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July•2•xxxx
Avarice found himself unable to sleep and decided to take a stroll back into the village for some alone time. He had wandered into a tavern he frequented. As usual, the tavern's patrons were lively and well on their way to being drunken messes. Avarice shuffled through the crowd towards his usual booth at the back when he caught sight of a familiar figure. Across the room on the dance floor, he spotted Gabriel dancing away with some girls who were all too flattered by his attention. Gabriel, who was clearly already drunk, managed to spin himself right into the young prince. Despite his drunken daze, he was still able to find it within himself to regain some kind of sobriety in order to speak.
"Gabriel? Why are you still here? It's long past time that everyone went back home."
The sound of his name seemed to shake him from his stupor. "Avarice? Oh! Prince Avarice ah-Your Highness! Umm...I was just...well...taking a break. I don't really want to head back home just yet."
He didn't quite know what it was, but the more his narrowed gaze remained on the man, the more he could see a vague reflection of himself in Gabriel's eyes. Lost and trapped, ignored and forgotten, at least that's what Avarice saw.
"Well...if you came for a distraction, you've come to the right place."
Gabriel lifted his head, smiling weakly at the soft tone in Avarice's voice. "Do you come here often?" He asked.
Avarice nodded. "From time to time. It'd be wrong of the country's most famous socialite to not show up to mingle with the common folk every now and again."
Gabriel chuckled, earning a smile from the Prince, who nodded towards the back. "Here, follow me. I'll buy you a drink or two...to make up for our uh...unfortunate first meeting."
Gabriel thought back at the way the Prince stammered out apologize as he stumbled over himself in a flustered fit. The memory made him laugh. "With pleasure!"
Gabriel's hand winded itself around Avarice's shoulders. Oddly enough, Avarice wasn't entirely put off by the sudden contact. He chalked it up to a fleeting allowance he had made as the tavern's atmosphere filled him with a rare ease. Avarice guided Gabriel to a cozy booth at the back, away from prying eyes or rather, ears. Almost as soon as they sat down, Gabriel began ordering drinks. It wasn't long before the man was flushed red, intoxicated off his own wanton shenanigans. Avarice, ever the lightweight, chose to opt-out of Gabriel's drunken escapade. Gabriel guzzled down cup after cup until he could just barely make out Avarice's concerned tone when asking if he was okay.
"Hass...your mother...uh...wok-woken up?" He slurred.
Avarice nodded. "She has...my brother has as well..."
Before Avarice could say anymore, Gabriel cut him off with a very quick, very loaded "I'm sorry."
Avarice rose an eyebrow, shifting back in his seat. "Sorry for what?"
With Gabriel's head becoming increasingly fuzzy, he failed to realize that Sin had not yet told Avarice who the culprit behind Ri-is' injury was. "I didn't mu-mean to...hurt him..." he began to ramble through his explanation.
As he spoke, Avarice's eyes widened. He came to the realization that if his mother knew of this, she'd raise literal hell that and he had no doubt just paid for the drinks of a man who had attacked a member of the royal family just hours ago. His initial reaction was anger. Anger that yet another person associated with Sana was able to lay their hands on his family. His anger, though increasingly becoming explosive, wavered when Gabriel's rant began to trail off into a drunken memory and straying completely off topic. He reached over and pulled Gabriel's cup out of his hands. Gabriel tried to grab it back as ramblings of how the day had been absolute shit came rolling off his tongue.
At some point in the midst of his ranting, he lifted his head to look at Avarice. He could see the Prince's lips moving but couldn't hear anything. It didn't even register when his vision began to blur as the world around him spun dizzyingly. He shut his eyes tight, trying to quell the dizziness, but when he shut his eyes, he didn't realize that it would be a while before they opened again.
•~•~•~•~•~•~•
Shrill screams sent a cold chill up Gabriel's spine. He blinked a few times, glancing down at himself, he noticed that his shaking hands were much smaller. Still, in a daze, he looked to his left, where he noticed that screams were coming from a room down the hall. The door was cracked open ever so slightly as if it were inviting him in. He stumbled down the hall and peeked through the little sliver of an opening. The scene that he saw made his heart sink. Shock numbed his lips and stole his strength as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
A tall man with dark cocoa hair held one fist in the air and wispy rose coloured locks in the other. He swung his fist down repeatedly, bloodying the pale face of a crying woman. Gabriel failed to choke back a gasp, drawing the attention of the man and woman.
"G-Gabe?" The woman's voice cracked horribly as she spoke.
Upon seeing Gabriel, the man began to drag the woman by her hair, throwing her out of the room. She cried out as she hit the ground, unable to do anything but watch as the man then turned and grabbed Gabriel, pulling him inside.
"MOM?" Cried, Gabriel.
The man shut the door, blocking the pitiful sight of Gabriel's mother. "That woman isn't your mother anymore."
Gabriel spun around to face him, just barely holding back tears. "What do you mean! Why did you hurt mom?"
The man gazed down at him with a cold, distant glare. "She has brought shame to our family. The woman you've been calling mother has been sneaking off to meet some man from a fancy Haan clan."
It became too difficult to breathe and Gabrielle clutched his chest, struggling to formulate the right words. "...that's not...mom would never-"
A harsh slap across the face silenced him.
"Did you not hear me the first time? I believe I've already made it clear that she is no longer your mother."
Gabriel bit his lip. He knew he wouldn't be able to reason with the man. After all, once his father had made up his mind about something, he rarely ever changed it.
"What are you gonna do to her?"
His father sighed and shrugged dismissively. "She will be executed. She will serve as a reminder of what happens when people betray this family. You will stay as my successor and as such, you will have the job of putting the bullet through her head."
Gabriel felt like his chest was on fire. He couldn't breath, couldn't speak, all he could do was choke back sobs as an overwhelming wave of powerlessness came crashing down on him.
The next day his father carried out his plan as he said he would. Gabriel stood in front of his mother with a gun to her head. All eyes were on him. For a brief moment he thought of turning the gun on himself after he had killed her, but in her final act of motherly love, she looked up at him with a smile.
"Do it," she whispered. "Do it and he won't harm you."
Gabriel glanced back at his father, who watched on expectantly. She was right. Having grown up in a very prominent crime family, his father always pushed him to do things, well beyond the scope of his moral compass. This ruthless image he so vehemently aimed to maintain made sure that they would be seen as a powerful family, ensuring their influence in the land never wavered and was never challenged. Gabriel looked back at his mother, the only one to ever shield him from his father's relentless abuse when he wouldn't do as he was told and with a heavy heart and trembling hands he pulled the trigger.
The blaring sound of the gunshot and the peaceful smile on his mother's face etched itself deep into his memory. He had now gained the respect of his father and was exempt from his usual beatings, but at what cost? He was only a boy, he couldn't fight back and he felt guilty. He had let her down. The pain in his heart far outweighed the relief from physical pain and was only worsened when not too long after her execution, the Haan man she was supposedly meeting, came knocking on their door with an army. They reduced everything to a pile of ash within minutes.
Gabriel crawled amongst the corpses of his family, desperately trying to cling to the life his mother tried so hard to protect. It was then that he picked up on very vague voices. He peered around the corner to see two men conversing. They spoke as if they were looking at a bed of flowers instead of a sea of corpses. Gabriel wasn't able to pick up on everything being said, but he did manage to spot a man dressed in silken robes of red and white that were far too elaborate to belong to any mere general and definitely too detailed to belong to a mere foot soldier.
The carefully stitched, vibrant insignia on his cape forever tucked itself away in the recesses of Gabriel's mind. He had seen that insignia before but he couldn't recall where. All he knew was that it was a Qishan insignia. The man he had spotted was none other than the leader of the Qishan clan. Rage surged within him as he laid eyes on the man who destroyed his life. The man who got his mother killed and destroyed any chance he had at avenging her. As he laid there in a pool of dead bodies, he was unable to fight the crushing feeling of never having been able to repay his mother for her sacrifices to the family and most of all, to him.
His eyes never left the Qishan leader. Long after he turned to leave, his gaze remained glued to the spot he stood. It wasn't until a man's voice called out to him that he realized he had forgotten about the other person.
"You can come out now."
Gabriel's breath hitched in his throat and he froze in his spot among the bodies.
"I won't hurt you."
Very slowly and cautiously, Gabriel revealed himself to the man. The man turned to face him.
He knelt down so they were at eye level with each other and smiled. "My name is Sana. What's yours?"
His sickeningly sweet smile didn't immediately set off any alarms in Gabriel's head. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Perhaps it was the stress and agony finally causing the boy to crumble, but within minutes, Sana had the boy pleading for help in tears. Gabriel was unable to contain himself. He had never been very good at hiding his emotions to begin with and so when the King extended his hand for the boy to take, he cried and cried. Before all he could think of was preserving the life his mother sacrificed so much to protect, but now he was so filled with grief he couldn't bare to live on. Was it worth it? Why should he get another chance at life when he had done nothing to deserve it.
"I'm not in the habit of killing children. If it's help you want, I shall lend it to you. Come, let's go to your new home."
Somewhere a voice in the back of his head cried out not to take his hand, but it was too late. A silent vow filled his mind. A vow to rectify that which was already broken. He wouldn't take his own life. It would feel like spitting on his mother's wish for him to live. Instead, he would devote his life to the memory of his mother and ensure the one's who brought her down would go down with her and then and only then would he be free to live. He hadn't realized the weight of his promise to himself then. Not even when the promise became a noose that slithered around his neck and held him tightly, did he realize what his vow would do to him.
He was tied by desire, overtaken by impulse and blinded by the King's warm promises of safety. Sana's figure looked like a breathtaking light, the warmth that seeped into his hands from his fingertips, filled Gabrielle with indescribable hope, so much so that Gabriel cried until vision began to blur. He felt like he was being pulled out of his body, he watched as he foolishly took the King's hand. Gabrielle wanted so badly to scream at himself, to tell himself not to do it, but the darkness consumed him yet again.
•~•~•~•~•~•~•
Gabriel's eyes snapped open. His heart hammered against his ribs as he bolted up from the bed. "A...dream?"
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