Chapter Text
This... was a pain.
The thought was an echo of his words from earlier, but in truth, those had been a rather hollow, token protest. He had been talking of course about the Coming of Age Ceremony. Not now.
Though it still seemed a bit of a farce to be coming of age at fifteen, in Oz's newfound opinion. That's right. Suddenly, he an awful lot of 'new' and 'opinions' rattling around in his head.
That this should be a pain was an understatement, considering it had entirely thrown off his delicate equilibrium and now he had no idea how to feel. In truth, it was painfully obvious that what he'd been doing so far had been a terribly unhealthy coping mechanism in retrospect.
He had taken a psychology course, after all, even if it wasn't his major.
...Yes, this was an awful lot to take in. He suddenly found himself questioning stupid things he'd taken for granted like why his best friend was an orphan with amnesia. Was Gil really okay? He knew from experience that amnesia wasn't as uncommon as some people might think, but it still wasn't something you should ignore, unless you wanted to end up like not-Oz's grandpa who after an incident with heavy machinery had been suggestible enough that his brother had been able to convince him he'd killed the president up until he decided to watch the news.
Oz vaguely registered that someone was shaking him, but couldn't bring himself to care at that moment, because presidents, democracy, and telivision (in color even!), and wow, that memory was weird even without all of that.
Of course, these concerns were really just another way to distract himself from his massive backlog of repressed issues from even Oz's own life, which were presently pounding against his throbbing skull with everything else like a sledgehammer to the raw broken glass of his emotional repression.
Because he was fifteen as of today and suicidal. That word hadn't even been in his vocabulary until approximately thirty seconds ago, when he fell into a hole and boinked his head. He had certainly never consciously admitted it.
And now, as an adult mind inside a fifteen year old body... he found it especially disturbing. Was it strange to be worried about yourself? No, stupid question. That wasn't what he meant anyway. It was more like...
He was seeing himself as a child for the first time, and something about that made him... angry. The things... his father... had said to a child were really inexcusable. Even if that child was him, and because of that he hadn't thought it had meant anything before.
Now that he could see it from an outside perspective though, kinda, because though he was himself he also wasn't, he knew what loving parents were supposed be, parents he could never even imagine hurting him, and now he was rewatching a recap of the world's most archetypal gothic villain keeping a child full of potential shut away from the world like he was a disappointment, keeping him arbitrarily and emotionally stunted and deprived and manipulated by those around him to work harder, to earn love that could never be earned, until his entire self-worth was wrapped around expectations he could never meet, until he gave up and only kept pretending not to let everyone else down and suddenly it was clear that 90% of everything that was wrong with him was the adults faults, not just his father or even mostly since he was almost never there and he mostly lived in his head and in what other people told him for the sake convenience, though he would still have wanted to tell him to fuck himself if he didn't have the sickening feeling that doing so would lead to worse than Gil being thrown in the cellar.
He honestly wouldn't put it past a powerful man like Zai to have the little orphan peasant nobody buried down there. Who would ask questions? Even Oscar, the greatest of the great dukes, couldn't protect them from everything. He hadn't been able to so far.
He still had responsibilities and decorum to follow after all.
"Y-young master? Please... p-please say something!"
Oz blinked.
Oh, right. The shaking. His head had been limply flopping on his neck and staring at that hole in the sky for a while now. He could only imagine the kind of face he had just been making.
Gil... he really needs to stop calling me master.
It was that very Oz-the-young-Vessalius thought that brought him into focus.
"Gil..."
"Thank goodness!"
Gil clasped his hands around his.
"Master, I thought-"
Oz shook his head.
"Gil! I told you not to call me that."
He stole his hand back to rub his sore patch of scalp, a little surprised at just how clear all his childhood memories were in this moment, and not just the razor sharp fear of actual confrontation, the searing guilt of thinking that Gil was gone forever and it had been his fault, but every lonely day reading in a dark room that should have blended together. It had always been like that, he realized. He'd always just written it off as good memory, like he had for facts and figures.
Now he was a little disturbed that he could remember almost everything that had happened to Oz since practically he could crawl.
That really wasn't normal, was it? There was normally something called 'infant amnesia'. Unless human minds worked fundamentally different in this world...
Though come to think of it, as he stared into Gil's golden eyes, he thought that maybe he really shouldn't take it for granted that they didn't. Again, he had never thought of those eyes as strange until now. Back home, he would've thought they were impossible outside of cosmetic contact lenses.
'Back home he would've...'
Something about that statement struck him as odd, and then he immediately blushed.
That was right. He had been- he had been-
A girl, hadn't he?
He didn't know how to feel other than embarrassed.
... And there goes my newfound emotional awareness. Chucked right out the window.
"Ah! Now you're turning beat red! I knew it, you're really not alright!"
His sheer innocent ignorance should have been a relief in this situation but as instead only made him blush harder. He'd never thought of Gil as adorable before and now he really wished he could stop.
(Maybe it was strange for a college student to blush about an adorable fourteen year old, but it wasn't like all his memories had come back! ... Just the ones that would make him blush like that in the first place. What was he even, fifteen or 21? Boy or woman? AAAAAAAAUGH-)
So he smacked Gil on the head and decided that until he was left alone to scream at his thoughts properly emotional repression really was the best strategy after all. Good thing Oz had lots of practice.
"There! Now we both have head trauma."
Maybe now your mysterious memories will come back too and we'll both be on the same sinking boat.
But no such luck. Probably for the best really.
While Gil rubbed his head Oz distracted himself by walking toward the big 'ooh shiny' cross-shaped gravestone about ten feet in front of him.
Though Gil was never to be distracted from what Oz was doing for long.
"W-wait!" He ran up behind him. "What's this? A grave? Is this a graveyard?"
Not unless all the other graves are unmarked, Gil. Who knew, maybe this is where dad hid the bodies.
He started to babble some more, but honestly, Oz's attention was more preoccupied with the strange pocket watch that caught his eye.
'There. A nice distraction,' Oz thought, as he unwrapped the chain from the grave and began to twist the knob.
A haunting melody began to tick away, drowning out any other sound. If it hadn't sent an entirely new chill up his spine, he would have marveled more at the novelty of a pocket watch that was also a music box (impressive even to the currently questionable percentage of him that was from a world full of smartphones.)
But no, the tune really did seem to have done the impossible, and completely distract him from his thoughts.
As a matter of fact, an entirely new stream of images blasted into his head, as if conjured by the notes. Something like black lightning. Cracks in the ground. Cracks in the sky.
What...?
The sound stopped and yanked him from the blackness around the corners of his vision. And pulled him back into a room. Which was very strange, since he could have sworn he was just outside in a hole.
Oz looked both ways, then all ways, even up at the ceiling and down at the checkered floor.
"Gil? GIIIIL!"
He could be sure he wasn't anywhere near where he was a moment ago, or else Gil would have come running. He was dependable like that.
The first thing he noticed in all the places that Gil wasn't (which was practically everywhere) were all the creepy dolls. (And was it just him, or were they chuckling at him behind his back every time he turned his head?)
"You've finally come."
Oz jumped. That voice wasn't Gil, and it sent the second shiver up his spine in maybe a single minute.
Oz turned to the drawn back curtained darkness of a doorway where he could have sworn there wasn't a girl in a white dress just a moment ago. Really, really sworn. The white of that dress practically seemed to glow, there was no way he could have missed her.
"I'm so happy!"
The girl lunged at him, and Oz fell back a step on reflex, but then she just passed right through him and-
Gods, couldn't he have just a five minute break?!
Now he was in another dimension with a ghost girl. Sure, why not. Had he died again already? Freaking HOW?
He looked himself up and down, from his brown shorts to his newly scuffed shoes, to see that he still looked like Oz, as far as he could tell.
Meanwhile the girl seemed oblivious to his clearly telegraphed shock. (Rude.)
She spread her arms and announced, "I've been waiting for you!"
"Excuse me?"
Now, Oz was pretty adaptable, and was quite proud of how quickly he'd managed to bounce back after knocking his head, but he was reviewing both sets of his memories and drawing up complete blanks and even he had his limits. The 21 year old woman in him was just internally screaming, and was likewise no help.
She completely ignored him again, turning to pluck up one of the terrifying ceramic dolls from the shelves. (Double rude!)
"Everyone else hates me, so they never come to visit."
"Look- I don't know who you think I am, but I have no idea who you are."
Maybe it was possible to cut through cryptic ghost riddles with bluntness?
"You don't... know?"
The doll cracked against the stone floor, and Oz gulped.
Okay, maybe that wasn't the best idea...
"You don't know? You don't know? YOU DON'T KNOW?!?!?!?"
He would take it all back to make the room not be on fire right now. Because it totally was.
Oz let out that internal scream just as the world dissolved under his feet and the girl fell on top of him, choking him off at the throat.
Why why why irony did he choose today to start valuing his own life?!?!?!?
The rest, as they say, was attempted murder.
***
Somewhere between soul and void and memories, a fragment broke free of its golden casing and lodged itself adjacent to Oz's soul. It sparked against the tiniest dust of a fragment that was already there, but too degraded to act on its own. The bigger fragment absorbed the smaller one, and finally gained enough awareness to peer out from the darkness behind Oz's eyes.
The thing that was not Oz, and not the ghost of some past life (except in the most esoteric sense) thought quietly to itself as it watched the scene unfold, not yet wanting to reveal its presence.
As it rebuilt itself, it pulled from Oz's deepest, most repressed memories of certain events to fill in some of the pieces it was missing from context, then while catching up on more recent history, did a double take. It ran through his thoughts and memories of just the past day to be extra sure, followed some of the strands that the fall had shaken loose, and suddenly, that had opened a whole new other can of worms. Oz's memories no longer followed a chronological progression. They were tangled, with each memory connected to... a shadow, like this childhood and that childhood; compare and contrast. More amazingly, the second set was completely separate from anything to do with the B-rabbit. No, those memories were still well locked. He had seen to that.
Gradually, the metaphysical brow of the intruders' solidifying form grew more and more furrowed.
'Well, this is unexpected,' thought Jack Vessalius.
***
"Master?"
Oz nearly jumped out of his shorts. He definitely dropped the damn pocket watch.
He registered Gil's hand on him and met his concerned gold eyes a second later. A wave of relief washed over him, and he quickly scrabbled to the ground to shut the cursed pocket watch closed.
Oz held it to his heart and breath.
"I'm back! Thank fucking god."
A rather girlish gasp followed.
"M-master!"
Oh right, Gil was still here. And Oz had never used that kind of language before. It seemed like it was Gil's turn to turn red.
Oz rubbed his head apologetically, though he couldn't help but snort at the look that Gil gave him. That just made him pout harder, and soon he was bent over laughing.
That seemed to have the effect of replacing Gil's indignation with confusion.
"Um... young master?"
"Wait, wait I just- I-"
Oz wheezed once, twice, rubbed a tear out his eyes. Gil patted him on the back awkwardly. Finally, Oz took one deep breath and straightened.
He turned to Gil. The smile dropped from his face and he looked him very seriously in the eye.
"Gil, I think I just got choked out by a ghost."
***
"...And then she told me she'd teach me how to feel pain just so she could inflict it on me. Or maybe it was sadness. Possibly an entire litany of suffering. We had to go through a whole list of vague grievances just to get to that point."
The sun was already setting by the time they had gotten out of the hole, which was slightly worrying because Mrs. Kate would no doubt be livid (though he tried not to dwell on things like that too much, otherwise he'd never get anything done), and disconcerting, since he'd swore the sun hadn't been more than half way in the sky when they fell in. Now suddenly the outside courtyard was all pink and red. Double weird, since looking back he was pretty sure that big tree had had golden sunlight streaming through it's branches despite being underground. He had been understandably too distracted to think about it much at the time, but if he hadn't been sure that place was cursed before, he could have added time dilation and phantom lighting effects to the mounting evidence.
Beside him, Gilbert bit at his lip.
"That's..."
"An awful lot of detail to squeeze into a ten second dream, I know."
(Ten was, for the record, how many times Gil had yelled his name and title before he had been able to snap him out of it. Gil really was diligent.)
He walked with a skip in his step, a hum on the tip of his tongue.
"Master, this sounds serious."
"Oh, I wholeheartedly agree," Oz hummed, with nod of his head.
"It's just well, you seem..."
Oz gave the watch a little circular swing while Gil's eyes followed.
"Giiil. Spit it out."
"You just seem, um, to be taking this rather well. N-not that I think you're lying or I don't believe you!" Gil added, waving his hands.
His expressions were always the best. This was exactly why he was so fun to tease. At least that hadn't changed.
Oz had to remind himself that nothing about the world had really changed except him. And also maybe the cursed watch, but since the flashes he'd seen didn't resonate with either set of memories, that was probably unrelated.
Speaking of which...
Oz dangled the watch in front of him. Though he did so with a casual air, an attentive observer might notice that he held the thing from the very farthest tip of the chain. It had been a bit of a... discourse, deciding whether or not they should bring it or leave it. Gilbert was against grave robbing on principle and especially against grave robbing a ghost, and Oz was inclined to agree with that second point, even if he didn't really think it counted as grave robbing if the thing wasn't buried.
Semantics aside, he was done with not having any answers, there was one person who he trusted to know the history of this place better than anyone. One person who he trusted more than just about anyone in general, 'cept of course Gil. So off to Uncle Oscar he went!
Or in other words, off to talk to possibly the only reasonable adult in Oz's life. Well, if he was going to be depressing about it at least.
For once in his life it was going to be straight from trauma to straight to Oscar, and straight to getting this mess sorted. There was no way he was going to let anything else distract him.
"Um, Master?"
"Mm, yeah?"
"About the coming of age ceremony...?"
Oz stopped dead in his tracks.
Between his head being scrambled and the ghost murder had honestly, totally, completely forgot about that.
"Fuck!"
"Again?!"
Oz twisted on his heel, zero patience for another lecture on his face as he grabbed Gil by the shoulders.
"You're totally going to be there, right? You're going to do this for me, right? Because I just remembered I never got an answer earlier, and you're my best friend in the world, and I am in dire need of this emotional support."
"I-I..." Gil wrung his fingers.
"Gilll."
Oz leaned forward, doing his level best to stare into Gil's soul through proximity to his eyes.
"You are. Coming. Right? Because if you don't, I may die you know."
Gil gulped. His voice came out a little like a squeak.
"Die?"
"Yes. Who knows when that ghost will strike again? You're the only one who might be able to snap me out of it if I go into a trance! Or, even worse, what if I pass out because you aren't there? What if I topple right down that huge set of stairs like a slinky? Do you really WANT MY BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS?"
"B-but why would you....?"
"HEAD TRAUMA, GILBERT!"
In the end, emotional manipulation won out. It wasn't even completely manipulation. Despite many rehearsals, Oz had never actually been placed in front of a crowd before. Attending an opera from one of those high up isolated booths once didn't count. Hell, he'd hardly ever left Vesalius owned properties, which, though admittedly quite expansive, still made him basically the forced, aristocratic version of a shut in. As for the 21 year old woman? One of the things she remembered pretty clearly was hating class presentations. After everything, he really could use the emotional support.
Also, Oz's father wasn't showing up today. He'd be damned if he let Gil abandon this poor kid too, whether it was him or not. That was just top depressing. This was his coming of age ceremony for crying out loud, and that meant something in this world. He shouldn't have to do it alone. Parental substitute Oscar non-withstanding.
That's right, Oscar!
"Right, I've already wasted enough time on making you see sense," Oz said, turning on his heel.
"Talk to Oscar, exorcize ghost, do ceremony. Sounds like a plan. What could go wrong?"