Stuck

People have been known to call me a sadistic psychopath. Seeing as I'm not a person myself, I generally don't give a rat's ass over what people think of me, though I must admit that particular title is one I wear with pride. (Not Pride the homunculus, you idiot human. If you think I'd stoop to such a stupid pun you are even more of a waste of air than I thought.) There are times, though, in which my capacity for psychopathic sadism pales in contrast to mankind's potential for cruelty. (What can I say? I'm only one homunculus, and regrettably, my incredible creativity can only go so far.) Yes, you humans have a tendency for cruelty which, under most circumstances, I find delightful. It is so gratifying to sit back and watch you destroy yourselves. But there are times—however rare they are—in which I do not enjoy your cruelty.

There are only two humans who have treated me cruelly and survived. The first was my father. I don't particularly feel like telling you what that bastard did to me, but suffice it to say that he will pay dearly. Preferably, it will be slow and painful. The second was Dante. I suppose I'll share an example of her brand of cruelty with you. But only because I'm bored and you aren't worth the effort to kill.

It happened shortly after Dante created Greed. I never liked Greed. I was never particularly attached to any of the other homunculi, but I hated for Greed from the second I laid eyes on him. That arrogant smirk. Those beady eyes. His god-awful ugly slouch. And Dante fawning all over him—"Look Envy, I've created one that looks almost human!" (She had tried creating a Lust before him, but that Lust hadn't even made it to her more humanoid form before she died for lack of red stones.)

So there she was, cooing over how "perfect" he was like some damned human mother fussing over her newborn child, and me trying to resist the urge to vomit, when that bastard looks at me, splits his face into a grin and says, "Oh, I didn't know there were female homunculi."

If it had been an innocent mistake I might have been inclined to forgive him. (If I was in a good mood. And if the idea of kicking his ass just to stop Dante's sickening fawning wasn't so damn appealing.) As it was, it was obvious that he had meant it as an insult. Nobody gets away with insulting me. Nobody.

I lunged. Dante barely had time to duck out of the way before my leg whipped through the air to deliver a roundhouse kick to his nose. There was a satisfying crack—no blood, of course—and he stumbled back a step, grunting against the sudden pain. I could hear the wet sound of his nose regenerating even as my foot swung away from his face, but I didn't care. All I was concerned with was making that prick hurt as much as possible.

I swung around to drive my fist into his abdomen. My arm glowed white as the swing gathered momentum, changing into a spike long enough to plunge straight through him. The hit connected—and then the tip of the spike snapped off and I screamed (not in pain, mind you. No, I was furious! How dare he cause injury to my adorable form?). As my arm changed back and I had a lovely glimpse of my crushed knuckles before my regenerative abilities kicked in, Dante said, "Envy, this is Greed. As you may have noticed, he is the Ultimate Shield."

I glared back at her with murder in my eyes. I spent years—decades, sometimes—tracking father and killing any woman he so much as winked at for her sake (Well, OK, maybe not for her sake. The killing part was fun, even if father always managed to save his own sorry hide), and this was how she chose to repay me? By creating herself an "almost human" (read "better") homunculus from the bones of her most recent lover to take my place while I'm out trying to track down the scumbag yet again? If she hadn't provided me with so many opportunities to create mayhem, I'd have killed her long ago.

Then Greed chuckled and said, "Ooh, she's feisty—just the way I like them!"

I turned my murderous glare onto him. I noticed that there was an iron poker buried in the glowing ashes in the fireplace behind him. Dante must have been stirring up the fire when I'd gotten home. I wanted to take the hot metal and ram it down his throat. Ultimate Shield or not, a burning hot metal rod down the throat would still hurt. Instead, I gave him a syrupy-sweet smile that conveyed my message loud and clear: "You are dead the second you let your guard down."

Apparently, Greed was too stupid to heed my warning. In the following weeks, I managed to ambush him no less than seventy-two times. (Sadly, I couldn't actually kill him, though it was ever so satisfying to see him stumbling around the room blindly until his eyes finished regenerating, or flopping on the ground while his head finished re-attaching to his body. I even managed to cram that red-hot fireplace poker down his throat once. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd thought it would be.) He never bothered to fight back. It was as though he didn't even notice. Needless to say, I was pissed. When I am doing my damndest to scare somebody into submission, they should at least have the courtesy to notice. (I'm sure that you would notice, human, and if you survived, I'm sure you would be wetting yourself at the mere mention of my name.)

I was lounging in Dante's study, wondering if there was some way in which I could incorporate hunting down father with my current mission of beating Greed's ugly head to mush (kill two birds with one stone, so to speak) when there was a knock on the door. I didn't need to open the door to know it was Dante. Greed had an annoying habit of pounding on the door hard enough to rattle it on its hinges—if he bothered to knock at all.

I didn't say anything. Unless she had some clue as to where father had slithered off to—which, judging by her significant lack of furious ranting, she didn't—I had no desire to speak with her. She came in anyway.

She stood there without speaking for a long time. Waiting for me to turn around and face her. I debated whether I wanted to stick it out and wait for her to say something first or whether I wanted to turn around and let her say whatever she was going to say and be rid of her that much sooner. (Secretly, I hoped she would break while I was still trying to decide. She didn't. Of course.) Finally, I sighed and said, "Yes, what is it?"

"Envy, I've got a little errand for you that I think you'll enjoy very much."

I offered a contemptuous snort in response, but my interest was piqued. Generally, any "errands" that I would enjoy involved assassination of some sort. Sometimes they were deliciously bloody. Sometimes they were just as deliciously subtle. "How many people do I get to kill?"

"As many as you need to. You have my permission to slaughter anybody who gets in your way."

"Oh?" I tried to hide the smile that was creeping onto my face. (Not that I needed her permission to do away with any bystanders, innocent or otherwise. Still, it was nice to know that she supported my favorite little hobby.) "Do tell."

"I need you to retrieve something that is very important to me."

"What is it?"

She fidgeted with the waistline of her dress as though she was embarrassed. "It's nothing more than a trinket, really, and its value is purely sentimental."

"Just tell me what it is."

"It is a simple urn, black in color, with my symbol incised on the front. I trust you'll recognize it when you see it. You'll find it in the older crypt in the cemetery of the town of Arlis."

I frowned. I couldn't understand why she would choose to dispatch me for such a mundane task. It didn't sound as though I would run across anybody worth killing (if I ran across anybody at all). "Is that all?"

"I assure you, it is of the utmost importance to me. If anybody attempts to hinder you in any way, deal with them as you see fit. Please retrieve it as quickly as you can."

In hindsight, I should have known that something was off. (Dante rarely had use for sentimentality, and the precious few times I'd seen her acting embarrassed had been precisely that—an act.) All I could think about as I left was that maybe she would finally be finished gushing over how "marvelous" her "newest creation" was by the time I returned so I could quit feeling like I was about to vomit every time I looked at Greed's obnoxious, smirking face.

Predictably, I didn't encounter any humans hell bent on keeping me out of Arlis or its crypts. (Well, there was the man who tried to rob me on the way there, but he was so dumb he hardly even counts. It was clear from the expression that would stay frozen on his dead face that he never knew what hit him.) By the time I got to that little flyspeck of a town I was aggravated enough that all I wanted was to steal the damn bauble and be done with it.

It was dark when I arrived in the cemetery, though that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. (When was the last time you ever heard of anybody skulking around in a cemetery robbing graves in the middle of the day? If you think I'm that stupid, be sure and remind me to kill you if we ever meet again.) There was a thin fog hanging in the air that made it difficult to see, but I was able to make out a pair of dark structures that must have been the crypts at the far end of the cemetery. I wound through the gravestones, just barely resisting the urge to kick a few of them out of the way instead.

I was pleased to discover that it was easy to see which of the two squat stone structures was older once I was standing next to them. (Not that I particularly cared whether I wound up desecrating one human grave or two. I just didn't feel like wasting my time rooting through both of the crypts.) The crypt on the left was clean and its stone surface was polished smooth enough that I could easily read the names carved into its surface. It must have been erected within the past ten years—that's all the longer you humans tend to take such good care of your monuments to the dead.

I turned my attention to the crypt on the right. The moss-infected stone was so rough it possessed none of the sharpness of the first structure. Most of the names that had been carved into its surface had crumbled away, and the ones that remained were illegible. Even the corners, which had no doubt once been sharp and proud, were now worn into tired-looking curves. It looked decrepit enough even the slightest gust of wind could have reduced it to a pile of worthless rubble.

A stone slab blocked the entrance to the old crypt. At one time it probably looked impressive. Now it was as dilapidated as the monument it had been erected to protect, with jagged cracks running through its surface like ugly black scars. There were so many weak points all it took to reduce it to a pile of wreckage was one well-placed kick. (One of my kicks, human, not yours. If you were to attempt it, the only thing you would gain would be a broken foot.)

It was darker than I'd expected it to be inside the crypt. The sudden absence of what little light the sliver of moon in the sky had provided damn near left me blind. A strange feeling twisted through my gut; something I had never felt before. I had a very sudden urge to (repeat the following words to ANYBODY and you are dead, human) get the hell out of that stone prison and run as far away from that cemetery as I could possibly get.

Pissed with myself for coming up with such a ludicrous idea, I grit my teeth and muttered a couple of curses under my breath. (I'd tell you exactly what they were, but they were old curses and I doubt you would understand what they meant. Let's just say they were roughly equivalent to "Screw that." How's that for equivalent exchange, all you high-and-mighty alchemist assholes?) I could have waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I decided to go all the rest of the way inside without waiting. (Because homunculi are not afraid of the dark, damn it.)

Something strange happened as I stormed my way through the dark. My limbs began to feel heavy, as though they were being pulled to the ground by invisible chains, and a sickish feeling curled through my gut as I went deeper inside the tomb. By the time I was halfway through the interior chamber, every step had become a monumental effort. I could feel my legs shaking with the strain, but I had no idea what they were straining against. My eyes had adjusted well enough by then that I was able to see that the walls were lined with rough stone shelves that were filled with urns—silver urns, clay urns, copper urns, bronze urns—but the only black urn I saw was sitting on a shelf on the back wall.

"Figures," I grunted as I took another straining step forward—and found myself gasping for breath when the heaviness that had been settling into my limbs suddenly decided to attack my chest. I doubled over with my hands on my knees with my mouth gaping, sucking at the air like a dying fish. It hurt to breathe. I couldn't breathe. And I still had no idea why. For the first time that night, I seriously considered giving up and going back empty-handed. All I'd have to do was say, "It wasn't there" and Dante would be none the wiser.

Except….

Except then she might decide to send Greed to check things out, just to be sure, and when Greed came back with the urn in hand (because let's face it, even a brainless bastard like him couldn't possibly screw up something as simple as finding a damn piece of pottery) I'd have to explain that I was too afraid to finish the job myself and I'd be damned before I ever let that happen.

It took me a long time to cover those last few meters that stood between me and that back wall. For every step forward, I had to stop and rest, wheezing like an old man until I built up the strength to force myself another few inches closer to the damn thing. By the time I finally reached the back wall my entire body hurt in new and creative ways. All I wanted to do was get the urn and get out of there before whatever the hell was happening to me got any worse.

I reached for the urn with an arm that felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds and my fingers brushed against its cold surface. For about three seconds, I stood there holding it in hands that were so numb they could barely feel it there. Then my legs gave out and I pitched forward. I heard a wet crunch as I landed face-first on the hard ground, and a dizzying bolt of pain flared through the left half of my face. It was an insistent sort of pain, clanging like alarm bells as it radiated through my jaw, over my cheekbone, and up into my eyes, and I didn't know where it was coming from until I noticed something hard and sharp rolling loose in my mouth like a polished marble.

I vaguely wondered why the teeth I had knocked loose weren't regenerating as I tried to get up. I could feel fat beads of cold sweat break out as my body strained to move, could feel them rolling over my face, down my back, over my chest. All I could do was lie there like a dead fish.

When the pain in my mouth finally dulled to a more tolerable level, I realized that I was lying on something sharp. I couldn't open my eyes to look (I'd managed to fall with my eyes closed and my body refused to grant me even that small movement), but the sudden absence of a certain black earthenware urn was a pretty damn good clue as to what it was.

I don't know how long I laid there. You don't tend to waste energy keeping track of things like that when your body is so weak that even something as simple as the beating of your heart is a grueling exercise in pain. (Lucky for me, I don't rely on that feeble ball of mush and tissue in my chest to keep me alive like you oh-so-perfect humans do. I suppose that explains why you are so easy to kill.) Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have counted the days as they crept by. I was never able to open my eyes, and I was too far inside the crypt to tell the difference between day and night without opening them. The whole situation was so unpleasant I was almost relieved when Greed showed up. (Almost.)

I knew it was him before he even opened his big mouth. He was the only one who could possibly belong to such graceless, stomping footsteps. Being prepared to hear his stupid, drawling voice didn't make it any less annoying.

"Well hello, what have we here?"

I tried to say, "You know damn well what we have here, bastard!" It came out as an unintelligible growl.

"What was that?"

I snarled in response and managed to force my mouth to cooperate enough for me to slur, "Geh meh ow or I kill ooh."

"You know, you're really not giving me much of an incentive to help you."

"Shuh up!"

He laughed and said, "I think I like you better this way." I heard his feet shuffle closer, until he was standing close enough for the toes of his boots to touch the small of my back. I figured he was about to take the opportunity to beat the ever-loving daylights out of me. (I'd have done it to him. Or you, if I were to ever find you in such a hilariously pathetic position.) Instead, he knelt down and started scooping something up off the ground around me. Some of it trickled through his fingers, and drizzled over me like old, musty dirt.

"Whah're you oohing?" I growled.

"Finishing the job you couldn't do."

I wanted to throttle him. Scratch that, I wanted to tear out his entrails and throttle him with them. Since it had never occurred to me to try that on him, I wanted to describe in intricate detail what he could look forward to, but my mouth had decided to stop working again and the best I could manage was an unintelligible scream of rage.

He didn't seem to understand the implied threat. Instead of begging me not to hurt him, he muttered, "It's a good thing she never actually wanted the urn."

I didn't know what to say to that. I was torn between "What the hell do you mean 'she never wanted the urn'", "Why did she send me out here then", and "I'M GOING TO RIP ALL OF YOUR RED STONES OUT THROUGH YOUR CHEST AND SHOVE THEM THROUGH YOUR EYES!"

Before I could choose which one I was going to (attempt to) say, he laughed and said, "Oh, don't tell me you don't know what you're lying on." I didn't say anything. (Now I was torn between "I'm lying on the FLOOR, idiot", "I don't care so shut your damn mouth", and "I'M GOING TO TEAR OFF YOUR HEAD AND USE IT TO PLAY 'BOWLING FOR GRAVESTONES!'") I heard Greed scoop up another handful of that musty-smelling dirt, felt another dusting of it sprinkle over me. Then he said, "Didn't Dante ever tell you your original body was cremated?"

No, she hadn't told me that. I'd never asked. I'd never cared enough to ask. Leave it to her to use that little gem of knowledge to her advantage when I was least expecting it. I was so shocked and so furious I didn't know whether to kill her or commend her once I got back to her manor. Greed kept scooping up handfuls of ash as I lay there weighing the pros and cons of both options. (On the one hand, I'd been wavering on the brink of doing away with her for decades, but on the other hand, she was so deliciously devious it seemed like a tragic waste of potential.) I was still weighing them when Greed said, "There; that should do it. I doubt Dante will care that I'm bringing your remains in an urn that used to belong to a Mr. Daniel Vandenhoff. It's not like he's going to come around looking for it. Come on; let's get out of here."

I tried to sit up, but my body was still so weak I couldn't even twitch a finger or toe. I tried again, groaning with the effort. My body didn't move. I heard Greed laugh again (and I added 'tear Greed's voice box out' to my internal to do list). "Whoops," he chuckled. "Looks like you've got ashes stuck in that girly hair of yours. Guess that means I'm carrying you back."

There was a sharp tug on my hair that snapped my head back as he hauled me up off the ground and slung me over his shoulder. Even though I knew it was useless, I tried to will my body to move enough to squirm out of his hold (or at least enough to bite him. I wasn't about to take being carried around like some damn Neanderthal's wife quietly). Nothing happened. I had no choice but to endure the embarrassing situation with as much dignity as I could. (Which, being completely blind, paralyzed, and on-again-off-again mute, wasn't much.)

I'm not going to detail the long trip back to Dante's manor. Suffice it to say it was humiliating. When we finally made it back, Greed carried me up the stairs (I could tell we were going up the stairs by the way the feel of his shoulder digging into my gut became even more uncomfortable), down a short hall, kicked open the door to Dante's study, and dumped me on the floor inside. I heard Dante's voice (or rather, the voice of her latest body) say, "Excellent work, Greed. You're dismissed for now."

Greed left the room whistling. (I swear, the bastard was whistling!) Dante waited until his stomping footsteps faded away. Then she said, "I hope you understand now that attempting to harm anything related to my research without my express permission will have dire consequences."

Her crisp footsteps rang as she walked across the room to kneel on the ground beside me. In a half-whisper, she added, "It seems that Greed has treated you gently. I can assure you that if you give me a reason to repeat this lesson I will not be so forgiving. In this state, even your body has its limits." (I felt something cold and sharp ghost over the back of my left hand: the tip of a knife.) "It would be a fascinating supplement to my research to explore those limits."

(I could feel the knife tip tracing lightly against the soft flesh between my first and second knuckles.) "I'll clean the rest of those ashes off of you tomorrow, once my little warning has had a chance to…sink in." (She leaned all her weight on the knife, and a groan jumped from my lips before I could bite it back at the sudden pain.)

There was a rustle of skirts as she stood up. The knife remained planted in my hand. Her clipped footsteps walked past me, towards the door. Through the pain I realized that the knife tip was embedded in the floor under my hand. The door closed. And I was left with the knowledge that I was going to be spending a damn unpleasant night waiting until Dante deigned to clean off the ashes that were keeping my regenerative ability in check.

Author's Notes: It's been a long time since I've watched Fullmetal Alchemist, but I always thought the homunculi were fascinating characters, especially Envy. I've always wondered what his life must have been like in the 400 years before the series began. My impression is that it was not happy. Please forgive me for any inaccuracies or out-of-character-ness. If it's there it's unintentional. Do feel free to tell me what you thought of it—it would make me very happy!