"We need to talk," Envy told Pride in the utter darkness beneath the stony dome Van Hohenheim had transmuted.
But how were you supposed to talk to someone who thought you lesser than a cockroach?
How were you supposed to get through to someone who considered himself superior to pretty much every other being in the whole world and was soundly humiliated by a "mere" human?
How were you supposed to not only make peace with someone who would have gleefully slaughtered you just minutes before, but to also make him see that he was unwittingly standing on the very precipice of doom, ready to throw his life into it for a cause that was never his own?
Envy wished they knew. Lust would have figured out what arguments to use, calculating, piercing and precise like her Ultimate Spear. Wrath would have stood his ground without backing down in the face of his adversary's fury, unafraid and stoic. Greed would have turned that infuriating charm of his up to eleven.
All Envy had was their absolute conviction that they needed to try.
The fading faith that Pride wasn't beyond saving. And the throat-clenching dread that he was.
They pushed their vision to the limit of what the arcane mixture of physiology and alchemy allowed, needing to watch Pride as they spoke. They could barely make out his shape a few feet across, his vessel's small arms folded in front of his chest.
He didn't say a word.
Perhaps... perhaps it was best to start with the truth.
So Envy sighed and sat down cross-legged on the ground, trying to force their lips to move.
"You know…" They began very slowly, "I used to be so jealous of all of you," Envy chuckled quietly. "Lust was more beautiful than me, without ever making any effort about it. Greed always knew how to get everything he wanted. Sloth was stronger and faster than I could ever have hoped to be, no matter what body I made for myself. Wrath had power over the whole country. Even Gluttony… stupid as he was, all he needed was something to eat and to be around Lust, and he never knew what fear, pain or doubt is."
It felt oddly… liberating to give voice to all of that under the comforting blanket of utter darkness. Admitting their weaknesses – first to themselves, then to Van Hohenheim, and now to Pride – was something they had never thought they would ever do. In the darkest, deepest trenches of their mind, they had always been mortified of the very idea of someone… anyone… laying eyes on the most personal and intimate reaches of their heart. Envy's heart was far too ugly to be seen like that. And yet… now that they had put it out in the open, their chest felt lighter than it ever had. It was like a terrible weight had been lifted from them.
Pride hummed and narrowed his eyes at them. "And what about me?" He finally asked.
Envy shrugged, "You were the highest of us all, the only one who had Father's full trust, the only one who got to know everything and order us around."
"You're talking in past tense," Pride observed, and they could feel him measuring them with his haughty gaze in the dark.
"Yeah," Envy cocked their head at him. "It was foolish. Lust was beautiful but that only made her a tool for Father to seduce human pawns. Greed always got what he wanted but at the end he reached too far and it nearly got him killed. It still might," they shrugged, "Sloth is fast and strong but he'd rather sleep through eternity than utilize his gifts. Wrath rules over Amestris but in return he must live in a lie and one day he will grow feeble and old and he'll die just like the lowest of his subjects. Gluttony is carefree, yes, but his hunger makes him a little more than an animal where it counts," they tapped their forehead with a slender finger.
"And you," Envy smirked, "for all the importance of your station, you're more enslaved to Father than all of us combined."
"HOW DARE YOU?!" The air inside the earthy dome rustled lightly as Pride rushed towards Envy, little fists balled viciously.
"I wouldn't do that," Envy gave him a cold stare without moving a muscle to react. "You may need light to make your shadows and use your powers… but I don't. Believe me, Pride, you don't want to put your vessel at risk against me."
Their eldest brother stopped himself and just glared at them, and they could make out how the little boy's face twisted into a furious snarl. He was positively seething. Envy sighed. Making Pride the Arrogant angry went against every instinct they had acquired since their creation. He was the oldest, the most powerful and the most cruel. You didn't disobey Pride, you didn't question Pride and you most certainly did not talk down to Pride.
Envy, however, didn't have the time, patience and desire to coddle his ego. Not after the way he had manhandled them just a little while ago.
He needed to hear this.
And they needed to hope he would actually listen. The two of them were close now, close enough for Envy to see a little bit of his pale face in the darkness.
"Look," Envy said softly, "I'm not trying to antagonize you. I simply want you to see the truth."
"What truth?" Pride bit out.
"I understand why Greed went against Father," Envy smiled sadly. "It's in his very nature, right? They can't both rule over the world, after all. What I don't understand is why are you so loyal to him." Envy shrugged. "All of us, we're bound by our sins, aren't we? We are the vices of Father personified because he expelled us from himself. And you are his pride," Envy stressed on the word, "Shouldn't you be the one who is the most appalled – more so even than Greed – at the prospect of serving someone else? Why are you the one who is his most devoted servant instead?"
Pride was silent for a few moments, blinking slowly and his mouth slightly agape.
And then his expression suddenly changed into the most evil grin that Envy had ever seen on a child's face.
"You seem to mention Greed an awful lot," Pride crooned, "Tell me, Envy, do you rememer the first time he humiliated you?"
Envy's eyes widened. "Shut up," they hissed.
"Yes, I remember it too," Pride stepped closer to them, his big eyes boring into theirs. "Oh? Did you think I didn't know?" The childish giggle that escaped his lips sounded wrong, "Really, Envy? I know all about your sordid, little, incestuous affair. I always have. How long did it take him to throw you away after he used you for the first time? Was it a week? Two? Couldn't have been more than a month," Pride was very close now, his face mere inches from Envy's. His breath tickled their skin. "I saw you. When you found the human girl he chose to lay with instead of you. I watched from the shadows how you cried and sniveled as you disemboweled her."
Envy's fist flew out on its own accord, smashing against't Pride's cheek. The neck of the child-husk snapped back and Pride fell hard on the ground, but he merely laughed as he sat up.
"You're pathetic, Envy," Pride declared. "You presume to lecture me about dignity? You?!" His laughter rang loudly inside the stony dome. "You who always crawled after Greed for the privilege of sucking his cock?"
"Shut up,"Envy growled, bile and hatred and shame washing over their very core, "or I will destroy you. And I won't cry about it."
Pride ignored the threat. "Little Envy the Jealous," he purred, "Thinking that it's all grown up and worthy to teach the rest of the family the error of our ways," Pride snorted contemptuously, "Shall I tell you something else about Greed?"
Envy found themselves unable to speak. They wanted to, they wanted to shout and scream and fight, but they couldn't. All they could do was stare at Pride.
"After you were sent to the North," Pride began, his voice a sadistic drawl. "It occurred to me that you might be too inept to handle even a simple task like recapturing Marcoh. So I went to Greed," their eldest sibling smiled at them, all false sweetness and amity. "I told him that if he wanted to, he was free to go after you and help you. After all, you two always worked together before he left. Do you know what he said?"
Envy swallowed heavily, dreading the inevitable.
"He just laughed and told me that he didn't care, that even if you died, he could easily find another hole to fuck," Pride paused for a moment, giving them a look of such utter condescension that their chest felt tight and raw on the inside. "His words, not mine. You don't mean anything to him, Envy. You never have. You never will."
Envy heard some of the bones inside Pride's vessel shatter when they slammed the child-husk into the wall of the dome. He screamed in pain but Envy was past caring.
The souls that covered the scaly green hide of their true form howled in hatred and anguish as Envy lifted one of their enormous, clawed arms and smashed him into the rock, again. And again, until the stone cracked and small rays of sunlight broke their way through.
A tiny part of Envy, that small, nearly voiceless, rational part of their mind that wasn't consumed by the heedless rage, realized that the morning had dawned over the Kanama woods.
They had wasted their time on Pride.
It didn't matter. Not in that moment of sublime, agonizing hatred.
He was determined to die serving the damned Dwarf?
Well, so fucking be it.
Envy was sick of him. Sick of his arrogance and his cruelty. Sick of his contempt and his disdain. Sick of every single thing he told them, true as it was. He wasn't worth saving.
A deafening, mindless roar tore out of their throat, echoed by the malformed souls that cluttered their skin and they hit him against the rocks again, claws digging cruelly into his vessel.
And the wall finally broke under the assault of their awakened anger.
In a cascade of stones and clouds of dust the two Homunculi tumbled out of the half-pulverized dome. Everything always seemed so much smaller when Envy shook off the masks and allowed their true, disgusting form to break through.
The sun washed over them and Envy immediately felt shadowy blades and sharp tendrils piercing their thick hide, stinging like the bites of a thousand vipers. Pride's big purple eyes were wide with terror and anger as his husk struggled in Envy's grip.
Red lightning screamed around them as Pride slashed at Envy with his shadows, again and again, blood splattering across the earth and smearing the sides of the dome, and thundering roars echoing in the forest.
This was it. Live or die. Kill or be killed. Two immortal monsters, fighting to the death.
Envy slammed Pride's vessel to the ground as black, shadowy claws dug into their neck and spine, splitting skin, severing muscles and hacking bone almost as fast as the Stone inside Envy repaired the injuries.
Envy was running out of energy. Sustaining this form for too long drained their Philosopher's Stone quickly, especially when it also had to constantly heal them up. They could almost feel it inside, soul after soul flickering out, like candles against a raging typhoon. Each soul lost was getting them closer to death.
They growled in agony and hatred, and squeezed. They heard the muffled, high-pitched scream of the child-husk and bared the fangs of their monstrous maw in a victorious snarl.
They never even saw the alchemist until the explosion that erupted around them tore apart half of their huge torso.
The shock wave was so powerful that even their gigantic body could not withstand it. With an echoing screech of pain and dismay Envy fell on their side.
The explosion had severed the long arm that held Pride to the ground and as it began to grow anew, they looked at the place where the sudden attack had come from and their eyes widened.
Kimblee. Holding the Philosopher's Stone they had gotten him between his teeth, almost like a grotesque, red candy.
Gluttony had gotten to Central, and the Dwarf had sent Envy's own pet psychopath, they realized as the hole in their body painfully repaired itself and they tried to crawl away, reassuming the shape of their favorite form.
Coughing up bloody bile, Envy couldn't stop themselves from flinching when they saw the Crimson Alchemist clasping his hands together, the scarlet glow of the transmutation making his pristine white suit seem almost as if it was splattered with blood for a split second as the combustion arrays tattooed on his palms were joined together and triggered another discharge, this one less potent but much more precise.
Fire, grime and gore exploded as the blast tore into Envy and they screamed.
"Such a shame," they vaguely heard Zolf's calm, nonchalant voice as their Stone desperately squeezed every ounce of power it had to painfully knit their body back together.
No, no, not like this, dammit!
They panted as they tried to stand up on shaky legs but they were so weakened and wounded that Kimblee felled them with a single kick, smashing the heel of his elegant shoe into their face and throat.
Kimblee took the Philosopher's Stone out of his mouth and tsked with his tongue, "The powerful, immortal Homunculus who had me destroy Ishval... Brought low by a human. It's a rather disgraceful irony, don't you think?"
Envy tried to speak, but they couldn't get words out, red light sizzling around their head and chest. "What's that?" The Crimson Alchemist frowned curiously as he stalked closer to Envy.
"They..." Envy wheezed, "They're gonna kill you too, you nutcase!" They coughed, their chest feeling raw and their Stone getting weaker and weaker. "Do you think my father cares about you? That Pride does?"
"I don't suppose they do, no," Zolf shrugged as he loomed over Envy. "But if you think I fear death, then you had me pegged just as wrong as the military did. Here's a lesson to you, Homunculus, from a lowly human such as myself. Those who deal in death must always embrace its pursuit. Try to think on it as you scream," his teal eyes were almost aglow with sadistic pleasure as he grinned, knelt over them and pressed his palms against Envy's heaving chest and bare, bloodied stomach.
They tried to fight him off, but he just stepped on their wrist and they couldn't move, and for the first time in their long life, Envy was afraid of a human.
Of the same human who was once nothing but the extension of their malevolence towards his own kind, just as they were Father's.
Even in their state, they could see the irony of it, and couldn't help but wonder if they didn't deserve a demise like this after all.
And then he triggered another explosion, tearing at Envy's insides from within.
And they did scream then, their spine arching and creaking, and their vision lost in a haze of red.
In reality it was over for less than ten seconds, a part of Envy could still tell, but it had felt like an eternity. As their body healed itself, their teary eyes focused on Kimblee, on the man who was going to be the end of them.
He was standing over them, looking huge and ominous like Death itself.
Funny, Kimblee wasn't a tall man, he had never looked imposing or physically frightening. But when he stood over you, staring down at you with those rabid eyes on that serene face... Envy thought that they could taste the terror of all those Ishvalans he had murdered on their orders. Or maybe it was the taste of their own blood when they bit their tongue just moments ago.
It wouldn't take much more, Envy realized. Their Stone felt almost completely exhausted.
"Now," Zolf J. Kimblee whistled almost amicably. "Where were we? Ah, yes. More scr..."
His words were suddenly cut short and a perplexed expression set on his angular face. His chest lurched forward and burst from within. Kimblee opened his mouth but no sound came out.
All Envy could do was stare.
Stare at the hand coated in Kimblee's blood and covered in the grey sheen of the Ultimate Shield. Looking up at it from the ground, Envy could even make out the red Ouroboros sigil etched on its back.
Stare at the human heart still beating faintly until the armored hand flexed its claws and tore it to chunks with a single move of its fingers.
Something shoved from behind at Kimblee, who had died on his feet, and tossed his body aside as if it was nothing but trash.
"G-greed?" Envy whispered, watching as the Ultimate Shield receded from his face, revealing his stupid, handsome features.
Greed.
Greed was here, Greed.
He came for them. Funny, though, he looked afraid. What was he afraid of? Cocky suited him better.
But at least they got to die looking at his face, Envy thought as they lost consciousness.
Third Envy chapter in a row. I tried and I tried to think of a way to shove a Greed chapter somewhere in between, but it just wouldn't work for me - it disrupted the flow and fucked the narrative up. The next one will definitely be his, but those three had to be strung together.
See you next time, where things will get oh-so much worse.
Rinso out!