FMA Fanfic: Unconditional – Eleven
Unconditional – Eleven.
by arcanewinter. R 4886 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Matters of the state complicate their plans, and Greed meets his worst fear.
These characters do not belong to me. I do not profit from this. [...]
Although their attack on the laboratory had been messy, by the end of it they had done a fair job of controlling the damage. All they had really left behind them was speculation, and amongst the military, speculation was little more than a political tool. The nation’s warlords were quick to formulate theories which painted their competitors in the poorest light, and so Greed and Envy, despite their scrape with alchemy, had little to worry about.
But once the other laboratories fell in startling succession soon afterward, they were not so safe. Indeed, the military was on to them, and had broadcast their crimes to every contraption that could receive the signal. After robbing the labs of their “valuable artifacts,” the perpetrators had demolished the grounds entirely. The uniformity of the destruction, as well as its time line, suggested it was not the work of competing military units. Though they were cautiously presumed to be extinct, it could only be the work of the fabled homunculi.
Except that it wasn’t.
Greed and Envy had been just as shaken as the military when they’d come across the former site of the laboratory they had pillaged on such a minor scale. Ordinarily its state would have meant little to them: attempts for the Stone often led to devastation, and they’d picked their way through fields’ worth of ruins before. But here, there was nothing left to search. The building, right down to its foundation, was simply gone, excised from the ground.
And it was the same with every other laboratory devoting resources toward the Philosopher’s Stone. There had been eight competing facilities: now there were none, and Amestris as a whole had lost tens of leading alchemists and hundreds of soldiers and personnel.
“Who do you think it is?” Envy had murmured to him, overlooking the yawning pit of their last successful theft.
Greed shook his head slowly, sharp eyes now vigilant again. Their days of rest had been so short. “Alchemists. And they should have thought the same thing, but they can’t accept that even one skilled alchemist would rather stand against them.” Blaming the homunculi was cheap, but they were the only scapegoat the military felt was safe.
“I thought alchemists were in the business of transforming things.”
“Creation through destruction,” Greed answered. He smirked faintly. He knew how it worked from–well, from the past.
“What about somewhere else? Other countries? There must be other humans out there still trying for the Stone.”
Greed watched Envy’s eyes as they studied the distant skyline. They had a decent supply for now, but they’d eventually run out. It was inevitable.
Again, Greed shook his head. “Amestris already took their alchemists, remember? They were working here.”
Envy’s mouth tensed in silence. “But in time . . .”
He hazarded a glance to Greed, whose gaze drifted away.
“If we push them.”
Greed closed his eyes.
* * * * *
They’d dispersed their share of stones–more precious now than ever–far and wide across the region to keep them safe from the unidentified attackers. They had considered merely consuming them to eliminate the chance that the stones would be found and destroyed, but they decided against it, despite the temptation. If they should be caught, if they should find themselves on another sealing array, they would lose all they had in them. They needed a store of stones that was safe even from that, waiting for them upon their escape.
Greed smiled faintly. Escape from a sealing array?
He glanced at Envy, who stood with him at the doorway of the station, before he returned his attention to their belongings inside. He knew his hope, his optimism that even in the worst of times, escape was possible, was a product of their partnership. No homunculus had any right or reason to assume that a sealing array would somehow not be the end of him. But Greed had learned otherwise.
“I guess we should move this stuff next?”
Greed frowned sourly. He didn’t want to take the time to move the entirety of his collection as far away as they needed to go, but he also didn’t feel right parting with it all. “Let’s take a break tonight. We’ve done the important part.”
Envy stretched as he considered it, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Come on.” He took a step toward the bed, extending his hand to Greed.
Greed took it with the ease of habit and followed behind him, but suddenly tightened his grip and tugged Envy to him. He paused in the center of the broad space, its tall ceiling still tenuously elevated, before his arms finally circled Envy’s waist.
His eyes rested on Envy’s neck, and his mouth worked to put something into words. “It was nice,” he settled on, finally, glancing up cautiously. “Being able to stay here.”
Envy’s expression remained open. He glanced around him–to the possessions Greed had collected over the past year, to the mound of pillows they’d taken for a bed, to the window he often sat at, to the books he’d stolen to read there. “Yeah,” he answered, his arms draping over Greed’s shoulders. “But they’ll only search for us so far. We won’t be running for long.”
Nodding, Greed lowered his eyes again. He felt Envy’s hand in his hair, bowing his head, and he let Envy rest his chin against him. He couldn’t have tolerated it if anyone had been watching, but it was strangely comforting to feel Envy’s breath in the roots of his hair.
* * *
Greed woke slowly. It wasn’t immediately apparent why: everything was quiet outside the station, and inside, everything was still.
But as Greed sat up, he realized things were too still, too quiet. The perpetual sound of his breathing wasn’t joined by Envy’s. There was no one in the bed beside him. Envy was gone.
For a moment he thought he must be mistaken. The station was packed with a hoard of possessions, and Envy, for known reasons, could be easy to overlook.
But if Envy wasn’t trying to hide from him, he should have been easy to find. Greed stepped outside and circled the station; he peered up and down the fading evidence of the rails and across the ruinous field.
Nothing. No one.
Greed returned to the doorway of the station and stopped. Had the military found them? Had they come across their favored culprits while they slept? No, they would have heard them–Greed would have heard something.
But if not the military . . . Greed’s stomach twisted to think it might even have been the rogue alchemists, looking for the hidden stones, maybe even extending their agenda to the homunculi themselves. It was possible the alchemists weren’t targeting the military at all: the homunculi needed the stones, too, and the alchemists knew that.
But why take Envy and not Greed? Why had Greed been left to sleep?
Greed turned from the station to face the wide view of Central below. He should go out, he should search, but where?
What do I do?
Envy had been with him almost since the day he’d been brought into the world. And from that moment, Envy had been his. To be without him now robbed Greed of his ability to act. It had been decades since Greed had operated with any singular mind.
What do I do?
Greed turned, ramming his claws into the rotting wood of the door frame and pulling a good portion of it out as he leant back against the other side. He should go out. He should start looking, he should march into the military’s headquarters and demand to know where he was, and if they didn’t know, if they really didn’t know, he would focus his vengeance on the alchemists. And just in case–just in case he was overreacting, he would leave Envy a message. Where was the journal?
He pushed himself from the door frame to rifle through the pile of knickknacks near the door, finally closing his hand on the journal and tugging it out, less concerned over its decrepit state now. Now he just needed something to write with–
A dull glint caught his attention, a necklace disturbed where it lay amid the other souvenirs of their time at the station.
Greed’s stomach recognized it before he did. Only after a moment did he understand the cold weight in his gut and why its chill crept up into his chest.
Envy had gone to that house again, where he’d found the necklace, and he had gone alone. Envy knew its significance. He’d gone back.
No.
He tossed the journal aside and backed himself to the wall for its support. There were other reasons Envy might have gone, reasons for Greed not to worry. And Greed could be wrong altogether, there were other reasons the necklace might have surfaced, other reasons Greed would have found it there as though dropped on Envy’s way out the door.
No, no, no.
Against his earnest attempts to be rational, he was shaking. He sat down, more out of necessity than desire. And by the time he heard the footsteps on the gravel outside, he hadn’t moved.
They were Envy’s footsteps. And they weren’t Envy’s footsteps.
He stopped just inside the doorway. He knew Greed was there; Greed could feel his eyes on him. It was a reluctant gaze.
Greed knew before he even looked at him that his eyes would be behind fabricated lenses of glass, and that they would be green.
“So you think you’re human now?” He tried to laugh as the pushed out that word, human, but it gave something away. “Is that it?”
There was no response, only those eyes, and the hesitance, the uncertainty.
Greed rose to his feet, only now realizing he’d had the necklace in his hand the whole time. “Or were you just bored? Because tonight was a hell of a time to play a game like this.”
Still there was no answer, and it seemed like there may never be. He took a step backward. He looked about to leave.
“Envy!”
“Don’t.”
He had stopped, but when he turned to face Greed now, his expression was ruthless. “Don’t ever call me that.”
“Why not?” Greed countered, gritting his teeth. “That’s your name.”
“My name is Maes Hughes,” he bit back, advancing a step toward him. “That is what you will call me.”
Greed’s mental retorts were momentarily halted. There was true menace in his voice–he hadn’t heard that tone since they’d met, and even then, it was fake, it was a show.
“You didn’t remember, did you?” he went on. His mouth twitched as he tried to keep his control. “Who it was who killed me.”
Greed frowned. There was no right answer here. “I thought it was–”
“It was Envy. It wasn’t my wife, for God’s sake, it was Envy!”
“The old one! That has nothing to do with you!”
“It has–” His voice broke. It was a sound Greed had never heard before. He looked as though he would have sloughed off his own skin if he could have. “It has everything to do with me.”
Greed turned away. He couldn’t think. Hughes was a thing of the past; Hughes was just a memory, just like Roy was, but Envy never talked like that. Envy never looked at him that way. No matter what face Envy was wearing, he never pretended like this, when it was just the two of them: not since the night at the brothel, when Envy had sworn never to deceive him again.
So which was it? Had Envy finally gone back on his word? Was he faking it? Or was Envy truly lost in this–was Envy buried beneath it all, silent, dormant, unaware?
Or was there a third explanation, one that hurt less?
“Look,” he said from behind him, “I didn’t plan on this.”
Greed turned only enough to stare at him over his shoulder.
“I went back to the house. I just wanted to see it again before we left.”
The house. Why did he have to remember the house?
He was frowning again, searching the floor, his expression so much more vulnerable than Envy’s ever was.
“You know,” he said quietly, “this would be a lot easier to explain if–”
“If what?” Greed turned toward him now, staring him dead in the face, even if he hated its alterations.
Hughes–if he really had to call him that–finally lifted his gaze. He looked apprehensive, and he should have been, but he met Greed’s eyes, need for need.
“Is Roy in there at all?”
“Does it look like it?” Greed answered, forcing a wide, vicious grin, knowing his eyes contrasted sharply with Hughes’. “This was your goddamned choice, don’t push it on me.”
Hughes looked dejected, but not surprised. “That’s what I’m trying to say. It wasn’t a choice.”
Greed scoffed faintly. He didn’t know who to be angry at, Envy for giving in, or Hughes for not staying dead.
“My daughter was there, Greed.” He gestured toward him as if those words alone should have said everything. “Tonight. In that house, the house I used to live in, where I had a life, and everything every normal human being should want! She was there!”
“You should have taken me with you,” was all Greed could say, though it was really meant for the one who apparently wouldn’t hear him. If he’d just been there, he could have–
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Hughes answered, interrupting his thought. He almost looked sympathetic; Greed only grew colder. “Just seeing her . . . something changed in me.”
Greed winced faintly. He finally looked down to stare at his hands, one of which still held the necklace, the black carbon rising beneath it as though to keep it from truly touching him.
“There used to be this . . . wall, and now I was on the other side of it.”
Greed’s Shield crept over the rest of his hand, teasing at his wrist.
“So what about Envy, then? What happens to Envy?”
Hughes turned his face as though the name were an assault, and maybe Greed wanted it to be.
“Look, I tried. I tried to go back, when I realized it. I tried to flip the switch again and I couldn’t. I thought of you, and–”
“And it wasn’t enough.”
He meant for it to be a question, an inquisition, and yet it fell from him as a statement, simple and true and painful as hell.
He wasn’t enough. This man was standing in front of him telling him that he had reflected on the past thirty years of his life, and it meant nothing. Greed wasn’t enough. He didn’t come first.
He clenched his jaw, twisting his mouth into something less readable. “So, what, then, you’re going to go play house with them now? Have some back-from-the-dead reunion?”
Hughes frowned, but not for the reason Greed was trying for. “I didn’t hear Gracia. I don’t know where she was.”
Greed perked up.
If Hughes never found her, then–
“You didn’t ask her? The other one?”
Hughes looked momentarily terrified. “I could never–Besides, she could have remarried, and–”
Only Envy could ever entertain the notion of returning to the bed of a human wife. Who else among them could live a lie?
“So why don’t I find out?”
Greed tried to look neutral, watching for Hughes’ attention.
“How?”
Greed knew Hughes excelled in research. He’d have found out himself before he ever returned if he weren’t afraid of what he might discover. Greed, on the other hand, was eager.
He shrugged as he passed him in the doorway, trying not to notice his proximity as he dropped the necklace into his hand. “I know people.” He grabbed a pair of sunglasses from the pile near the door. “Apparently.”
He flicked his hand in a wave over his shoulder, unwilling to look back. He set off toward the center of the city.
* * *
It was nearly dawn. The risk increased by the minute, but he wasn’t particularly attuned to risk at the moment.
He smirked bitterly at the irony as he crept deftly across the rooftop beside one wing of the windowed behemoth of Central Headquarters, searching. Just a few hours ago, he’d been preparing to infiltrate this very building to save Envy.
Maybe he was still doing that now.
He leapt from one building to another as he rounded the corner, his eyes still flitting from one brightened window to the next. It was early enough that only a few rooms were lit, and he knew one of them would be hers.
He’d almost reached the other side of the main wing when he finally found her, her hair still turned up and pinned in the same style though the rank on her shoulder was now lieutenant general. He could remember sitting at a desk like that. He could remember her standing just beyond the desk’s edge, ready to obey or oppose him, whichever was necessary.
Sounded like a lousy soldier.
He prepared to leap, and his heart sunk as he glanced over his shoulder for Envy’s nod. He was alone here. No one was watching his back, and no one would care if he didn’t make it home.
So at least he had nothing to lose.
He backed up a little further, then sped toward the edge to fling himself across the broad expanse of the street, Shielded in anticipation of the impact. There was no one to trick the way in for them both.
He grappled with the edge of the roof as he hit it, but at least he’d reached it. The other sides of the building wouldn’t have been as easy.
Her office was a few stories beneath him, but the architecture afforded him a narrow strip of pilaster to grip on his way down.
He soon came down alongside the window. From where he perched, he couldn’t quite see her, but so long as this was the right room (and he was sure it was), being caught prematurely wouldn’t matter too much.
He hoped, anyway. Extending a claw, he reached to perform his usual trick of window glass, but before he could make contact, the latch was turned and the window lifted.
“Please don’t damage my office,” she said, but there was nothing supplicating about it.
Greed was still for a moment of shock, but gritting his teeth, he eventually pulled himself inside and stood. He still bore the Shield to his neck, but she was unimpressed, and merely leveled her gaze at him, waiting.
“You’re really annoying,” was all he could think to say.
She merely gestured to the window, indicating its alternate purpose as an exit, before she sat down again to lift her pen and set it to paper.
Angrily, Greed stepped to the window to shut it. He wasn’t accustomed to insolence from humans. “I need to talk to you!”
She stopped writing, but it was another second or two before she sat back. “Then please sit.”
Still scowling, he strode around her desk and sat down. He felt loosely trapped by the room, by its human things, by its human occupant.
He folded his arms. He slouched. He caught her eye for a second before he found it more comfortable to stare at the front of her desk.
“Envy . . . thinks he’s someone else.”
“Who?”
Greed scowled. “Maes Hughes.”
She paused. “You disagree.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the front of her desk. He could usually stare down anyone, even Envy, but looking at her gave too much away. “Does it matter?”
“I’m sure it matters to him.”
“Look, I just need to know what happened to the chick he married. Where’s she now?”
She set down her pen, and after a few seconds of silence Greed was all but forced to lift his eyes to her.
“You assume that I trust you.”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” He flashed a grin, feeling more himself for a brief moment.
“I’m just a soldier. You’ve killed dozens, why not me?”
Why? Why? Why else? Greed leapt to his feet, now staring her wildly in the eyes. “Because you interest me. Because I can use you, because I’m selfish, and if you think it has anything to do with him, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Him?” Her expression changed subtly. “You remember him?”
“Yeah, I do.” Greed seemed to remember more every night, but it didn’t mean anything, it didn’t mean he was headed down Envy’s path. “From the inside out. And you know what?” He sneered, hoping to stun her, hoping to knock down whatever hopes she had as he leaned in, smooth and cruel. “In the end, this colonel of yours was as selfish as they come. Puts me to shame. Did you really think he was going to save the country?”
But again, she wouldn’t budge. She never flinched. In fact, her eyes had grown colder. “Please calm yourself. You may rest assured that I do not wish him back again for what he’s done. I am genuinely sorry for you that you have come to carry the weight of his memory. And I am sorry that you have found your companion to be a stranger. Your bullying is as unnecessary as it is ineffective.”
Greed stared blankly for a moment. He had been cowed, unforgivably so, and yet he was too busy mulling over her words to grapple further down that road.
So she didn’t prefer the colonel over Greed? She didn’t want him to change?
He sat down again.
“Then why didn’t you kill us when you were ordered to?”
She smiled, or rather, she got as close to it as Greed expected her to. “I was young.”
“And at the funeral? You could have revealed us.”
She paused again. Her silence was as expressive as her words. “Amestris is overrun with people worse than you.”
Greed snorted quietly. “We must be losing our touch.”
“They’re blaming you for the laboratories.”
“We heard. But–”
“You couldn’t have done it; I know. And I believe they know it as well, but they’ve nothing to gain by admitting it.”
Greed sighed. So they’d be hunted again, now, when the military was bigger and more vindictive than ever. Was it better to have one powerful enemy or thousands of troublesome ones?
And on top of that, more important than that: Envy. He might never see Envy again. Whether or not it was really still him underneath, Greed might never have the real Envy back.
“To answer your question . . .”
Shit. Was he that obvious?
“Gracia Hughes passed away nearly two months ago.”
Greed was still.
His gut reaction was relief–glee, even. If she was irretrievable, if Hughes had no hope in that direction, then he might eventually give up. Envy might come back to Greed and forget the whole thing. There was still the girl, but she was a lesser threat. It could go back to normal. Greed and Envy.
But wound around that relief was another response, an alien rival, a sadness that slowly strangled the life out of his infant joy. And it wasn’t grief for himself, but for Hughes. It was empathy. Gracia was dead.
And Greed had to tell him.
He stood. Her eyes followed him, attentive and intelligent as she watched for his reaction. It was precisely why he couldn’t give her one.
He spoke no words of departure. He’d got what he came for. But as he strode almost mechanically to the window, he nodded to her, his only concession.
Lifting open the window, he was out into the world again, his world, moving quickly only to avoid being seen in the harsh dawn.
* * *
He wasn’t sure how he made it all the way to the station, not with the weight he felt in the pit of his stomach as he made the final approach. He could see him sitting on the window sill inside, where Envy used to spend so much of his time. At this point, there was nothing he could do to stall further, and he wondered what had made him come back at all.
Hughes had been watching for him. He left the window to meet him, but he seemed to lose courage, and stopped instead at the doorway. Maybe he could already see it on Greed’s face, but he probably hadn’t guessed the worst.
“Tell me.”
Greed could feel the warmth drain from him, rooting him to the gravel under his feet. He shouldn’t care, he shouldn’t have any stake at all in the words he had to say, but he couldn’t override his dread, his fear of what this meant for the other–the other he knew so well, though indirectly, second-hand.
As the seconds passed, he couldn’t find the heart to say it. He looked Hughes in the eye and merely shook his head, his gaze never leaving him.
Hughes’ expression shifted. Now, now he suspected it.
“Say it.” He’d already reached for the door frame, a portion Greed hadn’t destroyed. “Say it or I won’t believe it.”
Greed wanted to look away, but he found himself unable, as though Hughes’ reaction were more important than life itself.
“She’s dead, Hughes.”
His immediate and audible grief was raw, defenseless. He slumped into the frame of the door and hung his head, his arms brought up around his middle. He was breathing irregularly, long moments of paralyzed anguish cleaved by deep, shaking breaths.
“How?”
Greed froze anew. “I don’t know.” Humans were always dying: he hadn’t considered that the reason might matter this time. “I didn’t ask.”
Hughes didn’t move–not exactly. But his entire body tensed, fingers momentarily straining the wood, a ripple of unrealized transformation passing over him as though he were bristling. “You didn’t think I might want to know?”
“I wasn’t really thinking,” Greed answered, weakly. He knew he was making the situation worse, but he was lost. Grief, especially human grief, was beyond his realm of experience. What else could he do? What else had she told him?
“I know it was two months ago,” he offered.
Now, Hughes finally lifted his head, but Greed immediately wished he hadn’t. He may as well have been hiding Wrath, not Envy.
“You’re not serious.”
He no longer needed the support of the doorway.
Greed took a step back. “That’s what she told me.”
“You mean to tell me that I’ve lain dead to her for thirty years, and I missed her by a few weeks?”
Greed clenched his jaw. So the circumstances were shitty–what was he supposed to do about it? “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Tell me you’re joking!”
“I can’t, it’s the truth!”
“The truth!” Hughes laughed, but it was ugly, and unsettling. “Now, you know the meaning of truth, now, when it’s too late, now, after the lie we’ve been living!”
“That’s not fair!” He was stammering. How was he supposed to defend reality? “We weren’t–”
“I could have been with her all this time, watching our daughter grow up, and instead I was with you, wasting time in some ridiculous fantasy!”
“Wasting time?”
Whatever sympathy Greed had felt left him in an instant. “You think everything me and Envy had–”
“Snap out of it!” Hughes advanced on him like he was prepared to force him. “Greed and Envy aren’t real! You know that.”
Greed was momentarily shocked. He didn’t think words alone could have that effect, but he steeled himself against them, sharpening his tongue. “Take that back.”
“Just drop it, Roy.” Hughes stood face-to-face with him, his eyes dark with condemnation. “Gracia’s gone! And you’re still playing games!”
Games. This was a game?
He’d risked himself to find out information–albeit for his own benefit–and this was a game?
Greed laughed harshly, his alternate defense. He leaned in. “You know what? Fuck you.”
He turned around and started walking. If this was what it would come to, he didn’t need it. Half a day ago it had been fine. It hadn’t taken long to get shitted up at all.
“Roy!” The gravel shifted as Hughes stepped forward, just one pace. “I need you!”
“Go look for him in his god-damned grave,” he called over his shoulder, forcing himself to keep going. “You let me know when you want to see Greed.”
It was difficult to hear over the sound of his own footsteps on the rough stone, but even the growing distance couldn’t stifle the plea: “Don’t go.”
Greed stopped, back still turned. He could hear the pain in his voice, the sincerity, the weakness. Could Greed really blame him for the things he’d said at a time like this? Wouldn’t Greed only regret leaving, if it meant he’d be, for the first time, completely alone?
“Roy.”
Gritting his teeth, Greed kept walking.
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