Written for FMA rarepair week on Tumblr, day 1: First Meeting. This is set before Sloth and Gluttony were born, about 1755-1765.
First Impressions
The sunlight filtered in through the delicate window nets, scattering his shadow beneath the table. It flickered and stretched as the wind shook the netting and the curtains, some dandelion seeds got caught in them.
Pride observed his ordinary, human shadow while he sat straight and refined, though his drooped lids betrayed an inner ennui. He snatched and savoured these moments of silence, brief as they were. Apart from the clock, but he could tune that out easily enough, pretending he was not counting the seconds until his governess arrived. Another fawning human to play for, and for her to teach him nothing he had not learned long, long ago.
He should have expected this sooner. This was the eighteenth century, what kind of General did not have a governess for their dear child? And two months after having left the Nursery, no less!
Normally, his false families required his presence only when he was visiting them at Headquarters, and then he was confined to the nap rooms, observing, listening. Children are seldom seen and never heard, military children more so, excepting relevant military events. Oft Pride drifted along on the crowds, monitoring the proceedings out in the open rather than through his shadow, and should the situation arise he would pretend to belong to some high ranking official. Effortless, really.
Now though, Father needed him for this, a less fleeting arrangement, and something only he and his childlike shape could accomplish. Eight months to go, he told himself.
A silver tray filled the space on his oversized writing desk, holding a plate on which sat a pile of five rout cakes; a gift of sorts from his governess-to-be, meant to endear her to him prior to their meeting or something pathetic like that.
Rout cakes seemed an unusual choice for an afternoon snack, but Pride took one lest she question why he had not eaten any. His genteel bite did not leave a mark upon the cake's surface, and beneath its pale enough exterior he smelt the burnt, hardened dough. After several moments Pride managed to champ down hard enough to break through the unreasonably solid cake, and the overcooked currants within provided some small comfort.
With a grimace Pride forced the rest of it down and gulped some of his warm water. No doubt such unpleasantness would reflect the same in the irksome woman who baked them.
The seconds dragged on, until several yapping snarls bled in from behind the closed door. Mother's lapdog, as ever. The whining canine, with its strange, fluffed up ears had rather sensibly deferred to his presence in the household and taken to keeping out of his way. Even so, it barked anew at something or other outside the room, not worth his attention in any way. Dimly he heard it be ushered into another room, before the schoolroom door eased open.
A servant held open the door, Mother walking into the room. Following her, a woman glided in with short, measured steps hidden beneath her loose grey dress with its high white collar and sleeves that ended in long, drooping frills. Loose, he knew, to more comfortably fit over her real 'clothes'.
The soft candles lit her pale skin, warming the cool shades of the fabric. Any attempts to appear dowdy failed, naturally. Pride knew the perfect tresses that framed her face and neck, her painted lips, not like the excessive wigs and makeup humans drowned themselves in. Perfect as accorded by Father's designs, of course.
The eldest's dread melted into surprise, and then into some strange emotion he could not place. Despite himself his sagged lids lifted, beaming, his mood all at once elevating as he stood to greet them.
"Good afternoon, Mother!" He called, much too loud and boisterous for his current façade.
"Volume." 'Mother' scolded him with a curt, shrill bark, much like the creature that usually occupied her lap. Though they had scarcely met, she conducted herself with all the pomp of being a gracious, perfect mother, and none of the responsibility.
Lust gave him a calm but knowing glance, before her eyes turned downcast and demure, beneath her employer in every way.
"This is Miss Landry. She will be your governess until you are to attend boarding school in the New Year. Listen well to her teachings."
"Thank you, Mother. I promise to be most attentive." He uttered in a more appropriate indoor voice, and she and the servant left without a word.
'Miss Landry' stood before him, and Pride offered his hand for a proper introduction, maintaining his act completely for the time being.
"It's nice to meet you, Miss Landry."
"And I you, Young Master."
"I hope you didn't have to travel too far to get here, or else your other pupils might miss you!" He asked, sincerely wondering what had brought his sister to join him in his observations, given her last mission situated far outside of Central.
"For now, you're my only one. I'm sure the dear George and Emma are doing just fine without me." Lust said, and Pride nodded, reassured that his other siblings were behaving where she had left them. "If all goes well, I will see them again in the new year."
She began to unpack her teaching material, but froze as she reached to move the tray on his desk.
"My rout cakes…did you…like them?" Lust begged for validation.
Pride had seen this aspect of her act before, behaving foolish and inferior in her human role to disarm her employers. Being useless at cooking seemed to be the one that came readily to her, and made it easier for her to not need cook for any humans. "You hated them, didn't you?" She said, a noticeable undercurrent of hurt and dejection wavering under the surface of her accusation.
"I…" His shadowy insides cramped, apparently still contemplating whether the cake counted as digestible so long after eating it, and gnashed it further into a fine dust if only to keep it down. "I loved them!" For good measure, Pride shoved another into his container's mouth, smiling around it.
Lust watched him expectantly, and after sitting with the biscuit hanging half out his mouth for a moment, his container struggled with biting through it again, until he managed to snap it off with his hands. Covering his mouth, his shadow dragged the fragment down into the hollow of his 'stomach', and his true form's flawless teeth ground it to bits. He couldn't bring himself to 'swallow', and let the crumbs settle there until he could drink something, hopefully that would melt them.
"Thank you for making them just for me."
Mollified, her feigned hysterics faded just as quickly as they formed, and she settled down with a smile.
"I'm glad you liked them so much," She moved the tray along to another table, clearing it with more graceful motions. "though, with so many things to teach you, I don't think I'll have much time to bake anything else."
Thank goodness.
Lust pulled a rolled up scroll from her bag with two fingers, unfurling it on the table and weighing the corners down. Given the faint lines and markings over it, it appeared to be map of Amestris, yellowing and likely older than Lust herself.
"What's your name, Miss?" Pride enquired with a cheery, toothy grin. It was perhaps a tad too forward for a child to ask, but beneath their façades the true hierarchy shone through. Besides, how could she to deny her darling pupil anything?
"Oh? My first name is Selene."
Pride accepted her newest human name with another nod, and noted its similarity to a name he had planned to utilise sometime soon. As Pride, and as the eldest, he of course had the best taste in names, so it was no wonder she would take inspiration from him. It suited her, even if he doubted he would hear it again during his stay.
"It comes from a goddess of Xerxes. She embodies the moon, don't you know."
In her longevity – that still paled to his – it seemed Lust favoured aliases based upon timeless things, such as the celestial bodies, the sun, moon, months and seasons. Perhaps she also selected her name in this case in relation to Father's Plans, the far off, glorious eclipse that filled their souls with fervent anticipation. Their younger siblings did not share such fervency, which had burned within them since the moment of their birth, but in time Pride knew they would learn.
"Ooh, Xerxes?" His eyes drifted across the map, from Central and eastwards to the point of Father's birthplace. "Will you teach me Xerxian, too?"
"Of course. Xerxian is such an elegant, erudite language." Lust sighed in an overdramatic admiration of the language they both knew, clasping her gloved hands. She eased her hair behind her shoulders. "I will teach you everything a boy ought to know, Young Master: arithmetic, history, science, geography, etcetera. Perhaps I shall teach you how to dance, also."
"I don't dance." Pride scowled, folding his arms. Foolish humans and their want to be close to each other, close enough to dance. Even in Lust's act, her stooping to such with him sent a wave of revulsion through his shadow body, but his container remained impassive.
"There comes a time where one must learn how to dance, Young Master." She waved off the boyish stubbornness. "But first, geography."
Leaning down, Lust described Central and its environs, the recent decision of the führer to rename the growing East Town to East City as the drizzly place began to expand. She prodded a spot called Fisk and recalled George and Emma's intention to visit there sometime soon. Pride thought of Envy. Once his youngest sibling had become a tad worldlier, his ability to change his form would certainly become useful. Perhaps they could send him to deal with the latest scion of the Armstrong brood. Soon enough they would nurture the Armstrong boy into complicity, like those before him.
"What is that place?" He tapped at a point north-west of Central, a place they both knew well. Lust caught his hidden smirk and returned it. Their acts fractured the tiniest bit, not that anyone would come to check on them.
"That is Riviere. It is a country that once bordered Amestris."
"We invaded it, didn't we?" Though Pride had not been witness to the bloodshed, he could imagine it and all it stood for perfectly. The first Crest of Blood of the eventual ten. On the map he envisioned where they would fall according to Father's desires, measuring the distance out with his fingers.
"Yes, long before you were born." Five years could not truly be considered 'long', but Pride brushed the teasing off.
"And you, too, right?"
"Of course, before nearly all things were born." Except Father.
It was the most they had spoken for several months. Though in their youth such discussions of anything and everything were commonplace, these days they were often curtailed by their responsibilities to their younger siblings, and the two of them relished quietly in the indulgence of this, to be alone together again, the only children of Father's within Central once more.
"Amestris will continue to grow, I'm sure. We are the only country so adept at alchemy, after all. Oh and there was that terrible business in Cameron a hundred or so years ago…"
If only Lust had been born a year earlier, perhaps she could have seen it for herself. No matter, with eight more Crests left to form, Pride knew there were plenty more opportunities to sate her bloodlust while also serving Father impeccably.
The now combined geography and history lesson continued, and they grew, by degrees, more enthused. Their eyes met and shimmered in their devotion to Father's Plans, and the warmth of sharing such devotion with each other swelled between them. If only the others could be like her…
Rays of orange streamed in as the sun set, and all too soon 'Mother' whisked him away for tea, the irritating dog bundled in her arms and growling ineffectually towards them both.
Pride did not mind the intrusion too much. He had lessons every day, after all. He allowed a quiet, sincere smile to curl on his container's face, thinking of the endless and far less boring lessons to come.
Many hours later, the small shape of Pride's container pottered through the darkened hallways, catching the occasional sliver of moonlight from the windows.
An unfamiliar light disturbed Pride's routine, flickering out from under the schoolroom door. Had Lust not gone home yet?
The door creaking, Pride poked his head into the room. The crackling fireplace threw his shadow across the wall in a long streak. Beside it, the younger homunculus sprawled in her simple but cosy armchair, legs slung over the sides, engrossed in a book. She must have brought some of her own personal library from home as well as her teaching material.
"What brings you here so late at night, dear brother?" Lust gave him a languid glance before she righted herself, slipped a strip of string to keep her place and closed the book onto her lap.
"I'm leaving for the night." Pride said in his true, metallic voice, his shadow leaking from beneath his container. No servants ventured to the area surrounding the children's rooms, the schoolroom included.
His 'mother', unaware of his true nature, surely thought him some downtrodden whelp sent to live with them by his true parents in exchange for the gift of his education and status, and cared not where he went in the evenings, if she noticed at all.
So close to Headquarters, Pride could slip away into the underground pathways they had used for decades and spend some precious hours with Father in his vessel, while monitoring the streets above with his true body. At least with Lust accompanying him this time the walk would be less onerous as well.
"Ah." She said.
"Come along."
As he retreated through the doorway, Pride did not hear her footsteps behind him, and turned to see Lust still huddled in her chair.
"What delays you so?" His shadow echoed in the small room. Their tendrils grew and shrank in the firelight, rippling.
Lust shook her head, eyes lidded.
"I cannot leave my station. They think me a normal, human governess." She sighed, smiling wryly, resigned to her fate. "I must stay, lest they dismiss me."
Pride understood. Governesses lived with the family of those they taught, and accepted the life of isolation that came with it. Though Pride could escape in the evenings, Lust was effectively trapped in her role. Surely, she had been sent here on Father's orders, and must of course accept this, as he had his previous missions and tutors. Even so…
"I, too, shall stay."
His shadow grew several tightly curved rolls of teeth at the slight widening in her bright magenta eyes, her painted lips parted in her silent gasp. Lust looked far from her sultry, confident self with her eyes so wide, looking so young despite her being a century old now.
"I would not wish Miss Selene to wonder where I wander off to every evening." His container returned her previous smile; its eyelids drooped again, more through drowsiness than any familiar smugness or boredom.
Lust nodded, lifting her head to regard the eyes in his shadow carefully. Their identical eyes, the eyes they shared with Father's True Form, as they shared his darkness in her lances and his shadow. Their siblings were not bestowed with that highest of honours, no true darkness within them. Slowly, her gaze ran down to his container again.
"Sleep well, Young Master." She whispered.
"And you, Miss."
With his nightshirt touching the floor, Pride's container tiptoed back through the hall to his room. As it nestled into what anyone would have thought as sleep, his shadow returned to fill the empty space around her, and the two siblings conversed long into the night.
Some cute fluff for you all! Hopefully I can get some more stuff written for rarepairweek!
By the way, Lust being a terrible cook and overreacting to people not liking her food is a reference to her Japanese voice actress Kikuko Inoue, who also voiced Sanae in Clannad.