A/N: Written for the 100_tales challenge on livejournal for prompt #061 – hatred with Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward & Envy. Also written for shadowcaster01's challenge on Fullmetal Alchemist: A Bit of Everything (link is on my profile). The idea was to write a fic where (in 2003) Edward isn't stabbed by Envy (though I don't this is what they had in mind). But enjoy anyway. ^^
Oh, and I've tweaked the dialogue a little since I can't remember their exact words. Paraphrasing really.
True Face, True Heart
'Damn it! Show me your true face and stop hiding you bastard!'
The silence echoed; strangely, as Edward's harsh pants fought audibly with the pained wheezing of the Homonculi he had pinned. His knees dug into the other's ribs, firmly planted in the ever changing form as the skin twisted and deformed into one shell after another.
And now it was back in the form it most often wore, the shark grin snaking across his pale face, framed with ferns of a deep green. Symbolic: no doubt Envy had found it amusing to be green. Green with Envy. Just something else sick to add to an ever growing list – that had started the moment he had stabbed that suit of armour with his own sword. And he had followed that up with the same shark-like grin he sprouted now, sprouting nonsense that only someone truly dense would even think to believe.
'My face?' The attempt at false casualness was lost by the breathless that stubbornly clung. 'You sure you're ready for it?'
He – or it, for Edward had no idea as to the Homunculi's true gender – snickered as Edward growled and brought his fist back to strike again. Almost to his ear it came, clenched until the knuckles were white, as if he was drawing back an arrow to fire at the other's heart. He might've too, if he could; he'd killed two Homunculi already and indirectly caused the death of a third, and off all the Homunculi Envy was the one he could almost truly hate.
Almost…and that was why he paused, arm taut as it prepared to snap forward again, preparing to crush through bone, watching the skin twist with the cackling of red and reshape instead of striking in that moment of vulnerability –
And that proved to be undoing, as a face so similar to his father's, so similar to his, stared back.
The maniacal look was gone; there was no stupid desire for revenge, but something cold and hard instead. Something true in all the false that rung between them. Something that reminded him of Hohenheim's own expression, seconds before an automail fist had ploughed into him. Something that had reminded him of the way the other had looked upon the confirmation of their sin: of the taboo they had committed in their desperation because he hadn't been there for them…
Those were the thoughts that rose in Edward's mind, the thoughts that clawed their way to the forefront of his brain, to his eyes – and he could see his father's face, to his lips. And it slipped out, almost unconsciously as his arm and the fist it supported slackened. 'Da – ad?'
'Yes.' And this time, there was that sneer, the contempt laced within his tone – that sounded eerily like Edward's own voice, slandering his father's name with Alphonse's weak protests beside. 'Hohenheim of Light.'
Dante picked up the tale after that, but Edward was only half listening to it. His arm shook with the effort to hold it taut, and the instinct to land his strike was quickly devoured by the cold shock that seeped through his mind.
His father…Hohenheim…he had…
…another child, another child he had abandoned, before them. Another woman he had claimed to love. Another world, another time – which he had destroyed in order to make a Philosopher's Stone, and then fled…
Maybe, if he had never met the man again, Edward could have been satisfied with clinging to the long years of hate. But he couldn't, couldn't because they had met. Because somewhere, in his heart, he had found it to forgive the old man, to accept the regret he wore, to realise that he had tried to atone for the past the best he could, that he had simply been trying to protect them…
Even if he had broken his heart. And his mother's.
'He broke my heart.'
Envy's grin stretched, triggered by the old woman in a young girl's skin. Her eyes were cold, but only Alphonse, bound and immobile, could see that. Envy devoured Edward's vision. Envy with his hair almost the same shade as his own. Envy with that pale, pitiable skin. Envy – no, William – with the same jawline, the same contours defining his face –
'He broke my heart,' Envy repeated, sounding angry…and somewhat sad as well. 'He abandoned me, you know.'
Edward's arm dropped, instinct and his thudding chest unable to support it any longer.
And then suddenly, he was unable to support anything of himself; his weight fell back a little, before pitching forward. Five long concrete fingers – or claws – had pierced through his ribs, cutting through flesh and bone and muscle as though carving up a stake. The other had had grabbed him a moment; enough for the first to puncture through flesh and bone, but then it was gone and he was propped up simply by those penetrating claws.
He coughed, and a few drops of blood fell upon the other's shirt, and face. The mouth below, now that familiar shark-grin that somehow came across so foreign despite all the times he had seen it before, twisted further into dark insanity. Sharp right teeth clashed with each other with the sound of grating stone as their owner grinded the jagged rows together, and Edward coughed once again as the fingers moved within his chest.
He tried to straighten – tried to move – but he had nothing. No energy, no savage will, no flame lit beneath his feet to shove him forward, except –
'Ni-san!'
– his brother.
'A – ah!' The words choked in his throat as the tiny scattering droplets became oozing rivers and his chest began to hurt. Some part of his mind realised what must have happened; the rest of it grappled still for a foothold. And then Alphonse was screaming something again, and he was screaming too – or he thought it was; he was having a little trouble noting, and his vision was getting rather fuzzy as well.
But the homunculi's next words came out clearly, and Edward heard every syllable in a mix of green, gold and red.
'I'm going to break his heart – by crushing yours.'
And then Edward was falling backwards, a limp ragdoll whose strings had been cut and then shoved through a gap in a fence. And he was shoved, as Envy had brought his other hand up as a barrier to rip the thing in his grasp –
And Edward lay, eagle-spread, on the floor with a pool of blood collecting beneath him while Envy, arm doused in that same vivacious fluid, clutched a mess of blue, brown and a still-pulsing red.
Alphonse screamed: nonsensically, but it was a scream that continued to echo, even when Edward found himself barely conscious, seeing only the faintest changes in the light, like the siftings from a curtain. He could hear a heart beating somewhere; it stopped – screamed – and then it started beating again.
And Edward found himself waking to a chest that ached from broken ribs, residual clots and strained muscle – and most importantly, a restored and still-function heart. But there was nothing else: no Envy (and he didn't think he could take seeing him so soon), no Dante, and no Al. There were still Rose and her baby, the latter crying with no understanding of the world while the former stared at him in shock.
'A – Al,' he croaked, struggling to get up.
The brown-skinned woman quickly helped, throwing aside her own tears even as she shook her head. 'He – ' she began unsteadily, before starting over, 'He tried to – he brought you back. Transmuted you.'
Her eyes were bewildered, and somewhat pained; he felt he knew what she was thinking. It was he who had told her it was impossible after all, impossible to bring back the dead once they were gone.
'He – ' Another wail, which Rose quietened while abandoning her own desperate call. 'Envy, I mean. He ripped your heart.'
Edward tried to stand, but failed to make it beyond a seated position, both arms and chest aching from the stain. He looked down, to find both hands flesh and staring back at him. 'He mended me.' My heart…and my arms and legs as well. His own voice shook, and it was only Rose to bear witness to the scene, for her child was far too young. 'He mended me – but he, that bastard – he's left me behind!'
The newly restored fist struck the ground with zero force.