Chapter Text
Light versus night, might versus right (or so the Elric boy claimed, and Envy never corrected him that it was might makes right), sun versus moon (Envy hated how pale he was, it was just another thing that made him different), brother versus brother (because the other homunculi were his family, there was no running away from that rather inconvenient and annoying fact) and creator versus creation. (Of course, Edward hadn’t created him. But the man who had created Edward had created the man who created Envy. And so it went.)
Hate versus love. (Envy couldn’t fathom how one could give so many damns about someone other than himself. For all the times Edward had put himself in mortal danger for his brother, it hardly seemed worth it.)
The sky versus the ground (Edward reaching up forever, always for the unattainable shining prize, always straining even as his wings melted away and his feathers were lost on the breeze –
-and Envy burying himself, deeper and deeper and deeper down so that no one could see the shame of his ugliness, his jealousy, the sin that he was cursed to be.)
Beauty and the Beast. (for all that Envy tried to be vain and to make himself beautiful with that paleness and mysteriousness, and to show off the body he’d crafted, the beast was always there, squeezed into a suit of skin that didn’t quite suit.)
Fullmetal and the Monster. North and south poles on the magnet, jerked together by forces beyond their understanding (Envy had shied away the first time Ed had touched him tenderly, terrified of being exorcised, terrified that a bolt of lightning would appear when he finally gave into the electricity.)
Opposing forces. Without them there is no movement. Without them there is no attraction. Without them, there is no change.