FMA Fanfic: Unconditional – Nine
Unconditional – Nine.
by arcanewinter. R 2349 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed learns the dangers of boredom and the value of at least one human emotion.
These characters do not belong to me. I do not profit from this. [...]
The weeks went by more slowly now that their largest threat was just a troublesome memory. They still had to be careful–Greed especially–thanks to Pride’s revelation of what they were, but for the most part, they had little to worry about, and little to do.
It wasn’t that they minded. With the night still young through the tall, broken windows, Greed rolled off of Envy with a satisfied pant. He felt no inclination toward pursuing anything else, especially when Envy’s sin kept him close at his side and Greed could indulge himself in any of the corporeal sensations this possession afforded him.
But that wasn’t to say they didn’t, from time to time, get bored.
Greed closed his eyes, listening to Envy flip leisurely through the pages of the journal they kept near the pile of pillows they used as a bed. They didn’t keep it close because they needed it often anymore: it was there only to avoid losing it among the hoard of vases, radios, paintings, and other furniture Greed frequently managed to squirrel inside the station before Envy caught him. There were even a few new-fangled televisions lying around, despite the fact that Greed never used them. He just had them, and that was what mattered.
“Where’s this at?” Envy asked, the silence parting around his words. Greed did his best to ignore him, wanting instead just to enjoy their command of the space, but in another few seconds he could feel the air moving around his face, pages flapping gently from where Envy dangled the open journal above him.
Greed took hold of it just to spare himself the annoyance, glaring lazily at his partner before his eyes found the unnamed address scrawled across one corner of the page. He frowned, uninterested.
“That’s residential, isn’t it?”
“But why would she have cared?”
“Beats me. Crazy bitch.” Greed let the journal fall to the cushions and rolled to his side. He was no longer forced to deal with that woman’s decisions and reasoning, and he wouldn’t do it by choice.
For a moment he thought he’d won. Envy settled into the cushions behind him, and as Greed’s eyes lazily followed the landscape of his material possessions, he felt Envy’s breath falling evenly on the back of his neck.
Greed was happy. He’d been hesitant to label this feeling at all, but it was occurring too often now to continue unnamed. To want for nothing . . . He never thought he of all people would ever understand the phrase.
He’d nearly fallen asleep again when Envy abruptly withdrew from him, and he felt the pillows shift as he stood. “Let’s go see it.”
“Why,” Greed muttered irritably, pushing himself up enough to glower at him. “What kind of lab are you expecting to find in a house?”
“I don’t know what to expect,” he answered, looking far too pleased by the idea. “That’s why we’re going.” He reached forward to haul Greed to his feet.
“Fine,” Greed muttered, relenting only with the thought of pilfering something new, because it certainly had nothing to do with the near-smile on Envy’s face.
* * *
There was nothing unique about the house. No tragedy had apparently occurred here, no scar of alchemy, no indication that whatever had been of interest at this address had lasted the years since it was written on the page.
It wasn’t vacant, but it was as silent as sleeping humans could manage, and their greatest obstacle on entering through a side window was merely the oddity of it. For many years they had kept mostly to themselves, trespassing only on factories and scientific facilities pushed so far underground that thievery and occasional violence seemed as natural as the rust on the locks.
But this, Greed confirmed as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness inside, was just some human’s dwelling, probably the best-kept on the block.
If there was anywhere they didn’t belong, it was here.
Envy seemed to disagree. He was already passing through the room, a shadow himself, skirting the large table and its chairs and disappearing through a large doorway into the bowels of the place. Though mildly alarmed, Greed found him again quickly enough when a small lamp illuminated the desk it sat on, but not much else.
Greed motioned to him sternly as he heard coughing from upstairs, and then the shifting of weight on the floorboards above them. But the staircase was far across the room, and the light of the lamp didn’t reach it.
A woman’s voice punctuated the reality of their trespassing. “I have your medicine right here, mom,” Greed heard, clearly enough though the voice was dampened by all the comforts of home.
There was more coughing, more soothing words, more shifting of floorboards, but eventually all was quiet again, and Greed caught Envy’s eyes briefly in an attempt to underline his carelessness.
Envy acknowledged him only barely. “There must be some reason,” he murmured, and though still reticent, Greed too had to wonder why Dante would have thought this address should be noted. Then again, it was likely whoever was here before was here no longer, but as long as they’d made the trip, they might as well be thorough. And there was a lot here Greed might want to have for himself.
Leaving Envy at the desk, leafing through what looked like letters and notebooks, Greed wandered over to the mantle, following it to shelves in the wall which held up a number of possible treasures. There seemed to be one photograph for every other bauble in the crowded space, most of them of a woman and her child at any number of ages, most likely the pair asleep upstairs.
Humans were so sentimental. Greed smirked at the collection, finding nothing yet that was worth carrying back with them. If there was really any clue here as to the historical importance of the place, it was probably in the basement.
“We should head downstairs,” he suggested, glancing over his shoulder to find Envy staring at a necklace in the light of the lamp, not hearing him.
Greed was about to repeat himself when his eye caught another shelf of photographs, separate from the others. Though they were all faded with age under the already-dim light, he could make out a third figure where the others had only two. They must have been taken almost 40 years ago, Greed guessed–maybe something had happened here.
Greed reached for one of them to bring it out from the shadow he cast over it, but as soon as the light revealed its contents, he froze.
“Envy,” he whispered, the name leaving him as involuntarily as his breath.
The room had turned cold. He heard Envy turn at the desk at the sound of his name, and as Greed looked up at him, he caught the waning remnants of green in Envy’s eyes. A flared reflection marked the edges of eyeglasses as they disappeared, and a human likeness vanished to pallor again.
“Greed?”
The transformation lacked the graceful orchestration he’d come to expect from him. He was oblivious to it.
“Did you find something?”
Envy hadn’t done it on purpose.
“Greed?”
Envy hadn’t even seen the photograph–he shouldn’t have known what he used to look like.
Shoving the picture frame back where he’d found it, Greed closed the distance between them in two paces and kept going, Envy’s arm in his grip. “We have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Greed found himself mumbling over his rapidly beating heart, trying to keep his voice from rising. He wasn’t sure Envy could hear him, but maybe it was better he didn’t. Greed was in no state to check his words before they fell out of his mouth, even if he had a feeling he was repeating the lines, whatever they were.
Greed didn’t look back for anything. Carpeting gave way to a wooden porch, which became hard concrete under his escape. He’d have dragged Envy all the way back to the station if Envy hadn’t finally twisted free of his grip a block down the street. “What is the matter with you? What did you find?”
Greed stared at him, saying nothing for a moment though his mouth was attempting to.
Your house, I found your house. And the people upstairs–
“Nothing,” he finally said, an answer too simple for his continued distress. “I just–humans.”
“It’s a little late to start that phobia now, don’t you think?” Envy looked him over sourly, rubbing his arm where Greed had gripped it. It wasn’t until Greed saw the healing claw marks that he even realized he’d made them. “What was it really?”
Frustrated, Greed turned from him, shoving his hands in his pockets and beginning to walk. “Nothing,” he growled, but he knew the more he repeated it, the more Envy would pry, and Greed just wanted to run from the whole thing. But he had to tell him something: if Envy found out, he’d never look back, he’d never stop trying to–
“I thought I heard them coming,” he blurted out. He kept walking. Envy was the greatest deceiver there was–Greed just had to lie enough to sidestep his curiosity. He didn’t have to buy it, he just had to let it go. Greed could do this.
“And what were they gonna do, Greed? Scream a little?” Envy hurried up to his side, and in an attempt to act normal, Greed glared at him.
“I can’t hide like you can.”
Envy smirked, his eyes leaving Greed only a moment before they returned in a sidelong critique. “You don’t need to hide with a Shield like yours.”
“You know what I mean.”
Envy slipped in front of him, forcing him to stop his march. Greed looked up at him, purposefully meeting his gaze, trying to forget the other man’s face.
“I don’t,” Envy corrected him.
Greed’s mask was beginning to fail him. But he couldn’t tell him. He could never tell him.
“But . . .” Envy sniffed derisively, looking to the side. “I guess it was a little stuffy in there.”
With one last, skeptical appraisal, Envy turned from him, and Greed let go a careful sigh of relief, though his heart continued to pound in his chest as he followed Envy’s nimble route to the city’s edge.
* * *
Their silence persisted into the station, but they were often silent, and Greed tried not to look too much into it. After all, Envy’s attitude had returned to normal, and he was no longer watching Greed for clues as to what he’d seen in the house.
Greed’s breathing had also returned somewhat to normal, though it would be a long time before he could dismiss the encounter.
He sat down on the cushions again and let his eyes wander. Envy had lit an antique lantern and now sat cradled by the warped corners of the window sill. He had picked up a book, something Greed hadn’t developed an appreciation for, and seemed occupied.
Aside from Envy, the only matter of interest in the room was the journal. It still lay open, one page marked only by that address.
What did it mean? Why had Dante made note of the place? What was it hiding; how was it connected? She seemed only to pay attention to alchemists and the tragedies they’d sacrifice a nation to undo. Was the man in the photographs such an alchemist? Or did she have something to do with his death, as well as his part in contributing to Envy?
Greed frowned further now.
The first time Greed ever saw Envy, he demanded his real form. Despite the time that had passed, Greed couldn’t bury the intensity of that desire, even though he’d gotten what he wanted.
Greed had asked for Envy. This Envy. Greed had known what he should look like. And that meant–
Greed flipped the journal away from him so that it closed, hiding its secrets. The address on that page was a siren, beckoning them both to drown, and Greed knew he was the only one between them who really knew it. He would have torn it out of the journal entirely if it wouldn’t have drawn Envy’s attention to it.
Flopping to his side, he folded his arms, eyes closed though the darkness already hid much from him. He listened to Envy turning the book’s pages, and as the familiarity of the scene settled over him, the image of the photograph flashed in his mind with less and less frequency.
By the time Envy finally extinguished the lantern and lay down close behind him, Greed’s memory had managed to replace the man’s likeness with his.
“Envy?” he murmured, his voice barely altering the stillness.
“Hm?” Envy had draped his arm over Greed’s side, his hand finding bare skin beneath the clothes.
“Are you–”
Greed’s voice halted. He frowned at his own struggle, mouth set tight against the word. But he had to know. He had to know if he even had reason to worry, if there was really any threat at all.
He began again, his voice even lower, his face warm against the bed. “Are you happy?”
In the silence his face burned hotter, and while it probably only lasted a second or two, Greed had stuffed a lifetime of agony into its space. He let Envy roll him to his back, but he couldn’t look at him, not until he knew the answer.
“Of course I am,” he said.
Greed turned his head. He meant only to meet his eyes, but he found himself reaching, and before he knew it, he’d pulled Envy down into an embrace that would have crushed a human, and he didn’t let go.
Envy wheezed in a sort of laughter, but he didn’t pull away–he did just the opposite of pulling away, and Greed was satisfied. Envy was his. No one would take him.
No one.