Stronger, Weaker
Rating: K
Summery: Gil, infinitely flawed an yet undeniably strong. 50 sentence challenge fic for Gil/Raven.
Characters/Pairings: Gil, Oz, Alice, Break, Liam, Vincent, Elliot, Sharon, Oscar, Jack Vessalius
Comments: These sentences, I'm not ashamed to say, took forever. But now that they're done I like this piece, it was nice to focus on Gil. Please review, let me know what you think.
Spoilers: Up to Retrace 56
1) Pain
It's almost sad how the man called Raven clutches his pain close, Oz doesn't like it when he sees him pull that pain closer to himself like he would that dark coat of his, as if he was so used to the pain it now gave him comfort.
2) Chocolate
Break forces it on him with great regularity, claiming that chocolate would cheer him up, and the annoying man never listens Raven's protestations that there wasn't enough chocolate in the world to cheer the depression that his master's disappearance caused.
3) Happiness
It was so strange, with Oz finally back Raven knew he should be overjoyed, but the happiness just refused to come as he whipped his coat off his newly awakened master and settled it over his shoulders; all he could feel was a certain bitterness that in the end, Oz hadn't needed him at all to get out of the Abyss, that all the things he had done up to this point had been a waste.
4) Name
The name change comes without Gil, now Raven, even wanting it, but he likes the way the title settles over his old name, cutting the last tie from the weak little child he had once been to the monster he was now.
5) Echoes
He hates it when Break gives his advice like that, obscure and ominous and vaguely threatening, and he especially hated how the words would echo in his ears for days later, because he really didn't understand how there could ever be a day when he could strike down his master; at least, if he was in his right mind.
6) Hat
This new Gilbert doesn't need to say, "I'll be right back," to Oz, the way puts his much loved hat on the boy's head and walks off is silent promise that he'll be back soon to collect both him and the hat.
7) Jealousy
It is silly and petty, but whenever Oz smiles for Alice, Gil feels a pang of jealousy at the chain, then his head starts to ache and he has to look away from them to stop his hands clenching.
8) Hands
He can only hope that if -when- the power of Raven finally drives him over the edge, Oz will have the strength to kill him before he strikes down with his own hands that which he meant to protect.
9) Devotion
Vincent's devotion scares him; he's always sure he never deserved it.
10) Forever
Gil had once promised Oz loyalty for forever, no matter the circumstances, no matter what they went through, but never was the promise more tested than in the ten years that Gil had to solider on, on his own.
11) Gold
It wasn't just the gold eyes, it was little gestures, the way he offered him what comfort he could over the death of the flower seller, the rather shy way he smiled, the way he looked after him when he could; Oz knew that there was no way Raven could be Gil, he was too old, but he sure did remind him of his best friend sometimes.
12) Fear
Break spends a lot of time saving Gil from his own destructive tendencies, though he fears he is only postponing the inevitable.
13) Bonds
They're bound together no matter what happens; even if Gil is quavering on the very edge of sanity and Oz is starting to move away, there was still that bond of master to servant.
14) Smile
Raven never smiles, Oz doesn't like that, it's almost worse than Break -who smiles all the time but rarely seems to mean it- Raven is the opposite, he's always scowling and bad tempered, so much so that Oz can't help but wonder if the expression lurking underneath is different than what shows on the surface.
15) Innocence
Raven still has that odd innocence he had when Break first found him in the rain, even after all that he has gone through in the past ten years, that vulnerability, that look of a lost child, is still there sometimes, just barely visible.
16) Sun/Moon
Alice was Oz's sun, bringing light to his life, a warmth to his chest and a smile to his face and Gil is his moon, always there when all seemed completely dark, ready to snatch him out of danger, and guide the way to safety; it was probably no large surprise that Alice and Gil got on so spectacularly badly then, considering how opposite they were.
17) Fierce
From his long dark coat, to his fierce glower, everything about Raven said "Don't bother me" and "Leave me alone," which at first made Oz a bit frightened of him, at least until he discovered exactly how nice Raven was under all the that growl and bluster.
18) Gloves
Raven was careful about his gloves, careful about what he touched with them off, careful about keeping a certain one of them on, so very, very careful; mostly because he really wanted to avoid inadvertently hurting someone.
19) Gift
It was a tossup whether Gil's incredible loyalty was a gift to him, allowing him to keep faith in a master that all but abandoned him, or curse, for exactly the same reason.
20) Speed
It amazed Oz the speed with which the angry stranger called Raven became Gil to him, it was so easy to call this tall, dark man the same name as the shy boy he'd once known, like he had always known it was him from the beginning.
21) Confusion
There was something in the way that Oz smiled down at Gil when he asked to be his servant again, a certain surety, like he had never even entertained the notion that Gil would want to do anything else now that Oz knew who he really was, wiped away any lingering confusion about his path from there on.
22) Despair
Barricaded in his rooms in the Nightray house Gil curled up on the floor -the bed felt wrong and too soft- picking at the healing scab on his chest and ignoring Vincent's hesitant knocks on his door; he rather hoped the gash would scar, at least then he would have something, anything, to remind him of… of what he had lost and where he had come from.
23) Familiar
Kneeling in front of the grave where Oz had found the pocket watch ten years ago, Gil reached out to touch the stone of the cross and couldn't help but think that he had seen this grave before, only then the marble had been new and without cracks, the inscription readable, but he couldn't have placed when this memory came from for the life of him.
24) Home
Even though his new house was supposed to be a secret, somehow Vincent still wrote an endless stream of letters, letters that begged his errant brother to come home; of course, Vincent didn't understand that his brother had never thought of the Nightray mansion as 'home'.
25) Hell
Huddled alone in the dark basement of the Vessalius mansion, punishment for speaking back to the Lord of the house, Gil's misery was not for his own plight but for the hell he knew the young master must be going through.
26) Touch
It had been hard to figure out how to touch on the subject of his brother to Oz, and so he put it off, for as long as possible, until Vincent himself made it impossible to keep the secret.
27) Thunderstorm
Young Gil went missing for some time after Oz's disastrous coming of age ceremony; when he appeared again it wasn't until after a nasty thunderstorm and the boy turned up soaking wet and clutching a ridiculously extravagant and slightly ugly hat whose owner he refused to divulge to Oscar.
28) Heaven
Vincent had been so focused on finding his brother, on returning his life to the heaven he remembered it being with Master Jack before everything went bad and bloody, but he had never thought about the after part until Gil flinched back from his touch and stared at him, his own brother, like he had never seen anything more terrifying in his life.
29) Sickness
The first time that Gil killed someone he was sick afterward, violently and shamefully sick, he swore to himself as he wiped his mouth and tried to get the bitter taste of bile to go away that he would never be this weak again.
30) Completion
Break watched the newly titled Raven put a hand to his forehead, looking pale and ill in the bright morning light, with a contemplative eye -and perhaps just a bit of guilt for what he had made him into.
31) Death
There was something about Jack Vessalius, something about the way he casually smiled as Gil pointed a gun at his head, which was so like Oz he couldn't force himself to pull the trigger for the life of him; Gil had thought Oz was the only one who could treat possible death so casually.
32) Hair
It didn't matter to Gil that wearing his hair that long meant he had to tie it back for formal occasions, he'd worn his hair almost exactly like this ever since he could remember and he wasn't about to change that habit now; besides, Vince's was even longer.
33) Weakness
There were times when Gil had given into weakness and had let himself forget that he was in the Nightray household to spy and steal Raven, he played with Vincent, taught Elliot how to do a summersault, talked with his other adoptive brothers with no thought to intrigue or information gathering; he always felt guilty after he did this, like he had already enacted the betrayal he knew he someday would.
34) Comprehension
Gil understood that there was something wrong with Break -he had always known that Break was dying- but lately the white haired man seemed to be fading away in ways only a suddenly secretive Liam was able to help with; it wouldn't be till later that Gil would understand what exactly was wrong.
35) Melody
He might have been only a note in the melody that Xerxes Break was dancing to, an insignificant detail, but Gil was determined to see that Break didn't dance himself to death in the end even if it meant that he had to join in on the madness too.
36) Freedom
Gil did not remember -or, at least, consciously remember- a time when he had not had a master or someone to tell him what to do; he wasn't sure what he would have done with freedom even if he had it.
37) Star
Xerxes Break was cold and untouchable as a star, no matter how Gil tried to help the other man was always slipping away, just out of reach of really comprehending.
38) Comfort
It was actually quite a comfort to Gil that Break had a friend like Liam, for some reason Liam always seemed like he was able to sidestep the impenetrable barrier of mysteriousness around Break and deal with the man underneath; Gil wished he could have done this, but for some reason he was never allowed that close.
39) Clouds
"What lovely clouds," Lady Sharon exclaimed, head tilted back to smile upwards, "But why are you out here watching them, Raven?" And Gil flushed, explaining that his former master had often cloud watched with him in far off happy days.
40) Taste
Gil didn't drink tea for almost ten years; the taste of it reminded him of his missing master too much.
41) Waves
The waves of power emanating from the Mad Hatter would have been enough to wound another contractor but he was Raven and he wasn't about to leave Break to fight two Baskervilles at once just because it was dangerous.
42) Tears
The tears the threaten to stream from his eyes as he begs Oz to be allowed to go help Break are honest, he knows he should stay to get his master to safety… but the thought of Break fighting two Baskervilles blind makes his blood run cold.
43) Erratic
It takes Gil a bit to figure out why Break is acting oddly, the Break he knew would usually never be as reckless, as hurried as he was when he accused Elliot of being the Headhunter, but once Gil factored Liam's non-communication and possible endangerment into the situation Break's actions made perfect sense.
44) Rain
He had always associated rain with one of the worst nights of his life, the night everything had gone wrong and his master had vanished somewhere he couldn't follow.
45) Ears
Break had originally worried that Gil was too kind a person to act as his eyes and ears in the Nightray household with any kind of effectiveness but the colder, less innocent Raven did just fine.
46) Market
Gil didn't much like the Rabbit, but when she vanished in the market, kidnapped by Cheshire he would find out later, he couldn't help but worry about what exactly happened to her.
47) Soft
Vincent knew he had to look after his brother, his soft, vulnerable, sentimental brother; he had not worked so hard to save him when they were young to let him sacrifice himself to save some Vessalius brat now.
48) Life
Oz looked around the neat, and yet bare, apartment with a frown, "So this is how you live now?"
49) Change
The knowledge that Break was blind changed everything, Gil knew Liam and Oz must gone though this exact process when they found out too, and now that he knew nothing regarding Break could be the same again.
50) Granted
The plan had been for him to use Raven to bring Oz back, that was how Break had explained it to him, but he never thought that Oz might have been able to bring himself back from the Abyss all on his own; he had taken it for granted that his master had needed him.