Number of words: 2,481
Published date: August 7, 2013
Began chapter: July 30, 2013
Finished chapter: August 7, 2013
Chapter 26: Unerasable Sin
Inspired by Alphonse's suggestion that Greed and Envy bickered because they had some history she didn't know about, and with her curiosity piqued, Ms. Bradley took the opportunity, when it presented itself, to ask the one who seemed most likely to answer.
"Lust, dear, could you spare a moment?"
"What is it?"
"Do you know why those two dislike each other so much?"
The second female in the household remembered all too clearly what had been the start of her brothers' antagonism.
"..."
It was sometime in the 1760s. Two crests of blood had been carved, the first in the northwest and the second in the southeast and they were momentarily taking a break, as it were, to wait for the next exploitable target to present itself. Father was busy putting his mind to the carving of the Nationwide Transmutation Circle and it seemed, though he did not tell them outright, that they would be getting a new sibling within the next decade or so. As it stood, Envy was the baby in the family until a new sibling showed up. (Lust hoped the next Homunculus would be female, but of course she had no say in the matter.)
She did not remember anything about the day, either before or after, except that she and Greed had been leaving Father's room when Envy met them in the passageway.
Of course, he didn't look like Envy. Or at least not the Envy persona that would eventually become his default body and face, for their young shape-shifting sibling had only been alive for twenty-odd years and had not yet come up with a unique image for himself. Neither had the awkwardly large monster fully mastered his abilities; unable as of yet to distinguish and memorize human features without prolonged scrutiny, Envy had been resigned to wearing his sister's or Greed's face to go up to the surface in order to study the humans and practice maintaining his disguise.
When he rounded the bend, he was dressed in Greed's body and his arm and front were covered in blood.
For the briefest of moments, Lust panicked. He looked hurt – badly – and it was only when she made to start forward, to try to help him somehow and he responded by looking confused by the action, that she realized how ridiculous it was for her to have thought he was injured. Any injury would have healed and the blood couldn't possibly be his. Quickly, she adopted a stony expression, feigning indifference.
Greed spoke first. "What the hell happened to you?"
Envy – with Greed's sharp-toothed grin – lifted the corners of his lips at them, though he seemed a little shaky.
"I," he declared, "just killed my first human."
That explained all the blood, then.
Greed-Envy seemed to be hoping that they would be impressed, but Lust wasn't sure how to react. She couldn't care less about the murdered human, but killing humans was not something she had ever enjoyed or been proud of. Rather, it was a distasteful but necessary task, much like cleaning the toilet or disposing of the carcasses of vermin that invaded their subterranean home.
She was saved from having to respond by the shadows that suddenly twitched to life, coiling and spiraling around the ceiling and walls of the tunnel. One narrow red eye took form on the floor at Envy's feet.
Lust stifled a sigh. Pride didn't need to manifest his shadows so... theatrically... but her eldest brother, true to his namesake, liked to present himself as omnipresent and omniscient and he reveled in the fear he produced, especially in Envy, who was still not used to their eldest brother and who had been taught some painful lessons early on about respect.
"What happened?" Pride demanded coldly. The source of his grating voice was impossible to pinpoint, coming ambiguously from the shadows and echoing off the walls. The eye turned to study Envy and narrowed as it scrutinized him.
Envy wasn't the best storyteller, but eventually, with unnecessary details and some backtracking, the story came out.
He had been wandering around in the streets, studying the humans like he was supposed to, concentrating on keeping Greed's form and adopting his older brother's swagger, when a woman stopped him in the middle of the road.
The woman, Envy said, had clearly recognized him, going so far as to greet him by name. (Greed's name, naturally, not his own.) Speaking quickly and with a lot of slurring so that Envy had a hard time following what she said, several times touching him on the arm and drawing closer than the usual distance held among acquaintances, she had insisted that Envy join her at one of the local bars and, without waiting for an answer, had looped her arm in his and pulled him down the street.
If Envy had been more confident, he might have tried harder to go along with the charade. As it was, the youngest Homunculus had been in a complete panic. He knew nothing about this human, had heard nothing of her involvement in any of the Homunculi's plans, and so had no idea what to do. He had barely mastered impersonating a person's appearance; Envy had no doubt that he would quickly be found out once they stopped and started talking. He tried several times to extricate himself while acting like the cool guy that Greed was, throwing out the phrases "babe" and "doll" that he had heard his brother use before, casually saying that he'd love to go with her but was unfortunately busy.
His efforts had no effect.
Even in its earliest years, there had been good and bad areas in Central City and apparently the woman favoured the latter kind, for Envy found that she was leading him onto one of the darker, seedier streets of the city. The sun had set a few hours before, but rather than sleep, the humans in the area were noisier than most were during the day. A drunken man was yelling a few streets over. The sound of glass breaking on the cobblestones was accompanied by hearty cursing. Music blared from several buildings, the light from their windows inviting when compared to how dark the streets were with only half of the street lamps operational. A man and woman ran past them, holding hands and giggling conspiratorially. They might have been married, but probably not to each other.
In his later years, Envy would have no problem working his way through such a place, masking disgust and discomfort with some unmemorable human face as he went about his work (typically of gathering information from soldiers who preferred the earthy, laid-back atmosphere despite the risk to their positions or reputation). But that would be a long time coming, and in the unfamiliar closeness of rowdy humans, Envy wanted only to escape, feeling an indescribable hatred for the species that brought bile to the back of his throat completely apart from the unpleasant stench of unwashed bodies and trash in the alleyways.
His telling was confusing, but apparently the strange female had eventually pulled him into a bar that was moderately crowded and, even worse, where several other humans greeted him by name when he came through the door. And after being clapped on the back twice, called over to pull up a chair at the table, and offered a mug of spirits 'on the house', Envy couldn't bear to even pretend to be Greed.
Greed, charismatic and charming, would have loved – indeed, would have soaked up – the attention. He would have sauntered in, grinning and returning the greetings of each and every person by name, then immediately would have joined the group for a round of gambling or a drinking game. And before the end of the night (or more accurately, before daybreak of the following morning), he probably would have ended up with not one but two women snuggled under his arms and both more than happy to share.
That would have been the real Greed, but Envy was not his brother.
Greed-Envy did not return the greetings, did not smile in response to the invitations, didn't even look at the mug that was thrust into his hands. Wordlessly, he jerked his arm out of the woman's grasp (though he still had the presence of mind not to hurt her), turned on his heel, and strode right back out the doors. He heard more than one exclamation of disappointment that he wasn't staying (Lust thought she saw a flicker of… pain?... on her brother's face when he said this) and the woman said something that sounded like an apology to the revellers. Envy didn't hear much else, for he took full advantage of Greed's long legs, hoping to make it to the nearest sewer entrance so that he could return to their hideout without any more hassle, but just as he was nearing familiar territory, there was the ominous sound of running footsteps behind him. The woman had caught up.
Envy couldn't recall the exact things she said. Whoever she was, she seemed to not need to breathe, for there was no break in her tirade about how he had embarrassed her and what was his problem? did he have a stick shoved up his ass or something? she'd never seen him act like that before and didn't he like her, she'd just wanted to have a fun time-
"Just shut up, bitch!" Greed-Envy snarled. "I don't have any clue who you are, so just mind your own damn business and leave me alone!"
It succeeded in shutting her up, but failed to make her leave. Drunkenly, insulted, she drew herself up, hand rising to retaliate, but then, rather than slapping him, her head tilted in confusion.
"There's… something wrong… with your face," she said, pointing at him.
And now Envy could feel it: that his disguise had slipped without his noticing. His eyes had reverted back to their ordinary left black and purple and right red multi-pupils and some of his flesh had started to change colour. His voice too, he noticed, had not matched Greed's.
When he told them, he was clearly embarrassed and even cringed a bit from Pride's shadows (for Pride was especially unforgiving of slip-ups), explaining defensively that they could hardly expect him to have maintained Greed's appearance perfectly in such a stressful situation.
None of them confirmed one way or the other that the excuse was an acceptable one, so he continued on with the story, now adding a bit of boasting to what he considered the good part.
The gig was up and he had been found out. Acting quickly, Envy did the first thing that came to mind: He had grabbed her (She was a lot smaller than Greed and so didn't have the strength to struggle), clamped a hand over her mouth (which was turning lumpy and green even as he did so), and roughly dragged her into the nearest dark alleyway, where he mimicked all three of his older siblings' powers by changing his arm into a sharp point and stabbing the woman through the chest. Then he had hightailed it to the closest tunnel, changing his skin and clothing to black and shrinking Greed's body into something only loosely human in shape to avoid being seen.
"Fool," Pride declared when Envy finished. "The human was clearly drunk. She would not have remembered by morning and no one would have believed her anyway. You are only lucky that she was no one important. What would you do if it turned out you'd killed someone we needed? Would you be bragging then?"
Greed-Envy glowered at the eye on the floor.
"Killing is easy," Pride continued. "The skill is in killing the right humans. If you are still so lacking, perhaps I will suggest to Father that you are not ready to go up above yet..."
"No!" Envy protested loudly. "I don't want to stay down here anymore! It wasn't my fault, Pride! What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to know that Greed had friends?"
Greed-Envy looked up to glare at his brother and Pride's shadows swirled around so that his eye was on the wall, closer to Greed's eye level. Lust turned too and was surprised to see that Greed, normally so cool and calm, looked furious.
"… That's right," Pride mused after a moment's consideration, ignoring the Sin's angry expression. "Greed, I assume you knew the human Envy was talking about?"
"Her name was Kristen," he replied instantly. "Her name was Kristen and the bar is called the Dancing Tap and you UGLY FREAK, you killed one of my friends!"
Everything happened fast. Greed lunged forward for his mirror image's throat. Greed-Envy, either by choice or because he wasn't concentrating, countered with an arm that was more monster than human. Pride's shadows snapped forward and Greed's Ultimate Shield came up, sending the shadows bouncing off only to have them return and snake around his arms and legs instead.
"You shouldn't have killed her!" he ranted, struggling against Pride purely from reflex, not with any actual hope of breaking free. "You didn't need to kill her! How am I supposed to go back to the bar now? You screwed up big time, you little shi-"
"Envy screwed up?" Pride asked incredulously. "What have you been doing, Greed? Making friends with humans? You are aware that we will eventually kill every worm that calls itself human, aren't you?"
"I don't care that she was my friend, I care that she was MINE. They're all mine and he took away something that belonged to me!"
"Perhaps I should inform Father that you've been befriending humans," Pride warned menacingly, but Greed didn't seem to care.
"I'm GREED," he stated. "I want money. I want women. I want status and glory and everything else in this world, and if I want to make pawns out of some humans, you think you or dear Daddy can stop me?"
Lust's memories ended there. She did not remember how Pride had responded or if he had even bothered to respond and she did not remember if there had been anything else to the confrontation. She remembered that Greed had been moody for several days (disconcerting because it was so unlike him). And she remembered that Envy, who had up until that point admired Greed, seemed both hurt and indignant when Greed did not forgive Envy his mistake, instead being curt and sometimes downright mean to the youngest Homunculus. Neither of them brought up the incident again, but their relationship had gone downhill from then on and had never recovered.
"... No," Lust answered eventually. "They have just always been at odds."
It wasn't a story for Ms. Bradley to know, and it wasn't Lust's place to divulge it.
Author's Notes:
Anniversary: I don't know what time zones everyone is reading from, but I stayed up late to get this posted, because today marks the one-year anniversary of when I published the first chapter of Phylactery. Woo-hoo! I know this chapter doesn't exactly fit chronologically, but it was shorter than other chapters I could have written and since it's a flashback, it's not so important where I put it. I estimate being about a quarter of the way through the story. I hope everyone is still enjoying themselves. Even if I'm working now and so am slower at updating, I'm still enjoying myself.
"Lust hoped the next Homunculus would be female": Since Sloth is the next Homunculus created after Envy, I made this comment as a reference to the 2003 series' Sloth (who, for those who haven't watched it, was a woman).
