Fic: Divinity Within Them [FMA]
Wow, what the hell? I wrote a Fullmetal Alchemist ficlet. It almost doesn't suck. Granted, it rehashes a lot of the same ideas I used in another character study of the same character... but getting back on the writing horse can take a little cheating like that.
I've had a strong urge to write but no real ideas. I've fiddled with Torchwood, Supernatural, Doctor Who and Avatar: The Last Airbender fandoms for quite a while -- in fact I've written nearly 40 pages of empty rambling re: Avatar and of course my ginormous crossover among the other three fandoms is probably 80K words out of a projected 100K finished. I've just got the block from hell on that front.
So I was looking through my old challenge lists and the things I never did finish, and I decided to try something simple and short again, with lots of prompts and outlines and rules. That doesn't really promote originality, but it does help me write something complete. Finishing a few stories is all I need right now. I still had five prompts left on my claim of Greed over at 7stages, an FMA challenge comm, so I decided I'd pick up the slack on those first.
The challenge table is in my omnibus post, previous fics done for the challenge include Thy Native Innocence and Folie a Deux.
Title: Divinity Within Them
Character(s): Greed, Ed, Lust, Gluttony
Rating: PG
Summary: Lust and Gluttony loiter outisde Dante’s mansion after sending Greed to meet his maker.
Author's Notes: Original 7stages prompt was "glass moon." I thought I was going to write from Ed's POV ever since I picked up the challenge, but it was only the other day that Lust's POV popped in there instead -- which was the catalyst that made this ficlet finally happen.
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Divinity Within Them
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“Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and nature gave a second groan;
Sky loured, and muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original...
As with wine intoxicated both
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings
Werewith to scorn the earth.”
--Paradise Lost, John Milton
--------
Lust stood at the window and wished for lightning -- a passing fancy. Music, perhaps. A scratchy Victrola record of something apropos of poetry. Instead, only moonlight and the quiet grumble of Gluttony’s digestion accompanied their vigil. Even the birds had fled the forest, and there was no night wind to rustle the leaves.
Gluttony muttered to himself, eyes roaming the ground around them for anything edible, chewing quietly on one finger. He’d complained that the chimeras weren’t filling, but Lust knew he would be docile for a while yet. He behaved almost like the dog he’d just eaten -- if something didn’t have a smell, he barely registered its existence. Reflections and the space behind windows eluded his tiny brain.
But Lust watched. The sounds of fighting were muted through the tempered glass of the high window into Dante’s ballroom; conversation was inaudible. She wondered, filled with a coiled tightness that might have been thrill and might have been regret, whether the Elric boy really would have the blindness -- the will -- the desperation that it took to kill.
Lust had only met her elder brother within the hour, but as with all of the homunculi, she felt she’d known him forever. She had. He was a part of the same undifferentiated mass of disease she had been plucked from, and that mass was eternal. A different Lust had always known a different Greed, and always would.
“Why are we still here?” Gluttony asked abruptly into the silence.
Lust reached out a fond hand and laid it on Gluttony’s round head. “Hush,” she said. “Come watch your brother. He’ll be the first of us to go. He always has to be the first. He wants it that way, and Greed always gets what he wants.”
Gluttony edged up to the window. He reached out and tore loose a strip of decorative molding to chew on. At last he seemed to register the scene beyond the glass and watched, transfixed.
It played out like a puppet show, small muted figures jerking around inside a frame. Edward had discovered the secret of the Shield. Lust wasn’t surprised; Greed’s shielding technique ironically made him the most vulnerable of the seven. He put everything of himself into everything he did; he wore his body inside-out and craved the pain of being discovered and destroyed. It had only taken one look at his eyes to know that what he wanted most, far more than eternity, was the strength to stop. He kept his chimera pets and had the audacity to want to believe they were his friends. He wanted them to stay, and to be loyal, so he was kind to them in his own way. Feeding honey to the flies. He wanted not to want to see them die; he wanted to give back, but he had nothing, and they had so much he wanted to take. Greed wanted and wanted. He wanted everything; and everything already being his, he wanted death.
Greed was the first, always the first; first born, first dead; source of every other sin. Her craving for flesh, Gluttony’s craving for food, Envy’s craving for attention, Sloth’s craving for nothingness, Wrath’s craving for violence, Pride’s craving for power -- Greed was craving itself, unrefined, abomination among abominations, disrupting tumor at the heart of the seven. She was glad to see the end of him.
Still, he would be reborn. Maybe not soon, but before the end of things. Greed always came back for more.
Gluttony pointed a chubby finger. “He’s going to --”
Lust caressed his head and shushed him, soothing. “They’re dancing,” she murmured.
Edward’s blade arced towards Greed’s exposed chest, but Gluttony’s eyes flicked upward, caught by a movement. “Lust!” he whispered, leaning into her side as if for protection. “It’s her!”
Lust watched her elder brother die for a moment longer before following Gluttony’s gaze up, to the balcony above the ballroom floor. A young woman she’d never seen before stood and watched the floor below her, hands gripping the balcony rail, face paper-white. She watched with the coldness and pride of a mother watching her child walk away from her for the last time.
“Who is she?” Lust breathed. Gluttony seemed to know her.
The woman’s thin lips moved with words Lust couldn’t read.
Edward’s scream brought Lust’s attention back to the floor. Greed’s body was already dissolving into its component lives.
Gluttony’s stomach gave a loud gurgle at the sight. A thin line of drool pooled and dribbled from the corner of his wide mouth. He looked up at Lust and groaned plaintively; his need didn’t require voice. Lust felt it too. Greed had left a pool of raw life in his wake and she wanted a taste, just a taste, ever since the first red stone that had passed her lips she’d always wanted...
It dissipated as they watched. The red pool faded into a dark stain, and Fullmetal sat guard, staggered by the enormity of what he’d done.
Fools all, thought Lust, disgusted with herself; the need to taste passed quickly. It takes no strength to kill. Death is such a small thing. What grace or what burden the boy thinks he’s gained is only in his mind, a false divinity, a kind of drunkenness.
Original sin, indeed.
“We’re done here,” Lust muttered, turning to walk away.
Gluttony watched through the window for a moment more, staring at the stain with longing, but eventually he turned to follow his sister.
I've had a strong urge to write but no real ideas. I've fiddled with Torchwood, Supernatural, Doctor Who and Avatar: The Last Airbender fandoms for quite a while -- in fact I've written nearly 40 pages of empty rambling re: Avatar and of course my ginormous crossover among the other three fandoms is probably 80K words out of a projected 100K finished. I've just got the block from hell on that front.
So I was looking through my old challenge lists and the things I never did finish, and I decided to try something simple and short again, with lots of prompts and outlines and rules. That doesn't really promote originality, but it does help me write something complete. Finishing a few stories is all I need right now. I still had five prompts left on my claim of Greed over at 7stages, an FMA challenge comm, so I decided I'd pick up the slack on those first.
The challenge table is in my omnibus post, previous fics done for the challenge include Thy Native Innocence and Folie a Deux.
Title: Divinity Within Them
Character(s): Greed, Ed, Lust, Gluttony
Rating: PG
Summary: Lust and Gluttony loiter outisde Dante’s mansion after sending Greed to meet his maker.
Author's Notes: Original 7stages prompt was "glass moon." I thought I was going to write from Ed's POV ever since I picked up the challenge, but it was only the other day that Lust's POV popped in there instead -- which was the catalyst that made this ficlet finally happen.
-----------
Divinity Within Them
-----------
“Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and nature gave a second groan;
Sky loured, and muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original...
As with wine intoxicated both
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings
Werewith to scorn the earth.”
--Paradise Lost, John Milton
--------
Lust stood at the window and wished for lightning -- a passing fancy. Music, perhaps. A scratchy Victrola record of something apropos of poetry. Instead, only moonlight and the quiet grumble of Gluttony’s digestion accompanied their vigil. Even the birds had fled the forest, and there was no night wind to rustle the leaves.
Gluttony muttered to himself, eyes roaming the ground around them for anything edible, chewing quietly on one finger. He’d complained that the chimeras weren’t filling, but Lust knew he would be docile for a while yet. He behaved almost like the dog he’d just eaten -- if something didn’t have a smell, he barely registered its existence. Reflections and the space behind windows eluded his tiny brain.
But Lust watched. The sounds of fighting were muted through the tempered glass of the high window into Dante’s ballroom; conversation was inaudible. She wondered, filled with a coiled tightness that might have been thrill and might have been regret, whether the Elric boy really would have the blindness -- the will -- the desperation that it took to kill.
Lust had only met her elder brother within the hour, but as with all of the homunculi, she felt she’d known him forever. She had. He was a part of the same undifferentiated mass of disease she had been plucked from, and that mass was eternal. A different Lust had always known a different Greed, and always would.
“Why are we still here?” Gluttony asked abruptly into the silence.
Lust reached out a fond hand and laid it on Gluttony’s round head. “Hush,” she said. “Come watch your brother. He’ll be the first of us to go. He always has to be the first. He wants it that way, and Greed always gets what he wants.”
Gluttony edged up to the window. He reached out and tore loose a strip of decorative molding to chew on. At last he seemed to register the scene beyond the glass and watched, transfixed.
It played out like a puppet show, small muted figures jerking around inside a frame. Edward had discovered the secret of the Shield. Lust wasn’t surprised; Greed’s shielding technique ironically made him the most vulnerable of the seven. He put everything of himself into everything he did; he wore his body inside-out and craved the pain of being discovered and destroyed. It had only taken one look at his eyes to know that what he wanted most, far more than eternity, was the strength to stop. He kept his chimera pets and had the audacity to want to believe they were his friends. He wanted them to stay, and to be loyal, so he was kind to them in his own way. Feeding honey to the flies. He wanted not to want to see them die; he wanted to give back, but he had nothing, and they had so much he wanted to take. Greed wanted and wanted. He wanted everything; and everything already being his, he wanted death.
Greed was the first, always the first; first born, first dead; source of every other sin. Her craving for flesh, Gluttony’s craving for food, Envy’s craving for attention, Sloth’s craving for nothingness, Wrath’s craving for violence, Pride’s craving for power -- Greed was craving itself, unrefined, abomination among abominations, disrupting tumor at the heart of the seven. She was glad to see the end of him.
Still, he would be reborn. Maybe not soon, but before the end of things. Greed always came back for more.
Gluttony pointed a chubby finger. “He’s going to --”
Lust caressed his head and shushed him, soothing. “They’re dancing,” she murmured.
Edward’s blade arced towards Greed’s exposed chest, but Gluttony’s eyes flicked upward, caught by a movement. “Lust!” he whispered, leaning into her side as if for protection. “It’s her!”
Lust watched her elder brother die for a moment longer before following Gluttony’s gaze up, to the balcony above the ballroom floor. A young woman she’d never seen before stood and watched the floor below her, hands gripping the balcony rail, face paper-white. She watched with the coldness and pride of a mother watching her child walk away from her for the last time.
“Who is she?” Lust breathed. Gluttony seemed to know her.
The woman’s thin lips moved with words Lust couldn’t read.
Edward’s scream brought Lust’s attention back to the floor. Greed’s body was already dissolving into its component lives.
Gluttony’s stomach gave a loud gurgle at the sight. A thin line of drool pooled and dribbled from the corner of his wide mouth. He looked up at Lust and groaned plaintively; his need didn’t require voice. Lust felt it too. Greed had left a pool of raw life in his wake and she wanted a taste, just a taste, ever since the first red stone that had passed her lips she’d always wanted...
It dissipated as they watched. The red pool faded into a dark stain, and Fullmetal sat guard, staggered by the enormity of what he’d done.
Fools all, thought Lust, disgusted with herself; the need to taste passed quickly. It takes no strength to kill. Death is such a small thing. What grace or what burden the boy thinks he’s gained is only in his mind, a false divinity, a kind of drunkenness.
Original sin, indeed.
“We’re done here,” Lust muttered, turning to walk away.
Gluttony watched through the window for a moment more, staring at the stain with longing, but eventually he turned to follow his sister.