A/N - Let the bells ring! Let champagne be broached! Let the heavens tremble with joy! Wrath is actually getting another oneshot!

Wrath and Mrs. Bradley are actually one of my favorite pairings from FMA - right up there with Roy/Riza. If they aren't one of yours, I hope to convert you before long.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer - I do not own, I merely admire… and offer my humble contribution to the general awesomeness.

Prompt - Forbidden Love

It hadn't been in Father's plans. Wrath had done it completely on his own, and she'd probably thought that his hands were shaking just because he was afraid that she'd say no, but in reality only part of his mind was paying attention to the words his lips were saying, words he'd rehearsed so many times in the mirror back home that Envy had finally stopped making fun of him and just wandered off with a shake of his head saying, "It must be love," - the rest of him was wondering frantically what Father would do when he found out.

Lust was on his side, and that was something, and so was Envy because of Lust, and that was something more - not because Envy could really influence Father at all, but because at least he wouldn't be trying to make Wrath's life a misery about it - and so was Gluttony and that didn't really matter at all, but it was kind of nice and everybody had agreed that it had been cute when he'd come up to his younger brother and solemnly promised not to eat his future wife 'even if I get really hungry'.

Pride would be against it, Wrath knew, and coldly furious because he'd managed to stop the several little romances that Lust had dared to have in her youth and he would have stopped this too, if he'd had the chance. Sloth was still working, and mattered even less than Gluttony. Still, with Lust on his side and with the thing already done, he had a chance - he had a chance.

Lust had been there when he'd come staggering home, hours late, from his little 'outing', as Envy so delicately termed it, with his head spinning with joy. "She - she said yes," he managed to gasp, and then he wondered why Father had never told him before how much happiness could be closed inside three short words. He wondered why Father had never told him about happiness at all.

Lust clucked over him, and made him change his clothing because he'd walked home bareheaded through the rain and hadn't felt a thing, and then sat him down and told him how glad she was for him, and how she would convince Father, somehow, that a wedding would fit into the Plan. "One of us," she said then, and her eyes were dark and clouded for a moment, "at least one of us should be happy," and he didn't say anything because Lust has always been the most dutiful daughter anyone could hope for and he knows that she loves Father with all her heart and that those words were the closest she's ever come to saying that she thought he was wrong.

They sat together in companionable silence for a long moment and then Lust allowed Wrath to tell her how fascinating and spirited and kind his fiancée was, and how she'd made him begin to think that humans - he checked himself and went on more carefully - that some humans were worth more than others, and Lust nodded quietly and patted his hand.

They both pretend that she's humoring him and that the reason she's sitting here and listening to him talk is nothing more than a kindness to her youngest brother, but she also knows that he sees the sad, wistful hunger in her eyes, and they both know that this is the closest she'll come, now, to that thing which is the completion of herself.

Then Envy burst into the room, whining at the top of his lungs about how now that Wrath's in love - 'Hush!' the two others say in alarm, glancing nervously at the door to Father's room - he's not spending any time practicing with him any more, and how he's going to get all dull not fighting anybody but humans. Wrath smiles and says that he's perfectly ready to fight any time his respected older brother feels like it, and he merely thought that he was ready to take a break from being roundly defeated all the time. Ten minutes later Lust tiredly tells them to take it into the other room, because she has to figure out how to explain to Father tactfully and smoothly that his youngest son and largest political asset wants to get married for no other reason than that he's in love.

Not that she'll say the last. She'll think up some reason that Father will accept. After all, homunculi shouldn't fall in love with humans, right? Does a human fall in love with an ant, or a dog? Perfect beings have no reason to care passionately and deeply and irrevocably for imperfect beings.

So she'll explain it to Father and smooth over the storm, and then she'll go help her little brother figure out all the difficult ramifications of his wedding, and tell him that she's happy for him and mean it. Because Lust has known for some time, with a quiet resignation, that unlike Father, she will never be perfect in that way.

Aw. Younger Wrath in love is so sweet… I imagine that one of the big things that tipped Father over to agreeing with it is that Lust pointed out that it would give Pride the perfect cover identity.

…Can you imagine Pride's face when he heard that he not only had to put up with little brother's disgraceful marriage, but that he had to pretend to be his son, and to adore the disgraceful woman in question?

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