Touch

Setting: Anime universe, post episode 45-6 or so.

Rating: Anyone mature enough to handle these themes.

Foreword

To me, the beauty of this pairing lies in its sheer tragic value. Roy has a melancholic past, Lust doesn't know what she's living for. They put on tough exteriors for the world, but beneath it all these two are very alike. They are emotional. They do not forget the past, and they are both extremely vengeful. So alike, yet so completely different. It is, of course, difficult to make this pairing work and find the right moments in the anime and manga-verse, but when these moments are found sparks can fly. I hope you enjoy this story and the pairing itself.

Touch.

That is all she can remember. His fingers on her skin, examining, admiring.

"Homunculus," his breath a sigh, she felt it cool her skin.

She may have groaned then, or she may not have. Death was near, trying to steal her life, a life that was never meant to end.

"So perfect…"

A finger stroking the inside of her neck, the line of her jaw. She wanted to move then, yet she simply couldn't. She had no power left within her. So, in desperation, she begged.

"...save…"

Lacking energy, she did not complete the sentence, but he understood. She felt him withdraw, then she heard sounds. A sort of clinking, it was familiar.

And then she felt his lips-yes, they were his lips, she was sure of it – covering her mouth. Swallowing convulsively: something was trickling from his mouth into hers and she felt a taste she knew all too well. She wanted to stop, scream that she didn't want it, but it was a drug. He was feeding it to her. And she was accepting it.

"Beautiful."

She opened her eyes.

"You are too beautiful."

Sun. All she saw was light. And his haloed silhouette. Who was he?

She knew. But she couldn't quite recall.

"Am I… dead?" it had almost felt thrilling to say it, as if she had once been human.

"Homunculi don't die."

"Who are you?"

She felt wind on her skin, and her eyes were slowly adjusting. But the silhouette remained a silhouette. He was close.

"I am the one who saved you from ceasing to exist."

It all comes back to her. The pain, the revulsion. The drug, the stone. No, she had not truly desired it, she had not desired to become a monster feeding on human lives. He'd recreated her but she wanted to die again.

"Why did you do it?" She rose slowly, swaying, weak. Her fingers could not even extend. She was powerless.

Now, he laughed. A cruel laugh.

"Revenge, I suppose. You killed Hughes."

"Envy did so."

"You helped."

"I did."

"You sinned."

"No."

"Yes. And now I have you at my disposal."

"Why did you revive me?"

"So I could murder you myself."

The halo is gone and she sees that he is who she had presumed he was. Gaunt, pale yet determined. He is her saviour, he is her damnation. For she cannot kill him. She doesn't want to, not after experiencing the brink of death herself.

"Then kill me, Roy."

His eyes widen a fraction. Surprise? It must be, she thinks.

"What am I but a fragment of who I once was? I do not need to live. I have wanted to be human for a long time. So let me be – let me die."

Her legs fold underneath her, she falls. She feels the pain and it hurts.

"Burn me, engulf me in flame, incinerate me… I don't care anymore."

He kneels before her, staring into her face, trying to see if she lying. She keeps it turned away from his, she does not want to communicate. His breath on the curve of her neck, his hands closing in around her torso. What is he doing?

"I could take advantage, right here, right now. When you cannot resist. I can torture you, physically and psychologically, as you've tortured me."

Her mere existence is torture to her, she has had enough.

"Do you think I am scared?" She whispers.

His hands slide up, over her curves. She forgets to breathe for a moment.

"I want you to be," his lips touch her skin. Like fire, they burn.

"Is this your torture?" Her eyes closed, she is not looking. But she feels him, he surrounds her with his presence, inescapable. She realizes that she does not want to get away.

"Does it cause revulsion to simmer within you?"

His fingers underneath the material of her dress, she remembers them. When she was blind and all she could do was feel, she was saved by this man, with these hands. Saved and cast into another hell.

"No. I feel nothing. You're bad at torture," she lies, but only she knows she lies. She feels something, but she is not sure what it is so she doesn't say it. "I would have done better."

"Oh?" Anger laces his tones. She's still not looking. "Then I will try harder."

She's tired. Of his game, of her situation, of her sin. So, she turns her head and opens her eyes. "Try as hard as you can, Hughes will still be dead. Kill me, but he won't spring up from his grave. I am weak, I am at your mercy. But whatever you do to me, nothing will change. So murder me." After all, I'm not even human.

Her voice sounds feeble, old. She is not old. Or maybe she is? She doesn't know what she looks like. I must seem so pitiable and dismal.

His face has suddenly paled, and abruptly he removes his hands and stands up.

"My god, what am I doing?"

"Torturing me," she answers, suddenly smiling, seeing the dark irony of the situation.

"He would never have wanted this…"

"Hughes? I didn't even know him."

"…what have I become?"

Roy's back is turned towards her, she cannot gauge his reactions. Yet somehow she knows what he feels like, she can relate to what he feels like. He feels like what she felt like when Greed died. Probably he feels more strongly, yet that is the best her experience can provide. She rises again, and steps towards him, her legs offering ambiguous support.

As she steps around him, puzzled at his stony silence, she realizes that his eyes are closed, that tears are running down his face. He is crying. She hasn't seen a human man cry yet.

She wants to touch the tears, so she lifts her finger and carefully picks one off his cheek. It runs down into her palm as he gasps and steps away, a hand covering his eyes.

The tear tastes salty. He's wiped them off his face, but she's still got some left on her palm. She licks it.

"Why the hell are you drinking my tears?" Angry, his eyebrows drawn together.

"I'm consuming your sorrow," as she says it, she laughs. It is her old laugh; it has resonated many times before, whenever she had made a dark joke.

He's not responding, his fists are clenched. Serious, too serious. She's seen him cry, and now she finally understands. She's seen his weakness.

"You don't cry, do you?"

Now close to him, she knows that his eyes still water. His dark hair tangled, a mess, he looks like a lost child, seeking his mother. But he will never find her.

He is pathetic: he is human. He has emotions. Strangely, she does not want to laugh at him for it, she feels something else. Something that is equally as human, as real.

"Roy, I am sorry for what's happened," and the sincerity she says it with surprises even her. Has she become human at last if she truly feels this emotion, this sorrow?

His piercing, dark eyes bore deep into hers. He is trying to read her, to see if she is acting or not. She's not. Another tear slowly trickles out of his right eye. She picks it up with her finger. Licks it. Salty.

"I've always wondered what it would be like to cry."

Silence. What is going on in his mind? Is he regretting what he's done to her, is he regretting giving her another life?

"It must have taken a lot of the stone to bring me back, where did you find it?"

Still, that intense stare. She is not averting her eyes, however.

"Doesn't matter. I suppose you think I'm in your debt. Giving me life… but did I want to live? I don't know myself. A human would want to live."

Now, she cups her hand underneath his chin. Tears are flowing into it.

"I'm not a human. Homunculus. Being without soul. At least I had a purpose before. What is my purpose now? What is my reason for existence?"
She pulls her hand away from his chin and lets the tears pour onto her face, trickling down from her own eyes. "Ha, look, I'm crying now too. You took away my purpose. To all, I am dead. I won't see them again. Maybe this is why I'm crying?"

Her eyes feel strange as the tears drop from her chin. She feels as if she's crumbling.

"You've lost Hughes, Roy. I've lost everything."

There are far too many tears running down her face now, they cannot possibly all be his.

"Yes, that's it. I've lost everything."

She's crying. And smiling through the tears. Cynically.

"Even my shreds of humanity. I lost them when you fed me the stone…"

Something seems to break down within him.

"Lust, no, you are no monster," his hands suddenly cup her face, his voice is full of raw passion. "If anyone is, it is me."

She still cries and he does too. They have never cried before, not in front of others, yet now they find solace in each other's tears.

"You are too human…" he sighs as they collapse onto the ground, on their knees and in front of each other, as if uttering a prayer to a deity neither believes in.

"Prove it to me," she asks.

And he does. He kisses her cheeks, her face, absorbing her tears with his lips. His touch is gentle, soothing. And she feels warmth grow within her as she kisses his mouth.

If there were any passers by, they would have seen two long-lost lovers reuniting in the shade of a tree, in a deserted mass of countryside. Yet this was no ordinary union.

This was Lust's blossoming into humanity.

"Roy."

He cups her cheek tenderly, smiling. "What is it?"

His jacket warms her cold body slightly. "I'm dying, Roy."

It's hard to speak. She is weakening, but she is content. He is sitting in front of her, wiping her forehead, holding her head in his hands.

"No, no you're not. You look fine," his voice sounds desperate.

"I thought you wanted me dead?" A touch of reproach, it makes him wince.

"I never really did, believe me, Lust."

She knows that he speaks true. His face is contorted with sadness again.

"What color were my tears?" She asks.

His lips purse together then he sighs, his head bowing.

"Answer me," she demands, but it sounds feeble.

"They were… crimson." His voice breaks. Was that a sob?

"Ah…" She whispers. Yes, of course. Her tears were her body rejecting the stone. But it does not matter now, she is ready.

"Leave me here, please, with your jacket on… I don't want to frighten anyone."

"Lust, you're not dying," he says, so determined. But she knows better.

"I am. But I will always remain in some state of existence – you've consumed my tears. I exist within you and you do within me."

"No, that's not alive and you know it."

"I don't have a soul and I still lived," she says, passive. "I can't talk for long-"

More tears are flowing out of her eyes. Her body rejecting the stone. No time.

She looks at Roy again, one last glance, absorbing his body, his lithe musculature, skin so much darker than hers. And sweat, clear sweat, a body not stained with crimson. But he is not as human as he once was, he has consumed the liquid stone. The liquid drug. Yet he is not addicted. He remains human, and she – homunculus. They're too different, no; they are alike.

In a final effort, she pulls herself up to kiss him, one last kiss. One last touch.

"Roy… don't cry …"

It is over.