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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"So do I," Break admits quietly. "There's a lot of people here I wish I could take home wiv me. I want to take the tiny Elliot to Disneyland and the tiny Liam to Europe and I want to take the tolerable Barma to all our interesting museums and just -- set him loose."

This book is the closest he's had to an opportunity to do so. Maybe the shared dreams that have been starting to happen lately -- maybe, hopefully, those aren't all sex-oriented. Maybe he can get a few people home with him that way.

Barma in a futuristic museum. It's a frightening thought, just because of how much Gilbert knows he would really enjoy it. He always has been the most insufferable when he's learning something new...

"...Thank you. For sharing these things with me, at least."

"...well. You never -- never quite seemed to believe me, whenever I talked about fings before. So."

Idly, he flips another few pages, taking them into autumn. There's a picture of one of Boston's Green Line trains, and Sharon grinning broadly in the center of a pumpkin patch. In another photograph Sharon and Liam smile while holding pumpkins that have had toothy grinning faces carved into them, and in yet another they stand together in costume -- Sharon as a rather pink princess, and Liam in a long brown coat and deerstalker hat, holding a pipe and a magnifying glass.

The last one on that page shows Break scowling protectively over a huge bowl of candy. He isn't in costume, but someone has placed a top hat on his head, and he apparently couldn't be bothered to remove it. His hair is still long here, but it'll be short by Christmas.

He turns away a little bit at that, looking a bit humbled. "It's not that I didn't believe it, it's just...'impossible' to imagine, right?"

Well, that doesn't look like any train that he's used to, so his eyes linger on it a while before moving on to look at Sharon, Liam and then eventually the scowling Break. Wow, the photo really could have been taken in his own time, if it had been sepia-toned and the hair cut a little shorter. He leans in with his chin in one hand, regarding it closely.

"Are they dressed for a festival?"

"I've felt the same way about being here in the first place," Break murmurs. There's no venom in it, or really even true unhappiness. "An Abyss, Chains who can appear out of shadows, paintings you can fall frough. Versions of meself who really were knights."

He turns a page, revealing Shelly as a lovely black velvet witch, eyes shining with mischief. Sheryl sits on the porch in the dark with a (confiscated) bowl of candy in her lap in a swath of black and orange and purple ruffles and a witch hat identical to Shelly's. The pumpkins seen before are nearby, lit from within by candles and glowing eerily in the dark. Barma is in another photo, dressed in his usual suit and refusing to look cheerful, but whoever had the camera then has caught him sneaking a bat-shaped sugar cookie from the kitchen counter.

"This is Halloween. Don't you have it here? All Soul's, maybe?" Break rests his chin in his own hand. "I might have to start it, if not; it's my favorite. The people who aren't grumpy choose costumes and dress up, and the kids go door to door collecting candy. Everyfing is decorated to be all spooky and there can be parties wiv scary stories -- I suppose it's sort of my time's version of a masquerade."

"Something like that," he answers. There were celebrations where people dressed up, of course, but the name isn't familiar to him. His smile only grows wider at the sight of Shelly in her costume. Somehow it suited her, even though he's only ever known her as the refined young woman that raised a lady like Miss Sharon.

"What did you dress as?"

"That year, nuffing. I was one of the grumpy people."

So he skips a few years ahead, and here's something so uncanny it's almost frightening, Gil -- a Break with his hair properly short, on a modern street in his modern world, wearing a rather familiar tattered blue coat and a nice top hat with a pink sash tied around its brim.

This Break, of course, has no idea.

His eyes go wide at the sight. It's an outfit that he recognizes all too well - the outfit that Break was wearing when they first met. He can still remember the scent of the rain, the flavor of the candy that Break had given him, the feeling of his chest still burning where he'd been stitched up. He'd been half-delirious with grief and blinded then by hope but...he still remembers that top hat.

"The day Break and I met...he was dressed almost exactly like that."

"Was he really? And I suppose he gets to wear that sort of fing whenever he wants. I don't fink I met my Gilbert until..."

Break trails off uncertainly, eye narrowing as he stares off at nothing.

"...when did I meet my Gilbert?"

Thoughtfully, he flips to another Halloween, wherein Shelly had somehow managed to get him to team up with her for Mary Poppins and then do part of the stupid dance with her in Harvard Square, to boot. Obviously this Break and his Gilbert had a far less memorable meeting; and yet, given the way he behaved with the Gils here, surely there was a bond of some kind between them.

...Well geez don't just leave off there, Break! Now he's curious. Ignoring the picture completely for the moment.

"You don't remember when you met?"

"Well, I know I knew about him before I met him because I knew Oscar frough Pandora and he talked about my Gilbert a lot. His moving to Nightray was a great big brouhaha. Then I saw him around before I actually discovered how fun it was to tease him."

Break pauses, honestly thinking about this. But, at last, he shakes his head.

"I don't remember the exact day, I'm afraid. I fink Liam met him before I did, even."

"...Even if the world is different, it's still just as small," he muses softly, turning to look at the photo more in depth. Another costume. This one suited Break more in a way that it wouldn't suit his own, though.

"Did he tell you how we met?"

"Your Break? No, he hasn't."

Break turns to him expectantly, clearly interpreting the question as an offer.

He glances over at him, making sure that he's actually interested in hearing this story. To Gilbert it's an old one, not meaningless but just played over enough times in his own head that it's still as clear as it was the day that he moved into the Nightray house.

"He was there...the night of the first ceremony. I heard about it later from Oz and Oscar, but I didn't actually see him." Leaving out the part about how he was controlled by Doldum that entire time.

"I was injured at that ceremony, but the minute that I could get out of bed, I ran away from the Vessalius house. I'd failed to protect my master and knew that I had no right to stay there. But I was still weak...I ended up collapsing in the rain that day, crying into the mud. Then he was standing there above me with an umbrella, telling me that he'd help me to get Oz back. All I had to do was spy on the Nightray family and he would help me enter Pandora, learn about the Abyss and then eventually Contract with the family Chain."

He pauses, scratches at the side of his head.

"Even though he was rude and pushy and loud and abrasive and didn't respect my personal space at all...I understood then that there was something about his words that I had to trust, and eventually learn to respect."

Break's eyebrows raise higher and higher over the course of the story. Spies and Contracts and Chains; there's all this foreign stuff again, strange time-skip stuff, all of it out of some sort of magical adventure story. He might even read it, if it popped up in a book at home, but it all seems so -- so odd when people he knows are shoved into the roles.

"...well, I do remember now that I stole the cherry muffin out of his lunch the first day we met," he offers. "And then he yelled at me about it every day for a week after."

Admittedly not the best first impression.

He smiles, almost sardonically at the response. Yes, that's definitely not something to just let go right after meeting a person. He can understand his counterpart's feelings perfectly, even though they're from two completely different worlds.

"And I'll bet you still did it again later, regardless."

"Shyeah. He made 'em himself and even then his baking was better than the grocery store's."

Poor otherworld Gilbert; Break acquired a taste for his cooking early. *3

"That doesn't give you the right to steal it..." Grumble, grumble. Pretending that he's not taking that as a compliment by-proxy.

"I do remember the day he started bringing me snacks of me own so I wouldn't steal his," Break says fondly, disregarding that comment completely and beeeeeaming. "That was such a good day! Pretty soon he was having to leave piles of baked goods in the kitchenette on that floor because everybody wanted 'em."

Totally oblivious to what this might be doing for this Gil's ego, but if it gets him more food, he's okay with it anyway.

Sadly, Gil's ego is feeling pretty good right now about all of this. And yes, he's also considering bringing Break food more often if this is how much he enjoys it. In other words, Just As Planned.

"Hmph," is all the recognition of this idea he gives, however.

You see now how he manages to hold Gilbertine in such thrall? Of course you don't. You are also a Gil. ~~But the rest of us do.~~

"Fings never -- well, they never got back to normal between us, at home. After I got sick. He avoids me. Sometimes he leaves outright when I walk in a room."

He's never really admitted this aloud before -- not even to Liam, who would probably try to fix it. He does know that Oscar once had the same problem, though.

There were definitely moments - after Sablier, after the tragedy in the mansion - that Gilbert had attempted to avoid long-term contact with Break, or at the very least was frightened by the idea of it, but to actually avoid him outright...

Break had said that his own Gilbert was more mature, aged and grown than this Gilbert was now, but hearing that, he couldn't quite believe it. Didn't he understand his dedication to this man? Even if it's not the same world, it still hurts him to have to think about it that way.

"...He'll come around. If he's anything like me he will, at least."

Well. In his own Gilbert's defense, he was still convinced he'd caused what had happened. No one had ever been able to get him to believe otherwise, and he'd seen the barest edges of what Break had gone through. That had been enough.

"One of these years," Break says, sounding just the tiniest bit wistful.

It's been nice, here, having Gils about.

"It'll be..." he starts, cutting himself off from finishing the sentence. How can he say for sure that everything will be fine? If they were in the same circumstance, would he and his own Break be fine? Could he really look his own in the eye and accept that he could possibly be responsible for something that almost killed him? They'd fought each other's side in battle, and Gilbert knew that there was always a chance that he'd get cut down in the middle if he got in Break's way, but...never the other way around.

So he doesn't finish the sentence, but he does reach out to place a hand on Break's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze to answer in lieu of words.

Break laughs, softly, at the contact. Hadn't it been their -- second? Hadn't it been their second meeting when he'd reached out to this Gilbert to comfort him and been stared at like he'd grown another head? But he doesn't pull away, or shrug him off.

"I hear he's doing very, very well," he says quietly. There's that at least. "He should be...off to Italy at home, by now, actually."

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