Chapter Text
It was quiet in the dark.
Gilbert curled up in a ball very tight.
The bed was bigger than the beds at the orphanage, and Gilbert felt very small all by himself in the soft bigness.
The blankets were soft and big, and the pillows were soft and big, and the mattress big and soft and springy. Everything was so soft and big that Gilbert thought he was sinking down into it, like it was going to eat him. The pillow wasn’t thin and lumpy like the pillows at the orphanage, it was huge, and poofed up on either side of his head when he lay on it. You had to be very careful with baby Sparkles, because if babies sleep wrong they can suffocate and die, that’s why Topaz always slept with baby Sparkles in her bed. The pillow was so pillowy that Gilbert thought he might suffocate and die, too, if he moved his head wrong, like he couldn’t escape the pillowiness.
It was very, very quiet.
Gilbert tried to sleep, because he was tired, and sleeping was important, but every time his brain started to get drowsy, he would jerk awake, because he couldn’t hear everyone else moving and breathing and being alive. Every time he jerked awake he would be sure for a split second that the sickness had come back, and everyone else had died while he wasn’t looking.
Gilbert had never slept all alone before. He missed Glitter and Glint.
It felt cold, sleeping alone.
It wasn’t cold, because the blanket was thick and warm, and the room was so warm by itself that Gilbert didn’t even need the blanket, but it felt cold, the cold of emptiness. Lonely.
Gilbert thought about the orphanage for kids with parents. He wondered what that would be like, what the kids would be like there. He wondered what the grown-ups would be like there, if they ignored the kids, mostly, and only hurt them sometimes. They were training kids to fight in the Games, so they probably hurt them lots.
Gilbert shivered.
He tried to sleep.
He missed Topaz. He missed Silver, but he’d left a year ago.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry , Gilbert thought.
Gilbert cried silently into his giant, fluffy pillow.
Gilbert woke up with sunlight streaming in through the window. Germania was still sleeping, so Gilbert sat very, very still.
He didn’t know what would happen if he woke Germania up.
He didn’t know what would happen.
Gilbert always knew what was going to happen, ever since he was a baby. That was the thing Gilbert did best, predicting things. Gilbert was the one who found things out. He was the one who had figured out how to break into Mr. Meanie’s office again after he changed the lock, and he was the one who learned how to read, and he was the one who found out how to climb up onto the roof, which was really useful, because Mr. Meanie didn’t know they could get up there, and you could see really far without anyone seeing you. Mr. Meanie was easy to predict, and so was the school teacher, who was nice as long as he could pretend you weren’t there (he was scared of Mr. Meanie).
But Gilbert didn’t know anything about Germania.
Germania had given Gilbert fancy rich person food that was sweet as candy, almost, when it wasn’t even mealtime. He let Gilbert sleep in his own fancy bed. Nothing about him made any sense. Gilbert was a brat on purpose and he didn’t even slap him once.
Gilbert kept asking him questions. If you asked Mr. Meanie a question, that was very, very bad. He called you impertinent, and said you weren’t allowed to eat anything at the next mealtime, and if he was feeling annoyed he might kick you or throw something at you. (Getting meal privileges taken away was the worst, because Topaz would try to sneak food to you, and if she got caught she’d be in big trouble too). But Germania had just answered all the questions. He didn’t seem like he liked answering questions, but he hadn’t gotten mad either. Even the older kids got annoyed if you asked questions at them all day, especially if they didn’t know the answer. “Go away,” they’d say, “Can’t you find something interesting to do?” and then immediately afterward, “ Gilbert! Get down from there! Holy shit, you’ll get yourself killed!”.
But Germania hadn’t done anything. Not even when Gilbert called him a big idiot, and grown-ups hated it when you acted smarter than them, even if it was by accident. Gilbert wondered if Germania was just saving up all his anger, just adding up every bad thing Gilbert into a big pile for later until… Until…
Gilbert didn’t know what would happen.
There were rules in life and if you followed them, you were at least mostly, sort of safe. And Gilbert had spent most of his life breaking the rules, because safety’s for cowards, and also you broke some of the rules just by existing. But he always knew how far he could push it, mostly, and he always knew what would happen. But now all the rules were going to be different, and he tried to figure out what they were, but Germania was just a tall, blank faced nothing.
Germania had let Gilbert choose which bed to sleep in .
And Gilbert had tried to choose wrong, even though he still didn’t know anything about Germania so he had no idea how to tell which bed he wanted. So he tried to choose wrong, but then Germania just accepted it, and he didn’t even act happy about it like Gilbert had accidentally chosen right. Gilbert still didn’t know.
It was like if you fell off a cliff, and instead of going splat immediately, you just kept falling and falling and falling and falling, and you knew the longer you kept falling, the harder the ground would be in the end, but you just never stopped .
What would happen?
Germania had been in the games. Did he miss killing people?
Gilbert sat on the bed and hugged his knees and he stayed absolutely quiet as the sun slowly got brighter in the sky. He was half certain that Germania would wake up if he breathed. He was half certain that Germania had spent all day yesterday letting Gilbert get away with asking questions and choosing the better bed and even jumping on it, which was almost definitely not allowed, just so that he could be angrier with him in the morning.
Gilbert knew he was just getting himself more and more scared, and that that was a very silly thing to do. “You think too much, Gilbert, that’s your problem,” Topaz said. Used to say. “You think too much and then you get yourself into trouble. Can’t you leave the thinking to me, and just worry about not annoying people who’ll hurt you?”
But Gilbert never listened, because he couldn’t help thinking, and he had to help when he saw the opportunity, sometimes his helping was even helpful.
He was the best at remembering things, and he was the only one who ran away to listen under the window of the school enough to learn to read, and he was the one that Silver had given the doctor’s phone number. That had mostly been because Gilbert was the one who was there when Silver went away, but still, Gilbert was the best at remembering. Every single morning since then, Gilbert had recited the number to Topaz to remind her. He couldn’t recite it to her now. What if she forgot? What if the sickness came back and Topaz got it real bad and nobody else knew the number or knew how to break into Mr. Meanie’s office?
That’s when Germania did wake up, so Gilbert grinned real big and said, “Wow, you slept in forever.”
Never, ever, ever show you’re scared, that was Gilbert’s rule. Don’t show you’re scared, cause it never helps anything, all it does is make mean people happy and nice people sad.