almost_knightly | Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...

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[phdr]

Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...

There was nothing remarkable about the day when Break got up this morning. There was nothing remarkable lying in wait in his bathroom, and nothing remarkable between himself and the kitchen, and nothing remarkable between the kitchen and the library.

The library, however, held something new today. It was lurking on the bottom shelf, easily missed but for Break's habit of crawling around on the floor -- a large binder, sedate red leather and several inches wide.

Break knows that binder.

Fingers shaking, he snatches it up out of the shelf. He fumbles it, and it falls open, and the first thing he sees is Faneuil Hall at Christmas, covered in snow. Below that is a photograph of Shelly, his own Shelly, dressed in winter clothes and laughing with Sharon when she was still small, and there's his ponytail in the photograph next to it because no one could ever get him to look at the camera that first year and he's seen these pictures a thousand times --

He slams the book shut, suddenly unable to look. A cruel gift, in a way; there are days that he wonders if he'll ever see this place and these people again. But on the other hand, now -- now he can show people, he can let them see things he's only described. It's as precious as it is mean.

Gathering the photo album up close to his chest and clutching it as though he's afraid it'll vanish, Break leaves the library, in search of some of the people he trusts most.

[ooc: Locked to

hadengineered,

retraced,

of_murder,

standstilltime,

smallkindnesses,

info_barma]

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"...Kevin was the same way."

He didn't know Break when he was Kevin, but he's met Kevin here. He knows how skittish and wild he once was, before Shelly taught him how to smile again. At least, that's what he'd been told. The real curse of this place was just how many secrets were revealed against everyone's will.

"Well, yes. I was Kevin myself then, you know, name change or not."

Break is looking at these pictures almost fondly. He doesn't hold the hate for his younger self that his counterparts in the mansion do -- perhaps because he never had the chance to damn himself the way they did, or perhaps because he survived the time of life that seems to be killing them. One finger moves to rest against that only clear photo of him underneath the protective film of the photo album, tracing along the bottom of the jacket.

"He's still around, some days." The jacket now lives in the Rainsworth attic.

"I never noticed it, back home. The moments where 'Break' and 'Kevin' would overlap." Or at least, he hasn't noticed it because he hasn't seen it yet. Here, however, is another story. He's seen Break snap to the point that he and Kevin would have looked the same if they'd stood side by side in this place.

"Even when we change...we still stay the same."

And there's a little boy in an upstairs bedroom right now that proves just what Gilbert has always been capable of, and shows just how deeply his weakness really extends.

"I fink in his case creating 'Break' might have been more an attempt to kill 'Kevin' outright. Maybe that's why I --"

He had never really tried to deny who he was or what he had done. The name had been for more of a fresh start -- a way to help himself move on, and maybe even grow up a bit. But there had always been bits of Kevin that had stayed around, and parts of Break that he could trace back to his younger self. Maybe that was why he'd turned out to be so different from the other Breaks, even as they were so alike.

"...I wonder, Gilbert; does your world have a custom of middle names?"

He'd never really thought of it that way. 'Killing' Kevin. Definitely coming out of the Abyss and being forced to live in a world that you'd changed for the worse would have been traumatic enough to force that sort of change in a person's life (especially a person like Break) but...to kill off that part of yourself completely? Gilbert had covered his up, definitely, but he knew that underneath everything he was still that wibbling, nervous servant who had the courage to stand up to Zai Vessalius but fled at the sight of a newborn kitten.

"Middle names?" he repeats, considering it.

"No, not usually."

"But you know what they are, then?" Break pauses for a moment, then says, "Me dad's name was Allen, and he gave that to me for my middle name. Kevin Allen Regnard. And when I had my name legally changed, I kept that. My full name is Xerxes Allen Break."

He flips a few pages, to pictures of the people in his own world on a beach. He's no longer hiding his face, but he's still pouting sullenly at it whenever it's pointed at him -- except in the photo where Barma, looking resplendent in khaki shorts and flip-flop sandals and a black Hawaiian shirt Sheryl had forced on him, accidentally lets himself get hosed by a wave while kneeling down to show something to Liam. Then, Break laughs. It's the first picture of him laughing in the entire book, and there aren't any others for a while. But in this photo, he really starts to look like Break, despite the long hair and too-slender frame.

He hums under his breath at the middle name - a name he's heard before at some point, but really, it's rare that anyone takes a middle name in his world. But there has to be someone somewhere that has...

The picture of Barma gives him pause. If only because. Wow. Duke Barma....

He can't help but giggle at the sight, one hand moving up to press against his mouth. Seeing Break in the photo laughing as well only makes him laugh harder. Excuse him while his shoulders start to shake from how badly he's trying to hold it all in right now.

No, no, no, don't hold it in, it gets better. Break flips a page and there, in all its glory, is a photo of Barma reclining on a lounge chair in that same ridiculous outfit, legs crossed at the ankles. Only this time, he's got his hair piled up on top of his head, giant sunglasses perched on his nose, and some sort of cold drink with a dinky little umbrella in it in one hand.

He also looks completely unsorry about it, despite the shirt.

Oh god make it stop. A loud FFFFT and he lets himself laugh outright. Honestly, how could a person like the duke ever allow himself to lounge around in this manner? Even if it's not the duke he knows, it's not hard to insert the man into this image. It's the sunglasses that really top off the whole thing.

"Is that - is that really Barma?!" LOLOLOLOLOL.

"This right here is the reason I will never be able to take this man seriously," Break says with a nasty little beam. "He's smarter than everybody else and he's excellent at what he does, but he's also one of the most ridiculous people I have ever met, and coming from me..."

Definitely a side of him that Gilbert hadn't expected. When he's finally done giggling (which does sound strange coming from him, but at the same time weirdly natural) he wipes the tears from the side of one eye and shakes his head.

"I can see why."

"Half the time he doesn't even do it on purpose, but you gotta figger he could do somefing about that silly hair antenna if he really wanted to."

He thinks a little bit -- what other incriminating Barma pictures would this album have? -- and then flips ahead to the spring just after this one. He'd come over for Easter dinner, and afterward, Shelly had managed to snatch a photo of her daughter climbing onto the arm of the recliner he was sitting in to place a headband with tall white bunny ears on it on Barma's head, said antenna sticking up ludicrously in between them.

He's side-eyeing her pretty terribly and in the next photo of him the ears are in his lap, but at least in that photo, he's letting her do it.

Bunny ears. BUNNY EARS. Break, this entire album is gold, and Gilbert is laughing his fucking ass off again. Wow.

But then it occurs to him...that these photographs are all memories of Break's; memories that the Break that he knows doesn't have at all. To just say that a person was from another world or experienced something different was one thing, but this is something that he can see and hear about in Break's own words - a voice so much different than his own. His laughter dies out quickly, and his thoughts are replaced with only one:

I really have been cruel to him all this time, allowing myself to compare the two of them. What sort of idiot am I...

If Break had the slightest idea what Gilbert was thinking just then, he'd have been immensely pleased with his revelation -- and relieved, for his own self. He's never been able to properly express the loneliness he's felt since arriving at the mansion, partially because he's done his best to stamp it out from the very start, and he has a whole horde of friends and even a lover or two to show for his efforts.

But that's never changed the fact that he was the first from a modern world to show up, or the fact that all the other alternates here at least had Chains and the Abyss in common to help them find their footing with the other residents once they arrived. Somehow, everyone has always been content to see him as the odd Break out just because of the way he looks and speaks and the fact that he has no contract; but that feeling of separation has always been much, much deeper for Break himself. Even the other moderns don't know exactly who he is or what he's been through.

As it is, however, he is unaware of the conclusion Gilbert has just come to and is busy turning back a page to reveal photographs of coloring eggs at Rainsworth, and when he hears the laughter cut off, he turns to the younger man with a curious, "Hmm?"

"I was just thinking that..." he mutters, trying to figure out how to phrase himself. He can't very well admit his true thoughts; not when Break had always been the one to try and drill the idea into his head. Admitting that he was right and Gil was wrong would be like opening a floodgate of frustrated feelings and words that he'd probably regret later, so he just shrugs and comes up with something else instead.

"Taking photos is so easy in your world. I wouldn't be able to share these many memories with you, even if I had every photo ever taken of myself."

Break knows an almost-lie for a save when he hears one, but he'll go with it.

"It's not always a good fing. My Oz -- he picked up a love of cameras from Oscar, and he's studying photojournalism. Basically he's a reporter, but instead of writing about fings for a newspaper or magazine, he takes pictures. Because of that he most always has a camera on him, and he most always sees the world frough a lens. It's like there's this barrier between him and us because of it, and that's why he's in so few of these photos. He took a lot of the later ones."

He runs a finger thoughtfully underneath a photo of himself. He's got the short haircut and is no longer hiding his face by then, but he still wears that sneering expression as he sticks his tongue out at the camera. He'd gotten a hold of a Sharpie and some white-out and doodled a skull on one of the purple eggs, and was showing it off for the photo.

"On the ovver hand," he says quietly, "I don't have any pictures from my life and my family before Rainsworth. Sometimes I wish I did."

A reporter with photos...somehow, the job doesn't suit his master in his head, but then, the only job that he could ever see Oz taking is his position as duke of the Vessalius house. It's the only mental image that Gilbert has ever allowed himself of the young man, from one universe or another, if only to keep it in his mind that one day he'll find to break that Contract ticking away on the young man's chest and let him life a 'normal' life.

"I...I'm not even sure cameras existed when I was a child." Which is a strange statement to someone who didn't skip one-hundred years into the future to live out the rest of said childhood.

Break had always thought it rather appropriate, himself. It suited the boy's -- no, the young man's -- tendency to get into trouble, or at least to be where the trouble was at any given time. Some days, Break liked to follow him around just because something was bound to go completely in contrast to whatever had been planned, and it made things interesting.

"My world's got lots of fings that didn't exist when I was a child, now. It's a little bizarre how quickly humans can advance an idea once they've figgered out the basics." Idly, he turns the page, revealing a picture of a young Sharon with a pink basket, collecting the colored eggs from where they'd been hidden around the yard. Break sits on the porch looking peevish and disinterested (barbaric Americans; you're supposed to use chocolate eggs!) until Shelly sneaks up behind him and bends down to give him a small box of something labeled "Cadbury Cream Eggs". His expression when he looks up at her is surprised and, perhaps, faintly adoring.

A...cream egg? Yes, excuse him for a moment, Break, while he focuses on the food part of the picture. An egg made of cream? How could that even be possible? The painted eggs were familiar, though; the mansion had played a prank involving eggs last year that left more than a few people upset and miserable. It made sense that in some other universe this was an event that made people happy.

"Ah...what's a 'cream egg'?" he finally gets up the nerve to ask.

"Hm? Oh, those. They're chocolate eggs wiv a white and yellow cream inside to imitate real eggs. We have them every year at Easter. The company that makes them also make a kind wiv caramel in; Liam likes those best."

...come to think of it if there aren't any in the mansion this spring he's gonna be pissed. They're not even his favorite candy, but you have Cadbury eggs at Easter. The end.

"White and yellow cream?" he repeats, sounding intrigued. Thanks to Gilbertine's influence (by way of Dork's influence, actually) he's really enjoyed making new dishes the last few weeks. This sounds like something fun to attempt too. But how is he supposed to hollow out chocolate like that...there has to be a mold somewhere.

"I wonder how hard they are to make..."

"D'you suppose you could?"

Unlike his counterparts, this Break is never going to be mistaken for being in his mid-twenties ever again. But he's nibbling on his thumbnail right now, and that tentatively hopeful look on his face -- well. Just at this moment, at least, he certainly looks a great deal younger than he really is.

He glances over and cracks a small, fond grin at the sight. It's a rare side that he sees of any of Break's counterparts, but it's always been there, ever since he was fourteen years old, even if he'd blocked it out by his anger and bitter drive to save his young master.

"I'll try my best."

That's all Break needs, really; once an idea for a new food has been imparted into the hands of a Gil, it happens sooner or later. Or it does with Gilbertine, at least, and since this one is attached to her, he's sure they'll find a way. He fidgets happily and turns some more pages, and ultimately comes across pictures of fireworks from the 4th of July.

"Fireworks?" he mumbles, leaning in close to get a better look. He's seen fireworks back home and here at the mansion, but he never imagined that one could capture them in a photograph. At least, it seemed like something that moved too fast and didn't shine bright enough behind a pitch black sky to be able to freeze in time.

"Amazing..."

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