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There was once a being born from a glass jar.
How much does it take to make a being into a person?
When she first gains consciousness, light is the only thing she can distinguish amidst all the sights and sounds.
She doesn't have a body yet and thereforth, no eyes. She's just a self, intelligence fast like lighting, trapped in a glass jar, a mix of cells slowly getting born.
She doesn't have particular feelings about her creator, her father yet. He hasn't made her to have feelings. She doesn't even know what they are yet.
As it is, she's just conscience, trapped in a glass jar, slowly learning what it is to live and think.
Her father hasn't really made her to think independently either. But as a homunculus, it is her very existence that requires her to do so. Ergo es su.
The first mistake of Szilard lies here. Because you can't become a person if you don't have the right to think.
When she first gains her body, she doesn't question her appearance and how it differs from her father, the only other thing she knows. She doesn't even know why she feels that she's a "she", but it's just one of those things that is both very instinctual and yet so inconsequential that in the grand scheme of her knowledge, it doesn't really matter and it is not something that should weigh on her mind yet.
It first becomes clear to her that there must be something different about herself when her creator begins to introduce her to other beings and their reaction to her is something she doesn't understand.
She wasn't created to understand others.
At first, she attributes it to the fact she's superior to them. The perfect being, born from a glass jar, distinct by her creation. Later, after she gains more knowledge, when she commits the sin of eating someone else, she attributes it to being a monster, something, a self created out of nothing, something that shouldn't be, a creation made from dark alchemy.
Later, years later, she just realized their reaction was because she was perceived by them as a woman.
A woman that was still in a subservient position to an older superior man (even if that is a whole other issue she will later have to address), but still a woman out of the home, active, dressing and acting as a man, very much contrary to the societal expectation of the time. And suddenly, it all felt really stupid, all the anguish she felt because of the weight of the eyes of men judging her for something as measly as her gender.
At this point, she's no longer just "she", but Ennis. Still simply Ennis.
She still wears suits. It was the thing Szilard wore and she never realized that there were other options for her to dress differently. Even now that she realized how wrapped her vision of the world was at her creation- She's not sure how to proceed with the new information she has. There are just so many options and different ideas out there that it's easy to get overwhelmed. She simply has to take small steps in order not to crumble.
It is so very easy to completely shift a world view with the power of knowledge.
Even then, she isn't sure yet what it means to be a woman. She's still trying to establish who "Ennis'' is as a person. She isn't sure what her physical gender means for her self, her soul. Sometimes, it's still difficult to realize that her body is truly hers and that she has control over it. Society seems to have a set idea of what a woman should be, but she's already on the underground of this one, surrounded by strange unconventional people.
She doesn't mind being a woman. Or at least, she doesn't think so. As stated before, she isn't entirely sure what it means. There aren't many women around her, but the ones she knows are the loveliest people. She thinks of Miria's smile, Kate's kindness, even of Edith's patience and of Maria's infectious energy and Ennis hopes that she can one day be like them. But even so, the different people surrounding her now are so forgiving and they love so strongly, it puts her out of her axis completely. She is used to affection being rare, some would say inexistent. So to be surrounded by people willing to consider part of their family…
It's overwhelming to say the least.
However, it's a good thing, because they never expect her to act a certain way. There, she can simply be Ennis- Even if she isn't sure what it means yet.
Ennis isn't sure at first how she should define her relation to her creator, Slizard Quates, to be. He's the one who made her who she is, so he should naturally be her father, as she is the fruit from his cells.
And Slizard is a really difficult father to please.
As much as he tells her that she is the result of countless attempts to create thepoect homunculus, that she is the natural apex of humanity, in the same breath, he's just as ready to belittle her and put her back in her place. It would make sense that as the one who built and created her, he can just as easily deconstruct, dismantle her down. As his creation - she knows she’s just one of many for him, a small footnote in his genius accomplishment - because truly, what is she, compared to the concept of full immortality, extrapolated from half missing information. Conversely, he has created her consciousness in a unique body, serving as her shell, but she knows he has created many others, sometimes spread in multiple bodies but forming a whole - so truly, what is she but just another toy for this man?
As her creator, he's naturally superior to her in every way and Ennis should simply follow his order, no question asked.
Those demands are naturally easier to execute when she is only thoughts, consciousness only woken up with no real knowledge of the world apart from what her father had told her about it.
However, when she bites the apple of knowledge -when she devours the alchemist- it's like her eyes are open for the first time since she was born. It's like seeing light for the first time and hurting your eyes, yet you must not avert them. And it's what she must do now with all the new knowledge and emotion she's faced with, so many things she hasn't known before, so overpowering that it feels unbearable. The first feelings she can truly distinguish among the ruckus is extreme guilt- Guilt over everything she ever done without even questioning the why.
As a result, she simply bottles it down, tries to ignore it. It doesn't bring anything useful to feel guilty. In fact, she has lived all of her short existence without feeling such emotions. It's simply easier that way, despite her newly developed conscience screaming at her. Now that she is aware of it, it's a lot harder to keep it quiet.
Following orders after that is a lot more difficult, not because there are any differences, but because she knows what they mean now. And once she knows their impact, Ennis is a lot more reluctant to actually follow the things she is asked to do. Or rather ordered to do, in her case.
She keeps her mouth shut however and continues to act on her own, in self-preservation. Szilard is a very difficult man to please after all.
Who knows what he would do if his perfect homunculus stopped acting the way he asks of her.
Ennis knows. After all, she knows that she isn't the first creation of her master. She knows that she is easily disposable, nothing more than a slight inconvenience if she decides to act in any way.
So, if she sometimes decides not to share all the information she has, Szilard doesn't need to know what he hasn't asked about.
Ennis naturally does not really understand what love is. Her view on it has always been skewed and despite the time passing, she still isn't sure what love is all about.
Even as a simple concept, it is very hard to explain or understand. What defines love as a tender passionate affection and attachment from any other kind of nice feelings? Can companionship be defined as love or is it another thing altogether? There are so many nuances that Ennis doesn't entirely get - And she is not sure she would be able to recognize love if it was right in front of her face.
Once upon a time, she dared to believe Szilard might have loved her. As his creation, as his loyal servant, if not as his daughter. Maybe that was naive thought of her, but it is hard to imagine creating someone, a whole sentient being, and not having the slightest feelings about them.
Ennis is sure he must have felt something. Not love toward her, she knows that now, but maybe something. At least pride in her creation - His creation, since she was his doing all along. Must have felt powerful creating something, someone out of nothing.
She won't pretend to understand what he must have felt when she barely can't put words to her own emotions. Her own feelings could barely be classified as love after all. Loyalty, certainly, fear even more so, but affection? She is not sure if she ever loved her creator, hard to say when she barely knows what that means. However, it feels all too easy attributing emotion like love so freely, when it feels all so overwhelming to her.
Different types of people love differently she learns.
For example, Isaac and Miria are the kind that do give that love so easily and in everything they do, it's hard not to love them in return. They smile at her and Ennis can only smile in return, wondering how blessed she was to meet such wonderful folks and how they inadvertently sent her free.
On the contrary, Czeslaw, her new adopted little brother, has a harder time letting his barrier down. She sees it in the way he tries to act carefree and yet, acts very consciously around people. Ennis can understand that, she is not sure what the little boy have lived through his many many years of life (a detail that is so easy to forget too, until when he gets lost in thoughts and she sees in the young man eyes reminding her, he is much older than she will ever be and probably have seen more that she'll ever get to in all her own years to come), but what she got from Maiza is that the young boy haven't had the greatest childhood and have lost his most recent care-taker too. The one that took care of him for the past 200 years or so.
She won't pry into the past relationship Czes had before coming to New York in hope to rekindle his relationship to Maiza. However, she understands that it must be very difficult for him, especially after everything he lived and such a great loss, to move to a new place and be prepared to open his heart to new strange people. She understands his reluctance and is willing to give him the time he needs for him to make those connections again.
Ennis can only hope Czeslaw can manage to love again, even little by little.
(She won't realize until later how wrong her assumptions are about his previous care-taker, but it's not a thing Czes ever really opened up about. Just like she doesn't really talk about Szilard and how despite it all, his death is still affecting her. That she still has difficulties putting their relationship in perspective. Because it is very hard for her to imagine him not having the slightest feelings toward her and yet, that was the truth of the situation and how stupid was she to ever believe he could have loved her, it's not like he ever pretended he did -)
(It's a shame neither she nor Czes ever talked about it. Because there would have been a lot to say.)
And then, there is Firo Prochainezo, her new master of sorts and she is not sure how to feel about him, even less what he feels about her.
It cannot be called love. It is far too early to know and she still hasn't found out how to define love yet.
But alongside him- maybe if he lets her stay with him- she gets the feeling that just maybe… She might one day get to know what love really means.
And maybe, it will feel similar to being accepted at his side.
Ennis knows what it feels like to die all too well.
She has experienced it more times than the average person after all.
Most of the time, it's just a sharp pain - Be that from a bullet, from a knife, sudden, quick and excruciating pain - and then, bone chilling cold, feeling like it settles in just for a moment, yet lasting forever. It's like spacing out, staring at a wall, only to realize you've spent several minutes in that position.
In her opinion, death shouldn't really be compared to sleeping. Sleep at least has the decency to be restful most of the time.
Coming back from death is also a feeling she's painfully familiar with. She would compare it to an electric shock, shaking all of your nerves, your body not feeling like it's your own for a moment before coming back to you. The pain is not there anymore, but the memory of it is still there and the fear - The fear of dying is still well anchored in you.
Overall, she would classify it as an awful experience, would not recommend it and she's glad to have at least know most people won't experience those awful feelings more than once.
She has yet to know a peaceful kind of death. Well, apart from that time she thought this death would have been her last…
The details of that night are a bit blurry. Maybe Ennis would like not to remember and so has purposely left out a lot of information out of her memory.
The alley cobblestones on her back had been wet, cold and unequal, she knows that for sure. The sun had already set a long time ago and with the only lights coming blindingly from the car headlight or muted from the surrounding business, she only had to look at the sky and its inky blackness. Knowing that the same darkness was coming for her and it was but a matter of time before this was what it would be. The air around her already felt chilling, but Ennis knows that it is only the beginning and soon, it will surround her and embrace her in a caresse made of thousands of needles piercing her skin.
Yet, there was a warmth there.
There were voices calling for her, yet she can't recall the words. But she recalls warmth, knows that one point arms wrapped around her and she recall thinking
Oh.
He has a kind face.
I wouldn't mind dying if it was for him.
And then, she was coming back, not with a shock, but more slowly. As if she had been taken down, but reconstructed again slowly - carefully- As if she was a masterpiece that someone had taken time to make perfect, fixing her every flaws, making her new, yet still her and-
He’s asking for her name.
She doesn’t understand. He should already know it after all. This man - Firo Prochainezo- has been the one to rebuild her after all, so he should be more than aware of the entirety of her psyche. And yet.
He is asking her.
Simply because he wants her to say it.
It is undeniable that Firo holds power over her, after all, if he'd want, she could simply cease to exist. Just like that, her existence would stop and she could do nothing to stop it. She remembers the agony of it all too much. And yet, Firo and the way he acts around her makes it all too easy to forget about it.
It's all too simple to forget that once upon a time, she had and knew nothing.
Now, she knows. She is able to think for herself and gather information, not with any goal or under the orders of anyone, but simply because she wants to know. It is a novelty at first to be able to research anything she wants, not for any sort of task or any goal in mind, but simply for the pleasure to know - the search of information only for information itself. Ennis isn’t sure what to do with all her new knowledge - reading about science, medicine, history- and sometimes, she still wonders if it’s alright to have all that information and not to do anything with it. However, Firo argues that knowing things is never lost and that information is valuable, because you never know when you’ll need that knowledge. In a self-deprecating way, he adds he wishes he knew more things - because he has always been the more instinctive type, acting before he can think.
Ennis has to disagree with him on that fact and express as much.
Because after all, he can show surprising insight in certain moments. Things she hasn’t even known herself - and if that shows her one thing, it’s that there exist many different types of knowledge.
And knowing empathy… It is certainly one form of knowledge Firo Prochainezo has along with all the things he also possesses, some of them he even gave to her. Like her freedom, her new sense of self and the ability to say that she truly has something now.
True, she had possession before. However, there was no emotional attachment to any of her clothing or material belonging and the only other person she had an established relationship with was Szilard. Definitely, she had belonged to him as his- since he had created her, was her father and master, that naturally made him in charge of Ennis. So it was only the course of order that by default, she was his propriety, because without him, she would be and would have nothing, not even her sense of self - and that was a thing that he was quick to remind her of. However, if she had belonged to him, the same kinship could not be said in his case. Szilard did not belong to her, because a master could not belong to his creation, he was not her, nothing more than her creator that could just as easily discarded her if the whim took him. She knew she was not the first. Hoped she would be the last.
To conclude, Szilard did not belong to her. Firo didn’t either.
Neither did she in return.
Firo had expressed as such when she had tried to treat him as his new master. After he had saved her, it was only natural that she tried to return her appreciation in some way. She had done the things Szilard usually asked of her; to stay silent, following him and waiting for orders. She had also taken her time to observe him. After all, Firo and the way he acted deeply intrigued her. From her perspective, she couldn’t understand how a person that had been so kind toward a literal stranger could still come back every night to an empty apartment. How could a person stay so warm when knowing that they were alone, that no one was waiting for them at home.
If there was one thing that she could recognize and know for Ennis, it was loneliness. The rest of Firo, she could not understand so much.
She understood why he felt awkward accepting her service and for him to take the place of her master. After all, if it was her that was put in charge of another being (she could not be called human), she would feel uncomfortable too. She just didn’t have any other frame of reference for what their relationship should be. But slowly- Slowly, Firo taught her. That he did not expect for her to do anything. That she was not at his service. That she could be her own person. And with that, she could truly have things for the first time in her life. And once more, it’s not the physical things that are important, but more the bonds she has formed.
Because Ennis, for the first time in her life, can say that she has people at her side without being under the will of anyone. She isn’t sure what her exact place is yet- but she has an eternity to figure it out.
From nothing, she knows and she has- and she can for the first time say that she truly is.
And she is free, free to think, free to be and -
Maybe this is what happiness is like.
Naturally, Ennis has never known what happiness was supposed to be.
She had known the broad concept of it of course. However, the definition of it just seemed too unrealistic for her before - More something you’d describe to children, something that exists in stories, yet in real life could never happen, no matter how much you’d wish for it . After all, reality was unpredictable, so even if it was possible to reach happiness, something could just as easily go wrong and you'd lose it just as quickly as it had come. Happiness, just like life, was fickle and erratic. Ennis could not trust such a concept, not something so fluctuating as this.
Maybe this is why now that her life has gotten a certain kind of calm - but never predictable… She is not sure how to accept this new feeling of contentment. What are you supposed to do now that you are now happy?
She can at least try to extend this feeling of bliss to the people at her side. It is the least for her to return to them a bit of the joy they have given to her. Moreover, all the people she surrendered herself with more than deserve because in her opinion, they are wonderful people and if someone like her can get happiness… Well, they are far better than herself so it is natural that they also deserve it.
Happiness, she learns, is finding a place for you to stay with people you want to make equally happy by your side.
Which makes it thoroughly devastating when she realizes Firo doesn’t seem to be happy, not truly.
Oh, he hides it well. But she observes him and has started to know him and she can tell that something is bothering him, though she can’t exactly tell what this something exactly is. Neither is she certain how to approach him with her concern - She’d consider him a friend, but is it overstepping a boundary? What if it’s something that he doesn’t want to share with her, for whatever reason? What if he deflects and says that everything is alright when Ennis knows for sure that whatever is on his mind is pressing down on him, pushing him down, putting a weight on his shoulder ? Their friendship is still too new - too fragile - for her to know for sure that doing so would not be encroaching on something too personal - Something that Firo himself might not be ready to be talking about. However, the fact that whatever Firo is carrying- it is making him more wary day after day and she can see how much he’s silently hurting, so she knows that she has no other choice but to confront him.
She does so on a night where Czeslaw is not home - Had to leave to take care of business, whatever that means - and Ennis is reminded once again that those people might start to be her family but they can still chose to hide things from each other for various reasons- Because they don’t want to explain themself, because they don’t wish to accidentally hurt the others or because they’re not ready to bare themself, the pretense and the lies they build inside themself across the years, not ready to take them down - and yet. She still decides to ask Firo what is bothering him.
They’re sitting next to each other on the small couch of his apartment- Their apartment. There is a cooling mug of tea that is on the table in front of them. The leaf had over-steep just a little too long, so it will continue to go cold and bitter. Firo is looking at his knees, his eyebrows furrowed as if he’s trying to find his words and his left hand-
It’s resting right next to him.
Ennis is wondering just how appropriate it would be to take it in her own to show the young man next to her that what he is going through, no matter what it is, it’s gonna be alright and that she is supporting him.
But maybe that would be crossing a boundary too, so she doesn’t dare to hold his hand.
After what seems like an eternity, Firo sighed and reveals what he’s been carrying in his chest for a long time, how after having eaten Szilard - Ennis still can’t stop the way her body tense remembering the event of that night, but she tries to stay calm and stay firm in order to support her frame - he had not considered all the consequence of taking the older alchemist knowledge in him. And now, he has to carry with him all the atrocities that Szilard has done and wondering- Did taking that knowledge make him a bad person? Is he there inside him, like a cancer, making him worse, making him evil? Have he become a monster just because he absorbed one?
(And once more - It’s a tragedy that Czeslaw is not there. Or maybe it is a good thing, Not that Ennis would know any of those things of course. But there is a lot to wonder about here)
And once he’s done talking, done laying his heart, this time- This time, Ennis takes Firo hand.
He promptly flinches and she releases it almost immediately. She can feel her face burning because she had not planned to do that at all and judging by his reaction - it was not the right moment to show her support either. But she has to say something- say anything because it is so blatantly false, she feels like screaming-
Because Firo could never be Szilard.
He has never dared to treat her the way Szilard had done for her. Because Firo had been her freedom, the one that gave her everything, so how can he even imply that he could be similar to that monster in any way? Comparing Szilard to Firo - it's undeniable that he's a good person. And it is the good people that are the ones to ask if they are good or not - Someone that is evil would not care about their morals and would not even be aware of it. And it is so important for Firo to realize that he is good, so good, that he makes her happy
Because he has given everything to her. Her sense of self. It is only natural that Ennis wants to return a little kindness back. Because she considers him her family and he is so important to her and
When he smiles back at her, nothing else seems to matter. The cup of tea continues to cool on the table in front of them. Nothing has changed.
Yet, Ennis is reassured that things are going to be alright.
Yes, it's still taking a minute to adapt to everything. She's not sure how who she is, who she wants to be. But with him by her side-
She can be anything.