openmisc | Daniel/Emery

Daniel/Emery

It's a very typical weekend for Daniel. He takes a call from his sister, who very recently struck out on her own and moved in with friends, while he makes tea. He keeps Sasha and Zhenzhen from the counters as he tries to tidy up as best he can. He puts on a documentary for a while before deciding to walk down to the shop for ice cream.

He hasn't even changed much. Sure, his hair is in a bun and the vest is decidedly 2015-chic, but he carries himself the same, very unhurried. Confident now. The barge isn't completely forgotten, but if anyone can compartmentalize and push down unwanted feelings, it's Daniel.

He smiles to an elderly neighbor as he opens his door and walks out to the street.

Really, nothing too out of the ordinary.

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Daniel stands under a flickering light, arms wrapped around himself. But when they change into a monkey, he can't help a giggle, even though he can feel his teeth chattering in the fear as the darkness sways. He forces himself to stare at the painting, tilting his head as he tries to interpret it.

Emery returns and Daniel wraps an arm around them.

"You did it!"

She's quick to replace the arm around Daniel, which feels less like a taunt and now that an anchor when they realize he's shivering. "Art is some first-class human nonsense, but at least I might confuse the next person."

"What's wrong with art?" he wonders, glancing to the exit. It's dark, night, but at least there will be streetlights.

"Let's go."

"I'm sure you're doing a good job," they snark, only a little condescending as they start walking, firm because Daniel sometimes needs that. "I just don't get it."

"Shut up," he huffs. "You don't have to get it. But everything that people make is - is a kind of art."

This doesn't sound like a helpful idea to Emery. If everything's something, then nothing is. But it's keeping Daniel from being weird about being in the dark, so whatever. "Sure. People. It's a human thing."

"Yes, w - well, I'm a people - a person," he corrects. "And that's what I think. Besides, you put something up there. What - what was it anyway?"

"It's an alchemical symbol. We all had it on us somewhere. Well, me only sometimes, since I didn't really look like anything, but it was always someplace on my old body." He just... didn't think about it when he made the new one, but now she holds up her hand, the snake-dragon, pentangle tattooed in red on the back like it's always been there.

'Alchemical symbol' gives Daniel a shiver along his spine and he urges them to walk a little faster, shaking his head at Emery's hand. "I've tried to forget all that. No wonder I didn't recognize it," he says with a forcible laugh.

"The symbol by itself isn't much. It's more like a signature, I think. Like Father signing us." Emery friend, wishing now they'd come up with something else to paint on the ceiling. "I'd say a homunculus is art, but Father definitely wasn't a human."

"No, but you are art," he says, staring at the ground as they walk. "You can choose to do whatever you want with how you look. It's a form of expression. It's not human art, but it's still art."

That feels like Daniel's intentions are good, so Emery isn't too sour about it, but. Sap. And in fairness, well, huh. "I do sort of like changing that," she concedes. Is that art? The same as wanting to decorate a room or design the outside of a dumb building? "But it's more that there are things I don't like than things I do."

He walks a little more confidently in the light and finally allows himself to look over at him.

"What don't you like?"

Emery sighs. "I don't really look like anything, but I did look like something... first." And he's glad Daniel hasn't seen any of those shapes. "I didn't know what I was doing yet, and Father crammed me full of spare energy." Didn't they do this feelings thing already today? "I can still... fall back into one of those shapes. Like my body remembers it best. And they were all ugly."

"You can but you don't like it," he summarizes with a nod. "Alright. So - " He turns onto their street, not wanting to get into feelings too far, but also - this is nice.

"It wasn't...people-shaped, was it?"

"It wasn't anything shaped. It's not like I knew about... cats, either." Emery sighs a little more loudly, just so Daniel will know they're being ill-used. "I guess I had enough instinct to give myself a mouth, eyes, and feet, and enough stuff in between to hold those together. I started imitating my brothers and sister as soon as I knew enough to know it was gross."

"That's a little early to learn shame," he mutters, but he's not upset. Emery's early years were so strange to Daniel that it's like reading a book.

"It was mostly Greed," Emery says, who's frankly reading the same book much of the time. Huh. Greed was the arch traitor for a century, and eventually he realized that frankly, he couldn't exactly blame his brother, even if the motivation was a little wonky. But Greed was pretty vicious to Envy before that, too. "I don't know what I did, exist maybe, but he never liked me," Emery muses. Is that something to have a feeling about?

"Did you do anything to him later?" he asks.

"Sure, he was a traitor. Father had us hunt him down and used the leftovers to make a new one. Who was also a traitor." Greed was consistent between lives. "I guess I get it now." But, somehow, that doesn't make Emery feel much better.

Daniel walks up the steps and to the door, unlocking it. "That's disgusting. And he insulted you?"

He opens the door for them. The lights automatically turn on and Daniel visibly relaxes. The night is only tolerable from inside.

She slips past Daniel and inside, immediately shedding the street clothes version of themself for the familiar... black scraps of weird fabric. "It was just philosopher's stone, not... meat." Much too sterile to be disgusting. ...Emery's standards for disgust may be a little off, but, well, it's not important.

He closes the door behind them, shutting out the night and the darkness in favor of the warm glow of the lamps.

"You can say that it was a terrible thing that was said or done," he tells them, hitting them lightly in the arm as he passes.

"Al my stories are terrible things by whiny human standards." Daniel is maybe not a stickler for the finer points of morality, but he's sure whiny.

He turns around from the kitchen. "Call me another name, and you will regret it," he threatens, washing his hands in the sink to hide his laugh.

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