Prompt: From Ro (as my Gilbert): Send "Break Me" for an angsty drabble about our characters. Interpreted rather literally.
Rating: T.
Warnings: Abuse probably. Mental instability? Not very explicit though as the piece is mostly introspective as usual.
I go back and forth on whether or not I ship these two, but anyway, anything I write for Ro is not intended as shipping. And besides that, this is just Break beating the shit out of Gilbert so I don't know where you'd get shipping but, just to be clear I guess?
He is made to break everything.
She asked him to destroy her very existence and gave him the power to do so, made him poison to those "like him"; he destroyed his own past, destroyed his own self; he is the one who took destruction into his own name and became the art of breaking.
And, as things designed for an end are wont to do, he shall use what he is given and make good on what he is built for.
He has never been good at seeing things whole—he would rather them splintered and fragmented as he is and has been, in nice easy-to-understand pieces as they suffer. And this man (he is only a child in that red eye, even as he grows) is so very fragile, cracks spreading like veins through a resolve that seems so noble yet so very twisted and familiar—god, it's familiar, and that's what irritates him more than he has any idea how to put words to (though by god does he know the actions for it).
Ah, but he is so controlled, so contained—he is so level, so simple and selfish, not looking to others in such ways; he knows he is wrong, in some way, that he is warped and that he mustn't show it, that wishing to use this awful art is an ill of his. Yet his is not a perfect facade, etched strong in marble over the things he's never resolved; it wears thin, cracks and shows what lies beneath when pressed just a bit too far.
The raven should have seen, then, that the walls built to protect them both had eroded. But he didn't—and the elder isn't sure just what about words mostly-innocent has sent that wall crumbling, but he is sure that half of it was the destruction inside himself, always eating away at that calm face, and that the rest was some child's mis-step, for children often do not know the bounds of their words.
He is cruel—that's simply a truth—but right now he is strung so thin that his entire person seems to be entropy organized into some shape that resembles a human being with another half-broken at his feet. But he has never been good at doing things halfway, and his own affections seem to be eating away at that wall between them even more, for he did destroy his very self once, as well.
"You've become so spoiled," he almost growls through a grin, chaos leaking out of the cracks in his expression as he draws back his cane, punctuates his words with another blow. "You won't be able to protect anything like that, Lord Gilbert Nightray." He hisses the name—it's correct, technically speaking, but to them both it surely feels wrong; it tastes a bit like iron on his tongue.
"Did you misunderstand me?" his tone grows light as his expression stays so horridly mismatched, stuck smiling somewhere between pain and pleasure and amusement and pity and apology. The cane lands again, not leaving room for answer; he shouldn't answer, after all, shouldn't even be able to. "You must be cruel enough to destroy anything else… yet, you're dreadfully soft. Why, you may be even softer than you used to be."
"If you can't destroy anything, you can't protect anything—
"Maybe if you break, yourself, you'll understand."