Please note, I've only watched Black Butler – I haven't read it. So the Drocell in this story is based off of my interpretations of the anime.

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"You have sad eyes." Drocell looked at the dark, simple circles on Akito's face and the thin, deep rings underneath them. "Oh yes…you can't hide it from me. But, I thought to myself…they are also powerful – filled with burning desires. Hm?" He tilted his head to the side mechanically, the reflex eliciting a sharp, wooden crack.

Akito was in London on a rare business trip, for a very important client of the Sohmas. She had wandered into Drocell's shop after escaping from the careful yet sometimes distracted gaze of Kureno, feeling tired of it and also irritated – irritated that he thought she needed supervision. She wasn't a child; she didn't need to be watched.

Although she was considering rethinking her decision to be alone at the almost hungry look this strangely dressed man was giving her. "Yes," she replied immediately, not hesitant to tell him an answer he clearly didn't need. "The powerful and desire parts at least."

He chuckled, the noise sounding like rain against straw in a drainage pipe – bits and pieces thrown in and mixed together.

"But you're so lonely…aren't you." He smiled at her, pushing his hat back so that she could more easily see his face. She gasped a little when she did, his eyes were purple – like Yuki's, only a few shades darker. "What good is power without loyalty? What good is desire without love?" he asked, tracing under her left eye delicately, with a gloved finger. She jerked away from his touch, flinching slightly. He went on unfazed. "You know you can't deny it…you want power, absolute power – yet you want love. But you can't have both. One must be relinquished in order to satisfy the demands of the other."

"So, I thought to myself – the question then becomes…which do you want more?"

Akito glanced up at him quickly, eyes widening in alarm. But Drocell didn't wait for an answer – perhaps not expecting her to have one just yet.

"You are an idealist. You want all that is good, but refuse to take the bad. You want to be absolved from loss – but no one is exempt. Not even someone such as you." He peered at her through gently faded orange bangs, his eyes coming out of their fragrant wash with a vibrant burst of color that made Akito shiver. How did he know so much? She'd never even seen him before today…yet here he was, calmly iterating her every feeling, vocalizing it for the nearly empty store.

"You, who gets something once and never wants it to go. But you have to let go of it – to have the love you so desire…it is necessary for your world to crumble and fall."

What was he talking about? She stared at him, trying to figure it all out. She'd been suspicious of him since the start, but now…she was beginning to suspect, in her paranoia, that he might be in some way related to the client she was supposed to see here, although that was unlikely, considering how she'd found him – not the other way around.

Of course…he could just be a complete lunatic.

"You can't control everything…" He eyed her carefully, then added darkly, "Or everyone." He paused, seeming to have done so just for serious emphasis. "That love is only an illusion...an imaginary window into a perfect world that doesn't exist, doesn't last beyond its breaking point – when the cracks become too much for the wood to hold."

"It doesn't satisfy…does it." He gave her a small, knowing smile. "They don't trust you, and you don't trust them. But still you force it – a bond that reaches out but holds back at the same time. So, I thought to myself, you are cursed – clinging to the fantasy of an intended blessing that has long since degraded into nothing but a twisted delusion. You tighten the collars around their necks so that your hoarse voice can better communicate your love to them, can better whisper in their damaged ears – "

"But you are all tired…you have nearly reached your limits…the glass is wearing, shattering – creeping into the edges of your souls."

"There is only so much abuse you can take…especially when it comes from those who profess to love you."

She was shaking. "What – what would you know about it?" she almost shouted, bile rising in her throat, fighting to keep it from going all the way in her extreme repulsion. She wanted to scream at him, scream that she loved them and they loved her, deny that and his other accusations, get angry – but the man hadn't known, he couldn't know; he couldn't get and hadn't gotten to her.

And he had said she couldn't deny it…what made him think that? What would he think if she did?

What would he say?

Drocell stopped for a moment, then answered slowly, "I have one such collar around my own neck – one I chose to put there, like your beloved."

"There is a dark cloud that looms over you and them…a shadow I can see, along with the stains it leaves behind on your hearts – stains that spread each time it passes over. Soon, your whole world will be covered in darkness."

"A permanent storm…is that better to you, better than an inconsistent sun – although you'll never see either the moon or it that way…a spatial purgatory of the most infallible of stars."

Her eyes scanned him, jerking over from one side of her profile. "You speak like one of them."

"Is that so." He made it sound as if it were something for him to consider. His face pulled on a thoughtful, slightly surprised look. "And how do I?"

"You say things I don't want to hear." The words slipped out of her mouth before she'd even heard them herself. She glanced at him – however, he didn't seem to care, still pensively absorbed in the idea. "With excessive description," she added, a tad woefully.

"I prefer to think of it as 'elaborate'," was all he said in reply. "But, I thought to myself…why should that matter? Unless you don't want to be reminded of that person."

Akito bit her lip. She definitely didn't want to be reminded of him – of that adulterous wretch…

Shigure.

"…My time is limited and valuable," she responded after a moment of hesitation, unwilling to agree with him.

"Then by all means, go," he urged, motioning toward the door. "If you don't wish to be here, then you are truly free to leave."

She walked a few steps to the door, then looked back.

She scowled, then frowned.

"Did you really know all this from looking at me?"

She couldn't help but ask. Drocell shifted his gaze, angling it to the side of her before he answered.

"From looking at your eyes, yes…they are windows. However, not in the manner most suggest – rather, they are pieces of your soul that people can see...as is your entire body and being." His look seemed to bore a hole right through her, raping the locked away pieces even she herself didn't want to see. "They show and don't tell a story…as good artists should."

Akito felt like screaming again; her throat felt like it was drying up. But it wasn't until she heard his last sentence that she fled out of the shop and into the streets of London, sobbing blindly until she found Kureno.

"Farewell…godchild."

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Please review, all you lovely readers! I eagerly await any comments you might have concerning this nightly-idea-turned-fanfiction!