[Edward x Envy; NC-17] It Ends With Swords And Knives Character/Series: Edward Elric; Envy; Fullmetal Alchemist Rating: NC-17 Notes/Warnings: Post-series AU; dark psychological themes, implied snuff, violent and graphic descriptions. Ironically, the rating is more for the violence than the smut, and this is a fma_fuh_q fic. This figures, somehow. Title is a reference to a Tears For Fears song. Standard disclaimers apply, don't own, purely for enjoyment, no money made, love for the creators, don't sue, etc. Music:Dead Is The New Alive - Emilie Autumn YSI link, if it expires, lemme know and I'll reupload it. Megaupload is what I usually use, and it decided it didn't like this song for some reason, so feh on it. Title: It Ends With Swords and Knives Author:yuuo Word Count: 3938 Summary:The first time he died, it'd hurt. Original LJ Post Date: Sept 28, 2006 @ Chaotic_Library
A quick taste of the poison A quick twist of the knife When the obsession with death- The obsession with death becomes a way of life -"Dead is the New Alive"; Emilie Autumn
The first time he died, it'd hurt. It'd been quick, but not quick enough; he had not died the moment the arm had pierced his chest, a numbed shock followed quickly by an unbelievable pain that blossomed out from the center of his torso. He could feel the faint twitches and spasms along his muscles as his brain began misfiring signals along neurons, shutting down bit by bit. He was still alive when he was dropped onto the floor, could feel the warm sticky wetness of his own blood as it pooled under him, clung to his hair and neck, soaked his clothes.
His heart had beat furiously against his busted rib cage, trying to keep blood circulating, blood that he was losing, then slowed down as it lost oxygen, as energy left every muscle in his body. Tears stung at the corner of his eyes as his throat closed up, desperately trying to draw in a breath and nothing happening in response but cries of pain where his lungs were ripped, exposed to air, the very muscle that controlled his breathing completely gone, torn and left a wet mess underneath him.
His death had not been fast enough to be considered merciful.
The first one, anyway.
They'd all been caught up in the reaction, brought in front of the Gate, sinners before the judge, and the doors to Hell opened up hungrily, taking in Alphonse's sacrifice, its black hands sliding over Edward, caressing and building and weaving and breathing a life he didn't want back into his dead corpse. Bone and organ and tissue knitted themselves back together, sending shocks of pain along every nerve as they did. An indescribable warmth slid over him, into him, down his throat and pooled hotly in his chest and Alphonse disappeared.
Envy slipped away quietly, sneaked through the Gate to find his creator that had been banished to the other side. Dante tried to escape.
Edward did not let her.
"Give him back! Here's your exchange, give him back!"
Red covered his vision, and another jolt of pain ripped out from the center of his chest, along every limb, and then things went cold, and then dark.
---
Death had been cold for him. He'd felt it creeping up over months, felt his teeth rot from his mouth, his lungs growing weaker and weaker, air coming more painfully with each breath. His body had betrayed him at every turn, slowly shut down, even as his mind became frantic, sanity slipping through his grasp like a broken hourglass.
He'd sped it along at every turn, refused to let go of his dream, refused to try to prolong the suffering. He would die, he knew it; Death's icy fingers played along his spine and whispered coldly in his ears for days. He would not give the bitch the satisfaction of having enough time, enough hours of his lucidity to laugh at him, to tell him smugly that she'd told him so. He would force it quickly, on his own terms.
He'd grown cold around the edges, while the center of him burned hot from the pain, struggled against the death that was taking over his body.
He'd spent the last few days in his bed, convulsions seizing his body, breath like fire in his lungs, every bit of his body shutting down piece by piece and haunted by images and sounds that only existed in his mind, black hands and wide eyes and smiles all laughing and reaching for him.
Ironically, it was being pulled back from the cold silence of death that had hurt more than dying.
He'd been misshapen and in such pain that his first death had seemed merciful when breath entered his body again, and he'd cried, or tried to, pitiful, guttural wails that wracked his body and made the exposed nerves misfire and jump, chemical-electric signals bouncing against each other and confusing and shutting down neurons.
He was dying again- brought back to life only to die again.
The hot warmth of the stones against his malformed tongue, against the sharp teeth that lined what passed for a mouth had been mercy, sweet and bitter all at once, and he'd taken it greedily. The heat spread throughout his body, mending and correcting the shape of him, returning him to a parody of humanity.
He'd spent the first week once he'd come back to himself wanting to die all over again when he'd realized his father had brought him back and then left, and it was the woman who'd wanted him dead that had fixed him.
---
Desperate to die, desperate to live, desperate to stop feeling stop thinking stop being-
He wanted to die.
He wanted to die and he couldn't. There was a bitter irony there. The harder he tried, the more he tried to collapse in on himself, to grow cold with death, the hotter he burned, the brighter he shone, until even his father couldn't stand to be near him, had to leave before he was scalded and burned away by the intensity of it.
He'd tried everything he could think of to die, to stop having to carry the burden of life in a world that had turned insane, an alien and foreign planet, a place without his sun, his air, his gravity. Every time, that same heat from the Gate had pooled into his chest and kept him alive, healed the damage he'd done to himself.
Even appeals to the Gate had been met with silence.
He could feel his death creeping up on him again, slow and quiet, feel the mechanics of his own body coughing and sputtering as fuel that was simply not there anymore burned itself, fumes that choked him as he would shift forms to slip into the town quietly, still searching, drawn by the promise of life, by the promise of a chance. There was life, life he wanted, life he'd taken once before, life that drew him like a moth to flame, caught by the nearly inescapable gravity of him.
Edward had been cheated of his death, cheated of the silence, the lack of pain that he'd slipped into. He tried to demand it back at every turn. He simply did not want to live in a world without Al, a world that didn't make sense, a void where he was left robbed of life, and yet denied death.
Purgatory, isn't that what they called that?
How fucking appropriate.
He'd been the one to give him death the first time, the one that had killed him, dropped him into the abyss that he'd been ultimately dragged back out of, the darkness still clinging to his skin like a rot. The smell of it was rich on him, acetone and achingly sweet to Envy, the delicious scent of rebirth that brushed away the cold, dulled the pain of death that crawled under his skin like poison. A drug he couldn't say no to.
Where better to go for death than the one who'd given it before? There was no one this time to bring him back, no misguided little brother clinging to a corpse- (look at what you did to me look at this broken broken fucking broken lost why why why did you do it why did you leave me alone?!). He could smell death on him, a sickly sweet perfume that he longed to wear, to feel on his skin.
Beautiful fucking irony, dichotomy, paradox, whatever word felt appropriate, two parts of a whole, both had what the other wanted and couldn't have, both of them covetous to each other. He felt life on his skin, tasted it as he bit into willing flesh, animalistic growling in the back of his throat as he ran his tongue along the blood that welled, revealing skin that had already healed underneath.
"I know The illness behind the image you create I know The tedious need to turn all you love into hate You poor pathetic paranoid Is it just me or do you secretly enjoy it?" -"I Know Where You Sleep"; Emilie Autumn
The second time he'd died had been an accident. He'd seen some boys- children old enough to know better, certainly- using a stray kitten as target practice and he'd chased after them, despite his roommate's attempts to stop him, yelling obscenities at them. They'd run across the street in a frantic attempt to get away from the 'crazy foreigner' and barely avoided getting hit by a car.
Edward hadn't been so lucky.
The car had plowed into him, and his legs had snapped at the sudden impact. His body has smacked soundly against the windshield, cracking it under his weight, the sharp edges scratching his skin and the fabric of his clothes as he'd rolled and skirted up over the roof.
The tires had screeched loudly as the car skidded to a stop, and the momentum dropped him off the back of the car and onto the street with a dull thump and a sharp crack of his skull on the pavement.
He'd sat up and walked away, to the confusion of the driver and spectators, not to mention his roommate who'd stood helplessly on the sidewalk and watched.
To his own confusion, too.
"You knew!" he shrieked wildly, grabbing his father by the shirt collar and yanking him down to stare him in the eye, anger burning hotly in his eyes.
The older man sighed and tried to pull away, found himself caught by an iron grip. "I didn't," he told him. "I was afraid of it, though."
"You didn't tell me this?! Didn't warn me? I died today and I'm still here! Again! How many times is that gonna happen before it stops?!" he howled in response, shoving Hohenheim away in frustration.
Hohenheim stumbled back from the force, smacked the table and fell to the floor with a loud clatter. He stared up at his son quietly, then sighed. "I don't know, Edward."
---
The second time he'd died, it'd been slow. It'd taken almost a month, the tiny handful of red stones in his blood struggling to keep up with the abuse he put his body through as he relentlessly searched, crossed the country, never stopping to drink, to eat, to rest, forcing energy from the stones that his body would not normally be able to give. He searched, he yearned, he needed him back.
His body had finally grown too weak for him to continue, and he'd hidden himself away from the daylight, hiding in the dark alleys, desperately hungry, for nourishment that food, not the scraps he scrounged nor the generous portions he stole, simply couldn't give him.
He needed the stones to live now.
Finally, months- (was it weeks? days? he couldn't be sure) -later, the woman finally had found him, smugly smiled as she held out her hand, offering the red stones that he so desperately craved.
That was when he'd accepted that the only thing that still lived was the monster named Envy.
"Are you quite done with this silliness?" Her voice was smooth as silk, but it grated his brain, sent crazy signals along his synapses that made him want to lash out, to grab her throat and squeeze until she stopped breathing, and this time she would not cheat death, would not escape to continue to live, her soul intact in a foreign body.
He couldn't perform alchemy anymore though, not even the simplest transmutations he'd had mastered since the childhood of his former life, the sun that had cast the shadow he'd become- red stones were most certainly out of his ability to create. Only she could make them for him.
That bitch held him on a leash that shone with crystallized blood, and they both knew it.
He snarled in reply, but obediently nodded and greedily yanked the stones from her hand when they were finally offered.
He'd been left, abandoned to Hell's cruelest mistress.
He wished he'd been allowed to die the first time.
---
Some part of his mind that was still bitterly aware, broken under the frantic desperation that had taken control of his thoughts and emotions, found it utterly hilarious that a way of describing an orgasm was 'la petite mort'- the little death. Hilarious in that ironic sort of way that one either found to be amusing, or else it'd cause one to completely break down in hysterics. That part of his mind was too tired to break down into hysterics, so amusement it was.
It was purely animalistic, one of the most primal parts of a living human being's nature. And that's all it was- there was no 'making love' or even 'having sex' involved, or whatever watered down term people used to try to make it sound nicer than it was. It was raw, animal fucking, a wild matching of heartbeats, skin slick against skin, teeth and tongue and claws, like two wolves fighting for dominance.
In many ways, it was the same as his death; nerves fired strange signals, his breath would become hot and pained in his chest, and blood would drain away from his brain, leaving him light-headed and dizzy, and there was that brief moment, that silence where everything fell away as he came hard- all over the bed, the floor, wherever they were- he could feel it under his skin, hot and sticky, and he could almost believe it was his blood, and he was dying again.
That moment always passed though, and once again, he felt himself dragged up from the abyss, and anger would flash white-hot behind the cold, dull sense of silence he'd reached for, brushed his fingers against and then lost.
And he'd turn on him.
He always made a point of suffocating him, quite literally stealing his breath away from him when he fucked him, the gold-haired 'perfect' homunculus dead-eyed and silent beneath him, letting him scrabble and claw at him, desperate to feed off of the life force that even in those moments radiated and burned. He'd crush his windpipe, or snap his neck, hearing the break of bone and the tear of soft tissue, and it'd make his head spin with delight as a mantra of 'mineminemine' would race through his head- his toy, his life, his death, his.
No matter how hard he tried to go cold, no matter how many times he died, let himself be killed as he was fucked, it didn't matter.
It never fucking mattered, did it?
He'd flash brilliant hot again, life returning in a rush of heat in the center of his chest and something in his mind would crack, snap all over again, though that same part of him that was so amused at the irony of his situation would always wonder what was left to crack, what was left to fall apart in the tangled webwork in his mind, and he'd turn on him, shoving away from the dark-haired sin that had killed him and would turn, facing him.
Long, gold-skinned fingers would wrap tightly around a pale throat and tooth and lip would clash. A perfectly formed right hand would tangle in dark hair and pull, hard enough to rip out chunks of it as he'd take control, take over, and Envy would be pushed to the floor, snarling and yowling like a wounded bobcat, a crazy banshee screaming in death, and Edward would take him, would fuck him raw until neither could move, the scent of sex and blood and sweat so intermingled that it was impossible to tell which smell was from which source.
In there, was the life, when the sun would become angry, wake up from the winter and scald him with summer. There was that deliciously sweet taste of blood, of life sliding hot down Envy's throat as he bit back too hard, drawing blood from Edward's lip. Every inch of Edward was bright in his awareness, the tensing of muscles, tight under his skin, hair brushing against his face as he thrust, his cock hard inside of him, ripping and tearing at sensitive flesh as he thrust too hard, too wild, desperate and frantic, and every muscle, every nerve in his body screamed in a familiar pain, rebelling and embracing and needing and hating all mixed up into one blur of sensation.
For someone that had been so cold for so long, it felt like coming back to life, a brief moment of that inexplicable something that humans enjoyed, took for granted.
Nobody here took that feeling for granted.
"He's standing on the threshold, Caught in fiery anger, And hurled into the furnace He'll curse the place. He's torn in all directions, And the screen is still flickering, Waiting for the flames to break." -"Wearing the Inside Out"; Pink Floyd
Maybe Purgatory wasn't quite right. Hell was merely separation from God, wasn't it?
That's what this was then.
Even after nearly a year, a long year where he felt his sanity slowly slipping away from him, that was still the worst part. That absence, that need- he yearned for his brother, his god, his life. For as much as he tried to die, tried to fade away, it was life he wanted back.
He wanted it back to kill it so it would finally end.
That was the beautiful irony of it, really. Love, somewhere along the line, had tangled itself up with hatred, resentment and anger bleeding over and tainting it, staining it dark.
He and his father had never been interested in the Church's teachings as he'd grown up. His mother, however, had retained a morbid fascination with the dying cult's mythologies, and he'd unfortunately absorbed some of the lessons and stories over the years, mostly after his death when he'd be left with long years of quiet boredom, frustration simmering low in his belly, twisting and melding with the growing hatred that fed off the hurt, festering and growing into something that consumed him. Like poison.
His favorite story had been of Lucifer, the brightest star in the heavens, who had loved God so much, craved him so much that he sought to be like him, and was cast away into the darkest depths of hell, severed completely from the source of his obsession, his delight and his torment.
He could relate, really.
He needed too much. And it was slowly eating away at him, destroying him from the inside out, how much he needed, needed his brother, needed to die, needed to live, needed to make his creator pay for the hell he'd been abandoned to (how could you don't you see didn't you know we learned that lesson why did you put me through this you knew better you knew you knewyouknewyouknew-!) needed to... to rest. To pay. To live and breathe and die and sleep and he was tired of it all.
(You owe me my death. You owe me.)
---
The last time he died was remarkably quiet. Quick and merciful. For once.
The final time he died, he hadn't been expecting it. It'd crept up behind him, slipped in underneath his carefully laid plans, and caught him off-guard. He was supposed to be the only one to walk away from what he planned alive. But the verdict had been laid down by a rhadamanthine judge. There was mercy in that much, at least.
His stones were running dangerously low- he didn't dare risk shifting and looking for Edward himself. If he couldn't find the younger homunculus, then he'd be stuck, trapped and would die, and of all the ways to go, that was not one he wanted. And Edward hadn't come up to the castle he hid himself in.
Abandoned. Again. Wasn't that what alchemy was about? What life was? It circled and flowed, it always came back around.
Huh. So death abided by the same rules.
The easy part had been finding his father, and talking him into helping him- "You owe him his death."
"The way Alphonse owes you yours?"
He'd smelled the younger homonculus there, smelled the blood, rich with life, with energy, and had silently watched him finish his work, serpentine lips curling back over sharp teeth, and then with a crackle of energy, he shifted, one last time, down to a face unaccustomed to him, a familiar stranger's face that no longer felt like his own. "Waiting for me?"
The hardest part had been having to recut himself every few seconds to keep up with his body's regeneration. It was a large circle, after all, and slowly forming it from blood when the wounds kept healing up was tedious work. But it'd gotten done, and the blood reflected an eerie red in the dim light.
"Just calling in a debt," the younger man had replied enigmatically, watching with jawline tensed as his murderer stepped into view, carefully mindful of the lines and symbols spelled out in blood on the floor.
Idiot. He couldn't do alchemy, anymore than Envy could.
"Just like that."
Hohenheim had sighed, wiped his fingers against his eyes under his glasses, and fixed his former son with a tired look. "And what will you do if he denies you that?"
His lips had curled up in a smile that didn't come anywhere close to pleasant. "I'll make him give it to me. That's not your business though, old man. Fact is, you owe him this."
Behind him, a clap echoed against the walls and he started, turned and-
He shuddered as the stones finally gave up the last of their power, the last few meager souls that his body had been jealously hoarding, clinging to as a lifeline-
And then it was finally silent.
The doors of the Gate had opened with a shuddering groan, creaking on the hinges, and Edward had whooped in triumph, smug even as the gates of Hell had greedily accepted the offering, black hands sliding along the three of them, pulling them in.
He almost didn't notice the prickly sensation at the back of his neck, where the bright red ouroborous had been seared into his neck at his rebirth, didn't pay attention as the skin there began to burn, too wrapped up in a single-minded focus, one solitary thought-
Al.
The thought made the seal burn more and he finally stopped, halted his trek through the insanity of the Gate, hand snapping up to rub over the flesh irritably.
His fingers came away slick and sticky with blood.
Actually, it wasn't quite silence, not right away- a dull awareness lingered, some strange sense of wholeness within the Gate as bits of his body broke down and what passed for a soul rejoined the darkness inside that incomprehensible hell.
Enough for him to watch with some detached interest as Edward finally realized that the Ourobouros on his neck had never actually been an Ourobouros at all-
What the-?
-but a blood seal.
He wanted to talk, wanted to ask him if he'd forgotten. Al had been attached to the Stone. Where did he think Al had gone when he'd used the Stone to resurrect his brother?
Looked like even in death, even as the Gate pulled apart the brothers and returned them both to the All- (got what you wanted finally, wanted death, wanted his death, wanted to be with him, together in death how fucking poetic) -irony still liked to kick Edward Elric in the ass.
Huh. So Death really did abide by the same rules as Life.