Wrath (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
garbagechild) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
route_10652015-08-12 12:11 am
garbagechild) wrote in route_10652015-08-12 12:11 am
Sometimes people leave you, halfway through the wood.
Who: Alphonse Elric, Envy, Greed, and Wrath.
Where: An ill-fated bakery. All around Goldenrod. The freakin' basement.
When: August 11th onwards! This is a catch-all.
Summary: The world has been pretty good to the various monsters and serial killers hailing from Amestris, but one particular villainous wild child has yet to be rehabilitated.
Rating: PG-13 for talk of abuse, manipulation, brainwashing, all that good stuff.
Log:
Continued from here.
Where: An ill-fated bakery. All around Goldenrod. The freakin' basement.
When: August 11th onwards! This is a catch-all.
Summary: The world has been pretty good to the various monsters and serial killers hailing from Amestris, but one particular villainous wild child has yet to be rehabilitated.
Rating: PG-13 for talk of abuse, manipulation, brainwashing, all that good stuff.
Log:
Continued from here.
no subject
[Sitting up, he shoves about half of it to the side and tilts his head at Lust quizzically.]
[The possibility that this is still some kind of huge, elaborate scheme to make him let his guard down is still bouncing around in his head a little bit, but after this, it's lost a great deal of momentum. Even Wrath can't delude himself-- if she'd wanted him dead, she'd had plenty of opportunities to pursue that goal. Realistically, any one of his captors could easily have marched down the stairs, cornered him, and wrung his scrawny little neck until all the life in him was gone. Determination, speed, and a tiny set of fangs were all he had now, and none of those could do any good in captivity.]
[So...]
[The only conclusion he could reach was that for some reason, she genuinely wanted to be down here. Playfighting with him against a bunch of Eevees.]
I like treats.
Why are we doing this?
It's never been like this.
no subject
[Lust sits there on the basement floor, her legs crossed under her and her hands in her lap.]
I know.
[It wasn't even two years ago that they'd been sworn enemies. But it had been different, back home. They'd all been different. How to explain all the complexities to a child? She sighs.]
Back home, I wasn't a very good person. I believed horrible things about myself, and it made me sad and cruel. I tried to find pleasure in the things I'd been told I should, but there wasn't any. I didn't think I could be good. I didn't think there was any humanity in me. But I've learned the truth since then. I'm not a monster and I never was, and I can be as good a person as I want.
Now I find pleasure in the things I like. Really and honestly like. Now I don't feel sad all the time anymore. And I treated you very poorly, back home, when I gave any thought to you at all. I don't want to treat you poorly here, I want you to have the things you deserve. A home, a childhood, a proper life.
[She's speaking openly to him. He's not so very young that he can't understand. And he isn't a normal child. He's one of them. Which makes him, by some sort of default, family. She tells herself that's all it is, this strange sort of tugging at her soft emotional parts he's begun eliciting. He's just so small and frightened and confused. She hates to see him like that. It's an uncomfortable new sort of instinct she's never encountered before.]
And children like to play. Someone should play with you.
no subject
[But after romping about on her shoulders with a bunch of Pokemon, it's almost as though he's hearing it with new ears-- even if he's still squinting, his brow deeply furrowed.]
[For a time, he seems to be deeply contemplating her words (and he is!), until finally saying, slowly--]
... So... you don't want me to break all my bones.
[YES, HE STILL REMEMBERS THAT CONVERSATION.]
no subject
[Lust shakes her head and sighs heavily again. It's taken her a good deal of trial and error to come to this point, where she can consider his feelings and place them as a priority.]
I was angry when I said that. When I'm upset, I say things I don't mean. I don't want you to break any of your bones. I'd be very upset if that happened.
I'd like us to be friends, Wrath.
no subject
[Still, for a second he tilts his head again, making DIRECT, PROLONGED EYE-CONTACT for the very first time during this conversation. For someone who spends a lot of time putting foreign objects in his nose and chasing invisible things across the floor, Wrath has a way of really staring straight into your soul.]
... Okay.
But, friends means no stabbing each other.
Not even if one of us is being really mean.
Okay?
[IT'S SURPRISINGLY MATTER-OF-FACT, COMING FROM HIM, BUT. It's also the closest he's come to acknowledging that he was being 'really mean' right before the skull-skewering incident. Baby steps.]
no subject
[Lust meets his eerie, unblinking stare without looking away. His eyes are piercing, but she sees nothing threatening in them. Only serious contemplation. And she deserves that contemplation, from him. She's done wrong by him in the past. But they've made such progress, in his time here.]
[She holds out her hand, palm up, to seal the promise.]
On my heart. And soul.
no subject
[He blinks down at Lust's hand for a moment, frowning thoughtfully.]
[On her soul, huh? So she had one now? Or was that another thing that they were trying to claim that Master had been lying about?]
[After a few lingering seconds, he decides on a suitable answer and looks back up at her.]
Well. I don't have a soul.
But I do have an organ in my chest for pumping blood. It works pretty well.
Will promising work if it's only on that?
no subject
[She didn't think anything could live without one. Even them. She knows they aren't an entire person, even if they're very close, but they have souls.]
That's your heart. I have one, too.
[She puts her hand on her chest, over where here heart beats. She can feel it.]
If we didn't have any soul at all, we wouldn't have beating hearts.
no subject
[Wrath still looks skeptical, and doesn't bother hiding it... but the fact that he's not literally opening his mouth to verbally argue back is some serious progress.]
Okay.
Then I swear on my blood-pumping chest organ. ... Or heart. No stabbing.
I might still bite, though. Sometimes I can't help it.
But Ralph says I'm doing better about that.
no subject
[She half-laughs shaking her head.]
Even if you bite me. But please try very hard not to bite me.
no subject
That's equivalent exchange.
That we both try.
Right?
no subject
[Lust nods, still feeling a strange sort of thick feeling in her chest and throat. These are all new impulses and physical compulsions she's never experienced before. She has the strong desire to hug Wrath. What has humanity done to her?]
We'll both be good to each other. Because we both deserve that. Now why don't I go upstairs and fix us some lunch? With a peanut butter brownie for dessert.
no subject
[If the kid had been a puppy, his tail would be wagging. Does he still have reservations? Sure. She did kill him that one time. But... but she's being so nice now. And after all those months of stubbornly resisting everything his former teammates had been trying to tell him, he's finally been worn down enough that some of it is sinking in.]
[And god, deep down, he really, really wants it all to be true.]
[Maybe it can be, if Dante never comes here.]
Okay!
If there's any bread in the lunch, will you make sure all the snakes are dead first?
[Envy has probably filled Lust in on the whole 'our horrible goblin brother in the basement thinks untoasted bread will kill him' thing.]