Pastfic: Envy's creation and the straw the breaks Hohenheim into completely abandoning his first family. Cold Hohenheim, Envy's creepy and weird throughout. It's like mixing the traditional Frankenstein with FMA; at least that's what I was trying to do. SPOILERS for end of FMA.
Below the Stairs
The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today;
Gee, I wish he'd go away!
--possibly Ogden Nash
They burned people like him, Hohenheim knew.
They burned the people who pushed against the darkness, against the customized ignorance, against the religious propaganda looking for something real and true. They tied them to the stake and lit the fire underneath, charring the body, which would most likely die first from suffocation and then from the fire. Or they hung them, in which the victim/criminal/outcast would die from slow strangulation if his neck wasn't snapped from the first initial jolt; most weren't. The length of the rope and angle of the knot would have to be improved before death by snapped necks drew equal with death by strangulation.
It bothered Dante, how he speculated if he would be killed, how he would be killed. The cold clear calculations of mortality were a comfort to him, but they bothered her. Many things bothered Dante: voices in the dark, the passage of time, the era of fear, even Hohenheim's own research and experiments at times scared her. Many things scared her, terrified her, yet ultimately fascinated and enchanted her. It was that final quality made Dante interesting, attractive, and ultimately worth his while.
And Dante had to be worth his while, or else she would have been worth very little; he was a busy man. He was very busy.
Hohenheim wanted to know everything. He wanted to know what kept the sun in the sky, kept it from touching the earth or roaming away. He wanted to know everything. He wanted to know where the human soul went after the body failed, he wanted to know where the human soul came from before the body was formed inside the mother's womb, which part of the body did the soul inhabit? What made human souls different from animals? What made saltpeter react with carbon? How did bodies grow taller through time, then smaller with old age? Why did people think when animals could not? For what purpose? Where did the voices in the dark come from?
He wanted to know everything. He wanted to know everything, to hold the knowledge of the ages and the universe in the palm of his hand.
The old priest of his town had called him greedy, slothful in his duties before God, lost and envious of the faithful and saved, damned to the pits of Hell before he left the squalor with only his pride, his clothes, suitcase, writing utensils, and a handful of heirloom jewelry. That had been before he had met Dante, small and willowy, as terrified by the world as she was angry and amazed by it. That had been before they'd formed their small cult of elites, all lusting for the same answers, all gluttons for power.
He wanted to know everything. Badly. Very badly. So very, very badly.
Some might have said…almost too badly.
But of course, only the ignorant limited themselves, chose to be mediocre. And mediocrity, failure, were things Hohenheim could not abide, not in anyone or anything.
His son was his one partial exception. On the one hand, Hohenheim agreed to raise him at Dante's insistence, to keep the boy near him instead of sending the bastard child to one of the church orphanages. On the other hand, the boy remained a bastard child born out of wedlock as Hohenheim could not stand priests nor had wanted a child: there wasn't room in his life for a child, there was barely room for himself and almost none for Dante.
The boy was his only by blood, by the blond hair and odd eye color that would ostracize the boy as it had Hohenheim. The child showed none of his intellect, his academic ambition or curiosity, only a willful mischief and rebellious temper.
"That child is your flesh and blood," Dante sometimes felt the need to remind him of, every time he and the boy came to Words over some cheap fracas with the villagers or Hohenheim's own clique that the boy would undoubtedly be the cause of.
"The boy's a born thief and troublemaker," Hohenheim corrected, flipping idly through one of the many books the church had banned, composed and cool as his son hadn't been. "If it weren't for his eyes he wouldn't be mine at all. Not even you," he added, as Dante opened her mouth to speak, face white, "Could call him mine, if it weren't for his eyes. He doesn't act like either of us. He doesn't share our intellect. He's…an anomaly. It happens, even among plants, though in-breeding is usually required."
The pea plants were his latest obsession, partly sparked by the strange normal intelligence his son sported. The mice—black and white fur, with brown and red eyes—were proving his theories on genetic traits.
"Perhaps some of what the priests say is true," he continued in the silence with a slight smile, hoping to lighten the mood. "Perhaps all men truly are brothers. It would explain a good deal, wouldn't it? It would explain the wide amount of unintelligence in the population, certainly."
Dante hadn't looked up from his desk, eyes still sad. Hohenheim found himself sighing, aggravated. That was one trait the boy and his mother shared: the ability to mope, to sulk. That and the strange tendency to be afraid of the dark, of other people. No one argued that the child was Dante's, but even those who'd studied Hohenheim's facial features in comparison to the bastard's and found the resemblance uncanny still wondered what had gone wrong.
"Darling," she still hadn't looked up, still avoided his eyes. Dante was even afraid of him, for some odd reason. "He's only six."
Hohenheim accepted this statement with the same aplomb as he accepted that men lived and died, were born from between a woman's thighs after nine months pregnancy and copulation.
"Yes? What of it?"
Through time and hard work, Hohenheim managed to scrape some of his answers out the universe, and hoarded them greedily in his notebooks, written in code so even Dante could not understand them. She spent (wasted) all her time on the boy, on the bastard child. Through time and stamina, the boy managed to run away twice, get caught several times for stealing and spying, and get beat up several more times.
"I told you he was ordinary," Hohenheim reiterated at three in morning, disappointed to find Dante still waiting up for the child in the parlor. The boy had been missing two days. "There's only so much you can expect of ordinary."
"He's my son," Dante didn't look at him, never looked at him when they were contradicting one another. Her voice didn't waver or shrink, which was an improvement, but she still didn't have the gall to look him in the eyes and tell him he was wrong. She said she loved him too much to fight. Hohenheim chalked it up to self-preservation instincts.
"He's ten. He's alone. He could be dead." Her head turned in his direction, stared at his knees. Her face was stiff. "He wants a father."
Hohenheim sighed and rubbed his nose, feeling the strain of another twelve-hour day on his eyes. "Instead of waiting for him to come out of his sulk, you could be productive and bring him back. He'd let you. Probably."
"I don't know where he is," she clipped the words out.
"He's at the church in Oswald," Hohenheim replaced his glasses and headed up the stairs. "Looking for a father. Being ordinary. It's your decision: I'm going to bed."
He didn't hear Dante leave the house. The next day though, he was mildly surprised that the boy did smell like incense, and less surprised to find that the child had stolen a crucifix inlaid with gold and silver.
"They'll kill you for blasphemy, if they find you took that," he told the boy passing in the hallway.
"They'd kill you first, if they knew the things you do," the boy snarled back with none of his mother's courtesy, eyes flicking towards the floorboards and Hohenheim's basement, whirling around to face him, hungry for the attention. Hohenheim stopped and turned, registering mild interest.
"How do you know about that?"
The boy grinned, smirked wide and evil, looking absolutely pleased with himself. "I've been inside. I've seen what you're doing down there. Not even Mother's seen, but I have."
Another node of curiosity flared, "How did you get in? Did you pick the lock?"
The boy only grinned, shoulders relaxing, body language exhibiting every outward sign of comfort. His eyes were less desperate now, Hohenheim noticed. Less hungry. Hopeful.
"I've got my ways. Secret ways."
Hohenheim pressed his lips together, appraising the boy coolly. He was tall for his age, with Hohenheim's jaw and mouth, though not his grin. The boy was more expressive than Dante or himself, far too expressive.
"Hm," Hohenheim continued down the hallway, ears registering the fast intake of breath, the sudden chill behind him, and not realizing the significance of either sign. He descended the stairs before feet pounded behind him.
"I could tell you! If you want. I can get into anywhere, anything, I can pick any lock, I've even read Mother's journals on the Sorcerer's Stone and I read your journals about--"
The tirade stopped because Hohenheim had turned around, regarding the figure hanging off the doorframe by his fingertips. The hunger was back in his eyes, deeper and thornier than ever. The boy's cheeks were flushed, and breathing rapid, unhealthy. Hohenheim cocked his head to one side.
"You read about the Sorcerer's Stone?" He was mildly surprised the boy could read. Must have been Dante.
"Yes!" the boy's eagerness had returned full-force, like someone had torn the faucet off a pipe.
"Did you understand it?"
The boy's smile faltered, came close to falling. Hohenheim didn't move a muscle. As strange and ordinary as the bastard had turned out, if it was possible to teach one substandard, then perhaps raising the intellect of the rest of population was possible. It all depended.
"Maybe," the boy shot back challenging, his voice wavering.
Hohenheim stayed silent, merely stared at the eyes that were his eyes, yet weren't his at all. The boy couldn't even do alchemy well, didn't seem to have the talent for it, or even the interest. Then the corner of Hohenheim's lip quirked up unexpectedly; it was true that it was only a peasant's stupidity behind those eyes, but there was a peasant's cunning as well.
"Did you find what you were looking for? At the church," Hohenheim clarified, because the boy seemed completely confused, lost.
"Yes," the boy answered with his earlier rebelliousness, defiance.
"Maybe," he amended with his later cunning, diplomacy.
"No," the bastard finished with an odd show of loyalty against the church he
always running to, escaping to, and placed a foot on the second step hopefully.
Hohenheim eyed the foot trespassing on his personal space, and the boy pulled it back up quickly. "You said you read my journals. Did you understand those? Or did you lie?"
"No," the boy said hurriedly with his mother's fear. "I mean, I didn't lie. Not that I didn't understand them. Not that…I didn't. Completely. I understood some of it, I just didn't…understand all of…" the boy's voice died away.
Hohenheim cocked his head to one side again, then took off his glasses with a sigh and cleaned them with the end of his shirt. "How much did you understand? Tell me."
"I…the parts about the…about a door. And things. Dimensions. Monsters. Souls. And--"
"You're listing nouns, not explaining what you understood. I don't want a repetition of the words, I want to know the extent of your comprehension. How much did you understand?"
Hohenheim replaced his glasses. The boy had trouble meeting his eyes; reminded him more of Dante than anything else, back when she was still young and nervous around him, awed by him. The boy edged further behind the doorframe. Hohenheim continued down the stairs, heard a voice start to say something, and closed the door. The boy was learning to be an accomplished liar, just like the maids. Learning that and little else. Sad.
After the boy died, he didn't feel relief. Strange. Not because Dante had cried, not because even his neophytes were awkward and uncomfortable at the news, and not because he hadn't seen the boy's soul pass. Strange. He wasn't sure. Perhaps it was all those things combined, that made him feel so green and prickly, frantic and distracted. Perhaps it was the absence of distraction, the absence of the child's screams at night that there were monsters under his bed, monsters in his closet. A child's rambling, baseless and irrational. He couldn't be missing that. Not that. There was no logic in it.
But he couldn't shake the feeling something was off. Something was very…off.
"Call it off."
"What?" Dante looked up at him, her red-rimmed eyes only reaching his collar.
"The funeral. Call it off now."
"Why? He was your--"
"It's not about that. I have work to do. Call it off."
He never managed to explain to Dante's satisfaction what had happened to the child's body. He never managed to explain why it was suddenly important, why he was suddenly important now that he was dead and gone, not even to himself. It just was.
It might've had something to do with the sheer amount of religious paraphernalia discovered in boy's room, sequestered and hidden away under the floorboards and under the bed, inside the dresser and closet. Mostly crucifixes, many of them plain, with a few small ones detailed with gold and jewels. A few silver and bronze candlesticks, even fewer books of religious dogma.
"What should we do with it?" Dante asked, puzzling over an oak crucifix.
Burn it, Hohenheim felt like saying. Sell it. This was from more than one church. He didn't get all these from this area, and probably not all stolen. We would've heard if it had been. "Keep it; it might be of use."
The trick with alchemy, however, was that there was an exchange. It might not always be fair, might not always make sense or give the user what he (or Dante's case, she) wanted, but there was always an exchange.
Hohenheim gave, and in return was given.
It was a measure of shock to note that Dante wouldn't even go down the stairs to see it. Her fearful fascination wasn't strong enough to propel her forward past her fear this time; it wasn't just a monster down there, she said, it was a travesty.
"A travesty against what?" Hohenheim asked.
She hadn't been sure. Against life, perhaps. Perhaps against the boy.
"It's only alchemy," Hohenheim insisted. "The product of natural science."
It was a stronger measure of shock that Hohenheim couldn't meet its eyes.
Wouldn't answer it, when it coughed and choked syllables that made no sense.
Couldn't accept it. He, he could accept anything, even his own death and
destruction, even the death and mutilation of the human race and universe, he
who wanted to know everything and anything at any price conceivable by
the imagination, and he couldn't even meet the eyes of something that might've
been his bastard son.
He began to despise the thing in his basement.
Apparently, genetics could flow both ways. The boy had been given his looks and his mother's eccentricities. His mother was picking up the boy's defiance, his father picking up the boy's mediocrity.
He couldn't quite bring himself to kill the thing, to let it die. It may have been neater, more hygienic: the church would have approved, and the boy had adored the church, hadn't he? He'd followed (collected) it obsessively, at any rate. Letting the thing die would've solved matters neatly.
Forgetting to feed it had been surprisingly easy. Locking it up had been surprisingly harder.
"Hohenheim! My Stones! My rubies!" Dante came flying at him, into his closed arms, at the same moment he rattled the broken basement door. "They're gone! They're…oh god. Oh god."
The familiar horror was back in her eyes as covered her mouth. "It's loose."
Hohenheim swung the door absently, listening to the creak of the hinges distractedly. The knob had been nearly torn out of the door, and rattled loosely in his hand. He hadn't counted on the creature's strength. He wasn't quite sure how the thing had managed to move, with its deformed body. Strange. Fascinating. But the boy said he hadn't understood her journals…perhaps some instinct…?
"Were you still using animals?" Hohenheim asked dreamily, wondering how far Dante had progressed on her own, away from his groundwork. He really hadn't been paying all that much attention to her lately; he never really had, now that he thought about it.
His eyes met hers, curious. How much had the scared fascinating girl he'd picked up years ago progressed into an alchemist, doing what had to be done for the sake of knowledge?
"Or have you moved on to humans?"
Her eyes told him everything he needed to know. He hadn't expected the shame, the guilt at being caught. He swung the door idly.
"We really should've named him…"
"I did name him," Dante said through her hand, eyes cool.
"Not the bastard, the homunculus. I'm not sure what to call him."
"Isn't it the same creature?"
"Would you be calling your son 'creature' if it was?"
Hohenheim only perused the house half-interested, while Dante drank down one of her many powders she made for the nerves. Unguents. Poisons. Potions. He'd never been all that interested in medicines, potions, and hadn't paid that much attention either.
He found the creature on the road a little under one third of the way to Oswald, and covered it with his coat before picking it up. It barely weighed eight stone, but struggled like a newborn goat, keening and coughing something that sounded almost like words. Cold webbed feet (hands? It was impossible to tell) slapped weakly at his face, wet and muddy from crawling on all fours and it's stomach and sides.
"They closed that church a year ago," Hohenheim explained as gently as he could. "You won't find what you want there."
The creature in his arms froze, muscles and visible organs working oddly, frantically, pumping out fluid that stained Hohenheim's jacket. The skin was near transparent, translucent, the thickness and skin pigment shifting, morphing, as the creature struggled.
"Besides," Hohenheim continued, "I think I know how to fix you, now. We might be able to go back."
He was not a sentimentalist; there was neither space nor time for it. But—and perhaps he might've only imagined it—he thought he saw a trace of the old hunger and eagerness in the creature's mangled features. A trace of the old. It took two more years to get the monster what it needed to function properly.
"You're going to give it the whole Stone?" Dante asked, outraged. The Stone was technically her project, her research.
Hohenheim answered, "It's your son."
"It's your homunculus! That creature is damned. The Stone is mine--"
"That creature is amoral," Hohenheim countered, thinking of his notes, of all old records of the homunculi, of the things beyond the Gate. He was creating a monster, and for some odd reason that didn't bother him. Perhaps it was for greed, for the sake of knowledge against all odds. Perhaps it was for pride. Perhaps it was for something he hadn't had when he could've, when the bastard-child had been alive. Perhaps it was possible to envy the past, the lost chances? Perhaps it was possible to rewrite it all, to change it all? Perhaps he wouldn't care once he had that chance again.
"We're damned too, my love, if we're ever caught," Hohenheim treated Dante to one of his rare smiles, bitter and amused. He did so with Thomas' face; his own body had been destroyed along with the other raw materials. He wasn't a sentimentalist; it was no longer necessary for him to survive. "By the authorities, gods, or our own scruples. If we're ever caught, we're damned as well."
Dante subsided. He stared at her, not entirely understanding the workings of his own mind, before leaning down to kiss her cheek.
"But what of my Stone? That wasn't easy to create."
"I'll get you another," Hohenheim promised. "We know how, now. We can live forever." He kissed her lips with Thomas' lips. Growing accustomed to Thomas' body had been strangely easy.
"Leave the creature to me."
It was almost worth it, watching the monster eat the red matter eagerly, making an odd purring sound in its throat. Afterwards, of course, it had been less comfortable watching the creature thrash and keen on the stone floor of his basement below the stairs, screaming, odd limbs flailing and crashing into his wooden table, glass crucibles crashing to the ground. Hohenheim's eyes widened as the creature's skin began to slither, morph from sickly black and red blisters to white skin, then to back again to raw flesh. He watched in silence from his stand in the corner, out the creature's range and sight, then took out his notebook.
When it was over, he could almost convince himself it had been worth it. Almost.
Something that almost looked like the bastard child lay on the floor, heaving and choking. Almost like it, except the body was still strangely shaped (the hips and shoulders unbalanced, the feet curled inward like bird claws) and the greasy mop of inky hair was still black, not blond. The creature's choking became worse, more pronounced, and after a bout of spasming went still. It didn't breathe. It didn't twitch. Hohenheim stared, fascinated, horrified.
The creature snapped backward before he could get closer, snapped inward lightening fast, visibly shaking. High plastic wailing ricocheted off the basement's stonewalls and oil lamps, scuttled up the shaky wooden stairs to thud against the oak door.
His handwriting shook on the page, though his nerves were steady. 'Hysterics, spasms, loss of control, malignant chemical reaction possible…'
Light—the residual illumination from an alchemic reaction, it really was a homunculus—seared along the creature's back. Its hands slapped into the floor wildly, breaking glass and fracturing the flagstones as light seared from somewhere in front.
There was no warning yet Hohenheim managed to transmute the wall into a suitable barrier against the pale skinny creature screaming high and inhuman, pummeling and thrashing at him, animal-like. Stone shrapnel hit his face and the floor careened into his side: the creature had broken through an inch of stone in less than a minute. It was much stron--
Something flipped him onto his back, hit his stomach and gripped his neck tightly, shaking him. His body struggled without his command, red and black spots showed in front of his eyes. He slapped his hands together overhead and prepared to touch the ground, prepared to kill the creature that had been so hard to create.
"Ssss--"
The monster's wild pained screams continued. So did the shaking of his neck.
"Sssson. My ssss--"
The shaking stopped abruptly, and the cold fingers around his neck tightened sharply. He couldn't breathe. His pulse beat strong and far too fast in his neck. Hohenheim pressed his fingertips against the stone floor.
The hands—cold bony hands, long and spider-like—gripped his skull, almost as if
they were trying to crush it, while sharp fangs dug themselves into his
shoulder. The creature was still screaming. He gasped, sucking air into his
lungs, the relief distracting him from the pain in his shoulder.
I've created a monster, Hohenheim stopped the transmuted spikes from
reaching their target, urged them back into the floor. How very cliché.
It took him some time to realize, but the creature was sobbing. When he touched its back, he found the alchemic nodes were wet and hot to the touch. The creature flinched against him, and continued sobbing. Hohenheim stared at the ceiling blankly, rubbing his throat absently, wincing every now and again from pain. Eventually, the creature's sobs subsided. He continued stroking its back, along the knobby bumps in its skinny spine.
"We kept your artifacts. Your religious paraphernalia. It's still here. You remember that?"
"The church in Oswald was burned down a year ago. You remember that? There have been changes, while you were gone. Schisms inside the church, outside of it. Most of it having to do with alchemy; they're hunting down alchemists now, as witches. A revolution is beginning. It makes…certain things easier. Certain things harder."
"We fired two of the old maids, Lydia and…the other one. I never remember her name. Remember them? There were…complications. Their services were needed elsewhere. Above the stairs."
"We had to move to a different house. Remember the old one? This one has more stairs. More places to hide. To get lost in. To hide your artifacts away in, if you like. You're like a dragon and its horde. This town has a larger population, easier for…people to…go…"
Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to say it. To tell the creature what kept it alive, what kept it going. It had only taken a few nights of pleasure to create the first bastard child; it had taken several lives and a part of his own body to create the second monster.
Hohenheim sighed. The creature shuddered against him hard, then curled its legs against either side of his chest, still holding his head tightly and burrowed in the crook of his neck. His fingers traced the monster's limbs: longer than he expected, as skinny as he remembered, wet and cold to the touch like a dead fish, or a skinned animal.
"You're body's older than I remember. It isn't supposed to be possible for your kind to age…but perhaps you're exceptional," he wondered out loud. It would be the first time the boy was exceptional, more than ordinary. It would make the work worthwhile, if that was the case.
"You were thirteen, when you died. Remember? You would have been fourteen in three more months. You were always tall for your age, but I don't remember you being this lanky."
The monster rose up, and Hohenheim froze his features serenely.
People would have a hard time calling it his son now, certainly. There were still traces of the bastard's facial features in the homunculus, and the lost-hungry expression was the boy's own expression, but the eyes and hair, even the skin color…no. Not his son. Not even Dante's son.
The monster had managed to clothe itself, it appeared, from its neck down to his thighs in a smooth one-piece body suit. Hohenheim touched the material at the creature's neck curiously, feeling something smooth and cold under his fingers, a little like leather but much sleeker than the stuff the tanners made. Where had it come from? How had it formed? The red stone hummed under his fingers.
The dark material was a sharp contrast to the white, still almost-translucent skin. The biceps and abdomen seemed more muscled than he remembered, but perhaps that was one of the advantages of being undead. Hm. Interesting.
Hohenheim sat up slightly, pushing the homunculus back to crouch on his lap, body hunched and curved inward protectively. He'd expected the fangs, the reptilian eyes, but not the human intelligence behind them, the sentience. The very human pain and fear.
He cocked his head to one side and ran his fingers along the creature's fine cheekbones. Could it speak? Could it even understand human speech? It had a way of looking at him that felt like it could understand him, responded to him, but he would have to test its intelligence later, at length.
The homunculus leaned into his hand like a dog having its ears scratched and closed its eyes. Hohenheim's thumb brushed against the alchemic nodes burned into the creature's forehead, and thought of Abel and Cain without understanding why. The homunculus flinched again, then hurriedly began humming in its throat, rubbing against his palm. A minute ago, it had been trying to strangle him. Hohenheim's left eyebrow rose ironically. Strange little monster.
Cold arms wrapped around his neck and the monster buried its face into his shoulder once more, only this time without biting. Hohenheim continued to run his fingers over the creature's back, wondering at the black material, at the energy humming inside the skin, at the alchemic nodes and leylines that made the monster flinch and jerk until he stopped. The creature's dark hair was about as long as the bastard's had been, shoulder high and still fine and thin. Still baby-soft somehow.
Hohenheim blinked, waking up out his stupor, "What?"
Something muffled was repeated into his shoulder.
"I don't understand you."
The creature coughed, then said in a higher voice than the bastard's, a thinner voice, "Found it."
He was never entirely sure what happened to the boy's religious parapharnelia. It'd been given to the creature, and that was the last anyone knew of it.
"What are we going to call it?" Hohenheim asked Dante one night when they were watching the homunculus stalk the bay mare inside the stable's paddock.
"It had a name," Dante answered quietly, fascinated by the pale creature slowly following the horse, doggedly trying to catch it without startling it. Neither Dante nor Hohenheim felt comfortable taking the homunculus outside during the day. The servants had been sent home for the night; there was too much chance one of them would see it clearly. They were told Herr Hohenheim had caught a remarkable animal in the forest, which now lived below the stairs, in the basement they were never to enter, to never come close to.
"The bastard had a name," Hohenheim corrected, watching the bridle slip through the creature's hands for what had to be the second time. Apparently some of the boy's lack of talent had transferred onto the creature as well. "The homunculus doesn't. What are we going to call it?"
"A human name? Or an animal's?" Dante asked with her usual attention to detail.
The mare shied again from the outstretched pale hand and wheeled sharply to the other end of the paddock. It wasn't unusual; most animals shied away from the homunculus, and when backed into a corner most would flee rather than fight. Not even cats or birds would stand to be near it, not even great dumb animals like cows and oxen. Hohenheim couldn't help wondering if they knew something he didn't.
"I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It resembles a human male, so it should have a human--"
The horse screamed as the homunculus leaped on it from a distance of two yards. Bone-white limbs clung to the mare's neck tightly while the horse bucked and tossed wildly. Underneath the animal's screaming, the monster's snarled curses could be heard.
"I told you that thing was evil," Dante reminded him dispassionately while her eyes followed the scene. Hohenheim found himself wondering when the creature had learned to swear. Its vocabularly was expanding, though not necessarily in the correct direction.
"I thought you were afraid of evil."
"There's nothing to fear of evil so long as its loyal to you. And that boy," Hohenheim's eyebrows rose at the term, over the frantic scuffle occuring in the paddock, "is loyal to me."
"So you like him now?"
The homunculus' snarl cut across the yard and it's body jerked hard before leaping off the horse. Both alchemist watched as the mare wheeled around, wobbled, then fell roughly to its knees. The creature circled the animal predatorily, smoothly.
The homunculus had seen horses on one of the farms circling the town, and had repeated and implored for two weeks without end that it wanted one. Dante had been worried the creature would steal one if left to its own devices, and Hohenheim had bought an old nag out of curiousity. The creature had been disappointed the mare wasn't black, or shiny, or tall, or young, and had whined and complained incessantly, repeating itself. Then it'd spent the better part of half an hour trying to touch it.
"You gave him the whole of my Stone," the resentment was still audible in her voice. "Liking has nothing to do with it. He's ours. For better or--"
The homunculus had sprung, whirled in the air and the horse screamed again as it was knocked on its side. Hohenheim's eyes widened; he hadn't even seen what the monster had done to the animal, it was getting that fast. The monster had been made strong, but its speed and coordination were speedily improving. It circled the animal once more and attacked. And again.
Hohenheim started down the porch steps, but stopped when he heard the mare's vertabrae snap.
Dante stepped down beside him, her hands folded inside her thick sleeves, "I told you it was damned. Evil."
"Aren't we all?"
The creature knelt beside the body, peering at it owlishly. It poked the skull, then stroked the pelt wonderingly. It fingered the mane, stringing the hair through its fingers over and over again, then pried the mouth open until it could get a good look at the teeth. Hohenheim shifted uneasily; he could hear the monster humming contendedly across the yard.
The homunculus continued stroking the mane obsessively, turning the hair over in his fingers. Metal flashed in the porchlight in the monster's hand, and a chunk of the mane was tied to the homunculus' left wrist, and another slapped on its head. Shrill jittery laughter rang out as the homunculus swung its arm rapidly, the hair streaming behind like a sleeve. It raced towards them and held its hand out proudly, the long chuck of hair hanging.
"Do you like it? Isn't it cool? Do you like it?" The porchlight flashed off the slightly crazed violet eyes, the too-white too-wide smile. Hohenheim couldn't blame the animal from recoiling. "It's really cool!"
"It's very pretty," Dante answered with a wan smile, though the monster had been looking at Hohenheim. "May I see it?"
The homunculus giggled and flinched gently when his arm was touched, but didn't try to escape. It always responded to attention, to flattery with almost-childlike obedience. It continued darting glances at Hohenheim under its shaggy dark bangs that Hohenheim tried to ignore. The hunk of mane the boy had slapped on his head was sliding off.
"Darling? Please have a closer look at this."
"He killed it in less than a day. Wearing animal skin is a savage custom. It's degrading to--"
"I really think you should have a look at this," Dante cut him off while the homunculus ducked its head and cringed. "I really think you'll find it interesting."
Hohenheim sighed, and looked. He could feel the homunculus studying his face with the familiar fear and trepidation and a new flavor of curiousity. He touched the smooth black hair that did indeed hang from the boy's arm like a sleeve, and remembered the first night, when the creature had managed to clothe itself. Well. At least now he knew in part where the Stone's energy was going.
He combed his fingers through the homunculus' hair, accidentally brushing the monster's cold neck, trying to ignore the soft hum of pleasure in the creature's throat. He wasn't surprised to find the long smooth black hair was growning from the boy's head, blending in with the rest of his short hair.
"Do you like it?" the homunculus asked in a calmer, imploring voice. Hohenheim ignored it. "Is it pretty?"
"He can change his body, my love," Dante murmured appearing impressed, thoughtful. "The mare was biege; this is black."
"He wanted a black one," Hoheneheim agreed, looking curiously at the homunculus' eager face. The tattered ribbons of the horse's mane had been lost in the paddock when the creature was dancing in circles; it might not have even realized it had developed its own hair.
"Do you think he can change his flesh? His bone structure?"
The monster's pale eyes flickered between them, uncomprehending. It tried again, "You do like it, right? I can change it if you don't like it."
"Possibly," Hohenheim thought of his notes, the old rumors of the homunculi. "There are some notes covering it. His body is flexible due to the Stone, malleable according to his will. He can't do alchemy, but he is a product of it. It would probably be painful for him to attempt."
Hohenheim dropped his hand from the creature's hair, noting the faint traces of pain and resentment in its eyes as he did so. "I do like it. But can you make it red? Or green? I like green better than black."
The monster grinned, wide and evil with the bastard's smirk, and Dante inhaled sharply.
"That's very good," Hohenheim eyed the dark green and scarlet red stripes in the flap of material hanging from the boy's wrist and noted the contrasting dark pine and lime colored streaks on the boy's hair. They'd both seen the faint flare of alchemic light that time.
"But I liked the horse too. I paid for it. It was an innocent animal. Can you--"
The monster's eyes narrowed sharply and the white of its teeth flashed as it snarled, "It was old it smelled bad. It was stupid it wouldn't even let me touch it. I can move faster than that old thing, and I'm shinier. I can make myself any color."
"Yes, you can," Hohenheim and Dante traded looks; they hadn't expected the anger. "But it was still a good animal. Can you make yourself into that?"
"Into a horse? Into that? Why? It's ugly and it smells bad and it's slow and old--"
"Can you make yourself into a better horse, then?" Dante asked, surprising him. She was still running her fingers over the monster's knuckles, feeling the power thrumming underneath the skin. The homunculus snorted and snatched his hand away, backing away from them suspiciously, challenglingly. Neither moved.
"He still needs a name," Hohenheim insisted under his breath.
"It was stupid!" the monster exploded at him. "It was lame! It didn't need a name it didn't need anything you shouldn't have wanted it! It was useless! I'm better than that and I'm never lame and I don't get hurt!"
Neither alchemist moved as the homunculus waded further from the porchlight, seething. Hohenheim spoke, trying to move his lips as little as possible, "He can hear us from this distance?"
"We don't know what he can do. When did he learn to change his appearance like that? To what extent?"
Sometimes, he almost loved Dante: she thought the way he did. "I thought you were watching him."
"I thought you were. He's your project."
"He used to be your son."
"Used to be your son too."
The homuculus crumbled on all fours in the darkness, out of their sight. They could hear whimpering and panting, wheezy breathing.
"He was a bastard. He still needs a name," Hohenheim persisted.
There was a choking sound, and a cough from the darkness. Silence, save for the harsh breathing. A whine. A pained whimper. Then another pained sound, and a whinny. More silence.
When the homunculus staggered back into the light, both alchemists were mildly surprised. Hoofs clopped hollowly on the ground and the animal was, indeed, tall and black, with a long wavy mane and tail. Dante touched his arm lightly when he began to open his mouth, eyes narrowed critically, and he stopped.
The animal had hoofs and the long equestrian neck, short pointed ears and long wide body, but it wasn't a horse. Hohenheim began noting the problems curiously, wondering what they added up to: the knees bent the wrong way, it's chest was too narrow and high, and the shape of the skull was off. It wasn't a horse: it was a child's constructed idea of a horse. And somehow, the homunculus had made it walk. That should have been impossible. Fascinating.
Dante stroked its side and said, "You can still feel the power underneath."
The animal's nose nudged his shoulder until Hohenheim began stroking it, scratching the muzzle absently. "He still needs a name."
Dante scoffed, "How about Pride?" She smiled at his confusion. "Or Wrath? I think Pride would be better. Maybe Gluttony, since he wants so much?"
"If you're going that way," Hohenheim answered tersely, "why not call him Greed? He's a living creature; it's senseless to name him for the sake of one of the Cardinals."
Dante laughed in her throat, before turning to stroke the thick soft pelt. "We both knew what you were making, before it was finished. It's too late to polish it up now, justify it. As you said, we're both damned; it'd be hypocritical to deny the creature's true strength now."
Misshapen lavender eyes flickered between them, before the animal tried to eat Hohenheim's sleeve affectionately.
The homunculus' second murder victim was harder to forget, to hide. In a way, Hohenheim had realized a second murder was inevitable, but had never devised a solution to the problem until it was too late.
It wasn't only that the homunculus had no patience, no interest in matters it was not instantly adept in like stealing and posing, it also had a short attention span. It showed no empathy for other people, had no interest in the reaction it would cause in the servants, the hostile reaction it already caused in animals. It disliked being tested and grew increasingly restless locked in the basement, beneath the stairs.
"Why can't I go out? I go out at night. Why can't I go out?" the monochrome homunculus paced the length of the basement while Hohenheim sat on the stairs, notebook on lap. The monster's eyes would flash with anger, resentment, and the familiar hunger. "I'm not scared of anything out there. I'm good at hiding, being quiet. Why can't I go out? Why won't you let me out? I haven't done anything wrong. I want to go out."
Hohenheim began to look to locksmiths for stronger locks, a stronger door and hinges.
The morning's coffee was refreshingly bitter, strong, when he realized the basement's lock had been destroyed. The door and hinges were intact, neatly shut and apparently untouched, but the lock had been demolished. Hohenheim sighed, and called up the stairs.
Dante gave the door a cursory look, "Do you think it's still in the house?"
"Probably."
Her lips narrowed, "We really will be damned if anyone finds it, so you can stop looking at me like that. For all I know you could be him."
Hohenheim blinked and nodded. "Good point. Suggestions?"
Dante shrugged, "Bring a dog inside. It'll bite the creature first. Or take the servants to the stables, and see which one is trampled. There's a limit to its ability, after all."
"You're being awfully cavalier about the situation," Hohenheim interjected. "For all you know, I could be it. You could be endangering yourself, talking like that."
Dante smiled grimly, "He likes me, and I like him. I'm just able to accept the truth better than you are; I've been living with monsters my whole life."
He let the silence hang in the air as Dante glanced down the wooden steps descending into darkness, lost in her own mind. Then she sniffed, "Besides, I think I know the difference between my own lover and a doppelganger," Dante returned up the stairs. "You're colder than he is."
He went in search of the servants, mentally calculating the odds of which one would appeal to the creature most. Rosemary was fourty-five, mother of five and grandmother of two, could cook like a demon, and unthinkable. Bethany was sixteen, small and slender, and saw to the menial tasks that Rosemary did not, like stoking the fires and polishing. Paul was twenty-six, tall and dark, but worked in the stables and Hohenheim wasn't quite ready to accept that all the animals had been slaughtered, so didn't investigate. Besides, he hadn't heard a commotion and smoke wasn't coming out the stable windows yet.
Hohenheim stuck his head in the parlour, and made a mental note: the homunculus had superhuman powers, yes, but it also had a vanity that did not allow it to include the pimples or burn marks on Bethany's hands. He wondered, half-heartedly, if it had been better to find the homunculus male and killing the livestock, or female and feeding pages of his journal to the fireplace.
He brought his palms together softly, and the flames extinguished. Bethany peered curiuosly into the fireplace, then turned to him blue eyes wide. Then the creature grinned broadly, "Hi. I burned your journals. Not all of them. But a lot of them."
"Yes, I can see that."
"I hid the rest," the monster chattered, sitting back on its heels casually. "You'll never find them."
"Where's Bethany? The girl you're mimicking," Hohenheim clarified because the creature's wide-eyed smile had turned even more vacant than usual. All its expressions were exaggerated, over-elaborate. He couldn't help wondering if that was some sign of mental retardation.
"I don't know," the homunculus smoothed the wrinkles on the calico skirt, tugging the folds irritably. Hohenheim narrowed his eyes; the monster (bastard?) still hadn't learned to lie while looking him in the eye. "Why? Do you like her?"
"I'd like knowing where she is."
"That doesn't answer my question," the homunculus' mind was getting sharper, colder. "Do you like her?"
In the silence the monster continued, "I know you don't like me. Do you like her?"
Hohenheim frowned, "Why do you ask?"
The creature smiled boyishly, shy and coy at the same time through Bethany's dark curls. "I'm curious. Who do you like? What do you like? I don't know these things. I want to. For the sake of knowledge," it rose and approached slowly, hands folded in front.
Hohenheim felt the atmosphere drop by a few degrees and fought the urge to shift uneasily; he disliked having his words used by someone else without permission, especially for such frivolous use. "What'll you do with the information once you have it?"
The creature plucked at Bethany's starched sleeve irritably, looking away. "It's not polite to answer a question with a question. Dante wouldn't approve."
Hohenheim's eyebrow arched high; what did Dante have to do with anything? Since when had he cared about her approval concerning cordiality?
"I'll answer your question," the creature stood in front of him demurely, looking up through thick lashes, "if you answer mine. Deal? That's fair. Exchange for exchange."
"It's equivalent exchange," Hohenheim found himself correcting instantly, noting the creature glanced away darkly. "The law of equivalent exchange. It was formulated for the science of alchemy, not social interaction. However…"
When had it learned diplomacy? Complete shape-shifting?
The homunculus watched him hungrily, avidly, and he was disturbingly reminded of jungle cat coiled in the bush watching its prey with the same avid and aloof expression. Hohenheim shook off the feeling, and sat down in one of the stiff horsehair parlor chairs.
"The ability to take another's form is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the doppelganger is able to see the world through another's eyes, to live another's life. On the other hand, the doppelganger cannot decide or remember which life is his own," Hohenheim studied the creature's replica of Bethany standing in his own parlor over the steeple of his fingers. "I would advise you to quit the habit."
"I'd advise you not to tell me what to do," the homunculus had dropped Bethany's voice like an old shoe, and spoke with Hohenheim's old-accented and cavernous tone through Bethany's rosy lips. "You never cared what I did before. Now's a poor time to start."
"Stop that."
"Or what?"
The homunculus cocked its head to the side (that was his gesture) and spoke with the same quiet disinterest, dispassion. It walked towards him (moving only below the waist, composed, those were his movements) and knelt by his knees.
"You spent days on your research. I saw daylight more often than you did, and I wasn't supposed to leave the house. I saw the hangman more times than I saw you. Everything for the sake of knowledge," the creature smiled his grim, mirthless smile, purred low with his voice. "But you've never asked me. Of the things I saw. The things I felt. You're a damn hypocrite; all that time researching and you never just asked me what it was like to be dead."
Bile was rising in his throat, and his heart was beating faster. The monster's eyes had turned gold. "I didn't think you remem--"
"You were afraid."
The chair thudded back as Hohenheim half-stood quickly and was shoved back in his seat, a cold bony hand tight around his throat and another crushing the bones of his left wrist. For a minute, he was clinical about it: he'd seen the homunculus' strength too many times to doubt it could kill him in an instant, crush his breathing tube and snap his hand from his arm with barely an effort. The monster's face, a few centimeter's from his own, composed and chilly took up his whole world, its weight light on his laps. The familiar December hunger was banging in the creature's eyes, and Hohenheim felt a tiny pang of fear without knowing why.
"You were afraid I'd gotten farther than you had. You were afraid I was smarter than you were; admit it. You afraid of me from the day I was born because I was yours."
The child had been ordinary. Regretfully, shamefully ordinary.
"That's not--"
The pressure increased on his throat, cutting him off. Knife-sharp pricks touched the nape of his (Thomas') neck. Liquid began to slide down his skin.
"You wouldn't even call me by name; you wouldn't even call me yours," the creature spat softly, hatred and hunger staining a rather flawless imitation of Hohenheim's voice. It chuckled darkly, humorlessly. "Do you like her? I can kill you."
"You wouldn't kill me."
"Why not? You're not mine. I'm not yours, you saw to that. Why not?"
"You still repeat yourself," Hohenheim observed quietly, feeling both light-headed and unstable. "You should get out of that habit also. But no; I neither like her nor dislike her. And you won't kill me; we both know that. I'm too important to you for that."
The homunculus stared at him lips slightly parted, dumb-struck. Then it burst it out laughing.
"You? You're too important? You?" The creature's skin shifted and crawled, alive with alchemy, alive with borrowed lives. It cocked its head to one side, using his face, his heavy body, not Thomas' body, but his old one. The one he'd been born with, not the one stolen from another. "I'm a doppelganger, remember? I can take your life and keep it, forever. Who'd know the difference?"
Hohenheim scowled irritibably; stupid question. "Dante--"
"Hates you. And you don't like her. You're never there for her anyway; it's not like she'd care if there were a few irregularities in your behavoir if you were nicer," the homunculus smiled smugly (its own expression, not his), looking insufferably arrogant. "You took Thomas' life easily enough. I can take yours just as easy. I've already kissed Dante."
He had nothing to say to that.
The homunculus held his silence, never leaving his eyes.
"What happened to the girl?" Hohenheim rasped quietly.
"We switched places. I wore her dress, and she's stuffed under the stairs. In your lab. She won't mind."
"Is she alive?"
The homunculus cocked its head to one side, sliding back into Bethany's body and face, the calico dress, though it kept its own voice, "I'm not alive either. She's got nothing to complain about. It was a fair and equal switch. Equivalent exchange."
Hohenheim said nothing. His blood burned, his eyes felt dry and his knuckles itched with the urge to—to do something. To do something about the matter-of-fact tone in the monster's voice, about the smug cocky attitude, about the monster's ability to take other's bodies and lives and not know anything about the persona it inhibited nor care. The absolute disregard for individuality made him sick on an intellectual level. The monster's skill and ease made him sicker on an instinctual level.
Then he realized the homunculus had done the same thing with the horse; replicated a perfect and inexact model.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, calming his mind. Too much rushing blood was bad for the brain.
"What is it," he spoke slowly, tranquily, "that you want?"
The homunculus blinked and its expression grew shadowed, defensive. "Thought that'd be easy. For a smart man like you? Obvious, even."
Hohenheim said nothing.
The homunculus straightened on his lap, drawing itself up proudly and tightened its grip on his wrist. Hohenheim didn't resist; on the one hand he was vulnerable, on the other the monster was too obsessed with him to actually harm him. The homunculus shifted shape again, the wide calico skirt shrinking and the dark curls straightening. This time, Hohenheim was the first to look away.
"I can kill you before you can scream," the monster said quietly, leaning forward to touch his shoulder lightly. "I can remember many things now. It's easier to see things. I'm very smart." The monster fell silent a moment, and toyed with the lapels on his shirt. "Would you like to know if there's a God?"
With a surprising amount of difficulty, Hohenheim met the monster's gold eyes and tried not to focus on the overall picture. The bastard had never looked like that; the boy had died at thirteen. The body on his lap looked fifteen, seventeen. The eyes, however, were older than that, and very sad.
"You wouldn't tell me if I asked," Hohenheim responded.
"No," the monster agreed, brushing its cold lips against his forehead. "But I would like to hear you beg."
The icy grip remained tight on his left wrist, the monster's other hand monitoring the movements of his right arm, and its lips whispered slowly over his face like snow. Hohenheim closed his eyes.
"I can kill anyone for you," winter whispered over his cheekbones, over his eyelids.
"I can steal anything, bring you everything you want," the chill kissed his stubble of beard, his nose.
"I can be as perfect you will ever want," mortality licked his bottom lip, slid against his teeth and covered his mouth slowly, sucking the warmth out.
He'd created a monster. How very cliché.
"You asked me what I wanted," his bastard son pleaded miserably. "I can kill you. Remember? I don't need you alive. You aren't that important. Not to me."
"What is it you want?" Hohenheim repeated without opening his eyes.
"You don't like her; you're always fighting and you don't even like fighting with her. You don't even like looking at her," the creature continued to plead, to beg recklessly. Hohenheim felt he was drowning in a million unanswered pleas, and for some odd reason was reminded of the susurrus of the Sunday masses he'd attended with his own father.
"You don't like touching her or anything and I could be something you like looking at, all the time and I can change if you don't like it anymore, I could be nice to touch and I can, I can learn to be interesting and fun to fight with if you just give me time and I can do anything and she's stuck in that body and--"
"Child," Hohenheim interjected as gently as he could, "what is it you want?"
The sobbing stuttered, choked, and the monster gasped in fresh air. Hohenheim didn't open his eyes.
Hours later, the homunculus opened his eyes blearily, inhaled, and whined at the pain. The ceiling loomed above him, white, wide, and ominious. He lifted a hand and compared it to the ceiling. Fresh red blood was still clotted under his fingernails, still wet, a strange contrast to his own dark and dry blood. Then he rose to one elbow, groaning low in his throat.
He'd dreamed, before he'd revived.
He couldn't remember what he'd dreamed, but he couldn't stop shivering, couldn't fight off the cold fever infesting his forehead and swallowing his back, his stomach and groin. He rolled over, fought further, but couldn't keep himself from vomitting, dark plum liquid spilling over his hand and staining the carpet. He looked around, half-hopefully. The room was largely untouched, save for a few broken vases and the copious amount of blood on the carpet. Most of it was his.
The creature curled up on the floor, shuddering.
Dante came down to breakfast the next day to find Hohenheim flipping idly through the newspaper, his bacon and eggs untouched. She threw him a glance, before sitting and squeezing his hand briefly. They had never been demostrative, but she did care for him. She'd heard the argument from her room the other day, and had tactfully disdained from leaving her quarters.
"Do you like him? The boy, I mean."
Dante blinked in surprise, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Hohenheim's eyes darted to hers once, then back to the paper, "Do you like him? Was he worth the effort?"
Dante coninued staring at his eyes, and then looked down at her own food. Then out the window, brow furrowing.
Hohenheim was rarely angry with her—Hohenheim rarely felt anything for anyone—and was difficult to predict. Still, she had been certain he loved her a good deal, and would never hurt her. His respect for human intelligence was too strong for that. She had no such guarantees with the homunculus.
"I like him very much. He's very sweet, very talented. We'll never find anything like him again."
"Do you like him better than me?"
This time, Dante felt alarmed. He wouldn't—Hohenheim's alchemical ability was swifter than hers, stronger than hers, there was no way a slap-job of flesh and power could kill him, was there? Her skin went pale. What had the monster done?
"I like you both, very much," she couldn't find anything else to say.
"Would you rather have him than me?"
"I…" Dante left her seat, "Could you excuse me a minute? There was something I forgot upstairs. I'll be back soon."
Hohenheim's room was intact, empty, with its brown suits hanging in the wardrobe. They hadn't slept together—hadn't slept in the same room—for years, yet she knew his possessions and belongings. His priorities. Dante flew to the basement. His journals were gone, along with his equipment. Everything else had been destroyed, trashed. The smell was still there: the smell of dank stone, cold air and the faint coppery tint of blood. Dante made her way up the stairs slowly, feeling sick.
Hohenheim waited for her at the top, one hand on the frame. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in his neck silently. Gradually, in stages, his hands covered her shoulders. His body was cold.
"I have a name for you," Dante announced quietly. "I like it very much for you. I think you will too."
A/N: For lykomancer's fmaeastside challenge. My idea of how Dante started out. Used a lot of FMA's Wrath's development into a homunculus for Envy's development, only Envy's a lot more collected and intelligent. I swore I'd never write Hohenheim/Envy and then I met Lyko and the whole thing fell apart 0o