sirenspull_logs | a wound like this isn't enough to kill me

Who: Gilbert Nightray, Oz Vessalius, Ahiru
When: Backdated to after the raid on the hunting grounds
Where: Gil's bedroom
Summary: Fake-canon updating is painful.
Warnings: Spoilers for recent Pandora Hearts chapters, graphic descriptions of blood/injury

Gilbert Nightray has been cut down before. He's no stranger to the sight of his own blood. For as weak of a personality as he's always had, his stamina has always been on par with that of Pandora's strongest fighters, even when he was still a child and he'd stepped in front of his master's blade to take, what should have been, a fatal blow in order to keep him from making an even bigger mistake.

The wound had bled, infected, but quickly healed into an ugly reminder of his pathetic failure to protect Oz down the front of his chest. He'd been poisoned later, and though he'd been close to death, he'd recovered. The Cheshire Cat had sliced him through with his claws just before pushing him back into his realm of Alice's hidden memories, and though he'd had trouble, he still healed quick enough to return to his master's side once again.

Break had told him...and then later, Vincent as well, that he'd once been carried through the Abyss, a child half-dead in, what he assumes, could only have been another failed attempt to protect what was most important to him. And no matter what lies Vincent has told him, he knows the truth. He remembers that warm feeling that Jack had given him, that feeling that he had a place to 'belong', something to protect, someone who needed him. He remembers...

He remembers this warm feeling of blood and pain erupting in his chest as the bullet hits its mark.

As soon as he collapses, pain shoots through his head as well. It's familiar, and familiarity is painful. The rest of the fight is chaotic enough that no one notices Gil crawl his way over to hide himself behind a bunch of bushes, hands shaking as he attempts to pull his cravat off and use that to staunch the bleeding. But the more time goes on, the more that he's sure that he must be bleeding out and getting to the point where he should maybe call for help, he...doesn't get worse. He's still bleeding, yes, but he's not feeling the symptoms of blood loss either. For a long while, the sound of fire and fighting turning to white noise in his head, he simply stares down at the wound as though he's expecting it to get worse.

Eventually his breathing evens out, the pain starts to dull, and he finds himself coming to his feet and...simply walking away.

The police and ambulances have enough to deal with that one more bloodied man escapes their attention. Others were injured far worse, and he's not asking for help. He's just trying to get home and keep whatever lost memory trying to surface in his head from actually becoming clear. It hurts too much; much worse than the wound in his chest.

He can't just walk in the front door like this, so he pulls a maneuver that he used on his brother only a few months prior when he was still here. He climbs up the side of the house and pulls himself through his own bedroom window in hopes that he's escaped notice from the other residents of the estate, despite the fact that he's been missing since early the morning.

He'll check his NV for messages after his hands stop shaking and the bloody clothes are thrown away.

[ooc - idk how you guys want to do this TIME PARADOX THREADING?!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She goes completely still for a minute, not saying a word. When she does speak, it's soft and fragile.

"Did they take you?"

"No, not me."

He answers quickly and opts to wipe his forehead on a part of his arm that is still dry of blood.

There's confusion for a moment, before she recalls her conversation with Mary recently. But that had to be a mistake, didn't it? He wouldn't—

All of a sudden, she realizes that he's never been one to care about his own safety. Again, it takes time for words to come to her, and she wipes at her eyes to stop the tears that are welling up rapidly.

"You went there? Why would you do that? You could have - look at you, you're covered in blood, you could have gotten hurt even worse! You could have been killed, and I would have never... You didn't say anything, and you could have just never come back, and - what would I have done?"

She realizes how selfish that sounds, and suddenly, the bulb in his light fixture shatters, raining glass down onto the floor. She gasps, frightened, and then quickly reaches up to wipe at her eyes again.

"Ahiru--"

It makes his chest hurt even worse to hear her say those words. Really, with what's happened, he should be hurt. In the back of his head he even has the idea that he should be dead, or at the very least looking for medical aid. The bullet had been real, the pain had been real, the blood is still soaked into his clothes and his skin. But he's still standing here in front of her, reaching out instinctively to grab her arm.

But as the bulb shatters, he brings that arm back up to cover his own eyes. After a second, he blinks and turns his head up to look at where the fixture used to be, stunned into silence.

Even before he pulls his hand away, she's taking a step back, frightened and moving away from the touch. She looks up at the light fixture in fear for a few seconds before taking a deep breath to compose herself. Her words are carefully controlled when she begins to speak again, though it's not hard to tell that she's still angered.

"Don't act like this isn't a big deal! What would Oz have done? Alice? Ciel and Alois? You can't just - do things like that!"

It's hypocritical, of course, but she can't deny that she feels betrayed somehow.

Oz...

He hasn't even stopped to think yet what Oz would say or do if he'd been killed. The weight of the situation hadn't let off of him enough for that to even attempt to sink in. Would he have cried? Would he be cross? Would he be scared? Lonely? There would be no way to know if he wasn't able to see his face.

But Yosuke had been taken, and for him Gil had always been willing to fight with everything he had. That was the sort of person that he wanted to be for Oz; someone who he could look up to and see as a strong person, not the coward that he'd been so many years ago.

Of course, hearing Ahiru's words now, he doesn't find himself very strong at all. It's too heavy to bear, and he finds himself falling back to rest against the wall, one hand reaching up to clutch at the wound in his chest again.

"I - I'm sorry..."

She senses, somehow, that she's gone too far, and the anger ebbs away all of a sudden. All that's left if the source of that anger: fear. Would she have been so furious if she wasn't terrified about the prospect of losing him, and never seeing him again? Of course not. The tears, which had stopped for a short span of time, resume, and she wipes them away with her thumb, taking in a shaky breath.

"Don't apologize, just..."

With a grimace, she moves back towards him and wraps her arms around him. It's different in this body, awkward and unfamiliar, but that feeling is overridden by her need to know he's really there.

"Please let me take you to the hospital."

He tenses, freezes in place to feel her unfamiliar arms around him. She's supposed to be smaller than him, a fragile person who is easy to pick up, to carry away from danger. His head is still spinning from exertion, confusion and pain, so he doesn't risk moving or pushing her away, as strange as it feels to be held by this person that he doesn't know.

"...It's already stopped bleeding," he whispers. "I just need to clean myself up."

She puts her head against his shoulder, trying to stop the tears from leaking out. Her hands tense into the fabric of the back of his shirt, too, and she waits until she's sure her voice won't crack to speak.

"At least let me call a healer. There could be a bad scar, or it could get infected somehow..."

"It's..."

He bites his tongue before he can finish. Saying 'it's already healing' would be admitting the strange truth that he's learned, and he can't admit something like that now. He doesn't understand it enough to say it out loud.

"I can't - I - I can take care of it myself!"

"If you could take care of anything yourself, you wouldn't be like this now!"

It's harsher than she's meant, snapped, and she immediately finds herself regretting the words. She sighs, disappointed, but it's more at her lack of control than anything he's done this time.

"Dad, I..."

That gets to him to shut up pretty fast. He turns away from her, depressed and completely silent. It's true, if he were more capable, then this sort of thing wouldn't have to happen. He can't even open his mouth to apologize any more; an apology is meaningless when it comes from someone incapable of ever backing it up.

She looks away, her posture communicating an apology, but she doesn't speak for a minute or so. What if she says something that makes it even worse? It's clear her last comment had hurt him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say something like that."

"I deserved it."

He groans, reaches up to touch the wound again. It doesn't hurt as badly as it did, but it still needs to be cleaned. Though right now the only thing he wants to do is find some dark corner to curl back up in and drown in self-loathing for making her worry.

"No, you didn't."

She winces in sympathy as her attention is drawn to the injury again, and then takes a deep breath.

"Do you need me to help? Do you want me to leave?"

He doesn't want to use those words, no, but he also wants to clean himself up alone. It's bad enough that she's had to see him like this, she shouldn't have to witness anything further. She has enough to deal with at the moment, as if having to move around in a strange, unfamiliar body weren't bad enough.

"You shouldn't have to see..."

He sighs, softly.

"If I can't get it cleaned up, I'll let you call someone. Okay?"

a wound like this isn't enough to kill me

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