AN: So last month, I started watching Pandora Hearts! I have three episodes left now (no spoilers please!) but the Gilbert feels are unreal. This was the product. Enjoy!
It wasn't fair.
It just wasn't fucking fair. He'd spent the last ten years in hell, although maybe not as literally as Oz had. Ten years of waiting, of wondering, of replaying the scene in his head over and over just to see what he could have done differently to stop Oz from slipping through his fingers. Ten years of sleepless nights, all because a smiling, golden-haired boy had stolen his heart on the day they met, and still held it in a vice a decade later.
And then, all of a sudden, like a switch being flicked, Oz was back. But the ten years that had weathered Gil so much hadn't touched Oz at all. No, he looked the exact same as he had on the day that he vanished. He was still fifteen. Gil, on the other hand, was twenty-four. Being older than Oz felt very strange; especially because Gil had matured so much, whereas Oz… had not. And that hurt him to the very core. He had the love of his life back. He was close enough to touch Oz, and to feel the warmth radiating from his green eyes when he smiled. But the reunion he'd been forming in his mind, the reunion that had been building itself up for ten years, would never happen. Because in Gil's mind, it would've included him sweeping Oz into his arms and kissing him, letting Oz curl his arms comfortably around his neck as he laughed into Gil's hair. But the Oz that returned from the Abyss was still a child. And Gil was a man.
He's supposed to be my age. He is my age, technically. But why does he still look like a fifteen-year-old boy? Who in the world wants to punish me like this?
There was no way Gil would consider pursuing a romantic relationship with a child, but because of Oz, the thought damn well crossed his mind. He would never do it, of course, but his morality did nothing to ease the pain. Oz was everything to him. He was the boy that had raised Gil from a terrified, wounded orphan to a strong, limitlessly loyal young man. He was the boy that had protected Gil from his demons and even confided a few of his own. Gil remembered being a lovesick fourteen-year-old as if it were only yesterday; the only differences between that boy and the man he'd become were ten years and a few scars. His love for Oz had survived, even when Gil had been so sure that Oz himself had not. But whether or not Oz had felt the same way, so many years ago, he would never know. Now Alice was in the picture. And Gil could tell by the way Oz looked at her that she was the one he loved. Not him.
But what might have happened if Oz had never gone to the Abyss? What if he had never met the Chain who had him wrapped around her finger?
He would never know.
Oz would find new love with Alice, but Gil would always be stuck, helplessly watching the love of his life fall for someone else. A Chain, no less. A monster. Someone who was not even human.
"No matter what happens, I will be beside you," he had told Oz when they were children. And he would, no matter how much Oz loved Alice, and how much that fact threatened to tear Gil apart from the inside out. Because he was Oz's loyal servant, and not even his own feelings could change that.
end