Disclaimer: You don't want me to own it...
YAY! First EnvyXPride!
Please note:
1) these are the anime versions of the characters. You complain, you die.
2) I forgot how Envy's original body (William) died. ::backs slowly away::
3) This story is rated "R" for a reason. It contains graphic descriptions of suicide, murder, self-mutilation and some other bad stuff like implied rape and incest. You have been warned.
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He walked down the dirt road that lead to his old house.
It had been almost fourteen years since he left, and he was wondering why he came back at all, should he have come back at all?
What were you supposed to say to someone you hadn't seen in fourteen years? To the kids that had grown up without a father, the wife without a husband?
How would they react to seeing him? Would they be glad to see him? Angry at him? Probably the second one… actually, it was most definitely the second one and he couldn't pretend he didn't deserve it if they did.
What should he say?
What should he do?
And where in Hell was his house?
He couldn't find it anywhere. It was as if it had simply vanished.
In the space where he thought he remembered it being were just some charred beams and wreckage in the center of a huge scorch mark.
This couldn't be his house; he must have simply forgotten where it was.
He turned around and was heading for the train station to ask directions when he glanced back and saw Edward standing a few meters behind him.
The boy had certainly grown, but still had the same wide, gold eyes and matching hair.
It was still Edward.
He walked up to him, questions pouring out of his mouth in what would almost be called a nervous rant, "Edward! How are you? Where's your mother? And Al too, are they both well? Where's the hou-"
He was cut off abruptly as Edward turned and started walking away, heading for the remains of the burned house.
He had no choice but to follow, asking questions but not receiving a response, much less an answer.
When they were in front of the house Edward turned, hatred burning in his violet eyes.
Wait a minute… Violet eyes?
Then Edward's hair grew and darkened to a deep green.
He looked into the blazing amethyst eyes and sighed, "Hello, William."
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Envy scowls, outraged that the man can speak so casually to him after abandoning him two hundred years ago, leaving him to sleep in the sewers and live off garbage until Dante came, and even more furious that the man would call him by the name he'd had when he was alive.
Well he'll show the famous Honhenheim of light, after all, he'll be lighter with his guts ripped out.
He smirks at the thought, then, before Honhenheim can react, he is behind him, an arm pressed tightly against his throat while he plunges a knife into the small of his father's back, delighting in the feel of the blood soaking the front of his shirt.
The feeling is addictive.
Hohenheim gasps in pain, and Envy takes that as an invitation to start twisting the knife ever so slowly, moving it up to the space between his shoulder blades, exposing decaying flesh and releasing the rotted odor of something dead.
Something that should be dead.
Something that should bleed a lot more, scream a lot more, and feel much more pain.
Honhenheim is screaming,
(They all screamed)
is bleeding
(They all bled)
Is dying,
(They all died in a pool of what they bled)
He pulls out the knife, and then drives it all the way through Honhenheim's neck.
He collapses, still bleeding freely, and dies, spitting blood into the growing puddle around him.
Dead already?
(Maybe he'll do something that he can't talk about with the ladies)
What a pity.
(Or the men)
Envy looks down with disgust and joy. It's an odd combination of feelings, and he takes a moment to savor it for fear that he will never feel this way again.
Big mistake.
He glances down at his father's corpse, and both emotions drain out of him, leaving ones he's never felt before: Shock, horror, and regret.
Father is dead, he's dead, they're all dead, everyone is dead, drowned in a sea of blood, and it's covering him, up to his ankles and there's more on his shirt, more blood, more pain, more death.
He stumbles, landing in the blood.
He curls into a ball, hands desperately clutching his shoulders, fingernails biting into the skin.
Nails, then claws, short, then long, dull, then sharp and piercing, cutting deep into the flesh, opening veins.
He digs in deeper, and his arm falls limply to the ground before reducing to ashes.
More blood flows.
He shudders and then is still, another life lost.
When he comes back, he's more unstable, changing forms rapidly, caught between his hated true form and the one he prefers.
He rolls back and forth, screaming, crying, and sometimes just horrible silence.
His eyes change, one gold, one purple, the colours shifting between the two.
His hair grows and shortens, lightens and darkens.
What did life mean if it ended in like this, alone on the side of the road in a pool of your own wretched blood?
Becoming human, the Philosopher's Stone, the Elric brothers, who cared?
What did any of it matter if you died with blood pouring out of both your mouth and the gaping hole in your stomach while your mother watched you and didn't care and only screamed for help as your last breath left you?
Why?
He's completely drenched with blood now, both his father's and his own.
What a perfect place to die.
A perfect place for someone to discover a body: lying right out in the open, steeping in its own blood, just waiting to be found.
He realizes this in a moment of sanity, or at least, something close to it.
The moment passes, but another one comes, then another, and another, minutes or maybe even hours of control over his actions are here.
He quickly decides what to do with them.
He stands up, walks over to his father's carcass, and dips his hand into one of the pockets of his coat.
His fingers close around a vial, in one swift movement he pulls it out and uncorks it before simply throwing the entire thing down his throat.
The glass breaks and stabs him from within, blood comes up his throat and for a moment he's William again, dying on floor while his mother watched him with a look of cool disinterest.
He's dead again before the poison can begin to work its deadly charms, and that soul takes the deadly liquid back with it to the grave.
"To die…" he mutters, more envious now than he had ever been before.
Life is pointless, he wants to die.
No, he needs to die.
His siblings need to die too. But they don't know it yet, so he'll die for them.
It'll be perfect: seven deaths for seven Sins.
He elongates his fingernails, sharpening them into claws just waiting to be covered in blood.
This death will be for Lust.
He slashes his stomach open, internal organs spilling out onto the damp ground.
Blood flows.
He dies with a choked gasp of pain, but quickly regenerates, screaming as he inhales the smell of freshly-spilled blood.
He slowly forces himself to stop screaming, and grows a sword from the palm of his hand.
This death will be for Pride.
The sword plunges into his throat, twisting cruelly and severing his head.
He comes back, dripping blood and panting with both pain and the effort of not screaming again.
If he screams now he doesn't know if he'll be able to stop.
When he's silent, he once again grows a weapon from his hand.
But it's not a sword this time, it's a spear.
Pride already had a death; this one is for that stupid brat Wrath.
This time, instead of finishing himself off quickly, he traces the point of the spear lightly over his forearm, leaving a shallow, stinging trench that quickly filled with blood.
He repeats this process until he's covered in bright red ribbons that trickle down his body like snakes. Then he makes a deeper cut on his belly.
Much deeper.
The spear goes all the way through him and out the other side.
Death comes while he writhes in agony.
Life comes while he screams out in frustration.
He turns his hand to a liquid, not quite water, but Hell if he knows what it is.
This death is for Sloth.
He brings it up to his mouth and swallows, forcing the liquid down his throat while generating more, drowning himself in what feels like his own blood.
It could be, for all he knows.
It certainly tastes like it.
His hand returns to normal as he regenerates, and he has to pull it out quickly before he chokes on it.
That would be a pointless death.
"Just like yours father, just like yours,"
He grows claws again and sticks them through his throat, not really caring if Greed would have killed him like that or not.
He was going to give the death to his already dead sibling whether he liked it or not.
He comes back trembling with pain, but he still has two more deaths at least.
Not that they would matter.
He decides that the next death will be for Envy, for him.
He liked to vary the ways he killed his victims, but now he decided to do it the same way he had killed that idiot Hughes.
A gun is in his hand, he unlocks the safety and places it in his mouth, when memories of long ago made him drop it and start to scream again.
He was trapped in an alleyway, wall behind, boys who could do him a lot of physical damage in front.
He hadn't had any stones, he could heal but he only had one life.
He could change his hair colour, his features, and his gender, but he couldn't transform into something useful.
Something… Dangerous.
The largest boy took a step forward and kicked him in the groin, the others had all joined in and beaten him until he was bloody and pain wracked his every nerve.
Then the leader of the gang had knelt down, pulled him up by his hair, and started pulling down his zipper…
The gun in his mouth is cold and metallic-tasting, but the feeling is eerily similar, and he finds he can't kill himself like that.
He picks it up again, still screaming, puts it to his heart, and pulled the trigger as many times as he could, screaming louder each time a burst of hot pain makes his heart seem to explode.
He's screaming as he dies and still screaming when life floods back into his veins.
It's happened, the pain has driven him over the edge, he can't stop screaming, can't stop the tears as they flow down his blood-soaked cheeks, he can't escape the pain.
With much effort he lifts his arm up, forces it into his mouth, and bites down hard, his teeth sharpening as he starts tearing at the flesh, biting down harder, trying not to start screaming.
This death is for Gluttony.
This pain is for Dante.
This blood is for Father.
Did I make you happy, you old, dead, bastard?
The gun lies forgotten beside him.
He picks it up again and jams it into his mouth, ignoring the memories, they're not as bad as the pain, they're not… Who in Hell is he kidding?
They are every bit as bad as the pain.
They're worse.
This means that he needs more pain.
He pulls the trigger.
This death is for Death itself.
Death, who wouldn't take him even though he was begging to be accepted into its cold arms.
He falls and ends up where he started, caught between two forms and screaming in agony.
Spitting up blood and rolling in it.
Crying, making a damp patch in the dirt where, impossible as it may seem, the blood hasn't spread yet.
This is how Pride finds him later.
He kicks him in the head, crushes his skull, getting an extra death after all, then picks him up and slings him over his shoulder as the blue sparks dance over him, focusing on his head.
He stops screaming, and starts giggling hysterically as he lifts up the back of Pride's jacket, puts his head down, and starts feverishly licking the flesh at the small of his brother's back.
Pride shivers in disgust, then reaches up and pushes on Envy's back just enough in just the right place to snap it in two, turning the giggles into screams.
He drops his older brother to the ground and twists his head sharply, silencing him for a few seconds of blissful quiet.
He crouches on all fours over Envy's body, his hand firmly on the other's neck, waiting for him to come back.
When he does, his windpipe is immediately crushed, again and again, death after death until the message is clear: don't do that.
When he finally allows Envy to come back he tells him verbally.
Envy ignores him and simply wraps his legs around Pride's hips, arching his back and pressing their bodies and mouths together.
He likes the taste of his brother's warm mouth even more than the surprise emanating off of him, and finds that it's difficult to pull away, although he finally manages to, and asks, in between bursts of hysterical laughter,
"Can I do this…?"
His response is a sword through his throat.
It plows in, spraying blood and ending Life again and again until he is exhausted from being slaughtered so many times, panting and covered in sweat.
Pride is the picture of decorum though, his face stony, his uniform dry and, impossibly, free of blood.
How does the bastard do it?
He wonders before being picked up again, carried the same way he was before. He doesn't do anything though, he just hangs there, drained and not caring about the indignity of being carried.
He looks back at his father's corpse, now so far away, and wonders if he would have done the same things if the person he had killed was a stranger.
He has to conclude that he wouldn't have.
He would have simply killed them, not himself, and moved on.
You can do that with a stranger, simply kill them and move on.
Water evaporates without a trace.
Blood doesn't.
Even the blood of the man who had abandoned him, the blood that even now stains the road… Well, some of the blood that stains the road.
But regardless of who's blood stains the road, they are still family.
Family bonded in death.
Family is lying dead in the middle of the road.
Family is carrying him back towards what would eventually be his final death.
He doesn't think Dante would allow him to live after the instability he had showed.
He is insane, he is a liability, and he can't be kept alive.
She'll kill him, he guesses that much.
He's right.