Captured By Pirates
This chapter tells Gil's story and why he began crying after looking into Ben's eyes.
[Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Descendants 2, nor the dialogue used from the film. Some dialogue from the film has been included in order to maintain continuity with the events of the film. No copyright infringement or theft of intellectual property is intended.]
Chapter 5
Gil was able to maintain his composure long enough to pass along the captain's orders to a couple of her more trustworthy crewmembers, then he quickly left the ship and raced towards his hideout. He made it to the dilapidated building, which was once a sweet shop, but had closed down after the Isle stopped receiving shipments of sugar from the mainland. Once inside, Gil bared the door and retreated into the upstairs apartment, which had once belonged to the shop owner, and was now the only safe place Gill could call his own. The tears began flowing as he fell onto his lumpy mattress. The sobs racked his body as they fought free of his clenched teeth. He cried himself into exhaustion and eventually fell into a fitful sleep. The tears continued to flow even in unconsciousness, spilling down his cheeks, and soaking his pillow.
As he slept he dreamt about his father. Gaston had barely survived his fight with the beast. He had fallen from the high castle walls, down into a ravine, and crashed into the frigid waters of a fast flowing river. Such a fall would have killed most men, but not Gaston; he was a mountain of muscle and shear power. Not only did her survive the fall; he had the strength to swim to the riverbank, pull himself out, and make his way back to town. The townsfolk welcomed him with open arms and nursed him back to health. But soon word spread about the beast being a prince in disguise and his plans to make Belle his wife. The townspeople were all invited to the wedding and soon their feelings towards Gaston began to change. He was no longer revered as a hero that went to slay a beast, instead they now saw him as a villain who had conspired against a royal prince. He was run out of town and forced to make his way to another village. But it seemed that everywhere he went word had already spread of his attack on the enchanted prince. People had forgotten their fears of a scary, ferocious beast, and only saw the prince as a victim of a curse. A cure that had been broken thanks to Belle.
Eventually, Gaston gave up on trying to live in the prince's domain and escaped into the woods to live as a huntsman. He told Gil how he had built a boat and crossed the sea to an uninhabited island full of trees and wild game. Gaston had built a cabin there and lived off the wild game in the forest of the island. For a time he was content, but the loneliness of the woods began to eat away at his heart, Gaston soon began to despair of life until the day he met Gil's mother, Violet. He was making his monthly supply run to the nearby port town, when he ran into her by the pier. It turned out that she had lived in the same town as Belle and Gaston and had refused to believe all the stories that people told about the enchanted beast becoming a prince. After he left their town, she had spent over a year trying tracking him down to confess her love for him. Violet finally learned that Gaston frequented the seaside town and decided to wait near the docks everyday in the hopes that he would show up and he finally did. Gaston learned this all from Violet a year into their happy marriage, but rather than think her pathetic, Gaston was impressed by the strength of her love. It was during this time that Gil was born. Gaston couldn't have been prouder with his baby boy. And they both looked forward to many more.
But their happiness was not meant to last, Gaston would continue as he told his son their story. The enchanted prince was now a king. And he traveled to all the neighboring kingdoms and lorddoms to propose banishing all the villains out of their lands and confine them, by magic, far away. They had all agreed to his plan and began rounding up every criminal, thug, and evil villain that they could find. And then in an act of pure spite, or at least that's what Gaston called it, the king sent all the villains to their island. Soon their happy home was transformed into a hellish prison. In the early days there was no technology, no hierarchy, nothing to keep chaos from running rampant. Soon disease spread and his mother fell ill. Gil was only three years old when his mother had passed away according to his father. He couldn't remember it himself, but he always felt a deep sorrow when he thought about his mother's absence from his life.
Gaston never truly recovered from the loss of his wife. He tried to be strong for his son's sake, teaching him all that he knew about how to survive and grow big and strong, but his despair grew with each passing day. As the island developed around them, people began breweries and numerous bars opened up all over the island. At fist Gaston went to the bars to brag about his strength and his past triumphs. But people soon lost interest in his tales, and he was reduced to spending most nights downing his sorrows in beer mugs and staggered home drunk. By the time Gil was twelve, he had spent more time taking care of his father, than Gaston spent caring for him.
Often Gaston would wake from his drunken stupors in a rage, yelling and screaming curses at the beast king. He believed that the beast had conspired against his happiness. He yelled out his many plans for revenge, vowing to kill the beast and his son. Then he would be free to take Belle back. Gaston took out his anger on anything near at hand. Kicking over furniture, smashing plates, and even attacking his own son whenever Gil wasn't fast enough to get out of his father's way. Over time Gil spent less and less time at home. He found the apartment in the abandoned sweet shop and made a home for himself there. But his father's words had planted seeds of resentment, bitterness, and hatred in his heart and mind. And these seeds grew and festered infecting Gil, until he believed that it was the people of Auradon who were really wicked and evil, especially the royal family that ruled over them. For his sweet, loving mother, for the man that his father used to be, he would have revenge. He would look into the eyes of the royal family and see the guilt of their sins. Then he would make them pay. And that's what he had intended to do with King Ben.
In spite of Uma's orders, Gil had intended to find the proof of the king's guilt and then torture him to death. Who cared if Uma needed live bait to catch Mal, the captain could still use her superior numbers to overwhelm the traitorous VKs. This was personal and no one was going to keep him from avenging his parents, no one would keep him from killing King Ben, and the rest of his family, if he could ever get to them. But when he held up Ben's face and looked into his eyes Gil saw something that he wasn't expecting. He saw himself.
He saw the fear that he had felt every time his father had beaten him. He saw the pain that he felt every time he thought of his mother. And then he saw something else. Something that he had never seen before and yet still recognized. He saw a pure and innocent nobility shining out of the king's face. It was so overwhelming that he had pushed it away, fearing that it would shine into his very soul and root out all the darkness that had grown there. He couldn't get away fast enough from the virtue radiating out of that man.
Now as he lay on his bed shaking with sobs, he accepted the fact that his father had been lying to him all these years. He had long suspected that the stories his father had told him about his mother and their perfect home on the island were just that, stories. He had never known the love of his mother, only the anger of his father. When he would collect his father from the bars, he heard what people said about Gaston. That he was a good-for-nothing. That he had run out on Gil's mother. And that Gaston had been forced to take responsibility for his son only after his mother had died. One of the women on the Isle had told him that she had known Gil's mother. According to her, his mother had been obsessed with Gaston, but ended up hating him after he had rejected her and their son. Gil hadn't wanted to believe her at the time. But if his father had lied about the royal family of Auradon being evil, what else had he lied about? These thoughts plagued Gil's mind as he slept away the night.