FicWad

Lust silently descended on an unwitting infantryman and cruelly cut short both his life and his head. She couldn't help it. A wonderful, deep-seated and uncontrollable anger was coursing through her veins. And for the first time, she knew exactly why she felt the way she did.

Another soldier spotted his fallen comrade and blindly opened a hail of gunfire in her direction. The sound of ineffectual bullets clattering to the floor would be the last thing he ever heard; a set of razor-sharp nails, the last thing he ever saw.

This is why she wanted to become human, she convinced herself-to get angry, to be able to enjoy a gentle breeze, to feel anything at all.

She deftly climbed up a stone rampart with her claws, scoring a few more kills on the way up. Lust knew it wasn't smart to systematically destroy the ingredients to the Philosopher's Stone like this, but she had let reason trump emotion for far too long. Her fingers hit their targets seemingly of their own accord. Nothing felt so good as to let anger wash through her overly analytical mind and guide her actions.

Standing atop a quaint little mosque, Lust quickly scanned the area for more prey. However, as the events of the day caught up with her agitation, a familiar sequence of memories began to flash through her thoughts.

He clutched her and embraced her as if there was no place he'd rather be, patting her flowing locks and looking off into the distance...
Those same startlingly expressive red eyes, this time streaked with tears, gazed upon her bed-ridden form fearfully. He was trying to press the locket she'd offered him back into her delicate hands...
He handed her a plate of his home cooking, and she made sure he wasn't looking before replacing it with some of her own food...
There was a gigantic patch of blood between his legs and he was wearing an insane smile, kneeling down to get a closer look at her...

Lust fell to her knees. She'd never felt anger, or even sorrow. She'd just been trying to distract herself from the inevitable.

Scar...

"You are not her," echoed his voice. "You cannot be. The dead do not come back to life."

Lust let herself collapse into a heap on the rooftop, staring blankly into the clouds. She could see a vivid afterimage of his eyes in the azure Lior sky as more memories cascaded into existence.

"You are not the woman my brother brought back. You only look the same."
"My body... acted on its own..."
"I received my name from God. I, who opposed His teachings, no longer have a name."
"I so wanted to tell my brother that... I love him."

"Those who inflict pain cannot sleep."

Lust snapped out of her episode. Scar was pacing towards the circle line of the giant transmutation circle, no lines of regret marring his look of stony-faced determination.

"But now, there is no need for me to worry about that."

She saw those brilliant red eyes close for the last time.

"I will no longer... have to... long for slumber."

The old Ishbalan, once so full of pain and malice, finally found peace. Though the array swallowed him up and worked him back into the earth, the look of determination etched on his face did not sway. He would be back with God, back with his family, back with her...

"Nii...san..."

All the pain, all the rage, all the potential of all the lives he had taken within him congealed into a raging crimson torrent. The scarlet ray pierced through the invading militia, and their screams pierced the air in turn as souls were wrested from flesh and channeled into a new host.

It was at once the most beautiful and the most dreadful thing she'd ever witnessed. The wave flashed over her several times, never harming her in the strictly physical way it had obliterated the soldiers, yet exacting its toll all the same. A different rush of red would flash through her mind... memories of red eyes and lost limbs, of red blood and lost love. It was that crimson torrent, and not the advent of the Philosopher's Stone, that excited emotion from her.

One door closed. Another opened.

"Where did I come from..."

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"...And where am I going?"

The blazing hot array forced her to double over and expel the incomplete Philosopher's Stone inside her body. Wrath took a moment to contemplate the arc the gleaming stones made as they tumbled from her lips and melted into the circle, marveling how the trajectory of the regurgitation made a sort of crimson torrent. Lust would've been mildly interested if she weren't so preoccupied... amongst the homunculi, she'd always been the one who had known the most about alchemy.

She spent all this time searching for the Stone... to die? Wrath had never heard anything more ridiculous. All he wanted to do was please his mother.

He delivered her death quickly and swiftly-he wasn't one to disappoint.

The light of the array filled her vision, ablating the last vestiges of life surging through her artificial body. But the light continued to grow in intensity. She was being carried through a yellow chasm, all the knowledge in her mind replaced with a tumultuous surge of understanding.

The Gate towered over her. Lust could only smile. She finally understood: Why she'd wanted the Philosopher's Stone, why she'd wanted to become human, why she'd wanted to die... It was all to be with him.

The Gate creaked open, hundreds of eyes audibly emerging from inside its unknowable depths. But there was only one pair of eyes that caught her attention.

It must've been the first time she saw a smile ever grace his face. Scar extended his arms, beckoning Lust to him, no scar blemishing his forehead and no signs of the harsh life he'd led marring his skin. Lust couldn't have hesitated if she wanted to; her body acted by itself.

He embraced her and together they were dragged into the darkness.

One door opened. The doors of the Gate swung closed.

And for once, Lust didn't care why.