Note: This story of kind of goes along with Colors, so if you haven't read that, it'd be awesome if you did. The two do stand alone though. Anyway I wanted to do Break and Lotti for Valentine's . . . I failed . . . This LJ prompt (that was more inspired by than filled with) infested my mind. But Break and Lotti should be next on my list of things to write. ^^ Happy belated Valentine's Day, everyone. Also thank you for voting on my poll. Please more people vote, so I can write more after Break and Lotti. ^^
Disclaimer: I don't own Pandora Hearts.
Innocence
~Pinkhearter13
Her eyes reminded him of a new moon. Empty—a deep chasm—no light showing through the clouds in the sky, and stripped of all inner beauty. He knew. He knew because he felt it too when the deep wrench in his heart turned. When he missed Oz and the way things used to be. When he regretted the manuevers he wouldn't take back that stained his hands in blood.
She reminded him of him, except for those times he could see in her eyes the gap in knowledge.
She didn't know what was lost.
What was missing.
He didn't notice her at all at first until a stray remark of Break's caught his attention. The snow lingered in the air on a foggy day when they met for the first time in a while, and Break requested the inclusion of Vincent Nightray's habits as well.
"Why my brother instead of just the duke?" Gilbert had asked. His height almost matched the other man's now, so he felt far less intimidated.
Glancing around at the weather, Break slightly tipped his hat and shadowed a lasting smirk on his face. "Because your brother—is not as sincere and loving as he seems to be. I'd like to know why."
Gilbert began to watch, and as he watched, he began to notice, and he noticed many things. His younger brother prefered black roses to any other color, he liked to rip apart stuffed animals for the thrill, and most of all, he treated his servant less than humanely.
He never saw Vince hurt her. He never heard his brother raise his voice as he frequently passed by his private quarters. But he didn't need anything to know besides the fact that she was so apparently malnutritioned, frequently exhausted as proven by the dark circles under her eyes, and likely abused if the light bruise that sometimes appeared on her cheek was anything to go off on.
The minor, minor details would have gone unnoticed had he not known to look for them, and he wondered if she was chosen for her personality, or taught to behave this way. Because almost nothing about her called attention to herself. She seemed to even avoid attention where she could.
He worried endlessly.
So it started with a candy he would slip into her room and on top of her pillow. Then it grew into a handful of candy, and then he frequently went to town to look for something he thought a girl her age might like. It didn't take long for him to notice she wasn't using or eating anything he gave her.
He found everything under her bed one morning.
It happened to be the day before he heard her soft crying from out in the hallway. He gently entered her room, and saw her sitting on the edge of the bed. She stopped crying immediately as he entered, but when she looked up and called out his name in surprise, he realized she had thought he was his brother.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Echo had something in Echo's eye," she lied monotonously.
He sat down beside her and almost wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder. He didn't know why but he felt that he knew her. Because she reminded him of him. He decided not to touch her in the end, because he knew she wouldn't feel the same. From what he had seen, physical contact intimidated her.
"Tell me." He used the softest voice he could manage. "Maybe I'll be able to fix it. Is it my brother?" With evidence, he could stop this treatment of her.
"No," she said quickly. "It's because . . . someone is giving Echo things that will get Echo in trouble—but Echo doesn't want to be rude and throw them away either." She glanced down at the floor near the crack of space between her bed and the carpet. "Echo just wishes this person would stop because it's . . ."
It was the most he had ever heard her speak. As if outside himself, he nodded and left without another word.
Never again did he leave her treats or presents on her pillow, and never again did he hear crying coming from her room as he passed.
Gilbert understood that he knew nothing about her at all. She always busied herself with Vincent's orders he never had the chance to speak with her. The next person he went to was her master and his younger brother, but unfortunately Vincent knew little more than how her minutely different expressions reflected whether she was lying or being honest or upset or afraid. Nothing about what she liked.
Luckily Eliot happened to discover his interest in the girl, and told Gilbert she seemed to enjoy flower symbolism.
"Are you free anytime today, Echo?" he asked when he saw her next.
She stopped in her tracks and approached him respectfully. "Echo is free right now for Gilbert-sama."
He led her to the gardens, the ones with more black roses than the others, and told her she could give Vincent one picked from there because he loved black roses. She had grown stiff after that without asking a single question about what black roses symbolized nor showed any enthusiasm towards touching the roses at all.
He told her anyway. "You know . . . the black rose may symbolize—"
"Death and mourning," she said. "Hatred and revenge."
The wind whistled through the gardens after she spoke as it tended to her eery tone. She stared at the ground, and Gilbert had no response to what she had said. She was mostly right—if not guessing exactly what it was he wanted to say—and again, he realized he understood nothing of her at all.
"Echo is sorry for interrupting," she said after a long silence, and turned away from the black rose she was facing.
He smiled, and almost took her hand. He didn't though. "Let's go somewhere else then." It was okay to drop such a sensitive subject.
It became a nightly routine for him to feed her. Day by day, she looked healthier and less sallow. It occurred to Gilbert that he was doing the opposite of his plan, as the healthier she looked, the less suspicious others would be of Vincent. But as he grew to know her over their meals, he realized his younger brother was very necessary to Echo's emotional stability, despite his previous notions.
No matter what she was doing, she would drop everything to say 'yes' to Gilbert's invitations. It was only when he noticed the faint bruise on her cheek become very noticeable, over the course of these days, that he realized he was getting her into trouble.
"Vince," he said sharply one day, "I'm sorry, but I've been borrowing your servant."
"Every night," Vincent agreed merrily clinging to his brother's arm despite their ages. "I don't mind if my brother likes to spend time with my servant—anytime he wants."
"Then I'll have to ask you to stop punishing her for it."
Vincent had smiled deviously, as he stood and reached for the scissors he left on the table, along with the torn stuffed animal. "Anything for Gil," he agreed, before tearing the scissors through again.
The next time he saw her, it had been a fortnight. He hadn't watched for her, because he assumed her disappearance was Vincent's doing. Almost angry at himself, because surely he had caused this, Gilbert calmed at how she had approached him instead of the other way around—her eyes as sincere as usual with the normal dulled edge he was accustomed to seeing.
"Sorry for bothering Gilbert-sama," she said respectfully but continued before he had a chance to dismiss her apology as unecessary, "Echo wondered what Valentine's Day was."
He forced a smile on his face. The perturbance he had for his brother could wait, but he couldn't help in asking, "Why not ask Vince? I'm sure he'll know plenty on that subject."
She looked away, and Gilbert instantly regretted his words. "Vincent-sama—is busy," and her words had a slight ring and characteristic in her movements to them that he knew she was lying. "Echo already knows from books that Valentine's day discusses some person known as Cupid-san, and Cupid-san shoots arrows at people. Echo doesn't understand why it is a holiday of love. Echo would ask Eliot-sama instead, but Eliot-sama gets angry."
His smile turned real, and he took her to the meadow again. This time, it was bright and sunny as opposed to the last gloomy night of the new moon he had brought her the first time. This time, he knew, he wouldn't scare her again. He felt as if he had before.
"Valentine's is when you show someone you love them," he explained and went on to tell her the true story of Cupid as he led her around the gardens. A part of him wished to hold her hand, but he knew she would be nervous at that. He stopped at the red roses and watched her carefully.
Whether she saw them or not, she ignored them and approached the different colored flowers. Once he explained the meaning behind them—and he was thankful he had studied up for her—she decided she liked the pink roses best, and wanted to give them to her master.
Gilbert, being Vincent's brother, knew he would never like such a gift, no matter what pink roses symbolized. As the sun began to set, he considered his options. "Echo . . ." he said finally, and gently as he might to a child. "Vincent doesn't like . . . colorful things."
The words dampened Echo's good mood—or was it only ignorance—and she dropped the flowers she had picked without a second thought. "Echo knows . . . Vincent-sama only likes black roses."
Then she began to walk away.
Gilbert felt the same wrench pull his heart as he watched her leave and he remembered the new moon in a cloudy sky. The sun setting was the start to that—and he knew, God he knew it now. What he had been seeking—since the beginning, since he started everything with her—was to replace Oz's image with a temporary, fleeting one.
And he realized she was nothing like Oz or himself at all.
"Wait," he said.
She stopped at his command but didn't look back.
And for some reason that he didn't quite understand, they were the hardest words he had ever spoken to her. "Those things—they aren't everything a black rose can mean," he said, just loud enough for her to hear. "They can foreshadow a rebirth. A new beginning."
Finally, she turned her head to look at him. And as her expression became clear, resembling emotion that a new moon could never have—he understood why they were the hardest words.
Was it wrong to give an innocent girl false hope?
That was how the vase of black roses appeared on the table that enumbered all of Vincent's other Valentine's gifts. When Gilbert saw them thrown away, along with everything else the next day, he took them, and replaced them as decoration for Vincent's room during a quick visit there.
He would make sure they stayed there until they died.
And on that same day, he left a few book-pressed white roses on Echo's pillow.
She knew it was him immediately.
"Gilbert-sama was the one who left everything else for Echo too," she said later that day when they crossed paths in the hallways.
He stopped and frowned at the floor. He had expected her to know it was him with the flowers, but not everything else. Being someone so quiet and unnoticeable, Echo definitely had incredible perception.
"Echo is sorry if Echo offended Gilbert-sama before," she said. "Echo loved the gifts, it's just—"
"My brother," he agreed. "I know."
At the mere mention of him, she looked away, and her eyes became dead and blank, and like the new moon, she lost all shape and light to her emotions. A part of her seemed to recoil from him—not in distaste, definitely not distaste. Or—at least, not in distaste of him or his brother. The rest of her shrank as the self esteem she held moments before waned and vanished leaving a dark emptiness around her heart.
He had seen that expression before. In the mirror. In his master. In even that Xerxes Break who had started this whole mess of him seeing her like this. But as her quiet voice asked him, "why white roses? Why give white roses to Echo? Why?"
He couldn't help but understand why Break had told him and why he was so grateful—just because he didn't notice didn't mean it didn't happen. He owed Break.
"Because, Echo," and he finally touched her shoulders in a comforting gesture. Even as her face lifted in fear and confusion, he stayed firm. She could learn to be touched again. "White roses are for purity. And worthiness."
Her eyes were wide and full of tears, but they opened the way a full moon might and the fear was gone.
Unworthy, impure—hands stained with red blood, and tainted by others' cruelty. They were all inward, despairing thoughts, hidden and secret, and always that insecurity lasted deep down. He decided then that he might have been right all along.
He was a lot more like her than he thought.