The burnt-down house was nothing more than a shell, twisted pieces of black plastic and half-melted glass under his bare feet. It hurt when they dug into his bare feet, but he welcomed the pain. It kept him on the edge and alert. It would be so easy to imagine that this had once been his home…
He bent down, crouching among the ashes. Scooping a few in his hand, he wondered what this house had looked like when Edward and Alphonse had lived here. He didn't even know what the tin can had looked like before.
Soon, Lust or Sloth or Wrath would be sent to find him, and they would find him. Homunculi could see through his disguises, and Dante just knew him too well anyway. He hated those brothers. Hated how they had a childhood to remember. Hated how they could throw away those memories, those most precious possessions, by burning them. He envied Ed's light, his radiance, his strength. He envied his freedom – he was no dog of the military, he was a wolf wearing a collar that he could shake off at any time.
He dropped the ashes, but some still clung to his hands. Like the pieces of memory that haunted him the few times he had tried to sleep. He never slept now, hating the dreams of his own hand reaching forward, but limp and misshapen, reaching for a tall figure that was getting smaller every minute, his weak voice calling out, where are you going, father?
"Hey! What are you doing here? This is Ed's hou –" The sound of an unfamiliar voice, a human girl's, made Envy lash out. His fist connected with the side of her face as he span around, slamming her against the rusting metal furnace. There was a snap. Her head lolled to the side, blue eyes staring unseeingly at him, blonde hair falling past her shoulders.
Envy knelt in front of her. "You remember too. You remember what it's like to be a child. You remember innocence. Did you still have it?"
She was already dead, but he sharpened his fingers and drew a bloody line across her face, marring her beauty. He dragged the five blades across her face again, driving them into her big blue eyes, the eyes that had never seen what he had. Would never see them again.
"There. You should thank me. Now you'll keep your innocence forever."