victory_road | [closed catchall for Homeward Bound Boy Wrath]

Current Location: Goldenrod City

Entry tags:

[closed catchall for Homeward Bound Boy Wrath]

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.

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Envy is...less serene as he shuffles into the kitchen, squinting. He's not a morning person, and it had really not been a great night for sleep for obvious reasons. He's still in his pajamas too, an oversized t-shirt with an assortment of dark types on the front and his least garishly stupid pair of boxers. Multiple spikes of hair have escaped his nighttime don't-strangle-Heather containment ponytail.

Oh, Scar's made his gruel breakfast. That means they aren't in a huge hurry. Which suits him just fine--part of why it had been difficult to fall asleep even after everything had settled down was just trying to figure out how to even go about the upcoming conversation. If it wasn't so important to get this particular warning to Wrath as soon as possible, he would've been happier to let it wait. But Lust is already having to deal with enough right now to maybe find this out from a chance comment.

If she ever asked directly, he'd tell her. But she hasn't, and if Lust isn't asking a question Envy knows it means she really doesn't want to know.

Envy goes straight for the cabinet that holds HIS breakfast of stupidly sugary cereal. Sucrose fortification for the conversation to come. And then from there directly to the house's most recent coffee pod contraption.

"Which room's he in...?"

Lust and Scar had been the ones in charge of settling Wrath in last night, and it's so early. So, so early. Getting human-tired is never going to stop being very unpleasant for ~~peepaw~~ Envy.

"The horse is in Greed's room," Scar says without turning away from the stove. He's half ignorant, half uncaring of Envy's groggy misery, and he's not even entirely cognizant that he's made what might be called,

A Joke.

"The both of us?" A stunted way of asking if they should go in together.

Envy stares blankly at Scar, too out of it to understand the comment right away. Horse...?

Why'd he say horse?

...horse....

....

HEY.

The comically indignant scowl that passes over Envy's face like a storm cloud as he finally understands that he's just been "I told you so'd" first thing in the morning is possibly very satisfying for Scar, if he turns around to see it. If he doesn't, he will still get to hear the very dramatic, drawn out groan and an under the breath grumble of "it made sense" as Envy shuffles over to the table to start eating his Minior Crunch.

He will answer the more serious question after he's had some bites of sugar and also taken a dramatic minute to sulk. How could this happen to him. Terrible. Unjust.

"Yeah, both of us can go talk to the child."

Scar doesn't react at all to Envy's moment of indignance, in the 'cool guys don't look at explosions kinda way. He finishes preparing his ~~hearty porridge~~ nutritious, filling breakfast before turning around, spoon in hand, looming at the counter rather than settling with Envy at the table.

"You lead. I wasn't there."

His tone is lowered, for the sleeping house, but also out of care for the situation. He can't not notice that their resident 400 year old 30 year old teenager deemed him worthy to even broach this odd little dilemma that's reared its head alongside Wrath's return.

Ironically enough, the thing that had tipped Envy over the edge in deciding to invite a human to this talk was Scar's own response to the very post where Envy had started insisting that Wrath was definitely a horse. That, and the careful way Scar had broached the topic when he'd asked Envy a year ago.

And this...feels like it needs both care and steadiness. Real care, not performed. More than he feels like he can actually provide when at his most genuine, Envy becomes unstable, awkward.

It still feels...he's not sure. Weird, at the very least, to have invited Scar on purpose into something that's so clearly Homunculus Business. But it wouldn't be the first time, and it HAD been a good thing when they'd allowed Al to join in on the old basement plan. It does help, for Scar to acknowledge that Envy should still lead. So he nods slowly, with a hum as he thinks.

"There's more than what I said, before. Al told me that later on he and Wrath had a fight with...what used to be Gluttony. He'd changed, gotten bigger and mutated somehow. I saw it once, some ghost types had us all sharing dreams. But I don't know more than that about the real thing."

He doesn't look up, and takes a long drink of coffee. He doesn't like thinking about it.

Scar listens quietly as he works through his morning slop.

He misses Al.

It's for the best, that he's where he should be.

His spoon pauses in his bowl.

"And what became of it?"

Al being gone is yet another thing that Envy tries not to think about much.

For now, though, he does try to think back on what he'd been told. It had all been really complicated and hadn't made a whole lot of sense.

"I'm...not sure, he didn't say. We were mostly talking about the Gate, there was something about opening a portal through?"

Envy shrugs as he spins his wrist around in a vague circle, gesturing helplessness with his spoon. He doesn't understand how Shamballa logic works it had sounded absolutely ridiculous.

"If I had to guess, I'd think that maybe it was transmuted to make that happen."

Envy's eyes narrow at that, a tension to his voice even as he says it matter of factly. He knows by now that he was part of that transmutation fee too.

~~But surely he and Gluttony together would have been enough. There would have been no need for more than that. Surely.~~

Now, Scar is half-distracted from the intended task of this morning by whatever ordeal Envy is describing.

"Would this happen to have anything to do with the other world Alphonse described?"

He knows of it. That it's connected to the Gate. But the rules governing it are inscrutable and absurd. It's nonsense he wants nothing to do with.

But he's inherited this mess, now.

Envy just nods again. Forget coffee; at this time of the morning, trying to make enough sense of his vague secondhand information about this to describe it to Scar feels like he'd need a handful of red stones' worth of energy.

"Yeah, that's the one. There's another world on the other side--I went through and I guess I make it there, and Ed does too. Most of what I know about the rest is a giant mess that barely makes any sense."

It is literally always too early for the world-bending mess Scar has been tangentially dragged into. He sighs through his nose, scraping the remainder of his oatmeal from the bottom of the bowl (he is also, of course, a fast eater) and bringing it to the sink to wash.

Envy doesn't know what becomes of him on the other side, then? Scar is smarter than to pry, here.

"We'll see what the boy has to say about all of it, then."

And then Scar is putting him in the shower. Because God in heaven they have running water for a reason.

Unfortunately, Envy very much knows how his story does eventually end over in that world, but Scar is right that he'd rather not get into it.

"Yeah...I guess we will."

Envy's fairly reluctant to find out more than what he already knows about, himself. It had never been anything good, and he'd avoided asking Al for more details unless it came up as a necessity. WELL, it's a necessity now!

He speeds up to finish his own breakfast so he can catch up and not be left eating cereal sludge while Scar stands and probably judges. Once everything's cleared up, it's time to head upstairs. Quietly. And knock on Wrath's door, also quietly. Envy's not sure there's going to be an answer, depending on how worn out Wrath is, so if there isn't one he'll open the door to peek inside.

Scar turns away from the sink just in time to see Envy slorphing down what remains of the "milk" at the bottom of his bowl. His eyebrows pinch just up enough that one might (reasonably) assume his horror at the concept of putting such a concoction of substances into one's body. But he makes no comment.

As he follows Envy upstairs to wait by Wrath's room, he stays a comfortable body's length back.

There is indeed no answer. By the time everything had finally wrapped up the previous night-- tearful reunions, an attempt to get some form of sustenance into both himself and his Pokemon, the setting-up of a long-unused room for a sleeping space, the exchange of ratty grass-stained clothing for clean ones-- Wrath, already running on fumes for weeks at this point, had been unconscious before his head had even finished hitting the pillow.

The lump on the bed has barely moved, in fact, since anyone last looked in on him. All that's visible of the boy in question is some of that shaggy hair poking out from under the blankets.

But said lump does stir a tiny bit, at the squeak of the door's hinges.

As he slips into the room, Envy mainly wishes they could just let Wrath sleep longer. If it weren't for the fact that he's not sure when else they'd get the chance besides right now, too early for anyone else to be awake...

Oh, well. There's not much to be done for it. Envy goes over next to the blanket lump, reaching out to carefully shake the spot where he thinks Wrath's shoulder probably is, speaking quietly in the sort of smoothly reassuring tone that...well, sort of like the one that he'd pulled out when he'd first met Wrath. He's not sure how this wakeup is going to go, but he sure doesn't want to startle the sleeping traumatized pre-teen.

"Wrath, hey, it's Envy. Everything's fine, but wake up a minute."

He figures that 'who's here' and 'everything's fine' are probably important to mention right off. Just in case.

In the past two years, Wrath has slept rarely and lightly.

But after accruing no small amount of sleep-debt, and running the emotional equivalent of a marathon last night... waking back up feels a little bit like floating slowly to the top of a vat of molasses.

Envy's voice is what registers first, and he doesn't even feel the shaking until he's opened his eyes. It takes a second to remember where he is... but fortunately, this process unfolds via sluggishly lifting his head to squint at Envy in the dark, and not via trying to scramble up the wall in a burst of post-traumatic panic.

The blanket rustles as he sits up, one hand clumsily moving to wipe drool from the corner of his mouth. His hair is a complete bird's-nest and he can't seem to open his eyes more than halfway. Or blink in sync.

He had been hella out.

"Mmmgh?"

Envy will absolutely take the slow, groggy wakeup over a confused panic-scramble! He's been sleeping in the same bed as a Silent Hill protagonist for long enough to be careful about waking up anyone who's Been Through It (tm). Especially when he really has no idea what's 'normal' for Wrath at this point.

He'll give him a few extra seconds to be woken up enough for things like: understanding language.

"You were really out, huh? Ah, Scar's here too, if that's fine."

Since there wasn't a wakeup panic, Envy does let his voice start sliding out of 'hey lost kid I'm so very trustworthy and I've got some rocks to sell you' and into a little more natural for here friendly tone. He glances over his shoulder to check where the other man is. He'd noticed the careful distance on the way up.

Scar doesn't loom in the doorway, but he does maintain his polite distance. He'll offer a brief nod if Wrath looks his way. He pulls the door gently closed behind him and leans against the frame, folding his arms.

"It doesn't directly involve you, or anything you have done. But it is important."

Don't sell him any rocks Envy!

As his brain crawls its way up to speed, Wrath turns his gaze from Envy to the doorway, and Scar. While he's still a little too... muddled to look surprised, he does blink curiously and sit up a little bit straighter, pulling the blanket with him (which exposes a small curled-up shape, which briefly unfurls to yawn, scratch under its skull-helmet, and then groggily pull a corner of said blanket back over itself).

Grimacing a little and digging sleep-gunk out of the corner of one eye, Wrath finally mumbles out some actual words.

"S'fine... what issit?"

HE WON'T! No rocks today!

Envy nods at Scar over his shoulder, and moves to sit on the bed next to Wrath. They're very nearly the same height now, and somehow it feels more right to be on a similar eye level for this instead of standing right in front of him.

He sits mostly normal for once in his life, with his ankles crossed on the ground in front of him and leaning back on one arm, still angled in Wrath's direction. He doesn't move to touch the other homunculus himself, but he's available if Wrath wants the contact.

He'd had since last night to think about how to start saying this, and he's still not fully sure. The words come out more carefully, now, but not as easily.

In large part because he's trying very hard not to put his mask up with Scar in the room.

"It's about Lust. She doesn't know what M--our old Master did to Gluttony, and I don't think we should tell her anything about it unless she asks. Scar's the only person here besides the two of us who knows."

As Envy elaborates, Wrath's droopy not-fully-charged expression tightens up a little bit.

Oh...

And speak of the devil, the worm of guilt he's carried ever since that horrible day wakes up too, and leisurely begins to writhe.

"... That... was 'cuz of something I did, though," he mumbles, casting a sheepish look up at Scar. As though apologizing for his own perceived innocence. He may not have been the one to erase Gluttony's mind, but...

Edited 2024-09-11 06:07 (UTC)

Scar remains steady, stoic. He's been sorting this over in his mind, how might be the best way to explain that it would be preposterous to hold Wrath at fault for Gluttony's fate, or even for Lust's.

"I am aware of your place in how things fell apart in Amestris, just as I was when you were younger. I did not begrudge you then, and that has not changed."

Platitudes would serve nobody, right now, even if Scar were inclined toward them. Wrath's case is unique, even among the many, many displaced kids Scar has known.

"Your master would have assured Lust meet the same end, regardless. Gluttony would have followed, regardless."

Of this, he is absolutely certain.

It's a very good thing that Scar's here to be steady. Because at what Wrath says, it's all Envy can do not to jump back to his feet or shout his own immediate denial that what Dante had done to Gluttony was because of Wrath at all. Genuine, but not exactly ideal for things being calm.

As it is, his surprise is clear on his face as he freezes to avoid an outburst. Blaming Wrath for that hadn't been something he'd considered even at his worst. Even later on in this world when he had still been blaming Wrath for Lust.

He's grateful that Scar can talk while he recovers. And for what he says.

When he trusts himself to talk again, it's accompanied by lifting his hand to rest on Wrath's nearest shoulder, although it winds up being his automail one. The gesture is still there. He's still quietly careful when he talks, but emphatic.

"It wasn't your fault. You weren't...you didn't see it happen. She didn't even try to order him herself, after he didn't listen to me," he can't help shuddering, but this is more important than his own guilt or fear, "She was going to do it anyway. You didn't cause anything."

Although Scar's undoubtedly had times where his severe stature and blunt, occasionally brutal honesty have made his life more difficult... it's also a blessing. Sitting here in this dark room, with the rest of the house still silent in sleep, the unbuffered weight of his words-- heavy in bleak truth even as they absolve Wrath of responsibility-- cannot be protested.

They don't rid him of that persistent gnawing shame-- he'll be carrying that for a long time-- but he nods, even as he drops his gaze from Scar back down to the blanket over his knees.

"Mm..."

Envy's hand on his shoulder is some comfort, even if the automail feels nothing.

"... I won't tell her."

Scar's eyes dart briefly to Envy. It's clear, still, that the ordeal with Gluttony rattled him more than perhaps anything.

Four hundred years is a dreadfully long time.

He doesn't have anything further to add, in this vein. Scar still struggles with the idea that this darkness is for the best. However, the previous twelve hours have gone to great lengths in settling his certainty. She wouldn't think she needed to know. She would have preferred never having known. It's the only thing that keeps his mouth shut.

Scar nods his thanks. That's one time bomb defused. He considers his words carefully.

"You're going to carry the shame with you. But it will become livable, with patience."

Envy nods, glad that Wrath's agreed to keep the secret.

He sees little functional difference between not having told Wrath his future before and not telling Lust about Gluttony's fate now. What would it accomplish, besides add more pain that nothing could be done to soothe? More nightmares?

He doesn't react openly, besides pausing to listen, but he does take in what Scar says, turns it over in his mind. Nods again.

"Mm. It does. And you're not alone, not this time."

He mulls over bringing up the second part of it all, but...

"Al told me before that the two of you found what was left of him down there. And that you fought."

There's an awkward but clear invitation in his voice. If Wrath wants to talk on that, he can.

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