Trying To Be Human

Chapter 9: The Elysia Hughes-Wrath Wedding

A/N: Well, here it is. The long-awaited ending (except the epilogue, which is coming very soon). It's taken about a year to write, and during that year, this story has started to suck the life out of me. I still love it to death, but, let's face it, it's nowhere near as good as If You Give A Sin A Soul. I suppose this is what I get for trying to defy the law of the universe that clearly states that sequels must suck.

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The one huge plus to having their quiet home completely invaded by Elly's family, Elly's friends, Reg's friends, and assorted wedding guests was that the overrun little village where the Sins resided could no longer complain about those "isolated, creepy folks out on the outskirts who never interact with anyone", because it was blatantly clear that they did interact with people... just not local people.

The only problem with this was that the Sins had gotten the reputation as "isolated, creepy folks out on the outskirts who never interact anyone" because they didn't like to interact with people. They enjoyed their solitude, and the hubbub of human beings around them was a rude reminder as to why they enjoyed it in the first place.

Their rooms infested with guests and people organizing the reception and decorations, Greed, Envy, and Reg were taking refuge in the one sane room in the house: the kitchen. Wedding foods, as everyone knows, are the most difficult foods on earth to prepare, why else would they cost so much, so casual passers-by were avoiding the kitchen as though it had the plague (which is an awful thing for a kitchen to have). This left the room empty except for Gluttony, who was smiling brightly and forcing his guests to beat eggs and pipe meringues in exchange for shelter.

"Boris! Why aren't those hors d'oeuvres ready yet?" Sloth scolded, barging without the slightest regard for any souffles that may be in danger of falling. Gluttony pointed wordlessly to a platter of finger foods that Reg was carefully drizzling sauce over top of to earn his keep. He had thought he was doing a good job of it, but Sloth disagreed.

"Reg! What are you doing here?" she shrieked, her once-perfectly-brushed hair standing on end. You'd have thought he was setting fire to the table or something. "Your friends are upstairs looking for you! You were supposed to be in your tux an hour ago!"

"Greg and Connie aren't in their tuxes!"

"They aren't the groom!" Sloth started to yell before doing a double-take. "Wait, Greg and Connie?" she turned to the two men she had overlooked on her first glance through the room. "Why aren't you two dressed?"

"You're not dressed either," shrugged Greed.

Sloth jerked her head down to look at her lilac business suit, as though frightened it had suddenly disappeared. "Yes I am."

"You're wearing that?" Envy asked, not bothering to keep the disdain out of his voice.

"It's sensible," Sloth informed him.

"It's like 20 years old or something. I'm surprised it's not one big moth hole by now."

Sloth responded with a threatening glare that clearly communicated the point; "Tuxes. Now."

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Sitting alone in her room (the privacy was the first she'd had for two days, and likely to be the last for a while, too), Lust slipped into an elegant floor-length dress, the white counterpart to the black she'd worn for years, complete with long white gloves and high-heeled white boots. Her long, silky hair she left down, as always. No earrings, no bracelets, no jewelry, no ornaments. She didn't need them, Lust thought, admiring herself in the mirror. Outside her door, she could hear people who needed to use her room. Well, she was ready to go.

Except...

Lust looked out the window at the decorations being set up outside. This was a special occasion. Wrath was getting married, a milestone that marked more than just an event in the life of a family member. Without being able to explain it, even without mentioning it among themselves, they all knew that this was some kind of turning point in all of their lives. One of those monumental events, Lust decided, that warranted her most precious possession.

"Hey! Is anybody in there?" someone shouted, knocking on the door, hoping to find a room to change in.

"I'll be out in a second!" Lust shouted right back, sitting back down at the vanity and removing an old box from one of the drawers. She lifted the lid, raising the necklace out reverently. The pretty blue and gold locket on a simple chain held nothing, none of the pictures or objects of remembrance associated with lockets. The pendant itself was all she needed to remind her, and she wore it only on those precious days that would become part of who she was. Lust kissed the necklace, her lips brushing the cold surface,

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

"JUST A SECOND!" Lust snapped, fastening the catch around her neck and taking a final look in the mirror. Perfect.

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Roy and Riza, already changed into their formal outfits, were wandering around those parts of the backyard not taken over by chairs and decorations. They, of course, were arguing.

"Couldn't you have worn a skirt or something?" Roy was saying.

"It's a dress uniform. It counts!"

"You didn't let me wear my uniform."

"You're part of the ceremony, you have to look nice," Riza explained snappishly. "Anyway, you look cute in a suit."

"I look like Colonel Sanders or something," Roy complained, adjusting his tie and tripping over a stone marker. "What the hell?"

"Looks like they've got a shallow unmarked grave back here," Riza laughed, replacing the stepping stone. This sunk in, and she and Roy gulped.

"It must be about time to start... we should really go back..."

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"WE NEED TO BORROW SOMETHING!" yelled a young woman in a bridesmaids dress, slamming into Lust in a panic.

"What?" Lust asked.

"ANYTHING! Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue! The pearls are old, the dress is new, there are blue flowers in the bouquet, we need something borrowed!"

Always ready in a crisis, albeit an unusual one, Lust surveyed her outfit, looking for something detachable. No earrings, no bracelets, no jewelry, no ornaments, nothing except for her locket. With a slight hesitation, Lust unclasped the chain and handed it carefully to the concerned girl. "Here. Be careful with this. I'll need it back."

"ELLY!" the bridesmaid yelled, relieved. "Problem solved!"

Elly stuck her head out the bathroom door, and her friend held up the necklace. "Oh... Natasha, it's beautiful."

The reverent expression that had dominated Lust's face when she parted with her precious locket had disappeared. She squinted at the pendant, trying to understand why she had been so attached to it. It was, after all, just a necklace. "I suppose." She stared harder at the jewelry. "It really isn't something I would have chosen," she remarked, more to herself than to the girls.

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"And here's the man of the hour, Reg. Smart money's on him bolting," Greed narrated for the wedding home video he was filming, zooming in on the sweaty-palmed young man fidgeting at the alter, looking, with all due respect to Greed, like he was about ready to bolt. "Poor Elly. She's trading down,"

"Greg," Sloth hissed, sitting in the front row between him and Gracia in her capacity as Surrogate Mother of the Groom. "Someday he's going to see that."

Greed swung the camera around to get a shot of her. "Changing the subject, here are the two lovely mothers, Trish and Gracia, smile, ladies! Uh-oh, music's changing... Reg, if you're gonna run for it, you'd better hurry, the bride's coming... with her hostile escort who won't hesitate to hunt you down if you hurt his baby girl,"

Through some miracle of self control, Roy was looking serious, even grim, but not threatening (on the video, Greed commented that drugs may have been involved). It was actually possible to think of him as a normal father-of-the-bride rather than a potential psycho killer.

"Is that 'Tasha's necklace on Elly's wrist?" Greed whispered to Sloth as the bride walked past. "I think it is! She never lets anyone touch that,"

Sloth, watching the action blithely, waved at him to shut up without turning her head.

Elly reached the alter, beaming happily, and tried to step forward... but Roy's arm locked down on hers, almost like a reflex. She pecked him on the cheek and tried again, but he really had a death grip on her. The spectators, Elly included, giggled and tittered, but he didn't release her.

"Mustang," growled a voice from the bride's side. Roy finally managed to let Elly go, although he stayed glued to the spot until Gracia stood up and tugged him into the seat next to her.

The procession was over, and it was time for the main event, the ceremony.

It was towards the middle of this homestretch that Lust patted Envy's hand and discreetly slipped him a handkerchief. "Don't worry. I'll never tell Reggie that you cried at his wedding."

"I'm not crying," Envy whispered back defiantly, his voice somewhat hoarse. "I'm just allergic to these stupid flowers."

"I already promised not to tell."

"Do you remember when we first found him, Lust? He was so tiny and... and... just look at him. He looks so happy and mature and..." Envy choked into Lust's handkerchief. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

Lust chuckled kindly and squeezed her friend's hand again. "Our little Wrath is grown up. That's what's wrong. Sloth's probably bawling her eyes out right now."

Sloth, it may be noted, was not bawling her eyes out. Apparently calmed back down to her normal self by having all the planning over and done, she was smiling serenely throughout the ceremony, and continued to throughout the reception, which Envy noticed.

"Am I the only one who lost it back there?" he whispered to Lust between munches on an hors d'oeuvre.

"Probably. Like I said, I won't tell," she reassured him. "Uh-oh, Gree- Greg's hitting on Gracia..."

Envy shook his head. "I thought he'd outgrown stuff like that... I'll go talk some sense into him."

Roy had decided that the best way to deal with this wedding was to get a little drunk, and, surprisingly, this really did help a good deal. In this slightly more lax state of mind, watching Elly and Reg doing the chicken dance with various other young folks gave him a bizarre, unfamiliar, warm, fuzzy feeling. The kind of feeling that told him to sneak up on his wife and wrap his arms around her. "Rizy, did I ever tell you how happy I am that you married me?"

His captive rolled her eyes. "No, Roy, how happy are you?"

"I'm so happy that... that... I'd give up all the frozen waffles in the world for you."

"I should get you drunk more often," Riza grinned. "I'd forgotten you could be so romantic."

As for the happy couple of the hour, they, of course, seemed to have been surgically attached at the lips... except for the traditional slow dances with every one of their in-laws, family members, friends, members of the band, ect., as well as holding still while every one of the guests took group pictures of everyone in the party in increasingly more ridiculous poses ("ok, now let's get Elly, Gracia, and Riza in a Charlie's Angels pose...").

But even that ordeal ended, and they were eventually allowed to get into the limo and drive off. The other guests weren't so lucky.

The Sins, you see, had no use whatsoever for leftover little meringue shells filled with fruit salad, bite-sized asparagus tarts, or broiled scallops on decorative toothpicks, and nobody was allowed to leave until all of these things were gone.

It was quite late when the last lingering, well-fed guests toddled off to their hotels and train stations, and most of the Sins wanted to collapse and sleep for several days. However, after a year of taking orders from Sloth, they felt lost unless she gave them permission to do this, and she was missing, so they began a search of the house to find her.

Gluttony, who wasn't actually part of the search, but happened to be going into the dinning room, found her huddled in a corner, sobbing, surrounded by shards of glass from a platter that she had been carrying when she was hit with the mood. This struck him as odd, so he alerted the others.

"Slothy! Sloth, are you ok?" Envy and Greed gasped, seeing the glass. Lust, for all practical purposes, ignored them to make sure that Gluttony was ok and not too freak out.

"My baby is gone," sobbed the lump in the corner. "I lost my baby. He's not my little boy anymore."

"Shh, it's ok," soothed the others.

"I was so happy because he's all grown up and in love and happy, but he's still gone. Why do children have to grow up?"

"I don't know, sweetie," Envy murmured, hoisting her up out of the glass. "Come on, let's get you some tea. I hear it helps empty-nest."

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Far far away, Reg and Elly had arrived at their hotel and were happily examining the various high-class extras that came with the suit.

"Ooh, Reggie, look! There's a mini-fridge!"

"Neat," Reg agreed, loosening his tie and throwing his jacket on the bed. After a moment of thought, he turned around and flopped onto the bed face-up himself. "It's over. It's finally over."

Unseen by her recently-acquired husband, Elly stopped examining the coffee maker and grinned mischievously. She jumped onto the bed, half next to, half on top of the startled Reg. "Wait just a minute. It's not over yet," she reminded him sternly. "We are still married."

"Oh, yeah," Reg grinned, kissing his bride. "I'd forgotten about that."

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(A/N: It's not over yet! The Epilogue is coming in a few hours! Don't give up on me, people! Maybe send in a couple of reviews while you're waiting?)