#ph fandom

And after all that, after all he had put them through, after all his own wonderings Is this really it? Is this where I die? Will I never get to see Oz again? He…was fine.

Fine. Not even a scar, a cold, a leftover cough. When the morning came, and his pillows, sheets, and clothes were changed, all that was left was white, and he could breathe fine, and there was nothing to show he had almost died the night prior.

Everyone said it was a miracle, (Bernice said something about how the Abyss had saved him), that there was no other explanation, as no one (or almost no one) comes back from behind poisoned, and they should thank the angels that the Nightrays hadn’t had to lose someone else.

At the time, he believed it was the worst thing he had ever had to experience.

Until he learned there's one other thing that works the same way: thoughts can be poisonous too.

They too, started small.

It started with Vincent whispering things in his ear, (things about Alice, and Chains, and killing) and “Why won’t you kill her, Gil?” asking him questions about things Gilbert denied, but he realized quickly had always been there, somewhere, in the back of his mind. And he supposed it must have started much earlier than this. His brother’s words brought them to the forefront, started a record of them playing on repeat. He didn’t know how, or where, or when, but somewhere in the middle, the thoughts decided to change directions, decided to stop saying No, of course I won’t, I can’t. I would never kill Alice, how could Vince even suggest something like that? to Maybe he’s not completely wrong, it’s her…She’s the one destroying my master’s body…This is her fault, and the answer’s so simple, if I just got rid of her… skirting around the single word, until he was admitting it full well: If I just killed her, if I just got the chance, then my Master would be safe, he’d be okay, all I need to do is kill her, and it started sounding less horrible bit by bit. And then somewhere, somewhen, somehow, that one word started filling up his mind, until it was all he could think, the record of questions replaced with some dark chant of kill, kill, kill my Master’s enemies, kill…

Then Sablier. Sablier, where his head, his hand, ached, and where he got so very close.

That knocking in his head, growing in intensity the longer he left the door unopened.

But they had already gotten in, and now they were knocking on the inner walls.

The chance came for him to fulfill the call of this dark melody, and he was inches from action, if he just—

Instead he…saved her.

Saved her. How? Why? Why, when his thoughts bent to blood, how could his body choose to act in mercy?

It was in Sablier when he started to truly understand that this wasn’t the first time he had tasted this poison; somewhere in his cloudy past he had once thought If I just left Vincent behind, if he was gone…then I’d be fine…But when he’s gone, who will need me? The words reverberated back to him from some time he didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, remember, and with them, this pain in his head. His breath caught in his throat, disgust rearing in his heart. How could he ever think something like that? Why? What would bring him to—?

But he didn’t dare think, Isn’t this the same? Am I not thinking the same thing right now?

And maybe this wasn’t the first time those words came to mind about Alice either. Maybe, once upon a time, he had said them aloud. He could hear an echo of his own childish tone—

Not just Alice, someone had tried to hurt his Master, and he had to protect him. He had to. There was no other option, no other choice to make. If anyone tried to hurt his Master, he had to protect him, even if that meant killing those who stood opposed to him.

All the while, his head throbbing. Had it always been this way? Had it always been like this? He was starting to forget what it felt like to be okay.

And it just had to be in Sablier when that man showed up. When Xai came, and brushed Oz aside again. Gilbert’s legs moved before his mind commanded them.

Long ago, when he was still too young to have blood on his hands, that one word—kill—had become so strong he lifted a gun and pointed it at Oz’s father.

He would have done it too—pulled the trigger. He wanted to. His jaw set, tears in his eyes, questions he knew the answers to (but everyone else denied) burning on his tongue, hands shaking, but aim true… it would have been so simple; just one motion, a single act, pull the trigger, and all this pain would be over.

But, it wouldn’t be. Over, that is. Gilbert knew that Oz was not like himself. Oz did not have these thoughts spinning through him—Oz had not been poisoned by them. And if Oz returned to a world where his father was dead, killed by his most dedicated servant, in some twisted show of loyalty, he wouldn’t be proud, or grateful, or anything of the sort. He knew it wasn’t what Oz wanted, no matter how much he had been hurt by this man. And if Gilbert did this now, it would be like he was saying, with the voice of a bullet, Oz isn’t coming back. So he didn’t, not then. There were pathways out of the thoughts, out of the chanting. The poison subsided, went dormant in his blood.

But in Sablier, things were different. In Sablier there were memories, and they made his head pound to escape his own skull. In Sablier there were voices, and his left hand was aching and What was going on with Oz—

Was this what they meant by poisonous gas? Did Pandora, Break and Reim, know about the thoughts, the memories? About the poison in his mind?—

And in Sablier he tried to kill Alice, and in Sablier, maybe some other him, in some other time, wanted to leave his brother behind too, but couldn’t bring himself to do—(not because he cared, but because he needed to be needed, and he wouldn’t admit that he still did)—and these memories, these memories, these memories—

If only he could cough them up too. If only he could turn them to a few drops of blood staining his gloves, rather than his entire past. But they stuck in his lungs, on his tongue, and they rotted there.

The word, the gun, were the only things left, in his hand, in his heart. The only thing left to do.

If only Xai could have been just a little bit kinder, just a tiny bit more forgiving. It wasn’t hard, was it, just to show one shred of human decency?

(Gilbert might just have changed the past for Oz, then. Might have erased the moment when Oz’s own father said he wished he had never been born, might have kept him from tossing him into the Abyss. Even now, if Raven told him he could, would he still—?)

How could this man stand there with a smile on his face, like he hadn’t ripped Oz apart all those years ago? Tossed his heart to the cobblestones, then, if that wasn’t enough, cast him into the Abyss itself? Like he didn’t care, and wouldn’t even try…

Gilbert would have done it. He no longer had anything with which to fend the thoughts off. They were enveloping his mind, and maybe there was no him left, just these sickening memories, a knocking that made his head throb, and the word kill.

Every intention in him was set on the task.

And it had been Break—Why did it have to be Break?—who stopped him.

If it had been Oz, things would've been different. If it had been Oz, things would have made sense. Gilbert would have listened to every word from the very beginning, and it would have been easy to stifle the thoughts, to come to the answer, to follow Oz out of this place, out of the dark…wouldn’t it?

Oz may have yelled, or kicked him in the shin, pulled on his hair, and called him an idiot, but he still would have made an effort to care, to understand, recognize what he was doing, and why. Oz would have stayed there, and talked him down from this place, slowly, made him put down the gun, second by second, drawing the poison from his veins in the same method it came.

But he didn’t get Oz. Oz was too shaken up himself. Oz was somewhere else, just as broken and hurting and Gilbert had to protect him.

(But how can I protect him if I’m not with him?)

Instead he got Break. And Break wasn’t kind like Oz. The Mad Hatter had severed the scene in two, he stuck his staff between Gilbert’s neck at the rest of the world, a barrier between him and the man he wanted to kill, ruining his chances of following the thoughts’ call through, in one fluid motion. And Break’s words were not compassionate like Oz’s surely would have been. For the most part, they were not cruel, but Break never seemed to make the effort to care.

Gilbert’s words hadn’t been any better, they grew more monstrous by the moment—(maybe that was the blood, the vomit on his tongue)—and that’s when they finally spilled out, “I have to kill him!”

Still—

(If he had been paying more attention, perhaps he would have seen how they made Break pause…)

“Gilbert-kun. That isn’t your will talking, is it?”

And it hurt so much. His head, his hand, he couldn’t even think with this pulsing, the blood in his throat—

“Who put that into your head?”

And he had to do it, he had to—

“Then you can kill me too!”

He had no choice, he had to follow the thoughts though to the end, he was their puppet—

Wait, what?

Did he really just put his gun to Break’s head?

Sure, Break could but insufferable at times, but was that enough to kill him?

“Let me ask you just one thing. Is the one you need...really Oz Vessalius?”

And then, of course, because it was Break, after saying the thing that cut to the heart of him, he had to jab his staff into his gut to finish the job. Punish Gilbert for holding him at gunpoint, even for a second, even at Break's own command, saying he let him off easy.

Break had never intended to be kind. He never gave any thought to the impact of things like words, and “worthless emotion,” did he? He had even admitted this fact himself.

And Gilbert had turned his gun on him, maybe even thought for a second That’s right, you’re an enemy too, I have to kill you. Something dark in him knew blood needed to follow blood, something dark in him needing to fire on someone, because someone, anyone, had to pay for all this pain in his heart, in his head, and he couldn’t think straight with this ache, this poison…

But, of course, in a moment, the very notion became so silly. This was Break after all. Sure, he was annoying, rude, maybe even cruel, but killing him for it was a bit far. And wasn’t Break somehow—(he didn’t like to say it too much)—his friend?

Except, when he had tried to apologize, Break had shut him up by shoving Emily into his jaw.

The question remained in the back of Gilbert’s mind: What if he’s right? What if it isn’t Oz I need? But he pushed the question down as far as he could, didn’t want to think, to wonder for a second that maybe…

Was this another poison? These questions of Maybe it’s not Oz…Or was questioning the poison’s intentions, bit by bit, was severing it at the seams, quickly and thoroughly as possible, the antidote? Was the antidote realizing just how very silly the thought was, from the very beginning?

He found himself so far from his reason for doing this; Oz. He hadn’t for a second thought what Oz would think about his actions. That had been what had kept him from the trigger before. Not this time. Though it was the only thing that mattered, he hadn’t even thought about it. It had just been pain, and knocking, and that one recurrent note.

So maybe, just maybe, Break was right. Maybe it wasn’t Oz, maybe—

Or maybe not.

And he wasn’t ready to tell Oz any of that. Especially not when he didn’t have an answer himself yet.

But he did tell Oz the truth. The thoughts flared back up, even afterwards, and Oz had been so quick to realize they were ridiculous—and, when Gilbert thought about it, wasn’t it weird that Break had took them so seriously, when Oz had laughed?—laughed, and said “What’re you saying? You’d never be able to do that!”

“No!” Gilbert had to prove the poison was real, “I tried to kill her!”

“But you couldn’t, could you? See, now that’s the Gilbert I know!”

He said it like he knew him better than Gilbert knew himself. It was starting to seem like everyone knew him better than he knew himself.

Maybe that’s how poison works. Maybe it made sense; the others could still breathe, after all.

Still, Oz’s words…and Break’s…

It was after they got back from Sablier, after Break had collapsed, after Oz had told him how silly it was, and after they got back from Rytas’ mansion, after the Headhunter showed up again, (the same Headhunter, surely that had tried to poison him before), Gilbert decided there was one thing left he should to.

He took a deep breath, and screwed up his resolve.

“Break?”

“Mm?” Gilbert had managed to find Break alone in the kitchen, making tea, and stealing candy from a place up high where Sharon had apparently tried to hide it. Break turned, leaning against the counter. “What is it, Gilbert-kun?”

“I…um…” Gilbert fumbled his words, realizing it was a lot harder to say it aloud, especially to him, “I wanted to say…” he looked at the ground.

“Looks like a kitty’s got Gil-Gil’s tongue.” Break took a sip of tea, looking smug.

Gilbert gritted his teeth, hands clenching into fists, biting back any insults that came to his lips. “About what happened in Sablier—”

Break looked up, realizing where Gilbert was going with this.

“Oh?” Break interrupted him, grinning, “Didn’t we already make it clear you were not to apologize?” He inclined his head towards Emily.

Why did he always have to make things harder? Gilbert was just trying to show him a little kindness, and he always had to spit it back in his face.

“Well, actually I, uh, didn’t come to apologize,” he cleared his throat, “I am sorry though, for,” he felt his cheeks growing hot, “pointing my gun at you. But, um, well—”

Break laughed, picking up his tea, slipping a few candies into his pocket, walking by, “Spoiled brats like you have the luxury of—”

“Thank you.” Gilbert said, more loudly than intended.

Break paused, shock flitting into his eye. He turned back to him, brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“For what you said…in Sablier. I—”

“Oh,” Break breathed again. “Well, you seemed like you were in need of a good ass-kicking,” he brushed Gilbert’s heartfelt words off.

“But you—”

Break ruffled Gilbert’s hair in response, walking away, chuckling.

Like hell I’ll ever say something nice to him again. Gilbert glared after him.

But as the older man rounded the corner, Gilbert didn’t realize there was something genuine in that laugh.

Because Break knew what it was like. He too had once tasted this poison. He knew what it was like to have word kill infect your thoughts. And worse, he knew what it was like to have blood fill your past, to the point where you had to change your name for it to stop following you, stop calling to you. And in that moment, he was the only one who could have understood, and stopped, him.

Maybe if Gilbert was listening more closely, he may have realized there was something real beneath his laugh. But what Break certainly wouldn’t let him know was his exact thought at the time, which was very different from Gilbert’s own:

When he turned, the source was behind him; a man standing in the courtyard. All black now; black hair, black cloak. No crimson. Like he never spilt her blood. Like she never existed in the first place. All black…except for the eyes. Gaze fluctuating between daggers…and some emotion he was struggling to keep from escaping; the leader, and the broken boy, crying on the ground. Soot with sparks buried within; glints of violet, glints of gold. Glitches of empathy in the perfect program. His eyes focused on the pocket watch—(a glint in the dark itself)—until they flicked to him, and Jack felt those eyes as a sword at his throat.

At the shift in his gaze, the scene itself turned over again, wind blowing by him, a single spark of violet glowing in the blurred tapestry, and ever, ever that melody, slowly corroding him.

Glen sat in the grass on a sunny day, those violet blades sheathed as he bathed in the afternoon sunlight.

The first respite from the dance in all these years. A rest in the measure.

Glen, sitting in the sunlight. Glen, playing the piano—always that single, haunting melody, laced with a name, filling up Jack’s mind with the harmony until he was drowning in its sound, and could think no other word.

That melody, that word, and her voice—(A memory of her voice, soon given to him by a bloodstained black rabbit)—pulling him through the blurred universe to a balcony, drawn there like he was ink on a canvas, subject to the whims of the artist.

Brown hair, like hers.

Violet eyes, like his.

White dress.

Black dress.

Her existence was not tied down. As if it was a part of the smear itself, and not the concrete picture beneath it. She was a part of all these mistakes the artist tried to smudge out.

Jack pulled a white rose from his pocket.

He offered her a red rose.

“Would you care to dance, Alice?”

******

A little girl held the keys to those chains—held them, held by them all the same; that is to say her world would fall into the dark too, if the bounds were to break. A little girl chose the music, the steps. A little girl ruled the world.

Is that why they call it insanity?

Her daughter.

Gods may be fixed in the sky, watching all our misdeeds, and we believe in them, not they us, but children can be made to believe anything. Such as: men who come down the chimney do so to give them presents, that putting their teeth beneath pillows is anything more than gross. One can make them believe the world isn’t made of malice. You can make them believe you haven’t sewn your mask—and the things you stole to get those jewels, things like lives—into the skin. You can make them think you’re a hero coming to save them, make them more than a blur, a mistake, a prisoner of their own creation, but a part of something real and concrete, when you’re just using them, like everyone else will. Naiveté is powerful and dangerous in that way.

I heard her voice one day. Lacie’s. Not just in my memories. This was real, one piece of her reaching out to me from the black.

She had this toy rabbit. A toy, yes, but to a god, a toy can be a thinking, living, breathing, thing, with nothing more than a thought to animate it. Dolls and figures can be princesses and princes, and their knights and soldiers. Children dream. And lonely children dream the most. And a lonely god is a dangerous thing indeed. Especially a child god, surrounded by lifeless toys. Dangerous, because of the stories they tell themselves in the silence can become real indeed.

It was this toy that brought her voice to me, like a gift, physical thing. Packaged up a memory and sent it off to me.

So it was back to the dance. But this time it was different. Because even if there were other melodies out there somewhere, other moves to know, my ears only heard one twinkling pocket watch, my feet would only obey one conductor.

And this melody was not bound by little girls, and lonely gods, and broken, blood struck leaders. This one I could make up my own moves to, intertwine them with the motions and melodies of the rest of the world, so no one would know I was dancing to my own song.

This rabbit, the one who brought her voice to me had a name. Oz—(like Oswald…but not like him at all)—was to be my chain. A chain different from the rest. A chain that was not friendship, or love, or hate, or malice. A chain that was not sanity or insanity. A chain that was not keeping the world upright. A chain to break all other chains. Bringing her to me. Tying me to her. My chain, to destroy all the chains keeping me from hearing her voice again, and her from the world she loved.

A god who creates something that can destroy their world is dangerous indeed.

Little girls and their dolls, toy rabbits and puppet kings, a tear or two, and some spilled blood couldn’t stop me now.

******

The world blurred in black and white, gold and red, violet and green.

Which color was real?

Was it the black and white; just the game of chess?

Was it the endless violet in the king’s eyes?

The gold of shimmering lights, and the eyes of scared little boys just trying to help?

Was it the green, the vibrant, envious green of his clothes, his eyes?

Or was it all the red they spilled?

And there was. So much red. One could have painted with it. He did. The floors. The walls. The roses he once promised she’d see. The world.

But even within those colors… nothing was quite solid, quite sure.

Because the gold didn’t shimmer anymore. Those golden eyes were full of fear, determination. They didn’t gleam with false riches, but with real poverty; a poverty that comes not from losing your money, but losing your friends, or your sanity.

Because that green wasn’t the vibrant bloom of a garden. It was not envy or eternity or ephemerality and it—he—too was dyed with red.

Because when Oswald truly put a sword to Jack’s throat his eyes held no sting. Those violet blades held nothing more than infinite sorrow. He called him his friend. But he saw him at the end of a sword, at the end of themselves, at the end of the world.

Or at least, that was Jack’s goal.

But the king made sure the only world that ended was their own, cutting off the hand for the sake of the rest of the body. Gouging out the eye for the sake of the face.

And there was another Jack trapped within the reflection on the sword—(mask or real?)—looking like a broken thing determined to hold itself together. And when something gets to that point, is broken enough…it doesn’t care. About much of anything. Not itself. Not the friend on the other end. Just whatever it is holding itself together.

The king’s head is lying on the board.

“Glen?”

Jack is calling his name, cradling his red-stained head in his hands, tears smearing the green of his eyes.

How did he die? Who killed him? How can he make them pay?

But his hands are covered in blood.

What’s the mask? The blood? Or the tears?

And now everything, once too blurred, once just a smear on a canvas, a move in the midst of a dance, is too real, too concrete, too irreversible.

Checkmate. But he doesn’t feel like he’s won the game.

And as he cries, as he screams and demands why, the masks peer out of the corners of the board, stare his way, snickering at him from the hidden passageways deep inside him.

The closer he got to his goal, the more those chains fell apart, finally creating his own moves to the dance…the less he he noticed something wrapping around his arms, his legs.

He rushed to the tower where the god-girl will grant his wishes at last—the bottle for the genie—where he will be free.

And she would have granted him all, if only he would have freed her from her bottle.

She wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy the world for him.

Were it not for her other half, the rabbit’s tears, and a pair of scissors.

At last the machine remembers the wrench; the one that tried to change the patterns, the melody, long ago, all for a single distortion in the system that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The one whom its gears once kicked to the bottom, the one who clawed his way back up. And it knows kicking him back down there again won’t be enough.

Fine. If he wanted to change the system, the dance, the melody, then the system would exclude him, treat him as an error. The dance will leave him with everything he wanted, everything he was, everything he created.

He opens his eyes.

There is no ballroom. No dance. No dancers. …Maybe there never was.

A cell. Or at least, he thinks it is, but he doesn’t see any walls or floors, just navy darkness, and a crack in the dimension above, like a slit in the prison door, letting in the tiniest bit of light.

He takes a step.

There’s a sloshing noise.

So there’s water in the bottom of this cell. Is the prison’s being flooded? He ought to tell the guards.

One more step.

Something cuts the air. A terrible sound; like somebody took a beautiful thing and melted it down, and melded it into something it was never meant to be.

Laughter. Twisted, reckless, mirthless, soulless laughter. As if he stepped on a malfunctioning Jack-in-the-box, with no need for the song.

There’s no music anymore. And the the absence of it threatens to suffocate him.

Another step, another laugh, different, but no less jagged.

He doesn’t want to look down. Doesn’t want to see. To face it. He knows. He knows what he’ll find there.

But he does it anyways.

Beside his foot is a mask. A fine porcelain one, like from a theater, that would cover the whole face. The slit-eyes are curved down, the mouth curved up, to signify happiness.

It’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen.

But he knows, if he were to put it on, it would fit his handsome face perfectly.

He puts a hand over his mouth to barricade the sick, to cloister his silver tongue, and takes a step back.

But when he does, another warped sound wrenches open the air. This time it’s crying.

He spins around. His heel is on another mask.

But, as he looks upon it, his eyes are pulled upward as if on strings. There is something far worse behind him. It’s like a snowy mountain.

Masks, endless, empty, lifeless masks. This place is surely built upon them.

All the masks he ever wore.