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MY HEART AND SOUL WERE NEVER MINE TO OWN

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[attr="class","freiwanttmid"]CHARACTER FACTION league

[attr="class","freiwanttmid"]CHARACTER RANK cadet

[attr="class","freiwanttmid"]FACE CLAIM eren jaeger from attack on titan

[attr="class","freiwantttop"]ABOUT THE CHARACTER

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what do you care to die for?

[break][break][break][break]bad habits never truly leave a person, no matter how much rearranging and fine tuning is done. so even though gabriel's a new man now, even though his edges have been dulled, his wit and intuition are sharp and reliable. he's seen enough of the world to know the basics of how most things works and is quick to apply variables to quick-moving situations. however, as much as he enjoys intellectual conversations, much of the conversations he holds are pretty one-sided. he knows how people work--ask them about themselves, flip the conversation back on them, and you can uncover all sorts of things without them realizing it. he's fluent in both italian and body language, can read bare emotions that flit just under the surface because he's not afraid to look into your eyes. once upon a time when he still believed in souls, he swore he'd be the first to find one, to see one in someone else. most of the time the interactions you'll have with him are harmless conversations and he wants nothing more than to learn a little story from you, but sometimes that urge is still there, that inevitable itch that comes with knowing how much control he has--can have over someone else, if he wants. he's still manipulative and although he's a better person than he was before, no one's perfect. piss him off and he might just decide to play a few games.[break][break]

part of his need to control people stems from his irreparable relationship with his mother. so once he has someone's attention, he's hard-pressed to let it go. he's a possessive little shit. it doesn't matter if it's an object or a person; once it's in his clutches, no one else can have it. he's not as much of a hoarder as he used to be, though. now he has standards. so it's actually pretty hard to fall victim to his possessiveness, and those who want to should probably think twice before pursuing him. he has a very addictive personality and despite however much he's overcome, he still struggles every day with not taking any steps backwards. because once he falters, that's it. while he treads carefully around potholes and temptresses, he still can't manage to remove himself from the equation entirely. he's a man of games, a man who can't stand being knocked down or shown up, least of all by himself, so he'll put himself in situations that test his limits, push himself to near breaking point even though he's not proving anything to anyone. tell him he's being a fool and he'll brush you off with a smile, a flippant wave of his hand. i know what i'm doing, he'll say. unfaltering, persistent, he won't give up or give in until he's absolutely sure he can't take it anymore. [break][break]

and part of it is because he has so much passion, so much love for the things he doesn't know. he's a knowledge seeker and whether it's because he just wants to know something about you to have the upper hand or whether he's genuinely interested in you is all up in the air. but despite how much of a snake he can be, you can trust him with your secrets. he treats all he learns as substantial things, keeps them shut tight in a locket where only he has the key. sure, he may use your secrets against you, possibly even entertain the notion of telling someone information should it give him the response from you he wants, but would he really? no. it makes him dependable and trustworthy, though it may take anyone quite a bit of time to figure this out. [break][break]

manage to get up close and personal and you'll see just how much of a pessimist he is. maybe it won't be clear at first, but listen once he starts to talk about murphy's law. see the lights flicker in the backs of his eyes. there's something angry left inside of him, a big you owe me to the world that's fucked him up one too many times. there's nothing he can do about it, he knows that. he can yell to the sky as much as he wants to, but it's not going to change anything, he knows that, but still he wants compensation. still, he wants someone, anyone to take the blame. but since there's no one to point fingers, then it could be anyone. so don't blame him if he doesn't trust you. almost everyone who's walked into his life has, in metaphorical terms, walked out. only bad can come out of anything good. it's this mentality that makes most of his relationships shortlived. but as stated before, he holds onto most things rather tenaciously, even if their horrendous ends are inevitable. keep him close and you'll find no man more dedicated or faithful. he's actually quite easy to talk to and it doesn't take him long to figure out what you want from a relationship, regardless of whether it's purely platonic or sexual. morever, he's a very sensual person and craves touch and closeness just as much as he craves a connection of the minds. [break][break][break][break]


we die alone; we all die young[break][break][break][break]
anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. his grandmother used to say that their family was cursed, that it was his great-great-great grandpa alessandro's fault that their family is so plagued by misfortune. but his mother, no, his mother didn't believe in curses; she believed in good and bad, in karma, and quite possibly in the devil, as she stated numerous times that somewhere along the way, she got a piece of him inside her. that he was eating her alive, that one day, one day it was going to break her. but until then she did his dirty work, swallowed down the regret and the guilt with pills and vodka. well, used to, anyway. that was before gabriel left.[break][break]

he was born in a sleepy town in hoenn, just short of an hour away from slateport, but he doesn't have very many memories of his birthplace. he never knew his father, as his mother didn't even know who he was. sometimes he'd catch her sifting through old photographs she carted around, a dictionary of all her ex-lovers. once or twice he'd smuggled it away from its hiding place, but never had he the courage to open it. he grew up starving for affection; she fed him, clothed him, kept a small jar of funds for him so she could buy him just what he needed to get by. and god, she tried to love him, but she hadn't asked for him, hadn't asked for the responsibility of taking care of a child when she could barely manage the responsibility of taking care of herself.

so boyfriends came and went and with each tally mark gabriel kept logged in a book, one check of every man who went out the door and never came back, the craving for her affection grew worse and worse. he learned that when he was hurt, sick, troubled in any way, she would rest tired hazel eyes on him, touch his wounds, whisper lullabies into his ear to help him sleep. so truths turned sour in his mouth. lies fell from his lips--lies about bullies, about his tummy aching, about having trouble seeing out of his left eye, about one of her boyfriends taking a belt to his hip, the list goes on and on. eventually she caught on and when she saw where he was headed, she shipped him back to where her family was from, dumped him at a boarding school in italy with funding help from his grandparents. [break][break]

in sinnoh, he met his several aunts and uncles and his six male cousins, four female cousins. they took him in with open arms, enamored by his stories of hoenn (even if most of them were less than half-truths). their attention buoyed his ego and helped cover up the holes that lay smattered in his childhood. the first few months were the hardest, considering he didn't know a lick of the common tongue other than the few short phrases his mother would utter when she was frustrated or angry. but he adapted quickly and his newfound family wasn't against helping him along the way. they showed him an entirely different world than the one he'd known, one full of color and culture and history. [break][break]

high school was where he grew into himself. people would react differently to all sorts of things that would sprout from his lips, but instead of letting his lies tangle like unkempt vines, he learned to keep them small, silver lining threads that one by one formed puppet strings on whomever he found himself attached to at that moment. he started seeing people as less than people, more as challenges, as mere playthings. he discovered parties and with it the three cliches every mother stresses over when their child leaves the house: sex, drugs, and alcohol. but fortunately enough for gabriel, he had no mother. not one who mattered to him anyway. the harbored grudge he kept of her through all those years had twisted into something vile. she'd sent him there to grow up on his own and when he was eighteen, she wouldn't stop trying to call, wouldn't stop trying to tell him she wanted him back, masked behind pleas of i need you, gabriel. i need you, angelo bello. [break][break]

he was untouchable. his cousin stella introduced him to her friend cecilia one night at a trap house. all three of them and a few friends shut themselves up in the attic, closed all the windows until the walls themselves breathed smoke. laughter shook through their coughs, deep inhales burned their nose as lines made of small snowflakes disappeared under makeshift straws. he took a pill called love bug and couldn't keep his hands off her that night. he can't recall it now, most of that night, except how bloodshot her eyes were, how cracked her lips were as she kept crying and telling her she loved him and to please, please never let her go. and so he didn't. but after that night, when they walked back out to the real world, the sun warm on their backs, for once, he had no words to say. he didn't trust his mouth because he didn't want the lies to damage this. he'd thought of her as fragile that morning, molten glass against the too-close sun. 
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"i think you should really speak to your mother. she needs to talk to you." not now, he'd say. later, he'd say. i've got to be studying for these entrance exams, he'd say. and then he'd go off with his girl and they'd laze around during the day; they'd talk about literature and politics, as machiavelli was her favorite author, and they'd talk about math and science, the foundations of the world. and one day he asked her about murphy's law. "do you really think it's true?" he asked and she only kissed him on the nose, eyes like honey, and whispered, "but it's only a law, il mio angelo. only a law and not a theory." [break][break]

but once that got stuck in his head, he couldn't stop thinking about it. he'd spend days thinking about its end, the end. whenever they argued, whenever she asked him, "why why why? why can't you just tell me the truth?" he'd say he didn't know. he didn't know how to stop it. hours stretched with him standing before his mirror, eyes wide as he tried to peer down his throat. if he could just find what was down there, if he could just get it out, then it would be fine. but no amount of looking gave him the answer so he turned towards illusions. pills washed down with whatever bottle was offered. "try this one, gabriel. we know you'll love this." in the beginning, she went everywhere with him, did everything with him, but then the weeks started to get hazy and he started counting the days by the number of times he watched her walk out the door. then it was every day she never called. every day he called and she didn't answer. he took more, more, more to forget her, to forgive her. until one night he cleaned himself up and tossed rocks on her window, begging her to move back in.[break][break]

"i'll call my mother. i'll stop drinking. i'll stop the drugs. i'll stop all of it. please, don't prove it's true." and she'd thought long and hard, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, so when she climbed down her window and let him take her in his arms, she murmured, "you can't prove a theory true. only try and fail to prove it wrong." but he became obsessed with his own idea. he could intentionally try and fail a million times, but proving it true, now that was the solution to everything. so he opened his mouth, spun the two of them into a dollhouse where nothing could hurt them. he strung up strings from her wrists and her ankles and her shoulders, took care with the bindings around her heart. when she asked him where he'd been, why he'd been out so late, why he reeked of smoke, he'd feed her lies with feigned innocence, bought her flowers and chocolate and let not a single crack show in his smile until her suspicions settled again. he made them happy. that's what he kept telling himself. they were happy. she was happy. even if, most nights, he'd lie awake staring at all the cracks in the ceiling, terrified of the growing thoughts in the back of his mind, the paranoia he could never seem to shake. he was scared it was all going to come crashing down, but more than that, it was he who wanted it. [break][break]

she tried to talk to him about it. and out of desperation, he told her those truths. but of everything, those are the ones that scared her. those are the ones who drove her out of the house and away from her bindings. she left him in the middle of the night and after she was gone, he paced around in their ramshackle apartment, thoughts seething and writhing as shadows stretched over the walls. she came back the next night high off of something, words all wrong and off kilter. she told him she was sorry. she was sorry that she'd lied to him all this time. she was sorry that she'd gone behind his back, shot up with his friends while he was out studying in the library and reading books and staying good on his promises. she was sorry for leaving him, mostly because he was the only family she had left, and after he was gone, she couldn't do it anymore. didn't want to do it anymore. "whatever happens will happen." he got her to a hospital an hour too late.[break][break]

he tried calling his mother, but she changed her phone number. his aunt had stopped speaking to him when he turned nineteen and made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her or her sister ever again. stella showed up on his doorstep only to share her condolences, offer her shoulder for him to cry on for an hour or so before she mumbled about needing somewhere to be. and when he was alone, he pressed his thumbs against his temples, tried to squeeze out the emptiness from inside him. his chest had felt heavy when she'd left before, when they'd fought, when she'd called him bastard, when she'd said that those would be her last steps out those doors, but that was nothing compared to this. and he'd done it, hadn't he? the messenger of god with poison for words had been careless, thoughtless, selfish. and he was deserving of punishment. and it was the first time in a long time that he thought about his mother and about what she used to say about the devil, and he wondered if maybe, just maybe, he had a piece of him stuck in him, too. so he did the only thing he thought was right--he tried to smother the devil inside of him.[break][break]

but anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. his cousin find him with the pill bottles in hand after she'd come to apologize for everything that had happened, and that to please come home because her mother was worried sick about his. but he woke up some days later to stella's bright green eyes and felt the world crashing back too hard, too fast. she came to visit when she could, tried to urge answers, sometimes questions out of him, and then she tried for one-word answers. but he refused to speak. he just held her wrist when she let him and tried to ask with his eyes what he didn't trust to say with his mouth. until, the day before he was released and a counselor came in to talk with him, did he say, "help. i need help."[break][break]

after a long year and a half spent with long hours of counseling sessions and treatment programs, he finally returned home. and his aunt had good news waiting for him. she bought his ticket back to hoenn and had already made arrangements with his mother. he would return home, well, to her home which was now verdanturf, and start a new life, away from the memories that plagued him here. there was a celebration, some less-than-heartfelt goodbyes from his cousins, save from stella, and then he was on his way. he shared one conversation with his mother while he was waiting for his connecting flight. they talked about catching up and about the ocean and about a little sinnohian place right around the corner from where she lived and even if it wasn't the best area to live in, it was still something. they'd make it something. she'd go get dinner from there and have it hot and ready for him by the time they got home and they'd spend the next few days together, building something, starting over, doing things they should have done a long time ago. "i love you, mother"[break][break]

when he came, when they found him, they told him that she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. one of them, someone who'd known her personally, had muttered that she'd had it coming for a while. karma and all that. but the rest promised that it had just been coincidence and that they'd catch the guy who did it, don't worry. but in the meantime, here were all the things he had to sign and all the funds he had to settle since she had no will. he spent a lot of the first few weeks in a blur. his aunt offered to fly over to help settle things, but he could handle it. her body was shipped back though, back to the people who'd known her longer than he ever had or ever would. the shock never really wore off--he moved out of her house, taking only a few photographs and valuables. after a few months, his funds started to dwindle, so he applied to that sinnohian restaurant she told him about. after a few weeks on payroll, he sold off her house and settled in a small apartment by himself, an apartment stacked high and low with all sorts of books; some by macchiaveli, some by descartes, by hume, by kant, and some on physics--hawking, greene, even aristotle, summaries of laws and theories and why the world works how it does. because god, he just wants to understand.