Foreword – Using Dante's 'hand clap but no-touch' alchemy trick.
Chapter 83 – Envy
Beneath the ceiling of an artificially lit world buried beneath the earth, Izumi looked harshly at the ancient devil pompously wearing a stolen child's face, concealing and cradling sin after deadly sin.
"Your sin is Envy?" she asked.
"His sin was Envy," Dante replied hotly.
Even with the firm hold his teacher kept on him, Alphonse's voice could still be heard from behind her, "Where's Winry, Dante? Where are you keeping her? I want to know she's safe."
Dante gave a simple shrug of her shoulders, lacing her fingers neatly at her stomach, "Winry's safety is up to you."
"Where is Winry?" Izumi repeated Al's question with a harder edge to her voice.
Annoyance flashed through the eyes that Dante used, and she rolled a frown into her face. Dante allowed seconds to thunder by without acknowledgement of the question, as though she existed beyond the progression of time, before she looked to Wrath again and told him simply, "You may go ask Aisa about your red stones now."
"Yay!" an abundance of childish energy returned to the homunculus as he bounded away.
"Wrath, no!" Al called out. Izumi's grip held firm on the youngest Elric; Al couldn't have followed if he'd tried.
"You've got your retriever well trained," Izumi's eyes slipped back to the child figure, "he seems to fetch pretty well, but does he roll over, heel, and beg, too?"
"You can't tease a dog forever, Izumi, it will eventually bite back," Dante gave a shrug to her statement, disinterest plaguing her tongue, "I throw it a bone once in a while to keep it loyal."
The bridge of Izumi's nose creased with disgust.
Dante's childish voice picked up suddenly, and it was the only thing that had the ability to hold any kind of echo in the underground graveyard, "So, what do you two think of Edward Elric beyond the Gate?"
Both Izumi and Al looked to Dante with a similar carriage of distain. The child's voice had been so happy, so amused, and so delighted to talk about the topic. It teased and insulted them with every syllable. Izumi brow wove together, her lips opening to speak, but Al's voice drew out before hers.
"How do you expect us to get my brother from beyond the Gate if you keep causing problems for us?"
Dante's childish hands fluttered around at her stomach, the pads of her fingers finally drawing together at her chest, "I don't expect you to accomplish that at all, so 'causing you problems' isn't something I care about," her eyes pinched happily with a cheeky grin, before her expression widened again. Dante continued to play her juvenile appearance like a professional artiste, "but, what I do care about is that all of your actions up until this point have shown me you're certain of the same things I am, and that is very important."
"What?" the word was spoken in chorus by Al and Izumi.
A little giggle rose up; a tantalizing giggle that raised the hairs on the arms of people who listened, but ultimately ended with a snort as Dante swept Nina's hair over her shoulders, "You're both so ignorant. Since you're so eagerly set on dealing with me and finding Edward Elric, then you've done nothing but confirm what I was speculating. He is, without a doubt, beyond the Gate," the petite body gave a careless wave of her hands to the two of them, tipping her head playfully to the side, "now, if by some chance you actually found out some way to complete that impossible task and fetch Edward, then you'd save me some additional effort."
A quick exchange of glances was made between Izumi and Alphonse.
"Save you some effort with what?" Izumi's heavy question rumbled through the chests of her listeners, "other than actually accessing what's beyond the Gate, how does getting Ed benefit you in any way?"
The demon child just smiled for her former student, and she began to approach. A dark shadow cast into her complexion, highlighting the edges of her smile as it blackened everything else. The light of this world was hers to control, as was the darkness, and the earth that contained them, "You are no longer welcome in this conversation, Izumi."
Dante clapped her hands.
Both alchemists were thrown apart when the ground at their feet heaved upwards between them. A terrifying realization unexpectedly gripped both Izumi and Alphonse for the only moment needed for Dante to split them – her hands hadn't touched the earth that moved when she'd clapped them. Izumi didn't have time to lurch away with Alphonse in her grasp.
"I am not down here today to talk to you, Izumi Curtis," the girl's voice rose, projecting through the streets like a theatre actor with the throw of her hands, gleefully and bitterly childish.
"Al, run!"
Alphonse's breath escaped him as he scrambled on his feet. He couldn't handclap like the other two; that left him with a huge handicap and astoundingly defenseless. From over his shoulder, the collision of tiny flesh palms crashed again. For Alphonse, there was a sudden, terrifying realization that the ground beneath him had neither heaved nor rolled, but had completely vanished. He fell without a chance to scream. The sensation of free-falling through the dark earth overwhelmed his mind – unable to see the width of the cavity he fell through, or how far he would fall. A sick feeling in Al's stomach lurched into his chest, and it remained there when he suddenly hit his back on solid ground, coming to an abrupt halt. Alphonse couldn't explain how he hadn't felt the full impact of hitting the bottom, and that was almost more terrifying than the fall itself.
The place he silently rested in had no light, was cold, and smelt like a dusty mantle had been blown clean. Where was he?
A confusing sound came from the depths of nothing: a baby cried.
A child's handclap was heard again, and Al cringed. When the lanterns of a squarely built corridor lit with flames, Al's eyes exploded wide to swallow the light. Flying up onto his knees, and with a sharp turn over his shoulder, Al came nose to nose with a monster's childish face.
"I am down here today to talk to you, Alphonse Elric," Dante smiled. She turned away happily and walked a few steps down the hall, picking up the baby she called Diana, who lay bundled on the floor.
Al cautiously looked up to the solid cement ceiling he assumed he'd fallen through. His eyes glanced around a tunnel that stretched into more darkness. Was this one of the other entrances? Where did it go? Where did it start from? Al sat back on his knees. The sinking feeling weighing in his stomach was a huge, dead weight. Alphonse startled when Dante was within his personal space again, and he tried to lean away, but she handed him baby Diana. He wouldn't have taken her, except that he was certain Dante would have just let the infant drop if he hadn't.
Dante stood up as straight as she could, lacing her fingers together at her stomach again, casting a sweet smile over the youngest Elric, "Alphonse, why do you believe your brother is beyond the Gate?"
Adjusting the baby he now held, whose cry was a murmur, Al looked up at the petite figure towering over him, "I won't tell you."
"That's fine, you don't have to," she shook her head, more than happy to accept his refusal, "but, by coming here, and everyone's actions to this point, you have shown me that he is in that magnificent society beyond the Gate. Thank you for confirming that for me," Dante's smile grew as a look of horror moved through the youngest Elric.
Al balked on his thoughts, "You didn't know he was beyond the Gate?"
"No, I was simply outsourcing a test for your father's theory," Dante shrugged carelessly, "if the results were negative, you wouldn't be here. There's no recorded instance of someone from this side of the Gate actually arriving on the other side, so the method for it is unknown. And since it's apparently possible to take people from beyond the Gate, like our lovely Brigitte, I will thank you for your assistance in my theoretical trials by helping you bring your brother home." She bounced her woven fingers against her stomach gleefully.
"What?" Alphonse's heart raced in his ears and throat; he nearly forgot to breathe, "How are you going to help me?"
Dante giggled at the flustered Elric, "I'm not entirely sure just yet how we're going to accomplish that, I have a few ideas, but you are going to find a way to get your brother home," she spoke the words to him like it was absolute fact he could not dispute, "you've been doing great so far Alphonse, don't stop here."
Through the obstacle course of his poor breathing and pounding heart, Alphonse's thoughts could not find the answer to why on earth Dante was standing before him offering to help bring his brother home, "Why do you want to bring my brother home? I thought you wanted to bridge the gap with the Gate."
"I do," Dante nodded in the poorly lit hallway, "but, that's why I like the charm of your brother; he's so much like your father. He's curious. He seeks knowledge. He will have already sought out things, learnt things that I want, created things unimaginable, and drowned himself in knowledge," Dante tipped her head from side to side playfully in thought, "And yet, for some reason I can't explain, I am having a bitch of a time accessing what's beyond the Gate, and if everything I have said up until now is true – which it seems to be – I cannot explain why he hasn't so much as contacted us," her sweet voice rose, "it means I'm missing something important."
Alphonse bit his lower lip, swallowing his own secrets.
Dante's tiny hands slapped over her knees as she bent in to be nose to nose again with the youngest Elric, "So, when you bring him back for me, I will extract every piece of information in his mind. I will have him tell me every little detail of every thing he's learnt beyond the Gate. I will find out what I am doing wrong, and I will find out what I need to do long before I fully introduce myself to the world beyond the Gate."
Alphonse's jaw slowly began to fall open in disbelief of what he'd just heard, "That's insane, I won't help you do that," he blurted in absolute refusal of Dante's proposal, "you want my brother to come home so you can dissect his mind?"
"Not dissect his mind, extract information from it," Dante corrected, without a rise to her voice. Her smile held firm, and she lifted three fingers for Alphonse to see, "Mind. Body. Soul. I can move souls. I can create bodies. But, the mind? That one is tricky to play with, but I've been practicing," again, using her childish exterior, Dante pushed out her lower lip and tightened her brow with an excessive pout, "Alphonse, I'm not going to jump head first into a stubborn and unknown world without knowing exactly what I'm dealing with. Did you think I was that arrogant? Did I live this long to only be that arrogant?" the foolish expression vanished and Dante gave a careless sigh to the situation, "everyone's so busy worrying about what's going on in Central, with me, what I'm doing, and how I'm going to ruin everything…" she gave an excited swing of her hips, "Edward Elric's little brother, Hohenheim's youngest son, came to see me of his own volition, because he's the only one who doesn't care about what I've done there. He only wants his brother back, and here's your big chance to get him, Alphonse Elric."
Rising to his feet, the baby wrapped in his arms, Alphonse took a step back, away into the darkness from this demonic child, "I want my brother back, but I'll do that myself. I won't help you."
"Yes, you will," Dante continued to speak in absolutes.
Al's words rose with ferocity, "I will NOT help you!"
A twitch of disinterest towards the protest flickered in her eyes, and Dante clapped her hands.
Alphonse caught the glow of the transmutation circle on the baby's stomach for a moment, before he found himself with an overwhelming urge to scream. He could not for some reason. A sensation hit him like two sledgehammers rammed into his head through his ears, and Alphonse lost his grip on baby Diana. He tried to reach his hands to his head, but couldn't seem to connect. A hundred thousand fragments of knowledge appeared all at once, all unique, and all completely indistinguishable. He couldn't turn away from the blinding sensation; every terrifying snippet of possible knowledge flashed in his face relentlessly, long enough to know they were there, but never long enough to truly understand what they were. The rush was numbing. It made him feel sick. He couldn't make it stop on his own, he couldn't even struggle against the sensation – a gaping hole had been blown open to his mind and he became nothing more than a flesh container overwhelmed with floodwaters. Alphonse fell out of the high when he was released from the ride, and his senses were abruptly returned to him. When the motion settled enough that Alphonse was coherently aware of his own existence again, he dropped to his knees, his hands finally finding his head. He curled over his legs, putting his forehead to a white, sensation-less surface.
Dante looked over to the young Elric who'd been forced to the ground. She watched him, amused by his reaction, before turning around in the white abyss of endless space and looked up at the Gate doors that had swung wide open.
She smiled, putting her hands down on her hips triumphantly, "Yes, you will."
There were things to do today; people to meet, coffee or tea to be had, conversations to carry on, and a meeting to attend. Hohenheim straightened his tie while looking in the mirror. He thought he might stop by the university, just to drop things off, since he would have some work to get started on for Monday. With the firm jerk of his arms to straighten his sleeves, he left his bedroom. The upstairs hall was lined with a few doors – one that belonged to Edward, which was closed, and the other that belonged to Winry, which was left open. Hohenheim poked his head into her room to see if she was in, noting nothing and no one beyond a wicker basket of laundry in the corner, the blueprints she'd tacked to the wall, an unmade bed, and a pink doll stuck in a crack between her pillow and the headboard of her bed. Hohenheim raised his brow curiously; he hadn't noticed the doll at all before. He walked in and pulled it from the crevice where it was trapped. It was obviously new, no wear on it to note. Turning it over in his hand, he looked for a maker's insignia or stitched tag, and found nothing to identify it at all. He shook his head, put it down on her pillow, and left the room again.
Coming down to the main floor, Hohenheim found Winry at the kitchen table with a cup of soup in hand, bundled up in a sweater, long skirt, heavy socks, and… Hohenheim's shoulders fell… the gaudy French slippers were on her feet.
Rolling his eyes, he entered the kitchen, getting a good morning greeting before he could give one to her first. He'd thought about asking Winry if she'd consider throwing the slippers out, but since they were on her feet, that probably wouldn't happen. Hohenheim placed a few items in the draining board at the sink away in a cupboard, before walking back out into the hall again. Although he had every intention of going to the door and heading out, he turned back to the kitchen with a nagging thought, "Winry, where did the doll on your bed come from?"
"Hm?" she looked up from the soup, "Ed got it for me."
"Did he?" the father lifted his brow. He withheld the 'why' question and substituted it with a statement, "a little pink doll isn't something I see you with."
Winry giggled at the statement, putting her cup down on the table, "I have a doll just like it at home. Ed and Al made it for me when I was little," she tapped her spoon on the side of the cup, "it was their first transmutation."
The father looked off in thought of the statement, "A doll for you?"
"Mmhmm," she dipped her spoon back into the soup to stir it again.
Hohenheim thought the statement over for a moment, wondering how old the boys may have been. Young enough to innocently make a pink doll for a little girl their first project, he assumed. He didn't ask her anything further about it. Although he was curious, for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to ask about that point in time. So, back to the day at hand: people to meet, places to go, and a Thule meeting to attend after all that – the last of the year. Hohenheim left the kitchen space again and turned to the front door, eyeing the collection of shoes on the mat.
His thoughts drifted away again.
What a nice thing for his boys to have done – to have made a doll for the Rockbell's little girl…
"Edward!" Hohenheim's voice bellowed into the house suddenly, as he reached for his boots, "Edward, come out here!"
Ed's voice burst through the house with far more edge to it than his father's had, "Why the hell are you barking orders at me? I'm not your goddamn servant boy. I don't jump at your call!"
"I'm not giving orders," the father's voice boomed back, "just come here."
The upper floor thundered with Ed's footsteps, as did the stairs he pounded on. Hohenheim chuckled as Ed's warpath came to a stop at the junction where the entry hall met the kitchen.
"What is it?" he addressed his father before suddenly turning his attention squarely on Winry at the corner of his eye, "those are mine!"
Winry stretched her legs out under the table, "The floor was cold, and I couldn't find my slippers."
"So, you took mine?" Ed's eye twitched at her.
"Yes," Winry stuck her nose in the air and sipped her coup of soup.
With a subdued laugh at the exchange, Hohenheim reached into the closet for his coat, "Edward, take Winry out for dinner tonight."
"What! She's a slipper thief. No," Ed protested, narrowing an eye, "And that sounds like an order."
"It's a suggestion," his father gave a shake of his coat as he took it from the hanger.
Ed wrinkled his nose. Glaring back he dropped his tone as deep as he could go in mockery of his father, "'Take Winry out for dinner tonight.'" Ed rolled his eyes, piping up a childishly annoyed voice as his father dressed in his coat, "There weren't any suggestive words in that statement. It's an order."
"Ed, you should take me out to dinner," Winry grinned smugly.
Scoffing at the request, Ed's face twisted with continued protest, "What! You two think I just have money floating around to take people out to dinner with? I don't go back to work for another week, and my pay cheque takes three weeks from that!"
A grin came over Hohenheim as he buttoned the front of the coat, "There's money in the cookie jar."
"Say what?" Ed's expression fell blank.
"Money in the cookie jar?" Winry looked over to the brown, porcelain, bear-shaped jar on a high shelf near the window.
Hohenheim nodded, opening the front door, "Help yourself and go somewhere nice on me, alright? And I'll see you at the hall at ten, don't forget. Have a good day you two." And he was gone before anyone had anything further to say about any of it.
Ed's bewildered expression panned from the door to the kitchen, "What?"
Winry laughed, eyeballing the porcelain jar that was supposed to hold cookies, "who puts money in a cookie jar?"
Ed shook his head, his tone confused by his own statement, "My dad does."
Still giggling, Winry stood up and walked across the kitchen. Stretching up on her tip toes to reach the jar on the shelf, her fingers snagged the bear-jar by its feet. She took it from the shelf, and cradled the heavy container against her chest, "Take me somewhere that doesn't require me to be dressed like a token arm accessory."
Ed choked on his laugh, entering the kitchen, "You voluntarily went along with that."
Winry's hand clamped down on the bear's head, the lid to the jar, and she popped it off. Peering over her shoulder, Ed looked into the jar, his eyes widening at the contents within.
"Okay," Winry's free hand came up to scratch in her hair, "So, it wasn't the porcelain that made the jar heavy…"
Ed gawked at the jar nearly full of coins and wound bills, "Holy shit Dad… I knew we'd talked about taking some money out of the bank when the economy fell… but," his face twisted, "a cookie jar?"
A subtle little poke began to repeatedly harass Ed's left shoulder, and Winry eventually had his attention, "I can do token arm dressing for food. Good food. Not cardboard food." She bounced a little where she stood as Ed's eyes shifted up to the corners of the ceiling in thought.
"The Empty City contained the other life, where Dante and Hohenheim once lived," Roze explained to a candlelit room full of men and women with blue collars buttoned to their ears.
With the sharp tug of his military jacket, Mustang's glance moved from Havoc to Riza, from Breda to Falman, from Sheska to Armstrong, over Ross and Broche, before cautiously leading all attention to Roze.
"It's where the first failed human transmutation took place," the woman from Lior held a somber voice for this late time of night, "and where the first Philosopher's Stone was created."
The room packed with military blues went as silent as the dead that Roze would discuss while she spoke.
"When Dante tries to crush your soul…" the young woman smoothed her hand over her knees, shifting, and finding the youngest Tringham's hand on her shoulder, "she kind of gives up a little bit of herself in the process," Roze laughed at her thoughts lightly, "she fondled me like I was some dress she was going to put on, and told me stories that only the devil could write. She'd tell them to me while she'd subjugate my soul," she took a heavy swallow of air, running her fingers over her ears to tuck her hair away, "a frightened soul is the easiest kind to overwhelm, and while she was doing it, I just knew the stories were true. I was this close to becoming her, I could feel her open doors into my soul and look in to examine what was left for strengths… and because it was a door opened, I could look back at her. She didn't mind. It worked to her advantage, because it frightened me more. Dante'd never lost a candidate before."
A shiver blew through the room at the bitter touch of the young woman's words. The collection of Amestris officers continued to invite their own silence into the tale.
"The first people to ever have attempted human transmutation were Dante and Hohenheim," Roze watched the eyes in the room flicker between each other, "they prided themselves on being the best there was, and the best there ever would be. And they were. No one could compare to them," a seed of empathy escaped in Roze's breath, "when their only son died, they tried to revive him through alchemy and red stones."
Roze allowed a pause to facilitate the reactions in the military ensemble. From the corner of her eyes that drifted in the room, she caught Havoc take his cigarette from his lips and Sheska's hands come over her mouth.
"Their human transmutation, the first human transmutation, failed; like it always fails without the Philosopher's Stone."
The young woman felt as though she were conveying a bastardized fairytale, ripe with inflammatory indignities, "They'd been so greedy; envious of all the perfect lives of mothers, fathers, and sons. They'd been pumped with pride for a skill that they believed put them above the laws of alchemy," she laughed at her own conveyance of the situation – no one on their own was above the laws of alchemy, "these sins made them arrogant, and ultimately could not bring back his life, destroying it instead."
The eyes of the military continued to watch with fascination and interest, strangely lacking fear, like the pages of Roze's sick fairytale could not possibly be true. It was strangely hard to fathom it was. A few bodies shifted in the deluge of the night. No one left the room, no one lost focus, and all eyes remained on the survivour of Lior.
"When the transmutation process failed, that was when they sought the Philosopher's Stone, but their envy had already been born, and it looked at them every day," Roze's eyes slipped away to the floorboards, her own mention of Envy brought a bloody mental image back to her head. She forced it down with a rise in her voice, "it made them vengeful; filled them with rage, contempt, and wrath against the world order," the woman's hands again smoothed over her knees, as though it had developed into something of a nervous habit; Izumi had actually pointed it out when she'd spent those months talking with her. "Dante and Hohenheim couldn't undo the disaster they'd created, but perhaps anything was possible with the Philosopher's Stone – they could turn their abomination into a man again with the Philosopher's Stone. Right the wrongs; correct the slothful neglect."
Frozen in place, enthralled by the sensation of a wild campfire story beneath a roof, every colour of every eye was devoted to Roze's words. Glances were no longer shared, because no one could possibly share anything more than the only young woman to have escaped from Dante could.
"That is how the Empty City ceased to exist," Roze exhaled a heavy breath, "it was there where a man and a woman's greed and gluttony devoured the life of an entire unknown city, extinguishing the lives of friends and neighbours, and allowed the populous to become the fear, grief, and blood of the first Philosopher's Stone."
Although his location was unknown, Roze was thankful that Alphonse was not present, "That is also where Hohenheim died the first time."
A few heavy brows twitched at her words, and the only exchange of glances occurred between two former State Alchemists – Mustang and Armstrong.
Roze continued, "Driven by the lust that remained for her lover, Dante used some fraction of the stone to steal the life of another man and replace it with her husband's. His dying soul was transplanted into this body and his life was renewed," her head shook a little, "the process Dante and Hohenheim used to change bodies was found in panic, by accident; a lousy twist of fate."
It was Mustang's, not Roze's, heavy sigh that the room heard. The young woman with a pinkish highlight to her thick, dark hair, watched the officer mull her words over before returning his focus to her.
"With the power of the stone, the city that ceased to exist was buried," her words were directly handed to the man leading the upheaval of Dante's imperfect society, "sins were hidden within the earth, and erased from memory over time. But that abomination of envy?" Roze's hands slipped up through her hair, pulling her strands back as though she'd intended to tie it, but swept it over one shoulder instead, "what Dante and Hohenheim learnt, in that first life, was that once a human transmutation has failed, the homunculus golem that remained meant that the original human life was unsalvageable. That person's existence was not only desecrated, it was ruined. Nothing can be recovered, and all you're left with is the dirty shadow of existence."
The morose fairytale continued to weigh down on society in a way no one had ever understood, because it had never been recognized before. The cost of failure of human transmutation had no measure to the chance of success. Eyes began to wander around in their own thoughts.
A lifted voice, unfitting for the weight of sin, held strong in Roze's words, "Dante chose to embrace her sins, but Hohenheim chose to walk away from them."
"Where is Envy?" Mustang asked heavily.
"I don't know," Roze shook her head for the officer, "I haven't seen Envy since Al brought Ed back. He just vanished."
Of the sixteen lanterns that had been set up around the Thule hall for light in the post-sunset hours, Hohenheim extinguished half of them. The meeting had broken at seven thirty, everyone had dispersed by eight, and Hohenheim made sure to linger until he would have been the last to go; he was a master of mulling about and appearing to be productive. This time, it had been easy to mingle and remain behind. At the start of the meeting he'd delivered his prepared excuse, and told the congregation he'd be giving them his leave. What a profound reaction that seemed to have – it surprised him a little. No one wanted to see him go.
The first man to leave the evening session had been Rudolf Hess, the last had been Karl Haushofer, and Hohenheim requested that Karl leave him be to have a few 'private moments' with to pay his respects to Shamballa. Even now Hohenheim laughed at how ridiculous that sounded, and how convinced everyone was of such impossible things. He hadn't believed in any god in hundreds of years. This entire world had the wool pulled over its eyes as far as he was concerned. He stood at the centre of the revolting transmutation circle etched into the floor, and tried to see what he could make of this area before Edward and Winry showed up.
"You're leaving them too?"
Hohenheim's eye twitched at the unwelcome voice he hadn't heard enter, "Hello Envy."
"Envy?" Adolf rolled his eyes, leaning over a waist high stone block near the far entrance of the room, "you're still going on about that? You can address me as Adolf."
"Only when it's convenient for you," Hohenheim drawled, slipping his hands into his pockets and eyeing the man partially hidden in the shadows of dim lighting. The old man walked towards someone sinful.
"Did you enjoy Christmas with your half metal boy and his pet girl?" Adolf folded his arms, pushing his chin to the side as he watched Hohenheim approach, "did everyone enjoy the season?"
The old Elric's brow tumbled, "What do you want?"
Adolf's voice rose above, like he'd been insulted, "To know how your Christmas went!"
"It went fine," Hohenheim answered, "now, why are you here and what do you want?"
"I was curious. You see, when my sources of information told me that everyone had left the Thule Hall but you, I got a little curious. What in the world could Hohenheim be doing post-meeting, all by himself? I came to have a look-see," the man who controlled the spin of the universe announced, "you appear to be admiring my art. Thank you."
Adolf, in his normal state, was far more composed, refined, eloquent, and freezing cold in demeanor than this. All Hohenheim heard in the voice was Envy. With power laced into his words, Hohenheim raised his voice, "You're going to kick that voice out at some point, aren't you Adolf? You're too proud for this kind of nonsense. This country is something you want to take on your own, right? What this is makes you weak and decrepit."
Envy rolled his rented eyes in response, "I feel very earthbound today," he straightened up, fixing the shirt he wore, "you have him pegged, I won't get to stick around much longer now. He's one pissed off fucker that someone else is making his arms move. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Greedy greedy greedy," the face Envy wore grinned, "It'll be interesting to see what he does from afar later, it should be fascinating. There are lots of other people out there I can keep company."
"Get out of here," Hohenheim ordered without a moment to pause or think between when the demon's words finished and his began.
A pointed finger ripped out at the old Elric father, "I will rip your throat out with my bare hands and feed it to the dogs if you speak to me like that again," Envy gave a pompous bounce of his brow as he found a new topic with the flick of his wrist, "Does that bastard child of yours know what you and I know? About why you've been standing in that circle looking so forlorn."
"Yes, Edward knows what this can do," the eldest person in the room replied.
Envy mulled the answer over, humming his slow thoughts with amusement, "I'm assuming you didn't tell him, that he sort of figured it out on his own after a bit of help," he waved his hands around, wishing for impossible inhuman strength, "because god forbid you let anything happen to that precious little whelp of a son you dote on."
Hohenheim's words grew colder than the winter chill in the stone, "Envy…"
Envy twisted Adolf's face in thought, "I can't call him 'little' or crack short jokes now, can I? That bastard child of yours grew up. He needs a new nickname," he gave a wag of his finger to the old man, "I bet you didn't tell him everything. You want to be his sweet old daddy; too busy trying to keep his fragile hopes alive. You don't have the balls to ruin his half metal life again."
The laugh Hohenheim rattled in his chest shook the air. With a toss of his brow and stiff jaw, he looked back upon his sin, "If you tell Edward there is nothing he can do on this side of the Gate to get back to the Gate doors, he's not going to believe you. Because you are you."
"And if you tell him the same thing, because you are you, he won't believe you either," Envy rolled his jaw, grinding the thought up in his teeth, "because he would think you are simply trying to be fatherly and protect him with discouragement. You've let it go on so long, now you've set him up to fail. You're such a shitty father, why did you even bother?" a malicious shot of amusement crashed through Envy's borrowed eyes as he watched the solid figure of a man once known as Father simmer in his own rage, "The only way someone on this side has any contact with the other side, is if someone back there figures out how to trigger it. So, you and I, we get to watch the HalfMetal Alchemist run himself in circles, dragging that pet girl along with him, looking for an answer that doesn't exist. I find that rather comical."
"I don't," Hohenheim's words shook the cement walls.
"Guess who's to blame for that? You should have told him to give it up right from the day he got here." Envy scoffed at him; shaking his head, he looked to the domed ceiling, "Or maybe…maybe you were kind of hoping that shit child of yours would find something you hadn't – because I'll give the Half Metal kid this: he's smart. Maybe he can find a way to get all of us home again, something you and I managed to miss." The clap of Adolf's polished shoes echoed with the footsteps Envy began to take as he walked a wide circle around the rim of the hall, kicking his feet forward playfully and childishly with each step, gleefully holding Hohenheim in the fringes of his vision, "But then again, this world is the perfect out for you – you have to die here. I guarantee you, if you were to go home, your instincts would kick in when your body is on its last legs, and you would FIND a way to transfer your soul again." The heel of his right shoe scraped on the cement as Envy slowly stopped, "I remember a time, years and years ago, when you tried to let yourself die, and you failed miserably with that."
Like the tidal wave before fronting a rising storm, Hohenheim marched forwards, fists clenched, with rage in his eyes, "I've had quiet enough of you for tonight."
Before the torrential wave could get close, Envy threw his borrowed head back, huffed a sigh into the air, and suddenly had Hohenheim stopped at gunpoint, "Down, doggie."
Hohenheim narrowed an eye, "A firearm? How degrading for you."
"I know," Envy's eyes widened, playfully horrified with himself, "but like I said, I'm feeling a little earthbound. I'd love to run my fist through your chest like I did your son," the delightedly wishful look on Envy's face faded suddenly, "and you know what, for some reason that stupid little fucker is still alive. Do you know how much that pisses me off?" Cold, dark eyes looked Hohenheim over slowly, "I want to shred you with my bare hands and decorate this hall with your insides, but I don't have the strength for all of that anymore. I think if I reached over and tried to rip out your ribs with these dull fingers, just so I could paint the walls red with your spongy heart, I wouldn't get too far with that. Poor Adolf would find the trigger and kick me out." A scowl began to crop into Adolf's face, creasing his nose and streaking his brow, "I can feel him churning at the thought." Envy's brow popped up playfully again, waggling the gun in his hand with amusement, "So, what is it they say here? When in Rome?"
"What do you want from me, Envy?" Hohenheim boomed, "this has gone on far too long."
Envy threw the voice he used around the room, "Don't be a senile old bastard! I want to spill your blood on this floor, and I know you're not stupid enough to think you're getting out of here before I pull this trigger," the crass voice tried so hard to shred the cement walls that encased this moment, "and then I'll let this world have its way with that only son of yours, because I will have had my way with you. I will watch him suffer until his death."
Hohenheim blinked; unmoving, unwavering, "I have two sons. Both Edward and Alphonse are my sons."
The darkness of the room's aura thickened, "You don't seem to think the younger one is very important to you. You don't even acknowledge he exists."
"Because, the alternative was to speak of Alphonse as though he were dead. Edward and I would have none of that," the Elric father spoke of a years-old decision, standing strong and without fear of his raging sin threatening to quake the earth, "but, a child needs no other reason to be important to his or her parents than simply being their child. Both of them are important to me, even if I'm the poorest parent to show it."
A sick, dark look flooded out from the hate of envy, blackening the hall and casting away any illusion of moonlight as the demon's voice entered again, "And they somehow corrected the first family you fucked up?"
"No, nothing could ever correct that mistake."
The stain glass window decorations high above could have shattered into a thousand pieces, the glass could have crashed to the cement flooring like heavy rain, and the cold winter air could have flooded in until flesh froze to death, and neither occupant of this cement hall would have noticed.
"… Mistake?" Adolf's voice repeated the answer like Envy hadn't heard the words properly.
Hohenheim paused, thinking over his statement, "Until we reached a certain point, I had a wonderful relationship with Dante; that was not a mistake. And my first son's life was not a mistake, his death was not a mistake, but everything I did for my family after he died was a mistake," spoken with cold, cruel, unequivocal truth, "that makes you a mistake, Envy. You are a mistake. I told you this the last time we spoke."
A wordless, unreadable exchange took place between a father that no longer was and his punishment that haunted him in every life he lived.
"And I told you last time we spoke, I would kill you," bold, heavy words were spoken. Envy brought up the strong arm of the man who someday would try to conquer all, and cocked the handgun, "and I will watch to see how the HalfMetal Alchemist fairs against the repercussions of his old man's sins."
Hohenheim stood square to the figure staring him down, his feet firmly planted to the earth, head bowed just enough that he could use his own eyes to see clearly over the rims of his glasses, "I do believe, jealousy is at the heart of all envy."
His sin laughed at him, "Yes, it is."
"Welcome to the Gate, Alphonse Elric," a little girl's voice cried out, all too joyous about the event.
Al was almost certain he was one sudden movement away from being violently sick to his stomach. He picked his head up slowly, and looked out into a white expanse of nothingness.
"The trip isn't always so pleasant the first time around, and you're here for your first time in a completely different way than anyone else has first experienced the Gate. Diana has escorted you, and you've sacrificed nothing. It's probably a little different feeling for you," Dante mulled the thought over, trying to recall a very old sensation, "but I've been here, and your father has been here, your teacher has been here, your brother has been here, and in a manner of speaking, your mother has been here as well."
If she kept talking, Al was certain he was going to be sick. Slowly he sat back on his knees and cautiously peered over his shoulder. His hands shook like the nerves in his body had been shocked, and he gripped onto his hooded jacket to calm his body down.
Dante turned away from the black, gaping mouth of the Gate. With her hands on her hips, she continued to hold her grin wide for her captive Elric to see, "And now you are here! It's a family affair, more or less."
Alphonse moved from his knees to his backside, sitting on a white surface that gave off no sensation; neither warm nor cold, smooth nor coarse – just simply a surface he sat on. He looked up to the yawning hole of the Gate, unable to escape the intangible crush that seemed to weigh on him from it. His eyes caught Diana, held high in the grasp of stone arms above the Gate. Her cry was faint. The sensations that overwhelmed Al at his arrival slowly began to fade. Finding that the tremble of his hands had lessened, and hints of strength were returning to his body, Al pushed to his feet.
"So, this is what you will do, Alphonse Elric: you will find a way to extract your brother from beyond the Gate, while I try to sweep up these lose ends falling away around the country," she gave a dismissive wave of her hands before skipping a few steps towards him, "I'm a talented woman, but if I can delegate at least one or two things, I'd function so much better."
"I won't help you," Al told her again, "I won't bring my brother back if I know you're going to torture him into giving you information."
"I won't torture him," Dante rolled her eyes at the thought, quite insistent about her methods, "I'm only going to extract information, and as long as everyone is cooperative, it won't hurt, and I won't leave his mind in any kind of vegetative state."
Al's blood rose, boiling into his ears.
Turning from the young Elric, Dante smiled to herself as she re-approached the Gate. She looked up to Diana, cradled high in the arms of stone corpses that lined the frame of the Gate; the infant was silent. Her eyes lowered into the black abyss again, a 'thing' that had embodied her frustrations. With another step towards the Gate, Dante's right foot came down to the floor, and her step made an odd squish as she shifted her weight to the leg.
Dante stopped abruptly, blinking down to her feet.
Alphonse looked to her as well, finding the sound odd and out of place – there were no sounds here beyond their voices.
Staring down, Dante curiously looked at a thick crimson liquid pooling around her feet, slowly leaking out from the base of the Gate. It was such a potent, dark red at the door's baseline seam, that it looked nearly as black as the Gate's abyss. Bending over, Dante swept the tip of her index finger through the liquid, and brought a sample back up to eye level.
Alphonse watched an obvious change in Dante's posture, while the substance continued to slowly spread out along the surface.
"Blood?" Dante's brow rose.
"Blood?" Al repeated in alarm. It was impossible for Dante to make her voice low enough that he couldn't hear in a space without any other sound.
Dante took another step, this one backwards, and yet again the sloshing sound came out as her feet moved around. Her eyes shifted between the Gate and the run of thick blood coating the indistinguishable white floor. Alphonse had no idea what to expect from the Gate, but he honestly didn't believe this was something that should be there at all, if Dante's reaction was any indication.
"What the hell is going on?" Dante couldn't shield the concern in her voice, and she sharply turned to her company, "are you causing this?"
Al's eyes flew wide at the accusation, stepping away from Dante and the spill, "How am I causing anything?"
Dante brushed her finger off on her skirt, looking up at the massive expanse of the Gate, "Maybe bringing you here had an effect on it, since you've been in the Gate's possession before?" Dante stepped up to the Gate despite what was at her feet, her thoughts audible as she walked up and placed her fingers in the black tar of the opened door, "but, I've never seen this before. Something must be present that wasn't present before."
Dante turned away from the monumental problem, and began to approach Alphonse. She opened her mouth to speak again, but was silenced by a rumble; a rumble at the core of existence. Alphonse felt the vibration too, and grabbed the front of his shirt, again stepping away. Dante's attention swung back over her shoulder to the void of the Gate, and she quickly began to move away from the structure, "Again?"
"Again?" Alphonse shrieked, his voice pitching as the rumble grew stronger, "again what?"
"The Gate rumbled like this when Brigitte came through… but it seized with power for her and didn't bleed. What the hell is this?" she continued to back away as the rumble grew stronger still, like standing in the path of a thundering freight train that bore down on them.
"We should leave, Dante!" Al yelled at her, but both figures suddenly found themselves frozen, like deer caught in headlights, and something passed through the Gate. Al flinched when it struck, raising his arms and curling away in defence. A wave of energy passed through him, touching every fiber of his being; it felt similar to the sensation he would get when he was acutely aware of his existence each time he'd perform a transmutation. Except… he hadn't attempted alchemy. No one had. The sensation passed almost instantly, vanishing like it had never happened, and the world at the Gate went silent again. In retrospect, the thundering locomotive that had bore down on them passed by like nothing more intimidating than a light summer breeze. It had faintly tickled.
Baby Diana began to howl.
Alphonse straightened up and looked to the Gate. The blood was gone. Everything was cleaned to white again. The doors were still open, the world beyond dark as pitch, and high above, Diana screamed like only an unsettled infant could. There was no way Alphonse could get up there to reach her and calm her.
"Dante…" Al's call of her name cautiously escaped him, yet he received no response; he could only hear the shrill scream of Diana's cry.
"Dante?"
Al's eyes shifted around. The old alchemist no longer stood where she'd once been. His eyes shot around, seeing nothing but white endlessness and the dark monstrosity of the Gate. He threw his head around to every angle imaginable, above himself and below his feet as well. There was nothing. No one. She was gone. Alphonse looked at the Gate, realizing that he was the only one standing there, and he had no idea how to get away from it.
Thursday, December 29, 1921. 10:08PM
One street light at the end of the block was all that lit the sidewalk, weakly showing the way to the Thule Hall entrance. Ed looked over his shoulder at Winry, and she let out a white puff of her breath into the chilled air.
"I think I ate way too much," Winry wrapped her arms around her stomach, "I think I actually feel full and that's not normal."
"Told you it was a good place," Ed fiddled with the keys in his left pocket, "one of the best restaurants in town."
"Still tasted like cardboard," Winry paused before smirking, watching as Ed rolled his eyes at her, "but it was really good cardboard, so it gets an A+ for cardboard."
"I'm glad it met your approval," he drawled out, looking ahead to the church doors. A restless thought for the monumental task of the Thule hall diagram lay ahead. Winry's hand startled Ed a bit as it landed on his shoulder. He looked at her as she grinned with an infusion of confidence.
"Come on. I'd actually like to get some sleep tonight," she was the one with the note pad, pen, and measuring tape in her purse, "I need to help get my men some alchemy numbers to chew on for the next few months."
Ed's brow rose, following Winry as she walked ahead, "Your men? Since when are Dad and I 'your men'?"
She shrugged playfully, putting a grin over her shoulder before stepping up to the church doors.
The only thing that Ed's light hearted words and Winry's casual playing did for the evening was serve as a damper for how they did not care for the building they were entering. The church at street level was a little guise above the location where the actual gatherings took place. It was a religious cavern of nightmares – a place where Edward watched his sense of humanity rot away, and where Winry had spent days of terror without dignity. Neither wanted to be here, but both had decided it was right. Their fears were told to shiver in a corner, because there was something excruciatingly important in the bowels of this world. After entering, Ed turned back and locked the doors behind them.
"Oh!" Winry tried to talk over the unease as she looked up to the ceiling that locked out the Munich evening, "so, for some reason, I got a crazy idea yesterday while I was looking at the airplane schematics, about what to do about getting you a right arm again."
Ed snorted, shaking his head as he walked into the building, cutting a path down the centre isle, "If you are going to fuse me to an airplane in any way, shape, or form, the answer is no."
"Idiot," Winry wrinkled her nose, stalling in her thoughts at the center of the building, "It was just some inspiration that hit me while I was looking at things. We've been busy and we haven't really discussed it. I think I should work on something to get you properly fixed up, until we get home again."
"If you want to make it, go for it," Ed stopped and looked back to Winry, watching as she slowly pulled herself along, her eyes capturing the interior of the building surrounding them. "Hey, you don't have to come down if you don't want to," he drew out his words carefully, knowing that this place might unsettle her more than it did him, "you can stay up here or I can walk you back home. I'm not going to force you to go back down there. Dad and I can take care of things ourselves if you don't want to be here."
Winry shook her head quickly, "No way in hell I'm staying up here all by myself," she scampered down the centre isle to meet up with him, "and it'll take too long to get home. Besides, I got all dressed up for dinner, and I should see what your dad thinks of my efforts. I don't need Mathilde to dress me up all the time to look like I can fit in here."
"She'll be heartbroken," Ed rolled his eyes at her.
"I even got all my hair to stay up on my head, and then somehow got my winter hat on. Good job, team me," Winry patted herself on the back as she patted the collection of twirled hair strands pinned to her head.
"You're insane," Ed gave her a twisted look, "Why are you being so fussy about how you look? You've never been fussy about how you look; it's weird. It's like you're a girl or something."
"You are such an ass," she hissed before straightening herself out and trying to stand a little taller, "you told me I had to be this fussy, so start giving me points for trying to pull off these frumpy dresses everyone wears."
Ed looked as though he wanted to laugh, but didn't, he just rolled his eyes once more and held up his left hand, "You get five points."
Winry looked back at him with mock horror, "Only five?"
"Yeah, only five."
Ed reached out for a door at the side, stage left of everything, and slipped a key into the lock of the Thule hall door. He gave it a sharp twist with his wrist, and swung it open. Edward took a few steps inside the door before he reemerged with a lantern in his hand. Winry sifted through her purse to find a match to light it, and she struck it firmly over the frame of the door, soon giving life to the container in Ed's hand.
Since the first day Edward could remember, the cement and cobblestone stairwell to the Thule hall smelt like what he thought being trapped in a water-well shaft would smell like. The hall itself was more or less dry, but the stairwell seemed to suck up all the moisture between the church above and hall below. It was bitterly cold in the winter. The fact it had no lighting only added to the effect. Ed made the abrupt conclusion years ago that he never wanted to get trapped in a well.
At the bottom of the stairwell was something like a small rotunda, before it ballooned into the hall. Without taking more than a few steps, both Edward and Winry came to a silent stop at the bottom of the stairs, looking out into the Thule hall. The entire room was sunken in darkness – even the clouds had decided to swallow the moonlight from the glass overhead.
"Dad?" Ed called into the stone room's echo.
A precautionary hand came up to Ed's empty shoulder, and Winry made sure that the one place darkness was not, was between the two of them, "Um…" her eyes shifted hesitantly, her voice locked below the echo of the room, "there's no one down here…"
Ed lowered his brow at the scene, scoffing indignantly as he walked forwards, "He's supposed to be here." He swung the lantern forwards, throwing the light ahead. Ed held the light high while his feet came to stand at the point where the rough cobblestone and cement bricks yawned widely into the open core of the hall. With calculated effort, the hall slowly accepted the light Edward offered.
The heart of this world was poisoned, as far as Ed had ever been concerned. He'd been dropped off in England in 1916, at the height of the Great War, and watched as portions of the world tried to destroy itself. Men had moments when Ed thought they liked the taste of blood better than the taste of wine. Of all the people in the world he'd encountered with a taste for man's blood, the members of the Thule Society were the neatest and tidiest villains he'd ever met. They were moderately wealthy, moderately powerful, and all people of 'proper' statute. They were an elite group of hand-picked people who had a narrow view on what mankind should be. They had an order about their business that nobody tampered with.
Contrary to Thule behaviour, a body's shadow lay on their centerpiece, illuminated poorly by the lantern held high by a flesh hand. A body that, under any other circumstance would not, and should not, be there. Dead bodies were discarded by means Edward did not know. They were showcases, but were never meant to be left to rot. This body was on display though, laid out on its stomach, arms out, and face down. It was a heavy body beneath a black trench coat, dressed in a fine pair of shoes that Edward Elric knew had been purchased in London years ago.
"Dad?"
There was no answer, just the echo of his childish voice in the dome.
Edward did not react to the sudden grip of Winry's hand at his chest, or to the frantic voice that said something to him that he couldn't hear. His eyes swallowed the poisonous world shrouded in darkness; drank it down like water. It spread through his body with the pumping of his blood, numbing to the tips of the fingers, causing the lantern to crash on the floor.
To Be Continued...
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