Beta: TaintedLetter

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

(Pride)

In the bowels of Central Command, a whirlwind of shadows circled around a pacing homunculus. The agitated homunculus that paced back and forth on the concrete floors glared mutinously up at the shadows that jeered, belittled, the pacing homunculus.

"Idiot," Pride, the shadows with dozens of narrowed scarlet red eyes, sneered.

"What's your issue, Pride?" snarled out Envy, his voice shrill and uneven, belaying his discomfort.

"Lust told me it was your idea to frame Ross. You moron, you've needlessly drawn suspicions towards the case, and Mustang now suspects the military!"

"Well that's hardly my fault, humans are such brain-dead creatures they're impossible to predict," Envy snapped back, raising his voice even further.

"You pathetic nitwit," Pride scolded, his shadows lashing out and forcing Envy to leap up and away from the deadly appendages. "You didn't have to frame anyone at all. You could have lied and lead the public on about an ongoing investigation. You could have declared it an issue of military security and closed off the case from anyone outside the higher ups. You could have given Mustang control of the investigation and fed him breadcrumbs to Xing! Doing nothing would have been better than your bumbling actions."

Envy's face paled with every venom-laced word Pride threw at him. "If your ideas are so much better, then why didn't you offer any help?"

Sheer disgust welled inside of Pride. He could not believe such a bratty snot-nosed cretin was created by Father. Not only was it too stupid to comprehend its failures, but it was daring to put the blame elsewhere. Pride retorted with contempt, "It's not my job to hold your hand, worm."

"What did you—"

"You have failed not once, but thrice now," Pride cut in, his tone laced with malicious disdain. "You are an embarrassment to us, a disgrace. A human child is outthinking you repeatedly, and all you can do is scream and flail about like an infant. You'd be infinitely more useful as a stone than what you are now. You're done trying to make decisions. You're done doing anything other than standing guard. Do not leave your post, do not say another word, do nothing but guard."

Pride could see the visible rage and hatred in Envy's eyes. His younger sibling was practically foaming at the mouth with anger, and quivering with bloodlust. If Pride were anything less than what he was, Envy would have already thrown himself at him in a violent frenzy.

Envy knew doing anything that could even be misconstrued as an act of disobedience toward Pride would result in his death, though.

So Envy swallowed back hard on his bile, and trudged off to his new duty.

Pride watched his fellow homunculus leave, and found himself thinking that Ellie would have made a far better homunculus than Envy ever could.

A pity that would never happen.

After all, even if she were to inherit Wrath's stone, she would still age. Her mind would go to waste in only a few decades.

That simply wouldn't do.

Pride had better plans for her... and now, so did Father.

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

(Elizabeth)

Elizabeth found herself curled up to Selim in his bed one lovely morning. The two had drifted off into a pleasant slumber. The echoes and blurred images of her dream still lingered in her mind. She raised a hand to wipe at her eyes and found that she had been crying.

She didn't know why, though.

Selim slowly opened his eyes upon Elizabeth's stirring. He blearily stared at her for a few minutes as grogginess drained out of him at a lackadaisical pace. He noticed the tears, though, and asked her, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. "I had a weird dream, though."

"What happened?"

"We were meeting again, some place cold," she said. "I called you Madson, though, and you called me—"

A knock at the door and it opened up shortly after to reveal Mumma. She poked her head in with a big smile. "Good morning my angels. Are you ready for breakfast?"

"Yes, Mumma," the two friends echoed, both crawling out of bed and hurrying over to her.

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Elizabeth was eager to return to her research after breakfast and headed back out to her greenhouse. Upon entering it, she was greatly surprised to find the single most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her entire life.

This woman was inhumanly gorgeous and reminded Elizabeth an awful lot of Selim. She had his soft skin, his hair, and even his smile. Her eyes were closer to a reddish-brown, however, while Selim's settled in between dark blue-ish purple.

She was also, you know, a woman.

"Good morning, Miss Elizabeth," the woman nearly purred. Even her voice was melodic. Elizabeth found her cheeks warming under her gaze, and she resisted the urge to shyly look away and fidget.

This was surely a woman that turned heads merely walking down the street.

She doubted anyone would ever insult such a lovely woman, or call her a psychopath.

What must that be like?

"Pride has told me much about you," she continued, catching Elizabeth's attention by her use of Selim's homunculus name. "I've wanted to meet you for a while, but have been kept on the busy side. Father only recently gave me permission. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Lust... I suppose you could think of me as Pride's sister."

Elizabeth hurriedly curtsied, a surge of giddy excitement putting a big grin on her face. Not only did she get to meet Selim's creator, but now she had the honor to meet his sister! And what a remarkable young woman she was. "It's a true pleasure, Lust. I'm always happy to meet more of Selim's family."

Lust smiled the kind of smile that Elizabeth would bet good money would turn men and women into putty. Even Elizabeth found herself blushing again from it, and worried if perhaps her appearance was dishevelled.

"Ellie—you don't mind if I call you that, do you?—would you mind showing me your research? Pride has shared some of your work, and I found myself fascinated by your results," Lust asked her, still smiling.

Elizabeth nodded her head. With quick steps, she closed the distance between the front of the greenhouse to her filing cabinet beside her work desk. Lust was seated at her work desk, so as Elizabeth neared her she got a strong whiff of delicate perfume. Not enough to be considered overbearing, but enough she could distinctly smell it. "Oh, yes, of course. Where would you like to start? Medicine, or weapons?"

"Weapons."

Elizabeth obliged without issue. The woman was so remarkably similar to Selim that Elizabeth wholeheartedly believed their relations. Besides, call it tuition or instinct, but Lust also reminded Elizabeth of Grandpapa—

'It's her eyes.'

Lust's eyes were cold enough to make anyone uncomfortable, and there was a predatory intelligence in them that promised nothing but danger to those who underestimated her.

Elizabeth wondered if Lust would make a good scientist.

Maybe she already was?

"Are you an alchemist like Grandpapa?" Elizabeth asked her, placing a binder of her vestard notes on her work desk for Lust to look over.

"Not currently," Lust answered. "But I do dabble in chemistry and physics."

"Physics?" Elizabeth repeated back, eyes widening in delight. "General, theoretical, or—?"

"A little bit of everything," she said, her smile softening. "It was something to learn about over the years, at least. Father mentioned something interesting that you brought up. You believe it'll be possible to go to the moon in a few decades."

"Yes," Elizabeth said firmly, nodding confidently. "Surely, you can think of a few ways?"

"I have some ideas," Lust admitted, "but I did not give it serious consideration until recently."

"And now?"

"And now I'm seriously considering it," Lust said, tucking her hair behind her ears. "It'll be something to do after we are done here."

'Done here?'

Elizabeth only nodded in acknowledgement, though, and pulled up a spare chair to sit beside Lust as she went over her notes.

As the two conversed Elizabeth found that Lust reminded her more and more of Grandpapa. Lust's interests in alchemy were low, but her knowledge and enthusiasm for chemistry were genuine. Elizabeth found herself wonderfully surprised by Lust's already extensive knowledge in botany and the chemical components of toxins.

The two had such an engaging debate on the merits of acid as a primary weapon, or toxins which eventually devolved into theorizing how unattainable chemical compounds would work. Elizabeth was beyond happy to have had not one, but two intelligent debates in the same week and her fondness for Lust shot up considerably.

Not only was Selim's sister beautiful, but she was intelligent, charismatic, and imaginative.

And when the topic turned to condensed matter physics Lust's eyes positively lit up like Selim's did when he got to play on the piano, or hunt Elizabeth.

Elizabeth wasn't as familiar with condensed matter physics, so she encouraged Lust to tell her all about it and boy did she!

Condensed matter physics was a combination of Lusts's love for chemistry and physics. It dealt with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter—and more specifically with the "condensed" phases that occur whenever the number of constituents in a system is extremely large and the interactions between the constituents are strong.

The most common example of these phases would be "solids" and "liquids" which arise from the electromagnetic forces between atoms. It was Lust's intention to understand the behavior of these phases, delving into the quantum critical, disordered state, ordered state, and classical critical. She had even done extensive experiments in the superconducting phase!

What truly made this all so terribly fascinating was when delving into the quantum world the matter no longer behaved in a rational manner when being watched!

It was an entirely new and foreign world of science that just listening to Lust gush about made Elizabeth itch to try it out.

But oh she already had so many things left to accomplish with botany!

It was a genuine shame that evening already slipped by them and Elizabeth was being called back to dinner by one of the servants.

"Oh dear," Elizabeth sighed, hanging her head low.

"Ellie," Lust said softly. Over the course of their day together Lust had considerably softened toward Elizabeth. Her eyes still had a chill in them, but her tone and smile had warmed. Elizabeth wouldn't be so arrogant as to say that Lust liked her, but she felt relatively confident in saying that Lust respected her.

Which was far better.

"Yes, Lust?" Elizbaeth inquired, neatly wrapping up Lust's to-go tea. Lust had mentioned she enjoyed the smell of some of the white teas Elizabeth was growing, so Elizabeth trimmed off some leaves for her to take with her while Lust talked about quantum theory.

"Do take care of yourself," she said. "I'd rather my mission didn't go to waste, after all."

"Your mission?" Elizabeth couldn't help but echo.

Lust only smiled again and kissed Elizabeth's cheek. "I'll return for you soon enough."

Elizabeth wanted to question more, but she had a feeling Lust wouldn't have been able to elaborate. She thought it was a little mischievous that Lust already teased her with some information—the information that something was going on that involved Elizabeth.

"Well," Elizabeth said after a moment, her cheek warm from where Lust had kissed her. "Do be careful, Lust. I very much enjoyed talking with you."

Lust gave her that heart-stopping smile again. She didn't respond, but instead took her leave.

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

When Elizabeth crawled into Selim's bed later that night, she did so with a wide smile on her face as she raved about her day with Lust. Selim listened with amusement as his shadows worked to turn off the lights and pick out a new book for them to read.

Elizabeth thought he was genuinely happy for her. Selim would always listen to Elizabeth when she wanted to talk about science, but science wasn't his true passion. It was so terribly lovely to have people share her passion and even better to have them be people that Selim liked.

Selim's family was so amazing.

"I wonder where Lust is going," Elizabeth half-murmured to herself after she finished telling Selim about her day.

"Drachma," Selim answered, opening up a book titled Rivers Run Red. "She's getting started on some real estate."

"What?"

Selim looked over at her, a mischievous spark in his gaze. "Ellie?"

"What?" Elizabeth asked, a little suspicious from that look in his eyes. That look meant he was either going to tease her and make her faint—she still regretted giving him that compliment jar—or he was going to toss her out in the street and hunt her.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek, the exact spot where Lust had previously kissed her.

The effects were immediate: her cheeks flamed, her head started to spin, and her breathing hitched as she struggled to catch her breath.

"Don't let her call you Ellie," he said with a wicked smile. "Now, I'll start off on chapter one..."

But Elizabeth had already passed out.

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

I love Lust, and I like the head canon of her being super savvy with science like Father. She's been alive long enough she ought to be, right?

I do wish fanfic dot net would let me post links at the end of chapters to share some of the neato references I found during my research. If ya'll are interested google: Matter behaves differently when observed or Quantum physics observation changes results.

Answer: Alphonse would be an ideal student, and I'd like to teach him baking!

Question: What is your aesthetic?

Reviews are love!