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[cobbledtogetherenvy]

[No recording. Envy doesn't want to talk to any stupid humans.]

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[choosetoforget]

Daniel watches him a moment. "Was I - not supposed to know that?" Envy so rarely gives him information that he's suspicious now.

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

"If you were, I'd have told you, not that reject." Annoyance flickers again, which at least makes him look more like himself and not an Envy robot, idling.

[choosetoforget]

"Why?" he wonders, standing up to put away his cup. And when he sits down, it's closer to Envy than he had been.

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

Like Envy has reasons for doing things. "Why would you have a reason to know?" Belatedly, he thinks of another angle, and just stacks the protests without much regard for whether they cohere. "You act ridiculous any time you learn anything about me. You launched a whole interrogation over me killing humans like it was new information."

[choosetoforget]

Daniel rolls his eyes. "Don't be a brat," he groans. "It certainly was not an interrogation. But I was concerned about it."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

"Well, stop." Envy means it to sound like his usual cavalier dismissal of dumb human stuff. He does not succeed.

[choosetoforget]

"I can't. You're - well, you matter."

He stands up and pushes Zhenzhen to the side. The whole point of Envy being here was because Daniel was afraid and didn't want to be alone that night. And now he's stayed up far too late asking too many questions.

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

He's come to accept that this is just a thing Daniel gets stuck on sometimes, but he's still irritated. "You were concerned about me hunting humans. That's not concern about me. That's not liking what you signed up for. I get it." Belatedly, he assumes a cavalier, more obviously false than usual cheer. "Usually we leave a few layers there, let the humans pretend we're not monsters. But I don't have the resources of a country at the moment. You just have to live with it."

[choosetoforget]

Daniel goes quiet for a moment, pulling bare feet up into his bed. "It's not that," he tells him. "I was concerned with you hunting humans for - other reasons."

He wraps his arms around his legs. "And you're a monster but - not the sort of monster I'm afraid of."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

Unimpressed, Envy tilts his head. It's a distinctly canine motion. He's worn a lot of dog shapes over the years. Sometimes they stick. If you're going to be cryptic, then you can explain. He's not going to chase the answers.

[choosetoforget]

He rests his chin on his knees, curling up as small as he can. "You're a monster like I am a monster. The monsters I am afraid of are - actual ones. Ones that hunted me in the castle. That hurt me and dragged me and killed each other. Made of parts of what were once human flesh."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

Another moment of uncontrolled expression, though this one's even harder to make sense of, on account of Envy has less idea what he's actually feeling than usual. "So, the difference that matters is... being made of dead humans?"

[choosetoforget]

"No," he amends quickly, though it's with a gentle laugh. "Mindless creatures whose only purpose is to tear apart and follow orders. You may have been - made by your Father - but you make choices."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

Envy doesn't relax. "Made out of dead humans." That's true of all of them, he tells himself. He's not--owning up to anything.

[choosetoforget]

Daniel sits back, resting against gis pillow as he stares at the ceiling. "It isn't- that," he assures him. "You choose, like I said. You make decisions. You could be made of smoke but that would be less important than what you do."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

Daniel's up to his usual justifications, and Envy usually finds them pretty amusing. He's long been entertained by the weird knots humans will tie themselves into to justify following their feelings. But this particular example niggles at him. "So it's, what, free will that gets us monsters off the hook?"

[choosetoforget]

Envy gets a petulant look. "That depends on if you're going to tell me that you don't have free will."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

"No such thing. It's just an easier thing to think if your brain's made of fat and chemicals." Envy isn't actually made of very different component parts, at least when he's shaped like this, but he's still a planned thing. "Sounds like they were just simple. We have homunculi like that. Just built to wreck things and follow simple orders."

[choosetoforget]

He frowns. "You - don't believe in free will?" he wonders. "But you - went against what you were supposed to do, didn't you? You don't - follow your nature."

[cobbledtogetherenvy]

"More complicated machines break more often." He's not even particularly invested in this argument. He's just edgy and vaguely unhappy and doesn't quite know what to do with it.

[choosetoforget]

"You're not broken and you're not a machine." He really doesn't want to start another argument, not so soon, and so he leans back on his arms.

"Will you dim the lights, please? Just turn the knob by the door? Not - all the way down, of course."