Title: Hands

Synopsis: "And I would dream it—of Him—if I could dream." Leo is broken. He has a single dream, but it will not come true. /Stream-of-consciousness; Leo's POV; Elly/Leo/

Rating: T

A/N: Recently, both Pandora Hearts and The Sound and the Fury have come back into my life. So you know what that means! More fanfiction with Leo as my surrogate Quentin. Anyhow, the style of this is crazy and Faulkner-inspired, so don't be freaked by that (or do be; I don't own you). I'll also just say that this is probably a companion piece to a work of mine from a while back called Hail Mary. By no means do you have to read both, but I will say that they are similar in style and content. Anyhow, happy reading! (Or at least, I hope you enjoy it.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Pandora Hearts.

…

"Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

Pockets full of stones."

-'What the Water Gave Me'; Florence + the Machine

…

I have no God.

Vincent is kinder than anticipated, more so than the whisperings of the uniformed men or well-dressed aristocracy would have foretold. He is not saint-like—lurking everywhere with eyes, hands that touch freely, stickily kind words rolling off his cat-like tongue that fill ears and drown out the other voices so well. But Vincent is here and he is not a God and it is well for I have none.

He was always searching for stories, an allegory. I would watch His hands, tracing along the spines of the tomes He loved. Just to feel. Just to feel them and know they are there and waiting. Vincent is always reaching… For me, for the Echo or for an invisible but visible brother. No torn pages but warm flesh and if it is not available whatever is soft and breakable and it is not romantic.

I shut my eyes each night and pray still. I pray for Him. I pray to Him. Does He hear me? I should hope not.

I sip; sip the tea in my hand. And I am calm and my hands no longer, no longer shake while I pick up the cup. I have the ability to bring the cup to my lips and though the tea is a liquid so basic that it slips down and eats away my tongue, my throat, my stomach, I drink until it collects and settles and swishes until I am at sea within myself, I drink. But look at my hands. They do not shake.

Vincent looks at me and sometimes I think I know. Know that I know that if he could have one eye with which to see the world then he would. Could I grant his wish? I could use my stable hand and take his eye and let the blood run down the sore skin, staining the cuff of the shirt that he had pressed for me. I could hold the small orb and keep it in my pocket or I could crush it between my flat palm and fingers. But my hand has stopped shaking—it shook every time it held a gun, even in His protection—did you know that, Vincent?

Ernest scoffs. "-one who can do nothing to protect you." Muffled noises that I do not wish to hear, do not wish to hear. "Little brother, I know you've got your heart set on this young man." He is restraining himself. Please do not, please do not. "But—"

Why does he talk back to them, to his family? For me and my imperfect hand, for the cold glasses that touch my cheeks when I smile? He is my smile. And I have doomed him, whose light shines more than any false prophet or sun and whose loyalty could put any man to shame. I have doomed him. If I could have been born as your eye, I would be.

"It's ironic," Vincent says. "Your name." I could not tell you. "In the Zodiac, Leo is the sun. But you're doomed for the darkness of the Abyss. It's your role." Vincent smiles with a twinge of sadness from one hundred years; for someone who claims such indifference he is too often with bags under those heterochromatic, cold eyes. "A touchy subject, I presume?"

"No," I say. Why should one shy away from fate, from destiny, from the punishment that they deserve for nursery rhymes and haunted echoes of past mistakes, if such huge a folly could be considered a mistake and not a life. My eyes turn to the Echo, who does not speak, and who just listens. I think she thinks she knows. I think she knows, as well. Her eyes are blue like an ocean.

"He can't fight!"

"I've… I've taught him how to use a gun!"

I cannot hear his name. I cannot hear his name. It is his sister now and I grip my face with my hands, under the cold glasses and if only bitten down nails could rip away skin, if only I could leave this place and the lights but not the sun. "If we could give him a chain, at least," she says, "Something to—"

I cannot hear His voice but it drives me cold, it drives me cold. "No! I can protect the both of us." Do Gods protect? I was never able to understand.

And he would take my hand in his and raise our hands together, his body close to mine, touching fabric, touching hair, and he would whisper that I should pull the trigger but we would do it together, he and I because my hand was shaking. And I could hear his breath in my ear, next to my ear and my cheek and I never learned for a moment.

Vincent's hand rests on the table between us. His fingers are thin and spiderlike and they tap out in meter. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. A tango or foxtrot but we have to measure out the beats per minute to be sure. Write a score. Play it on the piano. Take credit. "Vincent?" I ask.

"Yes?" He is too eager to please and I cannot, I cannot understand why.

"Never forget," that man whispers into my ear in my mind—so far from His breath against me. "It was you."

"Do you believe in God, Vincent?"

If I pray to Him, will He be reborn?

"No," Vincent says. I look to his red eye, that—even when he smiles sickly sweet—says only hatred and speaks no poetry. I understand, I understand. I have hidden my eyes, too, with their sparkling lights that cannot match the sun. When will He rise? "The world has no pattern," Vincent continues. "No rhyme or reason. God is an illusion." His voice is cold and it is plunging and it is no façade, not this once. "I'm no longer naïve enough to believe that something exists beyond human error."

He was often in the wrong. He often erred. But He knew and I didn't care, I still don't care. Come back. I was in the wrong, too, when I was a human once. Now my automaton hand clenches the teacup.

"Oh dear." Is he sincere, is he ever sincere or is his voice just used to lying to try to find honesty? "Have I upset you?"

I imagine that He will rise out of the Abyss. He will be in white. It will not be a school uniform a waistcoat buttoned for a dance and party. He will be in the white decoration of a Holy Knight—tomes untouched, left in dust because who could love them but Him?—and He will rise from the Abyss and I—

And I…

"No," I say.

Vincent clears his throat and that man inside of me fills my mind with his insidious words that crash like waves against my skull and I cannot think and I wish I could not breathe. And his fingers go one, two, three, four and I never felt His arms around my waist. I would dream of it—of Him—if I could dream, but sleep suffocates and I wake-up in sweat. I would not ask Vincent to loosen my tie.

"Then you?" Vincent asks.

That eye. "Then I what?"

It stings.

"Elliot." It is brother once again, the unsympathetic Earnest. Their hair is the same color. "You cannot protect yourself from all of the evil in this world."

"I'm strong," he retorts, so fired up and young.

There is a moment of silence; I can hear them breathing. "So are they."

Would my hand stop shaking if I removed it?

I doubt it, I really do. Because phantom limbs sting as much as real pain, though you cannot remove a phantom limb, a phantom hand that strangles you as you sleep. A phantom limb that hangs as hazy in my mind as a phantom memory of a person who I loved. Love. Loved.

"Do you believe in a God?" It's Vincent and no one else. I look at her eyes from where she sits against the wall and she just reflects the question back—an echo or light off of water. It is not ironic; it is sad and expected. I would pity them if I could. I look back at Vincent's eventual phantom eye. Set the tea down. Clench the first in my lap and try to stop the seasickness that I am drowning in but will not die from even if I wished I could.

I am drowning, Elliot.

"Not exactly."

Amen.

…

Fin