Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.
Warnings: End-of-series spoilers. This fic contains yaoi (malexmale) and incest (family memberxfamily member). You have been warned.
"You're not my father," he says, blonde hair pulled back into a loose braid. Muscles in his face tense, and his left hand is bunched into a fist. "No one like you could be my father."
"Edward," the older man replies, unfazed, and he wets his lips with his tongue and pauses. Hohenheim is standing next to the window, dark, thick skies bleeding through the thin windowpanes and making the air in the room heavy, unbearable.
And he wants to be lifted up with it, wants to let it take him away. Clenching his jaw and his laugh leaks through despite his efforts to stay, voice vibrating in his ears. "I just want to get our bodies back, that's all. What a stupid thing to always be saying, don't you think?" And he lets it take him away, lets himself be lifted, everything rushing through him, tingling, and for a second he isn't here at all, isn't anywhere.
He steps forward, smirking; Hohenheim's lower lip turns down slightly, but otherwise he doesn't move, doesn't speak, until -- "That isn't what my son is like."
"Bodies don't matter; bodies are nothing." It's still sifting through the room, the sky, and he lets the change float over him again --; Alphonse, this time, Trisha, Dante, and back to Edward. It's a body he is starting to feel comfortable in.
"We're not that different, me and the Fullmetal pipsqueak," rushing forward, and Hohenheim flinches, squeezes his eyes shut for a split second. But it doesn't matter that it's over, it only matters that it happened, and Envy's smirk widens triumphantly.
"We're not. We're exactly the same," and it's easy to lie when you are no one, when your words have never been yours to begin with. "And you are not our father."
He steps backward again, a half-step -- Hohenheim, steps backward. Envy lets one of his hands rest on the windowpane, lets his palm absorb the sky's beating pulse. "Why favor one of us over the other?"
Envy could kill him now -- could kill him easily. But this, he realizes, is better than death. Shadows rotating about the room and finally stopping to encase them both, Hohenheim's expression still flat, determined.
"Envy," he begins, and Envy clenches his jaw at the change in the man's voice -- whereas Edward's name was spoken softly, his name comes with glaring eyes and a sharpness of voice that makes a flash of overwhelming anger build up inside him, resting heavily in his face.
"Edward is nothing," he says, through his teeth, and he can't stop himself from striking out, from pushing his father back against the glass window, I want him to die!
His own body now, lean, strong limbs that won't, can't, fail him, and Hohenheim's hand is on his shoulder but it's too late, the sound of shattering glass, and finally the barrier is broken, and it all comes swarming in and fills up his veins with energy, Hohenheim is going to die.
"I hate you," he says, sullen dark words, I hate you for loving him, I hate you. "I," pause, shadows moving again and his hands are shaking, "hate," Hohenheim looks up, eyes of steel, something's going to happen, and he could kill him now, should kill him now. He leans in further, Edward's body, and he can feel Hohenheim's eyes on his borrowed face, can see reflected the image of perfection, and he doesn't want to do this with someone else's skin. His real body, skinny and clunky and a cough forming in his throat -- not the one he has adapted as his own, but his, the one he can barely call his anymore. "You," he whispers, leaning down, and Hohenheim's eyes are fierce now, thin and gold and relentless, and maybe he, too, has captured the sky. Maybe Hohenheim is the sky, is melting away.
Even without me, he's going to die.
The thought makes him smile morbidly -- I'll be the last person ever to kiss him.
"I want to kill you myself," he says, "now,"before Edward gets to you, "before everything is," Hohenheim tastes of salt and blood and nothingness, "changed."
He doesn't realize that it already is, that he has changed it himself, before it's too late.