Angsty question: based on your headcanon that Father has punished both Pride and Lust for Greed's escape since he still has Wrath within him at that point in time. How do you imagine he punished them?
Hi Anon! This is a cool ask, and I’m happy to answer it, sorta.
Pride and Lust’s punishment was awful, they got put over Father’s knee no, it was something really terrible, that they didn’t deserve at all. How could they know Greed was going to disappear after actually forming the Fourth Crest of Blood? As mentioned here, their recovery took so long that even though they found out about Greed’s betrayal in spring, it is the start of summer by the time they have gone to ‘rescue’ Envy and Gluttony.
I know what happened, but I wanted to leave it up to the imagination, though it does get brought up through hints in Summer Daze:
Lust watched one of [Pride’s] hands slither behind them and hang [his jacket] neatly in the boughs of a tree. It swayed in the welcome breeze. Thank goodness, anything less and she feared her skin might start peeling.
Again.
A shiver passed through her despite the heat. Grimacing, Lust crushed it down and forced it from her mind. Don’t think of that.
– Summer Daze, Scene 2
Pride was going to have a moment recalling what had happened in the third scene in the fic:
The memory of Father’s punishing thought made him falter, claws loosing and dropping his hapless brother back into the waves—but of course, Pride never faltered.
But I instead decided to leave it until near the end:
“All this…this is what Father wanted of us.” She said, half trying to convince herself and half pleading, scarcely above a whisper lest her younger brothers wake. They could not see her like this.
“You know it is.” Pride mumbled it purely through his container’s mouth, “You were there with me, dear sister.” His thin fingers flexed and fidgeted in his lap. He struck another match and the new filters in his container’s eyes shimmered faintly; she could still see the darkness trembling in the ruin of his face from that day, thin and weak as drizzle. Her new skin shone in the firelight, too bright against the old.“It will never happen again.”
Father’s nigh divine Punishment went unsaid, but she saw its memory warring within him, too.
– Summer Daze, Scene 5
Originally the aftermath of the event was going to be a fic of its own called Keep Waiting for Night to End, but I wanted to instead keep it vague. That being said, here’s a part of the scrapped fic:
The rain drips into him, and Pride feels himself spilling out, pooling like oil in his silk sheets, and over the floor. Perhaps the puddles aboveground look like this. His good eye opens, blinking slowly, once, twice, and collapses into dust. More room for his real eyes to roam. Half a groan and a shriek drips from him, shivering along and silenced as the globs splash in their own puddles. The ripples are almost soothing. He thins out, spreads. The squinted, shadowy eyes huddle in the cavern where his beautiful lilac filters should be, watching, sinking as more and more of him trickles out. Maybe it wouldn’t stop. Stay inside. Don’t die.
– Keep Waiting for Night to End
The fic may be scrapped, but some of its text may have a new use. Pride and Lust’s punishment is going to be mentioned again in my upcoming fic, Last Piece of the Dark, set shortly after Greed’s death. The factor of them being punished in Greed’s stead when Father had his Wrath, and the still horrible way Greed was killed even though Father no longer has it, is going to be brought up by Lust:
“Father’s Wrath was within him then.”
“Yesterday he was without. Greed bore it all the same.”
– Last Piece of the Dark
This is only a tiny snippet, you'll have to wait and see for the full fic!
Though Lust is happy Greed was punished, to her it’s a good way to allude to Pride that Father is deteriorating, and that he should ‘retire’ and let his children who contain the most of his soul, she (25%) and Pride (50%), take on the burdens themselves, potential godhood included.
Thanks for the ask again, but if after all that, once the fic is published, you still wanna know in worse detail, Anon, come back, and I’ll tell you more :3
