16 sheep in the heap
title: family
pairing: n/a
word count: too lazy to count
rating: g
Typical day. Breakfast, a long walk, shopping. The marketplace, full of people, pushing, bustling, competing, murmuring "excuse me"s to everyone without a collar; bumping arms and hips, rough, with the ones with them. Food, trinkets, clothes, toys, animals. Cats and dogs and pigs and chickens and several tall cages with one tiny trilling bird for each. A canary, silent on its perch.
Gino thought of his family then as he did so often when he passed this booth, these birds, these cages. Each one served as a reminder for each member of his household: his mother, his father, the servants he still remembered (thanks a lot, Thanatos). And the canary that never sang reminded him of himself, viewing the world as only as large as his container, seeing only what little there was to see from where he was and nothing more. Only what was shown to him by happenstance. These sorts of thoughts always lent themselves to depression, guilt, regret. FLEIJA, Prince Schneizel, the loss of Pendragon. How he'd left home a year earlier and refused to respond to his mother's letters, had given everyone from his childhood the cold shoulder and focused solely on searching for his love and on changing the world for her, changing himself for her, too. Family was a hard subject for him to ever stomach; if he could manage it, he walked quickly past the booth with the birds and went straight home. It was always the last one on his way out.
Typical entrance. Toss keys and jacket, close the door, call out to see who responds. Nobody, as usual. Quiet inside, except for the ferrets, squeaking in their pen. A happy, oblivious family. Happy?
Gino had had photographs printed from the many images he'd captured on his device and left them in a scrapbook on the living room coffee table. Everyone in his "family" was here, from the oldest, Sho, to the newest, Break. Happy, smiling faces, usually, but there were other ones, too. A shot from a recording he'd caught once where they'd all been on the couch, brushing shoulders, playing a card game. Several of Yukari and Travis, being dysfunctional. Luciola and Dio, Vincent looking grumpy. Gilbert looking grumpy, too. A posed photo: himself, draped over Maxxie's shoulder. Travis with a black eye, Gino with stitches on his face, Luciola with a sunburn, Maxxie with busted ribs. All of them on the living room floor, asleep.
Sometimes Gino's heart ached to flip through these photos, because they both made him so happy and made him so sad at the same time. Their security was such a fragile thing. One wave of a hand and they could all be gone, dead, torn apart, just like in Britannia. Gone forever. Family was a delicate thing. Family was a difficult subject for him to stomach.
The very last one in the album was a sort of "family photo" he'd forced them all into: himself and Maxxie, Luciola, Gilbert, Yukari and Travis. Quite the unlikely set, all of them, especially seeing them all in one place like that, all together. In times where Gino had needed comfort, had needed to seek out their memory to pull him through the ache that "family" sometimes brought to him, he referred to this picture. The droplet-sized stains on the paper of the scrapbook on this page proved it.
pairing: n/a
word count: too lazy to count
rating: g
Typical day. Breakfast, a long walk, shopping. The marketplace, full of people, pushing, bustling, competing, murmuring "excuse me"s to everyone without a collar; bumping arms and hips, rough, with the ones with them. Food, trinkets, clothes, toys, animals. Cats and dogs and pigs and chickens and several tall cages with one tiny trilling bird for each. A canary, silent on its perch.
Gino thought of his family then as he did so often when he passed this booth, these birds, these cages. Each one served as a reminder for each member of his household: his mother, his father, the servants he still remembered (thanks a lot, Thanatos). And the canary that never sang reminded him of himself, viewing the world as only as large as his container, seeing only what little there was to see from where he was and nothing more. Only what was shown to him by happenstance. These sorts of thoughts always lent themselves to depression, guilt, regret. FLEIJA, Prince Schneizel, the loss of Pendragon. How he'd left home a year earlier and refused to respond to his mother's letters, had given everyone from his childhood the cold shoulder and focused solely on searching for his love and on changing the world for her, changing himself for her, too. Family was a hard subject for him to ever stomach; if he could manage it, he walked quickly past the booth with the birds and went straight home. It was always the last one on his way out.
Typical entrance. Toss keys and jacket, close the door, call out to see who responds. Nobody, as usual. Quiet inside, except for the ferrets, squeaking in their pen. A happy, oblivious family. Happy?
Gino had had photographs printed from the many images he'd captured on his device and left them in a scrapbook on the living room coffee table. Everyone in his "family" was here, from the oldest, Sho, to the newest, Break. Happy, smiling faces, usually, but there were other ones, too. A shot from a recording he'd caught once where they'd all been on the couch, brushing shoulders, playing a card game. Several of Yukari and Travis, being dysfunctional. Luciola and Dio, Vincent looking grumpy. Gilbert looking grumpy, too. A posed photo: himself, draped over Maxxie's shoulder. Travis with a black eye, Gino with stitches on his face, Luciola with a sunburn, Maxxie with busted ribs. All of them on the living room floor, asleep.
Sometimes Gino's heart ached to flip through these photos, because they both made him so happy and made him so sad at the same time. Their security was such a fragile thing. One wave of a hand and they could all be gone, dead, torn apart, just like in Britannia. Gone forever. Family was a delicate thing. Family was a difficult subject for him to stomach.
The very last one in the album was a sort of "family photo" he'd forced them all into: himself and Maxxie, Luciola, Gilbert, Yukari and Travis. Quite the unlikely set, all of them, especially seeing them all in one place like that, all together. In times where Gino had needed comfort, had needed to seek out their memory to pull him through the ache that "family" sometimes brought to him, he referred to this picture. The droplet-sized stains on the paper of the scrapbook on this page proved it.