Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Anti-Existentialism ❯ Chapter 1: Restless ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

By: BHS

Restless

Okay. Yeah. Next chapter. This is where things start happening. I do so hope you like it.

Warnings: Cursing, not-quite-but-almost violence.

Disclaimer: We don't own FMA.

***

Chapter 1: Restless

Envy was restless. He couldn't sleep.

Well, he didn't normally sleep. However, he'd recently taken to napping for a few hours every evening, and had, for some reason, found that he kept awakening for no reason, and that sometimes he couldn't get to sleep at all. He felt restless and edgy and trapped in his own skin.

Right then, he was pacing about his room like a caged tiger, his fierce eyes darting about the room with the feral intensity of a wild animal (a tiger, perhaps?). He wrung his hands and let out a small growl every time he turned. The Homunculus seemed irritated at the very world for its heinous crime of existing.

Outside the door were people talking in low voices. They thought that he couldn't hear them, but he had sharp ears, and he heard things that other people didn't even know were being said.

“Is he still in there?” asked Greed's voice. A louder growl rumbled in Envy's throat, but he forced it down and listened.

“Yes…” That was Lust. She sounded concerned. If any of them really cared about him, at all, it was Lust. The sound of her voice brought a small, tense smile to his face.

“What's his problem?” Greed again, sounding flippant and irreverent. Envy felt anger welling up inside of him. He was the oldest, and the most powerful, and Greed needed to recognize that! Pushing down the urge to run out and punish the sin of avarice, Envy once more aimed his hearing towards the conversation in the hall.

“Ah, he's probably just having one of his fits…” That was Pride. Envy didn't much like him. Always smug, he was, the bastard…

“Envy doesn't have fits, Pride,” Lust and Greed said scathingly, almost in unison. Envy allowed himself to smirk at that. Although none of them got along very well with the others, none of them got along at all with Pride. He was pompous and stupid and smug and always thought he knew everything, and he reported everything directly back to their master, which was irritating. All of them complained about Hohenheim from time to time; Pride seemed to think that they shouldn't just because he couldn't let himself do the same, and took great joy in reporting every little mishap and bit of disobedience any one of them committed back to the man.

It wasn't like Hohenheim ever did anything, of course, but it was the principle of the thing.

Envy jerked his mind away from such thoughts in time to hear Wrath's voice asking, “Mommy, why is everyone talking about Envy? Is something wrong with him?”

“We don't know, honey,” replied Sloth in the familiar soothing tones she used for Wrath. “That's why we're talking.”

“Oh…”

“He's fine. He's just having one of those little fits.”

“Dammit, Pride!” It was, surprisingly enough, Greed who had first snapped. “Listen very carefully to the words I am saying: Envy. Does. Not. Have. Fits. Okay? If he did, Father would have scrapped him long ago!”

There was a sullen silence that Envy figured came from Pride, and shocked silence from the rest of the group.

`Oh, dear gods,' his mind moaned, `you're hearing silences! Maybe you should get some sleep.'

Envy coldly reminded his mind that he was a Homunculus, and therefore did not sleep, before realizing that he was talking to himself. Sighing, he flopped down—upside down—on his bed, with his head hanging over the edge. Nevermind that only Wrath did that. He was bored and felt weird, and he could lie on the bed whatever damn way he wanted!

The conversation continued, but all he heard were distant mutterings. The world faded a bit at the edges, and then went soft and black and fuzzy, and then he couldn't hear anything.

***

In the living room of the house that they Homunculi lived in, six of them sat in cold, tense, worried silence.

Lust and Greed were glaring at Pride, who simply gazed back with his unfathomable smile.

Wrath clung to Sloth, looking worried and scared and confused, while Sloth attempted to comfort the young boy.

Gluttony sat on the floor by Lust's feet, his finger in his mouth and a confused look on his face.

“What's going on?” Wrath finally burst out, nearly hysterical. “Why are you all acting like this? What's wrong with Envy? What's going on?”

Everyone tried very hard not to stare at the little boy as he burst into frightened tears and buried his head in Sloth's stomach.

“There, there, puppy…” she whispered, rubbing her hand in soothing circles on his back. “It's alright. Everyone's just been a little tense lately.”

“Why?” the boy sobbed.

“…” No one answered, everyone except Gluttony and Pride and, of course, Wrath choosing instead to look away in varying degrees of guilt.

“Mommy?” Wrath asked after a little. “What's happening?”

Greed sighed and rolled his eyes. “There's a war about to break out,” he answered gruffly, drawing surprised and vaguely scandalized looks from everyone. “Hey, don't look at me like that! Everyone knows it! Hell, we started it! And Envy always gets like that before there's major blood-shed. You've heard of the thing in Ishbal, right?”

Wrath nodded.

“Well, he paced around the outside of the /house/ for three solid days before that one.”

There was terrified silence from Wrath. A door slowly creaked open and foot-steps padded down the hall, but no one paid the noises any mind. It was only Envy.

About five seconds later, it actually registered. That was Envy!

“Hey, the beast comes out of its cage!” Greed jokingly called out. The man standing in the doorway merely glared coldly at him and walked through the living room and out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

“Envy--!” Lust started to call out as the door was being opened. She stopped when the `slam' stopped echoing.

Another long silence ensued, and then Sloth asked quietly, “How long was he in his room this time?”

“Oh, about a week…” Greed had started off with a casual tone, but he trailed off when it hit him. “Oh, fuck…” he moaned, letting his head drop into his hands. “It was three days for the rebellion…”

The silence this time was worried.

“Mommy?” Wrath whispered, understanding even at his young age that this was not a moment for loud conversation. “Mommy, are bad things going to happen?”

“I don't know, puppy,” Sloth was forced to reply. “I don't know.”

***

Envy walked through the streets of the city, scratching at his arms. They itched.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he chanted as he walked, each curse punctuated by an abrupt, complete change of form. He shifted and morphed into something new with each step, with the result that he was never actually one person, but always a hybrid of two or three people.

Right then, Envy didn't care if someone caught him. In fact, he was almost hoping that a member of the military would see him; at least it would take the edge off the inexplicable blood-lust that had suddenly welled up inside of him.

There were little voices in his head. That wasn't odd, they were always there. The little voices were his only friends. But these little voices were different; they were the voices that the others kept locked up because they were bad. These little voices told him to hurt people and kill people and do bad things.

Envy liked doing bad things. It was much funner than doing good things. But Father would yell at him if he did bad things, and he didn't want that, because he'd end up looking like an idiot in front of all the other Sins, which was inexcusable.

The shape-changes came more rapidly now. He wasn't even recognizable as a person; just a mass of ever-changing features that didn't fit together on one body. He was tall and fat and thin and short and old and young and everything else in between.

People weren't even trying to act like they weren't staring anymore. Passing cars, wagons, and buggies stopped dead, causing several accidents. Children clung to their mother's skirts, mothers covered their children's eyes, and husbands ushered their wives and children along, imploring them to hurry.

Envy grinned. He was the Monster Envy, the one that people feared and hated and secretly had nightmares about. There was a great big hungry beast inside of him, a monster, the Monster, and it fed on those nightmares and turned them into its reality. It was the shape-shifter, and it was what its victims most feared.

Right then, the Monster was locked away in Envy's mind, but it wanted to break loose. Envy scratched at his arms, noting that the flesh was starting to become scaly and hard, which was worrisome. He didn't want to become the Monster in the middle of a crowded city street, no matter how fun it would be.

A sudden sight distracted him from the Monster: a long blonde braid and a suit of armor that stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

Grinning a fangy, Monstrous grin, Envy strode towards his quarry. His violet-grey lasers widened slowly, his pupils shrank, and his body began to twist and change into its normal slim, lithe form, the pretty little killing machine that Father had always fancied.

“Well, well,” the Homunculus murmured when he caught up with his prey, his voice cracking slightly as the Monster fought for release, “if it isn't FullMidget and his walking trash-can. How are you?”

~Yes, I shall cut off there. I am most sorry. But it is, how do you say…plot-device. Yes.

~Eternally yours

PS: Oh yes, I did lie, didn't I? I said we were going to go on to happier things…I am sorry.

PPS: I do realize that Envy was only asleep for about five minutes. Of course, didn't it earlier mention that he was having trouble sleeping? If you're a creature that doesn't normally sleep at all and are suffering from insomnia, five minutes is a blessing.

***

Well…I redid it a bit. I hope it's better. I'm going to be submitting this to that big fanfiction contest that's replacing the Big Ass Fanfiction Contest….I'm going to enter it under the `Drama' genre. Anyway…I really, really, really need constructive criticism! Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings or make me mad, because I will love you for being helpful! Also, hold this up to the highest standard you possibly can, okay? Thank you all!