T/N: Uhh.. no idea how to explain this. The idea of this fic is based on the different 'stories' the Jury talked about. In this one, I chose to mess with a little detail in Gilbert and Vincent's story: Vincent's eye.
To put it simply, Vincent doesn't have a red eye.
Disclaimer: I don't own Pandora Hearts or any of these characters.
The room was very simple, almost empty except from a wooden closet trying desperately to blend with the walls, and two beds separated by a nightstand with nothing but a candle on top, filling the room with a pale orange light that overshadowed the faint silver one the moon humbly offered. The sheets of a bed moved in a slow steady pace, following the breathing of the boy hidden underneath them. Another boy sat on the other one, his gaze fixed on a book resting on his lap. He didn't even notice the door opening, or the third person coming in until the silence was broken by the voice of the newcomer, a woman in her thirties.
"Still awake?"
"Hum…" he absentmindedly mumbled in response.
"You should sleep already… Ah! All I want is to come late at night to give my cute sleeping little children a good-night kiss. Why can't I have that?" She said in a fake dramatic voice, fantasizing about the scenario she thought of, and wiping a fake tear.
"Sorry, the story was so interesting and I got driven." The kid, Gilbert, looked up, smiling awkwardly.
"Well, apologizing doesn't change anything… give me that!" She said in a playful tone, and effortlessly stole the book he was reading. He reached out in a desperate attempt to get it back.
"One more chapter, please!" He begged, despite knowing that he wouldn't take it anyway.
"Brother… too loud." A shift of the sheets accompanied the muffled voice coming from the other bed.
"Ah… sorry, Vince." He turned to his bother quickly, feeling a slight bit of guilt.
"Look what you did now!" Their mother scolded in a fake tone, then laughed before adding in a much more mature way:
"Seriously, now, the book can wait. Time to sleep!"
"Fine…" Gilbert sighed in defeat, before lying on his bed, facing the wall.
"Don't be angry~" his mother ruffled the black hair before leaning closer and kissing his cheek.
"Good night, children," she said with a warm smile.
"Good night," Gilbert replied, while another mumble was barely heard from the other bed.
A pair of golden eyes appeared under the blanket.
"Brother, I don't really feel like sleeping," Vincent whispered, careful not to be heard by his mother, even though she left quite a while ago.
"You could've said so when mom was here…" Gilbert complained, still facing the wall.
"Uh… well, I… wanted to talk to you… but…"
Gilbert turned to him, and interrupted:
"What did you want to talk about?" Noticing a slight worry in his words, he added in a calmer voice: "I'm listening."
"… nothing… it's just that…" Vincent stuttered, and then took a deep breath, rephrased his words, and asked:
"Brother, are you alright?"
"What do you…?" Gilbert thought for a moment before realizing what his brother was talking about.
"Hum. I'm fine." He smiled reassuringly.
"But… you don't look like it! You've been isolating yourself lately. You're not 'fine'! Those… things only you can feel -whatever they are, they're not normal!" Unsatisfied with his brother's flat answer, Vincent snapped. He quickly covered his mouth the moment he realized his voice was too loud and looked down apologetically, expecting to get scolded. However, Gilbert only chuckled. He undoubtedly knew his brother cared for him, but he seemed to like it whenever the youngest showed it, even though it happened quite often.
He sat on the edge of his bed, facing his brother.
"Vince, it's not a bad thing, you know?" He said.
Unable to understand, Vincent didn't say anything. He just stared.
"After all, those lights… I like them," Gilbert added.
Here they come, the moments Vincent felt his brother is in a whole different world.
"…I always get the feeling of being called…"
Gilbert was looking up at nothing, or so it seemed to Vincent. The latter guessed it was one of the golden lights the elder claimed to see.
"But, I'm not…" he stopped, and let out a sigh. Whatever Gilbert was talking about, he was clearly having problems describing it. "That place feels safe… it feels like it's where I'm supposed to be." He couldn't tell why, he just knew it.
Gilbert looked so happy whenever he talked about that. But for Vincent, it made him feel unease and a slight… jealousy.
"You can feel it too, right? That we belong somewhere else…"
Saying so, Gilbert seemed to be pulled back to reality, and had his full concentration back to Vincent, which should've cheered up the blond. But it didn't.
What he said was true, Vincent really did get a similar feeling of being called -even though it wasn't exactly the same as the elder's. But he had a different look at it. He even tried to deny it, or at least ignore it. But this time, he chose to face it. He was the one who brought up the subject after all.
"I… don't like it," he admitted.
Confused, Gilbert asked: "Why?"
Vincent didn't know why it was so unclear to his brother.
'Following something because you can just feel it, and giving up everything in your life for it… how is that not suspicious?!' He was about to argue, but Gilbert cut him off:
"Is it because you're scared?"
Hearing that, Vincent lost all his words. That one question made him doubt what he thought to be absolute. He tried to ignore what he'd just heard and remember what he was about to say, finding himself trying to convince himself that he was right.
Yes, he was right. Giving up their whole life for the unknown was just insane, right?
The unknown, wasn't he just scared of that? His mother told him before… he didn't fear the dark. He just feared what it was hiding.
"It will be fine. I promise!"
Gilbert's words stopped his train of thoughts. Surely, they sounded a little careless, but for some reason, he felt a little relieved after hearing them. He was not alone, Gilbert was with him. Gilbert would do anything for him. And with him, there was nothing to fear, not even the unknown.
Thinking back, Vincent wondered whether it was wrong to trust his brother.
His memories of what happened after that were very dull and vague. Everything seemed to happen too fast for him to keep up. It felt unrealistic, he could barely believe it. It felt foreign, as if it was something he had read in a fairytale. Though he could very clearly remember some feelings that proved the story was real: the scent of blood he smelled for the very first time in his life and still hadn't gotten used to, his brother's arms pulling his head protectively to his chest preventing him from seeing whatever happened to their mother and he could guess from his racing heartbeats that it was horrifying, the unbearable pain in his knees after running away and walking for a distance he couldn't assume but knew was very long, his brother's small hand pressing tightly on his even smaller one as they walked, the long silhouette of the man who claimed to be like Gilbert, and how he lead them to 'where they belong'. He also remembered pretending not to notice the guilt shading Gilbert's eyes for the promise he couldn't fulfill. After all, if you can't see it, it becomes unknown and vanishes in the darkness, right?
And even after countless years had passed, Vincent wondered if he managed to erase the guilt off Gilbert's heart. Though the master's eyes no longer reflected what he was feeling, not after Vincent stopped calling him 'brother'.
T/N: A little explanation: I'm not sure if the Glen and The Child of Misfortune are necessarily related, and even so, there were some exceptions (Leo and Break) so... and yes, Gil is still a vessel of Glen in this story. Vincent is a normal Baskerville. Also, judging from Lily's backstory, I think all Baskervilles have some sort of dark past.
Anyway, thank you for reading.