[Scar hadn't known what to brace himself for. As his hand falls away from Lust's lower back, he's left standing alone and utterly stricken.]
[One of the last things he remembers, before the cruel skip in his memory, is their tenuously positive relationship, and that alone had been a wild turnaround since...]
[There's a tiny, upward quirk in his corner of his mouth as he recalls New Years. Wrath had been caught stealing money out of coat pockets, and security had dragged him to Lust's side because she'd been seen accosting him earlier in the night.]
[Fast forward to that flu she'd been stricken with, and the wretched soup Wrath had been trying to cobble together not ten paces from where they stood, now. And to the hour ago when he had known little but to keep Wrath's name and his conspicuous absence out of his mouth.]
[Now, the present. Now, the multitudes in her he hadn't known. That, even if he had known her feelings, he wouldn't have expected to be freely given. He knows Lust's attention, care, love, to be a mad, desperate man's pursuit, earned only on the brink of death, only when it's too late. She is a lifetime removed from the woman he had scorned in Amestris, but the vestiges of her insecurities, of her defenses, are still painfully familiar. Sometimes, they drive him mad.]
[He would do it again, though, if she awoke tomorrow manipulated, callous and cruel.]
[So, she loves Wrath. And he loves her. He can work from there.]
[Scar swallows. He blinks. The redness around his eyes is less, with the scarred skin. But it is present.]
no subject
[One of the last things he remembers, before the cruel skip in his memory, is their tenuously positive relationship, and that alone had been a wild turnaround since...]
[There's a tiny, upward quirk in his corner of his mouth as he recalls New Years. Wrath had been caught stealing money out of coat pockets, and security had dragged him to Lust's side because she'd been seen accosting him earlier in the night.]
[Fast forward to that flu she'd been stricken with, and the wretched soup Wrath had been trying to cobble together not ten paces from where they stood, now. And to the hour ago when he had known little but to keep Wrath's name and his conspicuous absence out of his mouth.]
[Now, the present. Now, the multitudes in her he hadn't known. That, even if he had known her feelings, he wouldn't have expected to be freely given. He knows Lust's attention, care, love, to be a mad, desperate man's pursuit, earned only on the brink of death, only when it's too late. She is a lifetime removed from the woman he had scorned in Amestris, but the vestiges of her insecurities, of her defenses, are still painfully familiar. Sometimes, they drive him mad.]
[He would do it again, though, if she awoke tomorrow manipulated, callous and cruel.]
[So, she loves Wrath. And he loves her. He can work from there.]
[Scar swallows. He blinks. The redness around his eyes is less, with the scarred skin. But it is present.]