He failed. That was Gabriel’s first thought as his consciousness returned. Alice asked him to win and come back to her, but he failed to get the victory she desired. Worse yet was that he basically acted on instincts towards the latter parts of the battles, more beast than man as he just focused on beating down his opponents. And then he passed out, having achieved not a single thing, and possibly just having made things worse.
It was just pathetic. He was an embarrassment.
He seemed to be lying down, his body devoid of energy. His face hurt, his stomach hurt, his hands hurt, and there wasn’t a single inch of his body that didn’t feel heavy. It was all around uncomfortable, only his left hand was comfortable, wrapped in something warm that pressed against it. He was expecting the smell of medicine or metal, but no, the scent that tickled his nose was familiar and comfortable. Home, it smelled of home.
He wanted to check out his own body, just feeling it wouldn’t give him a good grasp of his state. But it was dark, only a faint shimmer of light reaching his eyes. It didn’t seem to be night, no, judging by the sensation on his face there was a cloth covering his eyes. He raised his right arm to remove the cloth, now wasn’t the time to lay around. But a rustling came from his left side as he raised his arm.
"You’re not allowed to remove it."
A stern tone. Alice. Her voice was rough and heavy, as if the insides of her throat had been scraped and torn. The sound of someone who spent too long crying, Gabriel had heard similar voices many time.
"I’m sorry, my Lady."
He could only lower his arm again and allow the darkness to shroud his vision. His own voice sounded a bit foreign as it reached his ears, hoarse and almost somewhat bubbly. During the fight, exactly what had he done to his own throat?
"Alice."
A quick response, a sharp one. Gabriel couldn’t see his surroundings because of the cloth, but since she was insisting that he refer to her by name they were probably alone.
"I’m sorry, Alice."
He changed his tune but kept apologising. Failure. He failed her order, and she cried. A failure. But the voice that met him after he apologised carried traces of fire as it reached his ears.
"For what, Gabriel? What are you sorry about?"
For a moment, Gabriel thought of the occasional times he was captured. Chained to a chair, a sack over his head. The buzzing of electrical equipment and flies, the voice of the interrogator that drilled him. No matter where, no matter when it seemed as if those points always repeated themselves in each capture.
"You wanted me to bring you victory, but I failed."
His mouth moved automatically, the answer spilling from his lips. To him, except for some key pieces of information, telling Alice everything had already become second-nature, even if it was admitting his own failure. And as expected, the voice that answered him was vicious.
"Victory? Gabriel, did I ever ask you to bring me victory?"
Well, the voice was vicious but the words themselves were a bit different. Victory… He thought back to what she told him before the match, he remembered the words with almost perfect clarity. Yes, those words should have been an order to acquire victory. But apparently he was… wrong?
"Don’t lose. Fight. Win. Come back to me. I never asked you to defeat them all, I never asked you to work yourself to the bone for nothing. In that order… Victory would be coming back to me unharmed. But you didn’t."
Her voice lost its vicious edge and instead came out with a hoarse croak. Returning was victory… Wounds were defeat… It wasn’t a type of mission he was used to. Kill the enemy or don’t come back, kill the enemy and don’t return. He’d never come across a mission where just his return was all that was required of him. He wanted to open his mouth to apologise, even if just to make her voice return to normal, but Alice was faster than him.
"Was it because you wanted to be useful? Because you are a good tool that is worth keeping around? Is that why you went overboard?"
In one fell swoop, with a few simple sentences, she stabbed him straight in the heart. Usefulness, it was the only thing he had going for him, it was the only reason to keep him around. And yet… He failed in that one thing of his.
"You failed, Gabriel. I asked you to do the simplest thing, fight, win, and come back to me. You failed, Gabriel. What sort of tool fails?"
Yeah, that’s what he expected. A rusty tool is thrown in the trash, a saw that can’t cut wood is discarded, a chipped knife is exchanged for a better one. He knew it, Alice knew it. And now it was time. But the knife she plunged in his chest, Alice apparently wasn’t done twisting it around.
"And then there’s the past. When you sniffed out the assassination plot against the duke, handled the planners, and gave me the credit, was that something I asked for?"
Gabriel had done a lot of things for Alice without telling her in advance, killing Leonardo and giving her the credit for that attack were just the first ones. But yeah… An axe that chopped lumber when you didn’t want it to, it did its job, but was it still a useful tool?
Alice held the knife that pierced his heart. His body was cold. Worse than the pain, worse than the emptiness, worse than the heaviness. Dread, pure and simple dread that slowly sank to the bottom of his icy stomach, until the only part of his body that still felt normal was that left hand of his.
"I didn’t. I didn’t even know about it, Gabriel. What sort of tool just goes around doing whatever it pleases? What sort of tool goes and hurts its wielder by being stupid and getting hurt? Does that sound like a good tool to you?"
Twist and twist, grind flesh and cartilage until only pulp remains. A good tool… Was there ever a time in this life where he had been one?
"I’m so…"
His mouth opened stiffly, like a doll whose joints are tugged by string. He had to say something. He had to redeem himself. He… He had reclaim a path home.
"And yet!"
But before he could spit out an excuse, Alice cut him down, raising her voice until it echoed through the room.
"Do you feel this, Gabriel? This, right here? What is it?"
He felt it. His left hand, the only comfortable part of his body, it was being raised by Alice. The thing wrapping around it, pressing against it to provide it with warmth, it became apparent as she squeezed it a few times.
"You’re holding my hand."
Yes. A gentle and somewhat trembling grip. Interlocked fingers as palm met palm. Such a simple touch, but it allowed him to feel it all. He felt her warmth, he felt her fear, her sadness, her care. Once again, Alice raised her voice.
"Yes! You do things as you please, you fail the simplest orders, you hurt me time and time again by being reckless. But here I am, carrying you to bed after you fell unconscious and holding your hand until you wake. That, what does that tell you, Gabriel?"
At first, he figured that Lawrence was the one who carried him away after he fainted, but it seemed as if that wasn’t the case. In that case… How long had he been lying here, how long had she been holding his hand?
"…That you care…"
It was… Hard for him to get out the words. Care… He made a mess of things and possibly even made things worse for her, why would she care about him after that? He failed to provide worth, so why would she even look at him? But that hand, tightly wrapped around his own, still spoke of the truth he couldn’t believe.
"Yes, Gabriel."
A soft voice, a gentle voice. A close voice. He felt her shift from his side, more weight landing on his abdomen. He couldn’t see her because of the cloth, but he could feel her. He could hear her.
"I care about you, Gabriel. More than a master does their knight, more than knight does their sword."
Something touched his forehead. Warm, hard, but familiar, her own forehead. Hot breath struck him with each word. He couldn’t see so all his senses were enhanced. He could feel her, hear her smell her. In that moment, the darkness that wrapped around him was Alice, enveloped him to keep him warm.
"You’re not a tool, Gabriel. Not to me, not to the world. You’re just you, a reckless idiot who needs to be beaten to death to learn a single thing. But still I care for you, and always will. And I will never, in this life or any that follow, even think about abandoning you. You just thinking that I might consider it is the greatest insult I have ever heard, and the deepest wound you can give me. You can fail all the orders I give, you can hurt me as many times as you want. But I, I will never abandon you."
Each word touched the dagger that she had buried in his heart, the knife she twisted to grind him down. She spun it backwards with each word, undoing damage as the crushed heart slowly reformed. A name, she gave the tool a name all those years ago, and in doing so she blessed it with a life beyond t hat of a tool. She took a tool and turned it into something else, into Gabriel.
"So why, Gabriel? Why do you keep trying to abandon me?"
Hot words accompanied by ice. Did the ice come from within him or from within her, whose fear was it that was contained in those words?
"I… I never…"
His mouth opened again to reject the very notion, it was in Alice and her pursuit of happiness that he was finding a reason to life so he could not bear to abandon it. But as she had done many times already, she cut him off.
"You did, Gabriel. You just did."
Her forehead was still pressed against his, a hand wrapped around his. But he could feel her other hand touch his body, trace his face. A pang of pain, she must have touched a wound. The cuts on his face… since when where they that long? Weren’t the just minor scrapes?
"You never wear proper armour, not even now, when you were heavily limited in what you could do. You ignored your own safety and let yourself get hurt time and time again for something as inconsequential as victory in a set of sparring matches. If they cut a bit deeper, if they cut a bit higher or lower, if they hit a bit harder, what do you think would happen to you?"
More pangs of pain. She traced his stomach, his chest, his knuckles, the back of his head. All the places he had accumulated injuries during the spars, she touched them one by one, a soft tremble running through her fingers.
"You keep running about recklessly, each time inching closer to abandoning me. Am I that unimportant to you?"
The knife she had just started to pull out of his slowly-regrowing heart, she stabbed it a bit deeper with the greatest of ease. The man who killed more than he saved, who killed on orders of people he couldn’t even see, since when was it that he could be hurt this easily?
"No… Please don’t even say that."
That thought, he couldn’t bear to let her carry that. Everything he did, he did to ensure her happiness. Every life he took in this world, it had been for her. She was important to him, perhaps more so than anything else had ever been. He wanted to tell her that, but she spoke up again before he could.
"Exactly, so stop trying to abandon me. Protect yourself, think about the best way to return to me even if you must disobey orders, and keep living, keep being healthy."
Her hand left his wounds, and judging by the shifting weight on his stomach she reached towards the side. A somewhat hollow metallic clink came from the side shortly after, like a finger flicking against metal. It was a sound he was rather familiar with. Metal armour, and judging by the crispness of the sound it was of rather high quality.
Protect yourself. Come back. Keep living. Alice was the first person to tell him things like that, be it in this life or the last one. The first one to ask nothing of the tool other than its presence, its life.
"I already told you back then, Gabriel. We are bound, you and I. Together we can live as good people, so we both need to lead long and happy lives."
Bound. A covenant for the two of them, shared by solely the two of them. It was almost funny, he was the first one to tell her that they could live as good people together, but she kept having to be the one to tell him, remind him.
"You need to live a long life if you want me to do the same. For in this world, Gabriel, you are the only one who can kill me in any meaningful way."
The cloth on his face felt wet. In fact, his entire face felt wet as her forehead touched his. Had her breath gathered enough condensation to wet his face? Was she crying? Was he crying? He couldn’t tell anymore, the smell, the voice, the touch, they were the only things he could feel properly at the moment.