This is a BBI (Blue Bird's Illusion) AU based on the anime. It branches off from the anime at roughly episode 43 and is set roughly sixty years after that episode. This story involves Pride!Ed. It's also titled after and quotes (much later) a Larkin poem, 'This be the Verse', mostly because it seems to excuse everyone Ed was related to rather well. This concentrates on family relationships.

This is actually the first piece of fanfic I've ever written so I hope it goes down well…….it's going on forever. I don't really want to say anymore about this AU because if I've done my job it'll all come clear sooner or later.

I own nothing.

Enjoy.

They fuck you up your Mum and Dad

In which Envy is feeling reflective

They stood too far away for the humans to see, watching the little girl playing with her dog in the long grass. It was always 'they' now, the two of them. Envy remembered a time when it had been 'them and us', a time when it had been 'us' or 'us seven' and even briefly a time when it had been 'I'.

The girl had brown hair, her mother's eyes, her mother's face for that matter and, much to Envy's amusement, showed every sign of not growing beyond an inch or two. She was almost twelve already for gods sakes, and she was shorter then he had been.

"Well?" Envy asked his companion. "What do you think?"

He got a blank stare for his trouble. "What do I- About what?"

"Her, dope."

His companion shifted and stared down at the girl with those blank eyes as if he had only just noticed her, which was entirely possible. Not expecting an answer Envy leaned across to rest his arm on his companion's shoulder.

"Don't think about it too hard, you might hurt yourself."

It had started with oddly enough with a victory celebration. Ed had died, Envy was celebrating, it was that simple. There had been food, from somewhere, red stones, and rather too much wine, which had resulted in the attentions of women, and men, that Envy would have preferred not to remember while sober. It should have been a good night, and for some reason it wasn't. He'd partied all the harder to try and make that one little doubt in the back of his mind shut up.

Because, yeah, Ed had been an annoying little brat of an alchemist, always getting in the way, messing up other people's plans. He'd looked like his father and Hohenheim had cared about him, and that should have been enough. Hell it had been enough to kill him, and enough to try and rub it in Pride's face when Envy had eventually staggered home. But Pride had just stared at him with those wide blank eyes, like he always did. He never got angry, never seemed hurt, or frustrated, or sad, or anything except confused. And even Envy couldn't taunt someone forever when they gave no response.

It had started slowly. Envy couldn't remember exactly when he'd stopped calling him squirt, shrimp, shorty and all those other names that had made Ed Elric explode into a fit of rage. There'd been a time when he'd called him Ed too, or Fullmetal, but that just seemed to confuse Pride all the more, because he could understand somehow that he was meant to be upset, but couldn't remember why. In the end Envy had given up and Ed had become Pride. Then, because the runt still didn't seem to remember or understand anything, dope, retard, idiot and a hundred other little names that Envy would have died before admitting were more due to affection then annoyance. Once or twice after they'd left, when they were alone, he'd even called him brother. It was an entirely pointless little gesture, since he doubted Pride could remember and it would have taken worse than wild horses and the dogs of Hell to drag the information out of Envy.

He told himself he'd left because Hohenheim had, again. It was easier to abandon the others with Hohenheim gone; it felt more like disbanding or striking out on his own then copying Greed. Greed, god that was lifetimes ago, but he made a note to remember it. Remember what happens when a homunculus stops doing what its creator wants and starts thinking on its own. Remember Greed. Remember Lust. Remember Wrath and Gluttony. Envy had gone off on his own, no reason, no orders, and not come back.

And why not? Hadn't he always wanted all those stupid human things that everyone else had? And god wasn't it easy to pass for human? He'd built or stolen lives and then abandoned them when he was bored of them, or when something better, richer, more interesting passed by. He flitted from place to place, pretending to be other people, men, women, young, old, powerful, poor, it didn't matter as long as it was someone else. It was odd, bland and almost comfortable, not having to be Envy all the time.

He'd found Pride because he'd run out of red stones. It was that simple. With all those dead homunculus bringing up red stones all over the place someone must have collected them up, and the military was as good a place to start as any. It had been stupidly easy to get in, so he'd had a look around. And found Pride. Pride stuck in a transmutation circle by a piece of Ed's old bones staring blankly ahead and probably wondering why he couldn't move. Retard. He'd almost left him there; after all if he was stupid enough to get caught it was hardly Envy's fault. But then again, why not?

Pride had started following him. He'd tried to make him stop, shouted at him, beat him up a few times, even to Envy's eternal shame, asked him nicely to piss off. But eventually Envy had given up, it was just like calling him shorty, there was no point, because whatever he said whatever he did, Pride would just stare at him with those blank eyes and then follow him again. The dope.

He'd toyed with the idea of going down Lust's route. He had enough red stones, and he could get human lives easily enough, all they really needed was an alchemist, a reasonably talented, unscrupulous alchemist and the world was full of those. But turning Pride back into a human wouldn't make him Ed. He'd asked Pride a couple of times, if he really didn't remember anything; he'd even tried telling him about Ed, the Fullmetal alchemist. Pride had frowned and said he thought he remembered being angry once when Envy had called him short, but he couldn't remember why. Ed was a dream he couldn't remember and Pride was as blank and passionless as Ed had been full of life.

"She looks……..like me." Pride said finally, smiling a little at having made the connection.

"Course she does retard, she's your sister." Envy said smirking as he watched Pride's face fade back to that familiar confusion. "She's his daughter."

Pride looked blank.

"Hohenheim's dope, she's Hohenheim's daughter. He found another woman, after all that bullshit about being in love with your mother. That would make her your sister." Envy watched carefully, but Pride's face still looked as blank as a doll's, not that he'd expected anything more.

"Oh." Pride said.

"We're going to take her with us."

"Why?" Pride asked.

Envy grinned. "Dontcha think a girl should know her older brothers?"

Pride looked confused. "But-why?"

"Why the hell not?"