Author's Note: Okay. Maybe I should put a little bit of explanation behind this utterly odd little thing. My girlfriend and I roleplay Envy and Ed, and this question has been posed upon Envy before. This is a far cry from the answer I actually gave her (and that one was much more Envy-like), but it had been simmering on the back of my mind. Also, she's writing a comparison paper on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and "Fullmetal Alchemist", so I found extreme interest in the relationship between Hohenheim and Envy and how similar it is to Victor and the monster's. So with those two ideas on the back burner of my brain, and a slight jarring from my playlist (I'm often inspired by music of all things. ; ), I wrote this. It could be better, it could be clearer, but so could the rest of my stuff and this is all I wanted to say. Without having my fingers fall off, of course. Please, read and enjoy. I'd love to hear your views on it, so review if you like. Thank you.
Disclaimer: Don't own "Fullmetal Alchemist", never will. And I don't own Frankenstein either, nor do I plan on purchasing it.
Pathetic. That's all it was; pathetic. Why couldn't he just let go, why couldn't he just forget it and move on? Why was it so important to him, why was it so meaningful to him?
Why was it so vital to him to hate so much?
Simply put, why did Envy hate his father and loathe the Elric brothers so much, and why did he continue with it?
Four hundred years is a long time, a very very very very long time. Longer than any human could ever hope to live, longer than any human should live, but here he was and there she is and there he is. Of course, they weren't human. They hadn't been for a long time. A very very very very long time. They were one big happy human family four hundred years ago, with a happy human husband married to a happy human woman who gave birth to a happy human son. The curious human husband fell in love with the opportunities it presented, the greedy human woman fell into lust with the power it promised, and the lonely human son fell into sickness and died a miserable human death.
He never asked to be experimented on; he never wanted what they did. And God did they ever do it - not out of love, because love was reserved for humans. Out of a sick fascination, out of curiosity, out of the belief they were better than God so who was God to dictate who died when? They didn't answer to Him anymore, so neither should this creature they brought into the world, so they killed the human once and killed him again and gave birth to a monster out of not love, but sin.
Maybe he had done it out of desperation, maybe he actually did like his happy human family. But he should have thought of those things, those intentions when his monster reached out to him with fear, confusion, and sadness. He should have thought of his happy human son when he played God and raised the dead and found he'd failed at humanity and only succeeded in bringing a demon unto the world. He should have done so many things.
But that was all a very long time ago. A very very very very long time ago.
By now, he'd had a new love, new children and a new happy human family; he'd left that family after loving them for real, but that was impossible because love was reserved for humans. And he wasn't human, because no human should live as long as he has. Never, only God and the Devil were immortal, and he'd failed at being God.
But the way he smiled, the way he held the small human sons in his monster arms, the way he looked at the human woman; if he was this good at being human why did he fail so brutally at being God? And why was his first son, his first creation, his first monster his first failure? Why was he the one who had to be the victim, the one who'd never have a second chance because he'd done nothing wrong but die, why was he the one who was supposed to suffer? What kind of God would do that to someone?
Assuming of course he was "someone". Of course.
So why hate his creator - the ma-monster who had forced his sins unto his own monster to bear - so much? That much was simple, that much was easy. But he was, and he is, a monster within himself; his sins do exist and his feelings are wrong, but if he wasn't human how would any of that matter? All he wanted was revenge. He wanted his creator dead and punished for what he did, what he kept doing, for over four hundred years. He wanted him to suffer at his hands, his own precious monster's hands, struggling for breath he didn't need because he was no more human than the creature killing him. That much was easy and simple.
Why hate the sons, the human products between the beauty and the beast? Why hate the creator's successes and happiness? Why hate the two happy human sons who received that man's, if you can call him that, fake love and attention? Why hate the only good thing the monster had ever produced in his life?
They had everything: they had a good mother, they had a happy little home in a happy little town, they had friends, they had memories, they had laughter, they had experiences.
They had each other.
And even after their sins, after they subjected their mother to the same thing their inhuman father subjected to his dead son, they had each other. But there was a difference in their sin. There was a unique trait that saved them, that let the younger one's soul stay on this plain and let the little one live: they were children who missed their mother; they weren't playing God.
Those who play God die. Or they should die, they deserve to die, they deserve to pay. All he did was leave his books there, and that was enough. He had done it again; he'd thrown his sins unto his children and let them suffer for it.
So why hate the children who were wounded so similarly? Why hate two human sons who just wanted their human mother back, to have and love forever and ever and ever? Why hate the two sons who shared the same fate, the same burden, as the first son?
They still had their humanity, God was merciful to them. It wasn't their time to die, they were meant to survive it and live.
Why did God decide he had to die so early, and so horribly? Why did God chose to let this man pretend to create only to sin against Him and bring a demon, a monster, a freshly dead child into the world? Why would God do that? He'd never sinned against Him, he'd never done anything wrong, he'd never played God because he knew it was wrong.
Well, you can sure as Hell bet he sins against Him now, providing God hasn't abandoned him too.
That power-hungry woman did one thing and one thing only correctly in her years of "immortality": she'd realized the sins and named them for it. Each monster had a sin, even if it wasn't their fault they had sins to their being - provided they had "beings" at all. Just monsters suffering instead of those who had tried to play God in the first place, and just like Adam and Eve did unto their children, their sins were passed onto their children, Abel and Cain and the monster. Of course, Cain would never kill Abel, and Abel would never admit God existed, so that left the monster to find something to sacrifice to the God who thought it fit to let this happen to him. Something he'd never asked for, something he'd never wanted.
But God had failed him, and the Devil was the only thing he was familiar with in his entire existence. Him, and sin. But still, the need to sacrifice something was there, and it was with a bitter laugh that the only thing he wanted to truly kill was himself. Of course, God would never accept a monster as an offering. What good is another demon when He had a Hell full of them?
So why couldn't he just let go, why couldn't he just forget it and move on? Why was it so important to him, why was it so meaningful to him? Why was it so vital to him to hate so much?
He wasn't human anymore. If he didn't, what else could he do. Maim and kill, sin and sin and sin again against the God who let his happy human life end with a horrible human death, who let his curious human father kill him again, who let the same demon do it again to two sons, and who let those two sons live despite it all. They escaped their Original Sin; Envy would have given anything to be so lucky.
Of course, it doesn't matter anymore. Because monsters don't think about things like this. At least, not anymore.