II. Dismiss
-—Envy can't help but think they aren't prepared.
Envy's never understood humans, their relationships and feelings and dreams.
His Father, of course, tells them to hate humans. They are, after all, weak; he is a Homunculus, superior in every possible way.
And for nearly two hundred years, he's swallowed this, swallowed it easily, because what does he know? He is stronger, smarter, better than them all. And for centuries, he's done his best to ignore the emptiness eating away at his insides.
(He mentions it once, to Lust, the one he trusts most. Pride would destroy him in an instant; Sloth wouldn't understand; Greed is already gone...)
(Sometimes, he wishes his older brother were still here. He thinks maybe Greed would understand; he thinks maybe this loneliness, combined with some sense of adventure, was what convinced him to leave.)
Lust had shushed him immediately, though her eyes had flashed with something he couldn't recognize. "Keep it to yourself," she had told him in an undertone, looking around furtively. Father or Pride would surely kill them for even thinking of having this conversation. "If you want to stay alive, don't say anything about it."
(He realizes, later, that she had not rebuked him for feeling this—this jealousy (how apt)—of the human race. She hadn't dismissed this feeling as insanity or a defect in his creation. Maybe she feels the same, sometimes, in the small, dark corners of her mind.)
He wants to scream and rage and tear those humans apart. He's perfect and beautiful and better, but he still yearns for the things they take for granted—the things he can never have. And what makes him the most angry, he thinks, is that they have no idea.
He hides his rage and pain and confusion well, though, as his Father's plans reach their climax. He's spent plenty of time with the humans they're planning to kill, has spent decades on reconnaissance missions and infiltration work. He has not failed his Father, not once, because he knows the consequences will be dire.
(How he wants to kill Mustang for destroying Lust! How he wants to kill the Fullmetal boy and his brother for being so irritatingly human! But he restrains himself, for they are precious sacrifices in his Father's plan.)
And after all those years with the humans—no matter how detached from them he truly was—he, inevitably, has learned things about him. How they live, how they operate. And he hates them for it, hates how they have friends and lovers and ambitions and dreams.
(He hates them all, but would give anything to have the same...because his relationships with his siblings—strenuous at best—have never been anywhere close to what those insignificant ants have.)
So, if for no other reason, he hopes they win. He hopes the humans are annihilated, destroyed, absorbed into his Father's life. Because anything—anything—is better than the furious envy burning in what should be his heart.
But he's observed and listened and learned these past two hundred years, and he knows that these humans are not as weak as his "family" assumes. They work together in a way he and his siblings never have; they look out for each other, will die for each other, will do anything for those they care about.
They're strong—if not in body, then in mind—and it terrifies him, the way they, as Homunculi (superior, always always superior), may be underestimating these creatures.
Because he doesn't think he'll be able to stand it if these humans—weak and strong and totally, totally oblivious to his pain—defeat them in this war.
