Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: M
Character(s): Dante, Hoenheim, Edward, Envy, Rose, Pride
Spoilers: Episodes 49-51
Words: 737
A/N: (channeling crack!Dante, AMIRITE?) This will be the beginning of what I can expect to be a drabble spiel that will eventually be neglected due to my inability to remember certain projects. Honestly, I don't ever think I'll get used to my version of drabbles; they're just so short and make me want to embelish them with lines enough to fill out into a one-shot. I can't think of a proper name at the moment, nor do I have an inkling on how to proceed with this promising bounty, but I'm sure I'll pop up with something. After delving into this fandom once more I sporadically started typing and it wasn't until I was halfway through the piece that I realized this was from Dante's POV and the familiar, slanted bitterness founds its way onto pages.
One can live on for centuries enshrouded in the decaying flesh that assumes the body you now reside in--for the law of equivalent exchange that is so holy is upheld by the Gate which dictates that you must offer an equal exchange in its diverse sets of eyes. This is all possible with the Philosopher's Stone's notoriously wary premise, after all.
So your flesh erodes and you cover it up with more garments and start taking to wearing long-sleeved shirts; it works for you as with each body you have the Gate eats up in this world to supply you with sane consciousness in the land you call home, you body-hop and oh look--another sacrificial human to contribute to the stone. This is the way Hoeinheim of Light and Dante moved about for centuries and it suited you for a time until that bastard Hoeinheim decided he wished to settle down and actually watch a few of his children grow up and contribute to their lives for a couple years, despite him having handfuls of children and watching them wither from a distance, leaving you alone to become a caretaker to a fresh bout of monsters he later names Homunculi to raise.
He says that it might help you with the whole process if you think of them as your children.
So you sneer as you rename your first "child" Envy because you can't stand the fact that he would dare leave an impression upon it not only in name and features so that every time that you'd speak its name it would remind you of him. You find it majestic when you learn its sole ability is to shape-shift and you teach it to always wear a mask like its mother and to never show that atrocious face to you again; you recommend it use features that are not identifiable with its past self .. all part of coping with its eternal facade, you say.
You try to banish the dubbing word Homunculi from you and because you can't forget the last thing he said to you, you end up writing the term down in one of those paper books that others now call a journal; a collection of papers that Pride and Envy just happen to come upon centuries later and read to store into the backlog of their soulless bodies in order to identify themselves and pass on to the next ones.
As you prepare to ensnare the body that Hoenheim's son loves, you find it odd that at least his son will love you now. This suits you just as well as if Hoenheim himself came back to call you his pet once more. You find yourself anticipating when he realizes that you have corrupted his bold and talented child's life in the name of bitter revenge and justified jealousy.
As you mull over this you wonder why this family stands distinctly from the slew of others. You question the worth of the woman who bred this bold being that will be so in love with the image that you'll present him with, of his beloved Rose, he won't notice the subtle differences because didn't it take him ages to piece together your identity in the first place?
So you slip into the skin of the one he wants to sustain him as he looks at you with the same luminous eyes as your Light did when you charmed him--before he grew old of you after centuries of bitter companionship.