Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
"Aegis of Eris"
By Violetlight
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, in any of its incarnations. That pleasure belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. I am borrowing her universe and characters for entertainment purposes only.
Author's Note: I recently got back into FMA after a long absence from the fandom (having a kid will do that), but I had an idea for an AU that I just have to explore. What if Envy abandoned the other homunculi after Liore, and took Greed up on his offer to join him? My pre-series events from "Wheels Within Wheels" and my other FMA stories are canon to this fic, so Envy and Greed had a relationship about a hundred years prior to the series, right before Greed abandoned the other homunculi, and they met up again, 20 years before FMA, in my story "Virtue of Vice". It would probably help to read the first chapter of "Wheels" and "Virtue" first, as well as my other oneshots "Bad Romance" and "Divine Comedy". Envy also began identifying as female for her relationship (sorry yaoi fans, that's just not my thing!).
Regarding the title: An "Aegis" is a synonym for shield, particularly the shield wielded by Athena, the Ancient Greek Goddess of Wisdom, which was decorated with the head of Medusa, the snake-haired gorgon whose look could turn people to stone. Eris was the Greek Goddess of discord and chaos, who indirectly caused the Trojan war. So, the "ultimate shield" of mythology, wielded by one who could be said to "carve blood crests". See what I did there?
Hugs to anyone who can guess what other anime Envy's human disguise in this chapter is from.
Special thanks again to my beta reader, Shocotate! And thanks to the DevArt artist Water-Diamond, for letting me use her picture, "Lolipop", for my story icon.
So, what butterfly effect on the series will Envy's deflection cause? Read to find out!
Chapter 1: Nothing Else Matters
Amestris Rail train number 426 will be arriving in Dublith in 5 minutes. Thank you for travelling with Amestris Rail.
"Where the hell am I now?" Envy groaned at the engineer's announcement. She stretched in her seat, and caught her reflection in the window. Her current form, a young woman with shoulder-length, brown pigtails, dressed in a low-cut, yellow sundress, her ouroborus tattoo on her left thigh just peeking from beneath the skirt, was nowhere near as cute as her Beautiful Self, but she supposed it was a serviceable civilian disguise. She just wished she had not had to "wear" it for so long, since shortly after she had left Liore, so for this entire miserable train trip. At least it's better than that fat bastard Cornello – ugh, Gluttony's cuter than that moron was. Envy smiled at her reflection. At least she would never have to wear that disguise ever again. Liore had been a fun Blood Crest to carve, but still!
Just how did I end up this far south anyway? Envy thought to herself as she grabbed her small suitcase and parasol from the luggage rack as the train slid to a stop at, where was she again? Dublith? Where had she heard that name before? It hardly mattered. She just remembered that she'd have to get off here, and the train that would finally take her to Central would not be running until later that evening, leaving her with about 4 hours to either hang around the train station, bored, or go explore the town, perhaps slightly less bored. But only slightly.
Envy got off the train onto the dumpy little platform, and swore under her breath as she noticed a sign, informing her that the Central Train was delayed by another 2 hours that night. "You'd think friggin' Wrath could get the trains running on time. Some dictator he is," Envy mumbled to herself . "More like 'dick-tator'" she giggled softly at her own joke. Eyeing a rack of postcards near the ticket booth, she briefly considered sending another one to Lust, telling her of the delay, but decided against it. She would be in Central again, finally, by tomorrow morning, probably faster than the mail anyway. Hell, Lust probably only just got the letter she sent from … wherever the hell it was, that first so-called "civilised" town (as far as humans could be civilised) past Liore, where Envy had first caught the train that had ended up taking her all over Hell's creation.
A road sign caught her attention – Kauroy Lake – 5 km. Oh yeah, hadn't Lust mentioned it once? There was apparently an island in the middle of the lake where no humans lived at all. Sounds awesome. Just getting away from those disgusting, annoying humans for a while; it would be the perfect place for a vacation. She could "stretch out" in her true form, not have to worry about some little pests yelling "monster! monster!", although making them go splat under her claws was always fun too.
South City had been even more fun, as had Pendleton, Forset, Liore, oh, and especially Ishval. Envy's smile widened, almost as much as the grin she often wore while not disguised. Sucks there's only one Blood Crest left now. I love my job!
That thought stuck in her mind as she wandered further from the train station, into the business district of the town. Fort Briggs is the last Crest left, and that's close to where Sloth will finish digging his tunnel. With the Promised Day so close now, Father will probably just let him loose to cause some mayhem. That means I won't have the chance to carve the Briggs Crest. So, that leaves waiting, probably babysitting Gluttony, babysitting the Sacrifices, looking for more Sacrifices! How boring! Envy frowned. Keeping things alive was so not her style. And Father won't let me go out and kill a town just for the hell of it – a 'waste of souls'. I guess I could always go and join one of the border wars, but knowing my luck, I'll be stuck with one of the boring jobs instead. With a shudder, Envy remembered that the only confirmed Human Sacrifice was that brat kid, the Fullmetal Pipsqueak, who had caused so much trouble for Lust in Liore before she had showed up to put things right. Just Lust's and Wrath's descriptions alone were enough to bug the shit out of her – the arrogance of that brat. And unlike Pride, who at least had some reason to be the prick he was, the Pipsqueak was just some lowly human. To be stuck babysitting him! Nope, nope nope! Not going there Envy!
Envy wandered absent-mindedly around Dublith's business district, growing more and more bored. There really was not much to see here, just the usual human shops, nothing there was not at least a hundred copies of in Central, nothing interesting. She looked up at a clock tower and rolled her eyes when she realized only about half an hour had passed since she left the train station. She had not even seen a bookshop or newspaper stand or anything that would let her know what was going on in the real world! These little hick towns sucked! She sat down on the curb in front of a butcher's shop and watched the people go by. Maybe she would get some ideas for new disguises. Anything to lessen her boredom.
After another half hour of watching people go by, nothing caught her attention, save for one, rather pissed-off-looking lady who glared at her as she walked past Envy and into the butcher's shop, her demeanour changing instantly as she started getting all lovey-dovey with the gorilla of a man behind the counter. The butcher's wife, evidently, not that it mattered. Envy scoffed, and turned back towards the street as her shapeshifter's eyes finally caught something interesting.
Across the street and a few doors down, Envy noticed an ugly, bald old beggar in an uglier brown cloak, who had been sitting around, asking passersby for loose change for at least as long as Envy had been sitting on the curb. However, as he finally got up, she noticed that he seemed to be leaning forward far more than usual, like something behind him was throwing him off balance. Envy had studied human movement for more than long enough to know that something was off about the way he moved. He had got up just as a pair of fancily-dressed, rich-looking people came down the sidewalk towards his spot. They looked the type that would go out of their way to sneer at a homeless person, so Envy did not blame him for moving. What happened next, however, definitively got her attention.
The beggar quickly looked around him (not noticing her watching him from across the street, however), and ducked into the alley behind his spot. Envy got up and walked a little ways down the street to see what exactly was going on. As the rich couple walked past the alley, a hand shot out from above where a human would normally be, and grabbed the wallet that had been haphazardly sticking out from the rich woman's purse. They never even noticed, and continued on their way. Envy, however, had walked far enough up the opposite street to see into the alley, and was greeted by the sight of the beggar, clinging to the brick wall like a goddamned lizard! Wait, it was exactly like a lizard! A long, green tail was sticking out from his cloak!
A chimera! Envy had found a runaway chimera! Now this was interesting!
Envy vaguely remembered one of her siblings, probably Lust, saying something about the military's secret Human Chimera program. At first, they had just grabbed homeless people off the streets of Central and the other larger cities to experiment on, then, injured soldiers from Ishval and the other warfronts. Grab people who wouldn't be missed, then alchemically fuse them with animals, hoping to create super-powered soldiers for black ops missions that the homunculi were either too busy to go on themselves, or were not worth their time. Most of the test subjects died, of course, but some had actually lived, and some recent field tests had been proving their usefulness. Oh yeah, I think a truckload of some of the earlier successes had gone off the road near the end of the Ishvalan war, and we never did find out where they had run off to. Looks like I found one of them! Envy thought to herself. I wonder where he's going?
A little game of chimera-tracking was bound to be more fun than sitting around doing nothing, at any rate.
Envy crossed the street, and ducked into the alley the chimera had gone down. She grinned. Now might be the perfect time to "field test" a new form she had been working on.
Ducking into a particularly dark corner, red alchemical sparks crackled around Envy as she shrunk down, far smaller than a human form, but luckily, not as small as the form she had been "born" as. It was a bit difficult to compress her mass into such a small space, but once she concentrated, it was as easy as shrinking from her amazing True form into a human shape. Just a little conversion of mass into Philosopher's Stone energy, nothing too drastic. She bent down into a quadrupedal stance and sprouted soft, black and white fur, roughly matching the pattern of her Beautiful Self's cute outfit to her perfect pale skin. Her ears pointed, and moved to the top of her head, and a long, elegant tail sprung out behind her. Needle-sharp claws grew from the soft paws her hands and feet had become, and in her mouth she sprouted long canine teeth. She tested the vocals, letting out a quiet "meow".
Satisfied with her adorable new cat form, Envy scampered down the alley after the chimera.
To anyone else, tracking a chimera that could use the walls and roofs as easily as the pavement would have been a challenge, but as Envy could move in the same way when it suited her, it was not too difficult, even as he led her through the unfamiliar maze of alleys. She leapt gracefully from fire escapes to windowsills to the tops of garbage cans, then down to the alley "street" and back up again, always keeping her eyes open for flashes of brown and green – the chimera's cloak and tail. Finally, Envy saw him duck down a sunken concrete staircase. She looked up at the sign above the door – The Devil's Nest. It looked like a dingy old bar, the type common to the "bad side" of any town. Appropriate. It's not like homeless chimeras would be hanging out at fancy hotels, Envy mused.
Spotting a sunken, basement window, Envy stepped down into its little trench and tried to look in, but the windows of the bar obviously had not been washed in, well, likely forever. Through the grime, she could barely make out a few blurry shapes, including a green snaky line of the chimera's tail as he perched on something, probably a barstool. So, he was not shy about letting his true nature slip in this place.
As she thought of a suitable form to take, something that would not attract too much attention, the door to the bar swung open as somebody stepped outside, and up the stairs to the street. Envy peeked up from the window trench, to see if she could just slip by in her cat form into the bar, when her breath caught in her throat with a feeling of déjà vu.
It had been twenty years since she had last saw him, but he looked the same as always – the smug, shark-toothed grin, spiky black hair, even his damn sunglasses. The only new thing was the cigarette dangling out of his mouth, but even that was completely in character for him.
Greed!
Without even trying, Envy had found him again!
She had last seen him at the Central Faire, had tricked him into reuniting with her. Envy started to purr as she remembered just how that meeting had gone. He had still wanted her, even after so long away from her …
Envy … join me. Fuck Father, fuck his plans. I've been waiting for you …
"Why hello there, pretty girl," Envy snapped back to the present as Greed spotted her. "Come on out, don't be shy."
She knew she should just act like a real animal and run away, but, against what her siblings would probably consider "better judgment", Envy hopped out from the window trench, and cautiously padded up to him. He had seen her; what was the point in running away now?
He seemed surprised as he kneeled down and placed a hand on her head, scratching her gently behind her ears. "This is new. Animals usually don't like me, well, except for my minions, that is."
Greed smiled at her, and stroked his hand down her back, then, his eyebrow raised as something seemed to click for him. He hand lingered over her left thigh, right where her ouroboros was, her white fur doing little to hide the red of the tattoo, the one part of herself Envy could never completely shapeshift away …
Greed sucked in his breath, his cigarette dropping from his mouth onto the pavement below.
Envy looked at him and mewed hopefully.
His voice dropped to a whisper, "how would you like to be mine?" he asked, equally hopefully.
For a moment, she and Greed just stared at each other, as the consequences of what he was asking ran through her mind. Leave the others. Leave Father and his Plan. Be with Greed, this time, forever …
The Promised Day was so close now, but Envy's part was over. Father really did not need her anymore, and had not gone out of his way to bring Greed home in all the time he had been gone. Her other siblings, would they miss her? Pride was too much of a prick, Wrath seemed indifferent to her and Sloth simply did not care, even when he was around. Gluttony probably would at first, but he would get over it as quickly as he had when Greed left. Lust … she might understand.
Perhaps it really was time to … retire.
Envy looked into the violet eyes of her lover, and performed a very un-catlike action. She nodded.
"Hey boss," one of the bar's occupants, a blonde woman with green tattoos snaking across her right arm, shoulder and the right side of her face, greeted her "employer" as he came back inside the bar. Her eyebrow raised as Envy padded in beside him. "Since when did you get a pet?"
"Since now, Martel," Greed answered casually, "Such a cute little thing, I couldn't help but want her, and you know by now, what I want, I get."
"Aww, not a cat! Bossssss!" A short, spiky-haired man in white whined.
"Don't mind him, boss, I'll take Dolcetto out for his 'walkies' if you want." A large, heavyset man said as he leaned back against the wall, a huge hammer balanced across his shoulders. He looked down at the cat with a small smile as she purred, rubbing against Greed's leg. "Heh. I can't say much for her taste if she likes you though," he teased.
"Funny, Roa. Real funny. I'm going to show my, um, 'kitty', around. Don't bug me unless the place sets on fire," Greed said, and walked – rather quickly – through the door behind the bar, probably leading to the living areas. Envy turned her head, and gave Greed's minions – probably more chimeras – a smug look before following.
Envy followed Greed down the hallway, passing doors leading to spartan-looking rooms, evidently his minions' living areas, to the more opulent one at the end. His, of course. She darted inside, under his legs, and barely gave him a chance to close his door before she shapeshifted back into her Beautiful Self and practically leaped into his arms, meeting his kiss eagerly.
"Envy …" Greed pulled back after a few, long minutes. "What are you –?"
She silenced him with a finger to his lips, "does your offer still stand? To join you?"
"Seriously?" Greed asked, his sarcastic voice betrayed by the genuine smile that spread across his face.
"Well, unless you don't want me anymor –" Greed cut her off with another kiss.
"I want it all, 'Vee," Greed said after a few more minutes, as he pulled back, and wrapped his arms strongly, possessively, around Envy. "Especially you, my little monster," he breathed as he began trailing kisses down Envy's neck, "welcome home."
"Oh Greed …" for a second, Envy's smile was as genuine as his, then she answered him with another passionate kiss as the two homunculi stumbled back together through his room, somehow landing on Greed's bed ...
No more words were needed. They were finally together again.