AN: So I decided to write my own version of Greed's history in the form of a looooong one-shot, since I'm so Greed-obsessed. For once, it's lacking in yaoi (OH GAWD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?!) and it's pretty straight-forward. Also, this is my tenth fanfic posted on here, and that's a pretty big step for me. --gringrin--
So, please enjoy and give me all the pretty little reviews I desire!
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of its characters. I just write the fanfics. C:
Nothing
By K. L. Vest
Eyes down, head forward.
It's all just a blur to him, right now. No soul, no mind, no memories, just a shell, listening and waiting to receive itself in the form of crimson nutrition.
"Hnn, he's actually coming along quite nicely, Master. Just a few more stones, and he'll be good to go," came the androgynous voice above him, forest green tendrils hanging into his line of vision.
"Master", as she was called, barely even gave him a second glance.
"He's still not complete, Envy. And you know how I dislike my creations until they're wholly functional," she said in a stern voice, filing her nails to a fine point. They were just as scarlet as her lips, if not appearing more blood-covered than her reputation.
Just the way he remembered her: vain, full of self-control and undeniably hateful cynicism.
"Aah, yes, I remember how scorned I was until I finally started to grow some legs. You were always so hateful towards me, Master."
Master sighed, her red lips parted in a state of depression.
"I'll leave it up to you to give him another handful. I'm going out. I'll be back after a while," her voice stated shortly.
Blonde and endlessly waved hair, ruby lips, full for kissing, baby-blues with sooty lashes, ivory skin, lovely as moonlight.
Oh, how he despised to even look at her. How he despised her scent, the way she looked at him, the way she disregarded him so.
He heard the door slam, and the thing Envy sat at his side, its legs crossed.
"So, it's just you 'n' me now, eh?"
He said nothing.
"Boy, isn't that Dante such a damn bitch, giving orders, bossing us around like a bunch of mentally-challenged fools…?"
Nothing.
A sigh.
"Very well, then. I can see you're not in the mood for talking."
A hand, full of those beautiful magenta stones, was thrust into view.
Gnarled and unfinished hands groped for them, his parched and incomplete throat swallowing them, ravaging them, hungry and beast-like.
The Envy laughed, something between a chuckle and an audible smirk in its voice resonating.
"Well, I certainly can tell what your name will be," it said, placing hands on hips as it stood up and paced to the door, which banged as it strutted out.
And then came the darkness again, the cold bitter feeling of loneliness.
What was he, anyway? And what was to become of him?
But these worries and cares barely even passed through his thoughts.
He simply said nothing.
-----
Eventually, he began to think.
And with thinking came reason.
And with reason came understanding.
And then, with understanding, came… being.
He was still secluded to the room, the cold black room in which he hardly slept, hardly ate the red stones offered to him by the Envy, hardly did anything except just think… rationalize… with these memories that came like rain clouds over his existence.
He could see a proud man standing amidst a crowd, a cigar dangling loosely from his lips, a sneer painted upon his features. Women flaunted about him, men turned a blind eye to his debauchery, but he kept his smile wide enough to make them all swoon.
And then came her.
She came slinking up to him, long lashes tempting him, pretty lips taunting him.
As with memories came emotions-- cruel human emotions-- that he could never shake.
He had fallen for her, as hard as a man could fall, and yet she remained at a distance, like a gorgeous star that man can only dream of reaching.
And it remained just that.
A dream.
Or, in his case, a haunting nightmare, plaguing him forever.
And then with those emotions came all the colours of them-- the fuchsia of love, the navy of despair, the blinding white of hatred-- and then the midnight of death.
Over and over, it became like a closing curtain just before the end of the scene, right as the climax hits, they drop it, and then there is no more.
"Eat, you idiot, or you won't get better," Master's scolding voice chastised like volatile thunder-claps, her perfectly-plucked brows knitted in fury.
But still, he kept all replies within his mind.
Still, he said nothing.
-----
And then came speech.
To him, it was like the door of life opened up.
But he never spoke to Master, never to the Envy.
To himself, he held conversations that could last for hours, for days even, when the Envy forgot to feed him.
"I can see… a place with velvet staircases and high-vaulted ceilings, where the scent is of liquor and brass plates, and smoke hangs tepid in the air, and the voices are of measly ladies and guffawing gentlemen…"
Often, he liked to see how far his vocabulary could go before it failed him, and often he thought up of words he never even knew he knew, like "tepid", and "guffawing." Many times, he found himself chuckling at the clever wit he never knew he had. Many times, as he kept his story going, his voice would take root and he could see his tale as a living and breathing thing.
"…And I can meander outside and see the brazen gold of a setting sun, and I can hear the titter of children's laughter, and smell rising dough down a street where the bakery sits alone, with the old man behind the counter, puffing on his pipe and content to watch the days--"
He broke his sentence as the door cracked open like an explosion, his neck craning upward in alarm as an enraged fist enclosed itself in his hair, causing him to squeak in pain.
"Alright, you. I'm tired of you refusing to eat these damn stones. So, you either scarf 'em down now, or I break your legs until you wish you had--"
"Envy, settle down. If he doesn't wish to eat, then let him starve. Eventually, he'll eat."
His hair was released, and the Envy padded back over to Master.
Looking up, he could see she was already wearing a new body. This one held a shock of flamboyant red hair and held deep-set emeralds that worked as eyes. Her skin was flaked with freckles, lining all down her bared arms and legs.
The Envy trudged out, teeth bared towards Master, but said nothing more.
"Come now, you must eat something…" she cooed to him, sitting beside him.
He still despised to look at her, still despised her smell, and still despised everything about her.
She sighed, setting the gleaming rocks near his strangely-marked left hand.
"Very well. Just eat when you feel like it."
She shut the door quietly, and as soon as she was gone, he gripped the stones madly and ground them with needle-pointed teeth.
Yet still, he would say nothing.
-----
Soon, he began to realize he was not normal, and that he was something else.
He had heard it when the Envy spoke to Master, that he and it were called something-- "Homunculi."
That meant he wasn't real, or at least, he wasn't what most described as real.
He was just a fake-- a copy.
But… how could he have these memories, these thoughts, these fears, so human, yet… not be?
He stood slowly, using his legs for the first time, and stumbled to the door, using his completed hands to twist the knob, though not without some difficulties.
Peaking outward through the small incision between the door and its facing, he could see Master reading a deep vermilion book, her face wrought with something between being annoyed and being filled with "ennui", a word he discovered deep in the back of his brain.
Her eyes shone on him without pleasure or delight, nor without anger or frustration.
"What is it?" she asked quietly, placing the book gingerly on the table.
"Nnn… Master, what… what am I?"
His voice was awkward, clumsy, but not because he knew not how to speak, but because he would have preferred to ask anyone but Master or the Envy.
"You are an artificially created being, called a 'Homunculus', which I brought back to life using the power of alchemy. Also, as I have discovered through watching your sleep patterns, you have the power to change the carbon molecules in your body to become an invincible shield as hard as diamonds. Anything else you'd like to know?"
She was cold, cruel, and undeceiving in her answer.
Just the way he recalled her.
Ruthless.
A witch.
He bared his sharpened teeth into his lip.
"N… No, Master--"
"Please, call me Dante," she cut in, venom dripping from her smile.
He hated her. Despised. Loathed.
He would say nothing more to Master.
To Dante.
He would say absolutely nothing.
-----
His personality came back quickly, and before long he was trading quips with the Envy-- better yet, just Envy-- faster than it could dish them out.
"Planning on working on that 'Ultimate Shield' technique of yours, or do you still plan on hanging around this joint until your dead again?" Envy would begin, its grin working itself to the sides of its pretty little face.
"Well, at least I have a talent, dearest Envy. And at least I don't run about with barely even a skirt covering myself," he would answer, a cat's smirk brushing his features. This speaking, this showing emotions, this interacting-- it was just what the doctor ordered.
"A talent in making myself into a walking gem-stone? Hnn, that's really an interesting skill," Envy would counter, crossing its legs and winking.
"Well, actually, it's really useful. I mean, it's not like you're not useful. I mean, every town needs its freak-show!" and he would laugh, then Envy would laugh, and they would actually… connect, in a strange manner of speaking. Not that they were friends, but it certainly sharpened his disposition to a tack's point.
But then Dante would enter the room, and she would scowl a loathsome scowl.
"Envy, I thought I asked you to take care of the place while I was away, not chit-chat with your little friend," her voice would come out throaty, disgruntled, and hinged. Lately, her form was looking less and less like a woman and more and more like a slug.
Then Envy would sigh irreverently, but would always comply by leaving the room.
And so he would while away the time reliving the fantasies that only existed as he spoke quietly to himself, weaving an image that only he could see.
On one such occasion where he and Envy spoke, Dante had asked it to leave, it had done so, but she had decided that her place was in the room, with her creation.
"So… Are you ready to go outside…? To see the world…?"
His eyes looked at her, maybe unbelievingly, as her thin lips formed into something resembling a smile.
"You look perfectly ready to go out into the world! You've got a handsome face, a nice body, your limbs are completely formed, and I know you're able to speak. Tell you what, I'll let you go out of the forest and into town to fetch some groceries for me!" she chirped, much more excited than usual.
But he wasn't fooled.
He knew she was only coating herself in sweet sugar to hide the fact that she was made of bitter salt.
He nodded, and she grinned happily, sort-of-skipping out the door to get clothes for him to prepare.
But he still refused to speak.
He still said nothing to her.
-----
And so came his departure into the realm of humans after the gifts of form, thought, and speech had been refined into formidable weapons to bar him from harms in the world.
And this world… it was a world of colours, of sounds, of light… of magic. All the delicate things he held to him in his fantasies sprung forth from simple words that decorated tedious images in his mind to full-blown spectacular spectacles of reality.
Taking his time through the forest, he just… listened.
Birds chirping, insects humming, winds swaying gently like a song set in silence-sharp.
He was grasped by this world, and bedazzled by this landscape that would serve as his canvas upon which he would paint his destiny.
Soon the forest broke into a town, and then into a city.
People rushed here and there, streets buzzed with selling and marketing, grass-playgrounds served as a means for children to convey their doings.
Of course, he received many strange stares. This man with what seemed like a tight-fitting shirt and black shining pants and furred vest-jacket was certainly a strange-looking one to join the group of norms.
But he paid little mind to them.
Besides, he was far too amazed by all the wondrous things going on around him to notice any annoyance on the faces of the passing humans. The laughing husband and wife out for a stroll down the lane, the giggling children playing a game with silly this-and-that rules, the huffing and wheezing of a near-dying old couple strolling down the boulevard for one last look at an orange and mauve-splotched sunset. There came yells of losing gamblers and cheers of the victors, the moan of a tired maid preparing the beds for sleeping-purposes and the crying of tiny infants from open windows through which smoke sifted and the aroma of baked goods drifted.
The feelings overwhelmed-- the sensations dizzied.
He spoke to no one, though.
He was just an observer, barging in on this perfect world in which he knew he really had no rightful place.
But oh, to really have a place, to be like these free humans, living their lives, laughing, loving as they would.
And after the sun had become one with the rolling hills off in the distance, he strutted home, hands in pockets, to Dante's sneering face.
"Did you have fun?"
But all he did was brush past her, not even caring to answer.
Nothing is what she would get from him.
Absolutely nothing.
-----
And more and more, he stayed far away from Dante.
He relearned human pleasures-- the quality of liquor, the binge of chain-smoking, the feel of a human-touch. The thrill of betting on a rolling wheel and the utter pain of defeat in the jaws of victory.
These things were fun, but dulled compared to the scent of the flowers blossoming in the meadows and of the simple hush of a velvet-stream. Perhaps he would change, or perhaps not.
But he would sit on the hill-side after a day of debauchery and outright hellish behavior to a humble and quiet evening watching the clouds drift up and over the horizon.
"Master wants you home, now."
He grimaced at the sound of Envy's voice, but agreed to follow home, though not without a bit of reluctance.
Already, she had another project under-way, and would probably care less, or perhaps not even notice, if he made it home anyway.
"She says she's still perfecting the new Gluttony, but I'm not liking the way he's turning out," Envy mumbled, attempting conversation of some kind.
"Well, weren't we all looking somewhat disfigured in the beginning? I mean, I know I wasn't exactly the sexy thing I've come to be today," he smirked his shark-like teeth as Envy pushed open the door to Dante's house.
Envy didn't reply with a smart remark, though.
"She also says that there's a place she wants us to see. A place where she first got the Philosopher's Stone."
"That thing? Don't tell me she's still chasing after that dumb old thing."
He may have been out of the loop, but he was still caught up on information slipped through unknown cracks in the door.
"Don't question Master. She knows what she's doing," Envy replied, teeth gritted.
He said nothing more, and as he saw that Dante was no where to be seen, he stepped lightly into his room and shut the door, no longer wishing to speak with Envy.
Envy had served a purpose… for a while.
No longer was he interested in conversing with Envy on such trivial matters as the Philosopher's Stone.
He would say nothing more about it.
-----
And he secluded himself in the human world, submersed himself in them.
He wanted them, wanted their freedom, and everything they had and wanted.
To put it bluntly, he wanted humanity itself.
But Dante… all she did was remind him of the humanity he lost, and how he would never get it back. Constantly, she served as the reminder of his beastliness, of the ugliness he truly held underneath his skin, the inhuman side of him he longed to tear and rip out of him for the sake of retaining his realness.
…And then she reminded him of how foolishly he had handed himself over to her, and how in death she had had his heart all along.
For that, he despised her.
For that, he would want nothing more than her death.
He would obtain his freedom from her, and he would be able to do as he pleased with the emotions he had kept inside him, even in this skin that was rightfully not his own.
He would break free.
And so… he finally said something.
"Dante, I don't want to be part of this little scheme of yours anymore. I'm damn tired of it. I'm sick of you, I'm sick of Envy, and I'm sick of that damn pet-project you're growing in that closet adjacent to mine," were his words, now so clear and sure, ringing with total confidence, his eyes set on her stunned jade optics without mercy.
But then… she actually beamed.
"Very well. Then what is it you want?" she asked, her voice full of some kind of sick sincerity.
"…I want to be free," he answered her.
"But I want to show you something, before you go. Would you come with me, please, before I let you go?"
He was sure it was a trap, and that he was a fool to follow her. He knew she was a witch, and a powerful one indeed, and that she was capable of doing anything.
But he would walk into her trap.
He may not have been Pride, per se, but he wasn't about to run from her.
He shook his head yes, but replied with nothing.
-----
And then she led Envy and he deep into the ground, and there they came into a hollowed chamber.
"This is where Envy was born, and where you were born, my dear. We'll just call this a birthday-gift and a going-away present," Dante whispered, candles in hand to guide them through the damp and darkened chambers.
Swinging wide a stone door, she revealed something so vast, so amazing-- so unspeakably amazing-- that he had to hold his breath to prevent himself from exhaling too much air. Envy remained unfazed, and un-amused.
"This is a very old city, working on its three-hundred-seventieth year of existence. And I must say, it's beautiful even now," Dante muttered to them, a candle hissing as droplets of water struck its wick.
"This is what you wanted to show me…?" he asked, his eyes tracing over the strange array embedded into the structure of the city itself.
"Well, that's one part of it. That was just a little birthday present. This way, and I'll show you your going-away gift."
They followed her closely, but then Envy suddenly stopped.
"Master, I think I should go back and check on Gluttony."
For a moment, suspicion formed in his mind, but he allowed its recession. It no longer mattered to him what Envy did. He could care less about what happened to that… abomination.
"Yes, good idea Envy. Please go on home," and then she turned back to him, the candles beginning to grow dimmer, their lights foreboding in his mind. "Please, let's keep going."
They kept walking, pacing down dark tunnels until the passage began to open into a room.
Looking over the chamber, he could see it was marked deeply with an array of some sort…
And then he could feel his chest tightening, his senses becoming woozy, his vision blurring.
"You go against me, and you must be punished," hissed Dante's cold voice, and then came the blinding flash of violet and crimson-pink.
Concealed in her dress, Dante held the straps with which she bound him, with which he squirmed and struggled until his strength slowly ebbed into nothing.
Upward, as he craned his neck against the pain of movement, he could see a skull embedded into the ceiling, its empty sockets dancing in the turbid and blinding light, its jagged teeth grinning at him in some sort of devilish glee.
…It was himself he was staring at-- the skull of a selfish and avaricious man, laughing at him for being the fake one present in the room. Laughing at him for being this false beast… Laughing at him for trying to run from his fate of forever being a copy.
He could no longer bear to look at it, and he rest his head on the cold floor, his mind receding into dreams of a reality he had come to know, dreams in which he was a part… dreams in which he had all his desires granted…
"Goodnight, Greed," Dante whispered before stepping from the chamber and sealing it shut for what would seem an eternity to a human.
But he said nothing.
Nor would he say anything…
…At least, for a while.