Author's Note: This is a mini-novelization of episodes 35-47 of the first anime, specifically focusing on the scenes involving Lust. I've always found this portion of the anime fascinating, and since Lust was my favorite Homunculus from the first anime, I knew that eventually I would have to write this. I've tried to keep everyone in character and extrapolate Lust's thoughts as much as possible, but won't really be going into a lot of detail about other characters. This is Lust's story.

Chapter One ~ Reunion of Fools

Rain fell in a soft drizzle, as it had all day. The sound of droplets hitting the window buzzed softly like the static undertone of quiet music on the radio. Lust had taken the window seat when they slipped into the booth earlier, and now she propped her chin delicately on one hand, staring at the rivulets obscuring the view. The whole day had been quiet and sleepy, the constant drizzle keeping most people cozily tucked away in their homes.

Lucky for them. Homunculi tended to draw stares everywhere they went, even if most people never guessed their true nature. Of the seven Homunculi, Envy and Gluttony were perhaps the most conspicuous, so it was just as well this diner had been empty for the past hour. After all, people tended to notice when a round, bald man started chewing on the furniture. And once they got over that, they would notice the young man with bizarre clothing and long, stringy hair who was carelessly flipping a knife around.

Suddenly Envy cut into Lust's thoughts and the sounds of Gluttony absently gnawing on a corner of the table. "So I hear Greed's dead."

"Yes," Lust murmured with a wry smile, glancing at his reflection in the window. Envy balanced his knife on one finger, looking supremely unconcerned as though they were not talking about their brother. "In a sense," she continued, "his death suited him in the most perfect way. Violence so intense it bordered on the beautiful..."

They had seen the remains after that Full Metal boy was finished. Who would have thought such a young child could have killed the mighty Greed in a one-on-one fight? Of course, he obviously had help. Once Laboratory 5 had been destroyed and Greed escaped, their master had made Greed one of her priorities. He had crossed her far too many times.

As though picking up where Lust's thoughts trailed away, Envy said with a smirk, "Well, Edward Elric can murder us all he wants, but you-know-who will just make us another one." The knife clattered noisily to the table. "Speaking of which, Sloth is taking care of the new Wrath right now. I wonder what we should make him do..."

Lust said nothing, letting her vision blur out of focus as she gazed at the streaks of rain.

But Envy didn't like being ignored, so he huffed, "What's up with you? Don't tell me you're getting sentimental about Greed dying."

"Not really," Lust murmured, the words leaking from her against her will. "I was just thinking... Where do we come from, and where are we going? Where do we go when we die?" Even normal humans didn't know, and none of the people sitting around the table were remotely normal.

"Pointless," he snorted.

Before either of them could say any more, the heavyset owner of the diner slouched over, yawning. "Sorry, folks," he said as he approached their table, "but if you don't mind, I'm just about to close up shop here."

"Go right ahead," Envy replied boredly, now flipping the knife between his fingers, "but we're not leaving."

"Oh you're not, huh?" The man seemed to swell with anger, till he was almost as large as Gluttony – and that was saying something.

"We don't need to go anywhere right now, so I think we'll be staying."

The man could hardly speak through his infuriated spluttering. "Now, you listen to me, stranger!"

"Oh, shut up." With the speed of a snake springing forward, Envy grasped the handle of the knife and sank the blade directly into the owner's heart. The man's breath left him in a puff, and he crashed to the floor with a resounding thud.

Immediately and predictably, Gluttony's childishly eager voice cried, "Can I eat him? Oh – oh – can I eeeat him, Envy?"

Envy tossed the knife across the room and smirked when it stuck, quivering, in the back wall. "Well, we did skip dessert. Today, it's my treat."

The fat Homunculus needed no more encouragement than that; he pounced on the corpse on the floor of the diner and began chewing as noisily as ever. Lust was his constant companion and had witnessed him devour hundreds of people, so she paid him no mind. Envy got up, muttered something about going outside, and stepped around Gluttony's feast. Lust continued her vigil of the rain on the window, thinking over what she had said. Where do I come from, and where am I going? That thought had been plaguing her for some time, always rising like a bubble to the top of her mind. But she couldn't remember where it had originally come from. Obviously, the others didn't care. Envy called it pointless, Gluttony only ever thought about his stomach... So why did it seem so monumental to her? Was it just because Homunculi were practically immortal?

SCREEEEECH – CRASH!

Lust's violet eyes focused on the road beyond the window, and saw a crowd of people already rushing around the car that had smashed into a building across the street. There was a woman, clutching a child to her chest and rocking back and forth, screaming words that couldn't quite reach Lust's ears. But she could see the blood seeping down over the cobblestones, and she didn't need to hear.

Then a man came running, and for some reason Lust's eyes followed him among all the other people running towards the scene of the accident. He didn't seem particularly remarkable from the back – just a tall man with dark hair and glasses – but Lust found herself getting to her feet, stepping over the half-eaten corpse, and making her way outside. Ignoring the rain that quickly drenched her, she joined the crowd of onlookers.

She drew short when she saw what the man was doing. He bent over the boy, a bloody heap in his sobbing mother's arms, and held his fist over the wound. A ring around one finger suddenly flashed an unmistakable red, and Lust started with surprise. Could it be...?

"He'll be all right now," the man murmured to the mother as the boy opened his eyes and blinked in surprise to find himself drenched in his own blood.

Now the woman was crying with joy, and as the man stood again she gazed up at him rapturously. "Thank you so much!"

Then, as the crowd began to filter away again, the man turned in Lust's direction. The smile slid off his face as their eyes met, and Lust blinked. I want you by my side...forever.

"Lust?" the man whispered, his eyes wide with shock and a slowly burgeoning hope.

"Lujon..."

She was back in her booth, staring out the window. But this time, Lust mainly wanted to avoid Lujon's earnest, dark eyes, which stared at her avidly, drinking in her every slight expression like a man trying to quench his thirst at a dripping tap. Envy had slunk away as usual, and Gluttony sat at the bar with his back discreetly turned, licking his lips happily. At least he'd finished before Lujon came in; she doubted he would look at her so hopefully if he knew the sort of people she associated with. The sort of person she was.

"It's been two years, hasn't it?" Lujon always talked too much – even without the slightest encouragement from her, he kept up a nervous chatter. "I never thought I'd see you again. I've got so much to tell you... But before I go into that, there's something I need to ask you."

Lust looked over at him at last, as he moved to stare down at his hands clasped on the table. "It's just...I've never been able to come to terms with it. The reason you left, Lust. Can you tell me that?" He frowned, and clenched his fingers tightly. "You just disappeared. You didn't even say goodbye."

She had known he would ask that, but was no more eager to reply, so she feigned indifference. "I don't remember," she said nonchalantly. "It was such a long time ago."

"Well, I remember! You taught me so many things." His face softened. "Alchemy...and something even more important..."

Lust didn't like the direction this was heading, so she changed the subject, inserting a slight tone of irritation into her voice to deflect him. "What are you doing here? You've never left your village before." Then she remembered the ring, and she wondered. Maybe, after a little probing, she could discover whether this was a waste of time or not. "Are you...looking for something?"

"Well, yes." Lujon fingered his ring, as she'd suspected. "I'm looking for a new Stone. You must remember that, at least. Thanks to the Philosopher's Stone you gave me, I saved my whole village from that horrible disease." He clenched his fist so that his knuckles turned white around the blood-red ring. "But the disease is spreading again, and this Stone's power is weakening."

He looked up at last, their eyes locking. "Please," he murmured earnestly, "will you lend me your strength again, help me save them like you did before?" And then his voice fell to a whisper as he delivered the final stroke. "Lust...I need you."

And something stirred deep within Lust, something she had never fully understood, something she had nearly forgotten, something she feared. It had always been there, but usually she could push it to the back of her mind, and with every heart her fingers pierced, the little voice within her seemed to grow quieter. Yet now, with his dark eyes holding hers as he leaned forward slightly, his neck tight, his whole being pleading with her...that voice spoke again.

Lust listened.

xxx

Two years before, Lust and Gluttony stood, unfazed by the rain, at the foot of a hill that looked as though it had simply melted across the narrow dirt road. Thick mud spread before them, littered with the branches of felled trees, the splintered remains of what looked like a carriage, and sprawling arms and legs. The passengers hadn't stood a chance, and the large boulder that had uprooted a tall tree seemed to have crushed the horse's skull.

"Must have been a landslide," Lust remarked, unconcerned. "Just look at all those bodies."

But that was the wrong thing to say in such company. Gluttony, who had been gazing at the destruction hungrily, now spoke up. "Can I eeeat them? Can I eat them, pleeease?"

Lust chuckled and patted the bald head of her short companion. "No, leave them be. You should go on a bit of a diet." She knew there would be people investigating this disaster in time, and it would not do to leave the remains of a carriage but none of the people – especially not when they needed to enter this village with minimal suspicion.

Suddenly a hand groped out of the mud, and a young woman struggled to pull herself from the wreckage. Her short brown hair and plain woolen dress were streaked with mud, but she seemed to have escaped the others' fate. She lay some distance from the bodies, which made Lust suspect she had actually been walking along the side of the road, rather than riding in the carriage. However, she seemed weak and could not lift the boards that pinned her to the ground.

Lust raised an eyebrow, not moving an inch to help her. "Lucky girl."

At the sound of her voice, the girl looked up weakly. Then she took a basket Lust hadn't noticed before and pushed it forward. "Please..." she whispered, her voice nearly lost in the pattering of the rain. "Take these...herbs back to my village. They need them desperately."

Lust had no intention of fulfilling the girl's request, but before she could make any reply, a cry broke through the still night air. "If anyone can hear me, answer!"

"Over there! There they are!"

"I see them!"

Men with lanterns made their way along the road, peering forward through the dark. They rushed forward when they saw the landslide, and then the flickering light fell upon Lust, Gluttony, and the half-pinned girl. "Hey, are you okay?"

Then one man broke free of the group, rushing forward with an anguished, "Lydia!" He ran towards the girl and bent over her, looking stricken. Lust could see little of his face because of the hood of his raincoat, but she saw light reflecting off the rims of his glasses and outlining his young, intelligent face.

The girl looked up with effort and smiled faintly, almost apologetically.

"Stay with me, Lydia!" the man cried, touching her cheek.

"I'm so sorry, Lujon..." she murmured, then pushed her little basket towards him. "Here..."

To Lust's slight surprise, Lujon angrily swatted the basket away, spilling Lydia's hard-earned leaves all over the muddy ground. "I told you not to go!" he shouted angrily. "It was too dangerous, and these herbs won't do us any good anyway!"

Lust's attention was diverted by a man with a lantern approaching her and saying, "I'm surprised. You two must have been riding in the carriage too, right?"

"But you know," another man broke in, "you should leave quickly, before it's too late. There's an outbreak of fossilitis, and no one who's contracted it has survived for very long."

"Fossilitis?" Lust echoed, feigning ignorance even though she had been in on the plan with Envy from the beginning.

At this, the man – Lujon – looked up. "I'll wipe that disease off the face of the planet!" he cried fiercely, his eyes aflame with more than the reflected light of the lanterns. "You'll see. I'll do it with my alchemy."

As he turned back to help Lydia out from under the wreckage, Lust watched him carefully. They had found their alchemist.

xxx

With a few evasive words, Lust managed to slip into the village with minimal attention. Most of the townsfolk had their own problems to worry about anyway, and there were all those corpses to dig out and bury as well. After making sure Gluttony was safely hidden with Envy in the forest looming over the village, Lust set out through the streets to find their quarry. It looked like a small, struggling settlement, with only a few streets dividing the rough log cabins. They were fairly isolated here, which was one of the reasons the Homunculi had chosen this spot to try out their little experiment. Even if the fossilitis wiped out the entire village, there would be little danger of it spreading to the surrounding settlements.

Not that Lust particularly cared about the foolish beings who populated this world. They were only human, which meant they were dispensable. She was only concerned that her master's plan would see its conclusion.

Finally, after nearly an hour of surreptitiously peeping through curtains as she trudged through the deserted streets, she found the man she was seeking. Together with a knot of harried-looking townspeople, he entered one particular cabin. Curious, Lust stepped up to the window and looked through. In the middle of the single room, a form that looked like a small boy lay on the floor under a thin blanket. His fingers scrabbled at the rough floor in agony, and Lust saw that they had turned grey and flinty, like stone – or a fossil.

She couldn't hear what Lujon was murmuring as he knelt before the boy, notebook in hand. But she could see the light of a transmutation as his circle began to glow on the floor, and she could hear the keening shrieks of the pain-riddled child. Lust waited, her eyebrows rising as the flinty skin slowly began to soften and return to normal. Impressive.

But she had thought too soon. At the very moment the energy should have tapered off and stabilized the child's health, it suddenly spiraled out of hand, the light flashed and fizzled out, and the child's body burst like a water-filled balloon.

Lust stepped back from the window and retreated a short distance, pondering what she had seen. She hadn't been wrong in her choice, she was sure of it. She had made many attempts like this over the years, so she knew by now what to look for. But this Lujon would have to be led by the hand before she could trust him to carry out his part of the plan.

Soon enough, Lujon staggered out into the rain, retreating from the anguished sobs of the boy's parents. He only made it to the next house, however, when he collapsed against the wall and weakly pounded it with one fist. The rain did not quite drown out the faint sound of sobbing.

"None of my efforts have done anything!" he whimpered softly, and Lust drew a little nearer. Through his tears, he began to pray to whatever god the people in this region believed in. "Please! Hear your loyal servant... Please save the little ones, at least... Just send us aid... Please, help us..."

And suddenly, all thought of how to channel and focus this man's desperation to the proper goal was extinguished by another man's voice. "Please, spare her! Ishbala...help me save her. I ask that with your power, you save this little one." And his arms were around her, and she was weak, so very weak, and tears fell from his eyes to her cheeks, and-

Lust blinked, frightened. What was that? What had happened? She was sure she had never seen that man before, yet the images assaulted her like a half-forgotten memory.

Lujon was still praying, though his sobs had weakened and now he slumped against the wall, defeated. "Please...spare them."

Shaking aside that incomprehensible moment of delirium, Lust stepped forward. Now was the time. She raised her voice as she slowly walked towards him, so he could hear her over the rain and his own misery. "Now that conventional medicine has failed, your only recourse seems to be breaking down the body's dead parts and rebuilding them in their original state."

Lujon looked up, and she saw the recognition in his eyes, as well as the hopelessness.

"Your theory is correct," she continued, "but your knowledge of alchemy is still rudimentary. But I will teach you true alchemy."

The man blinked at her, too dazed to look delighted or grateful, and she allowed herself a small smile. She would have him in her snare before he knew the meaning of danger.