Tiefe Wasser sind nicht still.

Only when it was over did he think of the consequences.

Only when she lifted her head to look at him with wide startled eyes that could have devoured him in their look of wonder. Only when her sweat-laden hair pulled from the damp pillow and exhaled a subtle musk. Only when she subconsciously lifted a hand to cover her heaving breast. Only when she sighed in regret.

"Oh, Gilbert."

Only after he had made her his own, for however many insidious seconds he had planted himself within her, and sown the seeds for the flowering of the event horizon. He could not see that distant plane but he could feel its terrible conception pulsing in his throbbing hands and aching loins. With a small cry he touched his forehead to hers and bit back bitter tears.

"Miss Ada I am so sorry-!" he gasped. The words felt brittle in his mouth and their apologetic intention faded on the very heated air. How could he pretend? He had enjoyed this. This comfort she had given him. This nonjudgmental intimacy comprised only of gentle warmth and boundless love. He had asked and she had opened. She had allowed him in so he may not freeze in the cold of despair and fear.

But this hearth belonged to his brother and this warmth was only his right.

"Vincent…" Ada voiced the blade hanging between them, double edged, a face for them both. She closed her eyes. "I must tell him."

"I-!" Gilbert looked away as he felt his gut tightening. How had it come to this? How had a deluge of tears become a sweat soaked embrace upon someone else's bed? He hadn't even been drunk! Such selfishness to take Miss Ada's pure love and turn it into adultery. He had been trying to comfort her as well, a young bride, frightened and alone without her husband.

Vincent had moved her from safe house to safe house and only a few days before had Oz come across news of his sister in the wake of the collapse of Pandora. Gilbert had only been asked to check in on her, to lead no one to her, to look at her face and see the life still there so Oz could know not all was lost. He had only been asked to look at her, not lay her beneath him like a shameless whore.

He had betrayed his master and his younger brother in one action, how could he have ever thought someone so lowly deserved to be in the light?

"Vincent will understand." Ada said softly as she slowly moved away from her unintentional lover, covering herself in a bed sheet. "He loves you more than he does me I think!"

She gave a small breathless laugh. "He knows, he'll understand!"

"Miss Ada," Gilbert laid a hand over her even as he turned away to hide his own shameful nudity. "Don't do anything to compromise yourself."

Ada looked up with a blink, but slowly smiled. She had been a cloistered young woman but she had still been born a noble. From the day her mother died she knew the sort of vicious games her class played and her marriage to a Baskerville was perhaps the only thing that had saved her head. Gilbert could only think it must have been true love on Vincent's part to have such a wife and in solitary moments he had even thanked his younger brother for the sacrifice. Even if her marriage had been conceived in love however, it was Ada's shield and she must not lose her protection. She moved her hand away however with a small look of chastisement.

"If Vincent wants to throw me out over this, I will allow it." She raised her head as Gilbert stiffened in terror. "I don't want anything but true love, Gilbert. If Vincent can't forgive me…so be it."

"Miss Ada!" Gilbert groaned at her stubbornness, so like her brother! She even giggled like him when scolded!

"Ah…I told him that you know, when he married me. 'I'm only marrying you because I love you'." Ada grinned in true delight at the memory. "And he said the same thing."

Gilbert only groaned again but Ada reached for the hands covering his face. She gently raised his head up in her palms, holding him as lovingly as a mother with a stubborn child.

"However, I don't feel like this was a mistake. He loves you more than anyone else, Gilbert. What would he thought of me if I had sent you away with such heaviness in your heart? I would never cuckold my husband; it was only because I felt like…he would have hated me more if I had let you go without giving you that release." Ada dropped her forehead onto his and submerged him in an embrace. "He will forgive us."

After he had dried his tears Gilbert dressed, feeling as if a heavy burden had been taken from his shoulders though he did still fear his brother's reaction despite Ada's limitless optimism. Though he may never know what Vincent would think of the encounter, given he had almost given up hope of seeing his younger brother ever again in the great rushing tide of a world being swept away. He could only hope the only woman he had ever loved would not be drowned like so many others he had known.

He left her with a kiss to the cheek and a final unobtainable hope from Ada, "I hope that one day all of us, me, you, Vincent, my brother, and Miss Alice….that we can all be together again!"

Gilbert nodded for he had the same dream, even if it lived it a castle in the sky, composed of nothing more than smoke and dust.

But in time, Gilbert did learn of his brother's thoughts on the matters of adultery and cuckoldry. The clandestine message arrived as they had in yesterdays, with black roses. He didn't know if it had been Vincent or another Baskerville that had left the bouquet upon his bed. It was someoneat least that had no inkling of that stupid rabbit's appetite as he irritably held the cluster of blooms over her gaping and snapping jaws. His annoyance couldn't hide his pale face however when he spied Vincent's scrawl upon the faded paper.

I have news. Meet me in the old Nightray mansion. Come alone and not be harmed.

The months hadn't faded Gilbert's memory of the night with Ada, he remembered every nuance of her straining body and it brought a vibrant blush to his cheek. So much so that Oz perked up at his red face.

"Oh are the roses from a lady-friend?" The blond sing-songed as Gilbert tossed the roses against the wall, letting Alice tear them to shreds like the little animal she was.

"No," he sighed. "My brother."

"Oh." Oz blinked and shifted as uncomfortably as he always did whenever Vincent was mentioned. "Is it about Ada?"

"N-no, I don't think so…hope so…" Gilbert let him read the note. Oz only frowned for a few seconds before handing it back.

"You better go," Was all Oz said. He set the note down and gave only one more order.

"Though if he did anything to Ada, you have my permission to kill him."

Gilbert never knew if Oz was joking or not when he said such things but he felt like his sentiments were about the same so it never disturbed him.

Gilbert was aware the old mansion had been overtaken by the Baskervilles in these past few years since the family's demise. He still felt the eerie thrill of his hair standing on his neck as he climbed the double staircase that gave the sensation of floating towards the entrance, as if walking in a nightmare. The darkness swallowed the steps below and nothing lead the way save for a distant and vague light at the end of the main hall. It hovered like a beacon in the great maw of the still and dilapidated home, where nothing echoed but the memories of a living family full of their own intricacies and suspended destinies. No ghosts prowled along the dust and cobwebs however; in death the home was as empty as it had been as full in life.

He found a painting of Elliot in his youth had been removed from the front parlor, but thought nothing of the choices of the reigning Baskerville duke.

Vincent held the candle delicately between his hands, as if at a vigil. In this back tearoom, many years ago, the duchess had been serenaded for her birthday. It was with no memory of that woman however that Vincent looked up and gave a small chortle. He seemed no different, as if he had not aged at all within the last three years. Perhaps he hadn't. Gilbert instinctively felt the stump where his left arm had been and recalled how this man had cried for him. Yet it was Gilbert who felt like decades had passed since that fateful night.

"You don't look good at all Big Brother," Vincent informed him and Gilbert knew it was the truth. He perched across from the younger man upon a dust soaked divan and chased away a mincing spider from atop the armrest. Vincent sat back, drinking in the full countenance of the person he loved more than even his wife who had only love to give. Gilbert had given him only bitterness and suffering. Why, even now, would he not raise a hand to him?

"Vince, I…" his words were swallowed by the darkness and distance between them. Vincent inclined his head as if reaching down to devour what was being offered him upon a platter; his brother's grief.

"You have been worried about something, haven't you?" he didn't look up even as his smile became broader.

"What is there to not worry about?" Gilbert sharply demanded. When Vincent didn't answer he continued on. "Vince, please, it doesn't have to be like this! Come home! Come with me and Oz! Miss Ada too! We can all live together and we'll all protect each other! We'll …"

"She is pregnant." Vincent dissolved all of Gilbert's hopes with one terrible truth. He at last raised his head and only sardonically smiled at his brother's look of horror. "It's yours, not mine."

"N-no! It can't! I mean! It must have been…you too must have…" Gilbert groped desperately for a denial.

"When I married Ada we had only one other rule besides that we must love one another," his bitter smile grew wider. "That we would have no children. There are ways to avoid such a thing you know and I did take every precaution so…."

He sat back and only looked at Gilbert in bemusement. "It's yours. My wife carries your child."

"No! Impossible! Impossible!" Gilbert gasped feeling the world falling around him in gruesome spikes of pain and regret. He sat forward and shut his eyes against furious tears. I can't be-! No! Not with Oz! Not Miss Ada!

"You're lying!" He threw the accusation into Vincent's face like a slap. The other man stiffened and reared back in disbelief but it only took his practiced smile away for a few seconds. How much Gilbert hated to see that look on Vincent's face, it was the same one he used to give to old countesses and bumbling earls. It was a look of deceptive congeniality. He must surely feel somethingin this terrible moment!

"If you think so….come and look at it when it's born." Vincent primly offered. He rose from the armchair with a trail of spiders' webs and horror following him. Gilbert only sullenly sat back at the offer, his stomach far too painful to further move. Vincent only looked out at the dead rose garden and perhaps with the nostalgia of the prodigal son.

"You know, when I first met that girl…I only thought of breaking her heart," Vincent confessed lowly, as coldly as the ice forming intricate patterns on the glass outside. He chuckled darkly, "If I had only known…you would be the one to break her heart."

Gilbert had nothing to say to him and Vincent only shrugged at his mollification.

"If it offends you, I'll kill it." He said softly. Gilbert gave a small noise of disbelief but Vincent looked at him with deadly seriousness. "I would have killed it if it was mine. This sort of world…no child should be born into it."

"Vincent." Gilbert knew he was not lying. Vincent hand was clenched against the glass as he stared down the line of withered plants each one throwing a grotesque shadow back into the abandoned home. He loomed larger than life on the threshold of death and tragedy.

"But it is yours, so…you can decide what to do with it." Vincent dropped his hand and straightened his back, not looking towards his brother as he decided the fate of his own child.

"Does Miss Ada want it…?" Was all Gilbert could ask. Let the decision ultimately be someone else's.

"As far as I can tell, yes. She was apprehensive but not unhappy when she told me." Vincent said blithely.

"Then….let her keep it." It would be her child then, not his, whatever Vincent thought. He looked away when his younger brother turned back to look at him, his other denied responsibility.

"…Very well." He conceded as he stepped away from the window. He didn't look up even as Vincent stood before him, and he only cringed as his younger brother leaned down and kissed his forehead. He chuckled to feel Gilbert's stiff muscles beneath him; his fingers lingered on his brother's slender clavicle, exposed by years of wear.

"Be well, Gil." Was all he said as he departed but Gilbert grasped for his younger brother's soul one last time.

"Vince, when you said- 'This sort of world, no child should be born into it', what did you mean?" Gilbert asked lowly but with an unwavering determination. Vincent's hand lingered on the doorknob.

"What I said," Vincent answered readily with a simpering smile he reserved for Gilbert alone, though the other man feared to see what exactly lay beneath it. Gilbert's fingernails bit into the worn fabric of the divan.

"Would you kill that too if it offended me?" Gilbert snapped with his eyes locked on Vincent's mismatched ones. In that darkness the red of his cursed eyes was lost but Gilbert knew it was there, always there!

"Of course," Vincent beamed like the child who used to peer around these very same doorways. Gilbert rose from his chair.

"You know-! You know if you try to change the world, like Glen Baskerville did, I will have to kill you!" It was a threat, a plea, a truth, all merged into one cry of agony. "If you try to take Oz out of existence!"

"I know," Vincent smiled one last time before descending into the darkness.

"Vincent! Vincent!" Gilbert bellowed his brother's name into the night but the house only shook with his own frustrated cries and the flickering threads of memory that laced across the rotted floors and decaying ceilings. No thread was tied to his brother's wrist, no sound followed him, and he was lost in the massive void that surrounded Gilbert in the house of the dead.

Gilbert was left in darkness and unable to follow because he now knew the light. Once he would have been able to follow his brother in the great cavern of the soul where no light ever penetrated. Now however with his head raised he could no longer looked down, could no longer see where his brother descended.

And that was the void between them; insurmountable.

When the child was born, Gilbert ignored the message. Oz received one as well, but the danger was too great at the time to expose themselves. Some months later an opportunity arose and Oz went to see his nephew, much bigger than an infant and looking very much like his uncle. Even when Oz compared the shade of the boy's hair to Gilbert's and teased his nephew had nicer hair because it was straight; Gilbert refused to see the boy. He was Ada's, he would always be hers.

Even with two red eyes of misfortune.

He didn't see the boy for many years, not until a decade and a little bit more had passed. Not until young Rotem Vessalius, who could only claim his mother's name because of his father's infamy, both the legitimate and illegitimate one, was on the threshold of adolescence. At a time when he was no longer a young child, but when he would most need a father to guide him and teach him how to be a man.

When he was old enough to be able to recognize his father's murderer.

I warned him! I warned him and warned him!Gilbert cursed the very charred earth. There was nothing left but the smoldering skeletons of buildings and the flickering embers of a wasted hope. The Chain had gone to rest within the Abyss, leaving the contractor exposed and vulnerable. And willing to pay for his sin.

Ah, but not yet.He raised his head to look at the line of red cloaks lining along the fire line. They had scattered at the blue flames that were the searing power of the Abyss, the only thing capable of devouring immortal bodies. They had been helpless and only silent witnesses to the immolation of their own, the jury of the trial of Gilbert Nightray, Baskerville traitor and brother-killer.

The judge descended from on high, delicate footfall tracing the scorched ground even as he walked as someone who should never touch the impure Earth. The master betrayed, reborn, and resplendent. What approached Gilbert was not the Guardian however, only a man, and one who was also already far too old.

"Let him go." Was the only order of Glen Baskerville, who like all those before him knew the love of a servant. Gilbert didn't ask why he was being pardoned for his blood-crime, for he knew in the darkest place, it must be because Vincent had asked for it. That all along, his brother had known he would die by his hand.

No one questions a god and the devotees left without a word. There was no absolution for a crime without the punishment. Gilbert however received his minutes later after he had fallen again to his knees in torment.

"Vincent is…" Ada's soft voice clashed across the chasm. Gilbert looked up to see her standing in a dark cloak, another figure behind her, his face lost in his hood, but his gasping breath loud and pained.

"Dead. I killed him." Let her have no doubt. Ada went as stiff as a frozen over corpse, her skin the same ghastly shade; until life came over her again as she realized she now stood where he had fallen. It was then she fell to the earth her husband had been seared into, cutting an even deeper psychic scar onto the land. Her cries were muted, but her grief was overwhelming. Gilbert wondered at Vincent's last cruelty, was this how he had meant for him to meet his son at last? Is this why he had brought them to Sablier with him?

As if looking for an answer he looked up at last into the young man's face. He had removed his hood, showing an expression Vincent had never allowed Gilbert to see; one of unrelenting hatred. The boy was tall, lean, with the same sort of awkward face Gilbert had had at the same age, the hard chin of a man with a boy's pudgy cheeks. His long dark hair gave his eyes the color of a deep wine red, nothing like the bright blood of his father's….uncle's….father's.

For Gilbert knew right then this boy would never be his, and never had been.

"I won't forget this." Was all Rotem said to him as he walked past to rejoin his master on the distant horizon. To find him whole and out of danger and to look upon Gilbert for all he really was.

He said nothing to the grieving widow and the seething son besides her.

"If I had only known…you would be the one to break her heart."

Vincent had always known more than him.