A/N:
Weapons Frayer; Next chapter is my favorite!
Laurel Silver; for those of you who struggled in the last round of "Guess Laurel's OTP", here's a second round for you!
[Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day] Gilbert wanders down the empty, lonely hallway. It's evening, most inmates are sleeping, dreaming, and the air is suffocatingly silent. The grey walls and floor have become almost like a home to him, even if it cages him from his old dream of living and working, free to be Gilbert and to love Elizabeta, to send spam e-mails to Ludwig and help Matthias to shove feminist, pro-choice leaflets through Alaric's letterbox, usually given to them by Miss Kirkland with a grin and a cheeky wink. Small dreams, but good enough for Gilbert.
His cell door closes with a finalising clang as it locks. Gilbert slumps down onto his uncomfortable bed, massaging the back of his neck in an attempt to relax. He throws his head back onto a thin pillow, and tries to sleep.
A face fills his vision. It's female, yet too soft and feminine-pretty to be Elizabeta. A pair of oval glasses balance on a slightly upturned nose, making pale purple eyes seem huge. Curly blonde hair cascades down around the face like a silky halo. A soft voice calls, the face's mouth moving in tandem with it, Gilbert barely being able to make out the words "Vanya… are you okay?"
"Who's Vanya?" Gilbert grunts, and the face frowns.
Gilbert blinks, and the woman is gone, the cracked grey ceiling hanging high above him. Blink again, and she's back, and the ceiling is lower and whiter and less cracked and the room is warmer and cosier. Every few seconds he seems to switch, from warmth to cold, from white to grey, from alone to the company of the woman, from silence to the soft voice.
He throws his head to the side, to face where the mirror in his cell should be. As the woman vanishes again, he catches a glimpse in the mirror for just a few seconds. His red eyes have paled to a cool violet, his hair had lengthened to messy mop, his face is more wrinkled and older. He has somehow become taller, his jumpsuit now a couple of inches too short and clinging to his belly now puffed with a layer of winter fat. Scars and tattoos line his skin, and something cold and heavy weighs his pocket down.
Gilbert pulls the pocket watch out, just staring at it. It's a little golden thing, unengraved and very plain, a short chain hanging from the top. He presses the button and the front cover pops open. The face is complex, with not three but seven different hands. A border of lines surround the clock face, the tips of four of these hands reaching various places on the border. These four are not moving, but the other three are whirring madly, first clockwise then back anti clockwise, stopping on quarter past twelve on the second every time. A single hole gapes in the very centre, a tiny key concealed in the inside of the cover.
Gilbert takes the key out carefully, matching it up with the hole and pressing it in. It moves easily, and as soon as it clicks into place, his surroundings stop flickering back and forth immediately, stopping in a strange golden area full of a glowing mist. The place smells salty, and bells seem to be ringing somewhere in the distance. The place feels surreal, dreamlike.
[What do you want from me?, Adam Lambert] The woman frowns at him "Do you think that you could move, eh?" she asks, voice still soft and smooth despite the clear impatience woven into the words.
"Huh?" is Gilbert's only answer before a hard, heavy hand knocks into his ribs, shoving him to the side, and Gilbert realises he had been sitting on someone.
The someone, the man from his reflection, sits up, rubbing his stomach where Gilbert had seemingly been sitting, the woman fawning over him.
"Who in the hell are you two?" Gilbert demands.
The pair blink at him. The man turns away, seemingly embarrassed, grabbing his partner and pulling her close, almost hiding behind her.
"I'm Madeline," she introduces, "And this is Ivan."
"Ivan?" Gilbert asks, "You're the motherfucker that got me arrested!"
Ivan hides behind Madeline, but Gilbert tries to get round her to glare the man down, the act only ending in a game of Here We Go 'Round the Madeline.
"Stop it!" Madeline snaps. Gilbert stops in his tracks, and Ivan reels back as if she's thrown boiling water over his head.
Madeline glares at Ivan. Ivan stares at his feet, playing with his scarf in his thick fingers, and Gilbert is reminded of a teacher scolding a small child.
"I'm really sorry I got you arrested," Ivan says eventually, Russian, not German and definitely not Prussian, accent heavy and prominent in his speech.
"Really?" Gilbert retorts, "Well, 'sorry' doesn't get me out of prison, does it? It doesn't get my name cleared, does it? It doesn't get me back to my life, does it?"
"I'm working that out!" Ivan whines.
"Work it out faster!" Gilbert snaps.
"We're working on it!" Madeline snaps back, "This is a difficult thing to fix!"
"What is?" Gilbert demands.
"Your arrest lead to a paradox," Madeline explains, "Paradoxes can usually be avoided, but you ending up in prison created one. We're not sure why, but we need to fix it."
"So, what, you've got to bust me out of prison?" Gilbert asks, confused.
"No, that's not how paradoxes work," Madeline says.
"Oh, so paradoxes have rules, do they?" Gilbert asks.
"Yes," Ivan answers, "To fix them, we have to eliminate them. To eliminate them, we have to get everyone involved in the paradox back to the original place the offshoot happened, and go back to just before it started and stop the actions that caused the paradox from happening again, and then the timeline will fix itself from there."
"Of course, it's not a foolproof plan," Madeline adds, "Because timelines can't really be 'fixed'. There will always be cracks in it, and memories from the offshoot will seep over. Muggles call it deja vu."
"Muggles?" Gilbert asks.
"Non-time travelling folk," Madeline says with a grin. Gilbert just frowns.
"Where were you arrested?" Ivan asks.
"College campus," Gilbert answers, "Me and Liz got completely smashed. Some Slavic guy over the phone payed for all our drinks, so we had a drinking competition, and wait just a diddly-darn minute!"
Ivan's face is the very picture of childish guilt; eyes down cast, teeth on his lower lip, cheeks and ears red, fingers practically knotted in his scarf.
"Ivan?" Madeline asks, voice dropping in pitch as she speaks, and Gilbert is once again reminded of how his teachers would speak to him and Matthias whenever they did basically anything. "What did you do?"
"I wanted Detective Jones to leave me alone," Ivan speaks with a pout, "Because I wanted to not be on the run from him all the time. So when I met Gilbert, I was so excited. He fit my basic description, and even called himself 'Prussian' not 'German'."
"So you set me up to get me arrested and Jones off you back," Gilbert hisses at him, "You arsehole!"
"I did not know would cause this much trouble," Ivan defends.
"You ruined my life to make yours a little bit easier!"
"I didn't give a damn!" Ivan yells, making both Madeline and Gilbert jump, "All I wanted was to give it up and just live happily with Madeline, without worrying about that asshole American Smile appearing on my doorstep. I wanted Madline to be able to live without ever getting connected to me and what I have done. I wanted to just be at peace, but Detective Jones could never let me do that. You have to understand that I know it was selfish, but I wanted to do it for Madeline."
[Breathe (2am), Anna Nalick] "Yeah, it was selfish," Gilbert says after a pause, and Ivan tenses up in anger, "But you have to understand that I've got somebody too, and you getting me put in prison has separated me from her. So, I need you to get this fixed so I can go back to my life with her."
Ivan nods.
"Now, how the fuck do I get back to the prison?" Gilbert asks, "It's not comfortable, but it's less freaky than these glow clouds."
"All hail the glow cloud!" Madeline cries, and Ivan smiles at her. He digs a hand into his pocket and frowns.
"Looking for this?" Gilbert asks, pulling the little gold watch out of his pocket.
"Yes," Ivan answers, snatching it from Gilbert, "Where did you get it from?"
"It appeared in my pocket when we were doing that switch-y thing. I might be in prison, but I am not a criminal, Braginski."
Ivan takes his watch wordlessly, and pulls the key out. The mist and glow clouds warp and darken, until his cell surrounds him with its cracks and its greyness.
"And Gilbert?"
"Yes?"
Ivan stares hard at him, handing the watch back to the Prussian. "You only have a certain amount of time to use the watch. If you do use it for more than the appropriate amount, then time itself may shatter, and then everything will be screwed up. Understand?"
"Ja."
Weapons Frayer; Yay! I won!
Laurel Silver; Leet's doo the tiime waarp agaaaiiinnn!
We own nothing