A Game for Children
Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction
Genre: general, character study
Rating: PG-13 (T) for language
Word Count: 500 or so
Summary: Envy does regret killing that talkative Lieutenant Colonel, but hardly for the reasons most would hope.
Notes: Tribute to Hughes' death. Sorta. Envy-centic. I'm a bad person. :P
Written mainly to practice writing Envy for a story I want to start someday. (Not because it's going to be written like this [and you will see what I mean when you get halfway through this thing but because I want to know more about Envy. And the only way I'll discover anything is by making him show me.)
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Envy stands on a field of green. He swears he can feel the tremulous drum of storm thunder in place of his heartbeat, traveling up from the ground and into his chest cavity: dum dum dum. But the sky is clear –
– It is a graveyard field. And he is not alone.
There are men – hundreds and hundreds of men – come to pay homage to a man they never knew, or only vaguely. Some of them are even glad he is gone. The pictures were too much, perhaps, the gossip unbearable. At least four in the hundreds will be promoted.
The tender few who miss the man… well. Envy can't exactly say he sympathizes. All he wants to do is fucking run, leap, fly – anything but this. The hundreds and hundreds of stifling uniforms, so close in proximity, invite movement, and the atmosphere invites particularly violent movement. Thick air, preternatural air.
Very much alive.
He can feel it breathing down his neck, sweat culminating all over. He imagines breaking line, breaking loose, and ripping through the oppressive heat – a fucking whirlwind to disturb the peace. Yet he remains still. Unchallenged, the air wakes the smell of grass, and of grave soil, but smothers all noise.
Save one.
It starts out faint. Mommy, mommy – why are they burying Daddy?
Mommy
MOMMY MAKE THEM elicia, baby please DON'T LET THEM BURY DADDY
shh, mommy will WHY; WHY?
envy, you killed him. That wasn't exactly part of the plan IF LUST AND SLOTH HADN'T FUCKED this is your fault I ONLY your fault SHUTTHEFUCKUPYOU –
you made this wife shoot him. what are you suggesting? She had come near him then, pressed her sweet-sick breasts and mottled skin to his. Went as far as to wrap her arms around his chest, trailing ghosts of fingertips across his clavicle. She whispered. …that a wife should kill her husband? that vengeance is a woman's art? And then she had squeezed, digging her nails into what passed for his flesh. Amaranthine bruises sprang up under her touch, and beads of blood smiled back at him when he glanced down.
(It was all gone within the hour.)
do you have no regrets?
(The memory was not.)
MOMMY MAKE THEM STOP hush baby, mommy's here; daddy's gone away WHY WHY
are you listening to me – FUCK OFF; I DON'T NEED YOU TELLING ME
oh, don't you? it was your mistake, envy. i try to be reasonable, but sometimes…
The whining bitch should have shot her precious Daddy. The child, not the wife. Edward fucking Elric has tried to shove the fact hat revenge is a child's motive down everyone's throats for far too long. For once, Envy agrees.
Child, not wife, will bear the joy of ripping Hohenheim of Light asunder.
fin
Constructive criticism is delightful!