When she lifts her little head and when her hand, which is tiny and pesky like a bug's, tugs on his coat, he's already ready with a scowl for whatever demand she has. They're in a marketplace where Gilbert seeks good ingredients for good hearty soups, while Oz is sick home because Gilbert wouldn't let that boy move a muscle with those sniffles of his. But still, he took Alice, if only because Oz had insisted to Gilbert since she wanted to tag along.
This area of market is a bouquet of odours from fresh fish to gamy meats to baked sweets, the latter being the only saving grace from the otherwise smothering stench. Every step and Gilbert's face is hit with a cloud of smell, and he'll either feel relief or itch to reach and pinch his nose. Alice must smell it too, he thinks. Strange that she doesn't outright mind despite how fussy a little girl she is.
(He really wonders who would put their sweets by raw animal carcasses. Who.)
She skips across the street like a skilled and precise pebble tossed over waters –fluid. She's oddly loyal behind his line of footsteps over the bricks. Their carriage is long enough behind that he can't tell her to go back and leave him alone, can't lose her on purpose either –Oz wouldn't like that. Oz would be frantic, not to mention moody, until the moment they found her. Conversely, if something happened to her… well…
(Good God. Oz has actually confessed of how he thinks he might die if so.)
(No.)
World knows though. World knows how Gilbert will never deny that boy -certainly not when he's ailing. Even if Gilbert had wanted nothing more than to stay wiping Oz's warming forehead before feeding that weakened body the appropriate and good but spineless foods.
"What?" is his grunt down at her in reply to her pulling of the hardy stitch of his black coat. Involuntarily he leans a dip to surveys her small face. Already he's long learnt that his gruff and bothered tones won't chase away her zest when she's in this mood. She might get mad, she might yell –but that'll be just as annoying as is her happy now and to where he wouldn't see any point on choosing his favourite mood of hers when it's all equally loud.
Well, apparently she wants cake. Not from the bakery they'd passed either, she helpfully describes, but rather she wants the dingy-looking stand arraying hotcakes drenched in syrup, the counter behind which the owner is swatting flies. It's a sight enough to darken further his face, shadowed by his hat. She's filthy. She is and Gilbert resents how exact she is about these cravings of hers (She wants soggy and stale, not fresh, imagine that). He hates how he has to give into her at least once a day, or Oz would accuse him of being unfair to her. No Oz, Gilbert still wants to say someday, it's really that you spoil her and she doesn't deserve it.
And then he doesn't even bother playing the dance of 'no's against her. Maybe it's that she's spreading her lips wide and how it's annoying because he can't argue against the naked happy without feeling even more miserable about himself. Because he doesn't need that today, does he? He's worried for the blond boy back in Pandora. It's becoming late, too. Meaning he'll definitely not be diving for obvious dead-end conversations when he can help it. He feels oddly spent for a man of his stamina. Maybe he has caught and is slowly succumbing to whatever virus that has invaded Oz, and under that umbrella of rationality he surrenders an exhale and to tell Alice he will buy her god-damned, germ-infested cake.
Oz, Alice, and Gilbert. Let the three of them just be sick all at once. Why the hell not?
He cringes as she cheers loudly at his acquiescence. And then when Gilbert fishes his pocket for change viciously to give to the seller, he cannot help the dismay of seeing Alice selecting three (three, this greedy girl) steaming cakes that resembles drying clay. None of the fluff found in quality junk-bakery. He watches as she bites into one cake without wait.
Well. Given how fast she will soon regret eating this, he certainly doesn't want to wait himself any longer than he has. Gilbert shoots his arms forward to usher an Alice busy chewing, or rather he tries to usher, at most managing in rushing her past the stands in rough manner before more of these sellers can call to her and force him to waste money. Yet just as he pushes Alice a bit harder this time and is really fed up, there is a sharp breath from her that is audible enough for him. She catches his eye under the fading sun right as she blinks those dark eyes.
And then she has the nerve to give a smile of gratitude with a way which he never understands.
"Thanks, seaweed-head!"
Gilbert will never understand her.
Like now, he doesn't understand why she's thanking him when all he's doing is scowling at her. But then, it doesn't really matter, does it?
Because he does understand that it's really getting late when the sinking sun adjacent to the horizon slides gold across the face of Alice. Alice who is slowed and takes another huge bite of the cake. Gilbert feels his form and walk go slack, behind her, feeling truly at the end of wits. He wants to pry that germ-infested pastry from thin little fingers now, wanting to tell her that her getting sick would be a burden. Oz he'll gladly look after, but if it's her then she'll be on her own. Oh God does he need to buy Oz's things already. Fast. That is priority. And the stands erect around them are still not the fresh stores he's looking for.
That's when it ends with him quietly cursing underneath his breath, when Gilbert fathoms how his pace has slowed considerably and he's so, so useless because he should be home already with fresh ingredients ready to turn into Oz's favourite soups, stews, and warm honeyed sweets. Maybe he's been afraid to make Alice walk too fast under the threat of her vomiting? Maybe he's been succumbing more and more to whatever he caught from Oz. Either ways; Gilbert runs his eyes over her calm face's profile while relentlessly frowning, counting the seconds till he'll cave, grab her and just run.
She's too relaxed in her steps.
But it's strange he'll admit. Socially callous as Alice is, when she walks she is a fluid stream. Black hair and red-white coat softly trailing lingeringly after her, Gilbert wouldn't ever peg her for a street rat despite her current gnawing on street food like a small, hungry animal.
The confectionary glazing the cake thing looks so cheap it could be wax. It may actually be, given the frugality of poorer storeowners. Still Alice eats with such a happy face, such triumph, that he ends up averting his shamelessly sneering face. Oh. But. He realizes with disgust even greater than for her dirty food, that he's caught between crisscrossing feelings of disgust and the feeling of something strange pecking away at the doors of his chest.
(They escape a building's shadow and the gold of the setting sun slides across Alice again.)
(Gilbert really will grab her and run now.)