"I love you, Trisha." Hoenheim whispered in a cracked voice, his eyes coming back to focus from the memories that the woman constricting him had triggered. She was wearing Trisha's face after all.

"Why, thank you, Hoenheim." Sloth hissed out and he stared at her dead eyes. It was still Trisha, but it wasn't at the same time. Her heart was not the same, though her body he could recognise. His heart would chase after her, though he knew that it was not his wife. It was not the woman that he loved.

Light beamed around them as Dante threw the child into the air, forcing the gate out of him. He stood with her liquid body wrapped around his, staring up at it.

"I take it you'll be throwing me in?" he said in a growl and Sloth grinned at him, pressing her cheek against his.

"Orders are orders." she said in a quiet way but something in her face as their skin touched seemed almost painful. She unwrapped herself from him as the doors to the gates opened and she moved to step away. He grabbed her arm, though and jerked her in front of him. "What are you doing?!" she yelled. "I'm not your wife, let me go!" he did not, instead pulling her close and kissing her the way he would have kissed her, were she his Trisha. Her struggling lasted only a second, though, because she gave in after that and kissed him back. Her submission was only temporary, though.

The longer she kissed him, the more images came into her head. Children. A house on a hill. Him. Him and her. Him and the children. It was not long before her heart felt pained and she shoved him off of her. Her head came down and he gripped her hand slightly.

"Go with me halfway." he said and she blinked again, another image coming to mind.

- - - -

"I'm not letting you go to Central with me in your condition." Hoenheim said sternly as his wife, Trisha, came up behind him at the door. Her form was round with their second child, due in only a month or two.

"You can't very well keep me here on my own." she insisted, her hand coming to rest on her back. God he loved the way she looked pregnant. It was the only time when she complained about her looks nonstop and he could honestly say that she was never right. It went beyond the kind of glow that women always had when baring children, though. It was something that just seemed... perfect... about her.

"Please... Sara and Pinako are up the road." he was trying to be firm, but losing his footing as she caught his arm and clinged to it, in turn pressing it against her stomach. The look she gave him was so pitiful, he at last uttered out followed by a soft chuckle. "Go with me halfway... to the train station only."

A squeak of delight came from her and she wobbled on her feet, having hopped a little and thrown off her center of gravity. It made him smile even more as she turned and called over her shoulder to Edward. the fair-haired child came running in, happy to have been called, and Hoenheim knelt in time for him to leap into his arms.

- - - -

Sloth pulled herself completely back from the gate as it closed on Hoenheim and sent him beyond it. She could feel her heart aching as she stared at it for a long second before turning to walk away and return to the world where Dante was.

She vowed to herself to become human then. To escape from the memories of that man. Whether they belonged to her or not, she knew that as long as she knew he was alive and that his sons breathed, she would not escape it. Because there was something in her heart of hearts--wherever that lied in a humonculous--that ached for that man. It was something that did not belong to her, but to his "Trisha". It was her constant reminder that she was only an imitation of that woman.

It was all the reason she needed to kill them all... so that they would not be her children. And she would be free to begin her life anew.