XXX: I do NOT own Fullmetal Alchemist. I am just a huge fan! :XXX
I've been contemplating writing this for a while. I have become obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist recently, more specifically Envy. I love his character, so I wanted to play around with him. How would he react to certain situations?
Just a warning, I jump around with the two anime's plot lines, mixing them up and what not. There could be spoilers if you haven't seen them, but I will be veering off that road quite a bit. Any and all reviews are appreciated! Enjoy!
Edward POV
I clumped down the stairs, feeling the braid of hair thump against my back, the wood of the banister under my palm, and the slight brush of wind that blew through the open window on my exposed skin. It's funny. Sometimes, like this moment, I could feel everything acutely, every single sensation, right down to the touch of my pants on my legs. Other times, I would feel nothing.
That numbness came shortly after I placed my feet on the bottom stair.
Standing there, I could see Winry's back, her light blond hair falling gently down behind her. Her arms were moving in a rhythmic pattern. The sound of a brush running through hair was the only noise. When she heard me come down, she turned slightly to see who it was. In her hand, emerald-tinted strands of hair were visible.
Those strands of hair were what made the numbness take hold of me.
How did we get here?
"Ed?" Winry stared at me, concerned.
I smiled weakly, shook my head. I didn't really want to talk about it. I didn't feel that I could talk about it.
My childhood friend released the hair and walked over to me. Her movement revealed the source of my unease, a tall, lanky body, to which the green locks were attached. The strands Winry had been combing through fell onto a bare shoulder.
I couldn't decide what I wanted to do to that shoulder. I could place a hand on it, a comforting gesture, or I could punch it, popping it out of socket. I couldn't decide-
And the effect was this paralyzing numbness.
"Ed, what's wrong?" Winry's brow creased further.
A gentle laugh came from the body in the chair, grabbing the attention of my friend. She went back over to him, bending down so that she could see up in his face.
"Are you going to talk now?" Winry looked at the man-if you could call him one-with hopeful concern. She wanted to help him, and that was the only reason he was here.
At least that's what I told myself.
Silence was the only reply she received. After a moment, she sighed and left him alone once more. She came over to me and leaned in close, whispering, "I'm concerned that he doesn't want to get better."
"Why does that matter? We should have just left him where we found him. You know what he's done," I said.
"Edward! He's not that person anymore."
"Yeah, and he hates that he's not. So how does that make him better?"
Winry glared at me. Her mouth opened, probably to give me some smart ass retort, but she was cut off.
"I can't stand listening to you people argue. Either stop butting heads or just get it over with and kill me." Envy ran his hand through his long locks, a clear sign of stress, and snorted. "Children."
He never looked at us.
We both stared at him. It was the most we had heard from the guy in the week that he had been staying with us.
How did we get here?
I suppose I should explain. I won't start from the very beginning, that would take far too long. But I can start from where it all went wrong. Well, wrong for Envy.
The homunculus had become completely consumed by the hatred he harbored for my father. He ignored every other engagement, every responsibility he had to go about his own way, carry out his own plans. Nothing else mattered but finding a way to end my father's life, and you could see that in his eyes. It was the little bubble of light that could be mistaken for inspiration or mirth. If you knew him, you knew it was perfect insanity.
The thing about being totally focused is that you don't pay attention to anything else. Not even enough attention to spare to cover your tracks. It made him extremely predictable.
So we followed him for a while, waiting for an opportunity to step in. I was not concerned for my father's safety, but Envy had to go. He was the enemy. Even if he wasn't actively coming after us, he was a weapon of the one who was. At any moment, they could rein him in and send him sniffing after us once more. If we can't manage to take out the active duty soldiers, we could at least weaken them by taking away their reserves when they weren't looking.
We tracked him all around the country, but he decided to spend quite a bit of time in Dante's mansion. We had watched him go in, and didn't see hide nor hair of him for a week.
"Maybe we missed something," Al was saying on that seventh day. "Did you fall asleep while on watch?"
"Of course not! He hasn't left that building," I assured him. I hadn't fallen asleep, but I wasn't so sure he hadn't somehow escaped without our noticing. Maybe he had finally fallen back into line.
"I'm not so sure about that..." Red glowing orbs stared at the curtained windows.
I didn't see many options. "Well then let's go in and find out for sure."
Al gasped. "But brother... We don't know what's in there. We could be walking into a trap."
"Or it could be nothing. So..." I walked towards the house, hearing the clang of Al's footsteps behind me a few moments later.
The door opened easily, no one inside ever bothering to lock it. The house was nice, just as I remembered it. Tall ceilings, quaint decorations in some rooms, fantastical ones in others. It was a perfect blend of money and country. In other circumstances I would have liked being in a place like this. Not today, not with this reason.
My brother and I gradually made our way up the levels of the house, inspecting every nook and cranny, trying to find some evidence that the bastard was still in there. However, nothing showed any proof that anyone had been living in that house for quite some time. Dust collected on every surface, beds remained perfectly made, everything was in its place.
After finishing the last room in the house, finding nothing, I turned to Al. "Well, hell, Al. It doesn't look like he was ever in here."
He looked at me, and I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to formulate some sort of answer to this mystery. "But we saw him come in this house. He had to have gone somewhere in here, touched something... But if we spend too much time investigating, he could slip out. Maybe he's been walking around us the entire time and has already left." The more he rambled the more I could hear the desperation in his voice. He wanted an answer but could not think of a plausible one.
Just then, an idea clicked in my brain. "Does this house have a basement?"
"The only doors I saw on the first level were the ones leading to the kitchen and the office."
"Just because you didn't see a door doesn't mean it doesn't exist." I propelled myself down the flights of stairs we had climbed, running away with this small lead. The sin probably would enjoy dank, dark places like a basement rather than a well lit, comfortable living space.
Downstairs I began inspecting the walls, trying to find some sort of secret switch or something to that effect. I knocked on the walls, trying to see if any of it was hollow. I told Al to go look in the kitchen and the study, so we could find something quickly. My hopes began to fade as everything seemed to be solid. No switch, no hollow echo from behind the walls, nothing.
I was contemplating smashing a hole through the floor when Al called my name loudly from the study. I rushed into the room. "Find something?"
He simply pointed in front of himself. I moved a bit farther into the room until I saw what it was that he was trying to show me. He had moved a rather large bookcase, revealing a door sized hole. There was an opening in the floor, a ladder leading downward. I stared at it. I had been expecting something much more ostentatious.
Without really thinking about what I would do once I got down there, I moved to the ladder and began descending into the room below. Al followed after he failed to stop me. I knew we should probably stop to make a plan, but we were so close. I didn't want to wait and risk losing him. It didn't occur to me that this very ladder would be the way he would have to come to escape.
I stepped off the last rung and looked around. There was enough space for Al and I to stand, though that didn't leave any personal space, and a rather ornate door. There wasn't much lighting, but I could see the intricate carving in the wood and an equally fancy brass doorknob.
What the hell?
I reached forward and pushed open the door. Light blasted into the small space, blinding me momentarily. After a moment, my eyes refocused and I was able to take in my surroundings. No wonder the ladder had taken so long to get down. The room was huge! The walls seemed to reach high into the heavens, each framed in beautifully carved crown moldings and floor runners. Pillars, banisters protecting balconies, doors all around. Something told me the basement was larger than the house.
Envy stood in the middle of the room, staring directly at me, a smirk on his face.
I growled his name into the space between us.
"I was wondering when you were going to show up, pipsqueak." His scratchy voice echoed.
I glared at him. He called me that so often, sometimes I thought he had forgotten my actual name. I wasted no time with pleasantries and ran straight for the homunculus. I chose my favorite weapon, transmuting my automail into a blade. The sin stood completely still, not moving from that cocky stance until the very last second. I barely saw his muscles tense as he pushed himself to my left side, a strange maneuver since that allowed the perfect opportunity for me to just continue bringing my swing around instead of having to pull back and create new momentum. I quickly realized that this was exactly what he wanted me to do. Unfortunately, I didn't think quick enough to stop myself. He stepped back, landing just out of my reach. His hand snaked out and grabbed my metal wrist, and yanked me to him.
His androgynous body was flush up against mine as he stared down into my eyes. "I thought you would have known better by now. Charging at me is only going to get you hurt."
"Brother!" Al's metal footsteps were loud behind me. He was making the same mistake I was.
I didn't realize my wrist had been released until it was too late. Envy backed up and planted a well aimed kick right into my abdomen. My body flew backwards, but abruptly stopped when I slammed into Al. My tailbone hit first, sending shock waves of pain up my spine. My back straightened out, causing my head to make contact with the sharp point of Al's chest. Then Al's body gave, and he fell backwards, taking me with him. I rolled off him, onto my side. A familiar warmth was spreading over the back of my head and I knew it was bleeding heavily. Drops of my blood ran down my scalp, followed the line of my jaw, then dripped onto the floor beneath me. My head was spinning.
Envy's laughter resounded through the large room. "You're both idiots! It's just amazing how you both make the same mistake, one right after the other. You have to be trying to be this stupid."
"Brother, are you alright?" Al was trying to help me sit up, but I didn't want to lift my head. It would only make the spinning worse.
"Oh, come on. Don't don't tell me you're finished already. You've been following me for this long, I figured we'd have some sort of showdown." The taunting nature of Envy's words got under my skin.
I found the resolve to get up. Once on my knees, my stomach somersaulted. It bothered me that I was already this weak. One kick to the stomach from this guy and I was ready to tap out.
"We should go," Al advised from beside me.
I scoffed. "We just got here. No way."
"But-"
I clapped my hands together, then placed them on the ground in front of me. I watched with some satisfaction as the slightest bit of nervousness spread across Envy's face. I could be transmuting anything and he didn't have much time to figure out where it was going to come from. Rock fists came up from the ground, one on each side of the homunculus. The goal was the smash his pretty little face between the two, but he was too quick. He ducked under the alchemic creations and ran straight for me, eyes hungry for blood.
Al jumped in front of me and attempted a swing at him. Envy maneuvered around his swing and pushed Al so hard that he fell and skid half way across the room.
"Alphonse!" I knew Al couldn't feel pain, but I still worried about him. Anything could happen...
"Pay attention, pipsqueak!" That was all I heard before Envy's foot got real friendly with my cheekbone. I fell back onto my side, only for a second before another kick sent me flying once more. I crashed into one of the pillars, my body wrapping around it, the wind gone completely out of me. I just laid there, shaking in pain. It was all I could do, even as I heard my enemy's quiet footsteps behind me.
A loud crash, complete with the crumbling of walls and the sound of many pairs of feet hitting the ground, startled me. That clearly wasn't something Al did. Was it? I turned my body around, groaning. What I saw, startled me.
Lust and Wrath stood on either side of Dante, Gluttony in the front. Perhaps he was the one who smashed through the wall instead of taking the door?
Dante's voice was so quiet, I almost couldn't hear her. "Gluttony, we could have just opened the door."
Oh, I guess I was right.
Gluttony looked up at her like a dog caught doing something he knows is wrong, a rock hanging from mouth.
Dante sighed. "Oh well. I suppose I can fix this later. " She turned her sights on Envy, who was standing as far away from her as possible without being up against the wall.
That was when I noticed Envy's face. He was... He was scared. The homunculus refused to look away from its master. I wasn't sure if he was shaking or if I was.
"Oh, Envy. Why did you come here?" Dante looked at the sin like he was a foolish child. "You had to know that I would come back eventually."
"I didn't really think it would be so soon." Envy had attempted to pull his usual swagger back, but it was clear he was struggling. "I figured I was being smart. You'd think it was too obvious. Guess not."
Dante touched her hands together. The ground beneath Envy shot upwards, throwing him at Dante's feet. He looked up at her with uncontrolled fear.
Why is he so afraid of her? Aren't they on the same side?
I grabbed onto the ledge on the pillar created from the impact of my body to pull myself up. That's when I saw the array under Envy. At first I assumed it was the same array used to weaken the homunculi, but upon further study of the lines I realized it was completely different. What was this for?
Al jogged over to me and became my crutch. I appreciated the help standing.
"We need to leave, Brother," he said.
Before I could agree and talk through a plan of escape, the array began to glow and Envy's throaty scream bounced off every wall. It was like looking at a train wreck. You can't look away because it's horrifying, yet beautiful in its own way. It's something that you won't likely see that many times in your life. So you stare, dumbstruck, frozen.
I have no idea how long it lasted. Seconds, maybe minutes, most likely not hours... But I couldn't tell for sure. Finally, the glow died, and Envy lay on the ground, completely still and silent.
"Did she... kill him?" Al asked, horrified.
"I don't know." I stared at the body. Why would she kill him?
Then Envy moved. So he wasn't dead.
What was that then?
He shuffled around on the floor, touching his arms, torso and legs, as if checking to see if everything was there. When he got to his left thigh, his whole body jerked, and he screamed.
The thing about that scream was that it wasn't from pain.
It was from sheer horror.
"What did you do?" Envy yelled at his master.
Dante laughed. "Don't ask questions you already know the answer to."
The other homunculi stared in fascination. They were entirely amazed.
Envy screamed once more, long and loud. "What have you done?!"
And he ran out through the whole Dante and her entourage had come through.