The Sin of a Homunculus

Chapter nine: The Free's Capture

Tennessee

Envy sighed stepping under the tree Wrath stood in front of near the apartments and shaking the snow out of his hair and off his clothing.

Wrath looked up expectantly, but Envy shook his head.

"I -choo- couldn't find her, and now it's getting dark… I-I'm worried," he said as a few more people walked by wearing heavy winter coats and eyeing them suspiciously. "Don't look at me funny! I rip out your eyes!" Envy called after them causing them to glance back worriedly and speed up.

"It's freezing," Wrath shook, earning him a slap upside the head.

"Then go home, nobody wants you here!"

"But I want to be out here."

"Then shut up!" Envy scowled pulling Olivia's winter coat tighter around his neck, Wrath did the same with Olivia's raincoat, which was what he was left with after Envy took the winter coat.

"…What if we don't find her?" Again he was hit in the back of the head.

"Shut up!" Envy repeated. "You look here again and I'll go through all the alleys are the apartment."

Wrath nodded and started off through the park again. It wasn't like there were many places for her to hide here besides the occasional fountain or bench, so he really did not understand why he was doing another sweep of it. Especially now that the snow reached half way up his foot and he had no shoes, why would this search be any more rewarding? If anything it would be briefer and less gratifying.

Wrath tucked his hands into the sleeve of the raincoat and continued through the almost empty area, catching several wary glances from the people headed for the exit, also the only people left in the park. After another ring through the trees and no sign of the missing Olivia he turned tail and walked back to the tree to wait for Envy, who returned within the next half hour with nothing to show for his search.

"Envy," Wrath sighed, "I think I should go home now."

"You're not going anywhere until we find Olivia," Envy growled without looking at him.

"But Master might get angry, she might send Mommy to come and find me-"

"You're not leaving."

"I need to-!"

"No!"

Wrath took a step backwards and said quickly, "I hope you find her, Envy."

"If you-!" Envy began spinning around, but Wrath had taken off and was already half way down the block. "… Idiot," he sighed as Wrath stopped at the end of the sidewalk to look at Envy for a moment to see if he would attempt to catch him and then took the corner and disappeared from sight.

Envy shivered and watched the empty streets for a minute or two with only the sound of a car rolling down a nearby street or slight whistle of the wind reached his ears. He was cold, he wondered if Olivia was cold, where she was, if something bad had happened to her… or the baby.

Envy didn't want to believe the child was his, but he had to, what other choice did he have? Go back to Dante and turn Olivia in? No, as much as he wanted to believe that the child was of another man, Olivia was still his, which meant he needed to protect her, no matter what the cost. And then the child was hers, and she was his. Did this make him responsible for it, whether it was his spawn or not?

But if there was one thing Olivia had been to him it had been faithful, even when she thought she'd never see him again. That meant he should be there for her and the child… his child.

For a moment he considered the possibility of convincing her to loose it. He shook his head saying to himself, "after all the family she's lost?" this child would be the only thing she had. He really didn't like the idea of being responsible for something as… real as a baby. There it was again, his caring side. That wasn't even supposed to be there. He wanted it out, but at the same time, even though it did make him hurt, he almost liked it.

Envy sighed again and looked around the empty streets wondering where she was.

And Olivia, thin coat wrapped tightly around her skinny body, was wondering the same thing as she looked around at the boarded up buildings and barred windows and men and women she would have expected to see six feet below the ground walked past her, watching he walk down the street. She didn't know where she was or what wrong turn she had taken, but this was supposed to have led her to one of the train stations, apparently she'd been wrong.

Olivia didn't even remember where she had been planning on going, all she knew was that it had made sense at the time, not so much anymore. And now she had no jacket, change of clothes, or an arm to be put around her shoulder while the raspy yet calming voice of a homunculus told her it would work out somehow.

She tried to move away from the image seeing as she was on her own now. No, not on her own, with someone who would grow to be a person to feed, shelter, and love; and all three of those things were in short supply at this time.

Olivia continued on her way as six men holding half empty pints of beer whistled at her from across the street shouting slurred words of drunken love that Envy would have torn their ears off if he had heard them saying to her. But she only pulled her hood up over her head, keeping her eyes down.

"Wha-sa madter?! No man, skinny?!" called one of the men, this being one of the most polite comments.

"We can fix tha-!" shouted another being cut off by a hiccup.

"You can have six, right now! We'll just take turns!" added the last, possibly least drunk, causing all others to break into hoots of laughter and Olivia's eyes begin to water.

She was unmarried and pregnant, but she was no slut, Envy was the only one who had ever touched her and he was all she'd ever need. If only she had him now, she wouldn't ever run out on him again. He'd hit and yelled at her but he didn't know any better, he needed help, someone, not to change him, but to bring out the better side, the side she saw every time she looked at him.

Olivia blocked out the other comments while wiping her eyes and continuing around the corner found herself just as lost, but now with a different sort of shouting.

About half way down the block was a young girl, no older than seven or eight, with dirty blond hair, reaching her elbows, stood shaking uncontrollably while tears rolled quickly down her freckled face. She was sobbing, but not loudly, more of a depressed cry and would occasionally shout for her grandmother or father.

"Are you okay, honey?" Olivia asked bending down so she was eyelevel with the child.

"I-I don't know w-w-where they went," she cried, "I can't find them…."

"Don't worry," Olivia smiled pushing her tears away so the girl could have hers, "I'll help."

Fifteen minutes later:

"I'm looking for a Harold Madison," Olivia said to the woman behind the counter at the small police station.

The woman sighed and began looking through the many records. "And you are?" she asked quite plainly.

"My name is… Olivia Brooks, but this is Fran Madison," she said quickly motioning to the girl whose tears had dried but still clung to Olivia's arm, "She's lost."

"Uh-hu," the woman nodded looking at the girl, "You can come back here and wait, I'll call your dad. Olivia, was it?"

Olivia nodded.

"Right I'll need to see ID."

Olivia nodded slowly and bowed her head so she could pull her purse off from around her shoulder, but as she did her sunglasses slipped from her node and clattered to the ground, landing behind the desk.

The woman looked up at her, her green eyes meeting Olivia's red eyes. For a moment neither moved, but when the woman did she needed only say one word for the guards at the door to block the only exit, the little girl to run from her side, and Olivia's life to begin its downward spiral.

"I-Ishvalan."

-----

Three months later:

Envy's eyes spun in his head and his eyelids fluttered eager to open, but he instead shut them tightly and pulled Olivia's blankets closer to his chest as if they held her spirit between their threads and fibers even though she had been gone for just over three months now.

He had convinced himself that she would not ever be returning, maybe it was possible that he was not the father of the child, and she had gone to live with him. He did not want to believe this, she said she'd always be there, but how could she, she was only a mortal. She was a lower life form and he should forget her, not knowing he needed her now more than ever.

Envy opened his eyes slowly and turned over to face the thick golden light that flowed through the window blinking twice in the sun. He sat up and ran a hand through his long hair, still thinking of Olivia. He didn't want to be, she was a worm crawling across the ground and should have meant nothing to him, he wished she meant nothing to him….

How dare she, a mere human, leave him? He was immortal, a homunculus, the next link on the evolutionary chain, he could give her anything she wanted, get whatever satisfied any need she had, and she dare leave him. If anything he should have left her. Was he not good enough? Was he something that displeased her?

Envy paused immediately knowing the answer. There must have been a million things that Olivia had hated about the sin, but just never called to his attention because she liked him too much. And he would find one thing he didn't like about her and pick at her until she changed for him. She was the only one who had ever changed for him, but now he had asked her to change too much.

He yawned pulling his plaid pajama shit over his head leaving him only in pajama bottoms and tossing it onto the ground among the other articles of clothing he had failed to wash seeing as he hardly every left the apartment. Possibly once every two weeks to purchase soup and other food items that were easy to prepare, but this was the only thing he needed to buy.

Olivia had taken no money with her when she'd left, and it didn't take long for Envy to become hungry begin looking for where she kept her savings. It was lucky for him that she had rented this apartment for the entire year, not that Envy knew where on Earth she had gotten the money, but in any case it would be several more months before anyone came looking to kick him out.

Again Envy yawned, scraped the sleep from his eyes, and moved slowly from Olivia's bed and into the bathroom where he stripped the rest of his clothing and stepped into the shower in hopes to remove the tired feeling from his skin. Water rolled from his pale face, over his closed violet eyes, and onto his bare chest. It seeped into his thick green tinted hair so it flattened out on the top of his head, covering his ears and running down his back, his hips, around his inner thighs, and continuing until it reached his ankles and feet. Reaching down blindly Envy took the shampoo bottle and proceeded to wash his hair, the water blocking out the sound of the telephone ringing and a message being left.

Envy tipped his head down and continued to rinse out his hair, the soap draining until there was nothing left but warm water flowing through his hair. He stood up straight and turned the water off before stepping out and drying himself off, leaving him feeling a bit more awake, but no happier. He rung the water from his hair and tied the towel around his waist then stepped into the main room.

For a moment or two he ignored the beeping of the answering machine until his optimism got the better of him. Hoping it might have been Olivia he leaned down and pressed the playback button.

"This is a message for Mr. William," a male voice said on the other side of the line. William was what Envy had been using as a false name since he had been here, but it was also the name he would have been giving if he had ever been born alive. "You had filed a missing person report almost two months ago," it continued making Envy's heart jump into his throat, "looking for a woman five foot five, dark skin, dark hair, twenty-one years old, going by the name of Olivia. We've found a woman meeting this description, but there seems to be a mix up. Please contact us immediately. Thank you for your cooperation."

Suddenly a strange feeling ran through him, and Envy was forced into a cough so furious it left him clinging to the couch in order to keep up right. Again he coughed as if about to vomit and something taking the form of a hot liquid was thrown across the room as he coughed again. Before it could hit the wall the pinkish red liquid took the form of small crystal looking rock of the same color.

Envy's eyes grew wide and he scrambled for it before it could melt and seep into the wood. Snatching it up, he took a closer look at the stone. It was a red stone, an incomplete philosopher's stone, one of the many that kept him alive and immortal, but there was something wrong with it. The object looked as if it had been drilled through or corroded with small holes covering its surface some penetrating it completely.

Envy moved to his mouth to swallow it but before he could the stone made a small crackling sound and broke into extremely fine particles that continued to break themselves down into and even finer powder.

Envy blinked hard, this could only mean that the same thing was happening to all the stones in his body. They were all going to turn to dust and with that his immortality and his life would be gone.

"… Oh…. N-no…."

-----

Wrath sat on the arm of a very large, currently unoccupied, chair and kicked his feet off the edge at a steady pace to a beat only he could hear. He'd just been on a mission and was currently still on, what one might have assumed to be a sugar buzz, but was actually more of an adrenalin buzz, not that anyone would be able to understand this feeling but him.

His head spun and colors seemed to whiz by his nose at a million miles an hour, his feet feeling as if they were traveling so fast carry him across water, and his hands under his legs to keep them from moving involuntarily or transmuting the chair.

Occasionally he'd just from his perch to transmute something half way across the room into something that no one could say they would have ever expected, before running back to his chair, jumping from arm, to seat, to the other arm before finally picking a spot to stay in for another three minutes.

So with no way to focus on anything at all he fell back into the seat of the chair, his legs over one side and his arms over the other and laughed and kicking his feet more rapidly, his whole body vibrating.

Sloth, sitting on the other side of the room, did not try to interrupt the child's hyper activities, but would occasionally look up from her clipboard as if to say something then decide it just wouldn't be worth it and go on with her work.

Wrath laughed again, this time louder and far more maniacally.

"Wrath, dear," Sloth said through gritted teeth.

"Uh-hu?" he responded with just as much energy.

"You need to be a bit quieter."

"Uh-hu!" he said loudly continuing with what he had been doing.

"Wrath," Sloth repeated, "Calm down."

"I'm just so excited!" he replied jumping from the chair and running over to his mother's seat where he sat down on the arm of the chair.

Sloth sighed and continued her writing.

"Wrath!" she said after another few minutes, this time becoming very irritable, "Stop acting like an idiot!"

Wrath drew back in surprise. "S-sorry Mommy," he said sheepishly.

"Calm down or I'll have to tell Master," Sloth said without meaning anything.

"No! No! I'll stop! I'll be good!" he exclaimed running back to his seat and sitting down on his hands trying not to kick his feet.

There were a few moments of silence before the door creaked open and Dante stepped in looking extremely agitated. She wore a sour frown and held a royal purple velvet bag that might have been able to fit a few books in, or for someone to fit their head inside. Lust followed at her heels as she stormed in.

Wrath swallowed hard hoping that Sloth would not tell her that he had been misbehaving.

"Wrath," she said sternly, "Leave."

Wrath nodded quickly and hopped out of the room before most could have even registered what Dante had just said.

"Sloth."

"Yes, Master," Sloth said standing up as Dante held out the bag.

Sloth took it carefully feeling its contents which seemed to be in great quantity but of all different shapes and sizes. She looked back at Dante for what to do next, but Dante did not reply, leading her to believe she was to open it. Biting her lip and undid the drawstrings and peered inside, almost disturbed by what she found.

"What is this?" Sloth asked slowly moving to the table and shaking the bag out carefully to reveal the smallest skeleton she had ever seen.

It consisted of a skull only an inch or two long and the rest of the body proportionate to its small stature, the only thing it was missing was half of one arm and a foot, and at the bottom of the bag an extremely fine powder she guessed was the absent pieces of the body.

"Perfectly preserved, with the exception of the arm, for four hundred years," Dante said setting her jaw in anger. "That… is Envy."

Both Sloth and Lust looked up at her in surprise.

"I-it's so small," Lust said quietly.

"He died prematurely so that was as much as he grew," Dante informed carelessly. "But it's not that I'm worried about. Look what's happened to it."

Dante motioned to the dust surrounding Envy's remains.

"I took the foot to make the shackles able to cripple as well as hurt him, and, when exposed to alchemy, break his body down."

"What's happened to his arm?" Sloth asked standing up.

"It's deteriorated," Dante growled, "Which means that he is dying, and quickly due to the prolonged exposure to the now activated cuffs."

"Activated?" Lust asked.

"Well we have Wrath to thank for that."

"That's not good," Lust said her voice carrying traces of urgency.

"What should we do, Master?" Sloth asked slowly.

"Tell Wrath about the cuffs and follow him back to Envy," Dante said simply, "Lust, you will kill his mistress and bring him back alive. Understood?"

Lust nodded half heartedly.

Some say Envy died when he was 17 others before he was actually born. I will be honest. I DON'T care! Believe whatever you want! I'm not stopping you! This is just the way the story goes! (it's not that important anyway T_T) so yeah and yeah.

Thanks for reading this week :P I hope you liked it! If you did please review because I LOVE to hear what you think and what you want to see happen! Not only that but I want to know if I should UPDATE!!!

If you want to see Olivia and Envy (and their child) I have a link on my profile!

Thanks for reading!

Tennessee