Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Duty
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist - Bluebird's Illusion
Genre: Dark-ish, continuation, shounen-ai
Topic(s)/Theme(s): "The Duty of Siblings"
Pairing(s): Envy/Pride
Word Count: 819
Sometimes he could almost forget that they were siblings. Well, half-siblings, but it didn't really count, not when there were four hundred-odd years and a few attempted murders between them. Sometimes it seemed like the only things they had in common were a shared resurrectionist, who happened to have provided half of each of their genes, and the ability to cause mass destruction.
But sometimes it was a little harder to forget, like when he came home from one of Father's "missions" a little bloodied (though little of it was actually his and what was his was from wounds long since healed) and Pride went into a quietly overprotective fuss, which generally included a lot of head shaking, almost stern looks, and a few heavy sighs. The blond might be a few centuries younger than him, but he'd lost none of his overreactive elder brother traits that had to have surely nearly driven the youngest Elric out of his mind. Envy had to wonder sometimes if he'd always been like that or if everything that had happened to him in the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone had turned him this way. Either of those he wouldn't doubt in the least, given the blond's predilection for - what was the term? - motherhenning.
Who knew how the other thought, after all? Not him, that was for sure. Sometimes, just occasionally, he wondered what went on in that mind of his, but asking, as had been proven, only led to more blank than normal expressions, with the confused tilted head tossed in from time to time for good measure, which was almost as annoying as the damned sighing.
Barely managing to hold back a growl, he swatted at the other's hands as they continued to seek out any spot that might be injured. "I'm not hurt! Even if I had been, it would be healed by now!" he ground out.
Large golden eyes stared at him for a long moment. "...you're sure?" he finally got out after what felt like a short eternity or three.
"Of course I'm sure. Don't be more stupid than normal."
Pride just looked at him for several long minutes, like if he waited long enough, Envy would cave and admit being hurt. Finally another sigh escaped him. "Then it's... someone else's blood?"
"Yeah." The blond opened his mouth, and he could just
see what was about to come out. "Yes, I'm sure."
"...really sure?" He had to gape. It really wasn't like Pride to push matter so; that was more of an Edward-thing, after all. "They... might have..."
There was a voice laughing in the back of his head - that happened to sound rather like Lust - laughing as he half-sighed and half-growled. "I'm perfectly all right, Pride. Every drop of blood on me belongs to someone else." Sometimes it was just easier to coddle the blond and appease his hyperactive 'elder' sibling instincts, even if sometimes it made him feel ill.
Without prompting, for once, Pride sat down straddling him, arms coming around his body in what he'd heard described as a 'hug' before. He wasn't too sure he liked it; it made something inside him tighten in a way that had little to do with arousal and nothing to do with reshaping his body. "I... don't want... anything to happen to you... Envy. I... don't want... to lose you..." there was a long pause, long even for Pride's halting speech patterns "...too."
There was that weird twisting sensation again, sharper this time. However, he chose to ignore it for the moment, tend to the other homunculus, and mention it to Father if needs be later. He caught the blond by the high neck of his shirt and maneuvered him where he wanted him. "I'm not going anywhere. What's the fun in that,
o-chibi-san?" Was that a faint twitch of a frown or a trick of the fading light? Later. "We're stuck together for a while yet."
"...I'm... glad... to hear that... Envy." That was certainly a near beginning to a smile or perhaps even a grin there.
If the remnants of Edward were indeed reemerging from Pride, this could spell out worlds of trouble for all of them, not in the least of which being himself and Father. Perhaps this did bear passing on, but not just yet. He wanted to see where it went first. Pride was his, after all, his lover and his brother, so it was only right that he pursued this matter first himself before turning it over to Hohenheim. No sense letting all his time spent on the other go to waste.
And it had nothing to do with large golden eyes that were starting to sparkle a bit more than they had been, or little speeches that were starting to get a little longer, or that nebulous twisting in his gut. None of that mattered at all.
posted by Apollymi @ 12:42 PM
Friday, November 04, 2005
Tabula Rasa
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist - Bluebird's Illusion
Genre: Dark-ish, continuation, shounen-ai
Topic(s)/Theme(s): "Thing left behind"
Pairing(s): Envy/Pride
Word Count: 247
Pride gave new meaning to the term '
tabula rasa'. In a million ways, half of them literal, he was a complete blank slate. The blond had apparently abandoned his memories - and was obviously completely at peace with that arrangement. They swamped back up to engulf him from time to time, but never without impetus; they were always triggered by some external stimulus.
Excepting those sporadic attacks of visions from his human life, the blond might as well be a blank piece of paper on which he could inscribe whatever he wanted. What he told Pride to do, he did. Where he told Pride to go, he went. And for the most part, who he told Pride to kill, he slew without any hint of emotion.
Going from those blank golden eyes, it was sometimes easy to forget who Pride had once been. Moments where he stopped to wait on a 'I'm not short' or a 'Who are you calling' rant were becoming fewer and farther between. It was even easier to forget when the blond didn't rise to the '
o-chibi-san' cracks he'd so enjoyed taking.
He had watched Pride emerge from the remnants of Edward. He had watched him struggle to form thoughts and opinions that were his own, not those given to him at his creation and since then. Pride was very much a work in progress, one that it would take him years to perfect.
And he'd thought life was going to be dull.
posted by Apollymi @ 10:28 PM
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Family
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist - Bluebird's Illusion
Genre: Stand-alone, slight angst
Topic(s)/Theme(s): "Homecoming (Visiting One's Parents)"
Pairing(s): Envy/Pride
Word Count: 291
Sometimes it surprised him how much Pride disliked Hohenheim. Not that he ever said a word about it, but
he could tell from the silence the levels of uncomfortable their father made the blond.
A visit from or to Hohenheim was tantamount to a family reunion... where one person never made a sound beyond the occasional noise of agreement or opposition. And he wouldn't even do that much if the prompting question came from their father.
He despised the man to no end, but he still found something to force out whenever he was around. Pride, for some reason, would clamp his mouth shut and keep Envy between himself and their father when it was possible; when it wasn't, he cringed at every touch and remained completely quiet.
Not that Pride was exactly talkative at any point in time, but he was rarely this taciturn. Despite what some of the others might think, he spent the most time with the blond, as in almost all the time; he knew there was something very like a language to the blond's silences. While Pride might not have the widest range of emotions he'd ever seen - and wasn't
that an understatement! - he did a few here and there. Apparently, Hohenheim set off something wrong in one of them because the silence he projected in the older man's presence was distinctly uncomfortable.
But as long as they had to keep having these little homecomings, there wasn't much he could do except put up with Pride's antics around their father and let the blond cling to him day and night the entire time they were around the man - and usually a good week or so afterwards. It wasn't
too much of a hardship.
posted by Apollymi @ 9:08 PM
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Silence
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist - Bluebird's Illusion
Genre: Dark-ish, continuation, shounen-ai
Topic(s)/Theme(s): "A Silence"
Pairing(s): Envy/Pride
Word Count: 283
He didn't like it when Envy was quiet. Silence from Envy never led to good things, he'd learned early on. The last time Envy had been quiet like this, Lust had ended up with pink hair and Gluttony... Well, it hadn't been pretty.
He especially didn't like it when Envy was quiet because of him. Sometimes he wondered if he shouldn't just stop speaking all together, at times when he'd opened his mouth and the wrong thing came out, but no, that would just upset the other homunculus as much - and sometimes more than - his occasional vocal blunders.
"...Envy?" Not a word. In fact, hardly so much as a blink. "...I'm sorry, Envy..." Still nothing. He felt his own face twitch, and he moved to kneel at the other's feet. "...I'm... really sorry?"
Finally he got some slight acknowledgement: a sneer and a muttered question: a sneer and a muttered question: "Do you even know what you're sorry for, o-chibi-san?"
A frown might have crossed his face, but he couldn't be sure. Sometimes he really hated that name, but never enough to complain about it. "I..." What had he done again? It never took a lot to set off his volatile lover, but for a pout of this magnitude... Oh yes, now he remembered. "I... should not have said... that name, that... that person looked like R... that guy.... I'm sorry...?"
"You really are a piece of work, Pride."
He almost breathed a sigh of relief, crawling up to drop his head in Envy's lap, his favored position. "...Thank you, Envy..."
"Shut up."
He let his eyes slide closed. He might have even smiled against Envy's stomach, but he doubted it.
posted by Apollymi @ 9:13 PM
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Omoide (Memory)
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist - Bluebird's Illusion
Genre: Dark-ish, continuation
Topic(s)/Theme(s): "Memory Loss", "Rest one's head on a person's lap"
Pairing(s): Envy/Pride
Word Count: 432
He was all right for months, even years, at the time, then something triggered in that blond brain of his, and he wound up a silently sobbing mess on the floor. He couldn't be talked and he didn't seem to notice anything going on around him or even to him, so usually he just sat back and let him go. This time, though, he knew what had set the other off, and he was vaguely (okay, maybe a little more than vaguely) interested in seeing what happened.
Pride was the opposite of him. He never wanted to forget what had happened during his short human life, while Pride had done his level best to block out all memories of his life as Edward Elric. That was where the blond's problems lay. Every so often, something pricked those buried memories, and they came rushing back up to envelope him.
Today, for instance, was a particularly bad attack. It was pure happenstance, but they had seen a blond-haired young man. Even he could admit that, from the back, the guy resembled the youngest Elric. What was his name: 'Al'? And that had set Pride off in the fit he was now in, rocking silently back and forth on his heels as tears streamed down his face.
He sat a few feet away, watching in abject fascination. He could almost see the blond homunculus examine each memory that floated up then pack it away in that part of his mind where they all hid till the next breakdown.
Once it would have brought him the greatest thrill to watch Edward Elric broken like this, especially if it could have been by his hand. Pride wasn't Ed, though, or at least not enough to count. Pride was... Pride. And damn it, he'd been around the little blond nitwit too long; he was starting to sound like him!
Finally Pride seemed to bring himself out of it. Watching the blond come back to himself was almost as odd as watching him lose it. Gold eyes cast around desperately till they landed on him. "Envy... You're here..."
"Where else was I going to be?" he shot back.
The other pulled himself to his hands and knees and half-crawled, half-dragged himself over, only to collapse again, his head in Envy's lap, blank golden eyes slipping closed. If Pride was a cat, he'd be purring, he thought to himself.
"...Thank you... for being here..."
This time, he was the silent one, save a soft scoffing noise, as he petted Pride as if he was the animal he sometimes acted like.
posted by Apollymi @ 7:26 PM
Name: Apollymi
