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Ada Vessalius died on a cold winter day. No, not Vessalius, she hadn’t used that last name in a long time, yet when Vincent thought of her, that was the name that came to his lips. Even now, he could still see her as that young woman, her hand trembling as she reached out for him, her quiet voice full of stubborn steel.
She was a woman that made him think of sunshine, of the promise of spring and the warmth of summer.
A cold winter day like this didn’t suit her at all.
-x-
The Baskerville mansion of today was a far cry from what it used to be. Of course it was; even if the Rainsworths and Barmas had helped set up a new domain so they could train and mentor the next generation of Baskervilles, it still took time to find their people.
And Leo, who still called himself Leo despite becoming Glen, who still retained all that he was, was still more comfortable in a minimalist setting than he was in a luxurious mansion.
Vincent didn’t mind. He was comfortable enough and more importantly, both Gil and Leo were content. The gloom of Leo’s office suited him better than a bright, gilded home anyways. Though, there was now a bright lamp on Leo’s desk, a new addition that Vincent couldn’t help but stare at while his brother and master discussed the matters for the next few weeks.
“Vincent.”
Hearing his name, he refocused on Leo. To his surprise, Gil had already left, leaving just the two of them here. He smiled benignly. “Yes?”
Seated at his desk, Leo regarded Vincent with dark eyes. His expression was unreadable as he asked, “You’ll attend her funeral with Gil?”
Ada’s funeral. Somehow hearing that made the whole thing all too real. Vincent swallowed. “I…I’m not sure.”
Leo’s expression softened and he stood up. Coming over, he gently took Vincent’s hand in his own and squeezed it. “You’ve avoided her enough as it was.”
“That was needed,” Vincent claimed, but his words sounded flat to his own ears.
“I doubt it. Still, at least in these final moments, you should say goodbye.” Leo’s expression turned distant as he let go, and Vincent wondered if he was thinking of Elliot, of the goodbye they never got. Of the body they never buried. It seemed the Baskervilles were doomed to tragic loves. Even Gil, for all his optimism about meeting Alice and Oz again, wasn’t exempt from it. “You don’t want to regret this.”
No, he didn’t. He’d had enough to regret over the span of two lifetimes. Closing his eyes, he sighed and nodded. “Then I’ll take my leave.”
“Good.” Leo smiled wanly before returning to his seat. His fingers skimmed his desk. “It’ll be quiet here.”
“It’s been like that for a while now,” Vincent pointed out.
“True.” Leo gave a complicated expression. While they had lived a long time, slowly, one by one, the previous Baskervilles had finally succumbed and died, their bodies spent. Though Vincent hadn’t expected it, he had mourned them, felt their losses. These people who had once been pawns had somehow become something more.
And though they had a handful of new Baskervilles to take their place, they were still awkward and figuring out their places. Still, there had been one noticeable absence from the group and Vincent studied Leo. “Have you found…”
“The next Glen?” Leo finished for him as he smiled bitterly. Though he never talked about it, Vincent knew he still heard the other Glens in his head, their advice carrying him as he rediscovered their family’s old techniques and methods. Oswald might be gone—and in that, Vincent didn’t know how to feel, something bitter coiled up in his chest but also something warm—but that didn’t mean the others weren’t able to speak.
Though, he privately hoped that Levi had disappeared entirely.
Leo picked up his paperweight, a small rock shaped like the jabberwocky. “I’m not sure if I want to wish this fate onto another.”
“It’s fine if you don’t,” Vincent consoled him. “We can find other ways.”
“We could but…it wasn’t as though I took the old rituals either.” Leo shrugged, setting down the rock. “There will be someone out there, hearing voices like I did, seeing things and unable to explain it. And…without another Glen, even with your successor, we might lose our connection with the Intention and the ability to keep the Abyss in check.” Leo sighed, his expression dejected. “Then what was the point of it?”
Vincent fell silent, unable to refute the point.
“It’s fine.” Leo rubbed his forehead. “I’ll start the search soon but…just need a little more time.” He gave a wry smile as he asked dryly, “What, you don’t like being my right hand man?”
“I wouldn’t give this up for anything,” Vincent answered honestly, his eyes locking in on his master’s. If there was one reason he was able to live as long as he had, to be able to breathe as easily as he had, it was because Leo had wanted him. Not need, but want. Not as Baskerville, but as Vincent.
Not as a master, but as a friend.
Leo’s eyes widened a fraction before he smiled back. “Me neither.”
They were like mirrors, too alike in all the wrong ways. But lately, Leo had kept a lamp on in his office and Vincent found he looked at his red eye in his reflection without flinching and maybe they were changing for the better.
-x-
His brother’s eyes were swollen and red, Vincent noted as they sat down in the train side by side. Gil pressed close, as though he needed another’s warmth, as though he needed the comfort. He probably did. Despite the many losses they had experienced over the decades, each one struck his heart like a fresh wound.
The last funeral he had attended had been Sharon’s and while he hadn’t openly wept in front of Vincent then either, his eyes had been full of unshed tears. Perhaps that was what age had given him: not the ability to harden his heart, but to strength to keep himself composed.
“Are you okay, Vince?” Gil asked, his voice rough. Had he slept? His skin was pale.
“Better than you,” Vincent replied automatically, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. It had been a lifetime since he had bid farewell to Ada. While in the ensuing years, he had sometimes watched her from a careful distance, their time apart hadn’t eased his feelings at all. His heart still ached at the thought of her. At the memory of her hands on his, her trembling lips on his forehead.
“I-I still remember when s-she had first learned to walk,” Gil stuttered, his body trembling like a leaf. “She kept following Oz like a little duck and repeated everything he said. Even the pranks. Especially the pranks.” He chuckled weakly as he hunched his back and curled his hands into his thighs. “And now…now she’s gone. She was family and now she’s gone.”
Vincent’s heart ached again, but for a different reason. Even as Gil’s voice cracked, even as his body shook, he didn’t shed a single tear.
“You can cry, you know.”
For a second, Vincent thought he’d said it aloud, but he looked up to find Gil giving him the most watery smile.
Oh. Had it been that obvious? He wasn’t sure what expression he was making right now. What expression he should be making. Looking away, he softly retorted, “I could say the same to you.”
There was a soft hitch in his breath and he wondered if Gil would. Yet, when he looked up, Gil was wiping his eyes, his jaw clenched. “No, I’m your big brother. You cry to me, not the other way around.”
“Even though you’re the one who always cries?” Vincent mumbled, but Gil just wrapped his arm around his shoulders and pulled him close, pressing his head to his chest. Enveloped in that familiar warmth, in that comforting scent, it was all Vincent could do to keep from crying. He closed his eyes. While he was used to the open display of affections now, the daily affirmations that his brother did love him, would always love him, it still made him breathless each time.
His life had worth.
His life always had worth.
“You should have married her,” Gil muttered into Vincent’s hair. His breath tickled his ear.
Vincent scoffed, remembering Gil’s shock long ago at the discovery of their relationship. “I didn’t think I’d hear that from you. You didn’t say anything even when I watched her.”
“Like a stalker.” Gil squeezed him, a little angrily. “You could have done it openly.”
“You know why,” he rebuked.
“I don’t.” Gil sighed. “I always thought it would have been better if you just…stayed. With her. You could have been happy.”
At that, Vincent frowned. He pulled back slightly and looked up at his brother. “I’m happy with you.”
“Me too.” And Gil gave a watery smile. “Still. You could have been happier.”
“I couldn’t subject her to us,” he argued, his hands digging into Gil’s chest. “To what it meant to be a Baskerville.”
“She would have been fine,” and Gil’s tone brokered no argument as he saw right through Vincent’s excuses. “She’s—She was stronger than you know.”
As Gil’s voice cracked at the was, Vincent’s shoulders slumped. What was the point in denying it now, when it was too late? “You’re right. I’m…I’m the weak one. I would have given up everything if she had asked.”
“It would have been fine if you did.” Gil hugged him tighter, pushing him back into his chest. “Not that she would have asked. She was smarter than that.”
Maybe it would have been fine if he had left the Baskervilles. Or if he had kept a life outside of it. Vincent closed his eyes. There was no point in thinking of what-ifs, though. That was a hard lesson he had learned through blood and death. Even if he could have been happy with her, he had also been happy here. With Gil. With Leo. With the children he now mentored and the Abyss he spoke to.
“I really am happy here, with you.” He buried his face in Gil’s chest. “You know that, right?”
“Me too. The happiest.” Gil sighed. “ You know, Ada once told me it was too bad.”
Feeling his arms loosen, Vincent pulled away and straightened. “What was?”
“That we’d never all exist at the same time again,” Gil explained, counting off with his fingers. “She’s leaving now and won’t be back for a hundred years. In fifty years, Oz will be back. And I…” Gil’s breath hitched but he pushed on. “I will leave shortly after that. He’ll never be her big brother again. Who knows if we’ll ever cross paths again, even if we remembered a hundred years from now.”
It was a sobering thought. While Vincent still had many years ahead of him, he could feel the age creeping into his body, entwining his limbs like a vine. When he passed, when he returned from the cycle, maybe he would see Ada again. An older Ada. An Ada out of reach. If he remembered. If their paths crossed.
“It’s a small chance,” Vincent muttered, leaning against the window.
“Yeah.” Gil’s expression darkened. “At least we that…if Oswald had a second chance…”
His voice trailed off but Vincent knew what he was thinking of. It was hard, sometimes, to remember their former master for who he had been before the tragedy had warped and ate at him. Before his body had been dismembered, before the grief and rage had consumed him. There had been a man, once, who had picked Vincent and Gil up when they fell asleep and tucked them into their beds even if had always favoured his brother over him.
It was easier with Jack. For all that he had wrought, for the ruin he had created, he had still been the first warm hand that hadn’t been Gil’s. The only one who had looked him in the eyes with joy, even if it had been faked.
It was a bittersweet fondness. Neither men, for all their flaws, for all their worth, would ever return to the cycle.
“But, you know,” Gil continued once he found his voice again. “Ada then said that’s how it was for most people.”
Vincent tore his eyes away from the scenery outside, the endless white plains, and raised a brow.
“They aren’t aware of the cycle, let alone how it works. Even we don’t usually carry our memories into our next cycle,” Gil explained softly. “There aren’t actually any second chances, either for them or for us. We’re not the same person.”
His words echoed in Vincent’s mind, bringing back an old memory. That wouldn’t be me, the Gil you loved. That would be someone else!
As though remembering the same fight, the same argument, Gil leaned forward and ruffled Vincent’s hair.
“She was glad she got to know everyone now. This time. This version of us. In this life, not another,” Gil finished, taking Vincent’s hand in his own. “She said, she was glad to have met you.”
Even in death, it seemed she still had a lot to say to him. Not sure of what to say, Vincent leaned on Gil’s shoulder and closed his eyes.
-x-
It was only when Gil fell asleep that Vincent stood up. Reaching into the bags they’d stowed overhead, Vincent carefully pulled out a small, velvet pouch. For a moment, he stared at it, taking a deep breath.
Returning to his seat, he pulled out a folded ribbon. While its colour had faded over time, it was still obviously red.
To match your eyes. Ada had blushed when she’d given it to him and he’d thought at the time, it matched her skin far better.
Over the years, he had wavered between tossing it and keeping it. Now he was glad he did. Gathering his hair, he tied the ribbon around the end. When he looked in the window, he could almost see Ada’s reflection next to his, her eyes adoring as she approved.
-x-
The funeral was a plain one. One that didn’t feel right for a member of the former dukedom of Vessalius. One that didn’t feel right for a woman as lively and beloved as Ada. Yet, despite that, it was neither small nor quiet. As expected of her, the church overflowed with people from a variety of walks of life. Her friends from her former social circles as nobility. Her neighbours from her current, more humble life. By her casket, her children and grandchildren sobbed openly.
Just like the woman who had wept shamelessly for him.
Oz would have outlived her, had he lived. But he was gone, he had never existed, and his body was missing from the family tomb.
Vincent hung back awkwardly throughout the ceremony. Unlike everyone else here, he had no obvious connection to her. Even Gil, who had visited her often enough, who was well known by the family, still got confused looks as he finally gave in and burst into tears.
“She was like my little sister,” he wailed despite appearing as old as her oldest grandchild.
Yet, despite how much closer he could have sat to the family, he instead stayed and held Vincent’s hand tightly throughout the whole affair like a lifeline. For whom, Vincent couldn’t say, but he clung back to him just as tightly.
When he finally approached the open casket, it didn’t take him long to recognize her. Yes, her body was so old, so frail, the colour faded from her hair and skin. Yet, he could still see the traces of her smile in her laugh lines and her joy in her wrinkles. Even in death, she looked happy.
Long after her coffin was taken into the family crypt, he and Gil stood outside of it. The well-wishers trickled away, the family left, and still they stood. It felt like the end of an era.
Part of him wanted to collapse right there.
“Excuse me, are you Vincent?”
At the unfamiliar voice, he turned to find a middle-aged man looking at them awkwardly. Gil shifted to stand in front of him protectively.
“Yes?”
“Oh, that’s a relief.” The man mopped his balding forehead with a handkerchief. Noticing their defensiveness, he gave a weak smile. “Sorry, I should introduce myself first. I’m Ada’s—I was her lawyer.” He smiled bitterly. “She lived a good, long life, but even then…it still feels like it was too soon, you know?”
Vincent didn’t—couldn’t say anything.
Gil bit his cheek as he nodded. “Yeah.”
They stood there awkwardly before the man pulled out a small envelope. “Anyways, she told me to deliver this letter to a blonde man with a red eye when he attended her funeral.”
Vincent felt winded, the breath knocked out of him. So, she really had known all these years. Had noted his absence. Maybe she had even seen him from a distance. And despite the time that had passed, she had even known he would come for a final farewell.
With shaky hands, Vincent took the envelope.
“I’ll be off now,” the lawyer said, tipping his hat, but Vincent wasn’t listening to him anymore, his eyes locked onto the Dearest Vincent on the envelope. He didn’t even register when Gil stepped away to give him space, his attention focused on carefully extracting the letter.
Dearest Vincent,
It has been a long time since I said that, but you’ll allow me to say that now, right? I think I have the right. I’m glad you came to visit me, though I wish you had done it when I could see you too.
Tears dripped down his cheeks as he read and he tried not to wrinkle the paper as grief welled within him, a crescendo. It wasn’t a love letter but it was a letter of love. He could still see her standing in front of him in the ruins of Sablier, both when he was a child as she told him to find her, and as an adult, ordering him to give his life to her.
And he could see her in front of him now, as she was, as she would always be in his heart, as she gave his heart back to him.
Are you less lonely now?
Are you happy?
His heart clenched. Vincent lifted his head, and there was Gil, unable to hide his sobbing as he watched Vincent. Even from this distance, he could feel the pull to Leo. His room in the manor was slowly getting filled with more and more remembrances and while he couldn’t say he always liked talking to the Intention, it made him feel useful.
It made him hate his eyes a little less each time.
It made him feel like he had a place now. With Gil. With his family. A place he could return to, a place he could be loved.
Vincent smiled. “Yes, Ada. The happiest.”