I've been wanting to do some more Pride and Lust BROTP for a while. They're so close-ish in age (relatively) that they can be a little more comfortable around each other. And hey this one is actually set in the series, so that's a first. Probably after episode 8 but before 14, maybe...
A Moment of Quiet
So, so many bright cerise eyes gaze out, all filled with a mix of awe and longing as Father crosses the stone floor. An inaudible sigh bleeds into the air as Lust absorbs his muted steps. There is no greater sound.
Father offers no glance, but to bask in his presence again is enough.
Her sigh fades, swallowed up by the sacred silence that cloaks them. Coiled beneath it, the two long severed fragments of their Father huddle together once more. With their younger siblings simply away, the ever-present obligations feel a little less pressing and they both revel in this unbecoming closeness that is so rarely given, taken, or accepted.
Lust lays her head down, her obsidian tresses pooling beneath her while she watches his multitude of eyes, one by one as they sink under the surface of his shade. It's almost nostalgic. Pride shifts closer to her, those beguiling eyes of his container masking a deeper yearning. Soft, needless breaths tickle her neck. He's still mired in his acts, his human clinging to him like a stain. The burden drags them down and Lust wants to purr to him, tell him how little time remains and the promised eternity that comes after, but she dares not taint this silence with her voice.
Despite herself, the younger homunculus stretches out, letting her deadly and delicate fingers comb through his silken hair. So like Lust's own but so much more, sleek, inky and perfect as his true self. He doesn't object, and soon enough his container settles in a comfortable stillness.
"Checking on Sloth?" She asks sometime after in her relaxed, sultry tones, musing on the tiny flickers in his eyelids, as if dreaming.
A hum ripples along the fluid edges of his tendrils, flaring purely in the negative.
"Then what?" Her hair brushes his nose and she smiles at the quirk of a scowl that crosses his face for a split second.
"Listening." Pride's ancient tones percolate out from his core like water, the interlaced whispers seeping into her. Her brother's ethereal bass has reduced so many humans to mewling wrecks lower than their usual, pathetic selves.
Before she can ask what, a rumble reverberates from the pipes surrounding them. Pride's tendrils curl into themselves. Ah.
"When I was young, before Father had scattered the fraction of his power beneath the earth, I heard it only at his side." Something of a wistful sigh bleeds through him, but it is quiet, having long refined their indoor voices in the sanctity of their home. "Hush, listen."
Lust's gaze follows along the equally ancient tubes they've nestled between, their winding paths arranged with the utmost purpose throughout the chamber, culminating at Father's throne. Another thing that divides them. Father creates; they only destroy. It's all for Father's benefit, of course. She envisions drenching the frigid Northern wall in red and allows herself a delighted thrill. Perhaps Pride will accompany them for the final Crest.
Her eyes flutter shut, content to join her brother in listening; perhaps she would even doze. The low, resonant booms of Father's influence have surrounded her since her birth, and now – without her siblings' constant chatter filling her ears – she can appreciate it again.
In the absence of the others, and her own unguarded state, other things worm their way into her, seldom heard things effortlessly ignored for centuries. But not this time.
All at once the cacophony of endless suffering within her heart explodes, their wretched shrieks for death and retribution clawing inside her head just as her lances have cleaved through countless humans. The bloodshed is all she lives for, her purpose and here she is, so shamefully weak that she cannot quash their cries, their lives extinguished before hers, that fuel her own.
Somewhere outside herself Lust's too quick gasps spill out and hover above Pride's head. Dimly, she glimpses his weary lids lifting, regarding her with a flicker of curiosity and she winces because he cannot know the shame of it, of her, and—
"Lust."
A barely tangible scratching reaches her. His container's false, smooth nails scrape softly at the underside of her glove before easing higher, between her fingers, and their hands clasp together properly.
His small, small hand squeezes hers,
"Listen." and though his parted mouth doesn't move he breathes it like a prayer, yearning, reaching out to her. He whispers to something beyond her.
One of Pride's real, sharp hands brushes her cheek, another pushes her hair aside with a gentleness that borders on non-existence. His shadow slows, flowing into a tranquil ebbing like a distant ocean. She hears the same screams beneath it; she feels the deeper cadence of his Stone within him and it grounds her, lulling her own into its rhythms.
The hateful cries blend into one, entwining, drowning together until only the glorious thrum of Father's power remains. It's enough to truly silence the echoes of them, bathing her in a peace she has never known.
"I hear it now." With a calming breath Lust shakes out of her senselessness, herself again. "It's beautiful."
"It is everything." Pride's eyes bubble out from the abyss of him, shimmering in the light of Father's radiance. She catches her reflection in them. He's smiling, not the overdone child's grin of his act, mature, content, purely for his own kind.
Without words he nestles close once more. Their hands are still joined, exchanging one darkness for another in his shade and her lances, the true essence of their Father. Her spare arm loops around him and the shadows quiver around her in turn, humming vibrations like a purr. Perhaps they can abide this unbecoming closeness for a moment longer. His little chest, quiet and still, offers only the strong, measured pulse of the Stone beneath it, in harmony with her own, and with Father.
They swathe themselves in the sound, attuned to it, One again, the closest to Father they could ever hope to be, until he became the All.