When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past

He was a man of many heresies, but even by the standards of his unorthodox appetites, the order surprised him.

Not surprised, he soon amended himself: frustrated would be more appropriate. Despite whatever misgivings, founded or unfounded, others harbored towards him, no one could deny his penchant for the proprietary. He prided himself on being a creature of ritual. There were strategies in place for these sorts of things, approaches as carefully mapped as lines of latitude and longitude, as fronts of a battlefield drawn in blood. And decorum demanded patience, lest he tarnish the memory with graceless bungling. It would sooner be an embarrassment to him than to anyone else unfortunate enough to be swept up in the dance.

There was a time when he would have refused the order outright. Not on the principle of the act itself. After all, he had mulled it over often enough, for lack of any better way to pass the time in incarceration. No, he would have objected on the grounds of the entire affair being so starved of any vestige of elegance that it seemed little above brute, carnal savagery. Which, if he were being honest with himself, didn't harmonize with his aesthetic at all. In fact, it struck him as being rather vulgar.

But that was before he did his time in prison. Before he had grown tired of waiting. He may have been a man of many heresies, but he was still human, after all.

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste

When given leave, he had asked the Führer why he deigned to rely on a human in lieu of one of his reputable siblings. Certainly Envy was a delightful little sadist, and it would be no skin off its nose to disguise itself as any number of people to do the job to the Führer's satisfaction: another Homunculus, Frank Archer, hell, even the Flame Alchemist, if the psychological stakes were high enough.

No. The Führer had been quite adamant. It had to be him. In the flesh.

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night

He supposed the order retained semblances of convention in the guise of its reasons. In the end, it all boiled down to a stark meditation on the nature of power. And oh, how the Führer relished his trappings of control. For all the Homunculus's subtleties and refinements, Wrath could be so deliciously human.

En route to a nondescript apartment in Central City, he ruminated on the new orders from his employer, and he wondered from what dark corner of Bradley's mind the idea had sprung. He knew, better perhaps than most, that hatred breeds all manner of perverse inclinations. A creature that was literally the embodiment of wrath ought to be prolific in birthing cruel and perverted fantasies. The Führer played the game well: Bradley the man commanded the primal impulses of fear, and Wrath the Homunculus knew how to irritate certain itches until they begged to be scratched raw.

And how his own particular itch had grown, the heat singing in his blood until he could scarcely contain the fire in his gut. It was no secret that those who emerged from Central Prison emerged changed men, but rather than bemoaning the wasted years, he found himself receptive to the new possibilities the world presented. And perhaps, in absentia, the world had grown more receptive to the possibilities he presented.

The more he considered, the more he felt inclined to forgive the transgression of his personal etiquette.

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight

As a general rule, he didn't make a habit of acting on impulse. Aside from the pleasure he allowed himself at the advent of his combustive alchemical reactions, he played his true passions close to his chest. He endeavored to remain in a position of empirical objectivity, especially in his dealings with other people. He found them tiresome, perfidious creatures, hardly worth the effort of genuine investment.

That was not to say there weren't the occasional exceptions.

When he arrived at his destination, and removed his hat, allowing the rain to run in rivulets through his black hair, he felt a shiver of almost sensual gratification at the prospect of succumbing to utter abandon. The Führer may have dallied with his dynamics of control, and indeed, that was what the entire soirée was really about. But for all the vestiges of refinement total control afforded him, sometimes it felt so damn good to lose it. To give in to the itch.

He dripped rainwater on the landing as he knocked on the door. And when she opened it, she stood adjacent to the entryway, her gun trained at the center of his forehead. Her hair was down, cascading across her shoulders, and a single bead of sweat snaked into the curve of her throat, because, he suspected, she had been roused from the trappings of a nightmare. Disheveled in her nightclothes, amber light in her eyes boiling like torchlight, she looked positively feral. In that moment, he wanted her. Not on the Führer's orders. Not to relish the sheer horror on Flame's face when he discovered their dalliances. Not to remind the Colonel and his adjutant of their proper places in the delicate balancing act their lives had become. No; he wanted her because he always had, and he was finally free to take her.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before

A part of him suspected she understood the terms of the arrangement. It was the only reason he was alive. She didn't shoot him when he stepped across her threshold, wordlessly shut the door and drew the deadbolt. When he closed the space between them, she tried to gap the distance, only to succeed in trapping herself between him and the wall. He moved closer, until the barrel of her gun rested neatly between his eyes. But her mouth stayed pressed in a tight, grim line. Her expression never wavered from frigid impassivity. Because she understood. She knew how to play the game, too, and she had long ago accepted the rules. After all, her life was in no danger; the Führer would not have him killing a valuable hostage.

But if she defended herself, as she no doubt wanted to, and shot him, she would forfeit the Colonel's life. She valued her superior far too much to sacrifice his safety so indiscriminately. She would do whatever was necessary to keep Flame from falling further from grace's better fortunes. He admired her fierce loyalty in that respect, though questioned perhaps her proclivity for destructive selflessness. But if power dynamics were to be the ambience of the dance, then he would allow her the satisfaction, at least, of knowing that she had succeeded in protecting her man. Better to capitulate to some conditions of comfort and be rewarded with assent than to drag her across the calderas of utter ruination, kicking and screaming and shooting people the entire way.

And, if her bleeding heart was intended to summon the sharks, then there was little doubting the roll he had been scripted to play.

So be it.

He lunged; he snatched her wrists, pinned them to the wall above her head. The gun clattered out of her hand. He could see her anger — and her fear — creasing the planes of her face, splintering in her russet eyes like a hundred shards of broken glass. He let her struggle beneath him; they were soldiers, after all, and though he had drawn the lines of their last battlefield, he held no interest in hollow victories.

He canted his hips against hers; the stirrings against her thigh were blatantly unambiguous. She shuddered, and tried to edge herself away from where his lips feathered against her throat. He tasted her sweat. His nose tickled the line of her jaw as he traced the current of her pulse. He took her earlobe in his teeth, biting ever so delicately. She stiffened under his ministrations, pressing herself hard against the wall. He lifted his head for a moment, to drink in the sight of her. She was so beautiful. And she was his.

Deftly, he moved her wrists to a single hand, the inked crests of a transmutation circle pressed against her pulse point. She froze; an alchemic charge snapped along the contours of her arm, curling the small hairs on the nape of her neck. When he kissed her, explored her mouth with his teeth and his tongue, she tasted like lightning and ozone. Like dangerous, unwieldy forces mankind has since learned to tame, to control.

He had no desire to temper her. Merely make her his own.

With his free hand he edged up the hem of her nightshirt. He stroked the skin adjacent to her navel, marveling how one so hardened and muscle-bound, a woman who wore her stoicism like armor and a soldier sworn to march to the front lines of hell, could still feel so soft. Her abdomen tightened under his hand. He hummed his approval against her mouth.

He pressed his forehead to hers, forcing her to look straight at him, amber meeting storm blue, as he slid his palm up her sternum. She schooled her expression when he cupped her breast, caressed the sensitive skin around her peak with the care of a sculptor kneading the clay of his masterpiece. Her breath hitched when he squeezed.

There were cracks in the carapace, minute fractures he would like nothing more than to tear wide open with his teeth. She was so indomitably impassive; he knew she was attempting to resolve this, resolve him, into the paradigms of risk and reward, push and pull, advance and retreat that passed like traded blows between their superiors. Detachment offered her a fleeting illusion of distance. But if she believed there was as little feeling behind his touches as there was in her supposed indifference to his stimuli, then she was sorely mistaken.

He released her wrists; a necessary allowance of freedom. "Hold still, my dear," he murmured against her cheek. He kept one array pressed against bare skin, should she try anything less than amusing.

Her voice was flat. "Is that an order, sir."

He hitched her leg against his hip, pushing her further up the wall. His words were a smooth, dulcet purr: "Would you like it to be, Lieutenant?" The emphasis on her honorific left little doubt what was being suggested.

She recoiled from him as though struck. Her eyes went wide, her mouth parted in shock; the sudden crack in her composure was intoxicating. A single plea hung unspoken between them.

Please, don't bring him here.

Spare him this.

He chuckled low in his throat. So much for proffered magnanimity. He had offered her a way out. He would not be so generous a second time.

He tore open her nightshirt, pushed it over her shoulders. She jerked when he lowered his mouth to the swell of her breast, rolled his tongue across the peak. The tiniest whimper dripped from the corner of her mouth — he marveled at such an exquisite deconstruction, falling to jagged pieces in his deadly hands.

Her body twitched where his fingers ghosted over the top of her trousers.

"Just get it over with," she hissed.

A sigh. "I mourn for lost virtues. No matter; patience may be bitter, but the fruit is sweet…" Something akin to panic flashed across her face as he slipped his hand under her waistband. "Wouldn't you agree?"

She grit her teeth. "Who gave the order?"

"That would be telling, Lieutenant. In any case, I imagine that so long as my employers, and yours, allow your Colonel his life, then this little intrigue ought not to resound with any particular consequence, oughtn't it not?"

"God damn you, sir."

"Mmm quite."

"He will destroy you. Utterly."

He frowned; he didn't much care for threats. He ceased his blind fumblings and entered her, eliciting a harsh gasp that fanned hot across his ear. With his other hand, he began to stroke her through the fabric of her pants. She tried to close her legs on impulse, but his long, lithe body kept her pressed against the wall, her knees forced apart.

"Imagine," he breathed into the hollow of her throat; the stirrings in his groin got noticeably more insistent, "imagine what that upstart will think when he finds out."

"Please…"

"And he will find out. There are consequences for treason, you know."

She tried to rebuff his hands. He responded by grazing a nail –– tenderly, agonizingly –– in slow, concentric circles around the small nub of flesh below her pubic bone. Any semblance of composure shattered in his hands.

"And when he blames himself for it, which you know he invariably will," he smiled against her skin; she began to tremble, "he won't be so keen on causing trouble again."

"Stop it," she mouthed.

He touched his tongue to his lips as he began to lower her –– and her clothes –– to the floor.

"No."

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

"Lieutenant."

"Colonel."

"How're things?"

"As well as can be expected, sir."