[closed catchall for Homeward Bound Boy Wrath]

[garbagechild]

Who: Wrath, Lust, Envy, Scar, Henry
What: LASSIE WRATH COME HOME
Where: Shark House (ie, quiet suburban neighborhood in Goldenrod City)
Warnings: Later threads include graphic dialogue about subjects like child death/injury, suicide, etc.
Summary: Wrath can't avoid the inevitable any longer. After meandering in awkward emotional paralysis for a month, he finally arrives in Goldenrod City to find out if his family is still there or not.



The city streets haven't changed a single bit.

The same smells hang on the humid, seaside air. The same warm yellow lights blaze above the sidewalks. The same buzz and murmur of never-sleeping nightlife float along main roads and narrow alleys alike.

Wrath remembers all of them with startling clarity, and yet they don't feel familiar anymore. He shies away from all of it, slinking along like an awkward shadow and trying not to be noticed. Which is blessedly not difficult, at least in the heart of town where there's still enough bustle and activity that a short kid and his Cubone hardly stand out. But even with his memories intact... coming back to a bona fide city after the isolation he'd wrapped himself in back in Amestris is overwhelming in every way.

What he's looking for, however, isn't in the heart of town. No, his destination is down in the southern half of the city, in a much sleepier pocket of suburbia...


____


His feet remember the path there better than his brain does, and all too fast, their surroundings have shifted from broad bright streets to ones lined with houses, trees, and lamp-posts. Completely preoccupied with his own growing anxiety, Wrath barely even notices how fast they've arrived until he realizes that downtown's golden hum has been replaced with the soft, velvet drone of chirping insects and whirring fans. The clank of his automail foot on the pavement is painfully loud now that there's so much less background noise to drown it out.

He stops right there in the middle of the road like a statue as the realization hits him.

This is it. This is their street...

Down at his side, Son squeezes his hand. The Cubone had been keeping up with his trainer valiantly all night long, despite his stubby little legs. Keenly-attuned partner-Pokemon senses aside, it hadn't exactly been hard to notice that Wrath had been growing tenser and tenser the closer they got (even though escaping from the chaos of the inner city should have, would have been a relief for most people). Although Wrath doesn't look down, the squeeze tugs him back into reality enough to carry on.

It isn't long until he spots it.

There.

It's there.

It's still there.

The House... but that doesn't mean it has the same people in it. Or that they would feel the same way they did once, even if they'd remained. ... It's not too late. He could just keep walking. He could just head straight out of town and into Ilex Forest, never to be seen again. They would never know that he was here. ... And vice versa.

A shadow briefly passes in front of one of the windows, and Wrath stiffens, freezing again. He feels like throwing up.

But Son delivers a gentle headbutt to his automail leg. CLINK. Wrath grimaces, swallowing, and stumbles up the walk.

Approaching the house is ten times more difficult and painstaking than it had been with the cottage in Violet, but eventually, he finds himself standing on the doorstep, almost too tense to breathe. He lifts a hand several times, only to drop it again. Once, he manages to make contact with the door... but just scratches it timidly with his nails, too quiet to be heard.

"... I can't," he mumbles hoarsely after these failed attempts, more to himself than to his Pokemon... but Son responds anyway with a whispered but no-less-vehement "Bone!" Yes you can!

Wrath lets out a shaky, miserable sigh, but... he can't say no to his son.

Steeling himself and taking a deep breath, he raises his hand again... and knocks.




Thread Timeline because we're out of control:
1. Wrath arrives and is ushered in by Henry + Envy; Scar informs Lust about Wrath's return; Lust and Wrath reunite.
2. As Lust + Wrath Cry In The Living Room (tm), Henry re-enters with a failed hot cocoa attempt; Envy flees to the laundry room.
3. Heather receives distraught Envy phonecall.
4. Envy and Scar briefly discuss The Gluttony Thing in the hall.
5. Wrath and Envy catch up; Evil Brother Hug! at Kitchen Island.
6. Heather and Scar fail to communicate on the porch, but it's fine.
7. Hot Cocoa Attempt 2.0 by Henry; Evil Brothers + Henry quiet couch time.
8. Scar + Lust discuss personal growth and parenthood.
9. Heather gets home with pizza baked goods, gets caught up on the tea.
10. The following morning, Scar + Envy discretely get info from Wrath; also Don't Tell Mom About Gluttony.

Comments

[officerdown]

It dawns on Scar, the moment the words leave his mouth, that he is also implicating Envy by making such a supposition. He watches the bony homunculus (although, he supposes off to the side, there are two of those, now) through the corner of his eye, well used to being subtle in his observation. It helps that the object of such seems abruptly distracted.

He continues prepping his tea.

"I see," said in a steady rumble. It isn't an issue he's going to directly push. Callous to Envy's plight though Scar may be, this isn't a knife he would even seek, let alone twist. Not for any of them. Not again. He replaces the lid on his loose tea and carefully, intentionally, returns it to its shelf.

He stares down at the kettle, not even close to a boil, and for a beat, Scar is still. It doesn't last. He turns, just as deliberate, to peer down at Envy.

"How did you find her?"

[exeggutorhead]

Envy's eyebrows shoot up at the question and he finally turns to look in the other man's direction--it takes him a few second to switch tracks between which 'her' Scar means, and his first interpretation made that a very very personal question.

It's only the phrasing of 'you found her' versus 'she found you' that gets him to understand the actual question.

"Oh, you mean Lust," some of the startled tension visibly drains out of him as he catches on. Not all of it, it's still a tense subject anyway. Enough that he does take a little more time to consider what he's going to say, and isn't flippant about it.

"By chance. We didn't have any part in it beforehand, if that's what you're wondering. There were rumors about some other variation of alchemy that might still have people practicing it, who'd get kicked out and wind up in Amestris. I was sent to poke around and see if there was anything to it, and found her on the floor."

[officerdown]

Scar doesn't outwardly react. On the floor sends some kind of electrical impulse down his limbs and back to his spine, but it isn't a feeling he can put a finger on. It's half numb, half cold.

A moment passes like this, several seconds too long before Scar turns back to the cabinets, reaching for his mug. He doesn't acknowledge the answer. Not even a nod. The question had been an impulse, waiting to burst from his impulsive mouth the moment the conversation even so much as glanced its horizon. He knows they aren't talking about this. He knows that there are many more pressing matters at immediate hand.

But he does wonder. He wonders a great deal more than even he thinks he does.

"Wrath's final impossible situation..." Scar uses Envy's own words, here. He's facing the counter, his back to Envy as he prepares his tea. "Another Elric mess."

[exeggutorhead]

The same way Scar hadn't pushed at Envy's closed off reaction before, he doesn't push at Scar's. It wasn't a pretty answer. Nothing about any of it is. Shame lurks around the edges of that, too. But he knows even less what to do about that than he does about what he did to Wrath, besides to deliberately avoid being cruel. He can't wish he'd never gone, or nobody would have been there to find her.

There's so much going on since last night, and Envy doesn't have much room for more. But he does take notice of Scar's reaction. The notable lack of one. With everything going on together, some unconscious facet of understanding shifts further towards it's complicated.

For now, he'll very willingly take the invited return to the present situation.

"Yeah, another one to add to the pile."

Those darn Elrics! You'd think they'd stop single-mindedly diving into the Gate chasing after other Elrics!

It does remind him that he'd had kind of a big question to ask though, and his tone goes from sardonic to something cautiously curious, "What was with the...we went in to tell him he shouldn't tell Lust about Gluttony, and you changed your mind at the end?"

[officerdown]

Scar pulls a ceramic mug in the shape of a Spheal from the cabinet and sets it beside the stove, then gets to work portioning loose tea into the brewing basket, a comically small job for his large hands.

"It is not a child's responsibility to protect their caretaker's feelings at the cost of their own," he says, still facing the stove, "I did not realize Wrath's death was entwined with Gluttony's. If he ever wants to speak on it with her, it is not our place to stop him."

Kids' minds work in odd ways. There are dozens of directions this could spiral, and dozens more Scar is sure he isn't even thinking of, given the homunculi's unique situation.

"I was uncertain of the secrecy to begin with, but I know you all have your politics."

[exeggutorhead]

Envy's head tilts as he thinks that over; not just the concept itself, but the certainty with which Scar says it. As though that was something normal, or expected.

"I...guess? She's not his only caretaker...but he did have a lot more people looking out for him before that aren't here anymore. He could still talk to either of us about it," but he does pause and concede, "I won't stop him."

He groans under his breath. This really did get more complicated than expected. The next thing is easier to sound more sure of.

"It's not a secret because of politics, anyway. It'd really hurt her, and there's not even anything any of us could do about it. Wrath needs her, and how's she supposed to be there for him and deal with what our master did to Gluttony at the same time? I don't want her to have to."

It's too much. What was done to Wrath is already so much, and Wrath's the one who's here now.

"I'm the oldest, so I should be looking out for both of them."

He doesn't think Scar would disagree on that front, given Envy's singular memory of the man from Amestris involves him busting through the ceiling to insist on what older brothers ought to be doing.

[officerdown]

"I am aware, hence my agreement to tell Wrath to keep it from her in the first place."

Scar doesn't want Lust to suffer more than she already has, but with all that's already happened between the lot of them, he's wary of the suffering waiting in the wings. It could very well kick down their almost too-quaint front door, someday.

He's grateful that he's facing the counter when Envy points out that he ought to be looking out for them, being the eldest. The surprise and amusement flickering past his eyes is brief, but undeniable. It's hard to imagine Envy taking responsibility for much of anything, even though Scar now has no choice but to admit to his increasingly nuanced understanding of what makes his housemate tick.

Words like "overgrown teenager" are not diplomatic words. They are not "share this space with a small herd of white oddities for the sake of his most important relationship" words.

"The fact remains that they would do best to start this life with as few secrets as possible. We don't know what the future holds."