Someone once said, "Every poet worth his salt imprints his poetry with a subtext about poetry itself." Why can't the same apply to prose? says I. I frequently roleplay as Envy on various sites. He's not the easiest character to play at times, especially for me, an optimist who will openly admit her alignment to be chaotic good. As I frequently am when it concerns Envy, I was struck with an inspiration, and acted on it.

Disclaimer: Envy and Fullmetal Alchemist belong to Hiromu Arakawa. May he continue to possess her, so that he can live in this world.

Note: Leilankali is one of my (many) original role-playing characters. She's a knavish, mischevious, and joyful fey, orginally inspired by Shakespeare's Puck but later warped into someone totally different. Large chunks of my personality are present in her, making her one of my easiest characters to play. She's anything but a Mary-Sue, though.

Warnings: Some curse words on Envy's part.

A dark room. Damp walls, damp cobblestone floor. Light from two lone bulbs, glowing with a steady, weak light on either side of the room. Dank. Desolate.

Just me and him, inside my mind.

We've met in here before. Me as Kana, him as himself. It feels like he comes back here, sometimes. He hates that I like to have him fall in love. How can I not? I find myself loving him.

"You didn't let me kill him."

The Homonculus is sitting on the floor on the opposite corner from where I stand, cross-legged and leaning forward like he's bored out of his skull. His back is to me, and I can't see his face. Perhaps I don't want to. Perhaps I've run out of words to describe it.

"You know the rules, Envy," I say, trying to sound authoritative, but my voice is flat to my ears. "I can't kill other people's characters. It's called--"

"Godmodding, I know, shutup," he grates. His spine tenses as he hisses out that last syllable, as if he's either pushing it out or trying to hold something back.

"You know I couldn't have let you do it. I had to intervene."

"He was just a stupid human. Just a stupid character, even. The idiot loser who played him deserved to die too."

"Envy," I say warningly, my voice clearly stating that he had gone too far.

"Just...a...human," Envy said. His voice sounded forced. Or again, maybe it was just restrained.

"I'm human too, Envy," I said, trying to be sarcastically joking.

It was exactly the wrong thing to say.

The Sin stood and whirled in one movement. I cringed at his expression, pressing my back on the damp stone wall behind me. His violet eyes threatened to bulge out of his face, and his mouth was spread in an unnaturally wide, inhuman grimace of utter hatred. He looked completely insane, totally batty. Even though we were inside my mind, I feared him, this visage of him. If he were real, if I were standing face-to-face with him, he could have torn me to shreds before I could blink.

It's a fool who doesn't fear something like that. Especially when that creature seems capable of possessing you.

"OF COURSE YOU'RE HUMAN!" Envy raged. I cringed. "YOU DAMN FILTHY HUMAN! You SAY you have respect for my character, oh what a LOAD of HYPOCRITICAL BULLSHIT that is! So like you damn humans! SO TYPICAL! You say one thing and then do another!" He took a few striding, rapid steps towards me, and I tried to will myself to phase through the stone at my back, anything to escape this very visage of fear. "I do not FALL IN LOVE! You damn filthy-minded BITCH! STOP IT! JUST FUCKING STOP!"

His arms hanging at his sides, he panted. I was thankful his fingers weren't around my neck.

I swallowed a few times, finding that a lump in my throat prevented me from speaking. Once I found my voice, I discovered I didn't quite know what to say.

There was something I could say, but I didn't want to say it. As much as I hated him, I loved him too. As much of a murderous, genocidal bastard he was, I still couldn't seem to let him go. I couldn't drive him off even if I tried. And I had tried before.

I decided that the silence was worse.

"You don't have to stay, you know," I said, my voice quiet but surprisingly strong. In my own mind, I'm always strong. I'm afraid of my weaknesses in real life. Afraid I'll have some of the weaknesses Envy's always accusing me of. "It's not like I'm keeping you captive here." My voice was tender and soft, unoffending and gentle, like a mother speaking to her unsure, frightened child. But I was the frightened one. My heart raced with terror. Even in my own mind's persona I could not deny that.

Envy looked up at me from under his green, tendril-like bangs, his glare glimmering purple out from the darkness beneath them.

I gained assertiveness. "You're the one that's possessing me."

No, why did I say that? I don't want him to leave...I really don't. But I hate him...love him...love more than hate, typical sappy optimist that I am.

He growled. "I hate you. I hate your damn sappy music, your fucking Postal Service, and how much you dream of me when you're listening to it," he snarled. "I hate that you wrote a poem about me, you fucking sick obsessed bitch. You make me sick. You make me SICK!" He spat, his saliva spattering ridiculously on the cobblestones, punctuating his hatred and disgust with all due intensity.

I looked down. Yes, I was guilty. I was a sap. I kept true to his character...except with Kana and Kii. No matter how cute he and Kii were together, or how much I wanted him and Kana to have a hidden relationship, it just...wasn't...realistic.

My mind giggled as I thought the word. Realistic. In context of a fictional character.

But he was real to me. All of my characters are. All good characters have lives of their own. They live thier lives; their lives aren't given to them by their Writers or Artists. I believe this. I truly do. It's what makes the muses speak to me. It's what enables me to write a thirty-seven-year-old pirate-mercenary or a bloodthirsty Homonculus with as much detail and vigor as I write lovely little Leilankali.

"Envy," I finally said, my voice weak, "...you live through me."

I looked up, eyes tired, ringed with circles. "Hiromu Arakawa didn't make you. Ho--"

Envy glared muderously from under his bangs as I started to say the name.

"Well, you know who made you," I muttered, trying once again to be wry and funny, and failing. I wiped the stupid smile off my face and plowed on. "Arakawa...didn't make you. She was just the first one to find your world. To find your muses. You possessed her more strongly than you've ever possessed me or anyone else. You, and Ed, and Al and Lust and Gluttony and Scar, every face that appears, every good, deep, well-rounded character...they all possessed her. She let you in. She developed you, helped you grow. She gave your lives richness and color. She penciled you, inked you, colored you, animated you. (Loved you, I breathed.) She took the ideas given to her by the muses, scraps of thought carried across the thickened fabric of space-time, and created a vision of you in her mind. She gave your vision breath and life." I looked up at him, directly into his eyes. "She enabled you to live in this world. And now that the series and the movie are over, you continue to live in your fans. In me."

I couldn't read Envy's expression. Maybe I had run out of words again. Maybe he didn't want me to.

I straightned. I was tired, sweaty, but confident. "So, Envy. You'd destroy your creators? You'd choke the life out of me? You'd hunt down Hiromu Arakawa and kill her?" I shook my head. "I truly don't understand you well enough, Envy. Your sole goal in your existence is to slash Hoenheim to ribbons. And now you want to murder your fans. The very people who gave you life, who continue to give you life...you want to take it from them."

It was my turn to glare. I turned my glasses-less blue eyes on him, tuned them up with all the intensity my firey spirit could muster, could squeeze out of my small form.

"You're the hypocrit, Envy. You."

Mutual hypocricy. We both carry it. We both hating admitting our mistakes. So he stays. He stays in my mind, in my dreams, in my writing and poetry.

But for now...he's still mad at me. I guess I deserve it.

Knowing Envy, knowing what he really wants...I wonder sometimes if he Covets my soul. Why else would he try to sleep in there?