Crossroads

Gilbert didn't know how many years it had been since his banishment, but he didn't much care. He used to, when he was first sent here, but not anymore. There was no point to it for it only served as another reminder of the time he was losing, so he'd stopped before it drove him completely insane. Well, he supposed there wasn't much help for that anyway. For Gilbert who had been surrounded by a bunch of brothers and relatives for most of his life, banishment was the worst punishment possible and it was eating him alive from the inside. He hadn't before realized just how much he'd relied on people being there to listen to him, even if they smacked him for being obnoxious, until there was nobody to talk to anymore

The Crossroads, so named because it was the point where the territories of all four of the Card Kingdoms touched each other and it was composed of a circular-shaped 100 foot diameter of neutral territory where the most important Conferences were held between all four Kingdoms. It was a most ironic name because it implied a heavy concentration of people would pass through, however it was anything but. Gilbert didn't think he'd seen a single person pass through the Crossroads in any of the however-many-years he'd been here.

That was another thing about the Crossroads; it was the first place that all the Jokers were banished to and nobody wanted to get anywhere near them. Gilbert wasn't stupid; he knew the Joker reputations as well as everyone else did. Being a Joker himself now, he could see why they were known to commit the atrocious acts he'd heard described. There was no reason to keep being human here. He wasn't so far gone, but Gilbert could feel his own desire to retain his human decency slip a little further with each passing year. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if there were other Jokers to talk to, maybe, but there weren't; he was literally all alone here. He only regretted that he hadn't realized before now, before he could do nothing to change the circumstances, how truly inhumane this punishment was.

Actually, that wasn't true. He'd come to regret a lot of things since arriving here.

His first most immediate regret was the way he'd yelled at Erszébet in his initial humiliation at having her watch him become reduced to nothing more than a Joker. His shredded pride wasn't enough of an excuse to justify his actions towards her and he had no way of being able to apologize to her. Later, he'd regretted that he'd practically abandoned his baby brother and he'd been very worried about him in those first few months, but when he didn't see any invasive armies marching in, he figured that Ludwig was fine and that whoever was voted King was managing well (or that Kiku and Rome were able to compensate enough for the inadequacies).

Past those two big ones, the other regrets had been coming in over the years like a trickle of water slowly drowning him. He wished he'd been able to prove Ivan was responsible for that mill explosion. He wished that he could have actually killed the bastard so that his banishment – or would it be execution at that point? – wouldn't be for nothing. He wished he could go and annoy his old man some more in his old age. He wished he could watch Lutz finish growing up and become King. He wished he'd gotten to rough house with Hungary some more like he used to. He even wished he could be around to tease Roderich about liking Erszébet and he even missed getting smacked in the head with a random frying pan! He wished that he'd shown his war strategist teacher, Ol' Fritz, how grateful he was for his teachings and his support. He wished he'd been able to figure out why the old man's charitable and generous granddaughter, Louise, always made him feel like he'd swallowed a crapload of butterflies whenever he thought about her. He wished that he'd gotten a chance to payback that Feliks guy in the Club Kingdom for convincing him that the doughnuts in their kingdom have spirits that haunt those who ate them. The list of regrets he had just went on and on and got even sillier and more ridiculous the longer he remained, including such regrets as dying a virgin and not putting caterpillars on the Queen of Spades eyebrows while he slept during part of a meeting.

Gilbert was shocked out of his doldrums by a sudden, high-pitched human screech and he stood up from where he was sitting on the roof, jerking his head over to where the sound had come from. Who the hell…? Who was stupid enough to get this close to the Crossroads? Did they have a death wish or something? Figuring that he might as well go see who was stupid enough to brave the dreaded Crossroads, Gilbert leapt from one rooftop to the other in the direction of where he heard the sound and it took him all the way to the outskirts on the border with Spade. Upon arrival, he abruptly wished he hadn't even bothered getting up. The source of the scream was some kid dressed up like a devil or something that was now hanging upside down from the tree noose trap that he had setup to catch food for himself, since there was just so much of it in the Crossroads. Even worse, the kid saw him.

"Hey you jerk! I see you standing on that roof; get me down from here!" the boy shouted imperiously at him.

Gilbert instantly decided that he didn't like his bossy attitude. "Why, should I?" Gilbert asked as he slowly and deliberately sat down on the roof, letting his legs dangle off the sides and his tail make lazy loop-the-loops behind his back. "I have absolutely no reason to help you at all."

"Yes, you do, jerk! I'm a Joker just like you, so you have to help me!"

Gilbert's eyes twitched in irritation, despising this kid more and more with every time he opened his mouth. This kid had the gall to claim that he was a Joker? What kind of sick game was he playing at? If he could, he'd drag the child back to his parents by the ear and chew them out for treating the matter of the Jokers as a game and not as the serious topic that it was. Speaking of said parents, why weren't they here, or did they even care enough about this child to bother supervising him?

"You keep being rude and calling me a jerk like that, and you're not going to find yourself on the ground for a long while," Gilbert growled, his temper mildly held back. "So if you want to get back down on the ground on two feet, you're gonna have to shape up that attitude and be respectful to those older than you, or did your parents even teach you manners?"

The boy pouted, dangling from his trap a little while longer in silence before he said in a much more subdued voice, "Can you please get me down, sir?"

Gilbert grinned ferociously at his success. "Of course I can, small Spade child, now that you've asked me so kindly! You sit tight right there, 'kay, and I'll get you down good."

Gilbert slipped off the roof and landed on the ground in a crouched position to let his entire body absorb the impact of the drop and sauntered over to the base of the tree where the rope was anchored. He considered untying it and letting it all go at once, but decided against it. The kid was a rude little twit if you let him get away with it, but he could behave properly when you made it clear he wasn't going to get away with any of that shit. He untied the knot around the tree and slowly lowered the brat to the ground until he could stand up on his own.

"Alright, you're down. Now untie the rope from your leg and go home. You've already cost me several more hours to trap a meal from this Spade forest, I don't need any more of them going to waste."

"But I already told you! I'm a Joker too, so that means I live in the Crossroads!" the Spadian boy protested as he stood up.

Gilbert scowled and was quickly regretting not dropping the kid on his head and knocking him out to get him away from the Crossroads without putting up a fuss. Now that he got a good look at the boy though, he saw that he had indeed tried to make himself look like a Joker. His clothes were all black except for the undershirt, which was red, and he'd even had a brown mostly-circular patch of fabric in the shape of a devil's head on the front of his jacket. Apparently somebody had described the Joker clothes well enough to him that he knew they all had the devil face on their jackets, but not well enough to know that it was always red and on the back. As for the horns and tail, he wore a black hat on his head with two conical pieces sticking out for his 'horns' and he'd just wound a long enough strip of cloth around his waist and tied it so that it would hang at the back for his 'tail'. The tail probably kept its weight from the black arrowhead paperweight that was attached at the very end of it. He really didn't know why the kid was wearing a red handkerchief around his neck though. Also he looked vaguely familiar, though he was sure he'd never seen the kid before in his life. Gilbert might have admitted the child's creative imagination in pulling off a Joker costume were he not so thoroughly pissed off.

"Don't you dare joke around about that," Gilbert growled. "I don't know what your parents told you, but being a Joker's not a game or something fun, now go back home before I get really angry and eat you. You're not the first kid I'll have eaten, you know?" he added with a predatory smile and licked his lips for added effect.

It was a lie; he'd never eaten another human, much less a kid, in his life, but there was certainly no harm in making good use of the vicious Joker reputation if it meant that the kid would go away and leave him alone. Well, at least he was shaking like a leaf now; pity he hadn't turned tail and run like Rome's Messina family grandsons Lovino, Feliciano, and Seborgo would have.

"I-I-I'm n-not l-leaving," he stuttered, "I k-k-know that the J-Jokers are t-t-the worst cri-criminals, but I'm not- I'm not- I'm not going back, e-even if you want to- want to- eat me!"

Gilbert's expression turned skeptical as he stared down at the trembling boy. Really now. He was that desperate to become a Joker of all things. "Why?"

The boy stopped shaking a little and looked up at him confused. His eyes were blue. "Huh?"

"If you know how bad it is being a Joker, then why do you want to be one?"

The Joker-wannabe-child cast his gaze down at the ground and scuffed his toe against the ground. "It will be better than being at home," he mumbled.

Gilbert gave an obvious snort of disbelief. "Hardly!"

"It will!" he protested loudly and Gilbert was a little surprised to see that he was on the verge of tears. Dude, what the hell? "It will because it has to! Ever since we got that new King, Dad's been paying more attention to him than to me, and he doesn't play with me much anymore either. He always seems to be in a bad mood and when he gets home, he always tells me to not to bother him, and lately, he and Mom have been yelling a lot about the King too. I never stay and listen when they start yelling, but I hear my name brought up sometimes, so I know they're yelling about me, but I don't know what I've done wrong to make them hate me so much, especially Dad. So that's why I decided to run away and become a Joker. They didn't want me around anyway so I left so that I wouldn't be a nuisance to them anymore."

This kid has issues. That was the first thing Gilbert thought when he'd finished his explanation, but then kids aren't exactly known for their good logic; that had to be learned, and Gilbert could see why the kid might think that being a Joker was better than staying at home where he felt unloved, even if the logic was faulty.

"So the Spades got a new King, huh? You remember how long ago that was?"

"Um-hm. I was six when Grandpapa died and we got that new jerk King and I'm twelve now, so it was six years ago."

"Six years?!" Gilbert repeated, his expression stunned. He'd been living alone for more than six years? No wonder he'd been losing his sanity! "Dang, I've really been out of the loop for a while now. So your Dad works pretty closely with the King, jas?"

"Of course he does!" the boy, "My dad's the Queen of Spades!"

"The Queen of-! Wait, you're Arthur's boy?! Peter?!" Gilbert exclaimed, suddenly realizing why he'd thought the kid looked familiar. Those cursed eyebrows!

"Y-Yeah, that's me, but how did you know?" Peter asked, looking taken aback.

"What? You don't remember the previous King of Hearts?"

Peter's blue eyes suddenly widened impressively. "You don't mean you're the Joker King Gilbert, are you?"

"Oh, is that what they're calling me these days?" Gilbert said with a dry, humorless laugh, "The Joker King. Hilarious."

"But doesn't that mean you're King of the Jokers?" Peter asked innocently.

"And that's the irony of it, kid!" Gilbert shouted, his tone bitter. "I ain't King of nothing anymore. There's not even any other Jokers around to rule over."

"That's not true! I'm a Joker! I could recognize you as my King!" Peter declared enthusiastically.

Gilbert only rolled his eyes. "And I already told you, kid, that you're not hanging around, no matter how messed up your family situation is back home. The Crossroads is one of the worst places to live and there's no future for you here excepting a lonesome death. Even if you don't go back home to Daddy dearest, even living in one of the other Card Kingdoms will provide you with a better life then what you could ever have here at the Crossroads where all things end. Now get lost already."

"But I don't want to live in any of the other Card Kingdoms!"

"Oh really?" Gilbert said sarcastically and made a dramatic show of sitting down to listen on the big rock next to the tree he'd used for his noose trap, the end of his tail being the only outward sign of his increased ire, "And why might that be, little Prince Spade?"

"Because all the Kingdoms are the same; all of the monarchs are focused on is the improvement of the system. The achievements of individuals are overlooked when all that matters is the greater good for the benefit of the Kingdom," Peter said with a very serious face.

"Because when the system is improved, everyone else's lives are improved and made more equal as a result," Gilbert responded immediately with a bored roll of his eyes, having previously been one of those very monarchs that this kid was criticizing.

"But who gets to decide what the greater good for the Kingdom is?" Peter asked in retaliation and Gilbert's red eyes focused on him immediately, slightly surprised to hear such a philosophical question come from the boy's mouth. "How is the greater good defined? Is there some book that lists a definition for it? And if there is, then how many ways can it be interpreted, and how much is that greater good affected depending on whether it's defined under a strict interpretation or a loose one? If there is no definition, then should it be up to the King to decide what constitutes the greater good? The King is elected by the patriarchs of the noble families, but what if they're not interested in the greater good and they elect somebody who's corrupt and not interested in the greater good, or worse, a weak, mindless yes-man puppet who is lead around by the nose into doing whatever others want of him? The King has the most power and yet there's hardly any balance in determining who is elected. If anything, it's the King who should be voted by the people and the Queen who should be chosen by the Electors, but nobody in the government will never entertain that thought because it's too difficult within the Card Kingdoms to disturb the status quo when a system is functioning well. I know my ancient history too and the only reason why we have our current still-faulty system was because the Card Kingdoms had undergone a violent revolution that had spread from the Diamonds where Marianne Aquitaine was spearheading the Reform movement. So I don't want to be part of a Kingdom that refuses to recognize and amend the flaws in its own system before it's too late for anything but drastic measures. I reject it entirely and wish to be entirely in control of my own future. That's the full reason for why I want to be a Joker."

As Peter took in several heavy breaths of fresh air, Gilbert continued to stare at him in mild surprise. He definitely talked like an educated youngster when he really put his mind to doing so. That alone was worth the wide eyes since Gilbert wouldn't have put it past the kid to have not cared at all for his studies and would do everything in his power to forget them entirely (though now it ticked him off that the kid had been acting like a brat earlier because he'd learned he could get away with that kind of attitude and childish language), but the philosophical reasoning and arguments behind it were so well thought out and supported that it didn't even matter if his motivation to pursue these thoughts was based exclusively on his dislike for the current Spade King (and he suspected it was since he couldn't see any other reason for a twelve-year-old to contemplate such negative radical thoughts against a functioning system). Even he, who'd been known as a great reformer of the Hearts before his Joker transformation and banishment, had never considered the points that Peter had brought up. With such adult reasoning Gilbert couldn't really see any logical reason not to accept Peter as a Joker now.

"Alright Peter, you've convinced me," Gilbert said with a sigh as he stood up from his rock and stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'll accept you as a Joker if you'll accept me as your Joker King!" he declared with his signature cheeky grin, an expression that was oddly unfamiliar on his face after such long disuse.

"Yes! Thank you, Your Majesty!" Peter said happily with a very quick bow to his new king. "So now that I'm a citizen of the Crossroads, what do I have to know?"

Once Peter had gotten over the bratty factor, Gilbert realized that he was actually a lot like Ludwig when he was a kid and it made him smile at the thought of getting to help take care of another kid. He did like kids, but he wouldn't stand for any of that disrespectful crap that some seemed to think they could get away with.

"Well, first of all, you have to know that I am awesome!" Gilbert began and thus Peter started his life as a Joker at the Crossroads where all things end. Well… maybe not all things.

Tada! Finally finished with my base story for if ever I want to write more Cardverse fics, because this one is going to be my frame of reference for character, potential plots hinted at, background, setup, etc. Man, I had a really hard time thinking of a way for Gilbert to be convinced that his looking after Peter would be an okay thing to do and having to take care of a child will help stimulate his mind and prevent him from going insane and being all depressed and stuff.

Weeee! I got to mention Ol'Fritz, yay! XD Also, um… the Louise mentioned here is Queen Louise of Prussia, so yeah.