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Gilbert von Obsidian knew fear. He had experienced it so much throughout his life after all. And yet, as he closed his bedroom door and turned to find a familiar figure curled up in the black sheets of his bed, he wondered if he had ever experienced this.
It was different from the fear he remembered feeling towards the creature that had been considered his father. He remembers the distance, the avoidance, the protection, the childish feeling of needing to stay away from whatever that thing that stalked the palace hallways was. After the turning point – the image flashes unbidden in his mind again, always, always returning: black stone and black skies and heads on pikes and the sheer abject disinterest from those around him – his fear merged with his hate. In the Emperor's last moments, Gilbert realised one of his greatest fears had already become a truth: he was as much a monster as the man whose body fell and disappeared from his sight.
It was different still from the fear which lurked deep in his heart, which echoed with every thump of his cane, which lingered in every footprint he left behind. The fear he had been taught, which had been carved so carefully into the dark marrow of his bones. No one could be trusted. Every interaction would be analysed, every person would be guilty until proven innocent, every action would be a source of suspicion. It became fuel: for every moment of fear Gilbert felt, he paid it back twice-fold. He was the most feared man on the continent now. Every betrayal, every deceit, every knife was returned. This was Obsidian after all, lessons had to be learnt. It had always been this way.
It was different even from the fear he felt about his sickness. In his youth, he had been afraid of spending his entire life locked in his rooms. He longed to breathe fresh air and play in the grass like other children did. He wanted to feel the sun warm his skin as flowers swayed in the wind around him. In his weakest hours as a child, he would stare beyond the curtains of his bedframe, beyond the curtains of his windows, poised like delicate and intricate bars of a prison. Half-awake, his eyes would linger on clouds that floated so far out of reach of anyone or anything. He would wonder what it could possibly be like to be so free. As he grew older, he found Rhoderic and made plans – plans for a new Obsidian, a new order, a new world even – and his fear changed shape. It was no longer about where it would trap him, but when. There was so much work to be done, so many fine lines to tread and needles to thread. So much to dismantle. Every moment had to be worth something, no matter how much pain he was in.
Fear was a normal part of Gilbert von Obsidian's life. Receiving or inflicting, it was so ingrained in him that sometimes it barely registered anymore. It was fear that had brought him this far after all.
This was different. A feeling unique, reserved only for you (so many things in his life were just for you).
It was still quite novel to him, to walk into his bedroom of at least ten years and find you sleeping so soundly. His life had been full of novelty since he had pulled you into it and you had decided to stay. Mostly, he was delighted. Sometimes, the pit that opened up in his stomach threatened to swallow him whole. And very rarely, he would feel like this. Breath caught, chest tight, eyes wide, a pounding echoing from the back of his head throughout his whole body. Terror coursing through every inch of him. And it was from you. You, who wept for everyone's pain but your own. You, who reached your hand out to everyone with no lies in your heart. You, who had accepted his everything as it was, whose only wish for him was to find his happiness again.
You, who loved him.
(He knew this, though it still didn't make any sense to him. He had called your love absurd and mad and baffling more times than he could count. He knew it, and you took every opportunity to show it (soft affections and stern lectures both), though he understood that he still didn't trust it. Trust you. It was a discussion you had had before, a truth that you faced with your usual determination and clarity, even as the weight of it tilted his world view.)
This feeling brought out his worst traits. The easiest solution was always to remove the source. It made his vision blurry and made that old voice sing (kill it kill it kill it). It was the closest he got to panic, he realised, the desire to wrap his hands around your throat and silence you. Like forgetting to control his strength in a fight. Like using full force to throw you like a ragdoll against a wall to protect you from a knife. It only took a moment. It was dangerous. For both of you. Because at the same time, his solace in the dark for so long had been you. Akatsuki's stories, the you he met in Rhodolite, and now the you here now in Obsidian, in his hands. Every time he had felt himself drowning, your hand had reached for him to pull him back to the surface. You would probably never quite grasp just how deeply he relied on you.
It made him ache.
Gilbert knew what you gave up for him. He knew all the concessions you made to him, how much you let him get away with. He had watched you butt heads with people for far less than what he had done to you, watched you not give an inch only to turn to him and give him a mile. He knew his worst habits and the worst he would do if you let him. You didn't, you couldn't, otherwise you would stop being yourself (and there would be no greater betrayal to Gilbert von Obsidian after all). But he was more aware than anyone how much space you gave him and how little he gave back to you.
In one moment – when you had stared into his soul, gentle but unyielding, and asked him what he truly wanted for Obsidian, for the people he worked so hard for – he had wondered what it would have meant for the two of you if he was 'clean'. If he could shed off the layers of grime and blood and filth that made this nation, as if he hadn't been mired and marinated in it since his birth. As if the name Obsidian, a name for fear and pain, wasn't moulded into his features, wasn't the only thing people could see when they looked at him. He felt the need to scrub at his skin and flesh and hair and eyes until there was nothing of Obsidian left and it was just him, just Gilbert, once again. And he could hold you without worrying about the smell of blood sticking to his skin and the image of dirt smearing across your gentle face, and you could smile and hold him like you had no care in the world and maybe you could both just be happy for the rest of your lives.
It was absurd. You had made him into an absurdity incarnate.
There was no coming back from everything the Emperor of Obsidian had done. And Gilbert was not one for regretting the choices he had made and the path that he had carved forward. But just in that moment, he couldn't help but wonder if you wished that of him. The look you had in your eyes sometimes when he returned from his work, when he knew you could see and smell and feel what he had done, made him wonder if you wished he could be better. (You didn't. You didn't wish he was better, you wished he was happier. You had told him that. Had told Gil, who hates liars, that.)
A ridiculous thought flits through his mind, almost making him laugh into the black night of his bedroom, over the pounding of his heart. Chevalier would be able to teach himself to be who you wanted him to be. It wasn't often that he compared himself to the Rhodolite prince this way; comparisons were inevitable considering the similarities they shared. Gilbert himself had always considered them two halves of the same coin – alike but clearly different. Chevalier Michel and Gilbert von Obsidian would never know love, would never know friendship, and would never find a middle ground. They would always be walking in opposite directions (he had believed that to the very end, and yet the stubbornness with which you wrangled him and Chevalier into each other’s company at every opportunity was almost scary. He expected it of himself. But to see Chevalier coerced into it too was beyond his expectations. They had both finally found something they agreed on: you were a force to be reckoned with when you wanted to be.)
But you had fallen in love with him as he was. And you had never denied what he was. Neither of you would have gotten this far if you had tried to ignore it after all. And so perhaps the terror came from the acceptance, the (almost) unconditional devotion. Perhaps for the Emperor of Obsidian, the weight of such feelings was just so unfathomably heavy that he felt it would be the death of him.
How strange, when his death was something Gilbert had never shied away from.
-----
"Gil?"
Your voice in the dark, sudden as a whip and gentle as a summer breeze, startled him. It sent a bolt down his spine again, hot and cold all at once. It made him dizzy how much he wanted to wrap himself in that sound, layer it fiercely around his wounded heart as it ached and throbbed in his chest. He felt like he might cave in on himself at any moment. He felt as fragile as you looked. So at home, unfurling in his black sheets, stretching the drowsiness away in his bed, blinking bright eyes open in his room to find him in the dark (just like you always did).
"Gil." Your voice was rougher than usual with the weight of sleep and small in the blackness of the room at night. You found him still. He could see well enough the way your gaze softened and your lips curved, even with half your face still buried in the pillow (his pillow too, since you seemed to be lying on his side of the bed). Your hand emerged from the covers and stretched out from the safety of the bed to him, inviting. It was cute, the way you wiggled your fingers to encourage him, the way the sleeve of what was definitely one of his shirts was too long and draped over your knuckles. It looked like salvation.
He felt frozen, his muscles locked at the chill that ran up and down his spine. He wondered how much you could actually see as you lifted your head to squint and pout at him. It felt like something in his chest had opened up inside him. Like his heart had been precariously placed on a trap door and this one moment was the trigger. An ache in his ribcage, a weightlessness in his stomach, a chill in his spine. He wanted to close his eyes, to turn the handle of the door and leave and find a less frightening room to spend the night (the infirmary would do). And when you asked in the morning, he could laugh at the idea that you had missed him so much you dreamt of him coming to you in the night.
Gilbert von Obsidian was very used to fear. But it had been a long time since he had run from it.
Forcing past the stiffness in his limbs, he reached for your hand. He was still dressed in his formal attire, not even close to ready for bed. But he didn't have time for that now. The brush of your fingers against his even through his glove didn't shock him like he expected it to. His fingers tingled, almost ached, like his body had been craving your touch whilst his mind was preoccupied. Your fingers slid against his, skin finally meeting skin as you pressed your hand against his. He wondered again just how much you could see of his expression, but perhaps his silence had been a better indicator. You held him gently, reverently almost, even when you were just barely on this side of your dreamscape. You pulled him closer. His knees brushed the bedframe now. His hand, in yours, was turned softly. You brushed your lips across his knuckles and the warmth rushed through him again. It felt like something had taken an axe to the inside of his chest, the way it seemed ready to crack open. His hand was pressed against your cheek as you laid a proper kiss on the flesh of his palm. It made his lungs stutter.
He felt raw. Exposed and vulnerable. And when you looked at him, he couldn't decide between reclaiming control and giving in to you. He had been working so hard on trusting you more. He truly had. He had given you more space, tried to let you explore and expand your horizons as you wished. He had even come to you once when he was feeling unwell (you had dropped everything and devoted all your time and attention to him, just like he had hoped. And it had made him feel so hilariously shy, of all things. He felt like a child again. You had lay with him and watched him and kissed his forehead and thanked him. He had wanted to crawl into the warm safety of your heart and never leave it.)
He watched you sit up, still holding his hand to your cheek. In the midst of his ruminating, you had removed his gloves. He let you lift yourself up onto your knees, bringing your face in line with his. Let you hold his cheeks in your hands, sighing at the ache rushing through him again. He let you stare at what you could see of his face and when you reached behind his head to gently maneuver his eye-patch off, he let you do that too. You pulled him close, your fingers played with his hair and your heads leaned together and your hands held his face and he let you. Your breaths mingled as your lips pressed against his cheek, against the corner of his lips. He stayed still.
When you finally brought your lips to his, with all the softness and gentleness of your night, he remembered what it felt like to break. He felt like he had fallen from a height and splattered against the cobblestones of the castle gates; like he had been beaten with a club, so bruised and battered that not a muscle in his body would move; he felt like there were no bones left to break in his body when you held him like this. You terrified him, in all the ways he had come to crave. When you held him like this, tension flooded in and out of him at the same time. His lungs emptied in a rush but he breathed easier than he ever had. The chill that accompanied him all his life seeped away, replaced by your warmth. One numbness went away as another eased in.
You held him like he meant more than anything to you. You felt like daybreak.