A/N: I should probably finish my other fanfictions before starting ANOTHER new one (umm... I think the count's up to about... 15 now?) but I just have to get this all down before I forget it.
Oh, and if any characters seem OOC or I'm missing vital characters to the story, like the Baskervilles, or just any other way that the fanfiction doesn't correspond with the actual manga/anime... I'm sorry. It's because I've been reading too many manga and watching too many other anime lately. After a while, all the facts start to crowd each other out of your brain, so I may - probably - have forgotten many crucial details. Hope no one doesn't mind too terribly much!
And also, some things are omitted on purpose. You see, I started the idea for this fanfiction at around chapter 20 of the manga, so I didn't really realize how complicated the plot was until after I'd finished planning half this story, so... Well, I just left out a TON of things on purpose in order to avoid a five hundred-chapter-long fanfiction.
So people like Elliot and Reo/Leo (if he is included, I'll be calling him Reo) will maybe be left out, even though they are crucial to the Pandora Hearts plot, and etc., etc., etc.
"Gil!"
The blond boy dashed down the hall and poked his head into yet another doorway, calling out the name again.
"Gi-iiillll!"
"H-Hey! Ada, let me go!"
"Ada!" the boy called down the hall. "Have you found him?"
"Yeah. Oz, we're right here."
Oz dashed down the hall and turned round the corner, where a young, eight-year-old girl was somehow holding back a larger boy who was at least three years older than her.
"Gi-il!" Oz sang as he threw his arms around the slightly shorter boy. "Found you!"
Gil turned bright red and tried to push Oz off.
"O-O-Oz-sama!" he stuttered. "T-The master will be angry at me if I don't do my duties!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Oz retorted. "If he gets angry, I'll just say I made you play with us! Right, Ada?"
The girl nodded and the ghost of a smile passed over her face.
"Honestly, you two," Gil grumbled as Oz pulled him down the hallway, closely followed by Ada, "you shouldn't be playing with a servant. You..."
Oz interrupted him with a jaunty song.
"Me-ow! went the cat! And it chased the mouse! Me-ow! went the cat! And away went the mouse! Me-ow!"
Gil turned a ghostly white. "N-Never mind," he muttered. "I-I-I'll go with you, just don't..."
"Hey, Ada," Oz said with a grin. "Didn't Cook Ramsey find a litter of kittens in the barn? She said she'd give them out to the servants! Maybe Gil will get one!"
Gil shuddered. "Fine. What do you want to play?"
"That's the spirit!" Oz chirped. "Now, Ada, what do you say? Hide-and-seek sound good to you?"
Wordlessly, she nodded.
"Okay then! Gil, you're IT!"
"Wha... Wha..."
As Gil stood there blustering and sweating and trying to figure out what the heck had just happened, Oz grabbed his sister's hand and pulled her down the hall.
"Count to fifty, Gil!" Oz yelled over his shoulder. "And no cheating!"
Before Gil had even opened his mouth to say "one", the two of them were gone. Not a single strand of their shared blond hair was left to be seen. He sighed and turned around. There was no trying to get by Oz; that kid always got what he wanted, one way or another.
He began to count.
"One... Two... Three..."
-0-o-0-o-0-
"Oooozzz!"
Gil ran and ducked his head into yet another room, cursing when he found it empty. He dashed down the hallway again, and yelled in a panic, "Oz! Come out! I forgot, it's your fifteenth birthday today! Oz! Your father is going to be-"
He rounded a corner and bumped into somebody.
"A...Angry...?"
He gulped and quickly bowed, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to imagine that the blond man wasn't there. It didn't work.
"Ah. Lovely. You're the servant boy my son plays with. Gil something?"
"Gi-Gilbert," he stammered. "But O-Oz calls me G-G-Gil. M-Master, I-I was just l-l-looking for Oz..."
"I can see that," Zai Vessalius said coolly. It seemed impossible that such a cold, emotionless man could be the father of someone as cheerful and lively as Oz, and that was because they weren't truly related by blood. Zai Vessalius had taken in young Ada and Oz as his own children when they'd first shown up on his doorstep, shivering and hungry, over five years ago. Gilbert, on the other hand, with his unnatural golden eyes and his scraggly black hair that in no way resembled Zai's own, had been kept as a servant. "Once you find him, confine him to his room until the ceremony begins. I do not wish to be bothered by such trifling matters again."
Gil bowed as the man turned and walked away. Trifling matters? Trifling matters? Since when was your son - adopted son, sure, but still his son - considered to be a "trifling matter"? The worse was, Gil knew that Oz didn't really mind. If he did, he sure didn't seem to show it, but it made Gil burn up inside. That man, acting like his own son was just a mere annoyance...!
"Gi-iiilll!" Oz poked his head around the corner with his usual grin on his face, albeit a tad bit wider than usual. "Hey, was Father angry? I bet he was! Maybe we should keep playing for a while longer, just to make him even more mad! What do you say?"
"Don't wanna make Father mad," Ada said in a small voice. "Go back to our rooms, Oz. I'm scared."
"Oz!" Gil quickly grabbed the older boy's hand and dragged him down the hall. "You heard what your father said! You're going back to your room!"
"It's going to be so booooring there, though!" Oz whined as he let himself be dragged along on the ground. "The ceremony isn't till the afternoon, and it's only, what, nine o'clock right now?" His face suddenly lit up. "I know! How about you stay with us and I can bully you for fun, until the ceremony actually starts?"
Gil blanched. "Uh... I-I've got... Duties! And - chores! I've got to go as soon as you return to your room!"
"Oh, that's no problem," Oz said cheerily. "After all, I've got... How many, again?"
"Sixteen," Ada murmured, clutching his sleeve tightly so that she wouldn't fall behind.
"Yes, that's right! Sixteen cats, all for you." He beamed at Gil's now-even-paler face. "I got sixteen cats for us to play with together. This is a direct order from your master." His face took on a devilish look. "Stay with us and play with the kitties. Okay?"
Gil gulped. Oz was looking at him with a triumphant grin, and Gil knew exactly why. He really, really, really didn't want to spend five hours playing with cats - and to make things worse, it would be five hours spent with the professional sadist, Oz Vessalius - but if he didn't, then Oz would escape again, and he'd ditch the ceremony...
"Fine," he forced out. "I'll play with you."
"Yippee!" Oz grabbed Gil's arm and dragged him down the hallway, skipping and singing a song. "And the cat came back, the very next day, the cat came back..."
And let the torture begin, Gil thought miserably.
-0-o-0-o-0-
"Geez," Oz complained, tugging at his pure white, silken tie in discomfort. "This is too tight, Gil. I thought I told you to tie it looser!"
"But...but..." Gil scurried along after him. "If I tied it any looser, it would look really messy, young master."
"It's Oz!"
Gil cringed. "Young master Oz."
Oz sighed. "Well, that'll do for now, I guess."
He turned around the corner and opened a set of doors, revealing a large ball room filled with chatting adults - lords, ladies, dukes and duchesses, along with some of their daughters that they were hoping to subtly introduce to him in the hopes that there would be an engagement. After all, who didn't want to gain from the riches of the Dukedom of Vessalius?
Gil reached out for Oz. Maybe if he just told him that everything would be all right, and that there was nothing to worry about, he wouldn't feel too much pressure. "Oz-"
"Oh, wow, Gil!" Oz exclaimed, completely ignoring the smaller boy. He clasped his hands together and stared around the room, eyes glittering with pure joy. "Look at all those pretty girls!"
Gil felt his jaw drop. He watched, frozen, as Oz skipped forward into a crowd of girls, introduced himself, and then, from what he could see, began to flirt with each and every one of them. He could practically see the roses and sparkles around the young master as he wooed each young lady with some sort of corny, sappy line straight out of a romantic book.
What had ever possessed him to be worried in the first place?
"This must be destiny, Lily-san!" Oz beamed at a young girl in pink and produced a lily out of nowhere, placing it in her outstretched hand. "For me to meet somebody as lovely as you... You outshine even the flower that you were named after."
"Oh... I-I-I..." The poor girl, blushing so hard that her entire face was scarlet, stammered, "I-I-I don't know w-what you're talking about, Oz-sama! I-I... My full name is Mai Lily Anorenia... L-Lily isn't even my first name! It..." She broke off, flustered, and in that moment when her guard was down, Oz seized her hand and planted a kiss on its back. Her blush instantly intensified.
"O-Oz-sama! That's n-not proper..."
Gil had to stop this somehow. Letting Oz torture the girls like this was so very, very wrong. "Oz!" He barreled into the crowd and grabbed Oz's sleeve. "Oz, you have to get ready - the ceremony's going to start soon!"
Oz sighed and let Gil drag him away, blowing kisses to the girls as he walked away. Once they were out of earshot, he leaned down and whispered teasingly, "Gil, are you jealous?"
Gil immediately let go of Oz and jumped away. "W-What the- What do you mean by that?" he demanded. He lifted an arm to hide his blush. "J-Jealous? No way! I-It's just that, the ceremony really is starting soon... Ugh! No, I'm just really worried, that's all!"
Oz grinned. "Uh-huh. Toootally."
"It's true!" Gil shoved Oz down the hall. "Go, already! You've got to get ready for the ceremony now!"
Oz laughed aloud and ran down the hall, seemingly headed toward the preparation room - but then again, with Oz, you could never be sure. Gil sighed. I hope nothing goes wrong with the ceremony...
A/N: No, I do not ship OzxGil. I just put that in there in the spur of the moment - and just because I can tell why people ship Oz and Gil. I mean, Gil is really protective of Oz, and Oz just likes to bully Gil... I ship Oz and Alice, but still not that much, because, well, the only pairing in Pandora Hearts, really, is one-sided JackxLacie and one-sided Alice(aka Alyss)xJack. It's just... Okay, Sharon and Break and pretty close, and Gil and Oz have that special relationship going on, and yes, there is definitely something between Alice and Oz, but none of them actually seem romantic to me - not in the manga, at least. In my random fantasies, everything is Oz and Alice, and Alyss and Jack (spoilers: There will be those two pairings in this fanfiction), and other random things happening in alternate universes. I just don't post any of them because they're too random and I'd rather work on my actual, incomplete fanfics.
And just for all you people out there who are obsessed with OOC/not OOC-ness, I've still got to adjust to writing about these characters. They are sooo complex - Oz is, lemme think... He's a sadist, a playboy, a kind of MPD-deranged guy, clearly is emotionally unstable - and very probably mentally unstable, too - and... Geez, I can't even think of words to describe him. Moving on!
Is that last sentence a bit of foreshadowing, or is that just me? (It's supposed to be foreshadowing, but...I don't think I did a very good job with it.) I'm going to sporadically update this, Chrono Crusade Present Day, and the Sisters Grimm fanfic with possible month-long intervals between updates, so I'm sorry if someone puts this on their alert list and is stuck waiting for a year for the second chapter. I know how it feels and I will absolutely do my best not to do that, but I'm not making any promises. Just saying.
