Stand Up and Walk

You Can Only Hope

"Beckoned now by the snow-white backdrop, I go into a yet unseen world. Lost as I traveled under a gray sky, with a different map each day, so many dreams ran together. I wonder if someday, even with my modest stride, I'll be able to get beyond those clouds. Falling raindrops provide a persistent diffuse reflection, as though able to see into my heart, wounded for acting tough. Beams of light crisscross and shoot on forever without announcing where they're headed; faint afterimages burn into my eyes. Wherever I am under this sky, I should still arrive at a yet unseen world."

—Nico Touches the Walls, Hologram

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Envy smirks in satisfaction to himself, wiping meat juice from his hands with a rag as he exits Doctor Marcoh's cell. He finds toying with humans to be so satisfying, and Marcoh is just as weak and spineless as all the rest. To think, he'd really doom the entire country just to save his beloved townsfolk back at home—not even realizing that they would be swept up in the slaughter as well, promises for their safety be damned!

He chuckles to himself as he thinks about it, stalking down the halls of the tunnels that Sloth had dug deep below Central. He's fed the prisoner and done all of his other necessary tasks for the day, and now he has time for his new favorite hobby!

He'd been watching the human girl for months now. Considering she was merely a human, he found her oddly fascinating, though he couldn't quite place his finger on why. She was much like the rest of the humans he hated so much—she was weak, just like the others, letting her emotions control her in the way he found so disgusting, and yet... she was different somehow.

She was nothing like him, but when he looked at her, it's like he was seeing a piece of himself, and it drives him wild. He can't understand what he's recognizing in a pathetic human like her, but he feels the familiarity all the same.

It's disgusting, absolutely revolting to even imagine her comparing to him, and he needs to prove to himself that she's no different than any other humans, her quirks be damned.

And yet...

And yet he'd seen thousands of hateful humans—had killed hundreds of them himself—but he'd never seen anybody hate like her. She didn't hate outward, though, it was herself that she hated, and Envy found that wildly interesting.

It puzzled him. Humans were supposed to be simple creatures, focused primarily on self-preservation, but she actively destroys herself, injuring herself in a way that he'd never seen before.

Well, from a human, anyway.

She's like a new toy that he can't get enough of—he wants to test its limits, see how far he can bend it before it breaks.

Yes, she was so much like those other disgusting humans—worse than many of them, in some ways—and yet the things that she said when she thought she was alone, the things that she did...

It makes him think about...

He shakes the thought from his head and stretches his arms behind his back. He readies himself to change forms, but a voice interrupts him.

Envy, it whispers at him, the young, sibilating voice echoing from the shadows around him, surrounding him on every side. You really shouldn't play with your food. Didn't Father teach you better than that?

"Tch," Envy scoffs, placing a hand on his hip. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Pride. Just off to have a little fun; maybe you should try it some time!"