exeggutorhead | IC Inbox

[The kiss is appreciated! Especially considering his extremely ominous and vague confession from earlier. He goes digging in the bag, humming under his breath while he tries to figure out how to even start.]

Yeah...

How much do you already know? About him? I know I mentioned his limbs earlier, but what'd I tell you last time?

[He stills for a long breath, and adds quietly:]

Did any of us tell you how Lust died?

_{[Taking a seat next to him, she rakes her fingers through her hair and blows a sigh out through her nose. How much does she know?]}

About him? Not a lot. About you... mostly that you were miserable and mean.

_{[And that they'd both been in the employ of an evil witch, but she figures that goes without saying. They don't need to bring up all the murder and subterfuge.]}

I don't know anything about his limbs, other than Al talking about his brother's prosthetics, which I assume are like... the same thing.

_{[LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW HOW LITERAL THAT IS]}

And I don't think-- ... I've never heard Lust talk about how she died. And I never asked. Seemed impolite.

_{[EVERYBODY IN THIS HOUSE EXCEPT HENRY HAS BEEN DEAD AT SOME POINT AND NOBODY'S EVER REALLY LIKED TALKING ABOUT IT.]}

Ha...yeah, miserable and mean sounds right.

[It's not a humored laugh.]

He wasn't too different than he was here, outside of being more violent. More, well, wrathful. We had that in common, then.

[He blows out a breath of his own, giving up on digging for a pastry for the moment. Doesn't exactly seem right to be munching on an eclair while he describes this.]

It's not mine to tell you all the details about what happened with Lust, not really. I wasn't there for it. I only got there at the end of the fight, when it was too late. It was a big mess...Lust was trying to leave with Ed and Al, and Sloth and Wrath were going to stop her. He wound up killing her, and then he accidentally got Sloth killed too.

I didn't take it well. Except I wasn't supposed to care at all. It wasn't supposed to mean anything to me that they were dead, even though it did, so all I did was get angrier. But Wrath was a mess over Sloth, he'd been close to her, and he got it in his head that she could be brought back.

He kept...kept crying, and trying to beg me to help or our master to do the transmutation, and she was getting annoyed...

[The sharp guilt is tightening around the edges of his voice again, and he shrinks inwards along with it, shoulders hunching.]

She set me on him, had me kick him around to put him back in his place. I didn't hold back.

_{[Heather listens, just taking the information as it comes. It's far from the first talk like this either of them have had-- when bombshells from home can drop on you or the people you know at literally any time, you get used to the information that's usually on a need-to-know basis become DEFINITELY-need-to-know very quickly.]

[And although she hadn't heard this particular set of details before... she is intimately familiar with how conveniently desperate, brainwashed followers can be turned on each other to spare a thrifty cult leader the need to get her hands dirty personally.]

[Even if Dahlia had never particularly minded putting a sobbing, begging child in its place herself when it got tiresome enough.]

[When Envy shrinks, she puts a hand on his back, not saying anything.]}

[He doesn't look at her face as he talks, if only because it makes it easier to keep going. Her hand on his back is steadying.]

Everything fell apart in...it was just a few days. She wanted her Stone, her new body was already starting to rot. And at the end, anyone that got in her way for more than a second, she'd--I'd never seen--

[He has to stop to breathe, and when he starts again his voice is flat, almost hurried. Just to say what he needs to without opening up the entire can of worms. This isn't about him.]

She killed another one of us. Wrath came in afterwards but he didn't know what happened, he didn't know what she could do if he got close. She thought he was going to use alchemy and cause a reaction, and set me to stop him again. I grabbed him and held him back, he wasn't near her, he wasn't. He hadn't done anything. But she opened the Gate anyway, right behind us.

I jumped out of the way, and it took his arm and leg back. [At this, his own hand goes to his right arm, gripping it loosely.] Pulled them right off, and left him on the floor.

He tried to stop me when I was fighting Ed, right afterwards. Grabbed my ankle, and I tried to kick him off. I wasn't thinking about anything but the fight by then.

[His previous single-minded determination to kill his half-brothers is something she's well familiar with by now, so he doesn't go further into it.]

That's the last thing I remember of him before here. I should've been protecting him, and I didn't.

_{[She can tell when he speeds up that this is rapidly getting to be too much for him... and it's not difficult to see why.]

[Even through his shaky words alone, the mental image of the people she's lived with and loved for so many years now, tearing each other to pieces at the behest of that... monster, makes her stomach twist into knots. It's bad to hear. Worse to imagine.]

[And when he gets to the part about the kid's arm and leg, she swallows the lump in her throat. For a minute there she'd been wondering if Envy was going to tell her that he tore them off himself. It's something of a relief to hear that he didn't, but the anguish in his voice when he recounts the incident makes it pretty obvious that he's blaming himself for it anyway.]}

... Envy...

_{[Not knowing what else to do, she rubs his back with the hand that was already resting there.]}

I'm... obviously not going to say that you hurting that kid was okay, or... not your fault somehow. I doubt that's what you wanna hear from me, either.

But... jesus, what that bitch had you all doing to each other...

_{[Saying out loud that Envy had been nothing but a tool to be wielded would be discounting his role in the matter in a way that feels kind of insensitive, given how broken up he is about all this... and it's not like reassuring herself of the bitter truth that Dahlia Gillespie's crusty, rotten hands were the ones holding the puppet strings even seventeen years after her death had ever dulled the equally-bitter truth that Claudia had made her own decisions, however misguided.]

[But god. It was still so fucking unfair.]}

You said you talked to him... what did he say about it?

[He knows, on some level, in a way that had become purely instinctive back then after so long under Dante, that even if he had tried to protect Wrath or Lust or Gluttony or any of them? He would have wound up punished or discarded as useless himself. There had been no room for genuine attachments, their master would never have allowed them to start coming together in earnest and possibly challenge her authority. He'd been just as trapped in it as the rest, even if he'd thought he wasn't.]

[He's not the one who threw Wrath into the Gate. He didn't erase Gluttony.]

[But he wishes he'd been more unwilling, or had woken up sooner. He wishes he hadn't just stood there as it happened. The cruel, biting, angry words had been all him. So he's glad that Heather isn't trying to tell him he didn't do anything wrong--he knows he did.]

Yeah...I know the worst was because of her. But not all of it.

[He drags a hand back through his hair roughly, and at her question of what Wrath himself had said, the corner of his mouth quirks upwards a little. This part, at least, is a relief.]

After I apologized? He said it wasn't me he was mad at. And said we both did stupid things, and he wished he hadn't done some of them either. I told him I'd been really stupid, and that I wasn't mad at him. We hugged for a while.

He'd been apologizing to Lust, when he saw her. But both of us forgave him that years ago, the first time he was here. He's just...I think he's really messed up about it anyway.

_{[Heather is possibly EVEN MORE CERTAIN THAN HE IS of that, but... this isn't the time to indulge her burning hatred of Dante. Maybe later. As a treat.]

[The backrub becomes a one-armed hug and the grocery bag rustles between them as she scoots closer.]}

Yeah, not all of it... but you're here now and you do better and that's more than she'd do.

_{[And judging by what he'd said about it, it sounds like the kid knows that, too.]}

He's probably having... a really bad time.

_{[Especially over Lust. Living through abuse as a child is bad enough... adding that level of guilt in? Unimaginable. At least as Alessa, the disappearances she'd caused had never been people she was personally close to... that she can remember, anyway...]}

... But I think that you being here to help him through it... is a good thing.

Will be a good thing.

For both of you.

[He doesn't hug back, but does lean back against her.]

[It's definitely some weight off, to have told her any of it. Even if there's still the matter of working through the aftermath, it's a good reminder that things didn't actually end back then. Wrath's willing to give him another chance not to completely fuck up.]

Yeah...yeah, he's having a bad time.

I've never seen him like this.

[Which is a pretty big part of HOW hard The Guilt (tm) is hitting.]

I hope so. I guess I can't fuck up worse.

[The conversation has helped, though! Enough for him to huff and add a sardonic little:]

I think if I did, Joker'd come back special for a day just to kick my ass.

_{[Likewise, the creeping unease she'd been pushing down all evening has dissipated. Perhaps it's something she should be used to by this point of dating an anime villain, but even past the obvious reasons, this is a relief.]

[That Envy's years here had allowed him to grow enough to feel this kind of guilt.]

[It's a stage some people never reach at all.]

[Sometimes she thinks Claudia could have, if given a chance. She already felt it, technically... just for the wrong reasons.]

[But ugh. She doesn't want to think about Claudia tonight. Even if the words I should have protected him had made her chest tighten for more personal reasons than just sympathy for Envy's littlest and most dysfunctional sibling.]}

Heh... yeah, Joker would murder you and make it look like an accident, probably.

_{[After giving his shoulder a little shake for emphasis, she releases him from the hug and digs a mini-muffin out of the bag. Unless he's got more bombs to drop, it feels fairly safe to indulge now.]}

Anyway... I'll help however I can. But I think having you and Lust... I bet he'd be having a way worse time if you guys weren't still here, is what I'm saying.

Ha, he really would.

[God, but he does miss Joker. The ringleader would know exactly what to do in this situation.]

[When she goes into the bag, he follows suit, if only so that he can cover for the wobbly expression that what she says next pulls out of him. By the time he's pulled one of those little eclairs out of the bag, he's got some measure of control over his face back.]

I...think you're right. I know he really wanted to see us.

[He takes a bite of the treat, leaning on her and looking ahead instead of making more eye contact.]

I was worried he'd...I don't know. Be scared of me, after everything. But he wasn't.

_{[Letting him lean, she starts idly peeling the wrapper off the muffin.]}

You said he remembers being here, right?

Not that it makes it easier, going through shit back home, but... you guys were close, here.

As hard as it is to reconcile conflicting memories... _{[God knows she's done her fair share of that, even if she's never had to leave this place and return with a new smattering of life experiences.]} ... It sounds like the ones he had from here wound up being what mattered more.

... 'Least, that's what I'd guess.

Since he came back.

_{[And she hopes she's right. Both for Envy's sake and the kid's...]}

I know, I know. I'm glad he's not scared of me. I don't know what I'd do if he was.

But he's still... [He absently waves the half-an-eclair in front of him, trying to figure out how to even describe it. "He's really really extra sad" doesn't exactly cut it. And that network conversation had been private.]

You'll see tomorrow, probably, or whenever you see him. I just never knew how bad it got, afterwards.

[Seeing the long term fallout for himself, on someone he cares about? It's really hitting. He takes another bite, and then snorts and mutters under his breath, taking some refuge from the uncertainty of Feelings Talk in dark sarcasm.]

Know for sure why Al went and tackled me on the beach, now.

_{[Her hand goes back to his shoulder, where it squeezes for emphasis.]}

When I got back from Silent Hill, I basically didn't talk to or look at anyone for weeks unless I literally had to. Just shut completely down and stopped existing any time I could afford to.

There's a billion different ways people can wind up responding to stuff when it happens on this level... but the important thing is that he's safe to have whatever response that's gonna be.

... Shit, is that what that was all about?

I forgot about that.

_{[She laughs, she can't help it.]

[That whole debacle has finally arrived at being more funny than cringe, in her head.]}

[Envy listens to what she describes, absorbing it. Knows she gets it enough to have a good idea of the level of things.]

He'll be safe.

[Said emphatically. Not that there's usually much danger in this world, not like there was back in any of theirs...but still. He's determined to do what he should've done back then right this time. It's not just him, either; he knows that Lust would do about anything to keep Wrath safe. Henry's good at being gentle and quiet. Scar's already come to Wrath's defense from Envy's mild network trolling without even knowing who he was. Heather...well, it goes without saying that she's good with traumatized monsters.]

[This did help, talking about it. He manages a quiet snicker, once she laughs.]

Yeah, he thought I was gonna pull some kind of shit and wasn't gonna let it happen.

So he snuck up on me and socked me in the jaw. Think he would've drowned me if you didn't show up to stop us.

[At what he says next...the lighter tone sticks around, but does get quieter.]

He knew Wrath after everything, like he is now. I'd kick my ass into the ocean too.

_{[Safe is the key word, and as far as Heather's concerned, it's the most important thing about this world. More than the free healthcare, more than the magical animals (even if they play a part in it, too). Taking 'imminent danger' out of the equation was probably just a given for normal people, but everyone in this house is actively, tangibly benefitting from the lack of it compared to where they came from.]}

Yeah, well, maybe you deserved to get kicked into the ocean a little, but Al had a bit of a streak going of punching first and asking questions later, so...

_{[YOUR ASS IS WELCOME FOR THE RESCUE, ENVY.]}

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