By: Minuiko
Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving! I'm thirteen and in 9th grade. I'm surprised none of you guessed it right, considering my horrible plot structure and occasional juvenile grammatical errors (though some of them are ffdotnet's fault…). I hope that doesn't change your impression of me, though it does give you a reason for my hesitance in writing lemon. School is still killing me, I just wanted to update because of the holiday and everything.
To deathdefy: I'm not supposed to admit anything , but I'm not Japanese; I just took random words from a dictionary. So I'm pretty sure it's grammatically incorrect and doesn't make sense… but it's supposed to mean "Slave of the Kingdom" or something to that affect…
To random: …… I did tell you all I wouldn't post until a holiday or a break. You have no idea how much homework and projects my school gives us, and I'm a straight-A student, too.
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Chapter Nine&
"You're to do as you're told, boy. Your name will be Envy from now on."
Not if he could help it…
Your mother betrayed you. She doesn't care about you.
He didn't give a fuck anymore…
No one could ever love you. You're tainted. You're not whole. You're an asshole to everyone about everything and you're not even strong enough to protect yourself.
"Shut up…"
The voice turned into Greed's. You do what everyone tells you to do, you whore."Shut up!"
Ed will end up abandoning you…you don't matter to anyone… he's just using you… he wants Alphonse… only Alphonse…"Ed!" Envy cried out, waking up in a sweat and feeling a rush of dizziness before falling back onto the pillow with a thump. His vision started to blur again, and he thought he saw the golden-haired boy tell him gently, "Go back to sleep, Envy…"
He felt a warm pressure on his hand… was that it was Ed's hand? He sighed softly as he squeezed softly in return and fell into the gentle embrace of oblivion once more.
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Ed brushed a few stray hairs out of Envy's face with his metal right hand; Envy was still clutching his left and he didn't want to wake the older boy after he had just fallen asleep. He heard the soft thud of the door closing, and feet walking on tiptoe behind him. Winry's voice was unusually soft as she asked, "How is he doing?"
"He just calmed down," came the equally hushed answer. "Don't wake him."
She took a seat beside him. After a while, she smirked and remarked, "You're holding his hand so tightly, Ed. Are you sure there's nothing going on?"
He scowled. "Not this again."
She made a soft noise of agreement— defeat?— and continued gazing at Envy's pale face without a word. A question formed in Ed's head, and he asked, "Winry, what do you think of Envy?"
She turned to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She said, quietly, "I think I should be honest with you, Ed. I'm rather fond of him. But I don't love him. In fact, I think I may be jealous of him…"
"What? Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Ed cocked his head to the side.
"No, what are you thinking?" Her smirk returned, but this time, he sensed she smiled to cover her pain."
"… I think that you think he's cuter than you are?"
She snorted. "Ed, you're a moron. Look, if you can't guess, then let's just drop the subject."
"Alright…"
Ed knew she was admitting that she liked him and that she was jealous because he was more attracted to Envy than to her, but he didn't need his life to be even more screwed up than it was already— a love triangle would definitely do that. Though it wasn't exactly a triangle, it was a guy-likes-other-guy-who-doesn't-like-him-back-while-girl-likes-said-guy-and-is-forced-to-watch-him-act-like-a-total-idiot kind of thing. He was sorry that Winry had to be the "third wheel," but he had to consider Envy and himself too. Envy probably didn't even like him. He was always a viper when Ed tried to be civil.
Like that time he got pissed at me at the restaurant and didn't even apologize.
Then again, he'd been clueless and said the wrong thing as usual. What else…?
Oh yes, and let's not forget that whenever he talks to me, he tries to bite my head off. And how he gets all those mood swings and reverts to Master Elric every now and then… and how he almost never smiles around me…
Envy definitely didn't like him.
There was a moment of silence; then Ed remembered his decision the night before. "Winry, I was thinking…"
Her eyes flicked to his face casually. He continued cautiously.
"…that we should go back to Central. There's some research I need to do."
She flared up immediately. He winced. "And abandon Al? Your own brother, Ed? What the fuck do you think you're doing? He could be starving in a jail cell right now or being fucked by Greed and you want to return all the way to Amestris for research? On what grounds? At what price? At the price of Al's innocence? His sanity? Don't even try to give me excuses, because I don't. Fucking. Care. What do you think you're doing, Edward Elric?"
"I do care," Ed said, looking at his hands, his expression miserable. "Of course I care. He's my only little brother. I want Alphonse to be safe just as much as you. But we're dealing with the possibility of Amestris being conquered. It's a national crisis here, Winry. Look," he pleaded, as Winry opened her mouth, "I'll explain."
"Greed took Alphonse. I think that knew that I would come after Al, and as I'm the eldest son of that bastard …"
Winry didn't question his refusal to say his father's name, she said, voice sarcastic, "I almost forgot. Looks like I'm too familiar with you Elrics. 'That bastard' is the Fuhrer of Amestris, isn't he— oh, and Envy doesn't know this?"
"Know what?"
She waved her hand impatiently. "That you're on a social class equivalent to that of a prince's…"
He scowled. "I'm not proud of it. And I'm still subservient to the damn Military, aren't I?"
Roy's annoying smug face flashed before his mind's eye. Winry sighed, and said reasonably, "But the fact remains that when your father dies, you will inherit his position."
Like he wanted to. "Like that matters? Besides, he doesn't even help Mom and us out, instead leaving us to fend for ourselves in some rural place in the middle of nowhere. Some father. Anyways, as I was saying… about my hypothesis about Greed… he was definitely expecting me, so…I think… that he wanted to lure me there and hold both of us hostage for some ransom or another… we're the only sons he has, after all."
"But," Ed continued, his eyebrows furrowed, "something doesn't make sense. If that's what he wanted, then what was he thinking, offering me to choose between Alphonse and Envy? Is he just toying with me? Or is does he have some other motive? That's why I need to find out more about Greed and that bastard. There're pieces of the puzzle missing. I need to find them. If Greed really did plan everything out so perfectly, then he would know that if I chose Envy, I would go back to Amestris and come back for Al. But during that time, what does he want with Alphonse…? And if I chose Al, what would happen?"
"How will research help?" Winry demanded.
"I heard that there were a few events that caused a big uproar in the media two decades or so ago," Ed said. "I didn't look into them because I didn't think they concerned me. But maybe they do. Look, Winry, I know you're upset about this, but we really have no other option. How are we supposed to get Al back from stronghold in a land full of people we can't trust, with only the two—" he looked down at Envy, then sighed, "—three of us?"
"I suppose..."
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Envy's POV&
"Prisoners," Envy gasped, sitting up abruptly.
Ed spun around and forced him back onto the pillow. "Don't strain yourself, moron!"
"What do you mean, me?" Envy demanded. "I just woke up."
"I guess you're feeling better," Winry said.
"At least I'm not coughing up shit anymore, right?"
Envy fought Ed's grip to sit back up, but Ed proved to be much stronger, and he stopped struggling. He turned his eyes away from Ed's golden gaze and fixed them onto something more interesting. Oh, yes. The ceiling. It was… white. A plain white, but preferable to Ed's intense look. Okay, I just wanted to avoid that look. I do not like that look. I can't stand that look. And I do not like his eyes… Those eyes. Those beautiful golden eyes. Aaargh, I'm doing it again. He groaned; his head felt like it was splitting in six directions as he remembered what he was doing there. "I'm… I'm sorry, Ed… I couldn't do anything against Greed…"
"It's okay," Ed murmured. "It's okay, you did your best."
He wasn't asking for forgiveness! He was just saying he was sorry. Stop being so goddamn nice, Ed, I don't deserve it.
Envy recalled his last dream, and remembered that he didn't tell Ed about the prisoners yet. "Ed. I did find something out. The king is making a collection of six prisoners, naming them after the seven deadly sins. He is Greed. There were two others, a Wrath and a Lust. Alphonse… he was to be named either Sloth or Pride, but I didn't stay long enough to get it. That means that there are three more prisoners coming."
Ed's eyes widened. "The seven deadly sins… Alphonse… royalty… the seven kingdoms… Winry, it's like the legend. A great king will one day take the seven kingdoms and unite them under one rule. But he can't possibly be thinking of that, can he?"
"I'm not the boy genius here, Ed," Winry responded with dull exasperation.
"Anything's possible for Greed," Envy said, grimacing, though he didn't quite understand what Ed was talking about.
Ed turned to him. "Oh, yeah. I was planning to go back to Amestris to report in for duty… and to do some research on Greed. You don't mind, do you?"
Envy could only assume that Amestris was his hometown, or close to it. He was silent for a moment, then cracked a smile. "… anything to get away from this place."
"Great. Then it's settled?"
"Yeah, whatever, Ed," Winry said in that same defeated voice, and clapped him on the shoulder before going off to her room. Envy stared at her back. "What's up with her?"
"She doesn't like us leaving Alphonse here alone," Ed replied. "I don't either, but we don't have a choice."
Envy winced. "I'm sorr—"
Ed placed a finger on his lips, smiling gently. "I wasn't accusing you, Envy. Don't worry about it. Get some rest. We're leaving tomorrow."
"But I just woke up—"
The door closed firmly behind Ed. Envy frowned at the door before deciding he should get more sleep after all to get rid of the headache he was quickly developing.
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.:Tsuzuku:.
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A/N: I apologize for all the technical detail. My writing often reflects my current mood (which is why some of my chapters are very mercurial in mood, going from happy to depressing very quickly because I'm writing over a number of days), and I feel very indifferent right now. This also felt like a filler chapter (to me, anyways). Again, I'm sorry. I'll try to get better over the winter break, so please bear with me.