dislike it. He doesn't mind those dreams.
There is one dream of the face-hurting kind that leaves him with a fluttering in his stomach and an ache in his heart. He dreams of the smell of apples and machine oil.
He especially doesn't tell Envy about those dreams.
Envy prefers him when he is quiet and agreeable. He obeys his brother without question-isn't that what brothers do? He doesn't share his experiences or his few and far between opinions. No one ever asks.
"Pride!" Envy bellows. He is startled, but his body does not react to the stimulus. Then he remembers that Pride is his name and that Envy is calling to him, his Envy. Slowly, he looks at his brother.
Envy is frowning, but he does not look to be terribly furious.
"Pride," Envy says, his voice a purr, and suddenly he is smiling-a smile that promises danger. Pride wonders if this is the expression that pains him, and if so, is his smile as poisonous? "It's time for you to return to the world. Aren't you excited?"
The world is the place his sibling disappear to, where he has been forbidden to follow by Father himself. The prospect of finally becoming a solid pillar in his brotherhood makes his tattoos, his birthmarks, burn pleasantly.
After all, he is so proud of his brotherhood.
"Al?" An echo dusts through his mind. It is easily forgotten.
Envy guides him out of the underground and into an alley that smells like piss, trash, and illness. He wrinkles his nose ever so slightly and follows his brother.
As Pride watches Envy march through the filth, something inside him feels that he should be leading the younger brother along.
It makes sense, then. Pride is the younger brother. That fact has always been so.
He has more than pride in his brotherhood. He has faith.
Envy scales a building, his body agile and powerful, like a feline.
"Please, Brother, can we keep it?" Another echo, as disposable as the other.
Pride's body is also built for such tasks and he is by his brother's side in mere moments.
Pride observes. Above, the sky is in various shades that remind him of fire. He is witnessing his first sunset. It is not as glorious as the books describe, but it is better than how Envy has opined.
"Look," Envy instructs, pointing down. Pride follows the direction with his eyes, drinking in the sight of construction and several humans dressed in royal blue.
There is a sudden tick in his right eye. It passes shortly.
No explanation comes forth, so he turns to Envy.
Envy catches the look. "Those guys down there, they're our playthings. We pull all their strings. They are the Amestrian military."
"I understand."
"Good. Now, there's something I need you to do for us."
Pride keeps his face schooled, but he feels something spark in his chest. It feels like superiority.
Envy keeps talking. "There's a group of soldiers that are making nuisances of themselves. Mustang's dogs need to be removed. I trust you're capable, Pride?"
While he tries to avoid stepping on Envy's toes, he knows the other has no qualms about stepping on his. "I'm quite capable of such a trite task, Brother."
Envy grimaces at Pride, but relents. He pulls a folded sheet of paper from his waistband and presents it to him. "This is a list of your targets and their addresses. Get a map if you need one. Don't show your face. And, by the Gate, make it look like an accident if you can."
Pride stares up at the apartment from the sidewalk. It is the dead of night and the only sounds he can hear are the distant sounds of trains, traffic and the nearby skittering of city rats.
He looks at the list. "Riza Hawkeye. Oak Street Apartments, third floor, number eighteen. Owns a trained dog. Considered armed." He drags his eyes to the window of the abode. "By far the most dangerous of these dogs."
For a woman with such a dangerous track sheet, Pride feels she would live in place with far better security than what he encounters. He opens the complex's door and strides right by the sleeping doorman. His steps are quiet on the stairs.
Pride finds the door.
He knocks.
At first there is only quiet. Then he hears the clinking of dog tags and pattering heading towards the door. The dog.
Heavier footfalls follow. The soldier. The target. He feels an itching in his fingertips and the urge to draw his scythe (and oh, how Envy had liked that trick).
The door opens. He pulls his black hood down to obscure his face.
"Who are you?" The asker is female, like the target, but she sounds much younger than any seasoned soldier he has ever heard of. He doesn't look at her.
"Is Miss Hawkeye in? I'm from apartment management. I need to talk to her about the dog?"
"Oh! I'm sorry, she's not here right now."
Pride doesn't like this answer. It's not the one he wants at all. "Might I ask who you are? I was of the impression that Miss Hawkeye lived alone with a dog."
The girl shuffles on her feet. "I'm Winry, just a friend from out of town. I was...visiting...some friend and she offered me a place to stay the night." Her voice is heavy with something Pride doesn't know.
Pride nods. He only half hears what she says. He is distracted by the scent of apples and machine oil.
His confidence is failing him. Envy will be furious if he finds out.
"I see. Do you know where Miss Hawkeye is at this hour? It's awful late."
Winry stills. "She's...paying a visit to the man she loves." The same, heavy tone is used. Is this sadness? Pride cannot relate.
Pride decides to give up the ghost on Riza Hawkeye for this night. He has plenty of other dogs to put down. "Understood. Thank you, Miss Winry. Good night."
He turns away, but the girl stops him with a gentle grasp on his shoulder. "Wait, what's your name? I'll let Riza know you came by."
The smell is stronger and he can't understand why his mouth suddenly runs dry.
Pride looks at her for the first time. Her hair is long, blond, and mussed with sleep. Winry's eyes are blue and lively, so different from the violet of his siblings and the dull, tarnished gold he sees in his reflection.
As he looks at her, she looks at him.
Oops.
Those eyes that he is bewildered by widen and her thin lips tremble on sounds she fails to make. Her complexion pales to rival Envy's. The expression on her face shows that she is terribly frightened and confused and in agony.
Pride has seen these expressions before. Practice on human puppets dragged down to test his abilities (and scythe work) usually led him to see them on the faces of his dummies before they neatly had their heads cleaved from their bodies.
Winry is not one of his targets. She may keep her head.
"Ed?" The name tumbles clumsily from her lips. Tears well in her eyes.
Pride doesn't understand. "I think you must be mistaken."
He pulls away. The moment the warmth of her hand leaves his shoulder, pain-that-is-not rips through him and he chokes on his saliva.
Apples and machine oil fill his senses and he sees the grassy fields of his dreams. Winry is there with him, but she looks refreshed and is smiling widely. Her smile is nothing like Envy's. When he sees hers, he feels lighter.
Another nameless, faceless person is there and he feels a pull to this person. The pull feels like Envy, but he has never had a problem recognizing his brother in his dreams (has he?). This pull to this foreign presence is also stronger than Envy's. It does not bring with it the accompanying fear of his nightmares.
Instead, it makes him feel complete. This feels like things are right.
Suddenly, he is back in the dank third floor hall of the Oak Street Apartments. He peers down and sees Winry huddled on the floor in the doorway, hands clenched tightly together. The dim hall light reflects in the tears streaming from beneath her eyelids, clenched closed.
"What are you?" Pride barely catches the whisper, but he does, nonetheless.
He doesn't answer. He can't think of one, anyway. He prides himself on his ability to plan, to think, but in the wake of this single human girl's tears, he is at a loss.
"What are you?" She suddenly screams, a sound so full of hurt and sorrow that it almost permeates his shell, and Pride steps back. Footsteps thunder up the stairs and another blond woman appears on the landing. Before Pride realizes she's even carrying a gun, there is a raging pain in his side.
Oh. Pride turns to face the new woman with her rustic eyes, sharp and frighteningly intelligent. This is Riza Hawkeye.
A dog's growling and several doors opening throughout the complex alert him that he has probably overstayed his welcome.
He has failed. Envy will make sure he will remember this even in his normal nightmares.
Pride barrels into Riza Hawkeye's apartment, passes a disheveled and astonished Winry, and fixes his eyes on the window. He crashes into the glass with his shoulder, feels the window break on impact, and then there is only the feeling of weightlessness as he free falls three stories.
The ground shatters his ankles. The new pain blocks out the sensation of the bullet forcing itself out of his flesh.
Two blond heads peer out from the broken window. Riza Hawkeye is already aiming her gun again.
Pride wonders if Winry is still crying or if she's too stunned to continue. He wonders why that is crucial.
The bones in his ankles snap back into place as the gunshot rings out. Pride pushes himself away and hears the crack of the concrete breaking.
This night is too chaotic to continue with his manhunt. He decides to return to the disgusting alley, through the gates to the underground, and report to Envy.
Pride is not human, so the wounds Envy inflicts upon his return heal in a short period of time. Pride holds no ill will towards his brother. He knows he deserves the beating, anyway. Grotesque failure does not go unpunished.
As he sleeps, Pride dreams of green fields, a presence he feels strongly connected to and familiar with, and of Winry.
"Promise me you'll take care of that automail and I'll make you an apple pie, okay?"