Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

Recap: After being rudely awoken by a cockroach, Claire is taken by Envy to the Church for the day. On the way, they meet a thieving boy who pickpockets the pouch Claire is carrying with the red stone from Magwar's house in it, but the homunculus retrieves it for her. He doesn't, however, immediately return it. When he finally does though, the girl gets a chance to ask him about the homunculi, and he eventually tells her to be careful because the other homunculi will kill her if she knows too much.

Chapter 18 ~ Behind the Hatred

The green-haired homunculus stared out the window of the building, looking at nothing at all. His eyes wandered over the sand, just slightly blowing in the wind, and the empty buildings nearby, but he was more lost in thought than anything else. Yes, he'd taken the human girl to the Church during the day because they needed to replenish their food stock and he didn't feel like having the girl causing trouble while he was gone. It really was like babysitting.

How the hell had he ended up babysitting a human? He wanted to slap himself for letting himself be degraded so.

But slapping himself was kind of lame too, so… the homunculus simply leaned his arm on the window sill and scowled.

What was really preoccupying him, though, was what the human had said to him shortly before they left the Church…

A few hours ago, the girl had been fiddling with one of her cast metal puzzles in the corner of the room, and neither of them had spoken for a while. Envy only opted to stay in the room because he wasn't in the mood for dealing with the Letoists because, in all honesty, he was bored out of his mind. So he had spent the past few hours annoying the human girl until she finally decided to ignore him.

Luckily for him though, it was late enough that "Cornello-sama" could excuse himself from the Church building and the Letoists wouldn't ask him too many questions.

Just as Envy was about to stand up to leave, the girl spoke. "You know," she said bluntly, "I hate you." Her amber eyes never looked away from the twisted metal structure she was attempting to untangle.

"Aww, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy," the homunculus replied sarcastically as he shrugged. Like hell he cared whether she hated him or not. She was just another foolish human. A puppet for him to manipulate.

The dark-haired girl did glance at him this time, somewhat irritated. "I don't care how that makes you feel," she replied tartly.

"Yeah, whatever," Envy said, turning towards the door. "Anyways, we're leav – "

"I'm not done yet," the dark-haired girl scolded irritably. "I didn't just randomly tell you that I hate you."

The homunculus rolled his eyes. "Okay, then get to the point."

"Fine," she said. Then, looking him straight in the eye and stating it in such a matter-of-fact way that it barely sounded grateful, she continued, "Thanks for knocking some sense into me." Then, flipping her hair over her shoulder, she walked towards the door.

Envy stood there in shock for a moment, not at all understanding what she was talking about. What she'd said earlier – that she hated him – made much more sense.

No human, no matter how foolish, thanked Envy the homunculus knowing who he really was.

"Aren't you coming?" he suddenly heard her ask. "I thought you were about to say that we were leaving when I cut you off earlier."

"What?" he asked, then still trying to recollect himself, answered awkwardly, "Yeah."

"Well then you better transform back into Cornello-sama before someone sees you," she reminded him, opening the door of the Head Priest's office. "C'mon, let's go."

Claire had thanked the homunculus for reasons that she didn't even fully understand herself. She actually thought it was a pretty stupid idea and might actually provoke him to torture her more, not to mention that it was a huge blemish on her pride. It wasn't as if he'd forced her to kill him for any other purpose than his own sadism, but still she felt she ought to do that.

Both the incident where he had killed the two military soldiers that had tried to attack them and this incident had forced her to face a reality that she'd always wanted to hide from: Death.

…And honestly, she didn't know if she'd ever have been able to face it without being forced to.

Hmph, I thanked him, despite his horrible personality, because I am a super cute and polite girl, she justified in her head. Deciding that made her feel a little better.

It was kind of hard to believe that she had actually managed to spend a whole day with the homunculus though. The amber-eyed girl frowned slightly, wondering how Envy could sometimes act like such a normal teenager and at the same time be a sadistic, scheming mass murderer. She wondered if it was because he was a homunculus.

The sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, leaving only the moon and scattered stars to illuminate the dark night sky. She and Envy had already made it back to the building they were staying at from the Church, and Claire found herself standing against the wall just outside Envy's room, attempting to convince herself to do something she found herself rather averse to doing.

That something happened to be visiting Envy's room again.

I think I might be crazy, she thought to herself with a grim smile, before changing her mind as she recalled what she'd done earlier in the day. No, I'm definitely crazy. The thing was though, when the homunculus wasn't being a twisted killer, she could handle him. Even if he was a supreme jerk, she could learn to work with him eventually. It wasn't impossible… and maybe he'd even start being less obnoxious if she got to know him better.

…She thought about that idea for a moment. Wishful thinking, she decided. Very much so.

But either way, it was easier to work with him when he was half asleep because he was too lazy to taunt her then. And thus, taking a deep breath, she slipped into his room again.

Unlike the last time she'd entered his room, the green-haired homunculus wasn't sleeping. Instead, he was staring out the dirty window, watching the stillness outside. There was a short moment before he noticed her, during which Claire wondered what he was thinking about. He was always so loud and annoying, but as he looked out at the empty buildings and endless sand, he seemed almost deep in thought. As soon as he heard her footsteps entering the room, though, his violet eyes turned towards her.

"What do you want?" he drawled with a mixture of boredom and minor irritation before she could say anything. It was pretty much the same rude question he had asked the previous time she came into his room.

Couldn't he possibly ask more nicely? she thought to herself, but quickly decided that he couldn't. "…Nothing in particular," the dark-haired girl answered truthfully. Although her opinion was that getting to know him better would make him easier to work with was wishful thinking, it didn't stop her from trying. She couldn't know without trying, she supposed.

"Really now." He raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. "I think…" he started smugly, "you're just too scared to sleep alone at night, Girlie."

"Hmph," she objected stubbornly. Her pride was too much to allow her to tell him he was right, even if it was beneficial for her to do so. After all, if she just let him believe he was right, then he couldn't question her further about her motives. But that wasn't her personality.

"Hmm… so Girlie is also a scaredy cat," the homunculus observed mockingly as a mischievous grin slid across his lips. "Interesting."

In truth, though, it really was safer to sleep near Envy than alone, where some random person could come in and shoot her without warning.

"I am not a scaredy cat," the amber-eyed girl huffed.

"Heh. Whatever you say," he mocked, shrugging.

She glared at him.

Envy chuckled, acknowledging his unspoken victory. "…So why'd you really come here?" he asked, returning his gaze to the window.

"Just to talk," she told him.

"I'm going to have to call BS on that, you know," he replied smoothly, but then he paused as a strange, confused expression passed over his face as his eyebrows furrowed. "…Unless you're a maso – " He stopped and recomposed himself. "Unless you're completely loopy…" He looked at her again, drawing imaginary circles next to his ear to indicate craziness. "There's no way you'd do that."

Claire didn't respond to him, this time too preoccupied by what he had started to say but instead substituted with loopy. She wondered what in the world could possibly make the homunculus suddenly seem so awkward, but she found herself trying not to smile. It was pretty funny to see Envy like that when he was normally so arrogant.

"Hey," he interjected, catching her attention once more. "What the hell was that thank you earlier? Just how stupid can you be?" He laughed cynically and asked, "Did you think you could accomplish something with that?"

"How dare you," the amber-eyed girl retorted, feeling mildly angered that the homunculus couldn't even accept a single thank you without deciding she must be scheming something. "I am not stupid, nor was I try to accomplish anything!"

An incomprehensible look passed over the homunculus' face for a moment before his violet eyes examined her carefully with somewhat masked confusion. "Then what could you possibly have to thank me for?" he asked.

Claire blinked for a moment, finding herself a bit taken aback by Envy's question. After the first rude response, she'd expected another one, but perhaps the first rude one was just a product of his disbelief..? She sighed, supposing that, although she didn't really want to, she did owe him an explanation. If her thank you didn't even make sense to her, there wasn't much chance it would make any more sense to him. "Just…" She took a deep breath. "You forced me to face something that I probably would have kept running from until it was too late, but at the same time, you set up a situation where I didn't have to kill an actual human, who really would have died."

"…I see," the green-haired homunculus said after a little while. He still seemed somewhat perplexed, until he recovered himself and smirked. "You're welcome then, Girlie," he sneered. "But I only did that 'cause it would be bad for me if the actual human got out of control and managed to kill you, which really wouldn't be all that hard, considering how miserably weak you are."

This time, it was her turn to shrug, and a heavy silence overtook the room as both parties were consumed by their own thoughts. It wasn't as if she hadn't guessed that the homunculus' reason might be something like that – she seriously doubted that Envy would ever do anything strictly for her – but in the spur of the moment, she had decided to thank him anyways. If not for Envy, who would have forced her to face reality? She may have ended up in a situation where her hesitation and fear of death would end up in the death of someone else. Although she still hated it just as much as before, she did have to admit that death was slightly easier to handle now.

The first time – it was always the hardest.

I still hate his guts though, she noted mentally.

The dark-haired girl sighed once more. She seemed to be doing a lot of that recently.

Suddenly Envy spoke, breaking the silence. "…Tomorrow," he started as he observed her with his evil violet eyes, "there's going to be a big battle – plenty of shrieking, plenty of bloody, and plenty of death."

A frown passed over the girl's face. "…Why are you telling me this?" she asked him quietly. The memory of killing another person was still vivid in her mind: the ease of pulling the trigger, the image of a limp corpse, the feel of the warm blood on her skin. Her emotions of that moment that she had temporarily managed to encapsulate flooded through her painfully. She felt her fists clench at her sides.

"Hmm…" he said thoughtfully as a wolfish smirk spread across his face. "You gonna join the party with me?"

Realization dawned on her, and she averted her amber eyes. He's asking, but he's not actually giving me a choice… she thought bitterly. She had seen enough killing, at least for now. Just how much was he planning to make her suffer?

"No? That's too bad," Envy said, feigning disappointment. Then he paused for a moment, and Claire resignedly waited for him to tell her that he didn't care whether she wanted to go or not. Instead, he said, "…But don't go near the Church tomorrow, then."

The dark-haired girl could only stare at him in disbelief as she tried to process what he'd just said. Naturally remembering the cockroach incident that morning, she left his room before she felt too sleepy, but as she lay on the floor in another room, she drifted off to sleep wondering what she should do the next day.

The homunculus' warning had truly confused the girl because she had fully expected him to force her to watch the fighting. She had been confused enough to debate the authenticity of his statement, and her first thought, of course, was that he must be lying.

But when she thought about it, it didn't make any sense for him to lie. By telling her to avoid the Church, he was telling her that the battle would be taking place there. If he was lying about that, then he was telling her that it wouldn't take place there and that that place was actually safe. Or he might have just told her that in order to mess with her head, and in actuality, the battle was taking place everywhere.

It seemed the most logical to her, though, that he was telling the truth. Indirectly telling her that the Church was actually safe simply wasn't like him, and if the battle were taking place everywhere, he would have quite enjoyed harassing her about what would happen there, rather than leading her to believe that she wouldn't have to watch it. It could be argued, of course, that he wanted to surprise her with that or that he was using reverse psychology.

Claire weighed the likelihood of each possibility, but her conclusion was that her best bet was to follow his advice. Reverse psychology could be turned around backwards and forwards so many times that she found the best option to be to simply disregard it. She also found it highly unlikely that he would have indirectly told her that the Church was safe in comparison to everywhere else, and if the battle was taking place everywhere, then it didn't matter where she was. Therefore, she might as well stay away from the Church.

As such, Claire found a quiet, shaded spot on the edge of town. There were only two single-floor buildings in this particular area and both were rundown and crumbling, but not from recent attack. These buildings had probably been destroyed during the previous civil war in Liore, and both of them looked as if they were about to collapse. Claire decided that she was probably safer outside than inside, and thus chose a shaded spot behind one of the cracked walls to pull out a small paperback book. She would have brought something bigger, but in all honesty, there was no way she could have fit anything else in her bag when she came to Liore. It had been so stuffed that it looked as if every seam was going to burst.

Leaning against the hard wall behind her, Claire resignedly took out her pencil and eraser. When she was staying with the Hughes', Gracia had insisted that Claire not entirely abandon her education because no matter how smart she was, she couldn't know something without learning it, and if she abandoned her education, there were certain subjects she simply wouldn't learn but might need to know at some point. Therefore, much to the teenager's dismay, Gracia had bought a bunch of calculus math books. The woman didn't bother with science and history textbooks, given that Claire often read them anyways out of curiosity, but math was boring to Claire. It was easy enough, but there was nothing at all intriguing about the mystery of what the answer to the problem might be. The mixed potential theory was interesting, the founding of Amestris was interesting, but the natural log of two divided by three was something she did not care about.

And so, as a low roar began to rise from the center of the city and a certain pink-and-brown-haired girl approached, Claire was busy working with derivatives and integrals while wondering why she couldn't be doing the same thing with physics problems instead of normal mathematics ones. She preferred to grumble about something silly like that than think about what was actually happening in the city. It was funny – people were dying and she was sitting her doing calculus problems.

But it wasn't like there was anything she could do about it.

"Claire?" a voice asked, causing the amber-eyed girl to look up from the math problems and see Roze.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed in surprise. She hadn't expected to meet anyone out here, let alone the older girl. "Roze!"

Before Claire had a chance to ask the same question, Roze asked, "…What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Umm…" the dark-haired girl started awkwardly. Doing math homework doesn't seem like an appropriate answer, considering what is going on in the city right now… Claire thought grimly. "I'm just avoiding the chaos…" she told the older girl. "I've seen enough of it already… it's horrible." Quickly, she changed the subject, wanting to avoid thinking about it any longer. "Fancy meeting you here, though," Claire said. Roze seemed to appear in all the strangest locations. "You asked me what I'm doing here, but what about you?"

Roze was quiet for a moment, and the younger girl wondered if she hadn't asked something too personal. But if it was too personal, that made her all the more curious as to what it was… Such a dilemma. The gray-eyed girl saved her the trouble though when she replied, "…Cain and I used to hang out here a lot." She smiled a bit sadly. "…So I come here sometimes."

"This place must have a lot of memories for you then," Claire said. "I thought you would be tending to the injured in the city right now though."

"Yes, and I will. I'm going back there soon, actually," the older girl explained. "The reason I came here today actually wasn't because of Cain…There are some medical supplies that we've hidden out here and Agatha-san asked me to go find them."

Claire nodded, assuming that they hid the medical supplies so that they wouldn't all be lost if they were raided by, for instance, the military. This method of hiding the supplies left them with backup in a bad situation.

"Anyways, though," Roze went on, "have you seen them? Agatha-san told me to look for them here but she didn't tell me where exactly they were."

"Nope," the amber-eyed girl answered. She checked out the area a bit when she first came, but not particularly thoroughly.

"Hmm…" Roze peaked into one of the two barely-standing buildings. To Claire's memory, this one was completely empty except for several layers of dust, so there wouldn't be anything in it. "I really need to find the medicine fast. Agatha-san still has enough, but it would be bad if she ran out…"

"Alright then," Claire said, standing up and brushing herself off as she dumped her pencil, eraser, and math book back into her bag. She smiled at her friend. "The ever-helpful Claire-sama shall come to your assistance!"

The gray-eyed girl laughed lightly. "Sure," she said as she went to go check out the next building, and Claire followed her, until she noticed that her friend was actually going to enter this one. The younger girl was no more eager to enter this building now than she was when she first came to this area, especially considering the state of it. Even with the wind constantly ventilating it through its broken windows, it smelled dreadfully of rat-droppings and mildew. Ew, Claire thought with disgust. Liore either has a lot of old, uninhabited, and unsanitary buildings or I have an uncanny ability for ending up in gross places.

And so, the "ever-helpful Claire-sama" retired early in her career.

Although nothing could convince the younger girl to actually enter the building, she did at least go through the trouble of looking in through the window so that she would be of some help to her friend. She did, after all, agree to help. Unlike the previous building which had been for the most part empty, this one had an overturned table, some water-stained cabinets, a fallen bookshelf, and some broken chairs. Roze, upon note seeing any medical supplies just conveniently lying around, made a beeline towards the cabinets.

Carefully making sure to avoid any glass fragments remaining in the window frame, the dark-haired girl leaned in to watch Roze search the cabinets. It was somewhat awkward though for her to just be standing there, so she tried to start a conversation. "…So Agatha-san is still teaching you medicine?" she asked.

"Yes," Roze answered, as she bent down and opened some drawers below the cabinet. "She's really amazing, actually. I never knew she had so much expertise in the medical field."

"Ah, really?"

"She told me that her parents had specialized in restoring and preventing the further spread of wounds, skin decay, infections, and other such bodily damage, and they taught her everything they knew when she was young. She doesn't know a lot about illnesses, but the knowledge she has is just what we need in a warring nation like this," the gray-eyed girl explained, closing the drawers and moving on to the next cabinet. As an afterthought, she added, "She also mentioned that there was a man who visited her a bit more recently. He taught her how to make more effective medicines for certain things, in exchange for telling him everything her parents had taught her."

"I see…" Claire said thoughtfully. She hadn't expected that the creepy, apple-selling old woman would know so much about medicine, but she supposed it made sense that she would end up selling apples if Cornello had been using the fake Philosopher's Stone to do all her work for her. "I never really expected that from her."

"Haha," Roze laughed, now digging inside another cabinet. "She's always full of surprises. Not only is she helping me with healing, she's also helping me take care of some orphaned kids."

"My gosh," the younger girl said, surprised. "You two must have your hands full."

"Ye—" Roze started, but then she cut herself off and exclaimed "Oh, found it!" In her hands, she held several rolls of bandages that she was currently dropping into the canvas bag she was carrying, and behind her Claire could see some gauze and various other medical supplies shelves hidden behind a wall of old clothes.

"Congrats," Claire said, as her friend finished putting supplies in her bag, closed the cabinet doors, and came back outside. "I take it you're leaving again now?"

"Yeah," Roze told her apologetically, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Sorry I can't stay longer, but I'm sure Agatha-san has her hands full already with the children and patients…"

"No, no, it's not a problem at all," the amber-eyed girl told her, although she was worried about her friend. No matter how light-hearted she acted, it was only because she was away from the conflict right now. She could see the smoke rising from the city, she could hear the screams, but she wasn't amidst it. She was only an onlooker. Roze had been alright so far – she could only hope it stayed that way.

Roze looked as if she was about to turn away, but then she stopped and said, "Hopefully all this war will be over soon… There have been rumors of the military's surrender, and I can only hope that they're true."

It took Claire a second or two to process what the older girl had said to her – not because it was hard to understand but just because she thought she must have heard wrong. "Really?" she asked in surprise. If that was so, she wondered if Envy had a hand in it. It didn't seem like such a far off conclusion, considering that Envy had not only been manipulating the believers but also the nonbelievers.

"Yup!" Roze smiled genuinely this time, but Claire found that that made her almost… sad.

The amber-eyed girl wasn't sure how she felt about those rumors, but she decided she shouldn't be surprised that the older girl could believe something was true even only through hope. This wasn't the first time, after all… but if Envy was involved and those rumors did have some truth to them, she couldn't help but think that there was something more to the whole scheme. Even so, though, she smiled back at her friend, saying, "That's wonderful!"

The fakeness of her statement was almost sickening, even to her. It was a terrible thing to lie about to a friend. But it wasn't as if she could tell her about Envy…

"Yeah," Roze said warmly. "Well, anyways, I do need to get going now though."

"Alright," Claire said, waving. Whatever guilt she felt, she masked it entirely. "Bye bye!"

The older girl waved back before running off back towards the war-stricken city, her hometown, leaving Claire to wonder about what Roze had just told her. She knew that the military pulling out wouldn't end the conflict between the believers and nonbelievers, but even just that seemed too good to be true.

Even by night, the fighting hadn't died down entirely, but Claire eventually returned to the building she and Envy had been staying at anyways. It was getting dark, and deserts areas such as this always had major temperature drops at night. During the day, she had found that she was an awful lot more tolerant of the war than she had been before – perhaps she had grown more used to it?

It was strange how humans could adapt to the most horrible of things.

The dark-haired girl climbed the steps of the building until she was on the highest floor. A chilled breeze blew through the open window, causing her to shiver slightly, but she looked out through it anyways, wanting to see just how bad the damage on the city was this time.

…But she didn't even get quite that far, because at that moment, her eyes were distracted by something else: A foot.

Claire frowned, rubbed her eyes, and looked again.

Yes, there was a (quite dirty) foot hanging down about an arm's length above her head.

And then it all clicked.

Leaning her body over the window frame just far enough so that she could get a good view of slanted roof, Claire called out, "Why are you all the way up on the roof, Envy?" She really couldn't see much more of him than his lower leg and foot though…

"And why the hell are you stalking me all the way up here?" the homunculus replied. He didn't seem particularly surprised or anything; it was more like he just wanted to be obnoxious and not answer her question.

"Excuse me?" she asked, mildly offended. "You're awfully conceited if you think I'd stalk you of all people."

"Oh really now?"

"Yes, really," she said stubbornly. And then, although she couldn't say what compelled her to do it, she added somewhat jokingly, "I hate people with filthy feet. It's nauseating. Like, eww."

"Pfft, it's my feet you have a problem with?" Envy laughed at the ridiculous notion. "Well, whatever then," he said and then shrugged and sneered, "It would be even more nauseating if you were actually stalking me."

"Well, I'm not," she huffed, "so there's no problem." Then she paused, feeling her teeth chattering slightly. "How the heck do you stay up there when it's so cold?"

"Because it's fun," the green-haired homunculus replied smugly. "The view of the fighting is so much better from up here than from anywhere else after all."

She tried not to think too hard about that statement. "You have a sick mind," she told him with disgust.

He either didn't hear her or he chose to ignore her, because he didn't respond to that statement, and Claire decided that she wasn't going to wait for a response that she wasn't sure would ever come, so she pulled her head back in. It really was pretty cold out there now, and she didn't have any extra clothes with her that she could put on.

But perhaps the real reason Envy didn't reply was because he was deciding whether or not to come in, since just a moment later, the homunculus had swung back into the room.

"…I thought you were enjoying the night screams?" the amber-eyed girl asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, and?" he asked sarcastically. "I can't decide to come back in?"

Claire glared at him, not wanting to deal with his constant aggravations at the moment. It wasn't worth the trouble to answer his question, especially when he was going to somehow turn everything around in such a way that she would only end up more annoyed. Eventually, she sighed and asked something on a completely different subject. "…How much longer are you planning to stay in Liore?"

"Unfortunately," the homunculus answered, "not too much longer. Such a shame, really. I'd love to mess with these foolish humans some more." His nonchalance was such that he could have been talking about a party – but that was what he had called it earlier, wasn't it?

The girl frowned slightly at this new piece of information; she was troubled by it. It gave slightly more authenticity to the rumor that Roze had mentioned, but it also gave more authenticity to her own gut feeling that Envy was involved with all of this somehow.

"But once we leave here…" That wolfish grin of his was slowly spreading on to his face. "…You won't be able to slack off on looking for that bastard anymore."

"Hohenheim?" Claire asked, taken off guard by the sudden topic change.

"Who else?" the homunculus growled before continuing smugly, "I've let you off so far because there's not much you can do here in Liore at the moment, but once we get out of here, you'd better start working on finding him…" His tone just lightly hinted at the threat he was proposing. "I didn't let you live for nothing, Girlie."

"…I know," she said quietly, remembering her position. She knew very well that he was in total control of her now, that if he decided to kill her, then that was it. Still, she let her curiosity get the best of her as she asked apprehensively, "…What are you going to do once you find him?"

"What do you think?" he snarled viciously but eagerly. "Kill him, of course. Watching that bastard die…" He cackled psychotically, seeming barely even to contain his excitement. After calming down a bit, he breathed, "I can't wait..."

"Why are you so obsessed with him?" It was obvious enough to her that Envy must know Hohenheim on some sort of level for him to have such strong animosity against him, and she wondered what the man could possibly have done - that was when she remembered: Homunculi were man-made. Her next words were spoken without thinking, out of the pure impulse of her curiosity. "I don't really know all that much about the creation of homunculi, but you'd think Hohenheim created you or something."

To her, this was an impossible suggestion; these words weren't meant to mean anything to him.

But their effect was immediate; it was as if the temperature in the room had suddenly plunged.

Any previous sanity evaporated in an instant - Envy was entirely consumed by his homicidal rage. "You…" he seethed ferociously, walking towards her. All his bloodlust for the man had temporarily been transferred to the dark-haired girl in front of him.

Claire's amber eyes widened fearfully, her face suddenly paling. She could easily deduce it was the last statement she'd made about Hohenheim being Envy's creator that had led to this transformation, but she couldn't understand why. It couldn't possibly be true – although she didn't know Hohenheim's exact age, Envy must be way older than him.

Before she knew what was happening, she was cornered against a wall, his metallic hand around her throat. Her heart was pounding heavily in her chest as she tried desperately, but futilely, to free herself from his grasp. Her lungs thirsted for the air that they were being deprived of.

Just as white splotches began to clot her vision, he hissed murderously, "…If you ever – ever – mention that bastard's name again…" He let his hand loosen, causing her to collapse to the floor, gasping for breath. "I won't care what sort of deal we have. I'll kill you."

All she could do was nod wordlessly, unable to speak as she fought to recover her breath. She heard his words, she responded to them, but they were background noise to her. Her own life had just flashed before her eyes once again simply because of a few misspoken words. She had seen the homunculus' reaction to Hohenheim on her first day in Liore; she had known he hated him.

It wasn't till just now, though, that she recognized the full extent of his hatred.

In that moment as his hand had closed around her neck, insanity had filled his violet eyes, insanity that stemmed from pure loathing. He was the one who controlled, but he was being controlled by his own wrath.

But there was one more emotion she saw:

Pain.

Author's note: It's been awhile since I've written a chapter this long lol xD ...I can't believe I wrote a mini fluff scene about feet. And that I started talking calculus. *facepalm*

...(by the way, if there are some inconsistencies in events in this chapter, please do mention something to me. There was one scene I rewrote near the beginning (it was just too awkward... ^^;), and I think I fixed all the inconsistencies, but sometimes I miss things... D; )

Anyways, I'm gonna be real busy the next week, so I might have some trouble finding time to write the next chapter. If I find that I'm behind schedule too much, I'll delay the update (most of the time I manage to update on time though xD).

Do you think I'm taking the romance at a good pace, keeping in mind Envy's personality?

Thanks for the favorites/alerts/reviews/etc~ Hope you enjoyed the chapter ;)