exsilium | text; where do we keep the lost and found around this place anyway? (forward dated to late 7/13)

( Collette smiles across at him, fingers interlacing in her lap as her hands came back down to rest. )

No problem! Thanks for being a pretty amazing cook. And a bit of a neat freak.

( She winks; past having him rearrange things for what would work for him and most people, she hadn't actually minded ~~wrestling away laundry and kicking him out of the kitchen~~ learning to compromise with someone much more compulsive about keeping domestically busy than anyone else she'd lived with up to now. )

Have you always been cooking? I've been learning more since I got here. Grilled cheese, eggs, pasta, rice, that was most of what I could handle before. Oh, salad too! I'm really good at salads.

( Her lips quirk up in a lopsided, sheepish grin. )

They're not pretty, but they taste good.

( Yes. Discuss food over food. She's achieving new heights of distractive, and curious, conversation. )

Did you want to be a chef when you were little?

[It's the one time that his skills actually come in handy; cooking and cleaning. And though it's also the one thing that he gets praised for without mockery, it's also mostly a useless thing to be handy with back home. At the Nightray house, there's no need for him to lift a finger with the number of maids and butlers that tend to the family. His own apartment in the capital city of Reveil is modest, small, and on a middle floor in the middle of the chaos that accompanies a city that large. It's easy to keep tidy when he's actually there. And even Pandora, a mismatch of servants from all levels of noble houses, stays running under its own power.

Pandora needs soldiers who don't mind bloodying their hands. They don't need people knitting scarves and preparing cupcakes.]

Not exactly. I've been a servant as long as I can remember, so it came naturally. But I learned to bake because -

[He hesitates, sits up a little straighter. This is a Very Important Story.]

Um, it was mostly because of Break.

( Now there's a story. She focuses all of her attention on Gilbert, eyes widening. )

For Break? Why's that?

( The love-hate depedanceship that wasn't is an ongoing source of confusion and fascination for Collette. She tucks a stray bit of hair behind her ear, waiting for Gilbert's response. Or how much of one she'll get out of him at the moment, as they sit at the dinner table with different intent than what it'd been laid out for. )

[He glances down at the table, hands fidgeting in his lap as he recalls that day so many years ago.]

When I'd first started working for Pandora, I was about sixteen. I'd noticed around that time that Break, who acted as my superior, was looking too pale and skinny. I asked his mistress about his health and - ah...

[He'll just skip the story that Lady Sharon told him and cut right to the end. It's too terrifying to tell at the dinner table!]

Well, I learned then that even though his diet is poor, but he can usually eat sweets with no trouble. I borrowed Pandora's kitchen and practiced a while before I was finally able to produce something that he'd accept. It's an embarrassing reason, but there's no doubt that it was a huge help to me.

( Superior, Pandora, a mistress... Collette listens with fascination. She's fairly sure by the end of it that Pandora might not be a person, and that Break is probably an untreated diabetic if his world follows any logic like what she knows. She wonders when and how he went blind... but that's all incidental. )

You really care about him a lot, too, don't you?

( Not that she so much doubted this... but hearing about Gilbert when he'd been her age is interesting. People don't talk so much about their teenage years around her. She finds it funny, considering how much more willing they were to say do or don't do this thing, but never really showing some of how they grew and learned -- like a certain lack of relatability. Weird! Maybe adults just wanted to forget they were ever a teenager in the first place. )

What's Pandora? Does Oz work for Pandora too? How long had Break been there before you met him?

[He grunts at the first question. Nope, he'll never admit out loud that he gives Break a second thought most of the time. Caring has nothing to do with their arrangement; all these years they'd only been using one another. There was never anything else to it.]

Hm? [He looks up at her, surprised by all of the questions. He'd started speaking assuming that Oz and Break had already explained most of their situation at home to her already. They'd all seemed to know each other well enough by the time Gil had arrived.]

Oz never told you anything about it?

Oz spends a lot of time talking about anything that's not really about Oz.

( She examines Gil's face, contemplative. )

It's not that unusual. Learning about his chain - suspicions I have with that, too - none of that is stuff he really wants to talk about. He just ends up having too because he uses it, and apparently goes crazy with it, too.

( Concern shows on her face, followed soon after by a bright, reassuring smile -- she's pinned Oz down to talk about that before, quite literally -- but it's not someplace Oz has volunteered to speak on. He's enough of a charming little liar, defensive and disbelieving of his own worth to others, to not want to weigh people down with what isn't light, happy, and nice.

She recognizes what she does all too well, sees it reflected in a different way with Gilbert.

What were they all up to? Something violent, or the chain Oz has wouldn't be capable of the destruction it does. )

Do you have a chain too?

[Ah, that makes more sense. Of course Oz wouldn't want to talk about himself, his own accomplishments. Actually, he wonders now if the people he's met here would even realize that he was nobility back home, the heir to one of the highest ranking duke families in the entire country. The details of all of that aren't worth getting into, of course, but the life he lives here is significantly different than the one he was destined to live back home.

He tilts his chin down slightly. He's seen the madness that takes over when Oz uses his Chain, and he's tried hard to keep him from using that power since he's been here. But at the same time, he doesn't have any other way to protect himself against the cruelty of this world.]

I do. Mine is...ah. Different.

[BUT LET'S NOT GET INTO THAT LONG EXPLANATION.]

Break has worked with Pandora longer than me, but the three of us are associated with them now. I guess you could call them a police force...one that wields more power than the monarchy.

That's some police force.

( Frightening, if monarchy for them was like historical monarchies she knows. Less so if they were talking about a monarchy really run by a group of elected officials. Then it wasn't so hard to end up with a group more powerful than the monarchs, was it?

Bah, she has no clue! That whole system is outside of her daily know how. )

How's yours different?

( She wants to know. Much as she wants to ask something of Gilbert that she's asked of Oz. She wonders if his answer will be the more honest of the two, out of sheer concern, or if he'll be a better liar for the same reason. )

[The abyss. That's the only thing different. Pandora's trump card - in the most literal of ways. A nightmare that is impossible to explain unless you're standing at the edge looking in, and even then to do so is to reenforce just how real that nightmare can become.

Gil hesitates, and then finally answers. ]

It's not exactly proper dinner conversation...but to put it simply, Pandora holds more power because of Chains.

( She hears the hesitation as if it carries a weight of its own. It does, really; the pauses and silences of people mean as much as the way they hold themselves, how they choose to meet your gaze or look away.

Collette straightens, nodding as if what he'd said made a great deal of sense. It did, but only the kind that comes along with recognizing that power is sometimes in the hand holding the reigns of destruction. Oz alone could destroy so completely it was frightening. If all of them could, in some way or another, police wasn't the proper term to encapsulate what they did.

She's not sure what the proper term would be. )

Gilbert...

( She begins, face solemn and serious for the moment. She wants to ask him a question she's asked Oz; one she knows Oz undersold like he will always because of whatever it is he thinks himself to be. A member of Pandora... but from how Gilbert speaks, not always. )

What does Pandora fight against?

( But of course, there is always the lead in. Trying to understand what it is they keep at bay in order to justify the danger. Her soft curiosity is almost out of place, warmer than the cooling food on the table before the both of them. )

[His silence is even more telling now. Whatever emotion he'd attempted to plaster on his face to hide the true weight of the topic vanishes. He's been here for enough weeks now, seen enough of this world that the last memory of his own has already started to become muddled, but he remembers his brother's words as though he'd just spoken them. Gil, the Baskervilles are trying to put the Abyss back the way it was and should be. He and Leo had condemned Pandora for doing the exact opposite of what they'd always claimed, switched the enemy for the savior. He can't say for certain who had been lying back then, but it hurts his head to think about it, broken glass in his head reflecting back memories that still cut too deep to recall.]

...It's more accurate to say that they 'protect' more than 'fight'.

[It's obvious that he's stretching the truth here for the sake of sparing her a long and terrifying explanation.]

Just like this world, there are horrific things out there that people need to be protected from.

Aren't most people fighting to protect something, or someone?

( She wonders honestly, even as she sees him try to make Pandora and its Chains something nice. But they really can't be, can they? Power at a cost, like everything else. Morphing at the cost of life.

Life... )

How quickly will it kill him?

[She's hit the nail on the head again, and Gilbert dips his chin down to hide the obvious expression on his face this time. For all he time he'd spent attempting to deny what he once was, a useless, nervous, crybaby of a boy, that's one thing he's never been able to develop; any semblance of a pokerface.]

It won't. [He answers, voice resolute even though his eyes still betray just how nervous the prospect makes him.]

There's no way that I'll let him die.

( She had similar difficulties when she wasn't hiding behind a smile. It made watching Gilbert an interesting entertainment, if she were being callous; part of her could be, when particularly tired, though the greater portion would still see it as a benefit. She likes knowing people all over the board in terms of expression. It's one of the endlessly fascinating parts of human, and sentient, interaction.

What is means while she watches Gilbert now unsettles her, but it helps in a way to see that he's not comfortable with the idea, and so resolute in standing up against it. Wanting to save someone important to him... a friend, maybe close enough to be family? She gets that. Her bond was nowhere near that strong with Oz, but by and large, it wasn't with most people. So it's with a sense of amusement at herself, in how she structure the importance and friends, and in knowing what she's already said to Oz, forehead pressed against his while he lay pinned beneath her, that she speaks now. )

Then I guess that means I'll help ground you, too, as long as you're both here. ( Her smile is warm, though the set of her eyes and jaw is determined. She's tired of losing friends. For the times she can help... then she will try. ) I want to see you both be okay. No matter how often the Initiative can bring someone back...

( No matter if you are already someone the Initiative has brought back, just to fight their war... )

It's nicer to live uninterrupted, don't you think? Where things are still exciting because you get to have firsts, or seconds, or ninth times of trying. I'd like that for Oz. For you, too, Bertie!

( It's a slide into nicknames again, partly beause it's easier, partly because it's meant to be offputting enough to make the rest sound overly sentimental, for all that she's dead (ha-ha) earnest on the subject matter.

Wow. Dinner was far more serious than she'd ever intended. Collette reaches out and adjusts her plate, then looks to the nearest dish. )

Shall we?

--You're still insisting on 'Bertie'?

[He sounds grumpier than he looks, but he does his best to glare across the table at her. It's hard though, when she's speaking so highly of his young master. About keeping him safe no matter how many do-overs there may or may not be here. There's no sense in living propped up by such nonsensical hope.

He sighs and then reaches for a plate as well, to answer her question.]

'Gilbert' is just as many syllables.

I like Bertie.

( Simple and to the point. She does glance his way, offering a half smile -- she sees when it annoys him, and she'd be lying if that wasn't part of the fun. Nick names were part affection, part a desire to make sure people knew you (even if it was to know to be irritated by you).

As for the food... Some of this, yes, let's try that. )

What's Gilbert mean, anyway?

[Yes good let's eat this thing that they just made for that kid who never showed up.]

Hm? I don't understand what you mean...

Like, as a name. What's Gilbert mean? Collette's from Nicole, from Nicholas. It means people's cvictory! That sort of thing.

( She passes one bowl his way. )

[He takes it and spoons some food onto his plate.]

I don't think it has a meaning? It's just a name.

[But he sounds disappointed in his own answer. It could just be that he never thought to question meanings behind names, but honestly, the subject has never been brought up.]

All names come from somewhere. It's why we're not like... called Dude and -- Girl and Boy all our lives! Why'd you get named Gilbert in the first place?

( To be fair, she was amused by naming conventions from places outside of her realm of experience. Caesar's still cracks her up today.

Not to mention the kid named Loki who lived with her for a while. )

If it doesn't have a meaning, we'll just have to make one up together!

[His name has always been the only thing he's remembered from childhood aside from less than a handful of brief, empty memories of his brother and Jack. Its meaning is 'the name that Oz could call me when he met me' and nothing more.]

To be honest...I don't remember.

( She blinks, sampling some of what's on her plate. For a moment, she thinks Gilbert might go on.

He doesn't. )

What do you mean?

( I don't remember could mean all kinds of things. Amnesia would be the like, cinematic version, but the more down to earth was simple. Forgetting what he'd been told, never really knowing, hearing it when he was younger and forgetting the details over time. )

[Unfortunately, his life is a terrible movie cliche.]

I don't have any memories from before I was nine years old.

[Though he doesn't sound too terribly upset about this fact.]

( Cue her blinking. Oh. Woah! )

Trauma, or a head injury? I knew a few kids who had it both ways, but more who had massive head trauma instead of like, emotional trauma. Nine years gone like that? That sucks!

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