Lust
It had been a long time since Lust had been in a fight, and he was worn out. It wasn't his stamina—there were other, much more pleasant ways to keep his stamina up, many of which ended with an orgasm or two—but the fact that he hadn't fought so many demons at once. Not while he was still in recovery. Not while trying to make sure two stubborn, hardheaded, possibly clinically insane Guardians-in-training didn't kill themselves.
Truly, he admired their effort, even if he didn't understand it. They had been safe in the house, yet Athena had decided to leave. What little he knew of her was that she was way too smart to make a decision like that, so she had to have her reasons. Why Clare had followed behind Athena with only an hour or two of learning to throw a punch behind her, he didn't understand. He knew why she did it—Clare felt this unwavering loyalty to her cousin, especially considering they were part of this Guardian legacy, and it was up to them to help save the world—he just didn't understand it. Clare couldn't even defend herself.
But, to his surprise, Clare had held her own until physical limitations had stopped her. Thankfully, and he thought he would never say this, Samia was there to save them. Had it not been for her, they would've died. This fight had proved to be a learning experience, however.
One: Athena had found out enough about her power to start dabbling in it. He had heard a little of Samia's mind; while her story had been the absolute truth, she had excluded the parts of her that were inherently evil and wicked. Athena had no such parts, and her reservations to use her power were proof enough that she was less likely to fall prey to the side effects.
Two: Together, Clare and Athena made quite a pair. With more training, they would be impossible to defeat. As it was, the demons had gotten more of an ass beating than they had expected. Athena knew more than she let on, or at least than she let on with his brothers. When he had been given a ten-second break to watch them, he saw something that surprised him: Athena was quick and agile, graceful on her feet, her saber jabbing through the air with efficiency. She rarely missed a swing, and when she did, she was quick to recover. Clare, while having an affinity for her saber, was too afraid to do anything but swim clumsily and nervous. She was, however, fast and strong, which meant she didn't get hit as much as Athena or even close to it. Until she got tired anyway.
Three: Mother's army was made of lower-level demons, but a lot of them. She didn't have much sway in the Underworld yet, so whoever she was, it couldn't have been that important. She was a telepath. She was stuck where she was, probably chained, and no one took her seriously quite yet.
Four: Greed was in no position to fight in the next few days. His brother, unsurprisingly, had given every bit of his all to defend them. It was all for Athena, who he loved more than he expressed. It was odd, Lust thought, how Greed tortured himself every time he looked at Athena, defended her, or even so much as thought of her—yet he still went above and beyond, playing off his feelings in jest so he could see her. Yet, he still didn't love her like Sloth loved her.
Lastly, five: They had no chance at beating Mother by themselves. If she had only sent a sliver of her army, they were shit out of luck. Lust couldn't hold them off, not while he worried about Clare. Clare wouldn't be ready to fight, and Athena was too cautious to use her powers to help them. Sloth was slowly losing his mind, and Greed had never been a good fighter. He had scarcely been a decent one.
He ran his fingers through Clare's wet hair. She was sitting in front of him on the floor, eating a bowl of soup Sloth had made, listening to them speak. She was content, warm, and happy—and not the least bit afraid of their situation. The tables had turned because, instead of Clare being the one to run chicken, it was the brave Athena who had been holed away in her bedroom until Sloth enticed her down. Athena looked haunted and afraid as if everyone was going to throw rocks at her.
As if. Lust didn't quite care why she had done it. Sloth and Greed wouldn't think anything of her because they were in love. And Clare? Clare would stand by Athena's reckless decisions 100% of the way, as long as they didn't hurt anyone she loved.
Clare leaned her head into his touch. He needed to touch her. Watching her on the battlefield ranked number one for the scariest things that had ever happened to him. The images of her covered in blood and bruises would haunt him until the past was far behind him.
Now, though, everyone was calm and bathed, full and relaxed.
That was, until, Sloth opened his mouth.
"Brother." Lust didn't have to look to know Sloth was referring to him. He was the only person he spoke to with that much malice. Although, they had been on good terms lately; his reaction could only mean one thing: Sloth had figured out Lust had removed his memories.
Lust resisted the urge to sigh. He knew he'd have to come clean eventually, but this could've waited until all of this was over with. He saw no reason to add fuel to the forest fire they had raging through their lives currently. "Yes?"
Greed whistled. "Sloth, I suggest you take a—"
But Sloth ignored him. "This is between my brother and me." His look became icier. "See, I know enough about my brother's powers to know taking someone's memories leaves some nasty side effects. Loss of memory, loss of time are some examples. Headaches so fierce you feel your mind splitting in half. Whatever he's caused you to repress comes slipping in eventually, whether it's in your dreams or in conversation. Sometimes you don't even know it."
Lust didn't have time for the dramatics. He straightened up, sighing. "Just ask what you want to ask, Sloth. We're all adults here."
He glowered. "What the bloody hell did you take from me?"
Years worth of pain and suffering. Lust couldn't say that, though. He couldn't come out with it because he loved Sloth, even though he hated him. Of course, the main reason he hated him was because of something Lust had done. Still, he couldn't bring himself to tell his brother the truth and have Sloth think he was anything less than.
Because he was no eviler than the rest of them. He had had his little thirty-year murdering spree, but none of them were perfect. Sloth had suffered the most prior to meeting them, so it made sense he rejected the parts of them that made them evil. Lust's parents had barely been attentive to him; they spent more time in bed than anything (which was a side effect of his sin that he later learned to control). His mom let him do his own thing and never bothered to remind him of who he was or what he was unless he did something crazy. He missed her when she died. As far as his father, well, the tall Frenchmen was in the army, and he left when Lust was about ten, right before he was adopted. He didn't have any hang-ups about being evil because he didn't feel evil. He just wanted to have sex (when he was the appropriate age) and sometimes he liked controlling people to do stupid stuff. He was a regular kid.
Greed, knowing Lust would never tell because he swore by his convictions to keep Sloth in the dark about how he was raised, held a hand up. "I think it would be best if we calm down. It's not good—"
"Calm down?" Sloth's voice was thunderous. "I yelled at the woman I love because I'm losing my mind, Greed. Half the time I don't know what I'm saying or doing, and you want me to calm down?"
The woman he loved. So he admitted it. Lust turned to Athena, who watched him curiously. But not surprised. He wanted to read her thoughts, but he simply didn't have the energy.
Clare wrapped her hand around his calf and gave it an excited squeeze. She wanted to meddle into their lack of relationship so badly it amused him. If he hadn't have been purposely tuning her out, he knew he would've heard her projecting her thoughts toward him.
Greed raised his hands defensively. "You're also yelling now." Greed had blanched a little at Sloth's slip-up. It was time he give that up because Athena didn't love him that way, and, even she had, Greed had gone about it completely wrong and made her dislike him. He turned to Athena, looking for help because Sloth was seething.
Athena shrugged. "I don't meddle in family business." He noticed her saber wasn't near her for once.
"Technically," Lust interjected, "you are family. You share a bond with Sloth, a foretold prophecy. I think that qualifies as family."
She wrinkled her nose. "I think you need to own up to what you did before things get violent." Because things were bound to get violent with Sloth. That was how he operated. He tried to be the best of them, walk the high road, and do what was right. However, he was the worst. As Lust had often remarked to Wrath, holding in the "evil" made it worse when you did give in to it.
Lust really didn't feel like arguing with him. "Sloth, I understand you're upset, but—"
"Your family was abusive," Greed admitted, cutting everything short. "When we first came to rescue you, years after we were supposed to, your family was going to kill you, and you were going to let them."
The silence in the room became thick. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Clare leaned back into his legs, putting her soup down as if she had lost her appetite. Although he had his eyes focused on Sloth, he saw Athena move to put her hand on his leg. He pulled away from her, and her hand dropped to the ground.
Sloth looked like he was malfunctioning. His eyes blinked, and his fists clenched and unclenched. "Why?" His voice broke, the sound of a man who was drowning.
"Why what? Why did we lie? Why would they do that you?" Greed shrugged. "Sit down, and we can tell you the rest."
Or Greed could tell him the rest. A ball unfurled in his stomach, tension he hadn't realized he had from holding that secret for that long. But a new one was replacing it—betrayal. He had only felt it once before, when he wiped Clare's memories. Both times, it felt like the right thing to do.
Sloth didn't sit, though. He stood with a horrorstruck expression on his face.
Sighing, Greed continued. "Your parents were less than excited about the bundle of joy that was you. From the moment you were born, your mother refused to have skin-to-skin contact with you. She wouldn't touch you, talk to you, or even treat you like a normal baby." He waited a second to see how Sloth was taking this in, but he didn't so much as blink in response to the story. Either way, Greed pressed forward.
"As you grew older, it became worse. They kept you in a cage. They starved you. They burned you. They told you that you were evil and wicked. They hit you and refused to give you the slightest amount of affection. You were depraved of gifts and love, food and snacks. They went through extreme lengths to make sure you didn't use your powers, often guilting you into thinking you were bad so you wouldn't retaliate.
"They enjoyed having that power over you. See, Teacher was supposed to retrieve you four or five years into your stay there, but they refused to let you go. Your mom said you were at school, and you were loved. Love didn't come easy for us, so Teacher allowed you stay."
Lust wanted to pick up the story, tell him about the boy he saw all those years ago, but he couldn't open his mouth. Guilt sat hot and heavy on his chest. Guilt. He had never felt that emotion before. He decided he didn't like it.
"Wrath kept tabs on you, though, when she could. When she noticed you hadn't been out of the house in weeks, she reported to Teacher. He came to London, asked your parents for you, and they agreed to give you up. Or so we thought.
"When we got to the church—"
Lust had to interject because this was his part of the story to tell. "—you were tied up," he finished, looking away from his brother as he drowned in the memory. "They had you hogtied like some wild animal prepared for the slaughter. They planned to slit your throat in front of us, but not after torturing you. They thought it was their religious duty to rid the world of you.
"But they saw how powerful we were. Your sister moved to slit your throat, and I couldn't help myself. I commanded her to stop, and I killed the rest of your family in front of her. Then I finished the job and killed her. I broke their necks, ripped their hearts out." His voice was fierce. If he had to do it again, he would. "Afterward, Wrath untied you, and we carried you home."
Greed picked up the story. "You were so weak, you could barely walk. Your skin was hanging off your bones. There was blood and scars everywhere, Sloth. It was sick to look at. You obviously hadn't bathed in weeks, if not months, and you jumped at everything like an animal in captivity."
Lust remembered those first few hours vividly. They thought he was going to die. They weren't the closest of siblings—in fact, he could very well say they didn't like each other—but they cared about each other's wellbeing.
To see Sloth like that had made him physically sick. Every night for the first week, Lust would stay up and sleep by Sloth's door, waiting for his heart to just stop.
"It took you a long time to adjust. In fact, you never did." Greed was lost in his own memories, remembering things his way. Back then, Lust remembered Greed left often and came home late, smelling like perfume with make-up stains on him. "You wouldn't use your powers or talk to us. You barely ate or bathed. You just laid in bed on your side, silent and horrified. We had to do something."
And then Lust spilled the secret he had been keeping for more than a century. "So I took the bad memories. Replaced them with good ones. I gave you a childhood that didn't scare you. I let you remember me as killing your parents, just so you wouldn't go looking for them and find out what happened. That's what I took from you." There. It was out. And he didn't feel better or worst. He just… felt.
Sloth's eyes had grown to the size of disks. His face was flushed red. "Return them."
"That's not—"
"Return. Them."
So he did. He closed his eyes and made him remember every punch, missed birthday. He retried the memories of his parents kicking him and yelling at him. His siblings teasing him and eating cookies in front of his face. That too-small cage. The cross they burned into his skin every few days so he remembered he would never be worthy of Jesus's love. He let him remember the pain, both physical and mental. The exhaustion. Being hungry and thirsty.
Sloth stumbled back. "I—"
Lust was sorry. He was sorry he had lied, sorry he had kept it from him. Sorry, he had brought it back.
Athena looked up. "Bash—"
He didn't even acknowledge her. Instead, he turned to them with a defeated look. "You should've let them kill me."
Then he was gone before even Athena could react.
Sloth
Sloth wanted to reach out to Lust and tell him he forgave him—yes, it hurt, and remembering all that shit upset him. But he couldn't reach for him; all he could was watch and wait, like he had been the past few weeks. Waiting for the perfect moment to come back.
He did, however, finally have some clarity on his weird dreams, and the odd things he had been feeling the past decade. An answer to the unsteady feeling in his chest that something was fundamentally wrong.
Sighing, he looked to the side, where the woman he had met was waiting. She looked so much like Athena it almost scared him—but that was where the similarities ended.
The woman waved her hand. "Go, pay attention to what he's doing. You won't listen to me until you do."
He gave her a grateful smile, tuning back in to the other Sloth. Another few days at most, and he'd return for Athena.
He grabbed the bottle of cheap liquor—something white that he knew would get him good and drunk, good and fast—and placed a twenty on the table. He unscrewed the top and drunk. And drunk. And drunk until there was nothing left. He even licked the little dot that had escaped his mouth and rested on the left corner of his lips. He put the bottle down hard enough to crack it before calling the bartender over for another.
The burn felt good. Actually, anything would've felt better than the assault of memories that plagued him. His parents had been right—he was evil and disgusting, a monster. Look at what he had done in the last fifty years, all the people he had murdered, the serial killers he had encouraged. Even now, he loved to torture demons before killing them. It felt good to hear them scream. Only a monster could like that, right?
Oh, look, the next bottle. "Go ahead and bring another, gorgeous," he told the bartender. He didn't have to wink at her. She was under his charm, like every other woman in this goddamn world (unless Lust was around, which he often wasn't, but when he was, Sloth cut his losses). This time he didn't bother to unscrew the top. He just squeezed it between his fingers until it bent and slipped right off.
The bartender gave him a dreamy stare before walking off. She was cute, he guessed if he was into blondes. She was not Athena, that was for damn sure.
No, he had to get Athena out of his head. He was evil. She was good. Beautiful good. A Guardian. A virtue. Chasity. Jesus, who even was a virgin still these days? A testament to how good and pure she is, he thought, gulping down the rest of the liquor. The burn hit his chest now, and he could feel the recklessness he tried to keep at bay returning.
He kind of missed those days before he met Athena. He didn't care. He was detached from everything and everybody. He had an agenda, and it included wreaking havoc. Doing what he was meant to do. Fulfilling his purpose. Why stop at encouraging someone to be lazy when he could encourage them to act on their desires instead? That was much more fun watching someone else self-destruct for once.
Then he met Athena, and he wanted to be good for her. Even if they had danced around the subject of him loving her, her loving him. Because she did. Love him, that was. Athena loved him, and he knew it, but what he didn't know was what to do about it. For demon's sake, she was chaste. He couldn't even bang her. Lust was getting more ass in his house than he ever had.
Except Athena was more than ass, and he wouldn't have sex with her ever if that was what she wanted.
"Break-up?" a new bartender asked, leaning across the counter. She was leggy, even though she wasn't too tall. Her skin was flawless, a shade darker than Athena 's. The girl had flaming hair, though, that stopped around mid-back, and almond-shaped brown eyes. Her face was all angles and sharpness, and she bore a grin that spoke of trouble. She sat the other bottle he had asked for in front of him.
The bar was relatively empty. Where was his brother?
"Nope," Sloth answered, watching her unscrew the bottle for him. How did he explain what was going on? He could see straight down her shirt. He made no attempt to hide what he was looking at or what he wanted. "Just a man having a drink."
She chuckled. "Well, I was going to offer you our special condolence services in the back. We have women and men that can do magical things to you for the price of your soul." There was a little emphasis on the word magic, and she had an accent, a thicker one than his, although she sounded quite American, too.
Sloth looked to where she was pointed. It didn't look like much, just a rickety door that didn't even look like it could close. "What if you don't have a soul?" Because he didn't have one. He couldn't. It had been ripped away from him the minute his family decided to treat him like that. Someone had to suffer, someone besides him anyway. And they were dead.
"Then oh the fun you'll have."
He grabbed his bottle and swaggered through the empty door.
Sloth twisted the woman's hair around his hand. The woman, a witch, moaned. Her eyes were rolled to the back of his head. This was a much-needed release. When was the last time he had sex?
Too long.
And she looked nothing like Athena, even though he couldn't pinpoint why exactly he was mad with his best friend. He could pinpoint the guilt he should've felt, had he not already cast his feelings to the side. It was easy easier to deal with the memories when he couldn't feel anything. That was how you beat the system. It was how he would be able to leave Athena, unfeeling, and go back to his life of crime. Unbothered.
The witch tilted her to kiss him, but he moved his mouth. "Why the hell would you try to kiss me?"
She tried again, so he lifted her up against the wall, hand around her throat. She grinned.
He spiraled.
When he returned to the bar, the girl was talking to someone with shocking red hair, the kind you could only find in the deepest cuts of Ireland. Or, at least, that was what they had told Pride.
Sloth should've been angry with Pride, too, but he wasn't. Instead, he was glad to see his brother. Sloppy drunk and sexually satisfied, he was ready to see what his brother was doing here. In fact, he wondered if she could call up the whole family. Get them together one last time to break his fucking heart again.
Pride turned around. He looked like he always did; like he was slightly irritated, mostly frustrated, and as if everybody was beneath him.
"Brother!" Sloth greeted, holding his arms out for a hug.
Pride didn't bother to get up. "Sit. Have… another drink." He wrinkled his nose disgustingly at him.
Sloth winked at the bartender. "Serve me up another drink."
"A pint of the black stuff, please," Pride told her, but she was already fixing it, giving him a promising smile. "Jesus, you're absolutely fluthered, aren't you?" This was directed towards Sloth, who was not knowledgeable in anything other than British and American slang.
"Absolutely," he agreed anyway. "What are you doing here?"
He lifted a shoulder but didn't answer. Pride never answered anything unless it meant showing them how much better he was. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at home protecting your girl?"
The redhead put the bottle in front of Sloth, but she didn't leave. She arched an eyebrow. "You have a girl?" She laughed as if it was one the funniest things in the world. "I couldn't tell by the way he was slagging it in the backroom." She threw her head back and mimicked moans—loudly.
Pride grinned. "That's how you get down? I never took you for a cheater."
Sloth had never had a relationship either. They bogged him down. "I have no girl."
The redhead tilted her head to the side, but she made no remark. "We don't have long, Patrick." She looked up at the clock.
"Well, he's drunk."
She made a motion as if that didn't matter with her hands. "And?" She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "My name is Scarlett, Guardian of the deepest pit of hell. There have been stirrings for the past few weeks, and it ties into you.
"Now, I don't know what's stirring down there, but I heard you have an idea. This Mother woman, am I right?"
Sloth wanted to remain drunk and happy, but there they were, throwing information at him..
"You're right," he answered, finishing off his bottle.
Scarlett. A Guardian. Why couldn't he escape them? There were only seven, and he knew two of them. Shouldn't they be falling in love with his siblings and staying far away from him? He knew he couldn't escape Mother, but he had no reason to. She didn't want to kill him as long as he wasn't in her way.
Scarlett grinned. "Excellent. Now, I found someone who knows exactly who she is, but neither I nor Patrick has the torture prowess to get the answer out of him. This is where you come in. I've heard good things and seen even better, Sebastian."
Torture? His ears perked up. He could find out who Mother was, tell Lust to tell Athena and then he could be on his way. "I'm listening."
They didn't have high hope of beating Mother, and his job was almost done. As soon as he could get Clare alone, this whole process would be over.
And good riddance. Sloth was tired of pretending. It was getting hard.
Pride started putting his knives away. They made a good team. Pride with his illusions, making the demon thing that his loved ones were there. Sloth with his torture skills, inflicting pain that left him begging to live. He wanted to ask his brother to do it again, but he had to disappear as he had mentioned earlier. Before he lost his nerve.
Sloth dragged the six bodies into the middle of the underground cave to burn later. They were in a remote location outside of upstate New York, some underground fortress Pride and Scarlett had built to lock demons in.
Funny enough, Pride hadn't really had to use the illusions because Sloth had nabbed the demon's real family and killed them anyway. Imagine the demon crying in relief when he found out they weren't real only for Sloth to twist the head off of his kid anyway. He killed the others slowly, had them beg their daddy for relief, but the demon wasn't hearing it.
Mother had promised protection for his kids if he joined her army and kept her secret, but she hadn't been there. It was really sad.
Sloth chuckled as he covered them in gas.
"Did we have to kill all his kids?" Pride asked, looking neither concerned nor worried.
"Of course. Wouldn't want anyone to feel left out." He grinned, lighting the match and setting them on fire. The smell of burning demon flesh soon filled the air. "We're done here?"
Pride nodded. "You're going back to Athena?"
No. Never. "I'll pass the message along." Because Sloth had messed up. The emotions had overpowered his good senses, and he had actually fell for Athena. Thank goodness Mother didn't care which one died—just that one did.
He looked disappointed. "You're mad at us, Sloth. Don't take it out on Athena. She loves you."
"She deserves better," he said, and he meant it.
"But she has you." Pride crossed his arms over his chest with a smirk. "So you did some bad things. Shit happens."
He rolled his eyes. Athena would never go for him. "And, Scarlett? That shit happen?" Was Pride in love with her? He had never been in love with anyone but himself.
A flicker of his smile crossed his face. "Right now, Scarlett shares my bed. Her doing." The look in his eyes—Scarlett was the sight to see in New York. "You follow a girl across the world, and the only thing she offers me is her body."
Sloth smiled. "So that's where you've been this whole time? Ireland?"
"For a decade or two, and I came to New York. I went back to visit, met Scarlett when she tried to cut my head off. Now I'm back here, following her around like a trusted sidekick." There was no real complaint in his voice, only happiness. There had been a time when none of them could stand Pride. He always had his head in his ass.
"You sound happy brother." Finally. They, with the exception of Wrath, Lust, and Gluttony, had some degree of miserableness to them.
"I am." Pride paused, then added, "Go back to her, Sloth. There's no better feeling than coming home to the arms of a woman that loves you."
He was absolutely right, but it didn't change anything. "I'll see you later."
"Will you?"
Maybe in a century or two. It had been decades since they had last seen each other, and Pride had lost the mullet. Thank God. Sloth just grinned at him.
Now, to start his journey.