Envy rolled around on the floor in front of the mirror, arching their back to make it curve and stretching out their strong, white legs. They ran one hand- human, with four fingers and a thumb and all the right parts and places- down their torso, examining the tight muscles in their chest and their flat stomach. Reaching down further to find firm thighs and ambiguous hips, the symbol inked in red there on their flesh, visible underneath the hem of the short (very short) skirt they had designed. They weren't entirely sure about the skirt. Tilting their head back (a round face, hot features, wiry jet-black hair) they changed it, the 'fabric' crackling and wrapping tight around the skin, now resembling a pair of trousers. A very tiny pair of trousers, more like what humans called 'underwear', really. Was that better? They weren't sure.
They flopped onto their side again, rubbing their arms and trying to play with their spine through the skin of the new shape, finding grasp in lean muscle instead. They tore at it, ripping it open to the bone and feeling the incredible pain, and then twisted to see the flesh repair itself in a wave of red lightning. They met their gaze in the mirror. Purple eyes and red lines- that was the same, they would leave it that way- but otherwise a combination of black and white in the colour of their skin and the skimpy clothing they wore. Duality. Like the other homunculi, like they had always wanted.
They tried to pout at themselves, blowing away one strand of spiky hair from their face. Surprisingly, they liked that. They looked cute. Had they ever felt like that before? Had they ever associated such a word with the reflection in the mirror? It was a unique feeling, and not an unpleasant one.
Suddenly, they heard (felt) someone arrive in the hallway outside.
"Envy!"
Lust's soft voice carried smoothly through the closed door to the room where they sat, now tensed, their eyes still on their body in the huge pane of painted glass they had found in an alley above ground. They made a humming sound in reply, to assure her they were listening, not wanting her to come in just yet. Not entirely sure why they didn't want her to come in just yet.
"The birth will be starting soon," she said calmly. "Father wants you to be there, with everyone else."
The birth, the creation of the new one, she meant. The one that would replace Envy as the youngest homunculus.
"Yeah, yeah," they called out to her, the air coming out of their throat high and clear and carrying. "I'll be there soon. I'm just finishing something, okay?"
Their words sounded strange to their ears in the voice they had chosen. Strange, and wonderful. Something they had never heard before. They didn't know if Lust had noticed anything different though, as she acquiesced gently and her presence faded away, slipping off again into the darkness of the tunnels. Oh, well. It wasn't like they were doing it for her, were they? They looked back at themselves, absorbed in the curve of their wide mouth and the sharp ends of their eyes.
Envy had never had a face of their own before.
They remembered the way everyone else had looked at them when they had been created ('born', to use Lust's words), the expressions on everyone's faces. 'What is that?' had said those expressions. Indeed, what were they- a worm, with bulbous eyes and cancerous-looking skin and a swollen maw for latching on; a parasite. Disgusting. All of the other homunculi until then had come out humanoid, with shapely bodies and features, their power and superiority coming through in their figures and voices and skin. Pride was innocently appealing, an angelic child with features like the cherubs on church walls, if said cherubs came from hell instead of heaven. Lust was beautiful beyond belief, her luscious hair and curves turning the heads of every human, male or female, in the street. Greed was handsome as well, devilish and confident, masculine sexuality and a cutting smile. They were all wonderful, they were, and Envy was disgusting.
When they had first starting using their power- the Ultimate Disguise, because they needed to disguise what they really looked like- they had only been able to imitate that which they saw often. They had practically memorized Lust's features and had taken to following her around in her skin, a shadowy doppelgänger with no voice and cold, lizard-like skin. At first she had found it flattering, laughing at them because it was sweet that they were so taken with her. After a while though they had apparently become annoying, because their obsessions were weird and their insecurities tiresome and she had snapped at them and sent them away. The others had never had any patience for them either- no one really wanted to deal with the crybaby Envy, who was too sensitive and too temperamental and had a habit of destroying the things they wanted. The others had always looked at them with something patronizing in their eyes, some veiled revulsion, like they were something scraped off the bottom of a shoe.
Eventually, they had gotten better at mimicking, needing only a quick glance to steal someone's shape. They had gone out in the world above like that, capturing the looks of young and beautiful people and other elegant creatures, tigers and horses and doves. Greed had laughed at them then, saying it was a game, who would Envy pretend to be today? A famous singer, an athlete, a unicorn, what would be wandering about the Underground this time? It had been fun for a little while, but in the end it hadn't helped. No matter how accurate their copy, how striking their choice of subject, it was still only an imitation- a mask of someone else's face to cover their own, cheap and unoriginal. They always wanted to be someone else- everyone else, anyone else- but even when they took a new shape they were still the same inside. Still Envy. They were always Envy, and for a time that fact had hurt so much that they hadn't left their room for months and had been completely useless, spending hours at a time bawling their ugly wormy eyes out, everyone else leaving them to rot in the dark and their own self-hatred. Only ever coming to deliver messages from Father and then leaving, because they were gross and a nuisance and simply the worst.
But though it had taken a long, long time, they had eventually reached a point where it seemed that they didn't have any more tears to cry and it was around that time that Father had announced he would be making another homunculus, and that everyone was going to have to step up from now on and work hard, because the plan was going to really start moving. It would, because Father would be cleansing himself of his laziness, and from then on he would no doubt be very productive. Envy had been curled up, alone on the floor, wondering what they could do with their time if they couldn't work up the strength to cry anymore when Lust had told them that, and then for a while they had been quite conflicted. On one side of things they would no longer be the littlest sibling, no longer have that unique position- and that had scared them, but on the other they would then be an older sibling like the others were, and didn't they always want to be like everyone else?
In the mirror, Envy stuck their tongue out at their reflection and bared their teeth, watching their muscles move as their lips peeled back and their eyes narrowed.
They remembered very clearly what their first moments had been like. After the terrible pain and the striking feeling of loss- after the instant where Father's memories and consciousness had melted away out of reach- they had looked around at the world with their own eyes, seeing the others for the first time and knowing that those others, with their fine clothes and their beautiful forms were their family, as clearly as they had known anything else. They supposed the feeling would be the same for this new one, only this time Envy would be among the family that this new one first saw. They didn't want to be there in a mask, a lie, to have someone's first impression of them be something fake, but they didn't want to appear as their true self, either. And they had been thinking about it for some time, little ideas blooming in the back of their mind, daydreams. It was a conflicting idea perhaps, something no one had told them was possible. They wanted to look as the others did and also not- that was to say, to fit in with the elegant uniform of the homunculi in a way that was distinctly theirs; they didn't want to be Lust anymore, or Greed, but they wanted to be like them, they wanted Envy to be a part of that group, just as worthy and superior as any of the others.
And so they had ended up here, playing with themselves in the mirror, deciding on what they wanted 'Envy' to look like. Not a copy of someone else but a new form, a shape entirely unique to them. They could do that- combining traits from hundreds of bodies they had seen, selecting and modifying their favourite looks, trying to find something that felt right when every other skin they had worn felt like a costume. They had scrapped the concept of ideal beauty almost immediately- they had strived for that too much before, and it had never fixed what they were. It was better, they had decided, to work from what traits they had- inhuman, freakish, bizarre. Shocking. Yes, they liked that idea, they liked the thought of tearing off a mask to reveal something strange and incomprehensible and scandalous and making the humans' puny brains explode. Hence, the revealing clothing and youthful shape. It had taken some time to come up with this- constantly unsure, they had been experimenting for days- but it was surprisingly gratifying. Cute. They were cute. For the first time in a long time they felt happy about something (or as close to happy as they could be, overtop of the constant burning resentment and hatred that sat in the pit of their stomach), and in a weird way almost proud. This was something they had done entirely on their own.
They had a problem with their clothes, though. They liked the skirt, and the shorts, but at the same time they didn't like either. One suggested masculinity, the other femininity, and Envy didn't know which side to pick. They had never considered themself to be either before, the various shapes they had taken being unreflective of their true nature. They weren't sure if they were ready to decide on something like that just yet, or if they would be ready for it ever. They frowned at their reflection, admiring the furrow where their eyebrows met and the downwards turn of their mouth. They lifted their hips into the air, shifting swiftly back and forth between the two designs, trying to settle their feelings. Did it even matter? Surely they didn't have to choose, did they? An idea came to them then as the skirt fluttered into stillness on their thighs, and they grinned. No, they didn't have to use just one.
In another flash of red lightning the skirt disappeared, replaced by a new shape, a combination of the two. When the transformation was complete they stood, evaluating what they saw in their reflection. Someone young and cute, sexless but still sexy, small but strong, with a wildness that recalled their true shape and also importantly, a look recognizable in association with the other homunculi. This was it.
"I, Envy," they said to their reflection in their chosen voice, and then they laughed. This was good, they wanted this. Would it be enough?
…
...no, nothing would ever be enough.
But it was pretty good.
They could feel energy raising from deep within the tunnels, coming from the central chamber. Father was almost ready to begin, no doubt, and they should get going if they wanted to make it on time for the creation of Sloth. Now a genuine excitement bubbled under their new skin- they couldn't wait to show everyone what they had done. I, Envy indeed, they thought. They started for the door and then stopped, something catching their eye in the mirror.
...maybe just one more thing. There wasn't a whole lot of colour in this form, now was there?
The lightning flashed one more time in the mirror and their hair changed in tint, from completely black to a very dark green. So dark in fact, it was almost unnoticeable, a very subtle difference in shade. That was better. That was perfect. Green was their colour, after all, that's what the humans always said. They should keep it, even if just a little. They gave their reflection one last self-satisfied smirk before whipping away into the darkness of the tunnels, enjoying the feeling of the cold ground beneath their feet and the damp air in their lungs.
Time to see what this new one was all about.